Brodie-Innes J.W. - Concerning Devachan

“It is a pleasant dream for us who live yet on the earth that those we loved who have gone before us should still be able to keep watch and ward over us.”

“Why call it a dream?” queried my companion, gently.

“Because”, I said, “we must needs think that the pure spirits pass away from all contact with the meanness and misery of this earth to a state of blissful rest, for a time at least.”

“But there are those who have seen and talked with their beloved dead”, she replied, with a strange gleam in her large serious eyes.

“You are not a spiritualist surely?” I said.

“No!” she answered, “not in the common acceptation. It is beyond my power to believe that an immortal spirit could condescend to play vulgar tricks with tea-tables to amuse a Clapham circle at the bidding of a Yankee Medium, hired at so much an hour. Whatever these phenomena mean, I am confident they do not mean that, but I am equally confident that our dead friends are near us always, and if it is good for us to be so we are aware of their presence. That is to say, if it is good for us we become sufficiently sensitive to perceive them, and if it is not good for us we do not, and in the latter case communications which cannot be made directly will never be made indirectly, least of all by a medium plying his trade for lucre, though sometimes perhaps the friendly aid of a hypnotizer may hasten the sensitizing of our consciousness.”

“But is it not a cruel theory, that would doom the emancipated spirit, while hastening to the rest and peace its earth-life has earned, to witness all the degradation, the sorrow, and the sin of this planet, especially of those whom it loved so well while it was here? The rest of Devachan must pre-suppose that it knows nothing of this.”

“Once I thought so too”, she said, slowly, “I know better now. I have been there.”

It was my turn to stare, and in truth I began to think that some strange hallucination must have clouded my fair friend’s brain. But she went on quite calmly.

“Yes! it was in a vision or dream of course, and it came when I was worn out by long nursing and anxiety or I suppose it would not have come at all. When the body is strong and vigorous one rarely gets beyond its control. You will remember when my dear baby boy was so terribly ill, some time 241ago; he was just over three years old. I never knew clearly what was the matter, or what it was the doctors did; but I know they said that some lotion or other, or dressing, I forget what, must be applied to his back and chest which would be horribly painful, and they told me I had better keep away from the room, out of the house if possible – as if I could! – I told them my nerves were strong enough to bear anything (and so for the time they were) but no power on earth would keep me away from my boy; the reality of it was far worse than I expected – I suffered horribly, as you may fancy – but there was more afterwards, for some lotion had to be applied from time to time, the effect of which would be to renew all the pain on the poor little suffering body, and this I insisted on doing myself, for it was simple enough to do, and I got all my directions and the doctors left. A dreadful night that was you may be sure of weary watching, and trying to soothe the poor little mite to sleep; and at last as he seemed just passing into a quiet sleep came the time when I must apply that cruel burning lotion and wake all the pain again. But I had my work to do, and I did it with unfaltering hand. To my surprise and joy there was not a sign of wincing. ‘Does it hurt badly, darling?’ I whispered to him. ‘Not one bit, mamma’, he said, looking up with his brave blue eyes in my face; and I felt inclined to kneel down and thank God for this great mercy, for every pang on that poor weak body was a tenfold pang to me. But at that moment there flashed on my mind the parting words of the good old doctor. ‘If it doesn’t hurt him very much, it will do no good, and nothing can save him – he must die’. I cannot express in words the sick despair of the thought. I had applied the lotion strictly according to orders, and it did not hurt him. Then the doom was sealed, and my flaxen-haired, blue-eyed cherub must be taken from me, no more to laugh his glad merry welcome in my eyes. Yet there was one more chance. After an hour I was to apply the lotion again. My little one had passed into a quiet sleep. I sat watching the clock with feverish eagerness. Would that hour never pass? At last the time came and once more I applied the lotion, and what music to my ears then was that long, low wail of agony! for it told me that the remedies were doing their work, and that my darling would live – as, thank God! he has lived to grow well and strong with all that cruel illness entirely conquered. I sat with him constantly; no hands but my own used that lotion, and I remember well how the pain it caused was a joy to me, and how by degrees I led the brave boy himself to understand how it was doing him good, till he bore it without a single cry, though the tears stood in his blue eyes with the pain of it. And at last the pain grew less each time, till we left off using it altogether, and then I suppose I collapsed. Anyhow the walls of the nursery seemed to rock and reel and then grow cloudy; and then I seemed to float far away, and the first thing I saw was my brother Jim – you remember poor Jim who went to Australia, and went to the bad – and he seemed to be drinking in a low bar with some vile companions, and I groaned in my heart as I thought of the careless 242handsome boy he had been before he left us. And then like a flash my thought went back and I saw him as he was then; but I saw clearly now through and through him, and in that bright, careless nature I could see the dark spiritual poison – selfishness, and cruelty, and vice – brought over, as I believe, from some previous life, seething away out of sight like a hidden fever in the blood. And a still voice seemed to say: ‘That fever must work out before it can be cured – if it is thrown inwards it will be fatal’. Then again poor Jim came before me as he stood at the low drinking bar, and I saw his spiritual self, but, if I may use a physical analogy, the poison was no longer seething within, but was, as it were, an eruption covering the whole body. And again the still voice said: ‘Now it may be cured; would’st thou see more?’ and I assented; and my eye seemed to look into the future and I saw Jim with a smoking pistol in his hand, and a murdered man lying at his feet. ‘The crisis’, whispered the voice. Then I saw him again, a hunted fugitive, dying a thousand deaths of agony, remorse, and terror, and by some intuitive perception I knew that every pain was a process of cure, till at last he stood on the scaffold and I could see the spiritual form purged from that foul poison, and I knew he left the world a better and nobler man than he came into it, notwithstanding all his crimes and degradation. Some evil Karma had worked itself out in those cruel years of flying from justice.

Then it seemed I passed deeper into trance, and the whole world seemed to me to lie before me like a great hospital, where I with other kindred spirits watched the gradual healing of the sin-sick souls. ‘Canst thou bear to watch their cure?’ said the voice once more. ‘Aye! if the cure be certain’, I replied. ‘I can rejoice in the suffering which works a cure, but what if it do not – what if the soul be lost after all? I could not bear to watch wasted suffering.’ ‘No suffering is wasted’, the voice replied. ‘When the soul is beyond cure it is beyond feeling; it suffers not – in all the universe is no useless pang, all obeys the law of love.’ I thought of my baby-boy, and felt I could rejoice over the pangs that brought such blessed results. ‘Wilt thou then’, said the voice, ‘join this band of spirits – the divine nursing sisters of humanity, as I would call them, and help in the work of curing souls and purging them of their impurities and diseases by aiding the great law of Karma, or will you take the so-called rest of Devachan, where you will be deluded with the dream that your dear ones are all with you, though in actual fact they are at the very moment fulfilling their Karmic destinies in pain and sorrow on the earth?’ I replied without hesitation: ‘Give me the real divine mercy of healing; let me have part in this grand work’.”

“Spoken like a true and noble woman”, was my comment. “Whether your vision be true or a mere dream, it sounds higher, grander, than the sick fancies of sentimentalists.”

J. W. Brodie-Innes, F.T.S.

Footnotes