IS THAT A MORTAL?--"THE END OF EARTH."
At length I perceived, in the distance, a crescent-shaped ring of silver
luster. It grew broader, expanding beneath my gaze, and appeared to
approach rapidly.
"Hold; cease your desire for onward motion," said the guide; "we
approach too rapidly. Quick, wish with all your mind that you were
motionless."
I did so, and we rested in front of a ridge of brilliant material, that
in one direction, towards the earth's outer circle, broadened until it
extended upward as far as the eye could reach in the form of a bold
precipice, and in the other towards the inner world, shelved gradually
away as an ocean beach might do.
"Tell me, what is this barrier?" I asked.
"It is the bisected edge of the earth crevice," he said. "That
overhanging upright bluff reaches towards the external surface of the
earth, the land of your former home. That shelving approach beneath is
the entrance to the 'Inner Circle,' the concavity of our world."
Again we approached the visible substance, moving gently under the will
of my guide. The shore became more distinctly outlined as we advanced,
inequalities that were before unnoticed became perceptible, and the
silver-like material resolved itself into ordinary earth. Then I
observed, upright and motionless, on the edge of the shore that reached
toward the inner shell of earth, towards that "Unknown Country" beyond,
a figure in human form.
"Is that a mortal?" I asked. "Are we nearing humanity again?"
"It is a being of mortal build, a messenger who awaits our coming, and
who is to take charge of your person and conduct you farther," he
replied. "It has been my duty to crush, to overcome by successive
lessons your obedience to your dogmatic, materialistic earth philosophy,
and bring your mind to comprehend that life on earth's surface is only a
step towards a brighter existence, which may, when selfishness is
conquered, in a time to come, be gained by mortal man, and while he is
in the flesh. The vicissitudes through which you have recently passed
should be to you an impressive lesson, but the future holds for you a
lesson far more important, the knowledge of spiritual, or mental
evolution which men may yet approach; but that I would not presume to
indicate now, even to you. Your earthly body has become a useless shell,
and when you lay it aside, as you soon can do, as I may say you are
destined to do, you will feel a relief as if an abnormal excrescence had
been removed; but you can not now comprehend such a condition. That
change will not occur until you have been further educated in the purely
occult secrets for which I have partly prepared you, and the material
part of your organism will at any time thereafter come and go at command
of your will. On that adjacent shore, the person you have observed, your
next teacher, awaits you."
"Am I to leave you?" I cried in despair, for suddenly the remembrance of
home came into my mind, and the thought, as by a flash, that this being
alone could guide me back to earth. "Recall your words, do not desert me
now after leading me beyond even alchemistic imaginings into this
subterranean existence, the result of what you call your natural, or
pure, ethereal lessons."
He shook his head.
"I beg of you, I implore of you, not to abandon me now; have you no
compassion, no feeling? You are the one tie that binds me to earth
proper, the only intelligence that I know to be related to a human in
all this great, bright blank."
Again he shook his head.
[Illustration: "SUSPENDED IN VACANCY, HE SEEMED TO FLOAT."]
"Hearken to my pleadings. Listen to my allegation. You stood on the edge
of the brook spring in Kentucky, your back to the darkness of that
gloomy cavern, and I voluntarily gave you my hand as to a guide; I
turned from the verdure of the earth, the sunshine of the past, and
accompanied you into as dismal a cavern as man ever entered. I have
since alternately rebelled at your methods, and again have trusted you
implicitly as we passed through scenes that rational imagination
scarce could conjure. I have successively lost my voice, my weight, my
breath, my heart throb, and my soul for aught I know. Now an unknown
future awaits me on the one hand, in which you say my body is to
disappear, and on the other you are standing, the only link between
earth and my self-existence, a semi-mortal it may be, to speak mildly,
for God only knows your true rank in life's scale. Be you man or not,
you brought me here, and are responsible for my future safety. I plead
and beg of you either to go on with me into the forthcoming uncertainty
'Within the Unknown Country' to which you allude, or carry me back to
upper earth."
He shook his head again, and motioned me onward, and his powerful will
overcoming my feeble resistance, impelled me towards that mysterious
shore. I floated helpless, as a fragment of camphor whirls and spins on
a surface of clear, warm water, spinning and whirling aimlessly about,
but moving onward. My feet rested on solid earth, and I awkwardly
struggled a short distance onward and upward, and then stepped upon the
slope that reached, as he had said, inward and upward towards the
unrevealed "Inner Circle." I had entered now that mysterious third
circle or sphere, and I stood on the very edge of the wonderful land I
was destined to explore, "The Unknown Country." The strange, peaceful
being whom I had observed on the shore, stepped to my side, and clasped
both my hands, and the guide of former days waved me an adieu. I sank
upon my knees and imploringly raised my arms in supplication, but the
comrade of my journey turned about, and began to retrace his course.
Suspended in vacancy, he seemed to float as a spirit would if it were
wafted diagonally into the heavens, and acquiring momentum rapidly,
became quickly a bright speck, seemingly a silver mote in the occult
earth shine of that central sphere, and soon vanished from view. In all
my past eventful history there was nothing similar to or approaching in
keenness the agony that I suffered at this moment, and I question if
shipwrecked sailor or entombed miner ever experienced the sense of utter
desolation that now possessed and overcame me. Light everywhere about
me, ever-present light, but darkness within, darkness indescribable, and
mental distress unutterable. I fell upon my face in agony, and thought
of other times, and those remembrances of my once happy upper earth life
became excruciatingly painful, for when a person is in misery, pleasant
recollections, by contrast, increase the pain. "Let my soul die now as
my body has done," I moaned; "for even mental life, all I now possess,
is a burden. The past to me is a painful, melancholy recollection; the
future is--"
I shuddered, for who could foretell my future? I glanced at the
immovable being with the sweet, mild countenance, who stood silent on
the strand beside me, and whom I shall not now attempt to describe. He
replied:
"The future is operative and speculative. It leads the contemplative to
view with reverence and admiration the glorious works of the Creator,
and inspires him with the most exalted ideas of the perfections of his
divine Creator."
Then he added:
"Have you accepted that whatever seems to be is not, and that that which
seems not to be, is? Have you learned that facts are fallacies, and
physical existence a delusion? Do you accept that material bliss is
impossible, and that while humanity is working towards the undiscovered
land, man is not, can not be satisfied?"
"Yes," I said; "I admit anything, everything. I do not know that I am
here or that you are there. I do not know that I have ever been, or that
any form of matter has ever had an existence. Perhaps material things
are not, perhaps vacuity only is tangible."
"Are you willing to relinquish your former associations, to cease to
concern yourself in the affairs of men? Do you--"
He hesitated, seemed to consider a point that I could not grasp; then,
without completing his sentence, or waiting for me to answer, added:
"Come, my friend, let us enter the expanses of the Unknown Country. You
will soon behold the original of your vision, the hope of humanity, and
will rest in the land of Etidorhpa. Come, my friend, let us hasten."
Arm in arm we passed into that domain of peace and tranquillity, and as
I stepped onward and upward perfect rest came over my troubled spirit.
All thoughts of former times vanished. The cares of life faded; misery,
distress, hatred, envy, jealousy, and unholy passions, were blotted from
existence. Excepting my love for dear ones still earth-enthralled, and
the strand of sorrow that, stretching from soul to soul, linked us
together, the past became a blank. I had reached the land of Etidorhpa--
THE END OF EARTH.
INTERLUDE.