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Good evening to all
I am listening to old songs from Ireland, rearranged for harp in the baroque mode, being brought nigh to heaven.
It brings me sceneries of the ancient Island in the West, which I love so much. The tones are steadily , light steps, walking on the pastures covering those ever green slopes of hills and its valleys, very longingly pulling my heart to enjoy the fresh winds coming in from still further away. There is a joy, a friendliness all around like sunshine and an intense longing accompanying them while taking me to the highest top of those ridges above the sea. Dear friends get some of these harped sweet melodies.
I was there when I was about 24- 25. on a 7 week long adventure, hitch hiking all over. Enjoying the music at the pubs and the many songs, even in gaelic. Among them by a bard on the island of Aran.
It made me start writing, very soon beginning to fill myself with the beauty of everything There was so much to be wholly immersed in, the singing, the talkative people, the willingness to discuss all sorts of things, everybody's openess, the warm hearts. They seemed to be members of an enormous crowd of witty, friendly,fascinated and artistic outsiders. I felt so much at home, was filled with an exceeding gladness at everything I saw and heard. I dreamt in the English language, I composed songs too, wrote poems in English, I couldn't stop. It was a reverie all together. But some said, o, you are more Irish than we. I was delighted. They drew me to their hearts, and I was totally changed, pure happiness and an exitment that nobody could stand in the end...
When I came home , penniless, I was speeded to the utmost, very exhausted. I met a friend on the ferry between the Islands north of Gothenburg. Shouting hey hey, to him, "I have been to IRELAND " I embraced him and started telling him as fast as I could about my great adventure out there. He has said, later,he will never forget that embrace and my exitement and has repeated that continously over the years to the number of:38.
Later he searched all over for a possible spiritual path and examined everything. In the meantime I steadily grew worse with my own inability to cope with the terrible day to day strivings, I kept writing for some time, but there was no singing around, and I couldnt' even draw any more.
With time I felt my outsidership turning its clothing from joy into fear, all energy ebbing out and finally turned it into what they called existential anxiety . I went to hospital scared to death, thinking the houses and the materia around would bury me. Thinking that all mankind would be suffocated having to be satisfied with just 40% oxygen within fifty years, cutting down the amazonas. That was a good sojourn, being at the hospital,I met a fellow playwrigt, who had met Emmanuel Swedenborg, the seer of the 18th century, coming in his long oldfashioned brown cloak. I was delighted. I felt better among the people who like me was fed up with society, finding no heartfelt security. Very soon I started to get such a feeling of firmness and strength and said such rare things as: I am soon going to be wholly assured of a lasting Explanation ofthe World, the most great Enlightenment will settle in my mind, very soon the World Explanation will be uncovered to me and reveal all the Essentials mankind has to know. Very soon.
Of course I was free to say all these stupendous things. I was in hospital, the perfect surroundings. So everybody there thought it was quite Okey, though some of them marvelled at me.
And, soon, I came out of the hospital where another stranger , Erik Hermelin, had been diligently translating the Persian poems of Hafiz and Rumi. for decades. A remarkable personality, using all sorts of languages to cover the intricate and bursting Persian wordings.
Then one day again my friend visited me and who recently had found the latest divine philosophy by a Manifestation of God, as he said. He showed me the Book of Certitude by Bahaullah and said: read this book. I read it and though I did not understand more than an infinitesmal part of that BOOK I soon sensed I was soaring, heart filled with high lifting sublime sentiments, I never had felt before. Maybe in my mothers womb, floating about listening to her musik, untouched by the world outside. I couldn't let this extraordinarily feelings fade away. I read more and more immersing myself in the oceanic vastness , the universe of this spirituality. I could not at the time put a name on this. it was like an old Friend soothing my heart, or treating it with balmsam of bliss wordless, although I read, treading forward through all those majestic portals towards God. I was in love, deeply in love with heavenly inexplorable sweetest mysteries, illumined ,being at home at last though my body was still lingering on earth in the old university town of Lund. And the Bahais kept smiling , nodding, perhaps thinking well ,she is doing fine. Let her swim around, she is at home now and will not be lost, ever. They were so kind, giving me book after book which I kept asking for.
I started to ask questions, and they all talked about unity of mankind , of God , and oneness of all religions and Messengers.
I have told you about my experience in the old Church of Lund, where I went one day after having withdrawn from the Swedish Church. Sitting there upon the bench to ponder upon the unspeakable experience I already entertained for months , the second Illumination captured me and the majesty of Jesus Christ was revealed to me . I sat there spellbound all alone,crying and singing and praying, the Bahai prayers,reading the psalms hardly being able to sing them for tears flooding my face,... the psalms that I understood for the first time in my life. The church was indeed singing in chorus welcoming me, Oh heaven! Jesus singing the loudest and most enchanting songs within my souls spirit.
That summer I declared my Faith in Bahaullah, The Glory of God.
There was no chance of vacillation. I was fulfilled with the Greatest Surprize there is, a surprize that has lasted for 37 years. And will last eternally.
I will put on some more music now.
Thank you for your precious company, friends out there.
Bye and good night
Laila
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