there is not anything that is _solid_; your own body, a piece of iron
or of granite, are not more solid than the air you breathe. All these
things are composed of atoms which do not touch each other, and which
are in perpetual movement. The Earth, atom of the Heavens, moves in
space with a swiftness of 643,000 leagues a day; but, in proportion to
their dimensions, each atom which constitutes your own body and that
circulates in your blood, moves much more quickly. If your vision were
sufficiently powerful to see through this stone, you would no longer
see it thus, because your sight would pass through and beyond it....
[Sidenote: How man errs in thinking his limited sensations describe
those of the universe.]
[Sidenote: The difference of organisms on Mars, Uranus, &c.]
[Sidenote: The tie uniting the physical and spiritual world]
But I see by the disturbance of your brain, and the rapid movements of
the fluid which crosses your closely-concentrated lobes, that you no
longer understand my revelations. I will not then pursue this subject
which I have thus merely lightly touched upon, with the end in view of
thereby demonstrating how greatly you would err, did you attach any
importance to difficulties born of your terrestrial sensations, and
to assure you that neither you nor any man upon the Earth could form
even an approximate idea of the universe. What is earthly man but a
mere pigmy! Ah! if you were but acquainted with the organisms which
vibrate upon Mars or upon Uranus; if it had but been granted to you, to
appreciate the senses in action, upon Venus and upon a ring of Saturn;
if during centuries of travel you had been permitted to glance at and
observe the forms of life in the systems of the double stars; at the
sensations of sight in the coloured suns, to glean the impressions
of an electric sense, of which you can know absolutely nothing,
in the groups of multiple suns; if a suitable comparison of this
ultra-terrestrial state had furnished you with the elements of a fresh
knowledge, you would then have comprehended that beings exist--who can
see, hear, feel, or, to be more accurate, understand nature without
eyes, without ears, without sense of smell; that an incredible number
of other senses exist in nature, senses essentially different from
yours; and that there are in creation an incalculable number of
marvellous facts which it is absolutely impossible for you to imagine.
In this general contemplation of the universe, my friend, one perceives
the solidarity--the tie which unites the physical with the spiritual
world; one sees from a higher ground the instinctive strength which
raises certain souls, tried by the coarseness of matter but purified
by sacrifice, towards the higher regions of spiritual light; and one
understands how immense is the happiness reserved for those beings,
who, even while on Earth, have succeeded in gradually overcoming their
lower nature.
QUÆRENS.. To return to the transmission of light in space. Does
not light lose itself at last? Does the aspect of the Earth remain
eternally visible, and never, on the contrary, diminish in proportion
to the square of distance, thus becoming finally annihilated?
[Sidenote: The word end applied to space meaningless]
LUMEN. Your expression "at last" is without meaning, because there is
no end in space.
Light becomes attenuated, it is true, with distance, the scenes become
less vivid, but nothing is lost entirely. Any number, whatever it may
be, perpetually reduced by half, for example, can never become equal
to zero. The Earth is not visible to all eyes at a certain distance.
Nevertheless it still exists, even though it may not be seen by all;
and only spiritual sight can see it.
Besides, the image of a star, borne upon the wings of light, goes into
the unfathomable depths of the mysterious abysses of space.
[Sidenote: Vast regions exist without stars.]
Vast regions exist in space without stars, regions decimated by time,
whence worlds have been successively removed by the attraction of
exterior suns. The image of a star in crossing these dark abysses,
would be in a condition analogous to that of a person, or object, that
the photographer had forgotten and left in the _camera_.
It is not impossible that such images encounter in these vast spaces an
obscure star (celestial mechanics state the existence of many such) in
a special condition whose surface (formed perhaps of iodine, if one is
to credit spectral analysis) would be sensitised, and capable of fixing
upon itself the image of this far-off world.
Thus terrestrial events might be printed upon a dark globe. And if this
globe turns upon itself, like other celestial bodies, it would present
successively its different zones to the terrestrial image, and would
thus take a sort of continuous photograph of successive events.
[Sidenote: Images of this world's events photographed spirally upon
other globes in space.]
Following moreover, in ascending, or descending, a perpendicular
line to its equator, the line where the images were reproduced would
no longer be described in a circle, but in a spiral; and after the
first movement of rotation was finished, the new images would not
coincide with the old ones, nor superimpose them, but would follow
above and below. The imagination could now suppose that this world is
not spherical, but cylindrical, and thus see in space an imperishable
column around which would be engraved the great events of the world's
history.
I have not myself seen this realisation. It is so short a time since I
left the Earth, that I have barely done more than glance superficially
at these celestial marvels. Before long I shall seek to verify this
fact, and see if its reality does not form a part of the infinite
richness of the astral creations.
QUÆRENS. If the ray which leaves the Earth is never _destroyed_,
master, our actions are then eternal?
LUMEN. Certainly they are.
[Sidenote: Actions carried for ever on rays of light.]
An act once accomplished can never be effaced, and no power can ever
cause it to be as if it had never been. Say that a crime is committed
in the heart of a desert country. The criminal goes far away, remains
unknown, and supposes that the act which he has committed has _passed_
for ever. He has washed his hands of it, he has repented, he believes
his action _obliterated_. But in reality nothing is destroyed. At the
moment when this act was accomplished, the light seized it and carried
it into space with the rapidity of lightning. It became incorporated
in a ray of light; eternal, it will transmit itself eternally into
infinitude.
Likewise a good action is done in secret; the benefactor thinks it is
concealed, but a ray of light has taken possession of it. Far from
being forgotten, it will live for ever.
Napoleon, in order to satisfy his personal ambition, was voluntarily
the cause of the death of five millions of men, whose ages averaged
about thirty years, and who, according to the laws of life, had
thirty-seven more years to live. Therefore, by this calculation, he
caused the destruction of 185 millions of years of human life.
[Sidenote: Napoleon's punishment.]
His chastisement, his expiation, consists in being carried along by
that ray of light which left the plains of Waterloo on the 18th June
1815, and to be ever moving in space with the quickness of light
itself; to have constantly in sight that critical scene, where he saw
for ever crumbling to pieces the scaffolding of his vain ambition;
to feel, without respite, the bitterness of despair; and to remain
bound to this ray of light for the 185 millions of years for whose
destruction he was responsible. By thus acting, in place of worthily
fulfilling his mission, he has retarded for a similar length of time
his progress in the spiritual life.
And if it were given to you to see that which goes on in the moral
world, as clearly as you now see that which passes in the physical one,
you would recognise vibrations and transmissions of another nature,
which imprint in the arcana of the spiritual world, not only the
actions, but even the most secret thoughts.
[Sidenote: Speculation upon the problem of communication by luminous
signals between the Earth and stars.]
[Sidenote: An interval of two centuries between question and answer.]
QUÆRENS. Your revelations, Lumen, are awful! Thus, our eternal
destinies are intimately bound up with the construction of the universe
itself. I have many times speculated upon the problem of communication
between the worlds by the aid of light. Many physicists have supposed
that it will be possible to establish communication between the Earth
and the Moon, and even the planets, by the aid of luminous signals.
But suppose one could make signs from the Earth to a star, by employing
the light, for example, a hundred years must come and go before the
signal from the Earth could reach its destination, and the response
could only return after the same interval of time had elapsed. Two
centuries must consequently elapse between the question and its answer.
The terrestrial observer would have died long before his signal could
have reached his sidereal observer, and the latter would doubtless have
undergone a similar fate before his answer could have been received!
LUMEN. It would, in fact, be a conversation between the living and the
dead.
QUÆRENS. Pardon a last question, master--one perhaps a little
indiscreet, but a last one, for I see Venus is paling, and I feel that
your voice will soon cease to be heard. If actions are thus visible
in ethereal regions, we can then see, after our death, not only our
own actions, but also those of others--I mean those which specially
interest us?
For instance, a pair of twin souls, dwelling in perfect unity, would
like to see again for a thousand years the delightful hours passed
together on the Earth; they would rush into space with a rapidity equal
to that of light, in order to have always before their eyes the same
hours of joy.
In another sense, a husband would trace with interest the entire life
of his companion; and should some unexpected situation have presented
itself, he could at leisure examine the causes leading to the same. He
might even, if his disembodied companion resided in some neighbouring
region, call upon her to observe, in common with himself, these
retrospective incidents.
No denial could be admissible before such palpable evidence, and might
not this power exercised by these spirits give rise to some strange
revelations?
LUMEN. You are very earthly, my friend, to think that in the Heavens
memories of a material kind will be valued, and I am astonished that
you can continue to think them of importance. What should specially
strike you in all we have said during these two interviews is, that
by virtue of the laws of light, we can see events after they have
been accomplished, although they are past, and indeed when they have
entirely vanished.
QUÆRENS. Believe me, master, this truth will never more be effaced from
my memory. It is precisely this point which I find so exceedingly
marvellous.
Forget, I pray you, my last digression.
To say the truth, that which from our first interview has most
taxed and surpassed the bounds of my imagination, was to think
that the duration of the voyage of the spirit can be not only
_nil_--negative--but also _retrograde_!
[Sidenote: Time retrogressive.]
"Time retrogressive!" These two words involve a contradiction in terms.
Dare one believe it?
You start to-day for a star, and you arrive yesterday! What do I
say--yesterday? You will arrive there seventy-two years ago, even a
hundred years ago! The farther you go, the sooner you will arrive!
Terms in grammar must be remade for such extraordinary reckoning.
LUMEN. This is undeniable.
Speaking according to terrestrial style, there is not any error in this
mode of expression, since the Earth was only in 1793, &c., for the
world in which we arrived, or for the world which we reached.
[Sidenote: Apparent paradoxes anent time.]
You have, however, on your little globe certain apparent paradoxes,
which give an idea of this one.
For example, a telegram sent from Paris at noon arrives at Brest
twenty minutes before noon. But these curious aspects of particular
application are not of sufficient significance for you to dwell upon,
but rather the _revelation_ of which they are the metaphysical form and
the outward expression. Know that time is not an absolute reality, but
only a transitory measure caused by the movements of the Earth in the
Solar System.
Regarded with the eyes of the soul, and not with those of the body,
this picture of human life, not imaginary but real, such as it was,
dissimulation being impossible, touches on one side the domain of
theology, inasmuch as it explains physically a mystery hitherto
inexplicable: I mean "individual judgment" of ourselves after death.
From the point of view of the whole question, the present of a world
is no longer a momentary actuality, which disappears as soon as it
has appeared, it is no longer a phase without consistency, a gate
through which the past is precipitated unceasingly towards the future,
a mathematical plan in space. It is, on the contrary, an effective
reality, which flies away from this world with the swiftness of light,
sinking for ever in the infinite, and remaining thus an _eternal
present_.
[Sidenote: Events live for ever.]
The metaphysical reality of this vast problem is such, that one can now
conceive the omnipresence of the world throughout all its duration.
Events vanish from the place in which they were born, but they exist in
space. This successive and endless projection of all the facts enacted
upon every world takes place in the bosom of the _Infinite Being_,
whose ubiquity holds everything in an eternal permanence.
[Sidenote: Scientific explanation of ubiquity.]
The events which have been accomplished upon the surface of the Earth
since its creation are visible in space at distances proportioned to
their remoteness in the past. The whole history of the globe, and the
life of each one of its inhabitants, could thus be seen at a glance by
an eye which could embrace that space. We thus understand optically, as
it were, that the eternal Spirit, present everywhere, can see all the
past at one and the same moment.
That which is true of our Earth is true of all the worlds in space.
Thus the entire history of the whole universe can be present at once
to the universal ubiquity of the Creator. I may add that God knows all
the past, not only in consequence of this direct sight, but also by
the knowledge of each thing in the present. If a naturalist, such as
Cuvier, knows how to reconstruct, by the aid of a fragment of bone, any
species of extinct animals, surely the Author of Nature knows by the
present Earth the Earth which is past, the Planetary System, and the
Sun of the past, and all the conditions of temperatures, aggregations,
and combinations, by which the elements have produced the complex
condition of things at present in existence.
[Sidenote: Present, past, and future, all one.]
On the other hand, the future can be as completely present to God in
its actual germs, as the past is in its fruits.
Each event is bound in an indissoluble manner with the past and the
future.
The future will be as inevitably the outcome of the present, and is,
as logically deducible from it, and exists in it as exactly, as that
the past itself is therein inscribed for those who are able to decipher
it. But--and I emphasise it--the main point of this recital is to
state, to make you understand, that the past life of all worlds, and
of all beings, is always visible in space, thanks to the successive
transmission of light across and through the vast regions of the
infinite.
FOURTH CONVERSATION
ANTERIORES VITÆ
[Sidenote: New horizons.]
QUÆRENS. Two years have fled, Lumen, since the day when you granted
me that mysterious interview. During this period, unconsciously for
the inhabitants of eternal space, but most consciously for us dwellers
upon the Earth, I have often raised my thoughts to the great problems
in which you have initiated me, and to the horizons developed before
my mind's eye. Doubtless, also, since your departure from the Earth
you have made, through your observations and studies, great advance
upon a field of research more and more vast. Doubtless, also, you have
numberless marvels to declare to me, now that my intelligence is better
prepared to receive them. If I am worthy, and if I can comprehend
them, give me an account, Lumen, of the celestial voyages which have
transported your spirit into the higher spheres; of the unknown truths
which they have revealed to you; of the grandeurs which they have
opened out to you, and of the principles they have taught you in
reference to that mysterious subject, viz., the destiny of man, and
other beings.
LUMEN. I have prepared your mind, my dear old friend, to receive
marvellous impressions, such as no earthly spectacle ever has, or could
produce. It is, nevertheless, necessary that you should keep your
understanding free from all earthly prejudice. That which I am going to
unfold will astonish you, but receive it from the first with attention
as an undeniable truth, and not as a romance. This is the first
condition that I demand from my earnest pupil. When you comprehend--and
you will comprehend, if you bring to the task a mathematical mind
and an unprejudiced spirit--you will see that all the facts which
constitute our ultra-terrestrial existence are not only possible, but
also real, and moreover, are in perfect harmony with our intellectual
faculties as already manifested upon the earth.
QUÆRENS. Be assured, Lumen, that I bring to you an open mind, cleared
from all prejudice, and I am eagerly expecting to hear revelations such
as the human ear has never before heard.
[Sidenote: Space and Light.]
LUMEN. The events which will form the subject of this recital have
not only the Earth and its neighbouring stars for their subject, but
they will extend over immense fields of sidereal astronomy, and make
us acquainted with their marvels. Their explanation will be solved,
as was that of former difficulties, by the study of _light_, a magic
bridge thrown from one star to another, from the Earth to the Sun, from
the Earth to the stars--of _light_, the universal movement which fills
space, sustains worlds in their orbits, and constitutes the eternal
life of nature. Take care, then, to keep ever in mind, the fact of the
_successive transmission of light in space_.
[Sidenote: Velocity of Light.]
QUÆRENS. I know that light, whatever it may be, is the agent by which
objects are rendered visible to our eyes, that it is not transmitted
instantaneously from one point to another, but gradually, like all
motion. I know that it flies at the rate of 75,000 leagues a second,
that it runs 750,000 leagues in ten seconds, and 4,500,000 each minute.
I know that it takes more than eight minutes to cross the distance of
37 millions of leagues which separate us from the Sun. Modern astronomy
has made these facts familiar.
LUMEN. Do you perfectly realise its undulatory movement?
[Sidenote: Undulatory movement of Sound.]
QUÆRENS. I think so. I compare it to that of sound, although it be
accomplished upon a scale incomparably more vast. By undulation
following undulation, sound is diffused in the air. When the bells
peal forth their sonorous sound, this is heard at the very moment when
the clapper strikes the bell, by those living round the church, but is
not heard till one second after, by those living at a distance of 492
yards; two seconds later by those at 765 yards; and three seconds later
still, by those at a distance of 1093 yards from the church. Thus sound
only gradually reaches one village after another as far as it can go.
In the same way light passes successively from one region in space to
another at a greater distance, and travels without being extinguished
into the far-off realms of Infinity. If we could see from the Earth
an event which is being accomplished upon the Moon; for instance, if
we had sufficiently good instruments to perceive from here, a fruit
falling from a tree on the surface of the Moon, we should not see the
fact at the _moment of its occurrence_, but one second and a quarter
_after_, because light requires about that time to travel the distance
from the Moon to the Earth. Similarly, could we see an event taking
place upon a world at ten times greater distance than the Moon, we
could not witness it until 13 seconds after it had really happened. If
this world were a hundred times farther off than the Moon, we could
not see an event until 130 seconds after it had taken place; were it a
thousand times more distant, we should not see it until 1300 seconds,
or 21 minutes 40 seconds had elapsed. And so on according to the
distance.
[Sidenote: Time taken by Light in travelling from the Earth to the star
Capella.]
LUMEN. Exactly, and you are aware that the luminous ray sent to the
Earth by the star _Capella_ takes seventy-two years in reaching it. It
follows, therefore, that if we only receive the luminous ray to-day,
which left its surface seventy-two years ago, the denizens of Capella
see only that which happened on the Earth seventy-two years ago. The
Earth reflects in space the light that it gets from the Sun, and from
a distance, appears as brilliant as Venus and Jupiter appear to you,
planets lighted by the same Sun that lights the Earth. The luminous
aspect of the Earth, its photograph, journeys in space at the rate of
75,000 leagues a second, and only reaches Capella after seventy-two
years of incessant travel. I recall these elementary principles in
order that you may have them thoroughly fixed in your memory; you
will then be able to comprehend, without difficulty, the facts which
have happened to me during my ultra-terrestrial life since our last
interview.
QUÆRENS. These principles of optics are, to my mind, clearly
established. The day after your death in October 1864, when, as
you have confided to me, you found yourself rapidly transported to
Capella, you were astonished to arrive there at the moment when the
philosophical astronomers of the country were observing the Earth in
the year 1793, and witnessing one of the most significant acts of the
French Revolution. You were not less surprised to see yourself again as
a child, running about in the streets of Paris. Then, leaving Capella
and coming nearer to the Earth, you arrived at the zone where that part
of the terrestrial photography passed before your vision, which showed
you your infancy, and you saw yourself at six years of age, not in
memory, but in reality. Out of all your previous revelations, this is
the one I had the most difficulty in believing--I mean, in grasping its
meaning.
LUMEN. That which I now wish to make you comprehend is stranger still.
But it was first necessary for you to admit that one, before I could
adequately reveal to you this one.
[Sidenote: Retrospective survey of life on Earth.]
On leaving Capella and approaching the Earth, I saw again my
seventy-two years of earthly existence, my entire life such as it had
been, passed before me; for, in approaching the Earth, I passed through
successive zones of earthly scenes, where I saw spread out as in a
scroll the visible history of our planet, because in going back towards
the Earth, I was continually meeting the various zones which carried
through space the visible history of our planet, comprising that of
Paris as well as my own, for I was there. Taking thus in one day a
retrospective survey of the road which it had taken light seventy-two
years to traverse, I had reviewed my whole life in that one day, and I
perceived even my own interment.