The Flight.
Lightly, as floats the atom on a sunbeam, swiftly as the bird flies, gaily as a laughing child, a spiritual form sailed stilly through the Space. Beneath it rolled the globe, its black mountains, deep valleys, and all its silvery seas; above it twinkled the starry shield of Heaven; and afar off, on either hand, great suns looked out to see the moving panoply.
And still the soul sped on; until, at last, its earthly home was in the distance, and all around the mighty Silence reigned. And still the soul swept onward! No dizziness, no faltering, from the awful sense of height, alarmed it; no fear beset its bounding, joyous, happy heart. That soul was not my own, for the reason that no man can possibly predicate ownership of a soul—the thinking-principle—Mind; for soul is himself He can speak of, and say, "my body, limbs, faculties, qualities," and so forth, with correctness and propriety; for these are his incidents, but soul is himself—that of which these incidents obtain. They are, to coin a word, the out-sphering of the inner being: the soul was me.
In a little while, the question, "What, and why is this? and whither am I going?" rose in my mind. A silvery voice breathed silently into my spirit this response: "Whoso truly willeth to know, shall know, by reason of the relationship between himself and the other two members of the great Eternal Trine, provided always that the wish is good, and its realization would be productive of Excellence and Use.
"No bad man can earnestly wish and will good, while he is bad; if he does, his failure is certain: not so with the good and lofty soul! It is always welcome to the banquet of knowledge; nor is the gate of Wisdom ever closed to it. The good man can solve all mysteries; the good woman sound the depths of all Music, Love, and Beauty. Thus the saying is literally, perfectly, absolutely true, which affirms that if ye 'Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, all things else shall be added unto you!'"
The voice was that of the fair being, whom Thotmor called his own. Previously intent upon observing the rapid changes about me, I did not, until that moment, realize that both these auroral spirits attended on this, my third flight.
"Brother," continued the sweet being, "Forget not the first lesson; the second, thou art now receiving."
For a little while, still pondering on what I had been taught, and still moving forward and upward, I made no mental response or observation. Soon recurred to me, the phrase used by the female teacher a little time before: "And the two other members of the great Eternal Trine." I longed to know the meaning; and at that instant a clearness of perception, power of conception, and ability of comprehension, was given to me, such as I never knew before. I asked mentally, how this came about, and the answer came to my understanding, through the channel of a clear intuition, and shaped itself in the following form, as nearly as words will hold it.
"The earth is coarse, yet imprisons the refined. It is a dense, gross substance, a heavy rough body, but it has a soul. The soul of the world is spirit. Every atom of matter has a moving, living, active, spiritual centre. The matter enchains the spirit, and the spirit (the principles of Beauty, Use, Goodness, Music, Odor, Tone. Sound, Rhythm, Shape, Sympathy and Coherence, constitute the World-soul or spirit)—and the spirit ever struggles to free itself from its unwilling thraldom. It can only do so by working up the material of its prison house into forms of Excellence, Use, Beauty, Sound, Tone, Shape and Rhythm. When it does so, it escapes its jail, and goes back to God, whence it originally came, through the human organization, and others less perfect, in the form of Odors, Music, Tone, Sound, Beauty (flowers, forests, &c.) Art, Color, and their cognates. A rose is that success in its struggle, which attends that amount and phase of spirit, working out its liberation, from and through matter, by means of its inherent self—the principles named.
There are two Realms: Matter, filled with spirit, and Spirit (above, beyond), free of material encumbrance—the great Spiritual Ocean, in which all the worlds are floating.[1] The World-soul is spirit, negative: the great Ocean is spirit, positive. In it floats, rained down from the Infinite, myriads of existences, in the form of Monads—each one a particle of soul given off, so to speak, from the great Eternal Brain.
These monads are not spirit negative, such as is contained in and constitutes the soul of the world, of matter in all its million forms of beasts, birds, reptiles, and vegetation; nor spirit positive, such as constitutes the Sea whereon the worlds do float, and whose finer breath is the sphere of disembodied souls; but they are the original soul-germs of immortal beings—they are the sparks which fell, and fall from God himself—particles of the Deific brain, unique, sui gerieris, unparticled, homogeneous: old as Deity, young as the new-born infant; always existed, ever will exist. They are Pha-souls (Fay-souls,) or Monads.
I now realized this strange truth: that the conscious soul that constituted me was now beyond, as it were, all the circumvolving material atmospheres surrounding earth, and that it was rapidly approaching the awful and vast Spiritual Ocean. Presently it ceased its flight, turned earthward, and made the following discovery: first, the Spiritual pervaded the Ethylic Sea: this, in turn, the Etherial; that, the Magnetimic; that, in turn, Electrimic; that, the Magnetic; that, the Electric; and that, in turn, the Earth Sphere, or 'Odylic' emanation, which in turn pervades the atmospheric or Oxygenic; so that man really breathes several, instead of a single atmosphere—the highest of which quickens the spirit, as the lower does the body.
Turning the gaze outward, a fine, glorious, soft, silvery sea was seen spreading away in all directions; and the eye had no difficulty in traversing space, as on earth it has, through the corporeal structure and the several earth-airs. In this clear expanse of Spirit floats uncounted globular monads, infinite in number, infinitesimal in volume; they are each enveloped in a fine electric substance, which surrounds them perfectly. The spiritual waves bear them on its bosom to the earth; they, by a mysterious power, are drawn to the human male brain, through the lungs; they enter it, become lodged, remain till a certain physical work is completed, and then descend and effect their mission through the aid of the prostate gland. At certain times, they quit this, pass into the uterus, enveloped in the prostatic mulse; are caught up—are carried to the womb, and—the work of incarnation is effected.[2]
Here, in these aerial Kingdoms, beyond the domain of matter and the sphere of what we call Nature, or Natural Law, which of course does not govern Spirit, it having a mode of its own, I found two sorts of monads—the one perfectly globular, which constitutes the germ of the man—the others ovoidal, which constitutes the germ of the female. There are always two together: in couples they come from the Eternal God, in couples they return.
Placed in the uterus, these come in loving relations with a subtile spirit originally in the female monad, subsequently energized in the woman, condensed in the 'ova,' and there is a blending of elements—the external of the monad, and the internal of the ova; and from this blending springs a third something, which is the nucleus of the nervous body, so to speak. This nucleus robs all earthly things of their vital life—plants, flowers, food, drink, and so on—through the instrumentality of all the bodily organs. This union produces an improvement in both; together, they attract the great spiritual substance or atmosphere pervading our air, and then the child is quickened, and rises in the pelvis; the very instant that the first spark of this great spiritual atmosphere passes into the babe, the monad increases in bulk, bursts its bonds or envelopes, passes from the foetal lungs to its brain, locates in the pineal gland, radiates through the corpus collossum, energizes its body, and, lo! a soul has entered upon a new career.
As said before, the soul grows—grows in two ways: first, by development—unfolding and awakening; second, by acquired knowledge and experience. The latter is of and for the earth, the former is of and for the soul itself. The one depends on circumstance and accident, the other is above and beyond both. There may never be much of the latter, but the former will, must go on to Infinity. Both may go on to a great extent on earth; one certainly will in the Hereafter.
All these things I felt, I saw, and knew, as I floated there on the shores of the Spiritual Kingdoms.
Have you ever beheld the golden rain of a rocket, on a stilly summer night? You have? Well, just so God rains monads from Himself! Spirit is the emanation from God's body! Monads are corruscations from His Soul! These truths can never be demonstrated; all spiritual truth is real, and demonstration is effective only in reference to fleeting appearances. The logical faculty deals with what pertains to us on earth; that which pertains to the Spiritual, requires some higher power of the soul. It has it—in the Intuitions. The logical faculty deals with Progress; Intuition with Development—unfolding: organic the one—central-soul the other. Intuition will one day substantiate my discoveries—when I am dead, and this writing is a century old.
At present there is really no Spiritual Philosophy at all—scarcely an approximation thereto. We have not even a spiritual nomenclature, and it is exceedingly difficult to convey spiritual facts or ideas in terms notoriously adapted only to the expression of transitory earthly knowledge.
Swedenborg's ideas are worth all others on the great subject, yet he, even must be read in Latin or German, to be correctly understood. The English is the tongue of commerce—has too much ring of the dollar in it—to be used to express spiritual things. I shall try to convey my experiences so as to be understood; yet how can I hope to be?—how make the fact known, that one human soul is actually larger, deeper, greater, than this whole material globe?—that it has a sun, within the cerebrum; a moon, the solar plexus; that its sun rises (when we wake), and sets, retires to the vertebral column, sinks within the great ganglion, behind the stomach, when we sleep; that it has stars, the nerve-villi; planets, the ganglia; it has a milky way, the great nervous cord; comets, and, in short, everything that the outer world has, and much beside. How shall I express these facts so as to be understood? for the terms I use do not convey the exact meaning. "Who can understand that the soul has hills, mountains, valleys, and so forth? Yet it hath all these things in a higher and heavenly sense. Still more difficult will it be to prove or show that the Bible saying, that "the kingdom of heaven is within" every one, is a literal truth. The soul, per se, contains within itself the sum total of a dozen universes, each differing from the other, each one overlying that beneath it; and just as fast as the soul outgrows, unfolds from, or 'vastates' either of these, new and higher ones become apparent, just as there dwells an appreciation of the refined and beautiful in every coarse man or woman; but, in order that this esthetic sense shall come out and be active, a certain discipline is essential, the result of which is a vastation and throwing off of what impeded and obstructed this beauty-sense. This is the end and mission of education or discipline. Our principal life—for we lead several at the same time, is the life of Imagination. We form, in fact create, by a mystic power not yet understood, whole galleries of paintings, figures, adventures and circumstances, 'houses in Spain' 'castles in the air.' These are our in-creations, because, while yet in the body, they loom up in the deep, distant depths of the mind, as images more or less vague and shadowy. They are as yet within us, pictured, as they are, upon the outer surfaces of the soul, yet within the radius of the spirit.
After death, these become the realities of our then existence, are the spontaneous out-births or out-creations of our souls, and in them we live, move, and have our being—happy, joyous, pleasant, provided our souls are beautiful, calm, and serene; but if they be not so, then those out-creations are full of horrors—serpents, noisome things, reptiles and dead men's bones.
Few, very few clairvoyants have ever beheld the realities of the spiritual world. I know of but few, contemporaneous or historical, whom I believe to have ever beheld the mysteries of the other life. Amongst the few, Behmen, Swedenborg, and Harris stand pre-eminent. The others—some of them honest, doubtless, but often deluded—have beheld their own out-creations, or the spiritual photographs on the sky-surfaces of things and events pertaining to the earth. Every out-creation differs from all others; hence arises the annoying discrepancies and diverse accounts of the same things, which we are constantly receiving—as, for instance, the spirit-land, the sun, moon, planets, and their occupants, as given by various so-called modern seers. The memory of man is internal to himself while here, but after death it is, as it were, the furniture of the parlor wherein he lives on the other side of time; and these tableau-vivants, or living pictures, when seen by clairvoyants, are passed off upon men as the revelation of realities, when they are but the ephemera of existence. Spirits tell us of their legs, lungs, bodies, lands, parks, and so forth,—and of their gardens, houses, trees, forests, and the like. All this is very well, and are spiritual facts to them, yet are but the out-creations of the human soul, which really has no legs, arms, and so forth, because the soul is mind, and can have no possible use for these things; yet, for a long period, these very things are realities to the spirit and to clairvoyants.
The fact is, good spirits do not appear one-tenth as often as imagined; the majority of spiritual appearances are but out-creations—subjective images of the seer, objectified—else are psychological projections of other minds—images impressed upon the susceptible person's brain.
The spiritual world, as it is generally mapped out to us, appears but a few degrees in advance of this one, on the same general plane, if we are to believe the tales told us concerning it; while the fact is, that world is not like this in any respect. It is not a place, literally speaking, but is a condition—a single one of thousands that have been—of millions yet to be. Dream-life is a good illustration of my meaning. It is a condition of the soul. In it, we have a life actual, real, absolute; not in far-off regions, because we are still in our bed; rooms; but in the midst of our own private domain, our own out-creations, our personal universe.
The human soul, as said before, is a divine kaleidescope, which forever changes, yet never exhausts its capacity, either for change, or for appreciation for the bliss thence derived, or of trouble encountered. So we have no need of legs in the spirit-world, because our movements are not with reference to space—we have done with roads and distances there; but our changes are of state or condition. Illustration: Anna is a beautiful girl—pious, good, pure, excellent; sits beside her lover, John—a polished scoundrel in every sense. One bullet kills both, instantly. They die on the spot. Both awake in the other life—in the same room, yet are a million miles apart, because their respective mental states determine their relation to each other there, albeit other things determine it here.
They may never not only not meet again, but never know aught of each other, so vast is the real distance (condition) between the twain. The spiritual world of the one will abound with forms of beauty, use, goodness: that of the other will abound with toads, swamps, snakes, bugs and unseemly things. Why?—because each is surrounded with his or her personal out-creations. Each communicating back to earth, will tell what each beholds; both will be true, yet both fail to give even the ghost of a real notion about the absolute supernal world. Whatever we are, we see; whatever we want, is there before us—we have. Thus we can ascend in goodness, or sink away to the very depths of hell—both our own, however. * * * * * And, all these things came to me there, as I floated on a wave of the sea of knowledge.
Self-induced psycho-vision often passes as the product of spirits. The line is yet to be drawn between the seeming and the real in this respect. Spirits first are monads—spiritual (psychal) atoms—God-existent from all past eternity: Secondly, they are awakened beings, self-existent to all future states—not times merely: Thirdly, at physical birth they, as monads, cease to be; at physical death a change as complete and great as the last occurs. And now they have passed through, and across three eternities; that of monads, matter, and spirit; and fourthly, they remain in no condition above a century (which accounts for the fact that no well-authenticated instance of intercourse with a spirit over a century dead, has yet been recorded); lastly, they ever pass onward, and each condition differs from the last, as does sleep from wakefulness. There are millions of these changes. It takes about a century to graduate and gravitate from one condition to another. When we pass from this world, we take some things with us which we are obliged to unlearn there. Thus, some want drink, others rest, fruit, land, houses, money, and so forth; some want children and desire to cohabit as on earth. All have just what they want; only that the children begotten there, are mere phasmas—just as by a powerful effort we can create a beautiful puppy dog, and hold it as an ideal before our eyes while here.
A crazy man's golden crown and throne, although to us nothing but straw and bits of stone, are to him gold and diamonds; and flash forth the richest scintillations of the most precious jewels. It is a state of the mind. Millions of crazy people inhabit both worlds; whence it follows that insanity is a disease of the mind, as well as a result of organic and chemical change and disturbance in the body.
It is hard to describe spiritual things in material language. Amongst all the flood of "Spiritual literature," I know of no single work that gives the faintest idea of spiritual actualities[3] All that passes current, as such, is far more ideal and material than spiritual, and are referable, as to their origin, to excited ideality, and other peculiar mental states, rather than to the Supernal world. Amidst the three million speeches a year, delivered under professed spirit influence, it is my deliberate conviction, that not over ten in one thousand has its source in the pure Soul-realm, but many originate in the Middle-states of the spiritual world; very many of the vivid and beautiful descriptions of spirit life, scenery and so forth, which so please us to hear, are transcripts from the individuals' inner-self, or rather of the out-creations thereof. Of course, these are true to the individual, but to no one else: let it be once remembered that the man is as immortal in the past, as he is now, and will be; and that during that state (as Monad or Pha-soul) of pre-carnate being, he had an experience as real to him then, as his present is to him now; and we shall no longer marvel at genius, or at the stupendous powers of the human mind. During the sublime experiences of my soul, which I am endeavoring to recount, I became thoroughly satisfied, not as the medium, not from spiritual teaching, but from soul-observation, that man, like God, had no beginning, as did matter as we know it—and that like Him, he will never positively have an end; albeit the modes of God, and those of man—for at bottom, they are one, continually change conditions. This brings us to the question, "What is God?" * * * * Up there,[4] upon the beautiful ether, all was still and silent music, yet moving in Beauty, Order, and Form—which were out-creations of one Eternal Monad, self-conscious and awful—shone a sun of ineffable glory and majesty—the Omnipotent God.
This sun shines in the heaven of spirit, just as the comparatively tiny and material suns illuminate the material universe. The spiritual does not glide into the material, but is from and above it, just in the sense that the meaning of a sentence is above the sounds or characters which convey it—and in no other. The grand procession of material universes constantly sweeps along the Eternities; receive Light, Life and Love thence; fructify; incarnate the monad's Beauty, Consciousness, Form, Order, Law, Music, and Number, in human souls; and then exhaustion prepares the self-same material universes—or rather, their bases for a new infiltration—of God-Od, so to speak, differing from the last; and so on forever. One procession is one Eternity—or rather, Cycle. Thus it will be seen, by those who can grasp this tremendous thought, that all matter—the amazing system of substance, is after all, but a mere fleck—a mote in the sun-rays—a mere grain on the awful shores of the stupendous Spiritual Ocean; nor does all the matter existing, bear a greater proportion to the spiritual, than an orange does in bulk to the Rocky Mountain Chain. The material systems move near its centre, and the spiritual waves flow on all sides into the Ineffable Beyond.
The fountain, whence they flow is God! and this word "God" is a poor name. Men become "gods" in the great hereafter—gods for Good, Use and Order, or the opposite of these; but this, of which I speak, the Eternal Secret, the awful, yet radiant Mystery, is as far beyond the Ideal Jehovah, as is the human beyond the analid. Let us make a chain: Matter is the first link: Spirit is the second—I speak of Universes now, remember; Soul—that which constitutes the Human Think-principle, is the third; well, this Over-Soul flows through all these, as man's spirit through his body. Now man is conscious only partly; he knows nothing just on the other side of himself, is ignorant of what life is, and of that august power which governs his involuntary self. Well, the Over-Soul flows out into the All—into the universe of Think, (I can use no other term,) into that of Soul, Monads, Spirit, Matter; and while pervading and being imminent in All, is self-conscious at every point; in the Think, the Monad, the Soul, the Spirit, the Matter, in every particle that is, or can ever be. I hold this, as the truest definition of the Deity yet given; and in the radiant presence of such a thought, all human things must bow; all human pride stand back, all human ideas pale and fade. * *
And these .things came to me, and I believe them true. And God is not good, but beyond it; is not truth, but its foundation; is not power, nor Life, nor Think, but beyond, beneath, above all these! Spirit may be represented as the soul of matter: Soul as the inmost of Spirit; Monad as the base of Soul; Think, as the essence of Monad; God as the Soul of Think. Here, let no man smile at these uncouth expressions; they stand as symbols of mighty truths. I have said that Monads were scintillations from God's brain: They are: That Matter was the proceeding from his body Monads are forms of thought, and are the bubbles on His ever-rising tide of Soul. Hence, these monads are, so to speak, the givings off of his spirit. God's Spirit is the element, Soul; but of this Soul, none but Himself knoweth.
And as I floated there on the sea of knowledge, animpulse sprung up to know more; and these questions were fashioned in my soul, and that soul derived from out the mystery the answers appended to each question: "Is not man forever in the human form?" In human form, yes; in human shape, no: Man was once the monad—a finite sun. He still is so as to himself (see a previous section), and the body which he uses is but an out-creation, as are his mental pictures; with the difference that the latter are volitional and circumstantial, while the former is constitutional. The shape,—organic, is the very best adapted to the purposes it serves, and it is the effect of a force lying behind the personal consciousness. Its use is for the material; it could have none in the spiritual world, save as the effect of Soul-habit, or as a means of discipline in the lesser or "lower" departments or conditions thereof. "How of dead infants?" Infants have spiritual bodies, and retain them till discipline places them beyond the necessity. In all cases, the bodily forms are attachments to the human, so long as the human is in the sphere of discipline,—hence moves within the possibilities of Good and Evil. When they leave this latter, and merge into the sphere of Uses, the external of the soul corresponds to its new state. A soul is immaterial, as of the nature of Think,—hence needs no stomach to digest food, lungs to breathe air, legs for locomotion, and so forth; for all these are principles of the soul, with mere out-created organs. When it needs the organs no longer, it dispenses therewith, but the principles underlying them still remain,
"Unhurt amid the rush of warring elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds."
A man sits in his study, and thinks of, his father's house, many, many miles away. He sees it;—well, brook, barn, trees, garden, flowers,—all, all just as they really exist. Now, the man's body, being a mere thing of circumstance, still remains in the study, but the man himself is gone; his body and spirit are in the room, but himself is at the old homestead. Space, time, and flight are not to the soul,—only to forms and things of coarser nature and lesser majesty.
The soul thinks "I am there," and—there it is. Certain persons, gifted, can see' things spiritual; all persons can at times, and frequently are sensible of the presence of others, whose bodies are far away. They are made sensible of it by soul-contact. It is possible for a man to project an image of himself to any distance, which image shall be mistaken for himself. These images, being such, of course, cannot speak when questioned by whoever sees them. Whoever can picture the exact simulacrum of himself, can will this figure whither soever he may choose, and then persons who behold this declare they have seen his "spectre," "phantom," "ghost," "wraith," or "double." Again, the man of strong will and pure desires may quit the body spiritually, actually, and be perceptible to others at a distance; may be spoken to, hold conversations, and move material objects, when his body lies scores of leagues away.
"Are there demons?" Yes, two kinds: forms of fear, corresponding to a man's bad moral state,—projected out-creations from the wicked self. Such are the fiends, snakes, toads, devils and horrid monsters seen by the victim of delirium tremens. Of the same order, but beautiful, instead of the reverse, are the angels, ghillim, houris, fairy-forms, peris and naiads, seen by the rapt enthusiasts of all ages and climes, but especially of the Orient, when inspired by opium, love, and religion; out-creations of their inmost souls,—subjective images objectified. This species of out-projection pertains to all persons, while under the discipline of good and evil, virtue and vice, and all other material conditions and accidents. "What do you mean by virtue and vice, as material incidents?" I mean that good and evil are but conditions environing man, while under the sway of his inevitable discipline.
There is such a thing as the spirit of Community. A mob is a fearful thing, a dreadful power, and it developes a ferocity which does not inhere in any one of the multitude composing it—a material energy of awful force. A reasoner can take aside, one by one, an entire audience, and convince them thus of the justice of the cause he advocates; but, let them be combined, and he shall not be able to convince the general sense, nor succeed in evoking aught but derisive sneers at his "imbecility." Or conversely: he may not be able to convince the people, taken singly, yet, let him pour out his soul before them, congregated, and he shall sway them as the tempest sways the forests-material energy in both cases. Again: vice is frequently not considered in the act itself, but in the how society views it. Thus, adultery, in France, is laughed at as "the mere affair of a sofa;" in England, its penalty is a black eye or so, and half a crown a week; in the Orient, it is a matter of course; in the Southern States, it is a legal and very peculiar institution; and in New-England it is a fearful crime; and yet is, notwithstanding, a very fashionable vice, in spite of bolts and bars; one, too, that has lately stained not a few preachers of the gospel. Adultery, so far as individuals are concerned, is, except in rare instances, a thing of terrible moment; but, alas! the very ones who make the most noise about it, denounce it the loudest and prosecute the sinners most grievously, are the very ones who are particularly weak in that direction themselves. Many a judge has left the bench, wherefrom he had just sentenced some weak one to long years of penal servitude, to revel in a wanton's arms!
Individuals are governed by personal laws and influences; but society, community, the mob, develope an "opinion" or "sentiment," before which all charitable, just, or personal considerations vanish and are forgotten. Many a jury, if individual preferences were allowed scope, would free the culprit whom the "twelve" consign to dungeon or the gibbet. This is material force! Again: A fellow hires himself out as a soldier, to commit homicide as often as he can;—goes out; does so; comes back, after making a dozen or two,—perhaps a hundred orphans;—settles down in life, beneath his "laurels," lives to a good old age, dies, and goes to—hell,—I think, with ne'er a pang or qualm of conscience. Why? Because the community smiles on him and sustains, as a mass, the very thing—man-killing—that every one of them, taken singly, condemns and must ever disapprove.
This personal feeling is Common Sense. The other is Public Opinion. The last is always wrong; the other is always right. The individual is generally just, the community very seldom. Public opinion is, there-fore, a mere physical power; and as such, eternally changes. Common sense, on the contrary, ever and always accretes and intensifies, spreads and grows stronger as the years and people pass away; the one is accidental and material; the other, personal, constitutional, and real. Now take a couple of other men, constituted precisely as was our soldier: let them, each for himself, commit a genteel murder; one gets caught at it and is strung up and choked to death in a period of time, varying from four to twenty minutes; choked till his eyes bulge out, his tongue lolls thick and swollen from his mouth—by a fellow who gets paid for the job. Society says this is right as Society; but take every one that composes it aside, and let him look on that blue-black throat, at those bulging eye-balls, contorted features, and ghastly carrion; ten thousand to one. that every man of them will denounce this legal choking affair as a damnable piece of buisness, totally unworthy of a savage, much less civilized (?) men and women.
Here you see the thing is material—is the monstrous out-creation of the social body, and not at all related to man, as an individual. How happens this out-creation of the body-politic to be so terrible? just go back a few pages and you will see that "the out-creation always corresponds to the condition of the being whence it emanates." The great mass is barbarous to-day; and civilization, much less Spiritualization, is the exception to the general rule and order. Bye-and-bye civilization will be the rule, and then we shall have a better "Public Opinion;" therefore, less hanging, and things of that sort. Let us work for it.
Turn we now to the fellow that earned his ten dollars by performing the choking operation—the nice young gentleman who so gaily looped the rope and pulled the neat little spring which sent a soul to God on a yard of twisted hemp. How does he feel when the job is over? Why, not at all uneasy. The guilt of doing this wicked thing is not his, he feels—albeit, he and I disagree on this point. It is not his, and so he "don't care a fig." That's it exactly. He, like the choked-to-death, whose eyes bulge out, who bleeds at the ears, whose tongue is so largely swollen that it won't stay in his blood-slavered mouth—he, too, I say, has sent a soul prematurely cross-lots home; but feeleth he remorse? No more than a good dram of sixpenny damnation will drown—but not forever! Oh, no!—for just as sure as God reigns, he must come up to the bar for sentence, and must expiate his error somewhere, at some time.
The judge, the jury, the legislators—all, just as the executioner, feel that they are clear of even this judicial murder, and at last, we trace the responsibility home to a formless, brainless monster, without a body, yet with a great black soul, whose name is, "Public Opinion." Presently, you and I, sir and madam, will beget a better one—God speed the day!
Now for the other murderer. He has too much tact and finesse to be caught, caged, and strung up. Chemistry can't fasten the deed on him, nor can skilful detectives trip him up; and so he goes along, happy as a lark in the day-time! But somehow or other his dreams are devilishly unpleasant! Why?—Because in the silence of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, a spirit passes before his face, bearing a very astonishing resemblance to a former acquaintance of his, now, alas! deceased; and, although he is above the weakness of believing in "spirits," yet he often catches himself exclaiming, "By God, I believe it's his ghost!"—an out-creation of his foul within. From this day forward, the invisible fangs of Public Opinion, go deeper and deeper into his soul—a moral augur, sinking an artesian shaft into his very centre—until, at last, the waters are reached, and burst forth in one full, deep stream of agony—Remorse. The executed suffered about ten deaths, in expiation of the one life he took; but this wretch, whose crime is not known, suffers a dozen deaths a day.
Now, in a community where man-slaying don't count much against a citizen, this fellow would not have suffered one whit more than did the soldier, or Jack Ketch. * * * * I said that there were two kinds of demons. Having described one, we will glance rapidly at the other; the process is simple enough. A man's elevation on the scale depends upon himself—if he loves disorder more than its opposite, hatred than love, the deformed than the lovely—why, the man, in so far forth as he departs from rectitude of his own purpose and will, just so far does he demonize himself. And as there is no limit to advancement or descension, so he may become guileful to an immense degree—be a demon.
There are myriads of such within the compass, and on the confines of the Material Realms, but none beyond them in the Divine City of Pure Spirit. But within those limits exists a Badness, so awful, so vast, that the soul shrinks before the terrible reality. These beings cannot injure our souls, save by the voluntary co-operation of our own wills and loves.
I content myself with this brief outline now, promising to take up the subject hereafter. In this book I have touched only a few of the lesser truths of the Universe, and shall go deeper next time.
All these things came to me as I floated on the air. These practical lessons I received from Thotmor and his Cynthia, and from my own spontaneous Teachings forth. Presently Thotmor looked lovingly upon the maiden at his side, and then upon myself. She turned to me, and said, "This lesson will do for the present. Return once more to earth." * * * * Again, a deep sense of drowsiness fell upon me, and seemingly, I slept. When next I woke, I was beneath the tree, and the golden sun was setting.
This was not all I learned; but my present task is finished. Patience, my reader! Since these truths were written I have received a message from beyond the sea. I am going to cross it. I shall speedily return and relate to you and all my brethren the things I there have seen. Till then, Adieu!
- ↑ I realized this tremendous truth. The links of the chain are: Granite Rock, Water, Atmosphere, extending about one hundred and fifty miles upward; Electrical Sea, above the air, one hundred miles; Magnetic Ocean, one hundred more; above that, each remove being as great as-between the first two, the ocean of Electrime, one hundred miles (the figures are approximative only). Next an ocean of Magnetime, then Ether, then Ethyle, and then the great Ocean of Spirit positive. All the rest are cushions, as it were, to this, our world.
- ↑ My business is with facts here; therefore, I shall briefly state what I beheld, and leave others to theorize—satisfied, as I am, that I have penetrated the Grand Secret.
- ↑ If we except Swedenborg, and a fugitive lecture or two, by persons not necessary to be named herein.
- ↑ I now discovered that "up" was a condition of soul and spirit and that to both, time and space did not exist.