Then I went to that place where are those who upon Earth had made a graven image of their possessions and worshipped it as their god.
I saw a man who had been master of a great vineyard. The love of plants can be a bringer of peace to the heart, but it had filled this man’s thoughts and encompassed his spirit.
Now he is imprisoned in his house by the vines that he loved too much. They have shrouded the walls and thrust open the doors and the shutters of the windows. They creep across the floors, and their clustering leaves have shut out the light until the air of the room is like dark water heavy with the weight of the sea. Savage with growth they strain towards him like leeches on a jungle path. He tries to scream, but he is as voiceless as a fish. He thinks that soon their tendrils, groping towards him with their blind green fingers will twine about him and ensnare him, even as his love for them had once ensnared his heart.
On Earth he had known no enemies save the insects that assailed his vines, and he could see the sky only as a background for the pattern of their leaves. To him life was the putting forth of their shoots, and death the decay in their branches. He ordered that when he died he should be buried under the great vine, which grew upon the wall of his house, so that his body might be food for its strength. His vines were his father and his mother, his children and his gods; and he prayed that they should grow as no other vines had grown throughout the history of the Earth.
And when he died the Gods had granted him his prayer.
Then I saw a man who upon Earth had filled his house with rare treasures. He had been jealous of the pleasure that their beauty might give to others who saw them, yet he invited people to his house so that they might envy him his possessions. He liked to see their fingers clasping the smooth curve of his goblets, for he thought their hearts sorrowed that their own wine could not be so graciously enfolded. He liked them to walk across his floors of cedar-wood so that the floors of their own houses should seem like the beaten mud of a fisherman’s hut. He liked them to sleep between the gilded leopards of his beds so that they should think of their own as a wooden bench covered with straw. He would walk round his house and stroke the precious woods of his furniture, and fondle his figurines of ivory as if they were the head of a favourite hunting-dog; and if his finger found a grain of dust upon a table, he ordered his servants to be beaten. He could not see the stars, for his eyes were filled with the beauty of the frescoes upon his walls; he could not see the beauty of a tree, for to him a thing must be possessed before it could be beautiful. And of his house he made a temple where he reigned alone, and of his possessions he made his only god.
When he died his spirit could not travel beyond the walls of his house, and the things that had filled his heart made him their slave. He would see a figurine of ivory begin to crack, and only when he took it in his hands was it whole again; white ants would attack his furniture, and only when he polished it with a soft cloth was it unflawed. Now he runs backwards and forwards between the rooms of his house, trying to save his possessions from dissolution. He thirsts, and his wine flagons are dry. He hungers, and his gold dishes are empty. He longs to sleep, but he dares not rest, for he thinks that by morning all the things he cherishes will have crumbled.
When I went to release him, he was trying to sweep out the dust that shrouded the floor of his favourite room. It swirled about him in a choking cloud, and only where he stood did the polished cedarwood shine through the grey. As I walked towards him, the dust curled back and withered like foam on a beach, and before me there was a smooth pathway like moonlight across the sea. And I said to him, “On Earth you built yourself a tomb, not for your body, but for your spirit: and in your spirit you have lived in it. Now the time has come for you to be free.”
Then I took him by the hand and led him from this prison that he had made, and I showed him the part of Earth where he would be re-born, a country whose white cliffs, rising from the sea, gave to it the name of The White Island. I told him that here he would find little to distract him from realities or to remind him of what he had loved too much before. His heart was thirsty for wisdom, but though he knew of his thirst, he thought that it was a thirst of the body. So, to appease it, I gave him water in an earthen cup. And when he had quenched his thirst he broke the earthen cup lest he should become too fond of it.