DAWNS
We have been given many wonderful dawns this winter, and I have used
them eagerly as a cleansing of the war-weary mind and distracted soul.
In such ethereal apparitional dawns one walks with the Eternal, and all
temporal things fade away. Those pale silver daybreaks have a rapture of
their own, they suggest a fresh creation straight from the looms of God.
When the hours of day have drawn on the flaming sunset, that exquisitely
serene emotion of virgin tranquillity will have passed away, and the
horizon will be lurid and grand beneath a grave frowning sadness
gathered from the scenes of earth they have brooded over.
Such dawns beckon imperiously to the pilgrim, to leave the shelter of
the roof-tree, and come forth to walk with the immortals whilst the
Morning Star, the light-bringer, still shines, a white gold radiance in
the heavens, and the distance is still dissolved in veils of pearl and
opal.
Such daybreaks always rouse in me the urge for wider thought, for the
broad day of the mind. Out of the limitless beyond comes the certain
knowledge of a something unimagined, lying just outside human thought. I
am sure there is so much not yet imagined, something more than mere
existence.
There is a wine of happiness in tranquil daybreak, and an aloofness from
life that urges one to seek for that which is beyond comprehension. The
draught exalts the soul, and quickens it with unquenchable fire, until
the world falls away, far from one, as day wells out of still darkness.
Only at such moments do we reach the true horizon.
Again, there is an amnesty in such dawns, a glory of release from the
house of bondage. In the great silences, life, as we know it, is remote,
and the immensity is a magic that draws the soul, fusing it in a strange
passion, so that whatever fulfillment our existence holds is summed in
that hour of solitude.
A pale wash of translucent gold is thrown across land and sea. On the
far horizon a ship is set in relief, against a core of crimson flame
which heralds the sun. A dove coos softly, and on a bare branch a thrush
thrills in waves of sound, seeking in the universal ether to reproduce
its divine instinct in other feathered hearts that are attuned to its
melody.
Such joys as these are transitory, and never wholly possessed. They pass
the enclosures of life, and bring one nearer to the beating heart of
truth. The agonizing fear of losing hold on them is, in itself, the
cause of their dispersal. It is the same at rare moments of
semi-consciousness, when one has actually laid hold of a genuine astral
experience--and knows it. Then comes the frantic endeavor to hold on--to
pin the moment fast and tight, till the whole vision is absorbed. The
soul seems to hold its breath! How often, with bitter disappointment I
have rushed reluctantly into full waking consciousness--and only half
the story told. Fragmentary though such moments are their potency is
such that they endure through time. Thank God, that whilst the wedlock
of body and soul still holds undissolved there is scope for such joys.
They are uncommunicable, and may not be shared with others at will, and
they tell the soul that she is not of creation and cannot be contained
by law. At such hours she learns the truth, that she passes for a brief
span into the limited, from out the limitless whence she came. At such
sacramental hours one can pray the prayer of Socrates, offered up by the
banks of the Illissus:
"O Beloved God of the forests and flocks and all ye Divinities of this
place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever
outward things I have may be at peace with those within. May I deem the
wise man rich, and may I have so much wealth, and so much only, as a
good man can manage to enjoy.
"Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? For myself I have prayed enough."
* * * * *
How many people now recall fragments of former lives! Ask the next man
you meet if he has any recollections of former existences, and be sure
he will not eye you askance as a fugitive from Bedlam. He may smile and
shake his head, and regret to say he isn't psychic, but he won't ask you
what on earth you mean. This is how we have progressed towards truth in
the last thirty years. The truth of reincarnation is being quietly
accepted by the West and is now openly preached from many pulpits. If
God is love, who could reconcile with any comprehensive idea of justice
and law in the world the lives and experiences of common humanity? How
reconcile the births taking place in one single day in their vast
diversity, by the hell for the criminal, born, nurtured and killed in
crime, who never had a chance, and Heaven for the happily born, who
need never have a temptation? What is the Divine Law lying behind this
seeming hideous injustice? Undoubtedly the continuous evolution of the
soul in bodies of matter. Men are looking now to the scheme of organic
evolution to provide the field for spiritual evolution. They are finding
it in the depths of their own consciousness.
I chanced upon one of those fragments of a past life, those islets in
eternity in a strange way. I was paying a visit to a stranger in
Cambridgeshire, and whilst awaiting her entry I walked round the room
looking at some lovely water-colored sketches that hung upon the walls.
When their owner entered, and after a few minutes' conversation, I said,
"How beautiful those Sicilian scenes are!"
She looked pleased and answered: "I'm so glad you recognize them. I
painted them. When were you last in Sicily?"
I had never at that time been in Sicily. I told her so, but I could not
tell a stranger that suddenly there had dawned upon me a keen
recollection of the country I had certainly been in, though not in this
life. The paintings, of course, dealt with a restricted field, but as I
looked at them one by one I saw mentally a wide landscape in which each
picture formed but a tiny spot. One I remember was a painting of a
wonderfully perfect temple, which occupied the whole space of the
picture. As I looked at it I saw wide rolling plains, and a wide expanse
of blue sea. This I later recognized in Girgenti.
A month or two afterwards my husband and I went to Sicily for the
winter, and, as I had expected, the island was perfectly familiar to me.
I knew exactly round which bend of the hill I should find a temple, but
Syracuse was really my spiritual home. It was there that I had played
out one of my many life dramas, and many incidents returned to me as I
wandered over the hills, and gathered maiden-hair ferns in the twilight
of the empty tombs.
Once I opened my eyes on Stromboli, one of the AEolian or Lipari Isles.
Instantly I felt a passion of love for it, an intuition of spiritual
delight which is utterly irreducible to terms. I have looked upon it
since, and always with an adoration impossible to paint with pen or
pencil. I have for weeks anticipated the moment when I should see it
again. It means something to me far beyond what the eye can see, the
tongue relate, and it is this something lying betwixt rhapsody and
lament which draws me by a tenuous chain of thought right back into the
womb of time, where buried memory stirs in its long sleep.
Stromboli, so the ancient poets tell us, was the home of the fiery god,
Vulcan. That explains much to me, but it unfolds a secret none may
learn.
It was in a flaming dawn that I first saw Stromboli rising from amid the
numerous isles surrounding it. From its cone shot a great plume of
smoke, like a giant ostrich feather, silver tinted. In its ethereal
loveliness it seemed to float in the void, half of earth, half of
heaven.
Neither bondage of words, nor the cold scrutiny of reason can impinge
upon a scene which draws the soul away upon a celestial pilgrimage. Free
and elate, she passes beyond the frontiers of life, and like the echoes
of the sea when a shell is held to the ear, she hears the pulse of earth
beat far away in unfathomable distance. The marvel of the uncreated
consumes her in a trance of unincarnate passion.
Those who have once adventured on such pilgrimages are never quite the
same again. They become children of "the Divine unrest." They have
experienced a moment in which earth and flesh dissolve, in which law is
not, in which creeds and covenants find no place, and the hold upon
common life with its moving mirages is blotted out. Time and space are
annulled, the aeon and the second are one. The soul unswathed, has risen
from the tomb where the life urge has laid it, and is aglow with the
transcendental fires of eternal being. In after days the soul learns to
set barriers against such visitants. One must not look upon the other
side of the moon too often, for fear one is drawn away from home and
kindred. The time is not yet, but it will surely come.
One other curious happening I must relate. Years ago, one autumn when I
was in the far north there came a magnificent visitation of falling
stars and many aerolites dropped to earth. The display was predicted,
and I was on the lookout. It came in a rain of gold and seemingly from
all points of the compass. For hours I watched a sight far more
marvelous than anything I had anticipated.
When at last I reluctantly went to bed I had a strange dream or, rather,
astral experience. I was a Hungarian gipsy, the head or queen of an
enormous clan. I heard wild Hungarian music, and saw enormous crowds of
my people gathered round me. They were very savage and picturesque, and
a ceremony was proceeding.
On the ground, and in the center of a great ring of people, stood a
large bowl filled with blood. I stood in front of it and watched the
swearing in of new adherents to my clan, by means of the "blood
covenant." The blood that filled the bowl had been drawn from the veins
of my people, and the new adherents were each required to drink from it
and swear their allegiance. Only one thing troubled me all through what
seemed a long ceremony. My feet caused me pain, and I was aware that
they were bare, as were the feet of all my people.
So vivid was the dream that I could visualize my whole life as I lived
it on the plains of Hungary, and the scenery surrounding me was lit up
by a glorious sunset. There were hundreds of horses grazing loose, as
far as the eye could reach, and flocks of enormous white geese, amid
which great storks strutted.
Suddenly I awoke with the acute pain in my feet uppermost in my mind. I
found myself clad only in my nightgown, walking bare-footed on the rough
gravel paths of the garden, whence I had watched the stellar display. I
had been walking in my sleep, and the sudden unaccustomed stony hardness
of the path under my bare feet had awakened in me the recollection of a
past life, in which I had lived, a wild nomad in southern Hungary.
This is the one and only occasion in my life in which I have known
somnambulism. Luckily my memory did not fail me on waking and, some time
after, when I was able to revisit the scenes of that long ago pilgrimage
I was quite familiar with my surroundings.
Buda Pest and the lands lying southward were then my home, a roving home
and tent life of infinite variety.
Thus the dead of vanished years are disguised in the present living.
I have no doubt that many people who have not had the interesting
experience of remembering one or more of their former incarnations have
been able through some trivial incident to recollect happenings long
vanished from their memory. Sometimes the scent of a flower, the glimpse
of a scene, a chance word or expression will vividly recall some episode
lying hidden for many years in the subconsciousness. Again it will be
pulled over the threshold from past to present, from the storehouse of
the eternal memory into the everyday working consciousness or mind.
This is not a book for scientists. I will therefore go into no elaborate
metaphysics, but will sketch as simply as I can what I mean by
subconsciousness. I use the term for the region or zone within us which
stores up the residues of past thoughts and experiences. Scientists tell
us there are three realms of mind, the super-conscious, the conscious,
the subconscious. The conscious mind is what we commonly use. It belongs
purely to the objective world, and its instruments are the five senses.
The subconscious mind is the storehouse for experiences on the human
plane of man's long past. The super-consciousness is independent of the
five senses. It is a faculty of perception closely akin to the One force
in the Universe, which is inseparably related to all created things. It
possesses the attributes of Infinity, is indestructible, immortal,
undying. We may forget a fact for many years, then suddenly we remember
it. I believe it has come back to us again across the threshold from the
subconscious region to our consciousness or mind which is open to
everyday observation.
I have become convinced, by personal experience, of the existence in us
of this region below the threshold of our ordinary conscious life. When
I was young there were many problems I wished to solve, and in this
effort human aid often failed me. My plan was to "sleep on" a problem,
ardently desiring before "dropping off" that an answer might be accorded
me. I suppose this desire was of the nature of prayer, though addressed
to no Deity. Almost invariably the solution was clear and unmistakable
to me in the morning.
I lost this great advantage at the age of twenty-one, but even now I can
sometimes "get at" a solution by leaving the question severely alone,
after turning it well over in my mind. The solution will suddenly pop
up, often weeks after I have tried to get at it, and when it comes
there, it arrives apropos of nothing, so to speak. It simply dawns in
the thick of quite other subjects, which happen at the moment to occupy
my mind.
Though I can no more demonstrate to others the existence of the
subconsciousness than I can prove the existence of the immortal soul, I
have got sufficient proof to satisfy myself, and I believe the same
knowledge is open to many of us. Within our being are sympathetic chords
that can vibrate to all the symphonies of Nature. There are visions of
beauty and depths of feeling which may be seen and felt, if heart and
mind are open to the higher influences. The finer forces of Nature, and
her immutable laws, are ready to draw nigh to us if we desire to welcome
them, and are eager to place ourselves in harmony with the Infinite
Source of being. We are in the keeping of the best and highest, and
whatever things are pure, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever
things are true and high and holy will gravitate towards us in
proportion to the degree we desire them. The mysterious gift of
existence is in itself a beckoning ideal, and a foregleam of the final
awakening that will surely be ours.
Now what does the subconsciousness contain?
Firstly, I believe it to be permeated by Deity, and the Divine
indwelling. It is the seat of Genius. I believe a genius to be one who
is capable of drawing from the contents of his subconsciousness that
which outwardly appears as a creation. It is said that genius creates
and talent copies. I believe that a man becomes great when he represents
the results of countless lives in his individuality, and each life is an
arc of the infinite life of the Universe. The man with aeons of
experience behind him is infinitely more _en rapport_ with his
subconsciousness than those younger, more immature souls who have as yet
experienced few earth lives and who constitute the bulk of humanity.
The eternal mind finds its home in the subconsciousness, by which I mean
that nothing is really forgotten by man. This lapse of memory is the
passing of the subject from the ordinary mind into the subconsciousness,
whence it may later be recovered again. The memory of all our former
incarnations I believe to lie hidden in the subconsciousness. It is from
this region or zone that one gets sudden uprushes of memory, and such
uprushes are induced by stumbling on a chance link between the two zones
of consciousness.
Some chance incident, such as the presence of my bare feet upon the
rough gravel, touches a correspondence on the other side of the
threshold, and lays bare old scenes to the observation of the ordinary
mind. It is noteworthy that the matter contained in this up-rushing is
recognized first, and the means which brought about the uprush is
recognized secondly.
I believe there is a vital communication between consciousness and
subconsciousness which could be enormously developed and utilized by
practice. The age in which we live has produced the most marvelous
triumphs of mind over matter. Access to the subconsciousness is becoming
commoner and simpler. We have broken in and harnessed material forces in
a manner undreamt of fifty years ago. Yet there is an alas! a fact which
detracts from all our legitimate pride in our achievement--the base uses
to which our triumphs have been put. The whole of our inventive power
has been turned against the life that gave it birth. The parents are
being consumed by their own offspring.... Matter evolved out of spirit
has threatened destruction to the latter.
The threshold between our ordinary consciousness and the region of
subconsciousness seems to me like a bridge which is rarely used, and
which separates the country known from the country unknown. I live in
the country known, but if I can touch a button at my end I can get a
response instantaneously transmitted from the country unknown. The
trouble is to find the button. At present I only press it at long
intervals and by the merest chance. Still it is something of an
achievement to have convinced one's self that such a region actually
does exist.
I believe this subconsciousness of ours is in direct contact with the
Great Creative Power. "It is God that worketh" in man, and its vital
communications are hidden in the infinite eternity. Says a Sufi ideal:
"To abide in God after passing away is the work of the perfect man, who
not only journeys to God--passes from plurality to unity--but in and
with God--continuing in the unitive state he returns with God (his
subconscious self) to the phenomenal world from which he sets out, and
manifests unity in plurality."
Though at present, to all outward seeming, the evolution of the beast is
consummated, there is a something that flatly contradicts this apparent
certainty. That something is man's subconsciousness, and the Divinity it
enshrouds, and which fiercely and irrevocably is set against the
bestiality into which he is plunged. War has never been so universally
hated as it now is. It is in this vital fact, which cannot be too
strongly emphasized, that our future hope lies.
I believe this vital fact to be so strong that entire regeneration is a
certainty. Where hitherto this force has lain dormant or been dispersed,
disunited and weak in spiritual utterance, it is now a collective force
concentrated in millions of lives. All over the earth it is now gathered
_en masse_, and that stupendous aggregate, vivified, sharpened, and
intensely accentuated by untold suffering will revolutionize all former
weak and fatalistic acquiescence in the inevitability of war. Millions
of men have descended into hell, they are there now, but they will arise
again from amongst the dead, and ascend one day into the Heaven of
peace, and thence they will judge the quick and the dead by a new
standard. The standard of the God within, whose voice has been heard at
last from out the din of battle. It is the same God who has said to the
East:--
"Have perseverance as one who dost forever more endure. Thy shadows
(physical bodies) live and vanish, that which is in thee shall live
forever, that which in thee knows is not of fleeting life, it is the
man that was, that is, that will be, for whom the hour shall never
strike."
To-day we all use, in some cases automatically, the powers and aptitudes
developed in us in the long and painful evolution of the physical form.
As evolution proceeds we will gain a vastly greater control over the
subconsciousness, and in aeons to come "in the flight of the alone to the
alone" union will be achieved. The two will be merged in one.
The Lord Buddha has said that to enter Nirvana is to become fully
conscious of our fundamental oneness with the universal life.
"I and my Father are one." Christ's sense of oneness with the Father was
essentially Nirvanic.
We have not yet accustomed ourselves to think of evolution in any terms
but the material, as a power inherent in matter, Darwin's physical
evolution stood for pure materialism. Bergson now carries us a step
farther. He introduces us to a spiritual principle. His creative
evolution is a spiritual activity seeking freedom of expression in
matter. Darwin's struggle for existence is by Bergson transmuted into
life, expressing itself through material forms, and life and matter are
in constant conflict. Again he points out that the spiritual principle,
life, has not "had it all its own way." It has experienced checks, but
in two modes of activity it has succeeded, in instinct and intelligence.
Thus he draws for us the grandiose upward sweep of a Divine activity.
Curbed, it is true, by the crust of matter, but finding ever higher
capacities, and higher expression towards that ultimate reality which is
creative life and to me is union with that higher self lying in the
subconsciousness of all men.