Alexander gave him a searching look. “I have scarcely ever had a finer assignment,” he said, “and was then content, in a way that one rarely is, with you and myself. If it is true that we must pay for everything pleasant in life, then I must now atone for my elation at that time. I was truly proud of you then. I cannot be so today. If you cause the Order disappointment, if you shock all of Castalia, I know that I share the responsibility. Perhaps at that time, when I was your companion and adviser, I should have stayed in your Players’ Village a few weeks longer, or handled you somewhat more roughly, subjected you to stricter examination.”
Knecht cheerfully returned his look. “You must not have such misgivings, Domine, or I should have to remind you of various admonishments you felt called upon to give me at the time when I, as the youngest Magister, took the duties of my office too seriously. At one such moment you told me — I have just remembered this — that if I, the Magister Ludi, were a scoundrel or an incompetent and did everything a Magister is forbidden to do, in fact if I deliberately set out to use my high position to do as much harm as possible, all this would no more disturb our dear Castalia or affect it any more profoundly than a pebble that is thrown into a lake. A few ripples and circles and all trace is gone. That is how firm, how secure our Castalian Order is, how inviolable its spirit, you said. Do you recall? No, you are certainly not to blame for any efforts of mine to be as bad a Castalian as possible and to do the greatest possible harm to the Order. Moreover, you also know that what I do cannot shake your own tranquility. But I want to go on with my story. The fact that I could make such a decision at the very beginning of my magistracy, and that I did not forget it, but am now about to carry it out — that fact is related to a kind of spiritual experience I have from time to time, which I call awakening. But you already know about that; I once spoke to you about it, when you were my mentor and guru. In fact I complained to you at the time that since my accession to office that experience had not come to me, and seemed to be vanishing more and more into the distance.”
“I remember,” the President agreed. “I was somewhat taken aback at the time by your capacity for this kind of experience; it is rather rare among us, whereas in the world outside it occurs in so many varied forms: sometimes in the genius, especially in statesmen and generals, but also in feeble, semi-pathological, and on the whole rather meagerly gifted persons such as clairvoyants, telepaths, and mediums. You seemed to me to have no kinship at all with these two types, the aggressive heroes or the clairvoyants and diviners. Rather you seemed to me then, and until yesterday, to be a good Castalian, prudent, clearheaded, obedient. I thought it completely out of the question that you should ever be the victim of mysterious voices, whether of divine or diabolic origin, or even voices from within your own self. Therefore I interpreted the states of ‘awakening’ which you described to me simply as your becoming aware occasionally of personal growth. Given that interpretation, it followed that these spiritual insights would not be coming your way for a considerable time. After all, you had just entered office and had assumed a task which still hung loosely around you like an overcoat too big for you — you would still have to grow into it. But tell me this: have you ever believed that these awakenings are anything like revelations from higher powers, communications or summons from the realm of an objective, eternal, or divine truth?”
“In saying this,” Knecht replied, “you bring me to my present difficulty: to express in words something that refuses to be put into words; to make rational what is obviously extrarational. No, I never thought of those awakenings as manifestations of a god or daimon or of some absolute truth. What gives these experiences their weight and persuasiveness is not their truth, their sublime origin, their divinity or anything of the sort, but their reality. They are tremendously real, somewhat the way a violent physical pain or a surprising natural event, a storm or earthquake, seem to us charged with an entirely different sort of reality, presence, inexorability, from ordinary times and conditions. The gust of wind that precedes a thunderstorm, sending us into the house and almost wrenching the front door away from our hand — or a bad toothache which seems to concentrate all the tensions, sufferings, and conflicts of the world in our jaw — these are such realities. Later on we may start to question them or examine their significance, if that is our bent; but at the moment they happen they admit no doubts and are brimful of reality. My ‘awakening’ has a similar kind of intensified reality for me. That is why I have given it this name; at such times I really feel as if I had lain asleep or half asleep for a long time, but am now awake and clearheaded and receptive in a way I never am ordinarily. In history, too, moments of tribulation or great upheavals have their element of convincing necessity; they create a sense of irresistible immediacy and tension. Whatever the consequence of such upheavals, be it beauty and clarity or savagery and darkness, whatever happens will bear the semblance of grandeur, necessity, and importance and will stand out as utterly different from everyday events.”
He paused to catch his breath, then continued: “But let me try to examine this matter from another angle. Do you recall the legend of St. Christopher? Yes? Well now, Christopher was a man of great strength and courage, but he wanted to serve rather than to be a master and govern. Service was his strength and his art; he had a faculty for it. But whom he served was not a matter of indifference to him. He felt that he had to serve the greatest, the most powerful master. And when he heard of a mightier master, he promptly offered his services. I have always been fond of this great servant, and I must in some way resemble him. At any rate, during the one period in my life when I had command over myself, during my student years, I searched and vacillated for a long time before deciding what master to serve. For years I remained mistrustful of the Glass Bead Game and fended it off, although I had long ago recognized it as the most precious and characteristic fruit of our Province. I had tasted the bait and knew that there was nothing more attractive and more subtle on earth than the Game. I had also observed fairly early that this enchanting Game demanded more than naive amateur players, that it took total possession of the man who had succumbed to its magic. And an instinct within me rebelled against my throwing all my energies and interests into this magic forever. Some naive feeling for simplicity, for wholeness and soundness, warned me against the spirit of the Waldzell Vicus Lusorum. I sensed in it a spirit of specialism and virtuosity, certainly highly cultivated, certainly richly elaborated, but nevertheless isolated from humanity and the whole of life — a spirit that had soared too high into haughty solitariness. For years I doubted and probed, until the decision had matured within me and in spite of everything I decided in favor of the Game. I did so because I had within me that urge to seek the supreme fulfillment and serve only the greatest master.”
“I understand,” Master Alexander said. “But no matter how I regard it and no matter how you try to represent it, I come up against the same reason, for your singularities. You have an excessive sense of your own person, or dependence on it, which is far from the same thing as being a great personality. A man can be a star of the first magnitude in gifts, will-power, and endurance, but so well balanced that he turns with the system to which he belongs without any friction or waste of energy. Another may have the same great gifts, or even finer ones, but the axis does not pass precisely through the center and he squanders half his strength in eccentric movements which weaken him and disturb his surroundings. You evidently belong to this type. Only I must admit that you have contrived to conceal it remarkably. For that very reason the malady seems to be breaking out now with all the greater virulence. You spoke of St. Christopher, and I must say that although there is something grand and touching about this saint, he is not a model for a servant of our hierarchy. One who wishes to serve should abide by the master he has sworn to serve for good and ill, and not with the secret reservation that he will change as soon as he finds a more magnificent master. In assuming such an attitude the servant makes himself his master’s judge, and this indeed is what you are doing. You always want to serve the highest master, and are naive enough to decide for yourself the rank of the masters among whom you make your choice.”