Allowing, then, that our human nature may be roughly divided as above into four main constituents, the destiny of two of these at death seems pretty clear. It is clear that (1) the central self remains (whether “we” know it or not) the same as it ever was, and ever will be, eternal, shining in glory and irradiating the world. It goes on, to be the birth-source, may be, of numberless lives to come. On the other hand, it is equally clear that (4) the actual visible tangible body dies, perishes, and is broken up. Though it may return, in its elements and through what we call Nature, into the great birth-source, it ceases as an individual body to exist, and passes even before the eyes of onlookers into other forms. The fate of these two portions of the human entity can hardly be doubted—of the innermost central portion, continuance, with but slow or secular change, if any; of the outermost material shell, immediate decay and dissolution.
What, then, may we suppose is the destiny of the other two portions, the human and the animal part? I think we may fairly suppose that they each share to a considerable degree the destiny of that extreme to which they are closest related. The outer personality or animal life, (3), is most closely related to the body. Its passions and desires (though in themselves psychical and mental entities) look always to the body for their expression and satisfaction. It is difficult to suppose them functioning without the body. We cannot, for instance, very well imagine the passion for drink without some kind of mouth or gullet through which to work (though of course it may carry on a sort of dream-activity by representing these channels to itself, or creating mental images of them). And similarly of the passion of personal vanity, or the passion of sex: they refer themselves always to the body, in some degree or other.
It is clear then, I think, that when the body in death breaks up, these psychic elements which function through it and correspond to the various parts and organs—these passions and desires, and with them the whole animal being—are to some extent involved in the ruin. They are (in most cases) smitten with dire suffering and confusion. A terrible misgiving and dismay assault them; and with the break-up and disruption of the body they too experience the agonies of disruption, and foresee their own dissolution and death.[41]
Yet to conclude from this that these elements do absolutely perish, would, I think, be a mistake. For these passional entities and this animal soul, though they seek the body and manifest themselves through it, are not the same as the body. They have a creative power within them.[42] The drunkard, as suggested, deprived of his liquor, represents furiously to himself in imagination the act of drinking: he dreams a gullet a yard long and an endless swallow—and in doing so he actually moulds and modifies his swallowing apparatus. The vain man and the sexual similarly mould and modify their bodies; they contribute to the building of the shapes which they use. And this sort of process going on through the ages has created the forms of the animals and mankind, and their respective members and organs.[43] All these things are the expression and manifestation and output of the psychical entities and passions and qualities underlying—which themselves are implicit in the world-soul, which indeed have grown up and manifested themselves out of the world-soul, and which still deeply though hiddenly root back into it.
The most reasonable and obvious answer, then, to the question, What becomes of the animal life and its satellite passions when the body dies? seems to be that under normal conditions they die too—in the sense that they cease to be manifest. They die, like the body, only with this difference, that being psychical—i.e. having a consciousness and a self underlying, while the body dies back into earth and air, they die back into the psychic roots from which they originally sprang—that is, into that form of the Self or World-soul of which they are the manifestation—as, for instance, in the case of the animals, into the self or soul of the race; in the case of undeveloped man, partly into the soul of the race and partly into the human soul which is affiliated to the soul of the race; and in the case of perfected man, entirely into the human soul or inner personality which, having now found and established its union with the supreme and eternal Self, is no longer dependent on the soul of the race, but has entered into a divine and immortal life of its own.
Thus in entirely normal cases, both of animals and man, we should conclude that the animal soul at the time of bodily death may return perfectly calmly and naturally into its own roots (as fern-fronds die back in winter), and the whole process may fulfil itself quite simply and graciously and with a minimum of suffering. But this can only be expected to happen in instances where instinctively (as in healthy animals and primitive men) or intentionally (as among a few of mankind) the perfect unity, physical and mental, of the organism has been preserved. In such cases each desire and passion, standing in a close and direct relationship to the spirit or self of the whole organism, is easily and willingly indrawn again at the appointed time; and there is little or no struggle or agony. But in the great masses of mankind—especially in the domains of civilization—where this unity has been lost, it is easily seen that many of the passional elements, loosed from the true service of the informing spirit, carry on a mad and violent career of their own; and to curb these or reduce them to orderly acquiescence and subordination is almost impossible. On the contrary, with the general weakening of the total organism they often break out into greater activity. The ruling passions, “strong in death,” push themselves to the fore and tyrannize over the failing or ageing man, and render his actual dissolution stormy and painful; and not only so, but they sometimes generate phantasmal embodiments of themselves which haunt the dying man, or even become visible to outsiders.
Frederick Myers, dealing with this subject,[44] invents the term psychorrhagy for this tendency of portions of the psyche under certain conditions to break loose from the whole man; and thinks that this process takes place not only at death, but that there are some folk born with what he calls a psychorrhagic diathesis, who are consequently peculiarly apt for throwing off phantasms of one kind or another. He says:[45]—“That which ‘breaks loose’ on my hypothesis is not the whole principle of life in the organism; rather it is some psychical element probably of very varying character, and definable mainly by its power of producing a phantasm, perceptible by one or more persons, in some portion or other of space. I hold that this phantasmogenetic effect may be produced either on the mind, and consequently on the brain of another person—in which case he may discern the phantasm somewhere in his vicinity, according to his own mental habit or prepossession—or else directly on a portion of space, ‘out in the open,’ in which case several persons may simultaneously discern the phantasm in that actual spot.”
Myers then proceeds to give a great number of very interesting and extremely well-attested cases of such phantasms, ranging from merely momentary apparitions of persons during their life or at the hour of their death to the persistent haunting of houses over a long period. And I mention this in order to show that there is good authority now for believing it possible not only that phantasms may be generated by the disintegration of the diseased or dying organism, which will haunt the patient himself; but that in cases the psychic elements generating these phantasms may be powerful enough to create a ghostly body which may endure, surviving the earth-body, and manifesting itself to outside observers on occasions for a considerable time.[46]
So much for the fate of the outer personality or animal part. Now with regard to (2), the inner personality or human soul, we may ask, What becomes of that? And the answer particularly interests us, because it is with this section that we—or at least the more thoughtful of mankind generally—identify “ourselves.” It is probable that almost any reader of these pages would credit his “I” or “self,” not to the one universal Being (to union with whom he may nevertheless distantly aspire), nor to the group of terrestrial desires and interests which we have termed the animal being, but rather to that constellation of nobler character which we have called the human soul. This, he will say, is the self that truly interests, that most deeply represents, me. Tell me, what becomes of that?
I think it is obvious that in the hour of death there are only two directions in which that human soul can turn, in which “we” can turn. We can turn for help either outwards toward the region of the animal self, or inwards toward the central universal self. And I think it equally obvious that the latter direction can alone really supply our need. At first no doubt it may be natural to seek outwards; but now alas! in the hour of dissolution the man discovers that all that region of his nature, in which indeed he has often found comfort before, is becoming involved in the ruin above described. Large portions of his animal faculties are already being torn away—or are sinking into lethargy and sleep. His bodily organs are losing their vitality; some of them have already become useless. His mental faculties—especially the more concrete and external faculties, like the memory of events and names—are becoming disintegrated. True, his general outlook may in cases seem to become wider and more serene as death approaches, and his inner character and personality to become more luminous and gracious; but it is a perilous passage on which he is embarked and in general threatening clouds gather round. The consciousness is painfully invaded by the lesser mentalities which surround it; the ruling passions domineer; silly little habits and tricks, of mind and body, obsess the man; phantoms and delirium overpower, or seek to overpower, him; he is astonished and perturbed to find himself on the fringe of a world in which figures, half-strange, half-familiar, come and go, and force themselves upon him with an odd persistence and a rather terrible kind of intelligence. It requires all his presence of mind to gather himself together, to hold his own, to suppress the rebel rout, and to find amid all the flux something indomitable and sure to which to cling.
There is clearly only one thing to cling to—and this must be insisted on—only that one great redeeming universal Self of which we have spoken: only that superb omnipresent Life which we find in the very central depth of our souls. (And fortunate he who has already so far taken refuge in this, that the wreck and ruin of the visible world and the mortal onset of Death cannot dislodge him!) That alone is fixed and sure; and to that the personal man must turn.
And I think we may say that it is not merely the personal soul’s highest duty and best welfare to turn in this direction; but that in a sense and by the law of its nature it must do so. For even in those cases where the man does not recognize this universal Being within, nor consciously believe in and hold on to the same, still is it not true that unconsciously he is very near and very closely related? For all the great qualities which we have already described as characterizing the most intimate human soul, are they not just those which must relate it to the universal Self? I mean such things as Equality—the sense of inner equality with all human and other creatures; Freedom—the sense of freedom from local and material bonds; Indifference—indifference as to fate and destiny; Magnanimity; abounding Charity and Love; dignity; courage; power—all these things, are they not obviously the qualities which dawn upon the personal soul and color it when it is coming into touch with the universal? Are they not the natural ‘sign and symbol’ of union or partial union with that Self? And more: are there not other things belonging more distinctly to the unconscious and subliminal region (which we shall deal with presently)—I mean such things as deep memory, intuition, clairvoyance, telepathy, prophetic faculty, and so forth—which point to the same conclusion?
The inner personal soul of man is surely already conjoined to the universal, and must cling to it by its very nature. And though the man may not exactly be conscious of this union; though he may hardly really know the depth of his own nature; though, notwithstanding his own splendid qualities of character, some thin film may yet divide him from awareness of the all-redeeming Presence; yet none the less that Presence is there; and is the core and centre of his being.
That being granted, it seems clear that in the disintegration of death the inner personality (whether consciously or unconsciously) will cling to the eternal self within it. And this seems to be the explanation of the part played by Religion in the history of the world, and its close connection with death. The different religions being lame attempts to represent under various guises this one root-fact of the central universal Life, men have at all times clung to the religious creeds and rituals and ceremonials as symbolizing in some rude way the redemption and fulfilment of their own most intimate natures—and this whether consciously understanding the interpretations, or whether (as most often) only doing so in an unconscious or quite subconscious way.
Happy, I say, is the man who has so far consciously taken refuge and identified himself with the great life that the onset of death fails to disturb or dislodge him. For him a wonderful passage is prepared—amazing indeed and bewildering, baffling at times and exhausting, yet by no means dismaying or terrifying. But for the ordinary mortal who has not yet arrived at this—for whom the Presence (beheld perhaps intermittently before) is now clouded and withdrawn from his decisive reach—for such a man it would seem best and most natural simply to gather and compact himself together as firmly as possible, and detaching his mind as well as he can from its earthly entanglements and hindrances, to launch forth boldly, and with such faith and confidence as he can muster, on his strange journey. There is a plant of the Syrian deserts—the Rose of Jericho—about the size of our common daisy plant, and bearing a similar flower, which in dry seasons, when the earth about its roots is turned into mere sand, has the presence of mind to detach itself from its hold altogether and to roll itself into a mere ball—flower, root and all. It is then blown along the plains by the wind and travels away until it reaches some moist and sheltered spot, when it expands again, takes hold on the ground, uplifts its head, and merrily blooms once more. Like the little Rose of Jericho, the human soul has at times to draw in its roots (which we may compare to the animal part) and separate them from their earthly entanglement; even the sun in heaven, which it knows distantly for the source of its life, may be obscured; but compacting itself for the nonce into a sturdy ball, it starts gaily on its far adventure.
May we presume at all to speculate on the soul’s actual passage out of this world and its experiences on the way? No doubt there are queer things to be encountered! I think it is obvious that if the soul passes out of this terrestrial world of ours into another state of existence (definite, but quite imperceptible to our present senses) there must be a borderland region in which phenomena occur of an intermediate character—faintly and fitfully perceptible by our present faculties, but lacking in the solidity and regularity of our present world; borderland phenomena in two senses, as being due (a) partly to the break-up of our present senses and the present stage of existence, and (b) partly to the glimmering perception of forms and figures belonging to a farther stage.
With regard to (a), it is of course common for the mind to ‘wander,’ and for all sorts of phantoms and hallucinations to obsess and cloud it in the last stages of illness; and these vagaries of the mind are no doubt due to or connected with excess or deficiency of circulation in the brain, and morbid physical conditions of one kind or another. But it is possible that a wider and more general view than that may be taken concerning them. I have already referred the reader to the Note at the end of this chapter. All our desires and passions are psychical entities, having a life and consciousness of their own, though affiliated to the total soul within which they work. All our organs and functions are carried on by intelligences, similarly affiliated yet in degree independent. Under normal conditions “we” are unaware of these; entities and intelligences—it is only when they rebel that they come decisively to our notice. In disease, mental and physical, there is rebellion. We become painfully conscious of the independent and often undesired activity of our organs, and of our passions—and so, unfortunately for them, do our friends! In morbid states of mind and body certain functions, certain passions, take on an independent vitality to such a degree that at last they endue a kind of personality and give rise to strings of phantasms which we believe to be real. In dreams, though there is not exactly rebellion, the higher powers of the mental organism being at rest, the lesser functionaries similarly display an extraordinary and impish activity and present us with amazing masquerades of actual life.
What then, we may ask, does probably happen in the moment of death, when the organism has become wasted and enfeebled by disease, and when the nucleus of the man, the inner personality, has compacted itself together into close compass in preparation for its long journey? What happens to all those marginal desires which have chiefly occupied themselves with the affairs of the body or lower mind—those innumerable little spirits and imps which (as we discover in dreams, or by closely watching our waking thoughts) are continually planning and scheming their own little successes and gratifications? What happens to the thousand and one intelligences which carry on the functions and processes of the organism? and whose labors, now that the bodily life is coming to an end, are no more needed? Is there not a danger—or at least a likelihood—of this strange masquerade of dreamland, of these painful obsessions of disease, being repeated with ever-increased intensity? True, that if the organism has been kept so well in hand during life as to cause all outlying passions and desires to weaken and become quiescent simultaneously with the body—or at least to go back quietly into the kennels of a long sleep—like a pack of hounds when the chase is over—then these phantoms, these obsessions, may in that last hour be conspicuous by their absence. But since in the vast majority of cases this is not, and cannot be so, it seems more probable that as a rule the departing soul will make its exit, not only through the perishing bodily part, but through a mass of debris, as it may be called, of the mind (chiefly though perhaps not entirely “the animal mind”), through a cloud of tags and tatters of mentality, thrown off in the final crisis. It seems probable that just as the actual body, bereft at death of its one pervading vitality, breaks out in a mass of corruption or minute multitudinous life, so there is a tendency, at any rate, for the lower mind to break out into a strange ghostly rabble—a cloud of phantasms, exhaled and projected from the dying person. Of these phantasms most, no doubt, are only visible to the patient himself (though that does not render them any more agreeable as visitors); others are discernible by clairvoyants present; while others again are distinctly seen even by persons at a distance in space or time—as in the numerous and well-authenticated instances of “wraiths.” The picture is not altogether pleasant, but it has a certain general congruity with admitted facts, and with a fairly-accepted body of tradition and theory; and provisionally I suppose we may accept it.
It seems likely, then, that the passage of the inner self, or human soul, out of life and its delivery in another world, the other side of death, may very closely correspond to Birth—to the birth of a babe under ordinary conditions into this world. Just as the babe, when being born, passes through the lower passages of the body, so the human self at death is expelled inwardly through all the debris and litter of the mind, into another less material and more subtle world than ours. And just as the pangs of childbirth are bad—but they are so mainly beforehand and in preparation, while the actual delivery is swift and a vast relief—so, in cases, the pains and anguish in preparation for death may be great (the squealing of demons torn from their hold on the soul, the cries of intelligences cut off from their coöperative life and source of sustenance in the body, the fears and distress of the animal mind, the yellow fury of the passions, and the death-struggles of the various organs!) yet the final passage itself may be calm and gracious and friendly.
Anyhow, as in other cases of human experience, it would be a mistake to depict this one as by any means uniform in its character. On the contrary, it is probably susceptible of great variety. The Head of a Department (if it becomes necessary for him to leave his post) may find, in one case, that he is turned out, so to speak, with kicks—that he has to run the gauntlet of the execrations of his subordinates; or in another case he may leave amid the expression of every good wish, and along a path made pleasant and easy for him; or again he may go “trailing clouds of glory,” and with a retinue of followers behind him, who refuse to remain now that their leader is departing. Some such differences possibly, and we may say probably, present themselves in the passage of death. The experience of childbirth varies to an extraordinary degree. We hear of Indian tribeswomen who only go aside for an hour while their people are on the march, and then rejoin them again at the next halting-place. And who knows but what Death and the preparation for it might be as easy—if only the doctors and the sky-pilots would hurry up and tell us something really useful, instead of spending their time in vivisecting the wretched animals, or in mumbling over ancient creeds?
Now, with regard to the second kind of borderland phenomena, (b), the glimmering perception in death of forms and figures or conditions of being belonging to a farther stage of existence: I do not propose at present to dwell upon this matter at any length. But with modern psychical research there has come a good deal of evidence to show that on deathbeds it not at all unfrequently happens that distinct and ardent recognition of departed friends takes place; and though, no doubt, it may seem possible to explain these as cases in which the simple memory of a departed friend is very powerfully resuscitated, still this explanation hardly covers a good many cases—such as those for instance in which the dying person was unaware that the friend had died, and yet apparently recognized him as a visitor from the beyond-world.[47] Also of course, modern research has brought forward some amount of testimony in favor of actual communications with the departed through the agency of entranced mediums; so that, though this whole matter is still sub judice, we may with fair reason suppose that both in trance-conditions and in the hour of death there are not merely apparitions and phenomena due to disintegrations on this side of the border, but also some kind of real communications and manifestations from the other side.
Anyhow, it is clear that each person’s experience of death is likely to depend a good deal on the question as to where the centre of gravity of his self-consciousness is placed; and that—as a part of the Art of dying—the object of our endeavor should be to throw (during life) the self-consciousness inward into that part of our being which is durable and immortal in its nature, into that part in which we are united, and feel our union, with other creatures, into that portion where the word itself (self-consciousness) ceases to have a petty and sinister meaning and becomes transformed with a glorious signification. In that case it is indeed likely that the soul may be endowed beforehand with divine vision. It must be our object, by throwing our consciousness always that way, to strengthen the power of the inner soul over the outer personality and all its functions, and at the same time to rivet more and more the hold of that inner soul on the One Self (the source of all vitality and centre of limitless power, if we only understand it so)—so that ultimately the outer and animal personality (though always beautiful in its nature and not to be despised) ceases largely to have an independent and uncoördinated vitality of its own, or to be the scene of uncontrolled activities and conflict, and becomes more the expression and instrument of the inner self: to such a degree indeed that at the dissolution of the body the animal soul, passing into slumber, easily dies down to its deep roots in the human soul, there of course to await its future reawakening, and thus leaving the latter liberated from earth-entanglement and free to start (like the Syrian rose) on its long journey.
In this freeing for the forward journey there must, one would think, be a great sense of joy and satisfaction—even as there must be in the freeing of a May-fly from its water-bred pupa into the glory of air and sunshine. Just as it obviously is (notwithstanding some drawbacks) a joy to the Babe to enter upon its new life, so it may well be that to the dying person—notwithstanding the perils of the change, the fears of the unknown, the parting with friends, the apparent rending of cherished ties—there is a strange joy in shelling off the old husks, and in getting rid of the accumulations and dead rubbish of a lifetime. A thousand and one tiresome old infirmities and bonds of body and mind—now for the first time realized in their true meaning—slip off; and the ship of the soul, “to port and hawser’s tie no more returning,” departs with a strange thrill and quiver upon its “endless cruise.”
The details of this launch and departure we cannot of course ordain. The mode of death is not always within our sphere to determine. Accident may decide, or some hereditary weakness for which the individual can hardly be held responsible. Some diseases are by their nature hard upon the patient; others are kindly in their course. In those that bring great weakness of body there is sometimes an easy passage—the earthly and corporeal part relaxing its hold, while the mind and character become heavenly-clear. In others of an inflammatory nature, or where there is great organic vitality, there may be severe and prolonged struggle. Anyhow, one can imagine the relief when the process is complete. It is not uncommon to experience a strange expansion of the spirit on occasions when the body is seriously weakened by ordinary illness. What must this expansion be when the body finally succumbs—this sense of immensely enlarged life, this impression of sailing forth toward a new and boundless ocean! How strange to stand a moment on the brink of terrestrial mortality, and to be conscious of—to see, even with the inner visual power—the shell one has left behind, with all its commonplace and banal surroundings: concrete indeed and material enough, but lying now outside oneself—something almost foreign to one and indifferent, abandoned on the very margin and shore of real life; to stand for a moment; and then to turn and pass inward into that subtle and immense ethereal existence, now to be learnt and explored, which lies within and informs and transfuses all our solid world, and surpasses all its boundaries!
In order not to burden this already rather lengthy chapter with matter which may not be needed, I append here some general considerations for those who have not given much attention to the subject of the various grades of consciousness in the body—considerations tending to show that the various parts and passions of the body and mind have a life and intelligence of their own, and that the whole human organism is a hierarchy (not always perfectly harmonious) of psychic entities.
We generally allow of course that our central or dominant selves are alive and conscious (though no doubt we use those epithets with a rather sad vagueness). But having allowed that, the extraordinary phenomena of variable and alternating personality compel us to admit that there may be many such centres within one person, each of which though now buried may in its turn become dominant and take conscious lead, and which must therefore be credited with life and intelligence (even if an alien life and intelligence to “our own”). Even the most ordinary brain-centres are in the habit of carrying on whole departments of the bodily organization with an independent intelligence of their own, and are sometimes liable under the influence of some excitement (like drink, or religion, or some enthusiasm) to take possession of the whole man and transform him into another creature—exhibiting in doing so a strange degree of invasive vitality and alertness. It is quite certain that the myriad microscopic cells of the body are alive, each with its own little particular life; and the more one studies these cells the more difficult it is not to credit them each, in their degree, with a particular consciousness or intelligence. And each body-organ again, composed of a congeries or colony of body-cells, has a life of its own on and beyond that of its component cells, and exhibits curious signs too of intelligence and emotion, which often (especially in sickness) affect the moods and thoughts of the entire man.
The whole of the subconscious world, in fact—that world which only occasionally breaks through into the upper consciousness—must be allowed to be alive, and in its various degrees methodical and calculating. This is well seen in the phenomena of dreams and of hypnotism, in both of which the most acute and diabolical ingenuity is often shown—as of weird imps working in dark chambers of the brain quite unbeknown to their supposed lord and master; or in the extraordinary phenomena of trance and “automatic” speaking and writing; or in telepathy and clairvoyance; or again in the craftiness of utter lunatics; or in the strange evasions and mental dodgery which (as just hinted) are induced by diseases of certain organs; or in the phenomena of mental healing, where an appeal to the subconscious intelligence in any and every corner of the body is often followed by extraordinary response; or in the subtle instinctive knowledge and perception of babes, and of animals, long before self-consciousness has developed; or again, in the sly cunning of ancient dotards; or in the complex bodily reflexes carried on perfectly unknown to ourselves during life; or in the continued functioning of some of the organs after death. In all these cases, and in scores of others not mentioned, it is clear that the majority of the processes of the human system are carried on by minor intelligences. They are indeed carried on by crowds of minor intelligences—to which we accord the epithet “automatic,” and which no doubt we regard as mechanical, as long, that is, as they work smoothly and without friction and opposition. But when they do not do so, when pain, disease and lunacy cut in—when a violent burn sets the epithelial cells screaming, and the scream comes into our consciousness as the vibration of pain; when a diseased liver twists the events of life and the faces of our friends into malignant shape and mien; when lust and hypochondria people the mind with phantoms; and drink makes all the functions mad—then we say we are “possessed with devils,” then we recognize, if only on the dark side, the pervading intelligence or intelligences of the body.
It is like the Head of a Department, as I have said, whose subordinate officials are working under him agreeably and harmoniously. As long as that is the case, he may have in his mind a general outline of the working of the Department. He probably is ignorant of most of the details; he certainly does not know personally many of his subordinates, but he superintends the working of the whole. Presently, however, occurs something of a strike or émeute; whereupon he discovers that vast numbers of his men are intelligently discussing questions or problems of whose existence he was almost ignorant; personalities appear before him whom, before, he knew at most only by name; and they argue their case with an acumen and vitality which surprises him. For the first time, in this revolt of his department, he comes to realize the amount of intelligent activity which is at work within it, beneath the surface. So it is with us in the case of disease. In health we have no trouble, unity prevails. As long as “we” are on top, and the intelligences which carry on the body are working on friendly terms with us, their minds do not intrude into our realm, and we are practically unaware of them. But when through our mismanagement or other cause dissension breaks out, then indeed we realize what kind of forces they are with which we have to deal, and of what a wonderful hierarchy of intelligences the body is composed.[48]
In the last chapter Death was compared to Birth, and it was said that probably the passage of the human soul into another world, on the other side of death, exactly corresponded to Birth—to the birth of a babe into this world. And certainly, seeing these apparent movements into the visible and away from it again, it is very natural to assume that there is such another and hidden world, and to speculate upon its nature.
But it may fairly be asked, is there after all any reason for supposing that there is a definite state of existence of any kind on that side? Is it not quite likely that there is only vacancy and nothingness, or at best a mere formless pulp (of ether and electrons, or whatever it may be) out of which souls are born and into which they return again at death? It is this question which I propose to discuss in the present chapter.
Historically speaking, we know of course that early and primitive folk, letting their imaginations loose, peopled that ‘other side’ and rather promiscuously, with all sorts of fairy beings and phantom processions. Giant grizzly bears, divine jackals, elves, dwarfs, satans, holy ghosts, lunar pitris, flaming sun-gods, and so forth, ruled and raged behind the curtain—in front of which the shivering mortal stood. But as time went on, the growing exactitude of thought and science made it more and more impossible to idly accept these imaginings; and it may be said that about the middle of last century these cosmogonies—for the more thoughtful among the populations of the Western world—finally perished, and gave place for the most part to a simple negative attitude. It was allowed that intelligences and personalities (human and animal) moved on this side of the veil, and were plainly distinguishable as operating in the actual world; but they, it was held, were more or less isolated and probably accidental products of a mechanical universe. That mechanical arrangement of atoms, and so forth, which we could now largely map out and measure, and which doubtless in the future we should be able completely to define—that was the universe, and somehow or other included everything. One of its properties was that it would run down like a clock, and would eventuate in time in a cold sun and a dead earth—and there was an end of it! Any intelligent existence behind or on the other side of this veil of mechanism was too problematical to be worth discussing; in all probability on that side was mere nothingness and vacancy.
Such, very roughly stated, was the attitude of the fairly intelligent and educated man about fifty years ago, but since that time the outgrowths of science and human inquiry have been so astounding as to leave that position far behind. The obvious signs of intelligence in the minutest cells, almost invisible to the naked eye, the very mysterious arcana of growth in such cells (partly described in a former chapter), the myriad action of similarly intelligent microbes, the strange psychology of plants, and the equally strange psychic sensitiveness (apparently) of metals, the sudden transformations and variations both of plants and animals, the existence of the X and N rays of light, and of countless other vibrations of which our ordinary senses render no account, the phenomena of radium and radiant matter, the marvels of wireless telegraphy, the mysterious facts connected with hypnotism and the subliminal consciousness, and the certainty now that telepathic communication can take place between human beings thousands of miles apart—all these things have convinced us that the subtlest forces and energies, totally unmeasurable by our instruments, and saturated or at least suffused with intelligence, are at work all around us. They have convinced us that gloomy phrases about cold suns and dead earths are mere sentiment and nonsense. Cold worlds there may certainly be, but nothing is more certain than that worlds on worlds, and spheres on spheres, stretch behind and beyond the actually seen—spheres so microscopic as to totally elude us, or so vast and cosmic as to elude, spheres of vibration which elude, spheres of other senses than ours, spheres aerial, ethereal, magnetic, mental, subliminal. The iris-veil of our ordinary existence may truly be rent, but the visible world, the world we know, is no longer now a film on the surface of an empty bubble, but a curtain concealing a vast and teeming life, reaching down endless, in layer on layer, into the very heart of the universe. And whereas, in the former time of which I have been speaking, we might have agreed that life could not well continue after the death of the body, to-day we should, as a first guess, be inclined to think that life is more full and rich on the other side of death than on this side. “I do not doubt,” says Whitman, “that from under the feet and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of, calm and actual faces—I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice.”
We come, then, to this problem of Death and Birth in a similarly modified spirit, and with a predisposition to believe that they do really indicate passages from one definite world or plane or region of existence to another. And here is the place to point out, and to guard ourselves against, a common error in the use of the word Death. Death is not a state. There may be an after-death state; but death itself is the passage into that state, or—better—the passage out of the present state. So Birth is not a state. There may be a pre-birth state; but birth itself is the passage into the present state. Either we pass through death into another life and condition of being; or else we are extinguished. In the former case there is clearly no state of death; and in the latter case there is no such state—because there is no self to be dead or to know itself dead. As Lucretius says,[49] endeavoring to disabuse man of the fear of the grave:—
“So to be mortal fills his mind with dread,
Forgetting that in real death can be
No self, to mourn that other self as dead,
Or stand and weep at death’s indignity.”
Birth and Death, then, we may look upon as two contrary movements, to some degree complementary and balancing each other; and it is possible that thus, from consideration of the one, we may be able to infer things about the other. One such thing that we may be able to infer is that Love presides over, or is intimately associated with, both movements.
The connection of Love with Birth is of course obvious. In some profound yet hidden way, almost throughout creation, the birth or generation of one creature is connected with the precedent love and sex-fusion of two others. And the connection of Love with Death, though not so prominent, can similarly almost everywhere be traced. The whole of poetry in literature teems with this subject; and so does the poetry of Nature! If we are to believe the Garden of Eden story, Love and Death came into the world together; and it certainly is curious that in the age-long evolution of animal forms the same thing seems to have happened. The Protozoa at first, propagating by simple division, were endued with a kind of immortality. But then came a period when a pair found they could enter into a joint life of renewed fecundity by fusing with each other. They literally died in each other, and rose again in a numerous progeny; so that love and death were simultaneous and synonymous. Sometimes parturition and death were simultaneous. The mother-cell perished in the very act of giving birth to her brood. Then again came the aggregation of cells into living groups—the formation of ‘colonial’ organisms; and it was then that distinctive sex-differentiation and sex-organs appeared, and with the capacity of sex also the capacity of death through the disruption of the colony. Everywhere love is associated with death. The expenditure of seed in the male animal is an incipient death; the formation of the seed vessel, and the glory and color of the flowering plant, are already the signs of its decay. “Both Weismann and Goette,” say Geddes and Thomson,[50] “note how many insects (locusts, butterflies, ephemerids, and so forth) die a few hours after the production of ova. The exhaustion is fatal, and the males are also involved. In fact, as we should expect from the katabolic temperament, it is the males which are especially liable to exhaustion.... Every one is familiar with the close association of love and death in the common May-flies. Emergence into winged liberty, the love-dance, and the process of fertilization, the deposition of eggs, and the death of both parents, are often the crowded events of a few hours. In higher animals, the fatality of the reproductive sacrifice has been greatly lessened, yet death may tragically persist, even in human life, as the direct Nemesis of love.”
George Macdonald, in one of his books (Phantastes, vol. i. p. 191), feigns a race of beings, for whom death is not so much the ‘nemesis’ of love, as its natural and inevitable outcome. Seized by a great love, too great for mortal expression, “looking too deep into each other’s eyes,” they (with great presence of mind, it must be said!) breathe their souls out in death, and so take their departure to another world. Heine touches the same note in his poem, the “Asra”:—
“Ich bin aus Jemen,
Und mein stamm sind jene Asra,
Welche sterben wenn sie lieben.”
And scores of scarcely noticed paragraphs in our daily papers, brief tales of single or double suicide, present us with a dim outline of how—even in the mean conditions and surroundings of our modern days—every now and then there comes to one or other a longing, a passion, and a revelation of a desire so intense, that, breaking the bounds of a useless life, it demands swift utterance in death.
Some deep and profound suggestion there is in all this—some hint of a life whose very form and nature is love, and which finds its deliverance and nativity only through the abandonment of the body—even as our ordinary life, conceived in love, finds its delivery into this world through what we call birth. At the very least it suggests that Death may have a great deal more to do with Love, and may be more deeply allied to it than is generally supposed. And it may suggest that the two things, being in some sense the most important occupations of the human race, should be frankly recognized as such, and should both be accordingly prepared for.
Another thing, about which we may be able to infer something from the analogy between Birth and Death, is the fate of the soul at death. If we can trace in any way the relation of the soul to the body at the time of the first appearance of the latter, that may shed light on the relation which will hold at its disappearance. We cannot certainly define very strictly what we mean by the word ‘soul’; but we are all very well aware that associated with our bodies, and in some sense pervading them with its intelligence, is a conscious (as well as subconscious) being which we call the self or soul; and we are all puzzled at times to understand what is the relation between this and the body. Now we have seen (ch. ii.) the genesis of the body from a single fertilized cell or germ almost microscopic in size, and its growth by continual and myriadfold division into, say, a human form; and we have seen that every cell in the perfect and final form—every cell, of eye, or liver, or of any part or organ—is there by linear descent or division from that first cell, though variously adapted and differentiated during the process. We are therefore almost compelled to conclude that that intelligent self (conscious or subconscious) which we are so distinctly aware of as associated with our mature bodies was there also, associated with the first germ.[51] It may not truly have been outwardly manifest or unfolded into evidence at that primitive stage. It could not well be. But it was there, even in its totality, and unless it had been there, we could not now be what we are. The conscious and subconscious self has been within us all along, unfolding and manifesting itself with the unfoldment and development of the body; and indeed to all appearances guiding that development. And more, we may fairly say—having regard to the mode of development of the tissue—that it dwells even in its entirety within every normal and healthy cell of our present bodies, and is the formative essence thereof.
Let me give an illustration. Sometimes in the morning you may see a bush glittering all over with dewdrops; every leaf has such a tiny jewel hanging from it. If now you look you will see in each dewdrop a miniature picture of the far landscape. Or, to take a closer illustration, some shrubs have, embedded in the very tissue of their leaves, tiny transparent and lens-like glands which yield to close scrutiny similar miniatures of the world beyond. Exactly, then, like these plants, we may think of the whole human body as trembling in light—each cell containing (if we could but see it!) a luminous image of the presiding genius or self of the body.
The question is often asked: Where is the self? does it reside in the head, or in the heart, or perhaps in the liver? is it an aural halo pervading and surrounding the body, or is it a single microscopic cell far hidden in the interior, or is it an invisible atom? Here apparently is the answer. It animates every cell. It pervades the whole body, and seeks expression in every part of it. Some cells, as we have said before, are differentiated so as to express especially this faculty, others to express especially that; but the human soul or self stands behind them all. Look at a baby’s face, and its growing sparkling expression—an individual being coming newly into the world, obviously seeking, feeling, tentatively finding its way forward—every morning a thinnest veil falling from its features! Playing through the whole body, is an intelligence, seeking expression. Helen Keller, the girl both deaf and blind, describes most graphically her agonizing experiences at the age of six or seven, when her growing powers of body and mind demanded the expression which her physical disabilities so cruelly denied. “The desire to express myself grew,”[52] she says; “the few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself.” And then most touching, the description of her relief, “the thrill of surprise, the joy of discovery,” when she at last, about the age of ten, was able to utter her first intelligible words. In some degree like Helen Keller’s is perhaps the experience of every babe that is born into the world.
It seems to me, therefore, that each person is practically compelled to think of his ‘self’ as moving behind or as associated with or animating every cell in the healthy body; and as having been so associated with the first germ of the same, even though that was a thing well-nigh invisible to the naked eye. You were there, you are there now, at the root of your bodily life. You may not, certainly, except at moments, be distinctly conscious of this your complete relation to the body; but, as we have already said, the term self must be held to include the large subconscious tracts which occasionally flash up into consciousness, and which, when they do so flash, almost always confirm this relation; nor must we lose from sight the still more deeply buried physiological or animal soul, whose operations we seem to be able to trace from earliest days, guiding all the complex of organic growth and development, and apparently conscious in its own way with a very wonderful sort of intelligence.[53]
All this compels us, I think, not only to picture to ourselves the mental self or soul as associated with the body, and taking part in its development from the first inception of the latter; but also to picture that self as in its entirety considerably greater and more extensive than the ordinary conscious self, and even as greater than any bodily expression or manifestation which it succeeds in gaining. We are compelled, I think, to regard the real self as at all times only partially manifested.
I think this latter point is obvious; for when, and at what period in life, is manifestation complete? Certainly not in babyhood, when the faculties are only unfolding; certainly not in old age, when they are decaying and falling away. Is it, then, in maturity and middle life? But during all that period the output of expression and character in a man is constantly changing; and which of all these changes of raiment is completely representative? Do we not rather feel that to express our real selves every phase from childhood through maturity even into extreme old age ought to be taken into account? Nay, more than that; for have we not—perhaps most of us—a profound feeling and conviction that there are elements deep down in our natures, which never have been expressed, and never can or will be expressed in our present and actual lives? Do we not all feel that our best is only a fraction of what we want to say? And what must we think of the strange facts of multiple personality? Do they not suggest that our real self has facets so opposite, so divergent, that for a long time they may appear quite disconnected with each other; until ultimately (as has happened in actual cases) they have been visibly reconciled and harmonized in a new and more perfect character?
With regard to this view that the real person is so much greater than his visible manifestation, Frederick Myers and Oliver Lodge have used the simile of a ship. And it is a fine one. A ship gliding through the sea has a manifestation of its own, a very partial one, in the waterworld below—a ponderous hull moving in the upper layers of that world—a form encrusted with barnacles and sea-weed. But what denizen of the deep could have any inkling or idea of the real life of that ship in the aerial plane—the glory of sails and spars trimmed to the breeze and glancing in the sun, the blue arch of heaven flecked with clouds, the leaping waves and the boundless horizon around the ship as she speeds onward, the ingenious provision for her voyage, the compass, the helmsman and the captain directing her course? Surely (except in moments of divination and inspiration) we have little idea of what we really are! But there are such moments—moments of profound grief, of passionate love, of great and splendid angers and enthusiasms which dart light back into the farthest recesses of our natures and astonish us with the vision they disclose. And (perhaps more often) there are moments which disclose the wonder-self in others. If we do not recognize (which is naturally not easy!) our own divinity, it is certain that we cannot really love without discovering a divine being in the loved one—a being remote, resplendent, inaccessible, who calls for and indeed demands our devotion, but of whom the mortal form is most obviously a mere symbol and disguise. There are times when this strange illumination falls on people at large, and we see them as gods walking: when we look even on the tired overworked mother in the slum, and her face is shining like heaven; or on the ploughboy in the field with his team, and see the mould and the material of ancient heroes. Yet of what is really nearest to them all the time these folk say nothing, and we are astonished to find them haggling over halfpence or seriously troubled about wire-worms. It is as if a play, or some kind of deliberate mystification, were being carried on—with disguises a little too thin. We see, as plain as day—and nothing can contravene our conclusion—that it is only a fraction of the real person that is concerned.
Your self, then, I say—covering by that word not only all that you and your friends usually include in it, but probably a good deal more—existed, with all its potentialities and capacities even in association with the first primitive germ of your present body.[54] That germ was microscopic in size, and its inner workings and transformations were ultra-microscopic in character. We do not know whence they originated; and whether we think of the soul which was associated with them as ultra-microscopic in its nature or as fourth-dimensional does not much matter. We only perceive that it, the soul, must have been there, in an unseen world of some kind, pushing forward toward its manifestation in the visible.[55] I do not think we can well escape this conclusion.
But if we conclude that the soul existed before Birth, or, more properly, at or before conception, in some such invisible world, then that it should so exist after Death is equally possible, nay, probable. For after conception, by continual multiplication and differentiation of cells, the soul framed for itself organs of expression and manifestation, and thus gradually came into our world of sight and sense and ordinary intelligence; and so, by some reverse process, we may suppose that in decay and death the soul gradually loses these organs and their coördination, and retires into the invisible. Whatever the nature of this invisible may be—whether, as I say, a world of things too minute for human perception, or too vast for the same, or whether a world which eludes us by the simple artifice of everywhere and in everything running parallel to the things of the world—only in another dimension imperceptible to us—in any case it seems reasonable to suppose that the soul is still there, fulfilling its nature and its destiny, of which its earth-life has only been one episode.[56]
And if the apparent loss of consciousness (the loss of the ordinary consciousness at any rate) which often takes place during the death-change, seems to point to extinction and not to continuance, I think that that need not disturb us. For in sleep, in our nightly sleep, the same suspension of the ordinary consciousness takes place, as we very well know; yet all the time the subconsciousness is functioning away—sorting out sounds, bidding us wake for some, allowing us to sleep through others, discriminating disturbances, carrying on the physiologies of the body, posting sentinels in the reflexes—and guarding us from harm—till untired in the morning it knits together again the ravelled thread of the ordinary consciousness and renews our waking activities. And if this happens in our ordinary and nightly sleep, it seems at any rate possible that something similar may happen in death. Indeed there is much evidence to show that while at the hour of death the supraliminal consciousness often passes into a state of quiescence or abeyance, the subliminal, or at any rate some portion of the subliminal, becomes unusually active. Audition grows strangely keen—so much so that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the things heard have been apprehended by extension of the ordinary faculty or whether by a species of clairaudience. Vision similarly passes into clairvoyance, the patient becomes extraordinarily sensitive to telepathic influences, and knows what is going on at a distance;[57] and not only so, but he radiates influences to a distance. All the phenomena of wraiths and dying messages, now so well substantiated—of apparitions and impressions projected with force at the moment of death into the minds of distant friends—prove clearly the increased activity and vitality (one may say) of the subliminal self at that time; and this points, as I say, not to extinction and disorganization, but perhaps to the transfer of consciousness more decisively into hidden regions of our being. One hears sometimes of a dying person who, prevented from departure by the tears and entreaties of surrounding friends, cries out “Oh! let me die!” and one remembers the case, above mentioned, of the apparently dead mother who, so to speak, called herself back to life by the thought of her orphaned children. Such cases as these do not look like loss of continuity; rather they look as if a keen intelligence were still there, well aware of its earth-life, but drawn onward by an inevitable force, and passing into a new phase, of swifter subtler activity in perhaps a more ethereal body.
That the human soul does pass through great transformations—moultings and sloughings and metamorphoses—and so forward from one stage to another, we know from the facts of life. Physiologically the body takes on a new phase at birth, and another at weaning and teething, and another at puberty, and another in age at the ‘change of life,’ and so on; and transformations of the soul or inner life (some of them very remarkable) are associated with these outer phases. The last great bodily change is obviously accompanied—as we have just indicated—by the development or extension of hidden psychic powers. What exactly that final transformation may be, we can only at present speculate; but we can see that, like the others, when it arrives it has already become very necessary and inevitable. At every such former stage—whether it be birth, or teething, or puberty, or what not—there has been constriction or strangulation. The growing inner life has found its conditions too limited for it, and has burst forth into new form and utterance. In this final change the bodily conditions altogether seem to have grown too limited. With an irresistible impulse and an agonizing joy of liberation the soul sweeps out, or is fearfully swept, into its new sphere. Sometimes doubtless the passage is one of pain and terror; far more often, and in the great majority of cases, it is peaceful and calm, with a deep sense of relief; occasionally it is radiant with ecstasy, as if the new life already cast its splendor in advance.[58]
Yes, we cannot withhold the belief that there is an after-death state—a state which in a sense is present with us, and has been present, all our lives; but which—for reasons that at present we can only vaguely apprehend—has been folded from our consciousness.