Section 19

Succeeding reply, on the part of the Umbratile, divested itself of just a particle of pleasantry, not enough, however, to deny frame to a mental rejoinder not unlike the following : *' Good E of the Cabalistic Zodiac, or, better still. Ego of Philo, the matter of choice to be settled between you, is your servant, while impressionable, not at the same time knowledg- able as to optical delusions as these relate with eye, nerve-tract, tubercula quadrigemina, and even with that extreme retreat in the brain poetized by the ancients as the habitation of the soul, and materialized by the moderns as the seat of particles of sand."
Naturally there came to mind remembrance of writing seen upon the plaster of the wall by the king of Babylon,* — the fatal pronouncement, ''Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," — as well memory of words heard by him of Tarsus, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
* "In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote."
"SEEING WHATr
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me?" Neither did the moment fail in bringing to mind that declaration by Alexandrians, that on three different occasions Plotinus found himself in company with the God. Still other things came to the Umbra- tile in shape of passing visions to be secured through hashish eating, through the use of opium, and con- cerning that less agreeable class of unreal realities familiar to a mania-a-potuist.
. . . The experiences of a night are to be written out exactly as they occurred. Even Occultism fails to antagonize sleep. The Umbratile, after an hour or two, found the curious mastered by the somnolent. Now came a dream, not a vision. After the manner of a dream was beheld an oblong square showing three separated sprays of lilies. The drawing represents ac- curately what was seen :
tolp*^
As the Umbratile looked wonderingly at this symbol, seeing as little meaning as with the preceding experi- ence, explanation projected itself as a Jack might spring from its box. The word was "Hypostases," and the association implied that the separate sprays or groups stood for the three parts of which a man is con- stituted, namely. Matter, Ego, Holy Ghost ; that it is left with men which they will most cultivate, and thus become most like unto, — that is, whether they will be Material, Selfish, or Godly.
I as SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
In his dream the Urabratile fixed his gaze ear- nestly— it may have been by accident, or it may have been out of intuition — on the spray representing the Holy Ghost. As he continued to look this developed little by little into a fulness of bloom which trans- formed the flower into a size and whiteness such as he had never before beheld. The other two sprays with- ered and shrunk away correspondingly.
. . . When the morning came the Umbratile wrote down that, in a dream, he had learned the meaning of differences which characterize men, and as well that he had been given the secret of creating differences.
But when the morning came, nothing of the
meaning of the couplet was seen by the Umbratile, nor for a whole year afterwards.
THE WRITING UPON THE WALL.
Day, night, the day again ; Yesterday, to-morrow, eternally the same.
But when a year had passed the same some- thing that had brought the couplet brought explana- tion. The manner of the bringing was possessed here, as in the preceding illustration, of suddenness and ful- ness. This time the form was that of a syllogism, — a syllogism so absolutely undeniable and irrefutable in
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premises and conclusion as it is accepted by the Um- bratile, that, if it be broken or breakable, one life at least will give itself up as deadness and failure.
Here is the syllogism. Let none but the great scholars or the divine men assume that a simple single reading gives understanding of it. The Umbratile reads it over every day. Every day it shows itself more and more plainly to him as the school of fate. Every day it shows more and more of the palimpsestic quality, having beneath its words other words. Here are the heaven, hell, life, death of the Umbratile.
The syllogism :
That which is perpetual is Eternal.
Now, is perpetual.
Conclusion :
Eternal and Now are one.
No duty, no responsibility lying apart from a
Now that is. Present one with the ever-existing eternity ; present always present ; now an eternal now.
All that is seeable, all that is doable, all that is
requirable lying immediately with and around a Now that is. — Yesterday gone; to-morrow not come; a thousand years back gone j a thousand years hence not come.
— — Can a man work or think in any yesterday? Can he work or think in any to-morrow that is with- out existence ? Certitude indeed ! Duty plain. Ar- canum openness. Nothing to concern, nothing to understand but what is directly at hand; the earthly at hand, hell at hand, heaven at hand.
The Now being what it is. Being exactly what
a man makes it ! Degraded senses seeing, tasting.
ipo SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
smelling the cess-pools. Senses lifted up, feeling the touch of celestials ; hearing the music of Elysium.
Summum bonum, the highest good. Man his own heaven maker and his own hell maker. Man his own lifter up and his own puller down. Man a maker and an unmaker. The relativity of good and evil under- stood and appreciated.
Comprehending that the garden of the gods
may not be separated from the cess-pools farther than the other side of a road. Apprehending that God, the Universal, is one with God the multitudinous; that he is one with the Divinity found residing in men.
Just here news of the "death" of a near relative. What a misnomer to call that death which is simply metamorphosis ! Is the Umbratile to darken his shade into black by the putting on of crape ? Is he to bewail a worm passed into a butterfly? Is he to be oblivious when he looks on a locust-shell with a rent down its back? Rather let him put on white. Rather let him rejoice in presence of an invisible materialization that has made crooked fingers straight and has smoothed out a wrinkled skin. Who can fly when the means of movement lie with feet ? Who can sing the songs of the spheres when the voice lies in a rough windpipe ? Who can commune with angels when the stature holds on a level with men ?
Has that which has been so long expected come
at this particular time to an end of furnishing vivid illustration ? An hour ago the Umbratile and his dual stood looking down on a body that once was rounded and warm and full of motion ; now it is shrunken and
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cold and empty of vitality. Remembrance carries back when there were beautiful white teeth, and eye- lids that never opened but to disclose love and smiles. There were refined dressings of the body, and there were dainty steps deficient in no figure of the dance.
For years only few and straggling teeth. For
years eyelids disclosing the shrunken orbs of a con- sumptive. For years steps too weary for aught but dragging from chair to bed. For years a body strug- gling to liberate the Ego within it.
Liberation now accomplished. A heavy load gotten clear of. A chain broken. An immortal come to wings. An immortal come to new and fresh em- bodiment ; to celestial environment ; to voice un- roughened by windpipe j to lightness which floats with clouds.
— — New position to be occupied ; new duties to be assumed. Position and duties in accord with Law which is one with Providence. Fitness for fresh life, adaptability to altered purposes. An Ego that has won for itself other planes and that goes higher.
An Ego which is what it was, is, and will be.
An Ego that has left fitting work for work still more fitting. An Ego that has worn out a body and that passes into other body. An Ego that looks out of the intangible ; itself seeing, itself unseen.
Let windows be thrown widely open. Let flowers be scattered. Let music appeal to the bereaved in glorious anthem. Let steps which accompany the corpse tread to the measure of a dance song.
Greetings ! not farewell, departed one. Departed, yet present. Gone into the eternity, staying in time.
192
SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
Seeing What ? — Seeing the practical application of the hypostases as it is to be trusted the reader sees it.
First as to the dream.
Difference between the muscles of a prize-fighter and •the God in Christ distinguished as residing solely with cultivation of different parts of a common hypostases ; all mystery taken away from religion ; cultivation of the religious as easy as the cultivation of muscle.
Second, as to the vision.
Here a culmination, an ending, that carries back to an unappreciated long-ago beginning as found in an old diary.
Alas ! for much of what there is between ;
Yet hail ! as to much of what there is between.
How dog-eared is the dingy manuscript ! How scrawlingly the words are written ! How disregardful are the lines of everything save experiences ! Written more than forty years back. Forty years which have covered a marsh with ship-yards. Forty years which have killed off and buried the bodies of willow-strip- pers. Forty years which have turned cow-pastures into city streets, and which have made breaches in the church-yard wall, separating mouldering coffins with their ghastly contents from luxurious Pullman cars hurrying along their richly-endowed occupants, — hur- rying along the occupants ; where to ? to what place ? to what end ? Forty years ! forty years ! The old graveyard full, the old lanes obliterated, the old people gone.
Alas!
Let a copy of the diary be made exactly as it is found written; "To-day is a birthday; fifteen years
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193
old. Going aimlessly about a marsh which borders the * * * * just outside the low wall of the Swedes' burying-ground, nobody being in sight, I heard dis- tinctly a voice directly at my ear say, — here the com- mon individuality grasps the pen ; it is not self-re- specting nor independent enough to have repeated what was said at the marsh. ..."
Upon succeeding pages appears the following : " I have been telling of the odd thing that happened down at the marsh yesterday. Mostly it is laughed at. Somebody said something of * imagination running away with wits.' This last hits it, I guess. Yet, how- ever and whatever it is, I did hear a voice, and I know that nobody was within sight. Associating this with other things, I may conclude that I am a trifle ofl" or odd. People are forever asking what it is I see as I lie under trees looking into the sky. Well, I see and I don't see. I surely never before heard a voice as yes- terday. The bell of the old church says to me what it doesn't say to other people; this I am sure of. I am afraid of ghosts, but to save a soul I can't stay away from vaults when they are to be opened. I should like of all things — that is, if the thing were over — to have the experience of having been locked in a vault over night along with bodies and coffins."
"... What a curious story is that I read last night about the old German Rosenkreuz ! I take to it. It is exactly the kind of thing that seems to fit me. Let me see : it was night before last, and not last night, that I read the story. Wonder if it could have any- thing to do with the voice? Why not this a ghost- voice, having something to say to me ? It is said^ I « 17
194 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
everybody says — that spirits are to be met by dozens
in the church-lane about midnight. I never met one
myself; but why not?
*******
"I have gone over again, crudely, however, I im- agine, that story of the Rosicrucians, and I have deter- mined to be one myself. It is not making money out of lead, which I find to be the meaning of the Philoso- pher's stone, that I care about, but these people seem to me to have got hold of some high thing which no- body that I know knows anything about. Here every- body is at work all the time, ship-building, or fitting out the whalers, or in the foundries, or upon the farms around the town. My own way of wandering about, shirking the dulness of school, sleeping on the shady side of walls, fishing the ditches, or helping, without pay, at willow-stripping in the season, — well, I like it, and I don't care. I guess it's a kind of natural start in this Rosicrucianism. The old graveyard is crowded with dead people. Some of the tombstones must have cost a thousand dollars, and some of the old sunk-in graves are not worth more than about ten cents, yet the bodies seem to lie as comfortably with the one kind as with the other. I think there must be something better for some people, anyhow, than foundries and whalers and stone-quarrying, and all that kind of thing, and I am going to look into the matter.
" I like, too, to pray. I am praying all the time. I pray lying under the walls, and by the side of the tree- roots, and the livelong day when fishing the ditches. Yet I don't like the praying at the meeting-houses; there's too much begging about it. I wonder if a boy
THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 195
couldn't make a Spiritus Sanctus for himself. I know every cave and rock and deep place among the trees about the * * * for five miles beyond where its waters join the * * * near the old church. Maybe place is no matter, however. I feel myself full to the lips and running over with a glory that seems not more inside than outside of me. I bubble over with the happiness of living. I wish that I could spend the whole of a very long life dreaming by the side of the walls, fishing the ditches, and peeling willow wands."
4^ *J* •!* *l* *f* 1* •!•
The next extract to be made that relates with the present epistle is dated ten years later. The interim is remembered by the now Umbratile dual as a dis- agreeable nightmare. Every opportunity permitted to become classical in learning ; no teacher found power- ful or enthused enough to compel or to invite to a life outside of self; a nightmare only, however, because of missed advantages. Fool things permitted to delay progress. The coming to consciousness of indwelling devils, yet not strangling them while they were little. Shifting from meditation to trade, and from trade back to meditation. Dazed by the glamour of dollars. Like unto a fly, getting one's legs caught in molasses. Making scars which show more and more with age, and which are apt to break out. Going not at all straightforward, but scenting about the fleshpots.
Not all contrariwise, however. A profession secured which marks the beginning of a new start ; a new start never interfered with save as delays are compelled by breaking out of the scars, and as obstacles are found
1^6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
put in the way by devils grown big. Not, however, become oblivious to the glory that the world puts on. Still a constant utterer of prayers. Still a tryer of wings, — which do not bear up, however, as once they did.
The extract is exactly as follows : " I am writing this in a country inn, where I am staying for the night. On the afternoon of this day I had stolen away from the disquieting influences of the town, being weary, discomforted, and restless; and was lying, after the fashion of boy-times, stretched full-length upon the sands of a cove bordering the * * * River, the place being not very far from * * * on the op- posite side, when suddenly I was startled into rap- turous ecstasy by hearing such music as I did not im- agine could exist for the entrancing of human ears. The song, while familiar, was at the same time won- drously new, and seemed to be sung by a choir of voices somersaulting in the air. Before me was a wide and long stretch of the stream, free from boat or sight of life of any kind ; while behind and below and above unshaded fields were witness to the absence of human beings. Full fifteen minutes the song went on in the air. Full fifteen minutes lay I captivated, straining now the sense of hearing to catch a faint sound losing itself in an illimitable distance, a moment later crowd- ing with open palms the ear-drums to keep a mighty roll and swell of volume from crushing them in.
*' The day has been as a revelation and a revolution. Let me put down, for sweet remembrance and for delectation, what to-night I am thinking and feeling. The voice of the marsh is back in my ears. Portals
THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. i^^