LETTER VIII
THE IRON GRIP OF MATTER
TO a man dwelling in the “invisible” there comes a sudden memory of earth.
“Oh!” he says. “The world is going on without me. What am I missing?”
It seems almost an impertinence on the part of the world to go on without him. He becomes agitated. He is sure that he is behind the times, left out, left over.
He looks about him, and sees only the tranquil fields of the fourth dimension. Oh, for the iron grip of matter once more! To hold something in taut hands!
Perhaps the mood passes, but one day it returns with redoubled force. He must get out of the tenuous environment into the forcibly resistant world of dense matter. But how?
Ah, he remembers! All action comes from memory. It would be a reckless experiment had he not done it before.
He closes his eyes, reversing himself in the invisible. He is drawn to human life, to human beings in the intense vibration of union. There is sympathy here—perhaps the sympathy of past experience with the souls of those whom he now contacts, perhaps only sympathy of mood or imagination. Be that as it may, he lets go his hold upon freedom and triumphantly loses himself in the lives of human beings.
After a time he awakes, to look with bewildered eyes upon green fields and the round, solid faces of men and women. Sometimes he weeps, and wishes himself back. If he becomes discouraged, he may return—only to begin the weary quest of matter all over again.
If he is strong and stubborn, he remains and grows into a man. He may even persuade himself that the former life in tenuous substance was only a dream, for in dream he returns to it, and the dream haunts him and spoils his enjoyment of matter.
After years enough he grows weary of the material struggle: his energy is exhausted. He sinks back into the arms of the unseen, and men say again with bated breath that he is dead.
But he is not dead. He has only returned whence he came.