Four Feathers
By Karmayogi
Someone
asked J. Krishnamurthy, the world teacher, what he could do to get rid of his
stupidity. Krishnamurthy answered him saying he could remain stupid. Life has
its stamp on many fundamental traits and they are not to be changed so easily.
The world honours its heroes with titles, insignia, medals, etc. The coward is
disgraced by being offered a white feather. A young British commissioned
officer engaged to a pretty lady faced the orders of his regiment to travel to Sudan to fight. The orders were prefaced by the news that the previous
battalion sent there had been slaughtered to a man. Fright possessed this
officer, Harry, prompting him to resign his commission. He little knew how his
world would react to his resignation. His father disowned his disgraced son.
His fianc was ashamed of him and broke their engagement. His friends too
deserted him at once. None of these exhibitions of social response stung him
that much until he received four white feathers from his friends signifying his
cowardice. His fate was sealed.
He was a coward who was born with a timid temperament. He was determined to die
a coward. But the iron had passed into his soul by the action of his friends. A
decision was born in him and became a determination. He wanted to outgrow his
cowardice. The one desire that now possessed him was to show his friends who
had sent the white feathers that he was no longer a coward. He joined the same
regiment as a baggage porter, faced untold indignities and with heroic
manliness overcame them. He was taken prisoner by the enemy in Sudan where a black porter came forward to rescue him. He told Harry that he
was saving him because ‘‘God has put you in my path.''
In the meantime, Harry was able to save two of his friends. After the war, one
of them went back to England and became engaged to Harry's former fiancée. At last, Harry came
back to his girl, vindicated in his own emotions that he was no longer a
coward.
His fiancée took back the last white feather and restored him to human dignity,
to which he was now qualified. A born coward usually dies a coward. When in
rare cases he is to transform his cowardice, he undergoes physical torture and
inner intolerable suffocation. If only man realises his defect, feels ashamed
and is able to offer it to Mother, the external trials are shifted to the inner
and the metamorphosis takes place. Poverty is thus changed into Prosperity,
when MAN is able to detach himself from the poverty consciousness and attitudes
that express it. It is done inwardly and in a short time. Mother calls it
transformation.