MASTER: You cannot do it because you do not breathe right. Press your breath down gently after breathing in….
HUGH:
I don’t know how
to press my breath down, gently or otherwise.
MASTER: You must draw strength from the ground.
HUGH: From the ground?
[The Master walks
up to Hugh and, bending low, presses on clearly sensitive spot on the young
man’s right leg muscle]
HUGH:
Oww!
MASTER: You feel no pain. The pain is an illusion.
HUGH:
Is that so?
MASTER: Yes.
Now try again. This time, draw
the bow spiritually.
[The Master now
walks to the target to adjust its position. Just at that moment, Hugh attains
enough of the gist of spiritual bow-drawing to let fly his arrow—which, though
he has been dutifully paying no special attention to it (archery is “an artless
art, in which the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects”),
nevertheless pierces the Master through the heart. The Master falls heavily to the ground.
HUGH:
This cannot have happened.
All this is illusion too. It
is simply a test. I must remain
detached from what has happened.
[He walks across
the grass to where the Master has fallen.
He then stoops to pull his arrow from the Master’s chest. He examines the arrow closely]
HUGH: This is no ordinary arrow. The Master has told me my own arrows do
not carry because they do not reach far enough spiritually.
But this one HAS reached far enough.
I have learned the
Master’s lessons! That is
unalterable. I am now my own
Master!
(curtain)
HUGH’S VOICE
FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN: No curtain has dropped. That too is illusion.
