The Garden of Man
by 
Maria Halseband

The gray dawn of the approaching day filled the room in which a man slept restlessly. His ethereal body had left its hull and was sojourning in far away realms.

He traveled through endless forests in which densely growing trees obstructed every view. Confused, he hastily ran along. At every crossroad he paused for a moment and, sighing deeply, chose one of three directions in the hopes of finding an exit. At the same moment, the physical body of the sleeper sighed also. He distinctly perceived the ever increasing distance between himself and his ethereal inmate.

At last, our traveler reached the edge of the forest and, relieved, saw before him what seemed to be a well laid out and systematically divided garden.

"What a large nursery!" the man marveled.

He stepped from under the trees onto a path running along a thick high hedge that guarded the enclosure against any intruders. Soon this path led him to a road at the end of which was a wooden gate. Little covered wagons drawn by small horses, not unlike our ponies, were just moving into the nursery. Accompanying it were little stubby men who guided their animals with low, cooing sounds.

"Lilliput," the man thought amused.

At this moment one of the little men turned his head toward him and he was very much impressed by his leathery and hairy face that seemed to be age-old and eternally young, and whose eyes examined him mysteriously.

After the last wagon had disappeared behind the open gate a dignified old gentleman appeared. He at once approached the man who meanwhile had seated himself on a stone by the wayside.

"So you have come at last?" he said with a deep but pleasant voice.

With a questioning look the man turned to the old gentle­man, and he knew instinctively that he had seen him long, long ago.

"Step in and look about," he continued, "You will not have the privilege and the opportunity to come here so soon again."

The man entered. As far as his eyes reached he could see beds, all the same size and separated from each other by narrow paths. Upon these little gardens, little gardeners moved to and fro, spading or cultivating and fetching water from the purling creek that merrily wound its way through this strange garden.

But how did these beds look? Originally they seemed to have been laid out carefully and they had been planted with flowers and ornamental plants; now, however, weeds and brush almost suffocated the flowers. Trees growing on these beds were mostly small and malformed. Others were so overrun with weeds and undesirable plant life that even the neighboring beds were in danger of being affected. Still others were almost free from weeds; they seemed well cultivated, but the flowers growing on them were tender and small and one could readily see that the weeds had been removed only recently.

Shaking his head the man strolled through the garden. With amazement he saw that the nimble, little gardeners cared equally well for the flowers and for the weeds, and they cleared away only the wilted. He noticed that lovely flowers,. wild herbs, poisonous plants and thorns grew side by side here and tried to suppress one another.

"A queer nursery!" he thought, and paused in front of a bed upon which hemlock and milkweed grew luxuriantly, although underneath them he could still discern the original flower arrangement. A slim red mallow also struggled for its place in the sun on this bed.

Suddenly the man became frightened. He turned quickly to the old gentleman who had quietly walked beside him and asked him, strangely excited, "Why is everything so badly neglected here?"

"Neglected?" the old gentleman repeated, "Do you not see that we do nothing else here but give the utmost care to every tender, little seedling we receive?"

"Yes, but why so many weeds?"

The old man nodded seriously. 

“Man wants it that way." 

"We?" the man exclaimed skeptically, thinking of his own well cared for garden at home. With this thought he regained his confidence, and in his habitual conceit he remarked:

"I do not think that many of us would tolerate such neglectfulness. And in a nursery! How could they make money with it?"

Again the old gentleman nodded.

"Yes, you cultivate the soil in your gardens and destroy all the weeds in them, but in your souls you carry them around all your lives. Such is man!"

The old gentleman's voice had grown bitter and resentful while he spoke, and when his angry sparkling eyes rested upon the man, the cold fear that the latter thought to have mastered returned to him. Quickly he walked away.

"Now and then we have occasion to rejoice," the old gentleman said after a while, his voice calming finally, "but not frequently."

He pointed to a bed around which a group of cheerful, little gardeners were standing. It was overloaded with flowers and a very pleasant fragrance filled the air, brown and fresh was the soil and the little ones lovingly tended to the numerous buds.

"But I still do not understand what all this means, although I usually take pride in my profound knowledge," the man said walking along. In his life on earth he was a scientist, a celebrity, thoroughly convinced of his knowledge.

"Your profession and rank on earth mean little to us here," the old gentleman answered the man's thoughts. "But I shall answer your question. You are in the Garden of Man! It is situated close by the life on earth and envelopes man.

This is the Garden of Deeds and Acts. Over this the Garden of Thoughts. It is separated from this part by a small rail fence. Behind it you will find the Garden of Sensations and Perceptions. We accept everything man sends to us, and care for the good as well as for the evil; for we live in God the Father's Holy Law and work as He wills us to work.

"We are in His service and not in man's!"

"But are you not in our service when you take our thoughts as soon as they leave our brain and forward them?" the man asked affably.

Again the old gentleman shook his head.

"Such is man! He always believes his ridiculously little self to be the hub of importance. We labor and live in accordance with the Will of the Lord and produce the wonderful Cloak of Life. You, however, you distorted human spirits who were created to dwell in Subsequent Creation, you have tried to put your will above that of your Creator. See the effect!"

By this time they had reached the Garden of Thoughts. Luxuriant vegetation covered everything and hid the beds. Queerly formed climbers and crippled trees crept like ugly animals through this wilderness, above which poisonous flowers raised their gaily colored heads. The guardians of this part of the garden were light and airy figures who moved about in silence.

"Man believes himself to be the master on earth", the old gentleman continued, "and he could be, if he would live in harmony with the Will of God. Instead he made himself the slave of his earthly conceit and of his intellect. If he only knew that he will receive back -and with interest- all the wrong, all the evil he does, his conceit would soon vanish.

Everything must return to him in the great eternal give and take, strengthened or weakened, depending upon his attitude toward Light and darkness. He will suffer no injustice. But he must free himself from all his own creations. No one can help him, not even we who take over his acts, his thoughts and his sensations, pass them on and return them to him later. We are the unbribable servants of our Lord, we neglect nothing and care equally well for the empty and for the filled ear".

The man felt dizzy. To think that he was connected with and held by innumerable threads and didn't know it! And, had never known it!

"Do you think God could be unjust, you little human spirit? Everyone of you has known all this once, but has buried this knowledge voluntarily, when he willed the wrong and the evil. Come, here is the third part of the garden."

Two huge Cypresses guarded its entrance. Behind them, however, insanity seemed to have been the gardener. The beds were covered with an almost impossible conglomeration of colors, forms and ugliness in general. Of course, here too, the eyes came now and then to rest upon beds abounding in beautiful flowers and well-shaped, slender trees. Some beds seemed to glow with light, while on others light and darkness, good and evil apparently were locked in a deadly struggle. In general, however, ugliness was predominant here. The man shuddered.

"Here it is worst," he said in anguish.

"Certainly," the old gentleman replied calmly. "Man's perception is spiritual; its effects are most intense and reach farthest. It produces the luminous and the pure, and is able to uplift man to the highest heights, but it also has created hell with all its horrors and phantoms."

"How is that possible," the man stammered.

"It is so simple! You can see it on these beds here. If all men would endeavor to will the good, darkness would soon receive no more reinforcements. As a consequence all of this hell would wear away and all sources of evil would be dried up forever."

"Where may my bed be?" the man thought nervously. With a silent gesture the old gentleman showed it to him at once.

It was overrun by creeping plants, the large leaves of which had suffocated all life underneath. The decaying trunk of a tree towered above this confusion like a broken down column. A sad, hopeless sight. Seized with fright, the man admitted this to himself.

The old gentleman, however, said:

"There must still be some hope, or you would not have found your way to me. I can see a little light that would like to guide you."

The man had hardly listened to the last words of the old gentleman. With a quick movement he knelt down and tore all this confusion apart. While doing this he came upon an insignificant looking blue flower that had been on the verge of suffocation.

Faster and faster he uprooted the tough vines. Finally he saw that they all sprung from one strong root. He laid it bare a little way to be better able to get a hold of it and then he pulled with all his strength.

"It reaches way down into the darkest spheres," the old gentleman said beside him. "It will put you to great trouble. And if you do not pull steadily with all your strength it will breed and grow again."

"How far down does it reach?" asked the man.

"Into hell", answered the other calmly and turned away.

The man's hair stood on end while a shudder ran over him, he felt as if a thousand voices repeated the terrible words again and again. Frightened, he let go of the root. Suddenly a storm broke about him and hail started to fall. He tried to flee, but his feet became entangled in the vines. With a cry ringing from his throat he fell down into the green that at once engulfed and buried him.

Horror-stricken, his limbs still trembling from exhaustion, the man woke up. Disconcertedly he stared into the bright sunshiny morning and could not find his way back to earth. Too vivid had been his experience!

Then there was a knock at the door. The servant brought the mail; many letters; among them one from a friend. When he held this letter in his hand, calmness returned to him. It was as if the voice of this friend had said to him: I will help you understand. He opened this letter with a faint inner expectation while the servant opened the drapes and the bright summer sun gaily shone into the room.

One sunbeam fell upon the unfolded letter and on it upon one word, a name, that fascinated him and kept his eye captive. Again and again he read the name and knew that it would be his destiny, the name: Abd-ru-shin.