CHAPTER XIV.
Myaim is to make this book practical, that is, to clothe its thought in such garb as to render it available for use, not to scholars merely, but to all thoughtful minds.
I shall endeavor in this chapter to gather up a few missing links in my train of thought, and afterwards endeavor to give you a glimpse of the Beyond. The question I seem called upon to answer is, How can a man be alive and dead at the same time? and in order to answer it, it will be necessary to analyze the thought called death, and separate it into its various parts.
The man is dead, says local report, and the consciousness of society undergoesthat natural change in regard to the man which I have described.
His name becomes associated with things that were, but no longer are. Even those who theoretically believe that the man continues to live either in happiness or misery, have, most of them, so little confidence in the theory which they have subscribed to, that they never dream of putting forth a mental current based on the theory. To all intents and purposes, society consigns the average man to annihilation, with a half-careless "Poor fellow, so he's gone. We'll see no more of him. Well, no time to weep, seeing as he didn't leave me anything. What new device for entrapping the elusive dollar shall I conjure up to-day?"
I am dead, says the man himself as the shadows which have been gathering upon his senses culminate in a rayless silence, and every thought of motionbecomes a recollection, a mere theory of fancy, that will not even approach the dominion of the will.
Death, as a state of consciousness, is a thing entirely new to him, but he cannot reason on the subject. To reason is to live, to set the brain in motion, to perform mental operations; this is no longer possible.
What shall this state be compared to? It is like that of one isolated in a secret cell of his own house, the key turned on him from the outside, every avenue of communication cut off, dead to the world and all that it contains. If a total loss of appetite can be associated with the state, it might continue for an indefinite period; and if the power of thought-transference comes in, a new kind of life has been begun.
But science says that no man is really dead who still retains his consciousness, by which statement science belies itsname. Calling itself knowledge, it spreads abroad its own ignorance. How many a post-mortem has been held in the hope of finding the secret chamber wherein that part of man which cannot die has gone to rest! How often the sweet peace of death has become a conscious madness, by this means, God only knows. Gentlemen, desist.
To find a chamber whose occupant is invisible debars you forever from obtaining the proof that you have found it. But perhaps it is not the soul itself that is the object of this search, but rather some special physical representative that might be found still quivering with life and so betray its master. All folly.
The soul when uncontaminated informs the whole outward body. It has its pains and illnesses, more or less affecting the outer form, yet all unrecognized in materia medica, and when itsmortal brother is struck with death, bends all its energies to make escape, lest it, too, take on mortality. Failing in its effort to make a doorway for its exit, it suffers for awhile through sympathy, till the final moment sets it free from pain within its small dark house, no longer small, because made clear, transparent, by the touch of death, when the dying has been brave. No trace of foreign matter may remain to start a dissolution, in which case the soul preserves the body from decay without more trouble than a little watchful care.
Sight, hearing, touch, through vibratory currents reach round the world and even touch the clouds; the body has become, in fact, a mansion perfectly adapted to the needs of its proprietor, who finds a new world open to his delighted consciousness, and thanks God fervently for his perfect victory overdeath, as well as for his comfort and protection within the white, still walls which form, in fact, the first abiding-place of the spirit.
With this still form as passive aid, the soul, with little pain, is able to make the mental transition which its change of circumstance requires. No longer concerned directly with any thought based on material needs or material changes, it finds itself in touch with the moral causes which underlie these changes; and because moral force is most familiarly manifest in and through people, these, and their relations to itself, fill all the mental horizon.
In this new field of perception, nothing impresses more than the enormous differences in spiritual rank and attainment existing among mortals who, judged by tape-line and scale, stood fairly equal, and whom human law necessarily places on a plane of perfectequality, or perhaps, through its deference to wealth, makes unequal in the wrong way.
The thoroughness with which past illusions are stripped away from the mind tends to leave the spirit fairly aghast at its previous blindness.
Frequently forgetting that the motor nerves of the physical form are no longer responsive to its touch, it starts to rise, that it may go and tell the world of these wonders just discovered, but finds itself in the firm and quiet grasp of death, a touch that seems to speak and say:
"Never mind; that is all right. You forget you are not free. Lie still and learn your lesson."
"But shall I not return?"
"Possibly, but the mortal life is no concern of yours at present. You are dead."
All this as in a flash, for words donot belong to this state, ideas rather, the spiritual essences of thought that seem to need no time whatever to make their mark upon the mind.
To some of these the mind is so receptive that they sink at once to the very core of being, while others are held upon the surface.
This last communication, You are dead, is sure to be so held. It seems such an evident conclusion to respond, If I am dead, there is no death but this seems such a contradiction to life's long lesson, namely, that amidst a wilderness of uncertainties, death is the one thing certain. And then the recollection of the shrinking of the soul at thought of death, how to account for that, if there were no reality behind appearances so countless?
This in another flash of ideation that leaves a sense of mystery as of a problem not worked out, and which may not bewhile death as a condition rests upon the form. I say, may not be, but would not be understood to mean that the hindrance is mechanical in this case. A pure soul, even in death, has certain reserve forces which can be put in action if the need is great enough, but the consciousness of being in a friend's control, especially when that control is apparently absolute, will tend to check all restless impulse in this region of the dark, till now all unexplored.
CHAPTER XV.
Butif the soul might not take up and solve the problem for want of time and space, we at this writing are not so limited.
First, let us state it clearly. If death does not mean a loss of consciousness necessarily, what is its distinguishing feature as compared with life? And what, if anything, is there in it to dread? The confusion of mind so general on these topics can be accounted for in a very simple manner.
The body has its life and its death, and the soul has its life and its death, and we have but two words to describe the four conditions. This makes it so nearly impossible to generalize on thesubject and at the same time maintain clearness.
For while the student of natural history attributes life and death to the body alone, and the idealist goes to the other extreme and makes life and death purely subjective—attributes of mind, not matter—the philosopher who would have his mind open on both sides, not only to those thoughts which enter unheralded, but also to those which seem to have their origin in physical vibrations and enter the sensorium through the body,—the philosopher, I say, finds it necessary to discriminate carefully in the use of these words, life and death, and to make it clear which is meant, the body or the soul, whenever he attributes either condition to man.
I have said the two words cover four conditions. What are they? In the first the body is alive, and the soul is alive. Beautiful condition of ingenuousyouth! In the second, the body is alive, and the soul dead. The man who by a course of persistent indulgence in all manner of crime and sensuality has stifled the voice of conscience, and finally reached the point where he is ready to say, "Evil, be thou my good," attains to a form of quiet.
The soul dies, and its decaying powers are absorbed by the body, which becomes henceforth an embodied poison, most dangerous and even deadly to the contact of the sensitive.
The third condition is that of the soul first described, in which the body has either temporarily or permanently parted with its life, while the soul remains intact. Still a part of the world's seething life, because action and reaction of the powerful causative soul-currents continue with such a soul, the interment of the body will decide whether the temporary physical death shall becomepermanent or not. In those exceptional cases where the body is preserved from the paroxysms of a blind grief which, when they include contact, tend to snap the last thread of vitality, or, still more important, from the embalmer's ignorant knife, which slays unnumbered thousands—when the body is preserved from both these dangers by a previous isolation, great possibilities are in store.
A forty-days' fast in the wilderness was the experience of one such soul, after which he was able to say of his bodily life, No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.
For his bodily life was restored to him, and death of the body had no more terrors to the man who had attained superhuman powers.
The fourth and last case, that wherethe death of the body follows that of the soul, will not be enlarged on.
There are such cases, but such can receive no lessons from a printed page. The language of events alone can reach them, and even when the soul is not dead, but rather entombed in the body, and rendered torpid for want of air to breathe, the effect is the same, so far as reaching them is concerned; the death of the body wakens such imprisoned spirits, only to plunge them into an untold agony of despair as they discover that life, with all its opportunities, has been worse than wasted, and a bare existence alone remains, minus friends, minus hope, minus resource of any kind even to conceal the abject poverty which is seen to be the direct result of wilful and persistent wrongdoing all the way to the bitter end.
If we can suppose that such a soul, at this twelfth hour, under the tremendouspressure of this awakening, should suddenly resolve to accept the situation, and to brace every nerve to endure the horrors of the event without complaint, while it would not be possible to saywhenthere would be any change for the better for such a one, the reason would be because time is not to such a soul; while it still remains true that mercy is as truly an attribute of infinite power, as justice must always be.
If, on the other hand, we suppose that such a soul breaks out into rage at the discovery of its loss, hurling anathemas at the author of its being, it will thereby plunge itself into darker depths, parting with one after another of its faculties, until final extinction of the individuality closes the scene.
I have now shown the four conditions which our dual constitution in relation to life and death makes possible. Some enlarging on these topics, which concernus all, may not be unprofitable. We all enter life in the first described condition, with body and soul both alive, the body visible and tangible, the soul more or less so, according as its environments since conception have favored its growth.
Comparatively few of us ever reach the second condition I have described, in which the body remains alive while the soul is utterly dead. The protests of this, which is called the immortal part of us, because the death of the body in itself does not impair its vigor, usually prevent so great a calamity from occurring.
Some kind of a compromise is entered into, by which the soul is allowed a certain amount of freedom, on condition that the body shall remain undisturbed in its favorite pleasures. Sometimes one day in the week is selected, in which the soul is permitted to rule.
Sometimes a single department of life's activities is placed under its charge, and to meet the man on the favored day, or to have dealings with him in this favored department, gives you a very exalted idea of the individual. Sometimes in his business relations a man will be found conscientious in the extreme, while in his family he acts the tyrant and the brute. Sometimes his family almost worship him, while thousands speak his name with detestation. In either case the body, not the soul, the outer and visible, not the inner invisible self, is the leading factor in the man, and the court of last resort.
The man is still in slavery to the mortal; he has no knowledge of any life except the earth-life; the faith-knowledge which he might have, were his soul given its freedom and permitted to use its higher powers, is shut out by the disorder of his condition,wherein a servant in rank, the body, rules over the prince entitled to the throne.
This is the prevailing condition of the human family to-day, the difference between most people in this respect being merely one of degree, some giving the prince more, and some less of freedom. A few millions at most have given the nominal power into his hands, retaining the real for bodily uses. To curry favor with these, tens of millions profess to have done the same. In thousands only is the soul truly regnant, and these are widely scattered, and more or less hidden, lest they be driven out of life.
CHAPTER XVI.
WhenI say that I have been outside and have returned, I speak the truth, and yet my words seem to express an untruth. It is because, as I have said before, that other kind of existence is so different from this that it uses a different language to express even a simple idea, a language which the kind we know as figurative most nearly resembles, although that is far enough from being the same. I should therefore use figurative language to embody what I have to say in regard to that other life, if literary considerations were alone to be regarded; but my aim is to benefit, and I decline to use a form of speech which has been so often sold as merchandise that many people nolonger believe there is any truth attached to it. I use instead the plain, everyday speech, and say without qualification that I have been away, that I am acquainted with the conditions that follow after death, that I lean on no man's theories, not even on those which I might make, if I were given to theorizing, which I am not. No, I rest on facts, plain, cold facts, which are none the less so because they are registered in the mind of one man instead of many; facts of consciousness not to be gainsaid, although, in order to express them so as to make them most useful here, it is necessary to translate them into a language so far from the original, that only those who keep the fact of the translation in mind can hope to receive the truth in something like its purity.
I am well aware that I can scarcely hope to convince my reader that it could be possible under any circumstances forone to enter the kingdom of the dead, to take on the powers and conditions belonging to that realm, to become a component part of that world of mystery to the extent of dismissing all care in regard to the possibility of return, and even to transmit such a thought-message as this. The responsibility for my being out of place rests upon you all; I was compelled to undergo the pain of the passage at your will; and now that you repent and ask me to return, I will take my time and think about it. I am well housed in a good body on this side. I do not know that I would go back if I could.
That, after all this, and after a succession of spiritual events which, measured by their effect on one's consciousness, should correspond to a period of centuries on earth, one should actually make his way back and take up again the broken threads of his earthly life,and weave them into something resembling an orderly design once more,—to convince my readers of the possibility of this is so nearly impossible that I shall not seriously attempt it, although it is true.
It will be said that even though I suppose that this is actually true of myself, it does not follow that I am not suffering from an hallucination.
It will be argued very naturally that in so far as I am now a tangible, actual human being, just so far is it impossible that I should ever have been actually dead; and as to becoming habituated to the kind of life which may remain after the body loses its animation, for any one now living to make such a claim is the height of absurdity.
Any one who shall take this stand will need to be reminded that bodily consciousness is one thing, and soul-consciousness another, and that there maybespiritualexistence beyond that. Comparatively few mortals have not at some time in their lives awakened at least momentarily to soul-consciousness, and can remember, if they care to try, how suddenly and completely the bodily consciousness retired into the background at its coming.
Thousands can testify that this soul-consciousness in them so dominates that of the body as to render bodily pains powerless to disturb the regnant soul.
These may be able to understand that in the world toward which they hasten, another advance will become possible, wherein the soul-consciousness shall become subordinate to the higher life of the spirit.
To make this a little clearer let me say that what you are now conscious of as your soul, the sensitive inner nature, that feels a slight as though it were a blow, that spurs the organism to yearsof anxious toil in the hope of gaining independence, that scorns to beg, yet in the hour of danger sometimes feels to pray—this inner self is to be your body when death shall come to break the tie that holds you captive in the dust. Every consideration to which your soul is now sensitive shall become, as it were, the laws of nature then. You will suddenly discover that ill-will, for instance, is a current actually tangible, as much so as an electric current was to your physical body. You will learn experimentally that kindliness of spirit, good-will, and gratitude are equally tangible to your new and finer senses. You will perceive that a generous spirit diffuses light, and a selfish one dwells in his own darkness, and this kind of light and darkness you will be astonished to discover has taken the place of what you formerly knew by those names. You will soon perceive that a deceivingspirit knows how to wear a false light as he pretends to a genuine interest in your welfare, and that a truly friendly one will sometimes hide his light, if thereby he can obtain advantage for your benefit.
If your life has been little more than a revolution around yourself, measuring everything by its relation to your personal advantage as you saw it, you will be surprised to find how small and dark a space will bound your being; and it may be a long time before you cease to dwell upon the memories of the world left behind, or cease to hope that in some way you can return to make a better use of its opportunities. And when you shall fairly come to understand that you have been living in the generous air and sunshine of the spirit of God, and that, instead of seeking to imitate Him by making your life a blessing to those less favored than yourself,you have employed your brief span in the effort to appropriate to your private use everything that could be lawfully seized on, you will wonder why the certainty that earth-life is limited had not impressed you more; and when you perceive, through the soul-consciousness which has taken the place of the bodily, that you have no data whatever upon which to base even a surmise as to how long your new kind of life is to continue, such measureless despair may fall upon you as shall even make tears impossible.
CHAPTER XVII.
Onthe other hand, if anywhere along your life-journey you have scattered any seeds of kindness, they will every one of them bear fruit in the Beyond.
From the moment when you perceive and acknowledge to yourself that you are not in every way fitted to enter the courts of heaven and become associated with those to whom selfish thoughts have become simply memories, you are likely to have experiences tending to refine and purify your nature. No longer active in the outward, you must bear what influences come upon you from without as best you may. An infant in the cradle is not more helpless than the great majority of those who enter the Beyond; and the invisible nurse thatmay have you in charge will not ask you what kind of medicine is most agreeable, but will administer what is best for you.
Picture to your mind, if possible, what it would be like to lie physically helpless, with your outward consciousness telling you that you no longer appear as a man, or as a woman, but only as an infant to any eyes able to see you, while at the same time your mental vision is perfectly clear and takes in all your past life in every aspect of its relation to other lives, and especially in its relations to the great all-pervading life which seems now to be somehow lost out of all possible reach.
Suppose that while those reactions called pain and pleasure are more vitally potent than ever, because of a vastly heightened sensitiveness, mental as well as physical exertion has become impossible, a succession of states of consciousnesstaking their place; and then suppose a master hand, with all the resources of mesmerism at his command, should begin playing upon your organism, proving to you by every touch that not a line of all your past history but is an open book to him, and his only aim is to bring you to a willingness to confess your weaknesses and follies, your neglect of duties, as well as your open transgressions—one thing at least would surely result: you would discover, and never forget, that spiritual things are not less, but immenselymorereal than any physical entities with which you ever came in contact.
It is such a great mistake to suppose that because you have nothing in your experience corresponding to such a condition as that which I have just described, therefore you never will have.
What kind of reasoning can be weaker than this? Have you not twokinds of consciousness, one of the world and all it contains, and one of personal existence in its various relations? Do you not perceive that your body, vitally active as it is, and swayed by every thought you send out, belongs properly to the first of these fields of consciousness, while that which makes up your character—your preferences, your predilections, your faults, your foibles, your beliefs, and your prejudices—belongs to the second?
Can you not see that a suspension of the outward consciousness, in other words, a suspension of your power to sense the material world through your material senses, has no necessary connection with any suspension of your inner consciousness by which you might be able to say, I cannot move; I cannot see, hear, or feel anything, but I am still a white man, ready to swear by the flag and by my right to my personalliberty, and if any one takes the trouble to hunt me out he will find me the same man I always was?
Hundreds of thousands thus lie in their graves, thankful if they know its location, and waiting as only the dead can for the time of their deliverance.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Acceptanother glimpse of the Beyond. One of the most distinctive characteristics of this country or state of being is activity of mind. Let me explain why I say country or state of being. It is either the one or the other to the consciousness according to the point of view. Looked at externally, it is seen to be a new environment, a different kind of life; but when its atmosphere becomes yours, the effect upon your mental organism will be so great that you will rightly regard it as a state of being to which earth-life bears the relation of a pre-natal one. This comparison, however, has one defect, for while we of the earth have no conscious memory of our pre-natal life, they ofthe Beyond recall every leading event of earth-life as clearly as though no time had intervened.
The change of state brings on the mental activity spoken of, the effect of which on the material side manifests as heat or magnetism, or both.
The lifting off of the weight of dead matter causes a feeling of buoyancy, and the vibrations of the particles of the gaseous body may be so great that it will seem to expand until one seems everywhere present over a vast territory in the same way that we are now present in all parts of our physical bodies.
The first event of prime importance to you will be the demonstrating and establishing of your spiritual rank. Just where do you belong? In the society of what people, or what class of people, are you content? Does any accusation lie against you? If so, what have you to say in regard to it?
Are there any special credits that you claim which seem never to have been acknowledged? Is there anything you wish to confess? To what concealment do you claim a right?
The answering of these questions may be a very simple matter, or may involve the welfare of nations. While the friends left behind will contribute their quota of evidence, those with whom you have been associated who have preceded you to the unknown country will be the most actively interested in your case. You will find some waiting for your testimony on some point involving their own status, and when you come to speak of the matter you may have to struggle against a tumult of voices before you succeed in testifying. Where questions of fact are involved, of sufficient importance to justify it, most wonderful agencies can be set in motion to determinethem correctly in the region of the Beyond.
That precise point in the ether where the event occurred, and which has long since been left behind by the passage of the solar system through space, can be visited and made to yield up its record as by kinetograph; or the surroundings may be reproduced as on a stage, and the one who persists in falsifying is suddenly placed there and told to act his part again according to his own story. He will find it very difficult to play a false part in the presence of those who know the truth.
It may be noted that this picture of a soul on trial is quite different from that given before, where it is held as the prisoner of death; but it is only necessary to bear in mind that events may succeed each other even in a country where time is not, and that such succession marks the stages of one's growth.
If any of your faculties are in a dull or torpid state because the circumstances of your life have been such that they never have been given a field of action, the invisible actors of the Beyond who may have you in charge will know how to awaken, stimulate, and call these faculties into an active state before the final decision is rendered, to the end that no injustice may be done you on their account. Should the verdict of the lower court be such that you are not willing to abide by it, you may take an appeal to a higher court.
At the last you may even appeal from the judgment of angels altogether, and demand a trial by the great Spirit of the universe, but you will not do this recklessly when you know that it involves a trial by ordeal, or a contest of sheer will-power, sustained by conscious innocence alone, with planetary forces.
Not brief nor trifling is a contest suchas this; not once in a thousand years does such a thing occur; but the fact that the way to it is always open in the Beyond proves with what infinite tenderness the individual is guarded against injustice.
But it is impossible that I should know of what I am speaking, some reader says. I grant you that it seems so, but would discussion settle it? Is it not time the door was opened? Is there no need?
CHAPTER XIX.
Anillustration of the difficulty of generalizing when speaking of matters on the spirit-side just now occurs to me.
Suppose that you as a mortal were permitted to witness a combat between a soul on its way upward and a foul spirit seeking to gain control. The spirit may be able to take on any form it pleases, and approaches in the guise of a friend. But the soul receives a warning touch and speaks out sharply: "Stand; keep your distance. Who are you? and what do you want?" With every smooth and crafty method of tone and word the spirit seeks to convince that he is what he claims to be, a friend, and entitled to approach. The soul, with its senses sharpened by fear, usesevery effort to discern the character of the stranger, weighs and analyzes instantly every expression of the wily foe, and before the answer is completed, decides positively and prepares to strike. The spirit perceives the motion and shifts his footing in time to escape the blow—a thought-impulse, weighted to kill. Does the spirit respond in anger? Oh, no; his object is not to injure, but to gain control, so he remonstrates, with pretended grief, that one whom he loves should so mistake him. But the soul is not to be deceived, and gathers up its strength for another blow. The spirit pours out a perfect stream of flattering words, intended to lull his intended victim into a momentary lack of vigilance, and ventures a little nearer, hoping to touch the aura and disappear from view, only to become manifest as an invisible power within the soul, an active agent in undermining its powers until theopportunity shall present to seize the very throne itself and revel in the possessions of its victim.
But the soul is cautious, and in virtue strong, and so, conscious of invisible protection, suddenly fixes the demon with his eye, and before he can escape launches at him a bolt that leaves him helpless and writhing, dead as a spirit can be. "I killed him," says the exulting soul, as it passes on its way.
You would be apt to say, "He did not kill him at all; he only disabled him."
Now, while it is true that what I have described corresponds in appearance to what we should here call disablement merely, its full meaning cannot be understood without entering the consciousness of the spirit who was struck down.
To such a one activity, or the ability to act, constitutes life; inactivity, or the inability to act, constitutes death, not death as we know it, but a livingdeath, in which the fierce vibrations of a life that knows no end, being confined as though by a broken wheel in its carriage,—being confined, I say, to the gaseous envelope, the propulsion of which has absorbed half its fire, soon heats the envelope to a torturing degree.
Illustrating in another way, the evil spirit, being disabled from continuing his customary activity, is forced to reflect, to look back over his course, and face the evils he has done. Horrors take hold of him. The most poignant dread of being overtaken by those whom he has despoiled of all that made life dear, until in despair they have committed suicide, and started out to find their tormentor, takes hold of the miserable wreck, who has not even the consolation of looking forward to some certain end to his sufferings, because neither time nor the last sleep are known in the region of the dead.
Is this experience, do you think, any less to be dreaded by a selfish spirit than is death by a mortal who is consciously not ready? It is therefore properly called death in the language of the spirit, made up, as that language is, of ideas only.
But in calling it death on the earth-plane we are using a word that has a much different meaning here.
When we say, "The man is dead," a funeral, or at least a burial is suggested. Not so there.
In this we have an example of the difficulty of conveying information in regard to the conditions of the Beyond, without using words that are liable to be misunderstood.
Only those who have attained to the ability to converse in the light, eye to eye, without words, are entirely free from these obstructions to mental intercourse.
CHAPTER XX.
Astronomyteaches us that our earth, together with the other members of the solar system, is traveling through space, at the rate of eight miles per second, around a distant center, in an orbit requiring many thousands of years to complete.
We learn from this that we are constantly changing our place in the universe, and are entering new etherean fields, not only every year, but every day and hour. Since we are unconscious of this motion, it may seem to have no vital relation to us, yet, by a knowledge of the fact, we may gain an insight into the wonderful resources of this great machine for recording events.
Every thought and feeling of whichwe are conscious makes its mark, not only upon our bodies, both the outer and the inner, but also upon the ether through which we are passing. I am alluding not to the words in which we clothe or perhaps conceal our thoughts or feelings when communicating with one another, but to the thought-current itself at the point of origin.
This would be the same in the minds of all men of equal intelligence, without regard to nationality; and those beings who are able to read the marks left by these currents would find them written in unmistakable characters, and of a size proportionate to our rate of travel, on the fair ethereal page.
In one respect we are at an enormous disadvantage in our relations, conscious or unconscious, with the denizens of the Beyond.
Our thought-motions compared with theirs are like an ox-team to a locomotive.It is a fact, and there is no use in quarreling with it. On the other hand, through our association with matter we are able, without permanent injury, to bear oppressions of the spirit which would be death itself to them; and those among them who would take delight in insulting us are deterred from doing so by our insensibility to the stinging thought-current. We ourselves would not insult a post for being one.
These oppressions of spirit, or depressions, as we blindly call them, are a part of the system by and through which we are made to manifest what manner of person we are; and our blindness as to the real meaning of the life we have come into possession of, our persistent mistaking it for an end, instead of a means to an end, brings it to pass that the tests we undergo as to our fitness for this or that position in the realthough hidden life that awaits us all, are real and genuine tests, which they could not be, to their full extent, if we clearly understood at the time just what was being done. Every thoughtful man and woman looking back over life can discern how this or that decision has been a turning-point leading on to unexpected success or paving the way to disaster or defeat. When the test is complete, some inkling of its meaning often dawns upon us, and we resolve to be on guard next time, and then perhaps we start off on some rainbow chase, only to discover that we are the prey of delusion once more. Then, perhaps, we get angry and curse the whole machine as the product of some stupid blunderer, thereby avoiding the confession of any mental obliquity on our own part.
Not all of the delusions of mortality are of a kind that lead to such a result. Some have been imposed upon us byour risen brothers of the other sphere, and have held sway over our minds, as they did over our fathers' minds, and over their fathers' before them, none of us living long enough on the mortal side, or obtaining sufficiently clear independent light, to enable us to become free. The shaking off of the fetters of this mental bondage is a special characteristic of our own day; and those who have listened to the torrents of eloquence poured from the lips of the young mediums upon this subject, know that this work, the necessity for which, as I have indicated, is largely due to other-world intelligences, is now being forwarded from the same quarter with tremendous power. Verily, there must have been a revolution in the heavens, or this would not be. And such, indeed, is the case. The tremendous power of an organized hierarchy under the controlling influence of a singlemind so prominently in evidence here, is without a counterpart on the other side to-day, although the sins against humanity which have been charged against the priesthood of past ages should more properly be laid at the door of their invisible inspirers, then in the height of that power which is no longer theirs. To-day the enemies of racial progress are to be sought for on earth, where the intoxicating dreams of power without responsibility have found lodgment and worked their corrupting influence in the minds of not a few of our brothers, who seem to forget that they are still members of the race they are seeking to enslave, and that their responsibility for misusing the power entrusted to them will be accounted all the greater in consequence.
CHAPTER XXI.
Therange of subjects coming within the scope of my title is so great that I cannot undertake an exhaustive treatment of any within reasonable limits, but I hope to supply a few keys by the use of which reverent minds of any and every school of thought may be able to enter upon successful explorations.
The amount of evidence necessary to convince a sincere inquirer that this earth-life, important as it is, is but the threshold of existence, is not very great, but it must needs be adapted to the individual mind.
To obtain this evidence is worth more to any man or woman than any other purely mental acquirement can be.
For it is a mental acquisition, the possession of which is related to, and has a natural influence over, every other we can call our own. Yet it has not, in itself, any transforming effect upon the life and character.
When such a result follows, other influences share in the work. He who has lost friends that were a part of his life, the mother whose children have fainted away into the world of mystery, the philosopher who has given the strength of his years to the search for truth, are all profoundly affected by the discovery; while those in whom the affections are less strongly developed, or whose mental powers give them no adequate perception of the profound and far-reaching relations of this great truth, may hold it as lightly as they do their dreams, and receive from it no more benefit than they do from them.
Whoever is capable of analyzing athought or the expression of a thought, can find evidence of the world beyond strewn along his path on every hand.
All figurative expressions are merely unconscious devices to give to thought somewhat of the objective reality it possesses to dwellers in the Beyond. For instance:
"There are names which carry with them something of a charm. We have but to say 'Athens,' and all the great deeds of antiquity break upon our hearts like a sudden gleam of sunshine; 'Florence,' and the magnificence and passionate agitation of Italy's prime send forth their fragrance towards us like blossom-laden boughs, from whose dusky shadows we catch whispers of the beautiful tongue."
Is it doubted that the Athens of which the author speaks will be found embodied in forms real and tangible in that other world which takes to itselfall that attains to immortality in this one?
Why do authors speak of acoldgreeting, ofwallsof reserve,riversof kindness, or thesunshineof love?
They may not be able fully to explain, but expressions like these point to features of the landscape in that world where the inner becomes the outer and takes on those garments of reality which belong to it by right.
The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal, and when we have broken connection with our temporal bodies, or attained a true and perfect control over them, we may enter into this knowledge, to find it truly a heavenly inheritance.
But it is not alone through figurative and poetic language that we may discover evidence of the existence of an immaterial world.
The broad fields of philosophy and literary criticism receive their light, their water, and their air, outside the world of sense almost entirely. Scarce anything in these domains has any causative relation with the world of matter.
For instance, take this passage from one of the magazines:
"But what does the work of higher criticism really mean? It means, briefly, as applied to the Old Testament, the revision of certain traditions concerning the structure, the date, the authorship of the books—traditions which had their origin in the fanciful and uncritical circles of Judaism just before, or soon after, the Christian era."[B]
A careful analysis of the meaning of this will show that it begins and ends in the domain of abstract thought. Touse a figurative expression, it does not touch the ground anywhere. If our bodies and their needs, if the earth and its products which minister to those needs, if, in brief, the material universe really comprised theall that is, such a thought as is contained in the passage quoted could never have come into being. For it has no practical relation to things as such.
Yet there is nothing especially obscure about it. It was written for men and women of ordinary intelligence, who are supposed to take an interest not merely in sacred truths, which, indeed, are not dealt with in the article from which I quote, but the structural forms containing those truths.
All of which, rightly interpreted, points to another phase of existence, which is either near to or far from us according to the stage of our development, a phase which may become measurablyreal to us even before we enter fully upon it, and which has the strongest possible claims upon our attention.
CHAPTER XXII.
Thereis no more fruitful source of error to the student of occult philosophy than the assumption which he continually makes, that the race and the individual may be treated as one when their relations to a higher power are being considered.
It appears that the study of the laws of chemistry may be partly responsible for this. A molecule of any substance, having in itself all the properties of that substance, may be reasoned upon and regarded as though it were, as it is, an epitome of the mass. In the same way it is assumed that man, the individual, is an epitome of the race, and that, in endeavoring to obtain a philosophical view of him, we may pass inreview before the mind what we know of the race, and what we know of the individual in a general way, without drawing any line of distinction between what is true of the one and what is true of the other.
Now, while this mental process may have a certain value when both are considered externally, those who attempt to solve the deeper problems of the race or the man, by means of it, are sure to fall into error.
It is not borne in mind that our race is scarcely conscious of itself as a unit, and if it were, it would in the present state of knowledge regard itself as alone in the universe, flying through space on a revolving globe with enormous velocity, along an unknown orbit. There may be other inhabited worlds peopled by other races of beings, but as a race we do not know this to be true; and only a dim perception of the survival ofa few of its own members that have lived their little lives and passed away since time began, relieves the sense of isolation with which the race looks out into the surrounding darkness.
The student of history contemplates the rise and fall of nations and traces the causes which have led to their overthrow. He observes the same influences at work to-day as in the olden time, and when the premonition of like disasters comes home to him, he is ready to exclaim, "There is no hope! There is no God!" And in so speaking he gives utterance to the soul of our race, which is still groping in the darkness for light and a place of rest.
How much of this is true of man as an individual? Very little, comparatively, as we shall see. In the first place, as individuals, we are conscious of companionship. We look around us and out over the world and see greatnumbers of our fellows whose life and surroundings are comparable with our own. Such differences as we perceive in each other only give evidence that our fellow-beings are real, not simply reflections of ourselves; are objective entities, not elusive shadows. And by as much as we are conscious of an individuality apart from that of our race, by so much may we hope to separate the thread of our destiny from the tangled mass. Examples of such a separation are to be found among the great names of the earth; and a study of their lives will teach us how best to shape our own. It will also teach us that race-life and individual life are not necessarily the same, that the individual may absorb light for which the race is not yet ready, and set his standards of thought and action far beyond what is yet possible to the race as a whole.
If, now, we form our conceptions ofthe character of the power overruling us, by an exclusive study of those events which affect great numbers, we are liable to serious error. If the sound of thunders intended for the ear of the race be concentrated so as to fall upon our individual hearing, they will certainly deafen us completely.
On the other hand, those whose narrower vision sees only the play of events as they affect the lives of individuals are also liable to error in forming their estimate of the character of the overruling power.
Here tragedy visible and invisible plays its part, and sometimes injustice in the extreme appears to triumph. There is no possibility of avoiding error in judgment from this point of view, without constantly bearing in mind at least three things: first, that outward disaster is sometimes an inevitable result of long-hidden crime; second, that to the innocent,death is a release from prison, a promotion from a lower to a higher sphere of action, and that those who are able to look beyond the instruments used to break their fetters, to the kindness that sets them free, can mount on the wings of delight to a diviner air; and third, that the dwarfing of the faculties of a soul during the short space of earth-life will turn out to be a far less serious matter to the soul than to the one responsible for it.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Thequestion may be asked, Wherein lies the difference between man the unit, and the race which is an aggregation of these units? What philosophical difference is possible? In answer, I would say that while the individual and the race alike possess body and soul, the individual at times manifests a power of becoming greater in every respect than the influence of heredity or surroundings can at all account for. Such individuals tell us of some powerful influence descending upon them, as it were, from a higher sphere, and to this they attribute the changes in their life and powers which make all their friends to marvel. No such stimulating and transforming influencehas ever manifested itself on so broad a scale as to affect our entire race at once, and we must conclude that the time has not come for such an event. As a race, our eyes are not lifted above the earth. We care little about our origin, and still less about our destiny. The love of war and bloodshed, delight in the flowing bowl and all its attendant revelry, are still characteristic of our race, and the heavy clouds that are gathering in our sky are not yet black enough with impending evil to arrest us in our downward course.
Ah! well for us it is that we are not to be left alone to rush headlong to destruction in our blind folly. Terrible as are the forces we have invoked against ourselves, those which shall save us from death by all manner of intoxication are infinitely greater.
The wasting fever of war undoubtedly must come, such war as the worldhas never seen before, but when the coveted excitement, changed to agony untold, is at last over, when our physical forces are entirely exhausted, the loving Parent whose outstretched hand we have always refused, will show a pitying face. A draught of infinite peace will be imparted to our spirit, and we shall rise in newness of life to enjoy the forgotten delights of obedient childhood, and make this old world over into one entirely new.
CHAPTER XXIV.
I hadnot thought to touch this strain when I began to write of the Beyond, but some things almost write themselves, and I have not forgotten the closing words of the appeal with which this book opens. "We are trodden down by our brothers among the living. Help us, our fathers from the dead."
Ah! if the wire which carries this petition outward can bear the strength of the return current, it may possibly convey such tidings as words are not able to express, for is it not true that the sweetest strains are cradled within a silence which speaks more profoundly to the soul than does the music to the ear? Let us hearken.
"Do you wish to know what stands in the way of our coming to the rescue? Nothing but your unbelief in the possibility of our coming. Thank God that unbelief is growing weak. Could you know what exhausting labor is ours in our efforts to reach you, you would pray rather for light to enable you to do your part. Believe, oh, believe that we have not forgotten. In agony of spirit we are striving to awaken you from slumber, to instil into your minds the supreme truth, that no good thing that can be named is impossible of occurrence. You are ready to believe it for the material, why not accept it in the spiritual?
"Religious liberty is your priceless privilege. Can you possibly gain it by setting foot on religion itself? Be sane. Learn to discriminate. Throw away the chaff, but keep the wheat.Death is a magician, not a murderer. The pain all comes beforehand. The passage itself is not painful. Death merely turns the key in a door you never saw before, and you step out into such a freedom as you never dreamed of. 'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,' suggests a great truth. Try to get hold of it. No man, and no body of men, no spirit, nor any combination of them, can prevent you from making your life a success. There are prizes to be won. Why not try for them?
"But you say you are trying. Sword in hand, you are battling for the right. Yes, we know, and sometimes you are wounded, and help seems never to come. Hold fast. We are building a road.
"It is already finished, and the cars are on the track. You shall not die of wounds like these. Help is near.Your prayer is heard. We knew it would be. From the heights beyond the heights has come the order, 'Descend in power. Earth's children are ready to receive you.' And we are not few nor weak. Our phalanx moves in a light which nothing can withstand. Believe it, and stand upon your feet. We are already here."
CHAPTER XXV.
Thereis another grand division of my subject, but the difficulty of presenting it through the medium of written language is even greater than that already dealt with, and only a slight attempt will now be made. Not only do thoughts take the place of timings in the Beyond, butemotions take the place of forces. By emotions in this connection I mean those currents of energy which have their rise in, and are more or less under the control of individualized intelligence, as love and hate, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, happiness and distress; and by forces I mean those which are sometimes called blind forces, such as attraction in its various forms,heat, electric vibration, and the like. As these last pertain especially to matter, we should expect them to retire into the background in a world where mind-realities, or facts of consciousness, absolutely dominate. And so they do. And here may be a good place to indicate what part matter really plays in this immaterial world. Let me call attention to the world of art. Let us recall its great names, and the masterpieces which have given them fame, the wonderful poems, the paintings, the sculpture, and the musical creations that will never die, and then pause and consider how slight are the demands made by this wonder-world on the lower world of matter. The poet and the musician call for writing materials, the sculptor needs some clay and a few modeling tools, the painter some pigments and brushes, and a bit of canvas. With these slight aids the noble conceptionsof genius are materialized for the delight of future generations.
Take another illustration. When a ship goes out of the harbor, it is to be assumed that she takes her anchor with her, and carefully guards it against possible loss.
It is likewise true that within the scope of the great and splendid activities of a free spirit, a material anchor is somewhere safely cared for, yet such an anchor has no more prominent relation to the activities of the spirit than the anchor of a ship has to the ship's power to cross the sea. If we could think of a ship with nothing else to do but to lie around the harbor, the relative importance of the anchor would increase very much; and if it had no anchor of its own, it might attempt to tie up to some other vessel that had one. And so with earth-bound spirits whose testimony is sometimes quoted to the effectthat spirit-life is as dependent on matter as any other. Most of them are blissfully ignorant of their own poverty, and move about the earth, that is to say in the lower or earthly strata of thoughts and feelings, because they have no desires above them.
They remember this life as a lost heaven, and are continually bemoaning that loss in secret, while their activities take the form of influencing mortals to this or that kind of sensual indulgence, which they wish to share through sympathy. Every impulse and desire is bent upon a possible recovery of the earth-life, and they are so ignorant of, and indifferent to, any higher form of life, that it remains without existence to them.
I would not say they are insensible to the enlargement of their powers consequent upon their release from the confinement of an earthly body. Theycould not be. Their discovery that death does not destroy the inner consciousness was a great surprise to them, but the novelty of the discovery soon wore away. What seemed so strange at first, became a truism, a simple scientific fact, previously unknown, and unable in itself to supply any stimulus to their higher powers.
It is evident that the testimony of these upon the subject is worthless, while those who have battled for and won the prize of recognition in a higher sphere give abundant evidence of their freedom from the bondage of matter, and the desires that have material things for their object.
Resuming my subject, not only matter, but those forces which are inseparably associated with it, retire into the background, nay, almost disappear, in the Beyond. Emotions take their place.
The atmosphere, or that which corresponds to what we know by the term, seems charged with some powerful element, resembling electricity in its effects, but differing from it in that it seems to be sensitive to thought, and to be capable of responding to it with dynamic force. A shock from this element is in every respect as real to the consciousness as an electric shock is to us. It comes from without and expends its force upon the gaseous body. Being sensitive to thought, it does not impress one as being capricious in its nature, but as though acting according to some law which it is of the highest importance to discover, if possible.
With the perceptive and intuitional faculties wrought up to the highest state of activity, it is presently discovered that it is not thought in the abstract, but thought surcharged with feeling or with devotion to a principle, some cherishedsentiment of the soul, which has the power to excite this hitherto unknown element; and gradually it dawns on the mind that this element corresponds to public opinion on earth, that it emanates from the inhabitants of that part of the spirit-realm, and that if your mind does not happen to be in accord with theirs, you must either get away or do battle for your life. By life, I mean your power and freedom of expression, the very breath of the spirit, what a printing-press is to a newspaper, cut off from which, the paper is dead.
Manifestations of emotion, both in kind and degree, depend upon two things, our spiritual state or condition, and the nature of our surroundings. Passing over the first of these, it is evident that earth-surroundings greatly limit the expression of emotion; and when we observe the effect of a powerful current of this kind upon the physicaltissues of the body, weakening and consuming them as by a flame, we see that the length of our stay here is involved in our ability to control our emotions.
Not so in the Beyond, where our stay is without assignable limits, and where the pent-up emotions of a lifetime at last find vent, and pour themselves out as by flood-gates to the sea.
And it is here that music plays its part in that wonder-world. For as ideas have each their appropriate form, so every emotion has a musical strain peculiar to it.
And who can describe the healing power of music under a master's hand? Reading the mind and soul as an open book, and informing every tone with the vibrations of a perfect sympathy born of knowledge, he administers to the soul whose life has been a tragedy long-drawn-out, such throbbing waves of strength and consolation, himself remaininghidden, as seem to issue from the very stars, and drown the memory of that age-long pain in an ocean of oblivion.
Ah! believe me, it is another world, where the powers of this one do not rule.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Andyet, as I have indicated, it is possible to live so far below one's moral and spiritual possibilities, that the loss of life will seem the loss of heaven, and the men of power on earth whom one has envied will come to seem very gods, worthy of being worshipped. Such a delusion as this is in part due to the absence of a common time-element.
Duration is measured only by the succession of various states of consciousness, and these change so rapidly under the influence of the vibratory intensity of the new life, that the events of a day lengthen it out until it seems like a year upon earth; and day and night being one in the Beyond, so far as activity is concerned, although they differ somewhatin magnetic conditions, when one of these year-long days is past, the spirit, glancing across into earth-life, at some money king, with thirty years of active life before him, can scarcely avoid endowing him with a kind of immortality, and may devote the fiery energies of the soul to building up the fortunes of such a one, with no higher object than that of keeping the mental balance and avoiding reflection.
This necessity for keeping the balance supplies motive for a great deal that is done by spirits in the lower strata of life in the Beyond. It is not, strictly speaking, mental balance, but organic, affecting the whole being. A spirit possessed of any conscious individuality whatever must generate a certain interior force to maintain it. This keeps his body in a state of equilibrium between the inner and outer pressure, and the body of a spirit is naturally asvaluable to him as ours is to us. It protects him against currents of thought and emotion that are not adapted to his needs, and when evenly balanced he is able to put forth effective will-power along the plane of his development and below.
Any one who has not learned what soul-action is will have it to learn soon after the exchange of worlds. No other form of activity is possible there. No spirit strikes another with his hand, nor presents him with a visible token of wealth, yet battles are fought and presents given. As a suggestion: when you say to your friend, "Good-bye and good-luck to you," you are making him a spiritual present, although you may not be aware of it.
Whenever you launch a curse, if only in thought, you strike a blow, against which conscious rectitude is an actual armor, and the only one.
The very slightest impulse of ill-will directed toward any one is an action of the soul that may do real harm, and certainly makes a record.
These statements will commend themselves as true to most of my readers, many of whom, however, would not be able to explain why they are so sure of what they have learned from no teacher, and cannot recall from the pages of experience. Let me suggest.
From six to nine hours' sleep is an essential part of our daily lives. We suppose ourselves to actually sleep, not only in body but in mind and soul as well. Perhaps some who have very little mind and even less spirit, do sleep when their body sleeps, but there are very large numbers of people who, the moment the brain becomes quiescent, enter at once on the most active part of their daily existence.
This is especially true of such as duringtheir waking hours have attained some knowledge of spiritual values, and have taken their stand on this or that platform of principles, religious, moral, or even political, and who would be ready to contend in argument, or even, if necessary, take up arms, in defense of their positions; in other words, who have a conscious location in some field of thought or fortress of belief.
The extent to which we influence others, or are influenced by them, during our sleeping hours, very few realize, because unable to recall, when waking, the experiences of the night just passed; but be sure that no reform can ever make much progress until the agitation for it becomes sufficiently powerful to link the day to the night, and engage the activities of partially freed spirits while their bodily consciousness is lost in slumber.
It is here that lessons are learned and impressions made, the recalling of theresults of which may surprise us as to the extent, and puzzle us as to the origin, of our knowledge.
Readers of Emerson will find this a key to some of his mysterious yet delightful sayings.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Thosewho have never entered into any kind of associate life where they might learn to think and act for others as well as for themselves, will have a particularly hard time on the other side.
For no one can go through life without becoming responsible for innumerable acts, even if he does nothing more than make room for himself, and defend his own footing; and if he persists in living for himself, it follows that his motives will never rise above the care of himself, and, possibly, of those who contribute to his comfort.