WHO ARE THEY?
“Who are they that are compelled to recommence the same existence?”
“They who fail in the fulfilment of their mission, or in the endurance
of the trial appointed to them.”
--_Allan Kardec._
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain;
They little know the subtle ways
I keep and pass and turn again.
--_Ralph Waldo Emerson._
Personally I must confess to one small weakness. I cannot help
thinking that the souls toward whom we feel drawn in this life are the
very souls whom we knew and loved in a former life, and that the souls
who repel us here, we do not know why, are the souls that earned our
disapproval, the souls from whom we kept aloof in a former life.--_F.
Max Müller._
Months on swift wing slipped away. Cartice’s pen was busy every day,
and every day she delighted more and more in her work, because she was
saying what she wished to say, was expressing herself fearlessly and
freely. New plans of action fairly rioted in her brain. Plans! When had
they ever worked for her?
There are persons who mark out everything ahead, and Fate lets them
live their arrangements to the letter, but Cartice was not one of them.
The lamp of the spirit, which tells unutterable things, now burned in
her eyes, with an unearthly brightness, throwing its touching radiance
over all her words and deeds; but she did not understand. She alone saw
not the heavenly illumination.
But one day the imminent change was made plain to her, though how she
never told. Coming to Lilla, with whitened face, and the old-time,
all-compelling appeal in her eyes, which neither man nor woman could
see without a bursting heart, she said:
“I must soon leave you. It has been shown me and I understand.”
Under the spell of the wordless pain in the glorious eyes, her heroic
friend flung her arms about her, crying, “Cartice! Cartice! My dear
one! I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!” And together they wept tears
of such anguish as only the strong ever weep.
For a few days the heart-breaking look continued in Cartice’s eyes; but
in the silence of the night help came from the great source, and she
got up one morning with peace shining in her face.
“Often in the past,” she said to Lilla, “I have wished I could die
and be out of trouble. But now I want to live: now I know that dying
doesn’t put us out of trouble. We must grow out of it by evolving above
it, learning to master it.
“Most of my life, as I look back upon it, seems to have been mere blind
groping. Now, when I think I have learned how to live, the business of
life is done. And I have learned how to work in a way that never would
meet failure; but that, too, is done.
“And yet, in spite of the mystery and the grimness of it, something
tells me all is well; that nothing can be lost; that what I have
learned will be useful somewhere. Perhaps we are here for the purpose
of learning how to live and work. When that is accomplished, we must
go on and learn other things, and we can take no other road than the
one we have named Death, and painted black. But you and I know that it
leads into light, and, though we die, we shall continue to live, and
shall evolve, unfold and expand, even ‘it doth not yet appear what we
shall be.’
“Yet knowing this--for we have knowledge, not simply belief--there
are moments when a childish terror seizes me. But why should I fear?
Millions have traveled the same road, the timid and faint-hearted as
well as the bold and brave, and all went forth alone. We say alone,
because we see no visible companions go with them; yet we know that no
one is ever alone, either here or on that inscrutable journey, or at
its end.
“But notwithstanding all I have learned of the life to follow this, I
cannot picture it--cannot form any clear idea of it. Nor can I realize
that life as I know it now must end. I try to think of the days to come
when I shall not be here, nor be anywhere as I am now, and when the
form through which I act will have vanished utterly from the face of
the earth, but I cannot! I cannot!
“I am always I in consciousness, always existing, never dead, never
different. Is it not the mystery of mysteries?
“I try to imagine a time when I may come here to our little home and
be unseen by you, unable to lift a book, flutter a curtain or speak
one word that you can hear; but I cannot. How inconceivable it is that
in a short time I shall be in a condition so different from this that
imagination itself cannot paint it!”
Cartice awoke from sleep one day with a loud cry, a wail of terror that
went to the heart.
“What is it, dear?” asked Lilla, bending over her.
Her eyes wandered wildly around the room, and at last, reassured by a
sight of familiar objects, lost their look of affright.
“It must have been a dream,” she said, “but so very real. I was lying
under the elm tree at home, as I so often did when a child; yet I was
as I am now. Close about me came a little company of people shining
like the sun. When they were very near, I knew them to be people from
my planet--my own people, whom I remember well, and whom I saw in a
dream years ago. One, a woman, the most beautiful of all, had a face
so familiar I almost spoke her name; but I could not quite grasp it,
though she seemed very near and dear to me.
“‘Your work is done,’ she said; and there was sadness in her voice, and
pity in her eyes.
“‘Well done?’ I questioned, though with a sinking of the heart, for I
began to be afraid, I knew not why.
“‘Did you always do your best?’ she asked.
“‘No;’ I answered, conscience-smitten.
“‘Then’--
“I interrupted, for I could not bear to hear what I feared she would
say.
“‘Who art thou, who look so pitiful and seem so dear, and whom I yet
fear?’ I asked.
“‘I am thine Ideal--thine Angel of Judgment--who hath so often come to
thee and from whom thou hast almost as often turned away.’
“‘But I serve you now,’ I cried. ‘I do my best. I have learned my
lesson.’
“‘Yes, you have learned the lesson, and will do better next time,’ she
said, compassionately.
“‘Next time?’ I echoed, trembling with fear.
“‘Yes; next time, for you must come again and do it over and do it
right,’ she said, sternly.
“Then I shrieked and awoke. O Lilla, now I see, I know, I understand.
I must live my life again and live it better--must do my best all the
way through. I don’t want to--no; I don’t want to; but I must, and so
must all who fail to give their best--not as penalty, but because it is
the only way to learn, and to grow.
“We have lived always; we shall live always. This is the foundation
rock upon which we build the indestructible temple, character. Victor
Hugo spoke of life as a fairy tale a thousand times written, and said
there was not an age in which he could not find his spirit. He believed
he would exist forever, inasmuch as he felt in his soul thousands of
songs, and dramas that never had found expression: He was sure he
should come again and give them life. I, too, feel within me numberless
tales untold which must be born somewhere. A great soul, like Hugo, may
voluntarily come again and again to help others; but a recreant dreamer
like me MUST come.
“Years ago I had a dream that now I understand. It is my belief, as
you know, that every mortal has a soul-guardian--a being higher than
a spirit, a dweller in the land of souls, beyond the middle kingdom,
far away from the earth and its ties. This guardian gives us all the
experiences we have, because he sees their uses in our development. The
bitter cups we would fain have pass from us he resolutely holds to our
lips, because he knows it is good for us to drink of them. Blessings
disguised as calamities and sorrows come from his hand, and all the
fires of anguish that scorch us are fanned by his breath.
“I dreamed of this guardian angel. He was going with me through life,
or rather through a series of scenes or situations representing
different lives. I could talk to him, and hear him, but could not see
him. Of the many pictures that were shown to me I remembered only two
when morning came.
“In the one which represented a life before this I was resting on
a rude couch, outdoors, near a blazing fire, in the midst of a
nauseating swamp. It was after night, and the light from the fire
played fantastically on dank little pools, rank tufts of grass, curious
plants, watery mosses and slimy roots.
“Looking off into the swamp I saw a great mottled snake curled up in
a hollow, looking directly at me, malignity darting from his eyes. I
pointed him out to the people who were about me, and told them I would
kill him. But one and all urged me to let him alone, and predicted
serious trouble, if I disturbed him.
“I answered that it was trouble to have him there, throwing hate upon
me with his eyes, and that, at least, I would give him a hint that his
presence was not desirable. So I got up and threw a stone at him. It
struck him straight on his back, but rebounded as though it had met a
wall, without so much as bruising him, save in spirit. It enraged him
fearfully. He raised himself in the air perpendicularly till he stood
on his tail, and hatred flashed from his eyes in bright electric rays.
“He did not stop at this, but hurled invective after invective at me in
plain English, and threatened me as a snake never threatened before. He
hissed, raved, cursed and glared at me, and swore that he would take it
out of me in slices scattered along a thousand years. In short, he made
me understand clearly enough that his principal business forever after
would be to make me wretched. So direful were his threats that I lay
down on my small bed quaking with terror, fearing either to sleep or
stay awake, and ‘none had power to protect me from mine enemy.’
“To make it worse, the people about me said, ‘I told you so,’ and
sermonized on the matter. They said, ‘You can’t destroy hate with hate.
That increases it. That mottled fellow in the swamp is not the enemy
you have to dread. The cruelty you put out, when you threw a stone at
him, is your real enemy. It will come back to you through him, because
it is the law. He will trouble you far down the line. Your heart shall
bleed again and again, because of blows from hands you never injured;
but it will be but your own deed returning to you, and something of
your mottled foe shall mark you, for many and many a day.’”
(Lilla looked at the mottled eyes of her friend with a new interest,
wondering if the curious splashes of tawn had been flung there by her
ancient enemy.)
“Now I understand why I have been treated cruelly often by the very
persons I loved and believed in. Somewhere I have earned it. Somewhere
I gave it forth, and it has come back a hundredfold, for good and bad
both multiply themselves on their return trips. Even Farnsworth’s
cruelty to me, which hurt me so much, was no doubt in accord with the
law of causality I had set in motion. But he, too, shall reap as he has
sown.
“The other picture represented this life, I think. I was climbing a
hillside, accompanied by a little party of friends and attended by the
guardian of my soul, who beguiled the way by pleasant speech and cheery
good-will. At last we reached the top and found there an old-fashioned
inn, clean and comfortable, with bare white floors, big rooms, and
broad wooden sofas, that looked inviting to our tired bodies. Before
I entered, I looked to the west, and saw a scene of beauty never to
be forgotten. Sunlight, soft as moonlight, fell on fields of swaying
grain, on trees gay with blossoms and heavy with fruit at the same
time, on flowers whose perfume sweetened all the air, on birds whose
bright plumage dazzled the eye. I gazed spellbound. The very sky above
was new and strangely beautiful. Looking down, I saw what before I had
not noticed, that the hill was cut off close by my feet, and between me
and this lovely landscape yawned a bottomless ravine. Stretching forth
his hand and pointing to it, my guardian said, ‘Behold the promised
land! But you shall not enter in--not yet! No; you shall not enter in
until you come with the great seal in your hand.’ With one longing,
hungry glance at the paradise I was not yet ready to know, I turned and
went into the inn, longing for rest.
“I have almost reached the inn. I have seen the promised land but have
not yet the great seal. After a rest in the inn--who knows,--perhaps I
can bridge the ravine.”
Those last days--those precious last days, how beautiful they were!
Northern forests put on a glory of gold and red after the frost has
touched them with its destroying hand, and the winter is near. Dying
suns diffuse a strange brightness, and the spirit of man, when passing
out of sight, often radiates a heavenly splendor.
So it was that the soul of Cartice Doring never gave forth so much of
sweetness as in the last days of her stay here.
“It is much to have learned one’s lesson,” she said. “Next time I
can begin in a higher class. So you see, after all, this life wasn’t
wasted. Yes, I have learned a little, and shall not find the road so
rough next time.
“Would I could give others what I have learned.
“I smile at my early idea of happiness, though it wasn’t unique at all,
but quite common--the ideal of all the undeveloped.
“Now I know that happiness is a spiritual condition--spiritual
healthfulness--spiritual unfolding the heaven within one which comes
when self is forgotten and we see our oneness with all that is. It is
our unfolding, our growth or evolution into knowledge, truth and light.
“It comes when we learn how to love,--when we see ourselves in every
other self, and the supreme self in everybody and everything.
“What matter whether we call the great ocean in which we move and live
and have our being, God, soul, energy, force or thought, we are its
offspring or manifestation, and can never for one instant be separated
from it. We are because it is. And see how this divine principle ever
strives for our highest health and happiness. If I but cut my finger,
it miraculously heals the wound. Out of its boundless resources it
forms a new cuticle to cover the abrasion. If my spirit becomes sore
the same power brings to me from every side, the sympathy and love, the
spiritual sunshine and air which heal that too.
“The hunt for happiness is a true instinct of the soul, a prophecy of
its divine destiny. We were intended for happiness, but a happiness far
beyond our usual ideals.
“A great seer has said that ‘love is life, and love in us is the life
of God in the soul of man.’
“My soul has always been homesick for its native land and its own
people--which are but other names for love and sympathy--infinite
love, changeless sympathy. Others, too, are familiar with this kind
of hunger. All feel it and give expression to it in the chase of one
phantom after another, and to each phantom they give the name of
Happiness.
“Does it not prove that all souls are irresistibly drawn toward the
great source of love from which they sprang, but know not the way
thither? The bosom of infinite love is the happiness they long for, but
in their ignorance of their true being and destiny, they pursue every
will o’ the wisp that dances before their eyes.
“It is the soul’s quest for its home, which is not place, but state.
We need not wait for death to let us in, for it is no more beyond the
grave than here. The pure in heart have reached it.
“We can experience resurrection before death, if we will. When our
spiritual nature is awakened, and we are set free from thraldom to
material gods, we have been raised from the dead. We can take hold on
eternal life now, for it, too, is a state of the soul. It is to know
and live and be the good.
“The long, long sleep of ignorance must end. The soul shall awaken to
a knowledge of itself and be consciously one with Eternal Being from
which it was projected, and be free, full-grown and happy.
“How shall this union be brought about? By our growth, our unfolding.
We are our own redeemers. The individual is the reflection or
manifestation of God. The higher man grows intellectually and
spiritually, the more of God does he reflect. When he becomes pure
in heart, high in mind, noble and unselfish in all his instincts and
desires, he is in union with God, working His Will.
“A modern philosopher expresses it thus: ‘An individual is a subject
which unfolds itself as an object.’
“‘Man, the progressively unfolding thinker, has descended from the
eternally perfect creative Thinker.’
“‘Eternity for every man is but the unceasingly clear consciousness of
his own identity in nature with the primal Thinker, of whose thought
the whole universe is but the outer, organic form!’
“‘An individual is an indivisible, immortal, self-completing, ideal
totality.’
“Now I think I know why at any cost we should give expression to
our ideals. They are streams from the central fountain of thought.
To ignore them is to put ourselves out of harmony with the truth and
essence of the universe. To give them expression is to vibrate in
harmony with the great heart of all that is. What is a genius but one
who is in touch with the central source of truth and transmits it to
others?
“Now we begin to understand what the love of God is--a great ocean in
which we perpetually swim, the ‘infinite and eternal energy from which
all things proceed,’ an energy that science admits but cannot explain.
“It is written, ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye
free!’ We shall know! WE SHALL KNOW.
“Already you and I, Lilla, know a part of the truth. We know that
death is not the extinction of memory, conscience, love and all their
attendant emotions. These are manifestations of the soul and cannot be
destroyed. The body, a clay image projected by the soul to make itself
visible, shall pass, but ‘the soul lives on, and all space, all time,
all beatitude are its heritage and its domain.’
“The great secret of what, whence and whither shall yet be known. The
dream of man’s perfection shall come true. You and I have read a few
pages in the sealed book. For us the last enemy has been destroyed, the
dark river bridged. We know there is no separation; that the dead are
neither dead nor gone. This is the great secret of the universe.
“I think I understand what it means to see God. The more we see of Him,
or It--the great principle of intelligence and love--in the atom, the
insect, the human being or the angel, the nobler and sweeter will be
our lives. All possible forms and modes of existence are expressions
of himself. As Whitman says, ‘A mouse is miracle enough to stagger
sextillions of infidels.’
“My lifelong dream of finding my own people shall be realized.
“My people, my own people--they who aspired, struggled and
suffered--who came to their own, and whom their own so often refused
to receive. They who first announced the truth in all ages, and were
stoned and crucified. They who brought their divine gifts of poesy and
prophecy, of art and science, of light in its thousand forms and laid
them on the world’s ungrateful altar. My dear people, I see you in
the far dim aisles of the past, and I see you toiling up the shining
heights of the future, and know you for my own, my spiritual kindred,
with whom I dwelt in pleasant and also difficult places ‘huge times
ago,’ and with whom I shall yet mount and mount great steeps now unseen.
“Are not all, all our own people, each a manifestation of the great
soul or self that is imaged in all other selves? But they who know
how to love are more truly our own. They are farther on their upward
journey. ‘For as many as are led by the spirit of love, these are the
sons of God.’
“All philosophies, all religions, all literature that fail to lead us
back to love, our central source--love, the essence and substance of
life, the energy of the world, the potential, moving force of all that
is or ever shall be, are vain and foolish.
“Only to love one another. This is the whole law. This is what we are
always longing and hunting for, though we give it many names and see it
through many veils and in many shapes. But it is love, only love, the
greatest and simplest thing in the world.
“Once I read a story of an Oriental magician who performed miraculous
cures. When one whom he had healed asked his name that he might mention
it in his prayers, he answered: ‘I have many names, but they all mean
the same--Love.’
“Love is all there is. Everything else is only an appearance or
phantom. My search for my own people was but the search for love, yet
how many mirages I saw, into how many pits I stumbled before I came in
sight of its temple!
“But the love that opens the kingdom of Heaven, like the love of God,
is ‘broader than the measure of man’s mind.’ It _is_ the love of
God--for it is the love of all that is. We know not love until we see
ourselves one with the whole, without division and without difference,
until we see every man as our brother and every woman as our sister and
every child as our own, or better, as ourselves.
“Since I know that the law of sowing and reaping is inevitable in its
operation, I begin to believe I have not found love in satisfying
measure, because I have not given it out. My conception of it was the
usual narrow one, and that fills one with self and selfishness. Love
knows no self.
“Am I about to leave this world? No; because the world is part of the
great Everywhere, which is the soul’s home. Yet it is a solemn time
with me. But I shall float out on trust. I _know_ that all is well, and
never can be anything else.
“The Hereafter, so much wondered about.--What is it? Just a
continuation of being--an eternal now, an endless is, an everlasting
present moment.
“Shall our dead be as they were here, when we find them again? This is
the cry of the bereft. They forget that nothing is the same from day to
day. The child becomes a man. As a child the mother loses it whether
it live or die. Change, incessant change, is the law of external
nature. But the soul of the man is the soul of the child awakened and
enlightened. Shall it be less, when it puts off its eternal form and
becomes clothed in finer matter?
“‘Give us our dead, as they were, when they left us,’ wail the mourners
at the tomb. Does any one here go away for a year or years and come
back the same? Never.
“Is the future beyond death a mystery? Yes; but not more so than the
future here. Does any man know what the next hour will bring upon him?
Every moment ahead of us is as completely wrapped in mystery as is all
that lies on the other side of the grave. In both cases we can only do
our best, trusting in the love that created us, and that shapes our
course.
“But the loneliness of life! Who can fathom it or explain it? and what
can mitigate it? Mediocrity feels it not, for its sympathizers swarm.
But in the hearts of the highest it is densest and deepest. As the soul
grows upward, it feels itself isolated, and the isolation has in it a
poignant anguish.
“Hours come upon us, when we feel that we touch no other soul. Even
the companions we take to our hearts never enter the most solemn
recesses of our nature. There the soul sits alone--always alone. And
this invisible place, this awful solitude is the soul’s real world, its
most fateful portion of existence. Yet into this secret place, this
hidden and lonely life, we take the ideas and feelings we cherish in
relation to our fellow-beings, so that though we seem to live alone in
the depths of ourselves, yet we are never severed from our kind, never
really solitary. The oneness of humanity asserts itself and its claims
upon us, and in spite of the soul’s solitude we understand that no man
liveth to himself.
“But the ache that nothing cures is always with us. We turn to the
arms of human affection, it is there. We sit down to the feast of the
intellect; it is there, likewise. We wander in search of new scenes;
but, in the face of all that can delight the eye, it cries out from
within for the satisfaction it never finds.
“Satisfied! Satisfied! Shall the yearning soul ever be satisfied? In
the hope that it would, mankind constructed its far-off heaven, and
said to the weary and the disappointed: ‘There ye shall be satisfied.’
“But it is not true. Never, never shall we be satisfied. Though we
explore all the mysteries of all worlds and taste all the joys and
pleasures therein, we shall not be satisfied. ‘We but level that lift
to pass and continue beyond.’
“When I walk in graveyards and see the childish twaddle about ‘Rest,’
‘Heavenly Mansions,’ and ‘New Jerusalems,’ there carved upon the
stones, I am pained at the mental infancy they denote. Dying does not
mean rest, nor does it open heavenly mansions or golden cities to us.
The striving and the climbing go on and never end.
“It is the ache in the heart, the void in the soul that cries out to be
filled which lift us upward. Were we content, we should rise no higher.
Were we satisfied, we should be in a condition which would insure our
destruction. But the soul’s hunger for finer and better food is the
principle of eternal life which makes us indestructible and eternally
expansive. By means of it we grow. Thank God that neither here nor
elsewhere can we attain content!
“And as we go higher we can reveal to lower souls their sorrows, and
show them how to overcome them--how to grow. This is the greatest
service one soul can render another.
“But we must not be content with mouthing theories--we must live our
love, must give from the heart and look only to the heart, for ‘out
of the heart are the issues of life.’ ‘The sign of the mastery of the
divine life in us is the readiness to serve.’
“And we must not dream of rest. There is none anywhere, neither here
nor on all the endless road that stretches before us. Life is action,
ceaseless action.
“Nor is there any heavenly shore where we can wander free from
perplexities and obstacles. Always, always will there be something
to overcome. We are building, building, ever building, we know not
clearly what. Every unfolding of the divine life within us opens the
way to still more unfolding. The heaven, the happiness, the joy we
dream of and search for, is in the unfolding, not in any fixed state at
which we shall arrive, for we pause nowhere.
“‘This is not Death’s world: it is Life’s. Death has no empire
anywhere.’ In time to come its very signs shall pass away. There shall
be no more graves, nor marks to graves to say that the dust of any
lie there. All dust is the same and all places the same; and life
everlasting is the eternal heritage of all souls.”
A few days later Cartice said she saw the Butterfly near her, and that
she now had most beautiful wings. Others thought her mind wandered, but
Lilla understood.
Clasping the hand of her friend, she smiled and slept; but her waking
was on the other side of death, with her own people.