Arthur Osborne - A Station Passed Through

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A STATION PASSED THROUGH

 

 

The next powerful influence on my life was the Yorkshire

Moors. Perhaps it could be described as a vision of beauty — the

long sweep of the hills, the heather glowing purple in the distance

and springy underfoot, the profusion of wild flowers — marsh

orchids, and many others — the wild strawberries growing by the

roadside and, above all, the sombre pine-woods with the wind

moaning through them. And yet I had known beautiful country

before and have known it since, and never had it such power over

me. I loved it in rain and mist as well as in sunshine. It became

connected in my mind with the Norse legends and the vital power

of the Northlands. It seemed something too sacred to speak about,

and I never did speak about it.

 

The last time we spent our summer holidays there I must

have been about fifteen. The spell was as strong as ever. It was

then that I wrote my first sonnet. I was sitting alone on a hillside

and took out a new notebook that I happened to have in my

breast pocket and wrote a sonnet about the moors on the first

page. I decided to write one on each page and give it to my

mother for a birthday present when it was full. I don’t know

whether I ever wrote another poem in it; I certainly never gave

it to any one. In the same holiday I wrote a lyric on the moors

and the pine trees that I long regarded as a great poem. Juvenile

as it was, it was written with genuine inspiration. I have long

since forgotten it.

 

The same holiday we made friends with a local farmer,

whom I will call Bob Thorpe, an uncouth looking fellow,

unshaven, with a broad North Riding accent, and yet a great

lover of beauty and a reader of poetry. When he sat on a hillside

beside me, reciting Tennyson and Milton, there was much less

of an accent in his speech. He too loved the moorlands. Instead

of a compact farm in the valley around his farmhouse he had

his fields scattered on the various hills because he loved walking

from hill to hill. There were those who said that it was also

because it gave him an excuse for walking over the squire’s

grounds and that he left a trail of rabbit snares as he went; in

fact, poaching was as much a business with him as farming.

 

I never liked games, neither cricket and football nor the

lighter games such as tennis and badminton. I played as much

as was inescapable at school and no more. On the other hand I

loved gardening. We had an orchard behind the house and a

garden for growing flowers and vegetables, and my father and I

did all the work of it. Whether it was the heavy work of digging

and manuring or sowing seeds, pruning fruit trees, even

weeding, I loved the very contact with the earth and the growing

things. When, therefore, harvest started and Bob Thorpe let

me work for him as an unpaid labourer it was he who was

doing me a favour. We worked from first daylight to dusk,

taking time off at midday to rest in the shade and eat the cold

meat that the womenfolk brought to the field for us. It was an

old-fashioned, simple reaper and we bound the sheaves by hand

and arranged them in stooks. I had never spent so enjoyable a

holiday.

 

Farming appealed to me and might have fulfilled my nature

but my father had other plans for me and would not consider

such a possibility.

 

When I say that this outcome, supposing it to have been

possible, would have been the only fulfilment of my life, that

does not mean that missing it was a cause for regret; indeed, it

was a cause for rejoicing. The only real measure of success in

life is the state of mind and character one has attained when the

time comes to leave it. The only full success is spiritual

enlightenment, realization of the Self. The life in a man is

returning ineluctably to its Source, to Oneness with the Self,

like a river to the ocean. This lifetime is an episode on the path,

and all that matters is the distance from the goal when the episode

ends. This depends on two things: first on the position from

which this lifetime begins, that is to say the stage on the road

already attained in past existences, whether human or not;

secondly on the wisdom and determination with which one

presses forward in this lifetime. There is no injustice in the

different stages from which man begins life’s course or in the

different degrees of understanding and determination with

which they are endowed, for that concerns only speed, and

impatience is a purely human disease. The difference does not

affect the universal order or the final outcome. Indeed, from

the viewpoint of the universal order, the courses man follows

can be compared rather to rivers flowing into the ocean than to

men trudging the road on a pilgrimage — a lifetime representing

not the whole course of the river but only a certain stretch of it.

 

Even though some meander or stagnate or even turn backwards,

while others flow swift and strong, all plunge finally into the

same ocean. There is not even any question of earlier or later,

since time does not come into it when the rivers’ courses are

viewed as a whole from the air. But for the individual time does

make a difference. So long as he feels himself to be an individual

the striving is real and it is the symbol of the pilgrim that applies,

not that of the river. And for the pilgrim, wasted time is wasted

opportunity. A whole lifetime, a whole day’s journey on the

pilgrimage, may be wasted, idling by the roadside, wandering a

field, or even going back; and then the next day’s journey will

be more arduous and its starting point less advantageous.

 

It is true that by no means all envisage life as a purposeful

journey. Happy are those who do and who act on the knowledge;

but even those who do not are advancing or regressing according

to whether they weaken or strengthen the grip of the ego, cutting

some of its tentacles or putting out new ones. Fundamentally,

the weakening and final dissolution of the ego is the purpose of

all religions; and it is religion which is the most efficacious for

accomplishing this task, although selfless service of others, and

even of animals and plants, can also be effective to some extent.

Whatever weakens the ego is good, whatever strengthens it bad.

Thus, it may be advantageous for a person to be uprooted rather

than to strike root. Certainly it was for me. If destiny had closed

the circle, leading me to contentment on a Yorkshire farm, the

journey might have ended there and this lifetime been wasted.

 

As it happened, this episode was like a station that the train stops at

long enough to look out of the window and then travels on.

 

taken from MY LIFE & QUEST