CHAPTER XIII.THE TONGUES OF ANGELS.
“When by suffering thou hast learned not to suffer—by passion learned calmness;Then shalt thou know what I am to thee—then shalt thou beA clean mirror where I am reflected—a face with a splendor which burns not!Past all pain, seeing Me thou shalt know Me—the Strength and the Truth of Thyself.”—Voltairine DeCleyre.
Being may be called the poorest, but it is at the same time the most marvelous concept of our whole mind. It is thesine qua nonof all we are, we see, we hear, we apprehend and comprehend. It is not our body, nor our breath, nor our life, nor our heart, nor what is most difficult to give up—our mind and intellect. It is simply that in which all these reside—that, in fact, in which we move and have our being.—F. Max Müller.
Being may be called the poorest, but it is at the same time the most marvelous concept of our whole mind. It is thesine qua nonof all we are, we see, we hear, we apprehend and comprehend. It is not our body, nor our breath, nor our life, nor our heart, nor what is most difficult to give up—our mind and intellect. It is simply that in which all these reside—that, in fact, in which we move and have our being.
—F. Max Müller.
The truth of being and the truth of knowing are one.—Bacon.
The truth of being and the truth of knowing are one.
—Bacon.
Cartice and Chrissalyn permitted the Joys to join them in their investigations at certain times, but for the most part they pursued their study of psychic life alone. As they went on, their experiences became more interesting and convincing. In the new world opened to them they made new friends. To be sure they could not see these friends, but they learned to know them well, to love them, and to distinguish one from another as readily and certainly as though they were of the visible part of creation.
One of these new friends called himself Moreau and won their hearts completely with his courteous speech, kind instincts and gentle manners. Indeed, after making his acquaintance they understood how little the personality depends upon that which we call the person, which is but a mask, as the word originally meant. He came often and sometimes remained a whole evening, kindly writing for those who had not yet learned to manipulate Planchette, and answering questions with well-bred patience and never-failing politeness. When asked why he came to them and remained so faithful, when he had not known them here, he explained that he was attracted to both of them, because they were magnetic to him; but that beside, it was his especial mission to make lonely women happier. They learned to rely implicitly upon everything he said, just as they did on the word of Prescott, whose strict truthfulness had been his one vanity.
“How long is the act of dying?” Moreau was asked.
“It is longer for some than for others; but you are sleeping at the time and know it not.”
This statement was corroborated by the others. They said the death-sleep in some cases was of several days’ duration,—days as we reckon them here, but there Time’s markings are unknown, for Time is not.
When Moreau was asked whether he kneweverything about his friends here, present and to come, he said: “Not everything. There are some things we are not permitted to know any more than you are.”
“Do you pass on into other stages of existence—experience a change analogous to our dying here?”
“I think so; but I am no more certain of that than you are about your future state.”
“How do you travel?”
“Like lightning, or even more swiftly. We think of a place and in the same instant we are there. This is a thought world. So is yours, but you are blind to the power of thought on your plane.”
“Are you affected by the sorrows and pains of those you love, who are still on earth?”
“We cannot help feeling the troubles of earth when they touch what you would call our heart-strings. But, as it were, we see with larger eyes—we understand better the purpose of suffering and the good that comes out of it.”
A friend to Cartice who had achieved considerable eminence as an analytical author, came occasionally. In the noonday of success she went away, after months of great physical suffering. When asked whether she was happy, she replied:
“It is happiness to me to have no aching heart, no pain, no burning brow.”
“Can you come to us when you please?”
“Sometimes only, not always. I feel a restraint, though no restraint seems put upon me.”
“How do you occupy yourself, Edith?”
“We do not have to occupy ourselves. We are occupied by others only. I cannot tell you better.”
When questioned as to the kind of clothing used there, she said: “The mist of earth is not a substance to be measured, weighed or worn by you. The material of our raiment is a thing of almost misty texture.”
“What is death?”
“To that question I will give you an explanation given me by one far wiser than I and much older in this realm of life: ‘Death simply denotes a rising from inactivity to action, from obscurity to eminence, awaking from sleep, or promotion from an inferior condition.’”
“Is there a resurrection?”
“Every death is a resurrection.”
“Edith, do you ever wish to be back here in the body?”
“Never. There would be nothing to gain and much to lose.”
“Why is it that although you and others come and talk with us clearly and freely at times, there is yet so much of your new life of which you tell us nothing?”
“There are many reasons, which I am not permittedto give, nor could you understand them. I myself comprehend them but dimly. I simply obey the law.”
“What is the judgment, if there is a judgment?”
“For me it is the beholding of my mistakes.”
“What is the most wonderful phase of your present life, if I may be pardoned for so bold a question?” Cartice asked.
“The knowledge that love is all there is—that it fills all universes; lights all worlds; encompasses every soul, and is the life of every soul. This is as true of your world as of ours; but nearly all there refuse to believe it. Here we cannot doubt it—that is, those who have love in their own hearts cannot doubt it. Those who love not do not know it, for all is darkness to them; but that darkness disappears when they begin to love.”
“What is love?”
“The living principle of good, which by a law that includes and governs all that is, constantly flows out from the infinite centre. The more you have of it the more of good in its highest and best form will you receive, because it is the greatest of all magnets, irresistibly attracting its like. Love is God. God is love.
“You are destined to realize this fully some day; but you might realize it even now if you would, and then the whole face of the earthwould change and become new and beautiful. Heaven, indeed, would be opened. But the love I speak of is not the sentiment that usually goes by that name on earth, which too often is but an exaggeration of self, a kind of sublimated selfishness, going out to special persons with whom your lives are intertwined and whose well-being particularly conduces to your own. No, no; the love that is God is universal in its application, enfolding the humblest and most wayward as well as the highest and most perfect. Cultivate this love and you will find heaven even on the earth. All good will come to you. It is the kingdom of righteousness spoken of in your scriptures, to which, if you first seek and attain, all other things shall be added. Love, even in its crudest, most selfish expression and narrowest interpretation yet has in it a spark of the divine principle from the great source or centre which lights and gives life to all worlds and all consciousness.”
“If you could give us but one precept to live by, what would it be?”
“That which was given you by the beloved disciple: Love one another, for love is, indeed, the fulfilling of the law. But remember that ‘one another’ includes all that live. The law is not fulfilled when you only love those of your own household, or such as minister to your enjoyment.”
“What are we here for? What is the purpose of life?”
“What is the purpose of any school? Is it not to fit its pupils for that which is to follow?”
“How can we best do that?”
“By the unfoldment of your souls or selves—the best possible development of every unit. Your ethics have taught you to aim at the highest good to the greatest possible number; but the true ethics of love are only content with the highest possible good to each individual.”
“How do the things of earth appear to you now—the things we value and strive for so hard, wealth, fame, power, pleasure?”
“As veils, or illusions which keep you from seeing the great and glorious light of truth—soap-bubbles, glistening and beautiful to the eye, but absolutely empty.”
“Do you not suffer at separation from friends here?”
“There is no separation. We are all one—all closely and indissolubly united—and that one includes what is in your world as well as worlds upon worlds, far, far, beyond my power of imagination—all that is, or was, or ever shall be. Sometimes death unites us more closely than ever to those still upon earth.”
“Does not the spirit sometimes faint with fear, when it first becomes aware that it has left the body forever?”
“It was not so with me. I was prepared. During my long illness I thought much of the future, knowing that the end of what you call life was near. In my mind I dropped the robe of flesh without regret, feeling that annihilation or anything that set me free from pain would be welcome. When at last I found that the silver—(otherwise the electrical) cord—was loosened and the body left behind, the experience seemed natural. True, it was not without awe, but that feeling of awe arose from the light and beauty, the newness and yet the familiarity of that on which I had entered. Yet it is not all new, for we still have the old, but understand it better—we see it with more comprehensive eyes—from a larger and higher outlook.”
“Is there anything there to depress or sadden you?”
“To depress me, no; yet something akin to oppression I sometimes feel, because of the vastness, the immensity, the endlessness of everything. Doubtless you experience the same feeling often, when you look up at the stars and the mind is staggered and shrinks back upon itself at the majesty and grandeur of creation. But do not forget that the experiences of no two souls are exactly alike here, any more than on earth. That which this state of consciousness means to us, or holds for us, depends upon the degree of enlightenment we have attained before enteringit—upon our mental, moral and spiritual attitude, our aspirations and desires—or character, or in short on what we have become.”
“Can you make things there, as here—shape things out of crude material, I mean?”
“We have no crude material. We have to do only with the finer forces. With us the idea creates. We form the idea, and lo! it immediatelyis. We think, and the thought takes visible form. Wonderful as this may seem to you, it is nevertheless as true of your world as of this, only the method is slower. The idea is always the true creation, but to make it objective you must give it form with the hands, out of material substance. The imagination is the creative realm.”
“Have we each a guardian angel?”
“Yes; every soul has a guide or helper, who ever works to incline one to good, and away from evil, yet leaves the will free. You, yourself, not he, must make the decisions. He suggests, but does not lead.”
“Who is my guardian angel?” Cartice asked.
“Who could he be if not one who loves you?”
Once only Louis Doring came. He was the same as when here, full of self and empty of all else. Cartice did not encourage him to come again, feeling the distance between them to be greater than ever,—a distance measured by an absence of sympathy, which is the only distanceknown to the soul. After uttering some of the flavorless nothings which ever characterized his conversation, he went and came no more.
Chrissalyn’s great dread, frequently expressed, was that her husband or some of her near kindred might come. As long as none of her own household came, Planchette did not seem uncanny; but again and again she declared that if any one of them came she would be wretched for the rest of her life. Colonel Layton did not respect her wish, however. One night he took her unawares, as it were. Giving Planchette a peculiar spin, he wrote his name as characteristically as he had ever done in life. When Chrissalyn saw the signature, she burst into uncontrollable sobbing, and begged him to go away.
Cartice consoled her, and implored her to let him remain, while she talked a few moments with him, and this at last Mrs. Layton consented to do.
“Don’t cry, Chriss,” he wrote. “I knew you didn’t want me to come; but I wish to tell you that I am better here than there, just as you are far better without me. So it is well as it is. I was a poor devil there for a fact; but I’m on the up-grade here.”
Chrissalyn wept afresh, but heroically went on, and the Colonel wrote:
“Mrs. Doring, why didn’t you attend my funeral?”
Cartice looked aghast, the question, at first blush, being so extraordinary. At some length she explained that she was too ill to go. Evidently reading her unspoken thought, he wrote:
“Yes, I was present—the real I as well as the silent image of me in the box. I looked around at my leisure, and saw everybody there. I wondered at your absence, you and Chriss being such close friends. Besides, you were always nice to me, too, God bless you!”
At this tribute to her kindness from beyond the grave Cartice dropped a grateful tear. The Colonel’s nature had something childlike and sweet in it, in spite of its many defects. Most of his faults had been of a peevish and childish order.
“Thank you, Colonel Layton,” Cartice answered. “I am glad to hear from you.”
“Mrs. Doring, do you remember the conversation I had with you an hour or so before I made the final journey?”
“Perfectly.”
“I sang about death being a narrow sea that divides your world from the land of pure delight. Well, it’s a very narrow sea—so narrow we can step across. In fact it isn’t a sea at all, for the two worlds are not really divided. They only seem to be.”
Several times Mrs. Layton’s friend, Jessie, came. When asked whether she threw flowersat her own funeral, she said she did; that she knew beforehand that Chriss had the faculty of seeing certain things others could not, and had it in mind before she went away that she would do something to prove that death was only an illusion.
Cartice’s great grandfather, who died before she was born, came and wrote his name in full, which she did not herself know. He told things pertaining to the family, which she afterward verified, among them being the name of the political party to which he belonged, and which had long been extinct. His handwriting was of an older style, and he wrote with a deliberation uncommon in the present day.
Some communications purported to come from North American Indians, mighty chiefs and stalwart braves with great dignity of manner and imposing names. After a time, however, Cartice inclined to the opinion that both the manner and the names were masks used to conceal identities that did not wish to be known. They spoke in the figurative style attributed to gifted red men, and for the most part their messages were interesting and instructive.
Once when Mrs. Doring was very tired and discouraged one of them wrote:
“Is it not a pleasure to the squaw to convince the braves and old men that she teaches many truths? She must not let the ink dry in herhorn, for she can carry many braves with her in the councils.”
Again, apparently overhearing the two investigators of psychic law talk of some poor, pitiful, hide-bound persons who found fault with everybody that did not revolve within their pint-measure orbit, this same Red Feather, as he called himself, wrote with emphatic force:
“Be not tied by the ways of others. The eagle cannot fly with the wings of a chicken.”
One evening Prescott wrote a few minutes and then excused himself from further work, saying that something had just occurred which made him too nervous to write.
His two friends looked at each other in speechless astonishment. Here was a mystery beyond other mysteries. Too nervous? Were not nerves but parts of the body, destined to dust with the rest of it?
Evidently understanding their amazement, he added this line after a moment’s pause:
“Incredible as it may seem to you, I still have nerves.”
Once when Chrissalyn was peevish and dissatisfied, she said she had a mind to give up fooling with Planchette; that it was scary and risky, and there was no telling what was at the bottom of its queer doings. Prescott came like a flash to the rescue, fearful that she would put her threat into execution, and so cut off communication entirely.
“O Butterfly, dear, don’t do that! Please don’t, for my sake,” he pleaded, with an earnestness that touched their hearts. “You do not appreciate this grand, beautiful privilege, which to me is so precious. Who, besides you can do this—converse freely with friends so far away that the railroad has never been made that can reach them?”
Somewhat mollified by his pathetic tribute to her extraordinary psychic gifts, she grumbled that for his sake she wouldn’t give up Planchette. He continued:
“Had I known as much about the unknown future, when on earth, as you do, I should have thought myself wise, indeed.
“It astonishes me now to remember that I ever doubted the persistence of the individual, the continuousness of life. Fools who think themselves savants will tell you to have nothing to do with spirits, not to encourage them to come back, as that interferes with their progression, and other rubbish of the same sort. Such persons know nothing of the laws of progress here. The two worlds—in fact all worlds—are one and the same. Your best interests and ours are identical. There is no differentiation. Frequently our work lies entirely with you. What higher mission could one have than to cheer and strengthen the disheartened and fainting ones of earth? We help you, and you in turn often help us.What would you think of a friend who told you never to come and visit him, but to go on and progress by yourself? Well, spirits are simply human beings living under conditions as yet not understood by you. Many of them are your friends, whom you would not dream of treating discourteously while they were with you visibly. The pupils of your schools go from grade to grade. Those of the highest grade are not prohibited from contact with those of the primary, if they wish it, and often they return there as teachers. The division between your world and ours only exists for those not yet far enough developed to understand its non-existence. It is not real, but only an appearance. It exists only in the consciousness of those ignorant of the great law of oneness which is operative everywhere. And this is true of many things that seem very real to you. They only exist in your consciousness. Also that which is not within your consciousness has no existence for you whatever. We are one—all the peoples of all universes, and all are moving upward into light by means of the process called evolution, which is the unfolding and perfecting of man, who is spirit, not clay.”
“Are we ever reborn into this world?”
“I am told that rebirth is one of the many methods open to the soul for progression.”
“Can you see our future in this world?”
“Some have this faculty. I have not. They only see the main incidents, as a traveler, looking from a high hill, sees a guide-post ahead in the valley.”
“Are we ever entirely alone?”
“Never. There is always the cloud of witnesses of which Paul spoke.”
A stranger came sometimes whose character was of an antique mould. He gave no name, but others, when questioned about him, said he had been one of the great of earth, and also one of the good—none greater since Jesus.
“What is the soul of man?” Cartice asked him.
“Can any one comprehend God?” was his reply.
“I do not understand,” she persisted.
“Eternal being mirrors itself in every existence—isevery existence. When you know that indefinable, illimitable, deathless and divine manifestation called the soul, you will know God, for in the one is imaged or reflected the other. Remember, eternal being is the background of every existence.”
Looking at these words fresh from an intelligence whose habitation earthly eye hath not seen, Cartice Doring thrilled with a strange joy, in sympathetic vibration with the wave of truth that touched her spirit. For one hallowed moment the great gates opened and she saw a light morebeautiful than the light of the morning, more glorious than the light of many suns, softer, brighter, more beatific than was ever on sea or land, for lo! she saw the reflection of the soul itself, and understood its infinite source and deathless destiny. In that ineffable moment she knew that it never had birth and never should know death, and that separateness was not of it, nor was it divisible from aught there is, and difference there was none. On the bosom of eternal being it rested secure through a thousand illusions.
The key that unlocked all mysteries was revealed by a flash of the soul’s own light. Pale and trembling she bent her head till it lay on the written words of the nameless stranger, and closed her eyes that she and the great white light might be alone together.
Thousands of years ago an Indian sage, when parting from his wife, said: “We do not love the husband in the husband, nor the wife in the wife, nor the children in the children. What we love in them, what we truly love in everything is the divine spirit, (the eternal atman, the immortal and absolute self)”—and as we should add, says Max Müller, the immortal God, for the immortal self and the immortal God must be one.
Life’s boundless extension and endless progression was ever the uppermost thought in Mrs. Doring’s mind. In it she found consolation forall ills, as well as explanation of them. She pitied those still blind to this tremendous fact. What had they to uphold them in the terrible conflict we make of life?
What of the literature that only reaches the grave and there halts, unable to go further? Is it not the literature of children, useful only to amuse and entertain them in idle hours? She had adored the art of letters, had made a fetich of it, paying homage to its great names and walking in its fair gardens with reverent steps. Now she asked herself what literature had done for the voiceless army of the dead. What representation had they in its pages? The dead, the sacred dead, the beloved dead, what had letters done to bridge the stream that separates them from the living?
Poets had sent them to a far-off heaven or plunged them into a flaming hell to suit their moods and meters. Romancers had used them as spectres to come upon the scene at inopportune moments and treat their readers to thrills. They were flippantly spoken of as “spooks,” “ghosts,” “apparitions,” and “supernatural appearances.” They were good stock in certain brands of stories which nobody believed in, and occasionally they were allowed to have a bit of business on the stage. Witless witlings had sneered at their claims to recognition, and writers of many minds, however they differed on other points, were generallyunited in the effort to keep the dead, one and all, from rising.
Authors of romances found death a convenience in disposing of inconvenient characters of their own creation. When they could not manage them effectively any other way, they slaughtered them remorsely, and that was the end of them; that put them out of both writers’ and readers’ way for all time. Not even the good always escaped this doom. If readers could be entertainingly harrowed and wrought upon by the demise of the most angelic heroine, she had to die, and that finished her for friends and foes. At the grave everything ended. There love laid its treasures and turned hopelessly away; and there hate sheathed its poniard in satisfaction, having reached its extreme limit.
Now Cartice Doring saw clearly that there are no finalities here; that the grave is not the end; that it never imprisoned a human soul. She saw that a new literature must come forth to satisfy minds of larger growth, which look upon death, not as a finality, but a change of costume and the opening of a new act. And this literature must go to the point, straight and clear; it must seek the solution of life’s problem and not merely amuse and beguile travelers on the journey.
Many a night, while she walked home after an evening’s talk with her unseen friends, she felt in touch with all the universe. Nothing was faroff, not even the stars, which looked down upon earth with tender human sympathy in their bright faces. She feared nothing, and knew no loneliness, feeling herself attended by an innumerable company. Already she believed that what Kant said will yet be proved, “that the human soul, even in this life, is by an indissoluble communion connected with all the immaterial natures of the spirit world, acting upon them, and receiving impressions from them.”
Now she understood more clearly the meaning of this statement by our greatest philosopher, Emerson: “every man is an inlet to the Divine mind and to all of that mind.” Yes, and an outlet, also.
Now, now she began to see that “the spirit of man is a personal limitation of the supreme spirit,” as another philosopher says; that “God is the all of man’s life, the power of man at bottom being the power of God.”
Now she could understand that “what we call the material universe is but the manifestation of infinite Deity to our finite minds”; and that “our individual self is found,” as the ancient wisdom of the East, and likewise Jesus and Paul, affirms, “included in the contents of the Absolute Being or Self.”
“Eternal Being mirrors itself in every existence,” she murmured reverently; “Eternal Being, and we are it.”
The pulsing, eager, feverish life of the city was stilled. Its people slept, at least they were asleep to the truth, and refused to be awakened. Thousands of Ephraims, joined to their idols, dwelt contentedly in their fools’ paradise, asking to be let alone. And what were those idols? Mists of their own creation, perishable and unreal—for nothing endures, nothing is real but being, Eternal Being. Like the wayward sons and daughters of old Jerusalem, they will not be gathered under the wing of even divine wisdom.
The old dreams of childhood came back, with their perplexing reminiscence of life in a land remote in the past, whose people knew not misery.
Had she lived before? Yes, always. How could it be otherwise with Eternal Being as the background, the source and centre of her existence? For this there was neither beginning nor end. Was she not an indestructible part of all that is, was and ever shall be? Behind her was no birth; before her no death. These were but “world-fictions.”
And what was she? One of the millions of conscious atoms that make up the great whole—a woman walking the path alone, with a dash of genius, original, creative, commanding, it was said, and a force of will and character that made her respected and conspicuous among other atoms. Whence came the genius and the force of character? From the infinite ocean of intelligenceand creative energy—from the one source and the one force. Why had she gifts and qualities others had not? Because she had reached upward toward the light; she had aspired, and as a consequence had expanded and grown. She had mirrored more of the supreme intelligence than many others, because she had desired it and had held her mind receptive to it.
All her life at times she had been a prey to a deep dissatisfaction. An unspoken unrest, a profound melancholy lay beneath her sunniest hours, and she had experienced a yearning of the soul for that which perhaps no mortal ever attains.
But now in these nights when she walked alone under the stars, illumined within by the light of truth, there were moments when her spirit vibrated in unison with the great spirit or self of the universe, and she was satisfied. She saw humanity, like a mighty river rolling slowly to the sea, each drop blending with others, and all impelled by a resistless force that bore them onward, they knew not whence nor whither. This river was rolling toward the ocean of truth, there to enjoy the freedom which was its divine destiny, and which each atom or drop could only reach by recognizing, living and becoming the truth.