< Man as a Spirit; Phenomena as Produced by the Spirits of the Living (continued from page 4-110) >
I beg to draw your attention to this diagram. It is a simplification of one my late most laborious and enthusiastic friend, Mr. Dove, employed to illustrate his psychological and alchemical views.
A to C represents the earthly or soul life. C to G the spirit life, x x represents the middle wall of partition, or river of oblivion, which divides the earth-plane from the spirit-plane.
A represents the ordinary life of self-consciousness and reason and vigilance. B represents the plane of reverie or day-dreaming. C represents the position, the point intermediate between the earth or spirit-plane. D represents the plane of spirit reverie and spirit-dreaming. This I conceive to be the region of elementary and evil and foolish spirits—the spirits which chiefly infest our dark seances: and this may be the position occupied by our spirits when infested in sleep by foul and evil dreams and vampires. E represents the position of spiritual lucidity or clairvoyance, or inspirational speaking in company at times with higher departed spirits. F represents a more intense lucidity and clairvoyance; and here, the spirit, escaping from the influence of the lower plane, is controlled by the “Holy Spirit of the Lord” at G, and hence the form of oracle is, “Thus saith-the Lord.” To this position I conceive St. Paul ascended when he was caught up into the seventh heaven, and saw things “impossible to utter.” G represents the position to which Christ from time to time ascended, and thus being, as it were, absorbed in God, could say, “I and the Father are one,” and became entitled to the name of “the only-begotten and well-beloved Son of God.”
I have been often asked, if those phenomena are produced by our spirits, how is it that we are ignorant of the fact? I reply, Man is only half known to himself. The man awake has no knowledge of the man asleep, nor the man asleep of the man awake. The somnambule has no knowledge of the normal man, nor the normal man of the somnambule. The chrysalis has no knowledge of the butterfly, nor the butterfly any remembrance of the chrysalis. We know that the ordinary man is ignorant of the entranced man, and the entranced man on returning to soul-life, has at once lost all knowledge and memory of the entranced man, who one minute before astonished us by his scientific knowledge. My diagram may help you to see how this is so. It shows the earth-plane and the spirit-plane as two states, separated by the wall or river of oblivion.
I desire, however, here to add that Christ, as I conceive, dwelt daily both on earth and in heaven, and was for ever conscious of both lives, and thus He obtained power and applied titles to himself presumptuous to mere man.
Of course this is only a diagram, but some thirty years ago I had a curious corroboration of the idea of a door leading to the other life. At the time when Sir James Simpson introduced the use of chloroform as an anæsthetic, medical students amused themselves by experimenting with it on their own bodies. One day a friend of mine of Oriental blood, took chloroform, and described his sensations.
He said he felt himself whirling round and round in ever diminishing circles, when at last he perceived a small round hole through which he darted and became oblivious.
I believe the action of anesthetics is to entrance the man. On one occasion, after taking chloroform for the relief of an intense pain, I distinctly found myself outside my body.
It is a fact well known to physicians that certain feeble and diseased persons will tell you that they get no good sleep, but only horrid and disgusting dreams, and that when they awake in the morning they are weaker and more tired than when they went to bed. This I would explain by suggesting that in sleep they merely reach the portal, as it were, and there become infested or possessed by the low spirits prowling about; and hence the myth of the vampyre. Some mediums would appear to be' in an analogous position; their bodies are unstrung, and their mental powers become somewhat soluble; and although, in a scientific point of view, it is interesting to know that the clothes of Dr. Monck rot quickly, yet this contrasts curiously with what we are told of the children of Israel, who, after wandering forty years in the desert, “yet was their raiment not worn, nor the shoes waxed old on their feet.”*
Physical mediums are generally more or less feeble, but of angels we read that “they excel in strength.”
But the wholesome and good man or woman who falls asleep after a good day’s work, passes rapidly through the doorway and ascends beyond the reach of these evil spirits and vampires. If so, it must be a matter of profound importance to our bodily and spiritual health that we, especially when we are composing ourselves to sleep, allow no evil food to vex the body, or evil thoughts to perplex the mind.
“Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath,” † but in prayer commend the keeping of your spirit to your Father, who is in heaven. In this light, those who have watched the loveliness of the innocent little child asleep will be able to feel the pathetic power of Christ’s words, when he says of these little ones, “Verily I say unto you, that the angels do always behold the face of my Father, which is in heaven. ‡
Hence the profound sleep rising into the true spiritual life may become prophetic, and “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” §
Furthermore, that soul which nightly passes into this profound sleep and thus sups with the angels, is nourished by that spiritual food which is the direct antagonist of the decay of this earthly life. The man so nourished may live to a green old age, sleep being, as Shakespeare says, “Sore labour’s bath; balm of hurt minds; chief nourisher in life’s feast.” And here the question presents itself, might it not be true that in the primitive age the Adamite man lived daily on earth, and nightly in Paradise, and thus “making the best of both worlds,” prolonged his life to 1,000 years. The myth of Castor and Pollux each dying daily for the other may be an illustration of this double life.
Some lower races of men may be illustrations of Mr. Darwin’s theory of development from the ape, and, if so, such races may be destined to become extinct. Not so the Adamite man, formed of the clay of the ground, in whom the breath of God created a living soul. ||
Does this myth not suggest that possibly the Adamite man was a materialised angel, and who gradually fell more j and more under the dominion of matter and his own lusts and putrescences?
It may be so; but, if so, man being, nevertheless, a spiritual child of God, has that within him which, if sought, will be found; and will be sought and must be found, and again resurrect the inhabitants of this earth to their former angelical condition.
Spiritual phenomena, although to me they are chiefly interesting in a psychological and scientific point of view, must yet, in a religious point of view, be regarded with the profoundest respect; not because there is anything in our ordinary stances which leads to this, but because, if we contemplate the subject in its relation to matter, we at once arrive at the conviction that materialism is a vulgar superstition, as our Mr. Harrison has put it; and yet this materialism is the outcome of the science of the nineteenth century. But science means knowledge, and the highest science is the knowledge of what man is, and of this divine science the materialist is as ignorant as a savage.
True Spiritualism is the highest of all the sciences, because it reveals to us a knowledge of the world which now is, and that which is to come, demonstrating that the spirit of man is supreme over matter, and therefore immortal.
We are told in the Bible that those who live the life shall <... continues on page 4-111 >
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Editor's notes
- ↑ image by unknown author
* Deut. Xxix. 5.
† Eph. Iv. 26.
‡ Matt xviii. 10.
§ Joel ii. 28.
|| Gen. ii, 7.