Section 24

"Transmigration?" queries Cordona.
" Yes, transmigration. Put into the earth, the tooth would have been nothing different from a seed that lifts itself as the flower. Going back whence it came, a new tooth, or something as useful, would be found as result of a thing made over."
"Ego is not a thing of hair or teeth?" says Cor- j. q 21
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dona. " Nothing is more clearly demonstrable than this."
** A trap holds a mouse," I suggest, *' so long as the door is shut. The door opened, the mouse is away. Body is a trap holding for its purpose the Ego until accident opens the door. Ego away, what is done with its trap is of as little concern to it as is the trap to a liberated mouse."
" What as to Ego?" queries Cordona.
*'I think," I reply, *'that the question finds its an- swer, as when asked of Ego residing with its trap. It does, or it goes, or it stays, as it finds itself able. Let it be put," I suggest, "somewhat differently, — after this manner, for example. To-night I am going to sleep. To-night I shall lie upon my bed, dead as to the uses of body. To-morrow, the body being refreshed sufficiently for fresh work, I shall take it up for the purpose of its intentions, going about as I like or doing whatever is found demanding doing. It will be ex- actly the same as to the going about and doing if body fails to wake up. I, which is no more the body that lies upon the bed than the body is I, would enter upon the occupancy of new body, and this so entirely with- out consciousness of change that dreaming is one with its accomplishment. Miscomprehension is with re- fusing the lesson of the dream-state. There is but one Matter. Body is Matter. A dream, and the capa- bility associated with it as the uses of Ego are con- cerned, show body as Universal body in the sense that Matter is Universal matter. Matter is instantane- ously and everlastingly, and after the manner needed, at the command of Ego as Ego requires it."
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"A common seed," suggests Cordona, '*has similar command of matter?"
** Similar precisely, even if the manner is slower. Intermediates between an acorn, which has about the slowest command, and a man, that has the highest, are to be instanced in the vines which sometimes draw upon matter for their use after such rapid manner that growth is to be measured by the hour."
** Bodies and graves and funerals are not the con- cern?" says Cordona.
**Only as is concerned making up a bank-account, as where one about to travel wishes to leave conve- niences to those who may not be going, or settling what is to be done with a trap."
**Ah," interrupts Cordona, " here it is ! this going away !"
'* Going away," I reply, " or staying, as one feels like it. Nothing at all different from staying with or get- ting away from the people of the old farm. Ego goes away from his house with the funeral of thrown- off refuse which is without interest or concern to Ego, or stays at home and lets the funeral go."
** But not seen or heard by friends as they come back from the funeral," suggests Cordona.
** Seeing and hearing, however," I reply. "Others alone, not ourselves, conscious that things are anyway different from what they were. Something more. Different and not different. A gradual awakening to the possession of new capabilities. The coming, little by little, to something akin with that which has effected painless separation of the truant school-boy, the willow- strippers, and the fishermen ; pleasurable separation."
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"But how," queries Cordona, "as to again being seen and heard, as well as to seeing and hearing?"
" The law is with like knowing like. Like seeks its like. Unlike changes sooner or later into like. Noth- ing is done by nature abruptly. We do not know when we are born. We do not know when we are unborn."
"Unborn?" queries Cordona.
"Yes, unborn. Being unborn continuously. Your- self unborn as to several bodies and not able to say a word as to particulars related with the dates; know- ing, indeed, nothing about the matter. Yourself to go on being unborn with view to being reborn so long as an Eternal Now shall last; consequently, forever and forever."
"Stature suited to condition," says Cordona.
"Exactly: stature suited to condition, and condi- tion to circumstances."
" I am so much a citizen of the world," says Cor- dona, " that often enough, on return from trips abroad, the street and house where I now am have seemed gloomy and cheerless."
"And often enough you have run away from them for sake of still newer associations?"
" Often enough," replies Cordona.
" God is good. An indigent girl's dematerializa- tion is one with your money; both alike carry where one may wish to go. Given time enough, one grows tired of a thing, of everything. Change is one with newness. Newness is winter made over into spring. Not to stay still, but to go on and on, is life."
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*'True," says Cordona j "moved into a new house, how often is it the case that a visit to the old one causes wonder that its inconveniences could have been endured !"
"I think that a locust must feel just that way/' I say, *' when he takes a look at his old house, the shell."
Cordona asks me to repeat an experience of a sum- mer now some time ago, which I do, adding to it something she had not heard.
The place was Barnegat shore. The night was black and fitful, occasional flashes of lightning showing ghostly-looking hills of sand rising abruptly from the edge of the beating tide. Protected from the storm, I sat looking from the window of a lonely-situated house near by, the thought coming to me as to the utter dreariness of a burial that should leave a man in such a place. A horrible fascination held me in my seat until after midnight. To break away from the loneli- ness and dreariness seemed impossible. I pictured to myself a stranger, who had left the sweetest and fairest of associations on the other side of the great sea, coming to this side and being caught in the treacher- ous shoals, drowned and washed against one of these hills, and covered out of sight by the shifting sand : no answer left for the question. Where ? I im- agined this stranger lying in his wet bed night after night through the stormy seasons of countless winters. Before my eyes was a cenotaph in some Stoke Poges or other of the primrose-scented God's-acres of England. In my ears was the sound of crackling logs upon a home hearth, — his home hearth. About both, the un- answered question, Where ? 21*
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Next night myself lay buried in the sand-hill. The fascination had been too powerful to be resisted. One of a number of self-burials was made. In a hole dug in the hill the next morning were deposited portions of all that a doctor knows of his bodily self; portions of hair, of nails, of skin, of spittle which is one with blood, of oil, lubricating the scalp, which a moment earlier was a gland, of sweat brought to the surface by other internal bodies ; in short, a doctor get- ting himself from himself.
Next night was not, however, as last night. The moon was shining brilliantly. Sultriness was replaced by a cooling breeze. There were no lightning-flashes, nor storm, nor thud of merciless waves against the sand-hills. The looker sat again at the window, looking this time at his grave in the sand-hill ; medi- tating, not on dreariness, but cognizant of two selves; indifferent, utterly, as to the grave in the sand-hill; indifferent as to whether it should wash away or re- main; indifferent as to winter's thuds of waves and summer's flashes of lightning. The something in the sand-hill was something that could be got along with- out. The spell was broken in understanding that a sand-hill cannot bury a man.
What had not been told Cordona was that, going a week later to the grave, it was found filled with crickets and their progeny. Not a sign of what had been buried was there. In a single week a resurrection had taken place.
Writing out the incident brings to mind illustration of unconscious separation as to Ego and body, not
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alone as this relates with the ordinary physiological change that is continuously going on, but as regard is with speedy disassociation.
The point is that so-called death relates with con- scious loss of body by Ego only slowly and by degrees ; this, as change of stature from boy to man is slow and by degrees and unconsciously. The illustration is the familiar experience of surgery that amputation of a limb or limbs made when a patient is uncon- scious by reason of anaesthesia is without knowledge of the patient as to the loss when he awakens if he be denied sight of the stump or stumps. So long as the parts remain covered, the limb or limbs are felt in place as before their removal. Some people are years in getting clear of amputated limbs.
It is not different as to full dismemberment. Being unborn is, as to consciousness, one with being born. Infancy waxes to youth, youth to manhood. New takes the place of old so gradually and continuously that man has no date as to a metamorphosis into angel or devil. Death and resurrection are not two conditions, but one. Now is continuous. Life is con- tinuous. Change is continuous.
SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
"Whatsoe'er thou lovest, that become thou must; God if thou lovest God, dust if thou lovest dust."
The heights of some men are the depths of other men.
The lines of the Illuminate epitomize the book here come of itself to a conclusion while the pages are as excursions on the lines of the philosopher: Spiritus Sanctus is before the reader.
The general and special analyses which signify the excursions making evident the indisputable truth that man by reason of his hypostases is of such relation with the Universal as to permit his being where and what he wants to be, the question of life shows itself as question of selection. Here other epitome offers itself in the injunction, *' Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," and in the added one, '* Ye cannot serve two masters.*'
The God leaves no man without evidences. There is no mountain so high nor valley so deep but what voice is to be heard as one crying in the wilderness. The lines of the poet are not too familiar for place on wall of hovel or palace.
" tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones."
Here, to the Illuminate, as attempted to be por- trayed in the pages, is the God's tryst ; — not less nor 248
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more, however, than found with the simple meeting- place of the Quaker, the synagogue of the Jew, the joss-house of the heathen, the ritualistic church of Episcopalianism, or the formalistic cathedral of Romanism.
Height and depth have no other measure than com- parison ; this alike as to hills and men. Height as to men is not necessarily education, nor is depth absence of it. Distinction between wisdom and knowledge holds the measuring-rod. The front brain may be credited, if one pleases, with being a storehouse hold- ing much or little of gatherings, and the back brain may be allowed its office of co-ordinator of organic relations, but wisdom, save as relation is with the lower planes of life, is with neither the details of storehouse nor the possibilities of cerebellum, but is, as illuminated men know, with Soul.
God is highest. To be God is to be highest. Water-drops being ocean by reason of being with ocean, men being God by reason of being with God.
Oh ! the God ! the God ! Giver of everything.
Withholder of nothing. God who will show himself face to face to men like Plotinus. God who opens a road of Induction that the Soul-lacking may not be without knowledge of him. Beheld as Giver after such simple and easily appreciated manner as shows hoeing to be one with having. Nothing complicated. Nothing mysterious. Nothing requiring grandeur or extent, as to external. Slaves the equals of kings. All and everything internal. Heaven, hell, and inter- mediate internal. Heaven, hell, or intermediate to
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be lived in as man discovers or leaves undiscovered the meaning of heaven, hell, and intermediate. Oh, Being of beings, before whom the mouth seeks the dust in its despair of words to name him ! Entity too stu- pendous, too unthinkable as to personality, for a name !
The end of the intention of the book is reached. What the pages prove to a reader is with the reader.
Men, holders-on to brass where gold abounds ; Crawlers, refusing flight where wings are offered.
THE END.
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