IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE?
In the last chapter Death was compared to Birth, and it was said that
probably the passage of the human soul into another world, _on the other
side of death_, exactly corresponded to Birth—to the birth of a babe
into this world. And certainly, seeing these apparent movements _into_
the visible and _away_ from it again, it is very natural to assume that
there _is_ such another and hidden world, and to speculate upon its
nature.
But it may fairly be asked, is there after all any reason for supposing
that there is a definite state of existence of any kind on that side? Is
it not quite likely that there is only vacancy and nothingness, or at
best a mere formless pulp (of ether and electrons, or whatever it may
be) out of which souls are born and into which they return again at
death? It is this question which I propose to discuss in the present
chapter.
Historically speaking, we know of course that early and primitive folk,
letting their imaginations loose, peopled that ‘other side’ and rather
promiscuously, with all sorts of fairy beings and phantom processions.
Giant grizzly bears, divine jackals, elves, dwarfs, satans, holy ghosts,
lunar pitris, flaming sun-gods, and so forth, ruled and raged behind the
curtain—in front of which the shivering mortal stood. But as time went
on, the growing exactitude of thought and science made it more and more
impossible to idly accept these imaginings; and it may be said that
about the middle of last century these cosmogonies—for the more
thoughtful among the populations of the Western world—finally perished,
and gave place for the most part to a simple negative attitude. It was
allowed that intelligences and personalities (human and animal) moved on
_this_ side of the veil, and were plainly distinguishable as operating
in the actual world; but they, it was held, were more or less isolated
and probably accidental products of a mechanical universe. That
mechanical arrangement of atoms, and so forth, which we could now
largely map out and measure, and which doubtless in the future we should
be able completely to define—that was the universe, and somehow or
other included everything. One of its properties was that it would run
down like a clock, and would eventuate in time in a cold sun and a dead
earth—and there was an end of it! Any intelligent existence behind or
on the other side of this veil of mechanism was too problematical to be
worth discussing; in all probability on that side was mere nothingness
and vacancy.
Such, very roughly stated, was the attitude of the fairly intelligent
and educated man about fifty years ago, but since that time the
outgrowths of science and human inquiry have been so astounding as to
leave that position far behind. The obvious signs of intelligence in the
minutest cells, almost invisible to the naked eye, the very mysterious
arcana of growth in such cells (partly described in a former chapter),
the myriad action of similarly intelligent microbes, the strange
psychology of plants, and the equally strange psychic sensitiveness
(apparently) of _metals_, the sudden transformations and variations both
of plants and animals, the existence of the X and N rays of light, and
of countless other vibrations of which our ordinary senses render no
account, the phenomena of radium and radiant matter, the marvels of
wireless telegraphy, the mysterious facts connected with hypnotism and
the subliminal consciousness, and the certainty now that telepathic
communication can take place between human beings thousands of miles
apart—all these things have convinced us that the subtlest forces and
energies, totally unmeasurable by our instruments, and saturated or at
least suffused with intelligence, are at work all around us. They have
convinced us that gloomy phrases about cold suns and dead earths are
mere sentiment and nonsense. Cold worlds there may certainly be, but
nothing is more certain than that worlds on worlds, and spheres on
spheres, stretch behind and beyond the actually seen—spheres so
microscopic as to totally elude us, or so vast and cosmic as to elude,
spheres of vibration which elude, spheres of other senses than ours,
spheres aerial, ethereal, magnetic, mental, subliminal. The iris-veil of
our ordinary existence may truly be rent, but the visible world, the
world we know, is no longer now a film on the surface of an empty
bubble, but a curtain concealing a vast and teeming life, reaching down
endless, in layer on layer, into the very heart of the universe. And
whereas, in the former time of which I have been speaking, we might have
agreed that life could not well continue after the death of the body,
to-day we should, as a first guess, be inclined to think that life is
_more_ full and rich on the other side of death than on this side. “I do
not doubt,” says Whitman, “that from under the feet and beside the hands
and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of,
calm and actual faces—I do not doubt interiors have their interiors,
and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another
eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice.”
We come, then, to this problem of Death and Birth in a similarly
modified spirit, and with a predisposition to believe that they do
really indicate passages from one definite world or plane or region of
existence to another. And here is the place to point out, and to guard
ourselves against, a common error in the use of the word Death. Death is
not a _state_. There may be an after-death state; but death itself is
the _passage_ into that state, or—better—the passage out of the
present state. So Birth is not a state. There may be a pre-birth state;
but birth itself is the passage into the present state. Either we pass
through death into another life and condition of being; or else we are
extinguished. In the former case there is clearly no _state_ of death;
and in the latter case there is no such state—because there is no self
to _be_ dead or to know itself dead. As Lucretius says,[49] endeavoring
to disabuse man of the fear of the grave:—
“So to be mortal fills his mind with dread,
Forgetting that in real death can be
No self, to mourn that other self as dead,
Or stand and weep at death’s indignity.”
Birth and Death, then, we may look upon as two contrary movements, to
some degree complementary and balancing each other; and it is possible
that thus, from consideration of the one, we may be able to infer things
about the other. One such thing that we may be able to infer is that
Love presides over, or is intimately associated with, both movements.
The connection of Love with Birth is of course obvious. In some profound
yet hidden way, almost throughout creation, the birth or generation of
one creature is connected with the precedent love and sex-fusion of two
others. And the connection of Love with Death, though not so prominent,
can similarly almost everywhere be traced. The whole of poetry in
literature teems with this subject; and so does the poetry of Nature! If
we are to believe the Garden of Eden story, Love and Death came into the
world together; and it certainly is curious that in the age-long
evolution of animal forms the same thing seems to have happened. The
Protozoa at first, propagating by simple division, were endued with a
kind of immortality. But then came a period when a pair found they could
enter into a joint life of renewed fecundity by fusing with each other.
They literally died in each other, and rose again in a numerous progeny;
so that love and death were simultaneous and synonymous. Sometimes
parturition and death were simultaneous. The mother-cell perished in the
very act of giving birth to her brood. Then again came the aggregation
of cells into living groups—the formation of ‘colonial’ organisms; and
it was then that distinctive sex-differentiation and sex-organs
appeared, and with the capacity of sex also the capacity of death
through the disruption of the colony. Everywhere love is associated with
death. The expenditure of seed in the male animal is an incipient death;
the formation of the seed vessel, and the glory and color of the
flowering plant, are already the signs of its decay. “Both Weismann and
Goette,” say Geddes and Thomson,[50] “note how many insects (locusts,
butterflies, ephemerids, and so forth) die a few hours after the
production of ova. The exhaustion is fatal, and the males are also
involved. In fact, as we should expect from the katabolic temperament,
it is the males which are especially liable to exhaustion.... Every one
is familiar with the close association of love and death in the common
May-flies. Emergence into winged liberty, the love-dance, and the
process of fertilization, the deposition of eggs, and the death of both
parents, are often the crowded events of a few hours. In higher animals,
the fatality of the reproductive sacrifice has been greatly lessened,
yet death may tragically persist, even in human life, as the direct
Nemesis of love.”
George Macdonald, in one of his books (_Phantastes_, vol. i. p. 191),
feigns a race of beings, for whom death is not so much the ‘nemesis’ of
love, as its natural and inevitable outcome. Seized by a great love, too
great for mortal expression, “looking _too_ deep into each other’s
eyes,” they (with great presence of mind, it must be said!) breathe
their souls out in death, and so take their departure to another world.
Heine touches the same note in his poem, the “Asra”:—
“Ich bin aus Jemen,
Und mein stamm sind jene Asra,
Welche sterben wenn sie lieben.”
And scores of scarcely noticed paragraphs in our daily papers, brief
tales of single or double suicide, present us with a dim outline of
how—even in the mean conditions and surroundings of our modern
days—every now and then there comes to one or other a longing, a
passion, and a revelation of a desire so intense, that, breaking the
bounds of a useless life, it demands swift utterance in death.
Some deep and profound suggestion there is in all this—some hint of a
life whose very form and nature is love, and which finds its deliverance
and nativity only through the abandonment of the body—even as our
ordinary life, conceived in love, finds its delivery into this world
through what we call birth. At the very least it suggests that Death may
have a great deal more to do with Love, and may be more deeply allied to
it than is generally supposed. And it may suggest that the two things,
being in some sense the most important occupations of the human race,
should be frankly recognized as such, and should both be accordingly
prepared for.
Another thing, about which we may be able to infer something from the
analogy between Birth and Death, is the fate of the soul at death. If we
can trace in any way the relation of the soul to the body at the time of
the first appearance of the latter, that may shed light on the relation
which will hold at its disappearance. We cannot certainly define very
strictly what we mean by the word ‘soul’; but we are all very well aware
that associated with our bodies, and in some sense pervading them with
its intelligence, is a conscious (as well as subconscious) being which
we call the self or soul; and we are all puzzled at times to understand
what is the relation between this and the body. Now we have seen (ch.
ii.) the genesis of the body from a single fertilized cell or germ
almost microscopic in size, and its growth by continual and myriadfold
division into, say, a human form; and we have seen that every cell in
the perfect and final form—every cell, of eye, or liver, or of any part
or organ—is there by linear descent or division from that first cell,
though variously adapted and differentiated during the process. We are
therefore almost compelled to conclude that that intelligent self
(conscious or subconscious) which we are so distinctly aware of as
associated with our mature bodies was there also, associated with the
first germ.[51] It may not truly have been outwardly manifest or
unfolded into evidence at that primitive stage. It could not well be.
But it was there, even in its totality, and unless it had been there, we
could not now be what we are. The conscious and subconscious self has
been within us all along, unfolding and manifesting itself with the
unfoldment and development of the body; and indeed to all appearances
guiding that development. And more, we may fairly say—having regard to
the mode of development of the tissue—that it dwells even in its
entirety within every normal and healthy cell of our present bodies, and
is the formative essence thereof.
Let me give an illustration. Sometimes in the morning you may see a bush
glittering all over with dewdrops; every leaf has such a tiny jewel
hanging from it. If now you look you will see in each dewdrop a
miniature picture of the far landscape. Or, to take a closer
illustration, some shrubs have, embedded in the very tissue of their
leaves, tiny transparent and lens-like glands which yield to close
scrutiny similar miniatures of the world beyond. Exactly, then, like
these plants, we may think of the whole human body as trembling in
light—each cell containing (if we could but see it!) a luminous image
of the presiding genius or self of the body.
The question is often asked: _Where_ is the self? does it reside in the
head, or in the heart, or perhaps in the liver? is it an aural halo
pervading and surrounding the body, or is it a single microscopic cell
far hidden in the interior, or is it an invisible atom? Here apparently
is the answer. It animates _every_ cell. It pervades the whole body, and
seeks expression in every part of it. Some cells, as we have said
before, are differentiated so as to express especially _this_ faculty,
others to express especially _that_; but the human soul or self stands
behind them all. Look at a baby’s face, and its growing sparkling
expression—an individual being coming newly into the world, obviously
seeking, feeling, tentatively finding its way forward—every morning a
thinnest veil falling from its features! Playing through the whole body,
is an intelligence, seeking expression. Helen Keller, the girl both deaf
and blind, describes most graphically her agonizing experiences at the
age of six or seven, when her growing powers of body and mind demanded
the expression which her physical disabilities so cruelly denied. “The
desire to express myself grew,”[52] she says; “the few signs I used
became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood
were invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible
hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself.” And
then most touching, the description of her relief, “the thrill of
surprise, the joy of discovery,” when she at last, about the age of ten,
was able to utter her first intelligible words. In some degree like
Helen Keller’s is perhaps the experience of every babe that is born into
the world.
It seems to me, therefore, that each person is practically compelled to
think of his ‘self’ as moving behind or as associated with or animating
every cell in the healthy body; and as having been so associated with
the first germ of the same, even though that was a thing well-nigh
invisible to the naked eye. You were there, you are there now, at the
root of your bodily life. You may not, certainly, except at moments, be
distinctly conscious of this your complete relation to the body; but, as
we have already said, the term self must be held to include the large
subconscious tracts which occasionally flash up into consciousness, and
which, when they do so flash, almost always confirm this relation; nor
must we lose from sight the still more deeply buried physiological or
animal soul, whose operations we seem to be able to trace from earliest
days, guiding all the complex of organic growth and development, and
apparently conscious in its own way with a very wonderful sort of
intelligence.[53]
All this compels us, I think, not only to picture to ourselves the
mental self or soul as associated with the body, and taking part in its
development from the first inception of the latter; but also to picture
that self as in its entirety considerably _greater_ and more extensive
than the ordinary conscious self, and even as greater than any bodily
expression or manifestation which it succeeds in gaining. We are
compelled, I think, to regard the real self as at all times only
_partially_ manifested.
I think this latter point is obvious; for when, and at what period in
life, is manifestation complete? Certainly not in babyhood, when the
faculties are only unfolding; certainly not in old age, when they are
decaying and falling away. Is it, then, in maturity and middle life? But
during all that period the output of expression and character in a man
is constantly changing; and which of all these changes of raiment is
completely representative? Do we not rather feel that to express our
real selves _every_ phase from childhood through maturity even into
extreme old age ought to be taken into account? Nay, more than that; for
have we not—perhaps most of us—a profound feeling and conviction that
there are elements deep down in our natures, which never have been
expressed, and never can or will be expressed in our present and actual
lives? Do we not all feel that our best is only a fraction of what we
want to say? And what must we think of the strange facts of multiple
personality? Do they not suggest that our real self has facets so
opposite, so divergent, that for a long time they may appear quite
disconnected with each other; until ultimately (as has happened in
actual cases) they have been visibly reconciled and harmonized in a new
and more perfect character?
With regard to this view that the real person is so much greater than
his visible manifestation, Frederick Myers and Oliver Lodge have used
the simile of a ship. And it is a fine one. A ship gliding through the
sea has a manifestation of its own, a very partial one, in the
waterworld below—a ponderous hull moving in the upper layers of that
world—a form encrusted with barnacles and sea-weed. But what denizen of
the deep could have any inkling or idea of the real life of that ship in
the aerial plane—the glory of sails and spars trimmed to the breeze and
glancing in the sun, the blue arch of heaven flecked with clouds, the
leaping waves and the boundless horizon around the ship as she speeds
onward, the ingenious provision for her voyage, the compass, the
helmsman and the captain directing her course? Surely (except in moments
of divination and inspiration) we have little idea of what we really
are! But there _are_ such moments—moments of profound grief, of
passionate love, of great and splendid angers and enthusiasms which dart
light back into the farthest recesses of our natures and astonish us
with the vision they disclose. And (perhaps more often) there are
moments which disclose the wonder-self in others. If we do not recognize
(which is naturally not easy!) our own divinity, it is certain that we
cannot really _love_ without discovering a divine being in the loved
one—a being remote, resplendent, inaccessible, who calls for and indeed
demands our devotion, but of whom the mortal form is most obviously a
mere symbol and disguise. There are times when this strange illumination
falls on people at large, and we see them as gods walking: when we look
even on the tired overworked mother in the slum, and her face is shining
like heaven; or on the ploughboy in the field with his team, and see the
mould and the material of ancient heroes. Yet of what is really nearest
to them all the time these folk say nothing, and we are astonished to
find them haggling over halfpence or seriously troubled about
wire-worms. It is as if a play, or some kind of deliberate
mystification, were being carried on—with disguises a little too thin.
We see, as plain as day—and nothing can contravene our conclusion—that
it is only a fraction of the real person that is concerned.
Your self, then, I say—covering by that word not only all that you and
your friends usually include in it, but probably a good deal
more—existed, with all its potentialities and capacities even in
association with the first primitive germ of your present body.[54] That
germ was microscopic in size, and its inner workings and transformations
were ultra-microscopic in character. We do not know whence they
originated; and whether we think of the soul which was associated with
them as ultra-microscopic in _its_ nature or as fourth-dimensional does
not much matter. We only perceive that it, the soul, must have been
there, in an unseen world of some kind, pushing forward toward its
manifestation in the visible.[55] I do not think we can well escape this
conclusion.
But if we conclude that the soul existed before Birth, or, more
properly, at or before conception, in some such invisible world, then
that it should so exist after Death is equally possible, nay, probable.
For after conception, by continual multiplication and differentiation of
cells, the soul framed for itself organs of expression and
manifestation, and thus gradually came into our world of sight and sense
and ordinary intelligence; and so, by some reverse process, we may
suppose that in decay and death the soul gradually loses these organs
and their coördination, and retires into the invisible. Whatever the
nature of this invisible may be—whether, as I say, a world of things
too minute for human perception, or too vast for the same, or whether a
world which eludes us by the simple artifice of everywhere and in
everything running parallel to the things of the world—only in another
dimension imperceptible to us—in any case it seems reasonable to
suppose that the soul is still _there_, fulfilling its nature and its
destiny, of which its earth-life has only been one episode.[56]
And if the apparent loss of consciousness (the loss of the ordinary
consciousness at any rate) which often takes place during the
death-change, seems to point to extinction and not to continuance, I
think that that need not disturb us. For in sleep, in our nightly sleep,
the same suspension of the ordinary consciousness takes place, as we
very well know; yet all the time the subconsciousness is functioning
away—sorting out sounds, bidding us wake for some, allowing us to sleep
through others, discriminating disturbances, carrying on the
physiologies of the body, posting sentinels in the reflexes—and
guarding us from harm—till untired in the morning it knits together
again the ravelled thread of the ordinary consciousness and renews our
waking activities. And if this happens in our ordinary and nightly
sleep, it seems at any rate possible that something similar may happen
in death. Indeed there is much evidence to show that while at the hour
of death the supraliminal consciousness often passes into a state of
quiescence or abeyance, the subliminal, or at any rate some portion of
the subliminal, becomes unusually active. Audition grows strangely
keen—so much so that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the
things heard have been apprehended by extension of the ordinary faculty
or whether by a species of clairaudience. Vision similarly passes into
clairvoyance, the patient becomes extraordinarily sensitive to
telepathic influences, and knows what is going on at a distance;[57] and
not only so, but he radiates influences _to_ a distance. All the
phenomena of wraiths and dying messages, now so well substantiated—of
apparitions and impressions projected with force at the moment of death
into the minds of distant friends—prove clearly the increased activity
and vitality (one may say) of the subliminal self at that time; and this
points, as I say, not to extinction and disorganization, but perhaps to
the transfer of consciousness more decisively into hidden regions of our
being. One hears sometimes of a dying person who, prevented from
departure by the tears and entreaties of surrounding friends, cries out
“Oh! _let_ me die!” and one remembers the case, above mentioned, of the
apparently dead mother who, so to speak, called herself back to life by
the thought of her orphaned children. Such cases as these do not look
like loss of continuity; rather they look as if a keen intelligence were
still there, well aware of its earth-life, but drawn onward by an
inevitable force, and passing into a new phase, of swifter subtler
activity in perhaps a more ethereal body.
That the human soul does pass through great transformations—moultings
and sloughings and metamorphoses—and so forward from one stage to
another, we know from the facts of life. Physiologically the body takes
on a new phase at birth, and another at weaning and teething, and
another at puberty, and another in age at the ‘change of life,’ and so
on; and transformations of the soul or inner life (some of them very
remarkable) are associated with these outer phases. The last great
bodily change is obviously accompanied—as we have just indicated—by
the development or extension of hidden psychic powers. What exactly that
final transformation may be, we can only at present speculate; but we
can see that, like the others, when it arrives it has already become
very necessary and inevitable. At every such former stage—whether it be
birth, or teething, or puberty, or what not—there has been constriction
or strangulation. The growing inner life has found its conditions too
limited for it, and has burst forth into new form and utterance. In this
final change the bodily conditions altogether seem to have grown too
limited. With an irresistible impulse and an agonizing joy of liberation
the soul sweeps out, or is fearfully swept, into its new sphere.
Sometimes doubtless the passage is one of pain and terror; far more
often, and in the great majority of cases, it is peaceful and calm, with
a deep sense of relief; occasionally it is radiant with ecstasy, as if
the new life already cast its splendor in advance.[58]
Yes, we cannot withhold the belief that there is an after-death state—a
state which in a sense is present with us, and has been present, all our
lives; but which—for reasons that at present we can only vaguely
apprehend—has been folded from our consciousness.