< Communicating Spirits: Their Claims to Recognition (continued from page 12-83) >
What theory have those to offer who disbelieve this, as to what follows behind the veil when the dreadful silence of death suddenly stills all the feverish vivacity of this life? (Of course I except such as are so amazingly credulous as to suppose this life the limit of human existence.) What has become of the love that day and night merged all self-interest in devotion to the happiness of another; of ambition that pursued its objects, noble or ignoble, with unresting energy; of intelligence ardently bent on applying some discovery of truth to the good of the human race?
To think that the severing of flesh and bones and blood from the focus of forces like these alters their direction, is surely to stultify the mind with a superstition quite as gross as any that leads to terror from the proximity of disembodied Spirits. I have under my hand many score of detailed communications from Spirits inter-audited,—if one may coin a word for the occasion—and the concurrence of their testimony is overwhelming as to the eagerness with which they make themselves known, the evidently characteristic peculiarities of habit and thought they betray, and the life-like simplicity of their revelations;—revelations. of what had happened to them before death, or in dying, never beyond the vaguest generalities as to present state. Eliphaz Levi is quite justified in saying that revelations as to the unseen world are not gained by evocation of Spirits: and this I think is explained by what has already been cited from Swedenborg regarding memory. When that which in the Spirit-world is quiescent rouses again, the conditions of consciousness are probably as different as those of a person in trance and out of it. The secrets of death are kept from ago to age, and by these very people who have most importunately clamoured at the threshold of the hidden world for some faintest intimation of what befel those who went before. One by one all pass beyond ken and the mystery remains; no doubt because its key is incommunicable.
Again Eliphaz Levi says: “Les Lines des morts ne sont done pas autour de nous, comme le supposent les tourneurs de tables. Ceux que nous aimons peuvent nous voir encore et nous apparaitre, mais seulement par mirage ct par reflet dans le miroir common qui est la lumiere.” (“Histoire de la Haute Magic,” p. 114.)*
Leaving on one side for the moment the question of where they are, I accept this conclusion of his only so far that, unless our spirits are in harmony with theirs, we probably do not fall within range of their vision. For instance, if in loving peace themselves, they cannot, I suppose, perceive us in our angry, troubled moods (though they may miss our unison with their dominant feeling); and this on the same grounds that Böhme declares evil Spirits to be unable to see ours when they are quieted by love and humility, because, as a rule, Spirits have no perceptions beyond their own “principle” or internal world. But when we approach the question of where they are who have vanished from our life, dogmatism is peculiarly impertinent. Few writers have indulged in it with more impressive weight than William Law, on precisely this point—the fate of the dead; and I must confess that his revered teacher Böhme occasionally supports the hypothesis I find so untenable, that at the death of the body no light of our sun can remain to the Spirit—that unless the light of eternal life is kindled by regeneration before decease, the Spirit finds itself in darkness.
“The light and spirit of this world,’’ Law says, in his admirable “Appeal to those who Doubt,” (chap. 1, p. 106), “can no more be the light and spirit of immortal souls than grass and hay can be the food of angels, but are as different from the light and spirit of Heaven as an angel is different from the beast of the fields. When, therefore, the soul of a man departs from his body, and is internally cut off from all temporal light and spirit, what is it that can keep such a soul from falling into eternal darkness, unless it has in itself that light and spirit which are of the same nature with the light and spirit' of eternity?”
By pressing home the horror of this solo alternative, Law really drives a thoughtful reader to seek some escape from his conclusions. It is found in the pages of his “blessed, inspired Böhme,” though, as I have said, he now and then speaks of this alternative with as little qualification; for example in his “Three Principles” (chap. 14, par. 12).
“The soule hath no light in itself of its own, it must borrow its light from the sunne; which indeed springeth up along with it in its birth; but that is corruptible, and the home of the soule is not so; and, it is seen that when a man dyeth it” (the light) “goeth out, and if then the divine light be not again generated in the centre, then the soule remaineth in eternal darkness.” But in another of his books he says: “All things of this world have a twofold body, viz., an elementall from the fire, aire, water, and earth; and a spiritual body from the astrum; and likewise a twofold spirit, viz.: one astral, the other elementall. Man only among all the earthly creatures hath a threefold body and spirit.”..
“This third body is from the water of the holy element which died in Adam, that is, disappeared as to his life, when the Divine power departed from him, and would not dwell in the awaked vanity. Which holy body must be regenerated if his spirit will see God, otherwise he cannot see him” (“Mysterium Magnum,” chap. 11, pars. 19, 20, 21), adding a few lines further on: “The sydereall body is the highest excepting the divine in man; the elementall body is only its servant or dwelling-house.” Now what reason is there to conclude that this “sydereall body” is necessarily shut off from the light of the sun by losing its external husklike organization? The very name given to it by Böhme would suggest that in our planetary system it was in its proper home; and in our total ignorance to speak as if this inner body died at the crisis we call death, for the sake of impressing the conscience, is as inexpedient for what is called “edification” as in the abstract it is rash and unwise, and to my thinking most dishonouring to the Creator and the Redeemer of man; for if W. Law’s conclusion is accepted, that total, hopeless darkness is inevitable after dissolution for the unregenerate, then Christ has not been victor over sin and death. For as we all know, true regeneration in this life is not the ride; it is most obviously and undeniably the exception.
Surely nothing more discredits religious argument than rhetoric, and to try and enhance the value of present blessings by ignoring the possibility of their continuance for a period after death, is perilous to even the faith it is employed to support. Especially must it be so when, as of late years, a series of destructive catastrophes have swept hundreds of our fellow creatures at every age out of this life without an instant of premonitory warning. To surviving mourners it must be almost impossible to believe that to all of these the immediate alternative was the light of the heavenly world or the darkness of a state which has neither the sunlight of cur own, nor that Light by which every created sun is kindled.
Now I submit that an astral body is presumably open to astral light, and that so long as this lasts the light of sun, moon, and stars would reach it. And believing this, I in no wise make light of the loss of eternal light, but I am spared the horrible and amazing fancy that the thousands who hourly slip away from the fragile outer body, totally blind to that supernal light, are at once plunged into irremediable darkness.
Still, the alternative is but put off; and is so terrific that once duly to apprehend all it moans of possible damnation (no torments inflicted by an external Deity, but the infinite woe of a godless immortal) would be to give priceless value to every hour of present life. Here we can still break the evil will; we have instrumental moans: we can coerce and restrain the body, so often hostile to the Spirit; but when nothing more external to us than our own thoughts and feelings remain, and these all averted by habit from the only sources of undying joy, how shall we recover lost ground? “For a Spirit without a body hath not that might or power as that Spirit which is in the body.’ (Böhme’s. “Forty Questions,” quest. 21, par. 16.)
* “The souls of the dead are not them about us, as the table-turners suppose. Those we love can see us still and appear to us, but only by mirage, and reflection in the common mirror which is light.’’
<Untitled> (Nirvana...)
Nirvana.—The Encyclopedia Britannica gives the following definition of this word:—“Happy seat, the excellent external; place of bliss, where there is no death or decay; the end of Buffering; the homo of peace; the other side of the ocean of existence; the shore of salvation; the harbour of refuge; the medicine for all ills; the transcendant; the tranquil state; the truth; the infinite; the inseparable; the everlasting.”
“The Fowler-Cumberland Challenge, which has, since its promulgation, acted (through extensive advertisement) as a perfect extinguisher to the absurd pretensions of the would-be exposers (?) of Spiritualism in the British Isles, has as yet failed of acceptance by any of these gentry. A late number of the London ‘Licht’ states that Bishop (the “Old South Savor”), has come out with a manifesto which he would like to have it understood is an acceptance, but his terms are so wide of those of the original challenge, that the true status of his manifesto as a piece of effrontery has been assigned it by all who have any real knowledge of the matter under discussion,”—Banner of Light.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Nirvana... by unknown author, Light, v. 2, No. 56, January 28, 1882, p. 40
Sources
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Light, v. 2, No. 56, January 28, 1882, p. 40