these letters and lay their principles to heart, and who shall will to
remember them after passing out, need not fear anything.
We all fail in much that we undertake, but I hope I shall not fail
in this. Do not you fail on your side. I could not do this work
without you, nor could you do it without me. That is in answer to the
supposition that I am your subconscious mind.
I have been in Constantinople and have stood in the very room where I
once had a remarkable experience, hundreds of years ago. I have seen
the walls, I have touched them, I have read the etheric records of
their history, and my own history in connection therewith.
I have walked the rose-gardens of Persia and have smelled the
flowers--the grandchildren, hundreds of times removed, of those roses
whose fragrance was an ecstasy to me when, watching with the bulbul, I
paced there in another form and with intentions different to mine now.
It was the perfume of the roses which made me remember.
In Greece also I have lived over the old days. Before their
degeneration began, what a race they were! I think that concentration
was the secret of their power. The ether around that peninsula is
written over with their exploits, in daring thought as well as daring
action. The old etheric records are so vivid that they shine through
the later writings; for you must know that what are called astral
records lie layer against layer everywhere. We read one layer instead
of another, either by affinity or by will. It is no more strange than
that a man may go among the millions of volumes in the British Museum
and select the one he wants. The most marvellous things are always
simple of explanation if one has the key to unlock their secret.
There has been much nonsense written about vibration, but nevertheless
truth lies thereabouts. Where there is so much smoke there must be fire.
In India I have met with yogis in meditation. Do you know why their
peculiar way of breathing produces psychic results? No, you do not.
Now let me tell you: By holding the breath long a certain--shall I say
poison?--is produced in the body, which poison, acting on the psychic
nature, changes the vibration. That is all. Volumes have been written
about yoga, but have any of them said that? The untrained healthy
lungs, in the ordinary operation, get rid of this poison by processes
well known to physiologists,--that is, in the natural man, adjusted to
and working contentedly on the material plane. But in order for a man
still living on the material plane to become adjusted to the psychic
world, a change of vibration is necessary. This change of vibration may
be produced by a slight overdose of the above-mentioned poison. Is it
dangerous? Yes, to the ignorant. To those who are learned in its use it
is no more dangerous than most of the drugs in the pharmacopœia.
Another time I will tell you about other secrets which I have
discovered going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it.
LETTER XXXIII
FIVE RESOLUTIONS
I HAVE stood at night on the roof of an Oriental palace and watched the
stars. You who can see into the invisible world by changing your focus,
can easily understand how I, by a reverse process, can see into the
world of dense matter. Yes, it is the same thing, only turned the other
way.
I stood on the roof of an Oriental palace and watched the stars. No
mortal was near me. Looking down upon the sleeping city, I have seen
the cloud of souls which kept watch above it, have seen the messengers
coming and going. Once or twice a wan, half-frightened face appeared
among the cloud of spirits, and I knew that down below in the city
someone had died.
But I had seen so many spirits since coming out here that I was more
interested in watching the stars. I used to love them, and I love
them still. Some day, if it is permitted, I hope to know more about
them. But I shall not leave the neighbourhood of the earth until these
letters are finished. From the distance of the planet Jupiter I might
not be able to write at all. It is true that one can come and go,
almost with the quickness of thought; but something tells me that it
is better to postpone for a time my more extensive travelling. Perhaps
when I get out there I shall not want to come back for a long time.
It means much to me this correspondence with earth. During my illness
I used to wonder if I could come back sometimes, but I never imagined
anything like this. I would not have supposed it possible to find any
well-balanced and responsible person with daring enough to join me in
the experiment.
I could not have written through the hand of a person of untrained mind
unless he or she had been fully hypnotised. I could not have written
through the hand of the average intellectual person, because such
persons cannot make themselves sufficiently passive.
Be at peace. You are not a spirit medium, using the word as it is
commonly used, signifying a passive instrument, an æolian harp, set in
an aperture between the two worlds and played upon by any wind that
blows.
Except as illustrating the fact that it can be done, there is no great
object in my telling you of the things I have seen in your world since
coming to this other one. The next time you look out into this plane of
life and see the wonderful landscapes and the people, remember that it
is in a similar way that I look back into your plane of existence. It
is interesting to live in two worlds, going back and forth at will. But
when I go into yours it is only as a visitor, and I shall never attempt
to take a hand in its government. There is such a rigorous custom-house
on the frontier between the two worlds that the traveller back and
forth cannot afford to carry anything with him--not even a prejudice.
If you should come out here with a determination to see only certain
things, you might give a wrong value to what you would see. Many have
come out here at death with that mental attitude, and so have learned
little or nothing. It is the traveller with the open mind who makes
discoveries.
I brought over with me only a few resolutions:
To preserve my identity;
To hold my memory of earth life, and to carry back the memory of this
life when I should return to the world;
To see the great Teachers;
To recover the memories of my past incarnations;
To lay the necessary foundations for a great earth life when I should
go back next time.
That sounds simple, does it not? Already I have done much besides;
but if I had not borne these points in mind I might have accomplished
little.
The only really sad thing about death is that the average man learns
so little from it. Only my realisation of the fact that the chain of
earth lives is relatively endless could keep me from regret that most
persons make so little progress in each life. But I comfort myself with
the assurance that there is no hurry; that the pearls in the chain of
existence, though small, are all in their inevitable places, and that
the chain is a circle, the symbol of eternity.
And it seems to me, with my still finite view, that most men on this
side waste their lives even as they do on your side. That shows how far
I am yet from the ideal knowledge.
Viewed from the stars, whence I hope some day to view them, all these
flat stretches in the landscape of life may be softened by distance,
and the whole picture may take on a perspective of beauty which I had
not dreamed of while I myself was but a speck upon the canvas.
LETTER XXXIV
THE PASSING OF LIONEL
I HAVE lost my boy Lionel. He has gone--I started to say the way of all
flesh; but I must revise the figure and say the way of all spirits,
sooner or later, and that way is back to the earth.
One day not long ago I found him absorbed in thought in our favourite
resting-place, the little hut beside a stream at the foot of a wooded
hill, which I told you about in one of my former letters.
I waited for a time until the boy opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Father,” he said, “my favourite teacher is going to be married
to-morrow.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Why, I have been listening!” he answered. “Every little while I go
back and pay her a visit, though she does not know I am there. I have
been aware that there was something in the wind.”
“Why?”
“Because she has been so shining; there is a light around her which was
not there before.”
“What caused the light, Lionel?”
“Well, I suppose she is what they call _in love_.”
“You are a phenomenally wise child,” I said.
He looked at me with his large, honest eyes.
“I am not really a child at all,” he answered. “I am as old as the
hills, as you, or as anybody. Have you not told me that we are all
immortal, without end or beginning?”
“Yes, but go on, tell me about your teacher.”
“She is in love with the big brother of one of my playfellows. I used
to know him when I was a little boy. He let me use his magnet, and
taught me kite-flying, and showed me how machinery went. He is an
engineer.”
“Oh!” I said. “In this case, of course, you are glad that your
favourite teacher is going to marry him.”
Lionel’s eyes were larger than ever as he said:
“I shall be sorry to leave you, Father; but it is a chance I cannot
afford to miss.”
“What!”
“It is my opportunity to go back. I’ve been watching for it a long
time.”
“But are you ready?”
“What is it to be ready? I _want_ to go.”
“And leave me?”
“I shall find you again. And--Oh, Father!--when you come back I shall
be older than you.” This idea seemed to delight him.
I was still human enough to be sorry that the boy was going of his own
free will; but as will _is_ free, I would not make any effort to
detain him. Though young in that form, which had not yet had time to
grow up in the tenuous world since he came out as a child, yet he was
old in thought.
“Yes,” I said, “perhaps you can help me along when I also shall be a
child again.”
“You see,” he went on, “with a father like Victor I shall learn all I
want to know about machinery--that is, all that he can teach me; but
when I am grown I shall find out for myself many things which he does
not know. You remember the little machine I have been working with, up
in the pattern world?”
“Yes.”
“When I am back on the earth I shall make it a reality. Why, it
actually runs now with the electricity from my fingers!”
“But will it, when you have fixed it in material form, in steel, or
whatever it is to be made of?”
“Yes, of course it will. It is my invention. I shall be a famous man.”
“But supposing that somebody else finds it first?”
“I don’t think anybody will.”
“Shall I help you to lay a spell around the pattern, so that no one can
touch it?”
“Could you do that, Father?”
“I think so.”
“Then let us go up there at once,” he said, “and do it immediately. I
may have to leave this world in a day or two.”
I could not help smiling at the boy’s desire to hurry. Doubtless he
would be present at that wedding, and I should see little or nothing of
him afterwards.
We went up to the pattern world, and with his assistance I drew a
circle around the little machine--a spell which, I think, will protect
it until he is ready to make his claim.
Oh inspiration! Oh invention! Genius! Little do the men of earth know
the meaning of those words. Perhaps the poet’s famous poem was sung
before his birth; perhaps the engineer’s invention lay in the pattern
world, protected by his spell, while he grew to manhood and advanced in
science and made ready to claim it for his own, his prior and spiritual
creation. Perhaps, when two men discover or invent the same thing at
about the same time, one has succeeded in appropriating the design
which the other left behind him when he came back to earth. Sometimes,
perhaps, both have taken from the invisible the creation of a third
man, who still awaits rebirth.
Lionel babbled on to me about the life to come, and of what a charming
mother Miss ---- would be. She had always been good to him.
“Perhaps,” I said, “many of us who return almost immediately, as you
hope to do, seek out those who have been good to us in a former life.”
“There is another point,” Lionel said. “Miss ---- is a friend of my own
mother, the one I left a few years ago. It will be so good to have her
hold my hand again.”
“Do you think she will recognise you?” I asked.
“Who knows? She believes in rebirth.”
“How can you say that? You were so little when you came out!”
“I was seven years old, and already she had told me that we live many
lives on earth.”
“Bless the souls who first brought that belief to the Western world!”
I exclaimed. “And now, my boy, is there anything that I can do for you
after you leave me?”
“Yes, of course; you can watch over my new mother, and warn her if any
danger threatens her or me.”
“Then make me acquainted with her now.”
We went out into the material world, the boy and I. Already I have told
you how we go.
He took me to a little house in one of the suburbs of Boston. We
entered a room--it was then about eleven o’clock at night upon that
part of the earth,--and I saw a fair young woman kneeling beside her
bed, praying to God that He would bless the union of the morrow which
was to give her to the man she loved.
Lionel went close to her and threw his arms about her neck.
She started, as if she actually felt the contact, and sprang to her
feet.
“Miss ----, Miss ----, don’t you know me?” he cried; but while I could
hear him, she evidently could not, though she looked about her in a
half-frightened way.
Then, supposing that the touch and the presence she had felt were
imaginary, she again fell upon her knees and went on with her
interrupted prayer.
“Come away,” I said to the boy; and we left her there with her dreams
and her devotions.
That was the last I saw of Lionel. He bade me good-bye, saying:
“I shall stay near her for a few days. Perhaps I shall go back and
forth, from her to you; but if I do not return, I will meet you again
in a few years.”
“Yes,” I said, “it is affinity and desire which draw souls together,
either on earth or in the other world.”
When next I met the Teacher I told him about Lionel, and asked him if
he thought the boy could come out to me now and then, after his life
on earth had begun, as an unborn entity in the shelter of his mother’s
form.
“Probably not,” he replied. “If he were an adept soul, he might do
that; but with a soul of even high development, lacking real adeptship,
it would be impossible.”
“Yet,” I said, “men living on earth do come out here in dreams.”
“Yes, but when the soul enters matter, preparing for rebirth, it enters
potentiality, if we may use the term, and all its strength is needed
in the herculean effort to form the new body and adjust to it. After
birth, when the eyes are opened, and the lungs are expanded to the
air, the task is easier, and there may be left enough unused energy to
bridge the gulf.
“But,” he went on, “those who are soon to be mothers are often vaguely
conscious of the souls they harbour. Even when they do not grasp the
full significance of the miracle that is being performed through them,
they have strange dreams and visions, which are mostly glimpses into
the past incarnations of the unborn child. They see dream countries
where the entity within has dwelt in the past; they feel desires which
they cannot explain--reflected desires which are merely the latent
yearnings of the unborn one; they experience groundless fears which are
its former dreads and terrors. The mother who nourishes a truly great
soul, during this period of formation may herself grow spiritually
beyond her own unaided possibility; while the mother of an unborn
criminal often develops strange perversities, quite unlike her normal
state of mind.
“If a woman were sufficiently intelligent and informed, she could judge
from her own feelings and ideas what sort of soul was to be her child
some day, and prepare to guide it accordingly. More knowledge is
needed, here as elsewhere.”
So, as in all my experiences, I learned something through the passing
out of Lionel.
LETTER XXXV
THE BEAUTIFUL BEING
YES, I have seen angels, if by angels you mean spiritual beings who
have never dwelt as men upon the earth.
As a man is to a rock, so is an angel to a man in vividness of life. If
we ever experienced that state of etheric joy, we have lost it through
long association with matter. Can we ever regain it? Perhaps. The event
is in our hand.
Shall I tell you of one whom I call the Beautiful Being? If it has a
name in heaven, I have not heard it. Is the Beautiful Being man or
woman? Sometimes it seems to be one, sometimes the other. There is a
mystery here which I cannot fathom.
One night I seemed to be reclining upon a moonbeam, which means that
the poet which dwells in all men was awake in me. I seemed to be
reclining upon a moonbeam, and ecstasy filled my heart. For the moment
I had escaped the clutches of Time, and was living in that etheric
quietude which is merely the activity of rapture raised to the last
degree. I must have been enjoying a foretaste of that paradoxical state
which the wise ones of the East call Nirvana.
I was vividly conscious of the moonbeam and of myself, and _in_
myself seemed to be everything else in the universe. It was the nearest
I ever came to a realisation of that supreme declaration, “_I am_.”
The past and the future seemed equally present in the moment. Had a
voice whispered that it was yesterday, I should have acquiesced in the
assertion; had I been told that it was a million years hence, I should
have been also assentive. But whether it was really yesterday or a
million years hence mattered not in the least. Perhaps the Beautiful
Being only comes to those for whom the moment and eternity are one. I
heard a voice say:
“Brother, it is I.”
There was no question in my mind as to who had spoken. “It is I” can
only be uttered in such a voice by one whose individuality is so vast
as to be almost universal, one who has dipped in the ocean of the All,
yet who knows the minute by reason of its own inclusiveness.
Standing before me was the Beautiful Being, radiant in its own light.
Had it been less lovely I might have gasped with wonder; but the very
perfection of its form and presence diffused an atmosphere of calm. I
marvelled not, because the state of my consciousness _was_ marvel.
I was lifted so far above the commonplace that I had no standard by
which to measure the experience of that moment.
Imagine youth immortalised, the fleeting made eternal. Imagine the
bloom of a child’s face and the eyes of the ages of knowledge. Imagine
the brilliancy of a thousand lives concentrated in those eyes, and the
smile upon the lips of a love so pure that it asks no answering love
from those it smiles upon.
But the language of earth cannot describe the unearthly, nor could
the understanding of man grasp in a moment those joys which the
Beautiful Being revealed to me in that hour of supreme life. For the
possibilities of existence have been widened for me, the meanings
of the soul have deepened. Those who behold the Beautiful Being are
never the same again as they were before. They may forget for a time,
and lose in the business of living the magic of that presence; but
whenever they do remember, they are caught up again on the wings of
the former rapture.
It may happen to one who is living upon the earth; it may happen to one
in the spaces between the stars; but the experience must be the same
when it comes to all; for only to one in the state in which _it_
dwells could the Beautiful Being reveal itself at all.
A SONG OF THE BEAUTIFUL BEING
When you hear a rustling in the air, listen again: there
may be something there.
When you feel a warmth mysterious and lovely in the
heart, there may be something there, something
sent to you from a warm and lovely source.
When a joy unknown fills your being, and your soul
goes out, out ... toward some loved mystery, you
know not where, know that the mystery itself is
reaching toward you with warm and loving, though
invisible, arms.
We who live in the invisible are not invisible to each
other.
There are tender colours here and exquisite forms, and
the eye gloats on beauty never seen upon the earth.
Oh, the joy of simple life to be, and to sing in your soul
all day as the bird sings to its mate!
For you are singing to your mate whenever your soul
sings.
Did you fancy it was only the spring-time that thrilled
you and moved you to listen to the rustling of
wings?
The spring-time of the heart is all time, and the autumn
may never come.
Listen! When the lark sings, he sings to you. When
the waters sing, they sing to you.
And as your heart rejoices, there is always another heart
somewhere that responds; and the soul of the listening
heavens grows glad with the mother joy.
I am glad to be here, I am glad to be there. There is
beauty wherever I go.
Can you guess the reason, children of earth?
Come out and play with me in the daisy fields of space.
I will wait for you at the corner where the four
winds meet.
You will not lose your way, if you follow the gleam at
the end of the garden of hope.
There is music also beyond the roar of the earth as it
swishes through space:
There is music in keys unknown to the duller ears of
the earth, and harmonies whose chords are souls
attuned to each other.
Listen.... Do you hear them?
Oh, the ears are made for hearing, and the eyes are
made for seeing, and the heart is made for loving!
The hours go by and leave no mark, and the years are
as sylphs that dance on the air and leave no footprints,
and the centuries march solemn and slow.
But we smile, for joy is also in the solemn tread of the
centuries.
Joy, joy everywhere. It is for you and for me, and for
you as much as for me.
Will you meet me out where the four winds meet?
LETTER XXXVI
THE HOLLOW SPHERE
SOME time ago I started to write to you about certain visits which I
had made to the infernal regions; but I was called away, and the letter
was not finished. To-night I will take up the story again.
You must know that there are many hells, and they are mostly of our own
making. That is one of those platitudes which are based upon fact.
Desiring one day to see the particular kind of hell to which a drunkard
would be likely to go, I sought that part of the hollow sphere around
the world which corresponds to one of those countries where drunkenness
is most common. Souls, when they come out, usually remain in the
neighbourhood where they have lived, unless there is some strong reason
to the contrary.
I had no difficulty in finding a hell full of drunkards. What do you
fancy they were doing? Repenting their sins? Not at all. They were
hovering around those places on earth where the fumes of alcohol, and
the heavier fumes of those who over-indulge in alcohol, made sickening
the atmosphere. It is no wonder that sensitive people dislike the
neighbourhood of drinking saloons.
You would draw back with disgust and refuse to write for me should I
tell you all that I saw. One or two instances will suffice.
I placed myself in a sympathetic and neutral state, so that I could see
into both worlds.
A young man with restless eyes and a troubled face entered one of
those “gin palaces” in which gilding and highly polished imitation
mahogany tend to impress the miserable wayfarer with the idea that he
is enjoying the luxury of the “kingdoms of this world.” The young man’s
clothes were threadbare, and his shoes had seen much wear. A stubble
of beard was on his chin, for the price of a shave is the price of a
drink, and a man takes that which he desires most--when he can get it.
He was leaning on the bar, drinking a glass of some soul-destroying
compound. And close to him, taller than he and bending over him, with
its repulsive, bloated, ghastly face pressed close to his, as if to
smell his whisky-tainted breath, was one of the most horrible astral
beings which I have seen in this world since I came out. The hands of
the creature (and I use that word to suggest its vitality)--the hands
of the creature were clutching the young man’s form, one long and
naked arm was around his shoulders, the other around his hips. It was
literally sucking the liquor-soaked life of its victim, absorbing him,
using him, in the successful attempt to enjoy vicariously the passion
which death had intensified.
But was that a creature in hell? you ask. Yes, for I could look into
its mind and see its sufferings. For ever (the words “for ever” may be
used of that which seems endless) this entity was doomed to crave and
crave and never to be satisfied.