Excerpt from My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East I now deem them; and I am reminded by the first chap ter of The Earthward Pilgrimage of my consciousness of being far from any shrine in the direction I was travel ling. There came to me one who spoke with a voice not to be disobeyed. He laid on me a burden, and gave me a shield called Truth, and said: 'henceforth thou shalt be a pilgrim. From a world believing in the incredible, adoring where it should abhor, thou shalt depart never to return. Whither, shall be opened to thee as thou shalt journey; whence, is already plain.' The concluding pages of that first chapter, written on the threshold of my new world, may fairly preface the present work, originally prepared as a part of my Autobiography. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.