There are many, however, who have an invincible repugnance to this
method of research, and I would here say for the benefit of such, that
while I am on friendly terms with spiritualists generally, I am not
indebted to them for what I have to give. My observations of the
phenomena of spiritualism, although wide and varied, have all been made
since I came to know, independently, that there are intelligences above
man, and that there is a world distinctly different from this, where
they have their home.
Spiritualistic phenomena, as observed through mediums, have, in a
general way, confirmed what I knew in regard to the other world, but I
find many of the prevalent ideas which are supposably based on these
phenomena to be erroneous in the extreme. For instance, it is taught as
a doctrine that there is no death, and those who teach it point
triumphantly to the demonstrations of the survival of those whose mortal
part has been laid in the grave, not realizing that in so doing they
prove themselves to be still in bondage to the old error, that death and
annihilation are one and the same, and that consequently whoever has
escaped the one, must necessarily have escaped the other.
To prove that a man who has severed his connection with the mortal state
has not suffered annihilation, proves nothing whatever as to his
acquaintance with death.
Even the passing from one world to the other, which is commonly
associated with death, is not the same thing, for many possess the
power of so passing while still tenants of the clay.
If death, then, is not annihilation, nor the mere passing from one kind
of life into another, what is it? It is the severing of the magnetic
bonds which unite the body of the individual to the body of the race as
a whole.
We do not often consider what an important element in our lives are
these magnetic currents which link us to our fellows.
Silent and invisible as they are, they hold us with a tremendous power.
What our friends, our neighbors, our relatives think us capable of
doing, that we can do with comparative ease; but anything out of the
common, calling for the exercise of ability which they do not suppose us
to possess--how nearly impossible it is for us to do it, however
conscious we may be of the inherent power!
As a part of the race we are bound to it by magnetic currents so long as
our mortal life continues, and the cutting off of these currents by
death may be to our consciousness the greatest misfortune or the
greatest happiness we have ever known.
Now I am not preaching, I am simply stating that which I know to be
true. I know it in the same way that I know anything wherein experience
shuts out even the shadow of a doubt.
To speak of the misfortune of death: suppose you were a clock which for
twenty-five years had been a part of the world's life, keeping good time
and always on duty. Then suppose you were suddenly laid away in the dark
and dusty attic of a warehouse until some estate should be settled that
would require an indefinite number of years.
The comparison is not perfect. The clock is not only mostly automatic,
as we are, but entirely so. That in our nature which is essentially
free is not even touched by death, but the bodily activities and
associations may be our only field of action, and these are cut off
absolutely, while memory recalls every event of the life that is
finished, and especially every decision which has had the slightest
influence upon our destiny. The positive element in us which has found
constant vent in physical action is rendered helpless by the complete
paralysis of all the motor nerves. We cannot even think, for this
requires some movement of the brain. A consciousness of being left
behind while the world travels on, a feeling that this experience had
not been foreseen in the least, nor in any way provided against, spite
of warnings which now seem to echo and re-echo through the
darkness--these are what is left us in place of the sunlight, the
breezes of evening, the voices of children, the light of the stars.
But death may be release, it may be happiness, it may be ecstasy beyond
the power of words to tell. We may have cast the long look ahead in
time. We may have decided that since bodily life is limited at best, it
shall not be first in our regards: its appetites, its demands, shall not
take precedence above those calls which find their answer in the depths
of being, calls to rise out of the mire of reckless self-indulgence, and
clothe ourselves in the garb of a true manhood and womanhood, taking for
our model those who count not their life dear unto them, but reach out
for eternal values.
The pathway is not wide, and they who pursue it may find themselves at
close of life (I am not speaking especially of old age) almost alone.
The energies of the spirit have grown by constant exercise, and the
soul has grown strong, imparting its vibrations to the body, which has
so responded that, one after another, the magnetic links which have held
it to the slower progress of the race have snapped asunder. We are far
ahead, and the spirit longs for purer air than it can find on earth. We
have anticipated all the pains of death. We have endured them in our
struggle for the mastery of ourselves. Death now but sets the seal upon
our victory, gives us the freedom we have earned, ushers us into the
society for which we have prepared ourselves, crowns us heirs of
immortality.
Now, whether death shall be this happiness or that misery, in either
case it will be remembered as a great fact of consciousness, the
greatest ever known, and the doctrine that there is no death will never
be able to find lodgment in the minds of those who have experienced it.