Dealings with the Dead/Part 2/Transmigrating-The Soul
Transmigrating—The Soul.
Turn where we will, ask whom we may, for information, we are sure to be met with the stereotyped "Know thyself." As well tell me to leap over the salt sea! I ask all mankind, the ocean, land, air, sun, moon, stars, history—everything else, both material and mental, sacred and profane—to point me out a single human being who really knows himself, or even approximately so. Where, I ask, is the wonderful mortal—tell, O tell me where?—and from hollow space the echoes mock me—where?
To know oneself! The words are easily spoken or penned; but to do it, is, of all things, the hardest and most difficult; for this very selfhood's personality is, beyond all others, the special acquaintance of whom we know the least.
The sentence "Know thyself" was written over the porch of an ancient temple. The man who placed it there must have been deeply spiced with satire and cynicism, else he certainly would have assigned mankind a task less arduous—a task compared to which the twelve labors of Hercules were mere child's play. Now, although this feat may never have been accomplished, still it lies within the range of the possibilities; and in declaring that a man may, by study, find out both himself and God, I fly in the face of current philosophy, and deny the truth of the noted dogma of modern sophists, that "It is impossible for a man to explore the labyrinths of his own nature:—a principle cannot comprehend itself." Why is the logic of this doctrine faulty? Because, first, God can certainly comprehend man. All there is of man is mind; all there is of Deity is the same. A principle thus comprehends itself.
Man is God's image, and can do on a small what He does on an infinite scale; and the only difference between Deity and a full man simply is, that the former can comprehend the parts of the Realm separately and together, while the latter can only grasp each truth as it swims to him on the rolling waves of Time's great sea; yet, so far as he goes, he comprehends himself. The day will dawn when, looking back at what he was, he shall fully understand the mystery; and as he advances, he will continually read the foregone scrolls, while new accrements of being will ever be his—each one in turn to undergo the scrutiny, each one to be fully understood, and so on forever and for aye. Were it not so, Being would be worthless and our existence a dreadful farce. Secondly: Intuition has already been proved to be the shoot, of which Omniscience is the tree—which fact disposes of the absurd dogma just quoted, and forever.
There are two mighty problems up for solution. These are: "What and where is God?" on which I intend to write some day; and the other is, "What is the Soul?" which I am now partially solving. This last has proved itself to be the profoundest of all questions, and very difficult of solution; but only so because investigators have mistaken their vocation, and analyzed a few of the faculties, qualities, and affections of the mind—all the while imagining the soul itself to be under their microscopes—whereas the soul was calmly, placidly looking on, and wondering why they were so busily intent upon examining the furze and bushes, instead of the deep, rich soil whence they sprung.
Faculty, Fancy and Dream-life are but three of the Soul's most common moods; and yet metaphysicians have confined themselves to but little else than their analysis. These are but three little rays from amidst a multitude of others, proceeding from one common source; yet, if even these were all analyzed, understood, and known, the great center whence they emanate would still remain as great a mystery as ever. Nearly all that we know of soul is really not of it, but of its methods of display.
There is something more of man than life, limb, sense-faculty, affections, feeling and sex. There's a depth beneath them all, and into these deeps I believe it possible to dive, and to bring up many a pearl, and crystal, and grains of golden sand from the floor of his being—from out the silver sea of life, whose waters flow soul-ward, and have their rise beneath the throne, whereon sitteth for evermore the Infinite Eternal—the great I am: Aye, it is possible to know oneself, notwithstanding that, to ninety-nine persons in a hundred, there seems to be an impenetrable cloud, circumvolving them—an obscurity, thick as darkest night, hemming them in on all sides. Yes, thank Heaven! man can untie the gordian knot, and triumphantly pass the Rubicon, but not over the bridge of Mesmerism, obsession, drugs, or any of the ordinary means usually resorted to; but through the continued exertion of steadfastness, attention, purpose, and will—the four golden posts to which are hung the double gates, which open in both worlds.
Souls are, of course, the subjects of number, and in this sense are "particles,"—souls of course being plural; yet soul is not, for although you may subtract forty-eight from forty-nine, and leave a remaining unit, yet that unit is absolutely one; and you could no more dismember it, than you could find the lost particles of dust upon a midge's wing. Spirit is substance in absolute coalescence; matter is substance, whose particles never touch each other; and soul is a developed monad. A thought of a house is, until that thought be actualized—surrounded with matter conforming to its shape—a monad. There was a period when God was alone; he thought, and the product of that thought is the material universe, as we see it; he thought again—and lo! those thoughts, each one complete in itself, took outer garments, and became human beings. Far off, in the past eternities, God's thoughts went forth; these were the monads. First, they entered into lower forms, then higher and higher, till at last they reached organizations adapted to the perfect ripening of that which had all along been growing. The ripening produced Intelligence: that intelligence is the soil, out of which Intuition grows; and what this last advances to, we already know. How long, and through what countless numbers of diverse forms, these transmigrations lasted, and passed, it were impossible to tell. We all have indistinct retrovisions, flashes of back-thought, dim and vague reminiscences of a pre-state of existence; and we also know, that there are marvelous resemblances between men and the animal creation, just as if the soul, on quitting an inferior for a superior form, retained something of its former surroundings and characteristics. Some men physically resemble the ox, lion, tiger, dog, owl, bat, deer; and we know that myriads resemble in their mentality the traits of character, habits and dispositions pertaining to all these animals, and others, as the fox, snake, eagle, peacock, swine, and so on to the end of a long chapter. "When I was a flower," said a little child. That child had an intuition of a mighty fact!
Now all these astonishing likenesses are not accidental, but exist in accordance with the great law of Transmigration. Mind me: I do not say, or believe, that any man or woman was ever a dog, viper, vampire-bat or tiger; but I do affirm that the monads, which now constitute their souls, once sustained a very close relationship to the beasts of the field, and have not yet got rid of the effects of the alliance. This is a matter too clear to be disputed: else, why these very remarkable resemblances? I know, that some people will "pooh! pooh!" at this idea; but that wont account for the likeness! A man never was a dog, or an owl; yet, that both dogs and owls were originally made, in order that the human monad, in passing a sort of gestation period in them, might be ripened slowly, and prepared for what he is now, I have at present no manner of doubt. Indeed, human bodies, both physical and spiritual, are but other and higher forms, to which the Winged Globe, Man, has transmigrated in its passage from minus to plus—from bad to better, and from better to best. A dog, owl, bat or human body is only so much matter; and the sole business of 'matter' is to furnish so many different sorts of huts, houses, and palaces for spiritual tenants, wherein the primary schools maybe attended by the regal student-soul. I know that even the disenthralled spiritual body is itself but a mere vehicle of Soul, on its next upward transmigration—is still but an adjunct, an out-projection of, and scarcely second cousin to, the tremendous mystery—Soul—the Winged Globe within it. We know that man can live without his carbonaceous body, which is but an incidental assumption in his career, a sort of garb, worn at the longest less than a century; that this period is scarce one second in its immense year; and that he can see without eyes, and know without cerebral organs.[1]
It is an axiom that whatever has one end, must also have another: now, if a human soul has its first beginning here, nothing is more certain than that it will have an end somewhere. But the soul is mind—mind is God: and God is eternal. He ever existed, and ever will; and the monads, the germ-souls here developed, and hereafter perfected, are also eternal; they existed in all times past, and can never cease to be, for their very nature is Permanency. All bodies here, or elsewhere, are but accompaniments—instruments, tools of the royal spirit in one or more of its multitudinous phases of existence—that is to say, it creates, uses, and puts them on to serve its purposes, till it can afford to dispense with them: for human existence is a synonym of Eternal Duration—is an immense circle: a circle is but an infinite polygon: and bodily vehicles serve the soul's purposes during its passage over a very few of the straight lines whereof this polygon is composed. And, beyond all doubt, the period will arrive—it may be away in the far-off eternities—but nevertheless will arrive, wherein the soul will dispense with all these characteristics of its juvenility. No one associates legs, arms, eyes, stomach, or sexual organs, with the idea of God: why then should such things be eternally predicated of man, who is fashioned after the model of the Infinite God Himself?
The body of a man is a greater thing than any object on earth beside; is far greater than even the physical world in which he lives, because it is the master production of all the elements and forces in that world. The spiritual form that man assumes, and to which he may be said to transmigrate after the physical decease, is of far more importance, and altogether greater than is his previous physical and material structure. A single faculty of his measureless soul is infinitely greater than the spirit, nor may even an archangel comprehend fully one of these faculties, at a glance, in view of its limitless and expansive power. From one point he may comprehend what the faculty was and is, but not what it can be: yet the soul itself has untold myriads of these; and only God himself can embrace all at one mental grasp—He alone can fully and perfectly know a soul as it was, is, and is to be. This does not conflict with previous assertions that a soul can comprehend itself; for God's omniscience embraces the past, the present, and the future: manonly seizes upon the first two. Virtue and Vice, and the organs it now uses, are but incidents in the career of this under-God. These things are of time—are transitory and fleeting; but the man is forever! In view of this, what is a vice, what is accident to this majestic being—the perfected work of the viewless Lord of Infinite Glory?
They are but flecks upon the rose-leaf—atoms on a moon-beam! The immortal man is not fashioned of such material as can be forever marred by vice, forever happy in what now constitutes the virtues. Its destiny is Action, and in the perpetual transmigrations, contrasts and. changes of the hereafter, it will find its truest account, and the proper subservence of the purposes of the awful Will which spake it into being. "Rest for the weary," is there? There is no rest! Man can never rest! God does not; why then should he?
The immortal spark within is a thing of ceaseless activities; not in sins and repentances, but in noble aspirations and high and lofty doing. Great God! I cower in the presence of the tiniest soul ever spoken into being; for I feel, by reason of the great unveiling that occurred upon that wonder-filled afternoon, that, insignificant as it may seem, yet within it there are energies that now lie sleeping which shall one day awaken into Power, Beauty and most surpassing Glory. Hell is its experience of the unfit, improper and untrue; but its wings are too powerful not to lift it, in triumph, above the flames and the deepest pit of all. Earthly virtues are the offspring of contrast; vice consists in bad calculation, and both will prove in the great Far-off to have been but the disciplines ordained to fit it for the business of Good and Use on the other side the curtain;—and I clap my poor weak hands in gladness! Who with true heart can help it?
Man is supremely greater than, not only law, that he has found it convenient to violate or conform to, but to any and all that it is possible for him now to conceive of or imagine; because, in the order of the great Unveiling, he will discover and come under the action of new ones, as the Night of Time moves toward the Dawn.
Those who go about in the exercise of benevolent offices are not always the most virtuous; nor are they who heal the sick and give of their abundance to the needy; for all these things are often done for fashion's sake. But the man or woman who ever acts up to the highest conviction of Right and Duty, even though rack-threatened, is the most virtuous; because in so doing the great design of God, which is individualization, and of intensification of character, is all the sooner carried out.
Human beings, male and female, talk much of virtue, which means strength, and loudly boast its possession; yet how very few there are who will stand up and face the music which their very talk may have evoked? How they shrink when the storm comes down; how they cower when bitter denunciation and abuse pours in upon them from the ramparts of the world! All hail the glad and coming day, when we shall be what we ought! When he who wears the garb shall in very deed prove himself a man, the most glorious title on earth save one, and that one is—woman!
Once in a while we are greeted by the magnificent spectacle of a female who dares to stand up and practically vindicate her escutcheon, not in loud talk and "strong-minded" diatribes against what exists, but in her daily-lived truth, and the practical knowledge of those tender virtues which so endear all true women to all true men. And whenever such a woman crosses my path, I rejoice; I rejoice in the presence of such a fact, and fold her as a sister folds another to her soul. People are false to the light within them. It is a great thing to be true to self—to stand forth the champion of your noblest thought, when all fingers point at at you with scorn, all heels are upraised to crush the sweet life out of you, and when only God and your own stout heart are on your side. To do this,—and. thank Heaven! some there be who dare it,—is to be more than human: is to be divine; and this heart-wrought divinity allies us to the immortal gods. This it is that I call virtue.
- ↑ Many persons desire to know how to produce and cultivate clairvoyance. To such I present the following rules, knowing them to be efficient, and only requiring patience (or success. 1st, Set apart the first hour after retiring to bed nightly. Eat a light supper; bind a light silk bandage over the entire forehead and eyes, turn the face toward the darkest corner of the room, and endeavor to see. 2d, Never call on a spirit to assist you. 3d, Keep the skin pure by daily ablutions. 4th, Learn to concentrate the mind on a single object, and keep it there. 5th, Fix it on something good, useful and true. 6th, Pray fervently to God. 7th, Ask a mental question, and desire that the symbolic answer may be given. 8th, Wish well to everything and everybody.
The results will be—1st, You will see a dim haze. 2d, A spark of light. 3d, A greater light. 4th, Misty forms will float before you. 5th, They will grow distinct. 6th, Answers will flow into your mind. 7th, You will gradually merge into a radiant light; behold the actual dead, converse with them, and realize your soul's desire.