Rampa Lobsang - Twilight, ZNAM I WIEM, SZTUKA WOJENNA, Księgozbiór Wielkiej Pradżni
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CHAPTER ONE
The old grey plane soared gently through the noonday
sky. Years before she had been one of the Queens of
Travel bearing a famous marquee indeed, traversing the
air lanes of the whole world, covering the globe wherever
Man traveled, carrying the elite of commerce, the stars
of the theatre world and the films. In those days it had
been a prestige symbol to fly in a plane such as this. Now
she was old and worn, a relic from a bygone age, ousted
by screaming jets and the insane desire to “get there”
faster and faster for—why? What DO people do with all
the time they “save”?
The old twin-engines murmured softly, a pleasant
enough sound, like giant bees on a summer day. Now the
old plane was on a placid routine flight from Vancouver
to Calgary. Last week, perhaps, she may have been flying
in the Northern Territories where the temperature was
far, far below zero, and the blinding snow would make
anything but instrument flight impossible. Next week,
maybe, she would take oil prospectors to some of the
remote oil sands in the search for more and more power
by a power-mad nation, for a power-mad world. But now
the former Queen of the Air was a charter plane, a poor
old hack going anywhere at the whim of any customer
with a few dollars to spare.
Soon the foothills of the Rockies came into view rising,
ever rising, until they soared into the highest peaks of
that immense range stretching across the world. Now the
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air was becoming turbulent and the plane bounced and
tossed amid the snow-clad ranges, for here was the re-
gion where the snow never left the highest mountain
peaks.
Miss Taddy Rampa uttered a yowl of outraged protest
and looked as though her last moment had come. Miss
Cleo Rampa swallowed hard and put on her bravest I-
Can-Take-It look as she opened wide her big blue eyes as
she stared hard at the rocky ground so far below.
But why the flight? Why yet another move? It all
started a few months before in Vancouver—.
June in Vancouver is usually such a pleasant month, a
month when Nature starts to come fully awake and the
weather is good, and when the sea has a smiling sparkle,
when people are busy with their boats. Tourists start
coming, and it is usually a time when all the store-
keepers are sharpening up their wits hoping to match
those of the tourists. But this June, this day in June, was
not so good after all. You'll have had the same type of
day, one of those days when everything—but EVERY-
THING—goes wrong. Still, you are lucky, you know, you
have those days every so often, or, as the saying goes,
“Once in a blue moon.” But supposing this type of day
lasted for weeks, for months, or even for years, supposing
there were patterns? Probably most people who are “in
the public eye” get trouble with the moronic few who
seem to exist solely to cause trouble for others.
A bus driver friend of mine told me that he and his
fellows are always being persecuted by frigid old biddies
who think that they are the “Lords Anointed” and are
entitled to special consideration from bus drivers—they
think the buses are their own private chariots. And when
a bus driver politely points out that the buses are for the
use of everyone the old biddy will rush off to complain
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and try to lose the bus driver his job. Authors get people
like that to persecute them and to prevent them from
being complacent or self-satisfied. I was going to tell you
all about a series of events which caused me to leave
British Columbia, but—conditions decreed otherwise—
The old Author sat in his wheelchair and watched
complacently while a typescript was being bundled up.
Another book finished, the fifteenth this time, and the old
man, just out from the hospital, was smiling to himself
with satisfaction because this was a book which would
stir no controversy, this was a book which a publisher
could take without having any qualms, without having
any urgent stirrings in those lower regions and to which
publishers seem to be remarkably prone.
The typescripts—for another country also was inter-
ested—were taken away to be mailed, and the old Author
went about the rather difficult task of everyday living in
the hope that soon he would be able to consider yet
another book as had been asked for by so many inter-
ested readers.
Time went on, as it usually does, and eventually there
came a gloomy message from the Agent in England say-
ing that the typescript was not suitable for England. It
seemed a fantastic state of affairs to the old Author be-
cause as was usually the case he had had the typescript
read by a panel of twelve people to make sure there was
nothing which could rule even the tenderest feathers,
and all twelve had insisted that this was perhaps the most
peaceful book and the “smoothest” book. But the Great
God Publisher who sat upon the Golden Throne and
wielded a whip laden with old lead type did not like the
look. Although the matter had already been dealt with
this time the edict came down from “the One Above” that
apparently there must be nothing about police, sex, pris-
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ons, abortions, religion—well, there mustn't be anything
about all the things I had written about. So it caused
quite a problem.
At about that same moment there came a cable from
another publisher who was highly elated with the book.
He was well satisfied, he cabled to say that he wanted to
sign the contract then and there. And another publisher
expressed his interest in the book without any alterations.
So it seems that in this year and age the English people
appear to have rather tender susceptibilities. But we
mustn't go on about this. I am told the publisher wants
questions answered, so let's get on with some of those,
shall we?
Hey, that's a nice little question, a sensible one, too;
“Why do people sleepwalk?”
Well, just about everyone does astral travel when they
go to sleep. The astral body goes off, and the physical
body is meant to remain more or less passive, twisting
and turning a bit, of course, in order that muscles may
not be strained by being contracted for too long in one
position. But sometimes a person who is in the astral will
be so engrossed in his or her activities in that astral stage
that he or she will unconsciously relinquish part of the
control suppressing the activities of the physical back on
Earth. And so the physical tends by “sympathetic reac-
tion” to follow the astral body, and so we get a case of
somnambulism, or sleep walking. The person gets out of
bed and just ambles about, and it is better not to awaken
such a person because if he is awakened then the sudden
shock can bring back the astral body with yet another
shock which makes the combination of astral and physi-
cal quite bilious. Sleep walkers who have suddenly been
awakened will certainly agree with me on that point.
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