Section 20

have been again opened. Ah, sharpened ears and sharpening eyes ! Is it any wonder that I cannot keep still ? — that I am turning hastily and continuously, ex- pecting strange sights ? What unwisdom is it to con- found essence with instrument ! How different, as this day I have been permitted to see, are environment and a thing environed ! Hereafter can harp and soft viol be to me nothing apart from media of materializa- tion, affording to unspiritualized ears relation with spiritualized belongings. I distinguish, never to for- get, melody from instrument.
*' No dream ! A watch looked at counting the passing time. — ^Yet what if it were a dream? What difference would this make, as separability of melody and instru- ment has been demonstrated ? Was not music heard ? Was not that character of instrument absent which is the ordinary means of relation with human ears? I know well that there are two sides to an inference. The happy side to me to-night is that my Ego has heard independent of its ordinary sense. If it be true that things exist in the universal independent of man's senses, then it follows that these things are to remain forever hidden in the darkness, as man's knowledge of them is concerned ; otherwise. Ego may receive inde- pendent of its ordinary senses as media. For the first time I comprehend that all music heard before this of the afternoon's experience has been imitation effected by use of reeds, or wire, or other ingenious contrivance. Certainly, the experience renders irrefutable the fact that a state can exist, let it be called hallucina- tion, aural derangement, or dream, or what else, in which a new world is opened within an old one and 17*
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music is recognized to be reality apart from the manner familiar to every-day life.
*' Not unfamiliar with the 'tinnitus aurium,' I am unable to find here explanation of what has been heard. I seek freely and fully, but ' tinnitus' does not account for refinement in variations of notes, as has been enjoyed. I am the happier in that I find myself unable to approach an explanation. My state of mind for the hour is, that whatever this rapture mean, whether health, disease, illumination, darkness, the condition is heavenly, delicious, and I do not want the paradise disturbed. I assume that I have been favored to hear, through some uncommon acci- dent, strains truly celestial, not earthly music, which is microscopically imitative, as pronounced by Rosi- crucianism. There is certainly not less confusion in explaining this phenomenon through the ' tinnitus' than there is in recognizing it to have originated, as taught by learned masters of the Mystic sect, out of impact upon lines or tracks existing in relation with the transit of planetary bodies as these lines, or tracks, or chords have been crossed and acted on by sun-rays.
" This last, transcendentally explanatory of the exist- ence of music, propounded by the Illuminati as filling the world ; bearable, however, by a dematerialized ear only, save in such rare instances as this recorded. Is it not told of John that he beheld seven candlesticks, and that he heard a voice, and is not the truthfulness of this accepted by a church that pronounces its judg- ments infallible ? Are not all Christians bound to believe that Jeremiah was commanded by a mystical voice out of the silence, and is it not heresy to doubt
THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 199
the reality of a voice which called Samuel? These things are to-day become perfectly plain to me. Do I need tradition or church or faith to verify or to con- fuse? Knowing is knowing. Whatever learning or enlarged experience shall have to teach in the future of such things, I accept that there is a relation of es- sence with essence which is not at all relation through intermediate matter.
** Yet, even in this hour of ecstatic consolation,
I may not be oblivious to thoughts that have often enough recurred as to a probable insanity, temporary or otherwise, of characters, be they biblical or others, who hear voices and see sights of occult character. To-night it is given me to see the matter in a different light. Ordinarily the strength and the sight and the perceptions of men pursue the course of a sluggish level: certain weights are liftable, certain adjacent things are seeable, certain character of thoughts are thinkable. Let anger arouse men, or let the stimulus of preliminary ether-anaesthesia be directed to the muscles, and weakness is seen possessed of reserved strength deemed of impossible existence by an ob- server. The lifting of an interposed cloud has shown often enough to a passing traveller scenes never before beheld or dreamed of as existing. It has been wisely taught by Neo-platonists, and is truth known to every godly human, that prayer, meditation, and harmony are means creative of higher and broader views than those associated with the grazing propensity. I am listening to a mental voice which is asking as to the meaning of the inspired hours of the poets, and as to unconstructed edifices beheld in the mirror of the
200 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
mind by the architects. I am recalling what myself have seen in sky-ascending smoke starting out of burn- ing brush-heaps. There come back to me pictures beheld in glowing western clouds. I have in memory lessons pumped into my brain from plashing brooks and out of long-rolling sea-waves.
1 say to myself, in doubt as to being under- stood, What is for self let it remain with self; the veil of Isis down, the veil of Isis up. It is for him to com- prehend who is able to apprehend.
Ad Interim. — Handling maggots where pearls were to be strung ! Life reached to the years of threescore in number showing body cultivated out of all contrast to Ego and Soul. Higher sacrificed to lower. Query ? Things being different, would appreciation of contrast exist as it does to-day ? Remembrance of words and songs heard forty years back, — words and songs hold- ing themselves occult until education has revealed their meaning. Alas ! for a teacher forty years back ! Perhaps not ! Count forty, or forty hundred, years in contrast with Eternity as existing with the Now. Every minute a beginning. Every minute an end- ing. Every minute the beginning of a new ending. Ending and beginning one. The Zuricher is right: **Men do not know themselves, and therefore they do not understand the things that are in their inner world."
Now ONE WITH Perpetual, Perpetual one with Eternal. — Truth being ever the same, it must be ever new. Reference is to be made to passages in the book
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" Man and his World," which book, being, so to speak, a first volume to the present one, invites relation.
Consider, Cebes ! Viewing the universe as a bound- less circumference, which undoubtedly it is, how im- possible is it that centre could be elsewhere than alike anywhere and everywhere, or, conversely, that it should be nowhere ! Again : Defining Eternity as represent- ing absence of beginning or ending, is this else than deciding it an eternal Now ?
You mean, Protagoras, that if a thing have neither be- ginning nor ending it is necessarily without movement ?
Ask yourself, Cebes, if this be not its only possibility. I mean exactly what I say. There has not been, nor can there be, any term, period, or existence that is without a state that has no without, or that is not within a state where there is nothing but within. Consider: We have divisions or measurements which are called hours of the day, and others denominated weeks and months, and still others named years, but what are these save arbitrary distinctions, inherent in a com- mon thing, made by men for sake of convenience? A watch the hands of which do not move is equally right with a running one three times in twenty- four hours, and this it would continue to be so long as a single man might be upon the earth to look at its face.
I think I catch the idea ; you mean, Protagoras, that time being Now, eternity cannot be anywhere else, for the reason that there is no anywhere else?
Look at it after still another manner, Cebes. Eter- nity having as its condition neither beginning nor ending, does it not necessarily follow that everything is within, or between, this no-beginning and no-ending ?
202 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
By the gods, Protagoras, you declare and show that we are now in eternity !
The thing declares and shows itself, Cebes. As- suredly we are now in eternity. Two thousand years ago we were in eternity. We shall be in eternity ever- more, for the reason that there is nowhere else to be.
What strange, yet apparently irrefutable, thing is this you are propounding ? Truly you do not fail to recognize in the showing of the argument life and living going on forever as these now are; that is, man changing into nothing else ?
Whist, Cebes ! he may have wings and fly, or he may be without legs and run. Does not a man retro- grade or advance ?
I mean that he does not, in any individual sense, turn into something else.
Into an Angel, would you say, Cebes ? Why, Soc- rates, according to the telling, has shown how he may metamorphose into the God. For myself, I have seen beneficent seraphs and malignant devils sitting, in the shape of men, on the common seats of a circus.
THE CORNER-STONE IS NOW. To emphasize it, Cebes, let us imagine a pyramid millions of times broader and higher and older than that of Cheops, and let us imagine the stone-cutting instru- ments of all the earth made into one, and in turn let us imagine this instrument forever engaged in cutting and deepening a line reading
"AN ETERNAL NOW." This, Cebes, may faintly express idea of the stupendous significance of the line as it relates with a man's under-
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Standing of himself, and of his relation with the Uni- versal. In application of Oneness as to Now and Eternity is disappearance of confusions of all kinds, together with all mysteries. What could remain to confound, when highest height and lowest depth and greatest length and widest breadth are one with the man standing in their midst ?* Here is no to-morrow to consider, no yesterday to perplex. Here is Oracle with voice ever unmuffled. Here God and devil and heaven and hell are one with a man's self. Attained to understanding of this oneness of Now and Eternity, and of the oneness of man's hypostases with the hypos- tases of the Universal, how insignificant and unim- portant become the disputes of philosophers and the diversities of systems ! Does not even the simple man comprehend that an outside implies inside, or, in turn, inside may not exist separated from outside ? Seeing Now to be one with Eternity, and the hypostases of man to be one with the hypostases of the Universal, is seeing the all.
Concerning this Eternal Now, Protagoras.
It, and its relations, alone remain to be considered. But how say you, Cebes? If a man is not in an Eternal Now, are we to declare that he is not in it ?
It would not be easy to say anything else.
What as to Consciousness ? Would you say that if a man is unconscious he is not conscious ?
This, truly.
And would you say, reversing this, that a man being conscious he is not unconscious ?
* See Idealism : " Man and his World."
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Nothing else is to be said.
How as to oneness of Consciousness and Uncon- sciousness with being or not being?
Assuredly Consciousness is the same as *'to be," while Unconsciousness is one with ** not to be.**
Such being the case, immortality is to be declared one with continuous consciousness ?
Necessarily this.
And we may not say that Consciousness exists else- where than with Consciousness ?
It would be impossible for it to exist save in itself.
How is it just now with Cebes ? is he conscious ?
We have agreed that Ego and Consciousness are identical, and certainly Cebes is Ego.
Then, if a consciousness which is one with Cebes is immortal, that is, if Cebes is immortal by reason of being a conscious existence, this consciousness is to ll continue unbroken ?
^^' Assuredly this.
What continues unbroken is That which Cebes knows as himself? in other words, what continues unbroken is a That which now is ?
This, Protagoras, otherwise there is no present Cebes.
We are, then, agreed that unconsciousness is the reverse of consciousness, the one being identical with non-existence, the other identical with existence?
Quite agreed.
Turning this around, I am to say that we are one in a conclusion that Consciousness is immortal by reason of its being one with Ego, which Ego is an Entity, or simple, the entities, or simples, being pure existences, consequently immortal ?
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In truth, Protagoras, the argument must be held perfect, if doubt is entirely absent as regards the per- sistent nature of an entity.
Are we, then, to opine that doubt is not absent from Cebes?
Pardon, Protagoras,- it is just away. I had momen- tarily overlooked the noumenal nature of the parts composing the hypostases.
To be wanting in appreciation and understanding of the noumena is indeed one with finding nothing in the argument of the hypostases.
But you esteem argument existing in the hypostases unbreakable ?
To break it is one with denying hunger when one is hungry, consciousness when consciousness is present, and God when the construction and rhythm of the world are looked at.
Might it not indeed be said, Protagoras, that proof of it lies with the Self that finds itself asking after proof?
Put it as you please, Cebes, Yourself holds it all. Shall we go on ?
I beg that unnecessary interruption be pardoned.
Let us, then, put the things together. Cebes exists. He exists now. Cebes is Ego. Ego is a simple. Simple is immortal. Cebes is immortal by reason of being a simple. Immortal is one with unbroken ex- istence. Unbroken existence is not possibly else than continuous existence. Ergo, Now and Eternity are one.
I fear, Protagoras, you will scarcely excuse me, but question here offers. Eternity and Now accepted as one, what is gained in replacing a familiar with an unfamiliar term ?
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Your last more than excuses the questions put to- gether. The word Eternity has been made the saddest misnomer of language. It is at one and the same time the bugaboo, the land of promise, the will-o'- the-wisp, and the cheat of mankind.
" Man never is, but always to be blest."
In like manner, he never is, but always to be curst. Now, there not being anything else, or time, or space, save what now is, man is to recognize that he joys or cheats himself always and forever as he relates with a Now that is with him. This he may not get away from. Heed, Cebes ! Compelled to recognize the oneness of Eternity and Now, could it be otherwise than that heaven and hell are with That which alone is ? Might it as well be otherwise than that heaven, or the absence of it, is anything or any place save as it is one with the presence or absence of God in the hypostases ? for surely, as has been before considered, presence of God is identical with existence of heaven. The sprays, Cebes, are become my Zeus, my Christ, my Gautama, my Mencius, my Confucius, my Mahomet, my all of the philosophers and systems of philosophy, my entire and sole religion, my whole knowledge of pain and pleasure, my bad genius in times of tempta- tion, and my good daemon in hours of succor; in a word, this dream of a modern is become my sole lifter-up and puller-down. Heed closely, Cebes: temptation is with Matter; Salvation is with Soul. Ego is chooser. To yield to Matter is to descend ; to cling by Soul is to ascend.
THINGS SAID OVER
IN
OTHER WORDS.
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A ROSICRUCIAN.
Getting farther and farther away from water until one famishes is illustrative of getting farther and farther away from the God until practically he is lost to us.
A friend from whom I have just parted, and with whom the afternoon has been spent wandering by the side of a creek that is a favorite place of resort with both, is a Rosicrucian of the order known as Illuminates, or Illuminati. It is not, however, by the singular of such word that he names himself. Indeed, as just here the thought is in my mind, I am confident that in the course of our fairly long intercourse it has not been used between us. To himself he is simply a doctor out of harness ; to me he is a man well advanced in years, who is known as having spent a life of large and prom- inent usefulness by giving the benefits existing with great learning to those found standing in need of them. As a practitioner and teacher of medicine, fifty years of his life belong to the history of his profession. The present time is his own — and, happily, mine.
I introduce my fellow-loiterer and dreamer of the creek-side as a Rosicrucian of the Illuminate order because of his being what he is, he being, in fact, about the only one comfortably known to me in this unrestful world who occupies such a plane.