It was only a dream and yet the love of those innocent
and beautiful people has remained with me for ever. I feel as though
their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have seen them
myself, have known them and been convinced. I loved them and I suffered
for them afterwards.
They desired nothing and were at peace; they
did not aspire to knowledge of life as we do because
their lives were already full. Their knowledge was higher and deeper than
ours. Our science seeks to explain what life is in order to teach others how to live, while they already knew how.
They showed me the trees, yet I could not understand
the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they
were talking with creatures like themselves. Yes, they had found
that connection, and I am convinced that the trees understood them in return.
They
looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived in peace with
them and did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love.
They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could
not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with
those stars, not only in thought, but through some living channel.
Yet these
people did not persist in trying to make me understand them, they loved
me without that, but I knew that they would never understand me, and
so I hardly spoke to them about our earth. I kissed the ground on which they walked and quietly worshiped them.
And they saw that and let me adore them without being embarrassed by it, for they themselves loved as much. They were not unhappy when I kissed their feet, conscious
of the love with which they would respond to me. At times I asked
myself how it was they never offended a lower being like me and never once aroused envy in me?
They were happy like children.
They wandered about their woods and glades, they sang their beautiful
songs. Their food was light - the fruits of their trees, the honey from
their woods, and the milk of the animals who loved them. The work they
did was brief and not laborious. They loved and
begot children, but I never noticed in them that cruel
sensuality in sex which is the source of nearly every sin. They rejoiced
at the arrival of children as new beings to share their happiness. There
was no possessiveness, no quarreling, and no jealousy among them, and they did not even know
what those words meant. Their children were the children of all, for they
all made up one family.
There was scarcely any illness among them, though
there was death; but their old people died peacefully, as though falling
asleep, giving blessings and smiles to those who surrounded them to
take their last farewell. I never saw
grief or tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the
point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and contemplative.
One might think that they were still in contact with the departed after
death, and that their earthly union was not cut short by death. They
scarcely understood me when I questioned them about immortality, but
evidently they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was
not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had a
real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the
universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when
their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there
would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater
fullness of contact with the whole. They looked forward
to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming
to have a foretaste of it in their hearts.
Yet it ended in my corrupting them
all! How that came to pass I do not know, but I remember that moment clearly.
The dream had ranged over thousands of years and left in me only a vague sense of
this alternative universe. I only know that I was the cause of their downfall.
Like a germ of a plague infecting whole kingdoms,
so I contaminated their earth, so happy and sinless before my coming.
They learned from me how to lie and grew fond of it. At first it began innocently, with irony, jokes and flirtation on my part...but that germ of falsity
made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality came afterwards, and sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy - cruelty. Soon, very soon, the first blood
was shed. They wondered about it and were horrified, and began take sides against one another.
Recriminations and blame followed. They came to know shame, and shame
brought them to 'morality'. Then the concept of 'honour' sprang up, and every tribe began waving its flags.
Then they started torturing animals, and the
animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them.
They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality,
for 'yours' and 'mine'. They began to talk in different languages. They
became acquainted with suffering and learned to love it; some of them even claimed that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then book-learning appeared.
As they became wicked they began talking about the coming 'brotherhood of man'. As they became criminal,
they invented 'justice' and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe
it, and to ensure the laws were kept, they set up the guillotine.
They hardly
remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they
had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility
and called it a dream. But, strange to relate, although they had lost all faith in their lost innocence, they longed to be happy once more. So they made a religion out of this craving, set
up temples and worshiped the idea of it; though at
the same time they believed that it was unattainable and could
not be realized. Yet they bowed down to it and adored it!
Nevertheless, if someone had shown them how to get back their lost innocence and happiness, and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused.
From: 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man' by Dostoievsky (1821-1881).
