Part 9

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.

There was in it just enough left of the mind which had made it man--just enough to catch a fitful glimpse now and then of the horror of its own state. It had no desire to escape, but the very consciousness of the impossibility of escape was an added torment. And dread was in the eyes of the thing--dread of the future into which it could not look, but which it felt waiting to drag it into that state of even greater suffering than its present, when the astral particles of its form, unable longer to hold together because of the absence of the unifying soul, would begin to rend and tear what was left of the mind and astral nerves--rending and tearing asunder, in terror and pain, that shape whose end was at hand.

For only the soul endures, and that which the soul deserts must perish and disintegrate.

And the young man who leaned on the bar in that gilded palace of gin was filled with a nameless horror and sought to leave the place; but the arms of the thing that was now his master clutched him tighter and tighter, the sodden, vaporous cheek was pressed closer to his, the desire of the vampire creature aroused an answering desire in its victim, and the young man demanded another glass.

Verily, earth and hell are neighbouring states, and the frontier has never been charted.

I have seen hells of lust and hells of hatred; hells of untruthfulness, where every object which the wretched dweller tried to grasp turned into something else which was a denial of the thing desired, where truth was mocked eternally and nothing was real, but everything--changing and uncertain as untruthfulness--became its own antithesis.

I have seen the anguished faces of those not yet resigned to lies, have seen their frantic efforts to clutch reality, which melted in their grasp. For the habit of untruthfulness, when carried into this world of shifting shapes, surrounds the untruthful person with ever-changing images which mock him and elude.

Would he see the faces of his loved ones? The promise is given, and as the faces appear they turn into grinning furies. Would he grasp in memory the prizes of ambition? They are shown to be but disgrace in another form, and pride becomes weak shame. Would he clasp the hand of friendship? The hand is extended--but in its clutch is a knife which pierces the vitals of the liar without destroying him, and the futile attempt begins again, over and over, until the uneasy conscience is exhausted.

Beware of deathbed repentance and its after-harvest of morbid memories. It is better to go into eternity with one’s karmic burdens bravely carried upon the back, rather than to slink through the back door of hell in the stockinged-feet of a sorry cowardice.

If you have sinned, accept the fact with courage and resolve to sin no more; but he who dwells upon his sins in his last hour will live them over and over again in the state beyond the tomb.

Every act is followed by its inevitable reaction; every cause is accompanied by its own effect, which nothing--save the powerful dynamics of Will itself--can modify; and when Will modifies the effect of an antecedent cause, it is always by setting up a counteracting and more powerful cause than the first--a cause so strong that the other is irresistibly carried along with it, as a great flood can sweep a trickling stream of water from an open hose-pipe, carrying the hose-pipe cause and its trickling effect along with the rushing torrent of its own flood.

If you recognise the fact that you have sinned, set up good actions more powerful than your sins, and reap the reward for those.

There is much more to be said about hells, but this is enough for to-night. At another time I may return to the subject.

LETTER XXXVII

AN EMPTY CHINA CUP

IT is no wonder that children, no matter how old and experienced their souls, have to be retaught in each life the relative values of all things according to the artificial standards of the world; for out here those values lose their meaning.

That a soul had houses, lands, and honours among men does not increase his value in our eyes. We cannot hope to profit by his discarded riches. The soul in the “hereafter” builds its own house, and the materials thereof are free as air. If I use the house which another has built, I miss the enjoyment of creating my own.

There is nothing worth stealing out here, so no one trembles for fear of burglars in the night. Even bores can be escaped by retiring to the very centre of oneself, for a bore is himself too self-centred ever to pierce to the centre of anyone else.

On earth you value titles, inherited or acquired; here a man’s name is not of much importance even to himself, and a visiting-card would be lost through the cracks in the floor of heaven. No footman angel would ever deliver it to his Lord and Master.

One day I met a lady recently arrived. She had not been here long enough to have lost her assurance of superiority over ordinary men and angels. That morning I had on my best Roman toga, for I had been reliving the past; and the lady, mistaking me for Cæsar or some other ancient aristocrat, asked me to direct her to a place where gentlewomen congregated.

I was forced to admit that I did not know of any such resort; but as the visitor seemed lonely and bewildered, I invited her to rest beside me for a time and to question me if she wished.

“I have been here several months,” I said, “and have gained considerable experience.”

It was plain to see that she was puzzled by my remark. She glanced at my classical garment, and I could feel her thinking that there was something incongruous between it and my assertion that I had been here only a few months.

“Perhaps you are an actor,” she said.

“We are all actors here,” I replied.

This seemed to puzzle her more than ever, and she said that she did not understand. Poor lady! I felt sorry for her, and I tried my best to explain to her the conditions under which we live.

“You must know in the first place,” I said, “that this is the land of realised ideals. Now a man who has always desired to be a king can play the part up here if he wishes to, and no one will laugh at him; for each spirit has some favourite dream which he acts out to his own satisfaction.

“We have, madam,” I continued, “reacquired the tolerance and the courtesy of children who never ridicule one another’s play.”

“Is heaven merely a play-room?” she asked, in a shocked tone.

“Not at all,” I answered; “but you are not in heaven.”

Her look of apprehension caused me immediately to add:

“Nor are you in hell, either. What was your religion upon the earth?”

“Why, I professed the usual religion of my country and station; but I never gave it much thought.”

“Perhaps the idea of purgatory is not unfamiliar to you.”

“I am not a papist,” she said, with some warmth.

“Nevertheless, a papist in your position would conceive himself to be in purgatory.”

“I am certainly not happy,” she admitted, “because everything is so strange.”

“Have you no friends here?” I inquired.

“I must have many acquaintances,” she said; “but I never cared for intimate friendships. I used to entertain a good deal; my husband’s political position demanded it.”

“Perhaps there is someone on this side to whom you were specially kind at some time or other, someone whose grief you helped to bear, whose poverty you eased.”

“I patronised our organised charities.”

“I fear that sort of help is too impersonal to be remembered here. Have you no children?”

“No.”

“No brothers or sisters on this side?”

“I quarrelled with my only brother for marrying beneath him.”

“But surely,” I said, “you must have had a mother. Was she not waiting for you when you came over?”

“No.”

This surprised me, for I had been told that all mother spirits who have not gone back to the world know by a peculiar thrill when a child to which they have given birth is about to be reborn into the spiritual world--a sort of sympathetic after-pain, the final and sweetest reward of motherhood.

“Then she must have reincarnated,” I said.

“Do you hold to that pagan belief?” the lady inquired, with just a touch of superiority. “I thought that only queer people, Theosophists and such, believed in reincarnation.”

“I was always queer,” I admitted. “But you know, of course, dear madam, that about three-quarters of the earth’s inhabitants are familiar with that theory in some form or other.”

We continued our talk for a little time, and meanwhile I was puzzling my heart as to what I could do to help this poor lonely woman, for whom no one was waiting. I passed in mental review this and that ministering angel of my acquaintance, and wondered which of them would be considered most correct from the conventional earthly point of view. The noblest of them was usually at the side of some newly arrived unfortunate woman--to use a euphemism of that polite society which my latest _protégée_ had frequented. The others were here, there, and everywhere, but generally with those souls who needed them most; while the need of my present companion was more real than urgent. If Lionel had been here, he might have entertained her for a while.

I wished that I had cultivated the acquaintance of some of those ladies who crochet and gossip in this world as they crocheted and gossiped in yours. Do not be shocked. Did you fancy that a lifelong habit could be laid aside in a moment? As women on earth dream often of their knitting, so they do here. It is as easy to knit in this world as it is to dream in yours.

Understand that the world in which I now live is no more essentially sacred than is the world in which you live, nor is it any more mysterious to those who dwell in it. To the serious soul all conditions are sacred--except those that are profane, and both are found out here as well as on the earth.

But to return to the lonely woman. I was still wondering what I should do with her when, looking up, I saw the Teacher approaching. He had with him another woman, as like the first as one empty china cup is like another empty china cup. Then he and I went away and left the two together.

“I did not know,” I said to the Teacher, “that you troubled yourself with any souls but those of considerable development.”

He smiled:

“It was your perplexity which I came to relieve, not that of those poor ladies.”

Then he began to talk to me about relative values.

“In a sense,” he said, “one soul is as much worth helping as another; in a deeper sense, perhaps it is not. Do not think that I am indifferent to the sufferings of the weakest ones because I give my time and attention to the strong. Like the ministering angels, I go where I am most needed. Only the strong ones can learn what I have to teach. The weak ones are the charges of the Messiahs and their followers. But, nevertheless, between us and the Messiahs there is brotherhood and there is mutual understanding. Each works in his own field. The Messiahs help the many; we help the few. Their reward in love is greater than ours; but we do not work for reward any more than they do. Each follows the law of his being.

“To be loved by all men a teacher must be known to all men, and we reveal ourselves only to a few chosen ones. Why do we not go the way of the Messiahs? Because the balance must be maintained. For every great worker in the sight of men there is another worker out of sight. Which kind of teacher is of greater value? The question is out of order. The North and the South are interdependent, and there are two poles to every magnet.”

LETTER XXXVIII

WHERE TIME IS NOT

I THINK you now understand from what I have said that not all the souls who have passed the airy frontier are either in heaven or hell. Few reach an extreme, and most live out their allotted period here as they lived out their allotted period on earth, without realising either the possibilities or the significance of their condition.

Wisdom is a tree of slow growth; the rings around its trunk are earthly lives, and the grooves between are the periods between the lives. Who grieves that an acorn is slow in becoming an oak? It is equally unphilosophical to feel that the truth which I have endeavoured to make you understand--the truth of the soul’s great leisure--is necessarily sad. If a man were to become an archangel in a few years’ time, he would suffer terribly from growing-pains. The Law is implacable, but it often seems to be kind.

Nevertheless there are many souls in heaven, and there are many heavens, of which I have seen a few.

But do not fancy that most people go from place to place and from state to state as I do. The things which I describe to you are not exceptional; but that one man should be able to see and describe so many things is exceptional indeed. I owe it largely to the Teacher. Without his guidance I could not have acquired so rich an experience.

Yes, there are many heavens. Last night I felt the yearning for beauty which sometimes came to me on earth. One of the strangest phenomena of this ethereal world is the tremendous attraction by sympathy--the attraction of events, I mean. Desire a thing intensely enough, and you are on the way to it. A body of a feather’s weight moves swiftly when propelled by a free will.

I felt a yearning for beauty, which is a synonym for heaven. Did I really move from my place, or did heaven come to me? I cannot say, _space means so little here_. For every vale without there is a vale within. We desire a place, and we are there. Perhaps the Teacher could give you a scientific explanation of this, but I cannot at the moment. And then, I want to tell you about that heaven where I was last night. It was so beautiful that the charm of it is over me still.

I saw a double row of dark-topped trees, like cypresses, and at the end of this long avenue down which I passed was a softly diffused light. Somewhere I have read of a heaven lighted by a thousand suns, but my heaven was not like that. The light as I approached it was softer than moonlight, though clearer. Perhaps the light of the sun would shine as softly if seen through many veils of alabaster. Yet this light seemed to come from nowhere. It simply was.

As I approached I saw two beings walking towards me, hand in hand. There was such a look of happiness on their faces as one never sees on the faces of earth. Only a spirit unconscious of time could look like that.

I should say that these two were man and woman, save that they seemed so different from what you understand by man and woman. They did not even look at each other as they walked; the touch of the hand seemed to make them so much one, that the realisation of the eye could have added nothing to their content. Like the light which came from nowhere, they simply were.

A little farther on I saw a group of bright-robed children dancing among flowers. Hand in hand in a ring they danced, and their garments, which were like the petals of flowers, moved with the rhythm of their dancing limbs. A great joy filled my heart. They, too, were unconscious of time, and might have been dancing there from eternity, for all I knew. But whether their gladness was of the moment or of the ages had no significance for me or for them. Like the light, and like the lovers who had passed me hand in hand, they were, and that was enough.

I had left the avenue of cypresses and stood in a wide plain, encircled by a forest of blossoming trees. The odours of spring were on the air, and birds sang. In the centre of the plain a great circular fountain played with the waters, tossing them in the air, whence they descended in feathery spray. An atmosphere of inexpressible charm was over everything. Here and there in this circular flower-scented heaven walked angelic beings, many or most of whom must some time have been human. Two by two they walked, or in groups, smiling to themselves or at one another.