But O'Malley did not immediately return to his own cabin; he yielded to
Dr. Stahl's persuasion and dropped into the armchair he had already
occupied more than once, watching his companion's preparations with the
lamp and coffeepot.
With his eyes, that is, he watched, staring, as men say, absent-mindedly;
for the fact was, only a little bit of him hovered there about his
weary physical frame. The rest of him was off somewhere else across the
threshold--subliminal: below, with the Russian, beyond with the
traveling spirit of the boy; but the major portion, out deep in space,
reclaimed by the Earth.
So, at least, it felt; for the circulation of blood in his brain ran low
and physical sensation there was almost none. The driving impulse upon
the outlying tracts of consciousness usually submerged had been
tremendous.
"That time," he heard Stahl saying in an oddly distant voice from
across the cabin, "you were nearly--out--"
"You heard? You saw it all?" he murmured as in half-sleep. For it was
an effort to focus his mind even upon simple words.
The reply he hardly caught, though he felt the significant stare of the
man's eye upon him and divined the shaking of his head. His life still
pulsed and throbbed far away outside his normal self. Complete return
was difficult. He felt all over: with the wind and hills and sea, all his
little personal sensations tucked away and absorbed into Nature. In the
Earth he lay, pervading her whole surface, still sharing her vaster life.
With her he moved, as with a greater, higher, and more harmonious
creation than himself. In large measure the cosmic instincts still swept
these quickened fringes of his deep subconscious personality.
"You know them now for what they are," he heard the doctor saying at the
end of much else he had entirely missed. "The father will be the next to
go, and then--yourself. I warn you before it is too late. Beware!
And--resist!"
His thoughts, and with them those subtle energies of the soul that are
the vehicles of thought, followed where the boy had gone. Deep streams of
longing swept him. The journey of that spirit, so singularly released,
drew half his forces after it. Thither the bereaved parent and himself
were also bound; and the lonely incompleteness of his life lay wholly now
explained. That cry within the dawn, though actually it had been calling
always, had at last reached him; hitherto he had caught only
misinterpreted echoes of it. From the narrow body it had called him
forth. Another moment and he would have known complete emancipation; and
never could he forget that glorious sensation as the vital essence tasted
half release. Next time the process should complete itself, and he
would--go!
"Drink this," he heard abruptly in Stahl's grating voice, and saw him
cross the cabin with a cup of steaming coffee. "Concentrate your mind
now upon the things about you here. Return to the present. And tell me,
too, if you can bring yourself to do so," he added, stooping over
him with the cup, "a little of what you experienced. The return, I know,
is pain. But try--try--"
"Like a little bit of death, yes," murmured the Irishman. "I feel caught
again and caged--small." He could have wept. This ugly little life!
"Because you've tasted a moment of genuine cosmic consciousness and now
you feel the limitations of normal personality," Stahl added, more
soothingly. He sat down beside him and sipped his own coffee.
"Dispersed about the whole earth I felt, deliciously extended and
alive," O'Malley whispered with a faint shiver as he glanced about the
little cabin, noticing the small windows and shut door. "Upholstery"
oppressed him. "Now I'm back in prison again."
There was silence for a moment. Then presently the doctor spoke, as
though he thought aloud, expecting no reply.
"All great emotions," he said in lowered tones, "tap the extensions of
the personality we now call subconscious, and a man in anger, in love, in
ecstasy of any kind is greater than he knows. But to you has come,
perhaps, the greatest form of all--a definite and instant merging with
the being of the Earth herself. You reached the point where you _felt_
the spirit of the planet's life. You almost crossed the threshold--your
extension edged into her own. She bruised you, and you knew--"
"'Bruised'?" he asked, startled at the singular expression into closer
hearing.
"We are not 'aware' of our interior," he answered, smiling a little,
"until something goes wrong and the attention is focused. A keen
sensation--pain--and you become aware. Subconscious processes then
become consciously recognized. I bruise your lung for instance; you
become conscious of that lung for the first time, and feel it. You gather
it up from the general subconscious background into acute personal
consciousness. Similarly, a word or mood may sting and stimulate some
phase of your consciousness usually too remote to be recognized. Last
night--regions of your extended Self, too distant for most men to realize
their existence at all, contacted the consciousness of the Earth herself.
She bruised you, and _via_ that bruise caught you up into her greater
Self. You experienced a genuine cosmic reaction."
O'Malley listened, though hardly to the actual words. Behind the
speech, which was in difficult German for one thing, his mind heard
the rushing past of this man's ideas. They moved together along the
same stream of thought, and the Irishman knew that what he thus heard
was true, at any rate, for himself. And at the same time he recognized
with admiration the skill with which this scientific mystic of a
_Schiffsarzt_ sought to lead him back into the safer regions of his
normal state. Stahl did not now oppose or deny. Catching the wave of the
Celt's experience, he let his thought run sympathetically with it,
alongside, as it were, guiding gently and insinuatingly down to earth
again.
And the result justified this cunning wisdom; O'Malley returned to
the common world by degrees. For it was enchanting to find his amazing
adventure explained even in this partial, speculative way. Who else
among his acquaintances would have listened at all, much less admitted
its possibility?
"But, why in particular _me_?" he asked. "Can't everybody know these
cosmic reactions you speak of?" It was his intellect that asked the
foolish question. His whole Self knew the answer beforehand.
"Because," replied the doctor, tapping his saucer to emphasize each
word, "in some way you have retained an almost unbelievable simplicity
of heart--an innocence singularly undefiled--a sort of primal,
spontaneous innocence that has kept you clean and open. I venture even to
suggest that shame, as most men know it, has never come to you at all."
The words sank down into him. Passing the intellect that would have
criticized, they nested deep within where the intuition knew them true.
Behind the clumsy language that is, he caught the thought.
"As if I were a saint!" he laughed faintly.
Stahl shook his head. "Rather, because you live detached," he replied,
"and have never identified your Self with the rubbish of life. The
channels in you are still open to these tides of larger existence. I wish
I had your courage."
"While others--?"
The German hesitated a moment. "Most men," he said, choosing his words
with evident care, "are too grossly organized to be aware that these
reactions of a wider consciousness can be possible at all. Their minute
normal Self they mistake for the whole, hence denying even the
experiences of others. 'Our actual personality may be something
considerably unlike that conception of it which is based on our present
terrestrial consciousness--a form of consciousness suited to, and
developed by, our temporary existence here, _but not necessarily more
than a fraction of our total self_. It is quite credible that our entire
personality is never terrestrially manifest.'" Obviously he quoted. The
Irishman had read the words somewhere. He came back more and more into
the world--correlated, that is, the subconscious with the conscious.
"Yet consciousness apart from the brain is inconceivable," he interposed,
more to hear the reply than to express a conviction.
Whether Stahl divined his intention or not, he gave no sign.
"'We cannot say with any security that the stuff called brain is the
only conceivable machinery which mind and consciousness are able to
utilize: though it is true that we know no other.'" The last phrase he
repeated: "'though it is true that we know no other.'"
O'Malley sank deeper into his chair, making no reply. His mind clutched
at the words "too grossly organized," and his thoughts ran back for a
moment to his daily life in London. He pictured his friends and
acquaintances there; the men at his club, at dinner parties, in the
parks, at theatres; he heard their talk--shooting--destruction of
exquisite life; horses, politics, women, and the rest; yet good, honest,
lovable fellows all. But how did they breathe in so small a world at all?
Practical-minded specimens of the greatest civilization ever known! He
recalled the heavy, dazed expression on the faces of one or two to whom
he had sometimes dared to speak of those wider realms that were so
familiar to himself....
"'Though it is true that we know no other,'" he heard Stahl repeating
slowly as he looked down into his cup and stirred the dregs.
Then, suddenly, the doctor rose and came over to his side. His eyes
twinkled, and he rubbed his hands vigorously together as he spoke. He
laughed.
"For instance, I have no longer now the consciousness of that coffee
I have just swallowed," he exclaimed, "yet, if it disagreed with me, my
consciousness of it would return."
"The abnormal states you mean are a symptom of disorder then?" the
Irishman asked, following the analogy.
"At present, yes," was the reply, "and will remain so until their
correlation with the smaller conscious Self is better understood. These
belligerent Powers of the larger Consciousness are apt to overwhelm as
yet. That time, perhaps, is coming. Already a few here and there have
guessed that the states we call hysteria and insanity, conditions of
trance, hypnotism, and the like, are not too satisfactorily explained."
He peered down at his companion. "If I could study your Self at close
quarters for a few years," he added significantly, "and under various
conditions, I might teach the world!"
"Thank you!" cried the Irishman, now wholly returned into his ordinary
self. He could think of nothing else to say, yet he meant the words and
gave them vital meaning. He moved across to another chair. Lighting a
cigarette, he puffed out clouds of smoke. He did not desire to be caught
again beneath this man's microscope. And in his mind he had a sudden
picture of the speculative and experimenting doctor being "requested to
sever his connection" with the great Hospital for the sake of the
latter's reputation. But Stahl, in no way offended, was following his own
thoughts aloud, half speaking to himself.
"... For a being organized as you are, more active in the outlying
tracts of consciousness than in the centers lying nearer home,--a being
like yourself, I say, might become aware of Other Life and other
personalities even more advanced and highly organized than that of the
Earth."
A strange excitement came upon him, making his eyes shine. He walked to
and fro, O'Malley watching him, a touch of alarm mingled with his
interest.
"And to think of the great majority that denies because they are--dead!"
he cried. "Smothered! Undivining! Living in that uninspired fragment
which they deem the whole! Ah, my friend,"--and he came abruptly
nearer--"the pathos, the comedy, the pert self-sufficiency of their dull
pride, the crass stupidity and littleness of their denials, in the eyes
of those like ourselves who have actually known the passion of the larger
experience--! For all this modern talk about a Subliminal Self is woven
round a profoundly significant truth, a truth newly discovered and only
just beginning to be understood. We are much greater than we know, and
there is a vast subconscious part of us. But, what is more important
still, there is a super-consciousness as well. The former represents
what the race has discarded; it is past; but the latter stands for what
it reaches out to in the future. The perfect man you dream of perhaps is
he who shall eventually combine the two, for there is, I think, a vast
amount the race has discarded unwisely and prematurely. It is of value
and will have to be recovered. In the subconsciousness it lies secure and
waiting. But it is the super-consciousness that you should aim for, not
the other, for there lie those greater powers which so mysteriously wait
upon the call of genius, inspiration, hypnotism, and the rest."
"One leads, though, to the other," interrupted O'Malley quickly. "It
is merely a question of the swing of the pendulum?"
"Possibly," was the laconic reply.
"They join hands, I mean, behind my back, as it were."
"Possibly."
"This stranger, then, may really lead me forward and not back?"
"Possibly," again was all the answer that he got.
For Stahl had stopped short, as though suddenly aware that he had
said too much, betraying himself in the sudden rush of interest and
excitement. The face for a moment had seemed quite young, but now
the flush faded, and the light died out from his eyes. O'Malley never
understood how the change came about so quickly, for in a moment,
it seemed, the doctor was calm again, quietly lighting one of his black
cigars over by the desk, peering at him half quizzingly, half mockingly
through the smoke.
"So I urge you again," he was saying, as though the rest had been some
interlude that the Irishman had half imagined, "to proceed with the
caution of this sane majority, the caution that makes for safety. Your
friend, as I have already suggested to you, is a direct expression of the
cosmic life of the earth. Perhaps, you have guessed by now, the
particular type and form. Do not submit your inner life too completely to
his guidance. Contain your Self--and resist--while it is yet possible."
And while he sat on there, sipping hot coffee, half listening to the
words that warned of danger while at the same time they cunningly
urged him forwards, it seemed that the dreams of childhood revived in
him with a power that obliterated this present day--the childhood,
however, not of his mere body, but of his spirit, when the world herself
was young.... He, too, had dwelt in Arcady, known the free life of
splendor and simplicity in some Saturnian Reign; for now this dream,
but half remembered, half believed, though eternally yearned for--dream
of a Golden Age untouched by Time, still there, still accessible,
still inhabited, was actually coming true.
It surely was that old Garden of innocence and joy where the soul,
while all unvexed by a sham and superficial civilization of the mind,
might yet know growth--a realm half divined by saints and poets, but
to the gross majority forgotten or denied.
The Simple Life! This new interpretation of it at first overwhelmed.
The eyes of his soul turned wild with glory; the passion that o'er-runs
the world in desolate places was his; his, too, the strength of rushing
rivers that coursed their parent's being. He shared the terror of the
mountains and the singing of the sweet Spring rains. The spread wonder
of the woods of the world lay imprisoned and explained in the daily
hurry of his very blood. He understood, because he felt, the power of
the ocean tides; and, flitting to and fro through the tenderer regions of
his extended Self, danced the fragrance of all the wild flowers that ever
blew. That strange allegory of man, the microcosm, and earth, the
macrocosm, became a sudden blazing reality. The feverish distress,
unrest, and vanity of modern life was due to the distance men had
traveled from the soul of the world, away from large simplicity into the
pettier state they deemed so proudly progress.
Out of the transliminal depths of this newly awakened Consciousness
rose the pelt and thunder of these magical and enormous cosmic
sensations--the pulse and throb of the planetary life where his little
Self had fringed her own. Those untamed profundities in himself that
walked alone, companionless among modern men, suffering an eternal
nostalgia, at last knew the approach to satisfaction. For when the "inner
catastrophe" completed itself and escape should come--that transfer
of the conscious center across the threshold into this vaster region
stimulated by the Earth--all his longings would be housed at last like
homing birds, nested in the gentle places his yearnings all these years
had lovingly built for them--in a living Nature! The fever of modern
life, the torture and unrest of a false, external civilization that
trained the brain while it still left wars and baseness in the heart,
would drop from him like the symptoms of some fierce disease. The god of
speed and mechanism that ruled the world today, urging men at ninety
miles an hour to enter a Heaven where material gain was only a little
sublimated and not utterly denied, would pass for the nightmare that it
really was. In its place the cosmic life of undifferentiated simplicity,
clean and sweet and big, would hold his soul in the truly everlasting
arms.
And that little German doctor, sitting yonder, enlightened yet afraid,
seeking an impossible compromise--Stahl could no more stop his going
than a fly could stop the rising of the Atlantic tides.
Out of all this tumult of confused thought and feeling there rose then
the silver face of some forgotten and passionate loveliness. Apparently
it reached his lips, for he heard his own voice murmuring outside him
somewhere across the cabin:--
"The gods of Greece--and of the world--"
Yet the instant words clothed it, the flashing glory went. The idea
plunged back out of sight--untranslatable in language. Thrilled and
sad, he lay back in his chair, watching the doctor and trying to focus
his mind upon what he was saying. But the lost idea still dived and
reared within him like a shining form, yet never showing more than
this radiant point above the surface. The passion and beauty of it...!
He tried no more to tie a label of modern words about its neck. He let
it swim and dive and leap within him uncaught. Only he understood
better why, close to Greece, his friends had betrayed their inner selves,
and why for the lesser of the two, whose bodily cage was not yet fully
clamped and barred by physical maturity, escape, or return rather, had
been possible, nay, had been inevitable.