Part 15 (1/2)

Only in the land of abundance can we play the game of beauty which is our sole destination and which unites our nature to G.o.d's nature. And if we cannot stand abundance we must learn to accustom ourselves to it.

He who created us leads us by the line of joy, another link between Him and us does not exist. Though the way lead through dismal gloom, the luring voice of happiness continues to go before us. That is our will and G.o.d's will, disagreement is but misunderstanding.

Forgive me, dear reader, if I join the conclusions to the facts. I know that among them there are many confirmations of ancient, long-known truths. But you shall see that the very simplest and most well-known facts must be repeated to men over and over again, because they lack the courage and originality to keep their hold on them.

XIX

If so far you have believed and understood me, dear reader, it cannot fail but you will demand more of me than I can give. You will not demand further proofs, but revelations: communications from beings of another sphere, distinct, well-formulated communications concerning the beyond, concerning the meaning of our life, concerning the soul, concerning Christ, concerning G.o.d. Everyone desires these, not considering that for a distinct communication two factors are always required - namely, a good communicator and a good understander; just as air and fuel are required to start a flame.

I myself, as everyone would have, also sought for revelation, and many a time instead of calling Emmy I committed the folly of calling for Christ, or even worse, for G.o.d.

In the clear moments of observation of the night one can only effectually carry through one thing, there is no time for more; and it would happen that throughout the entire vision I would pray pa.s.sionately, not thinking of Emmy, thanking G.o.d for his favors and beseeching him for enlightenment, and in the same way Christ. I could never do it by day with so much earnestness, conviction and eloquence.

In the daytime I am not eloquent, but bashful and embarra.s.sed, even when alone. I cannot pray by day for fear of feeling ridiculous, for gene. But at night this gene is gone and I abandon myself to prayer with a true pa.s.sion, sometimes - even as all pa.s.sions in the immaterial life - going beyond my control. At times my devout pa.s.sion during prayer, even at the very moment, seems exaggerated and affected to me, but I am unable to restrain it.

But now the remarkable fact about it is that I never, absolutely never, have perceived anything in my visions that at my pa.s.sionate and ardent invocation appeared as a divine image, as an angel or as Christ. Human beings, dead or living, came almost always when at all strongly urged; Emmy I saw many times in various shapes and circ.u.mstances. But at my invocations and prayers to these higher beings, whose existence man has always had to conclude from the signs of the world perceptible to the senses or from inner consciousness, I have never seen anything but what we call natural beauties - sunlight; blue heavens; flaming evening skies; radiant horizons, brightening or clouding with promising or warning significance.

And this where the history of human civilization is replete with stories of visions of angels, of Mary, and of Christ. We may explain this as we like, yet it proves that the simple wish, the invocation, the self-suggestion is not enough to create a visionary image. The demons of the Middle Ages I have seen, but not their angels, their Marys, their Jesus, their G.o.d the Father, while yet I often longed for it as a child and prayed for it as a man, until I was old and wise enough to understand that I had to be glad of their non-appearance, because the apparition of an old, bearded king as G.o.d, of a white-robed, long-haired man as Jesus, of a winged man as an angel, would simply have been nothing but fancied images, spectral deception or impotent human phantasy.

Does not our simplest reason tell us that all life that is more than human life, all higher beings, whether superman, or Christ, or G.o.d, can have no form perceptible to man with his five senses? Do not all endeavors of art and imagination to create something above man, remain limited to a perfected humanity? Has not the sole conception of a superhuman being always been the impossible one of a man with wings?

Yet we know that there is a higher being, higher life with more exalted beauties; but clear reflection must also teach us that its form remains imperceptible and unimaginable as long as our perceptive faculty and our knowledge have not, in a manner at present quite inconceivable, increased in a higher sphere, and that therefore all their awarded shapes, though formed by Dantesque phantasy, must be erroneous.

Sometimes, indeed, I saw worlds and sad beings that, much as they resembled the familiar and human, seemed to me to belong to a wholly different sphere. One night I dreamed of the sea, but it changed to something else, - a park, a landscape peopled with many creatures. I remember that the ground was moving like ocean waves, but magnificently blue and speckled with intensely yellow spots. There were also bushes and a mult.i.tude of happy, festive, richly dressed human beings. They were not demons, that I felt, but a species of men - happy, luxuriously living men.

Then I remembered that I was on another planet, and though my consciousness was not yet quite clear, still I began to pay close attention. Thus I remember that I gazed at the sky and seeing the blue color immediately drew the conclusion: ”so there is oxygen in this atmosphere too,” because it is oxygen that gives the blue color to our atmosphere. I went on and on and the landscape changed repeatedly. The inhabitants were extremely sympathetic and kindly disposed toward me.

Of language or words I have no remembrance, but there was a cordial understanding. Then I saw trees and hills or something resembling them, and I fell into raptures. ”0 my earth!” I cried, ”it resembles my earth!” and I wept with emotion, because it reminded me of my beloved earth. Then I noticed that everything differed somewhat from earthly things and yet resembled them. ”Just as America resembles Europe and yet differs from it,” I thought in my dream.

Upon this I came into a barren and uninhabited part and I saw a perspective of mountains, a mountain chain rising out of the sea, luminous and steep, but so affecting and terrible to behold that it oppressed me. The perspective stretched out farther and farther - a dizzy extent, and all the way my eyes travelled along the ridge of faint-rose-colored rocks. Below me, at the left, was a mighty abyss, also, a distant mountain prospect. I saw everything with peculiar sharpness and distinctness. My mind was clear at the time and I was fully conscious - the terrific depth made me dizzy.

Thereupon I saw two strange beings in the wilderness. Human beings also - not demons. One was slate-colored like clay, the other brownish red like baked earth. They were hard at work - and the thought crossed my mind whether these were perchance the proletarians, who in this land supported the luxurious people I had just now seen. They were busy with a fire and I asked them something, about food or wood I believe.

Laughingly they explained: ”That is scarce here.” Then I pointed back toward the land where I had left the people living in affluence:

”Yet it is not scarce there.” Thereupon they laughed, feigning indifference, and intimated, how I no longer remember, that they were not envious of this, that these things were not essential, that it should be so. I awoke pondering the meaning of this dream, which I did not comprehend, and even now would not dare to explain entirely.

All that the perception during sleep teaches us, demands exactly as much scientific thought and comparison, critical a.n.a.lysis and selection, and building up into fixed, universal and lasting truth, as do all our waking perceptions. There can be no other true revelation than that of creative art and of science, established by all and for all. What would a personal revelation signify, that depended on the receptivity of a single individual, and could be affirmed in a few words and, by suggestion, forced upon the unreceptive? Would it not be as though the Divinity entrusted to the apostle the work of convincing thousands, where he himself had found only one - the apostle - susceptible to persuasion? Can such a revelation, spread by inculcation and pressure, by authority and servility, be anything else than pa.s.sing fancy, and fleeting deception?

Therefore the study of the immaterial did not draw me away from the world of day, but caused me to work in it with all the more zeal and satisfaction, because I learned to look upon this world as our real field of labor, where the riches that shall count on a higher plane of vision are prepared.

Dreams only give us slight hints; the work must be done in this life.

But my dreams also showed me that solitude and seclusion could never lead to the highest joy and purest bliss. Unspeakably happy as were the moments of meeting with my dream bride, they were surpa.s.sed by those in which a universal joy, a great and transcendent enthusiasm simultaneously filling many beings - human happy beings - carried along myself and my beloved in a wave of radiant festive bliss.

I have had them often, such dreams, and they were the most beautiful of all. I know not whether they were the proclaimers of future or the dawning of already existing reality - but I would see spectacles of countless enthusiastic mult.i.tudes, processions of festive people streaming together and marching in solemn rhythm, with jubilation and sound of clarion. And we two, my beloved and I, were a part thereof, we belonged to it; and a feeling of festiveness and of unlimited confidence toward all possessed us, lifting us up into a bright and joyous mood, and yet not detracting from our mutual affection, but transfiguring and strengthening it.

Thereby - as through repeated experience I learned to understand them - truths were pointed out to me in a peculiar symbolical way. Thus I once saw in my dream many people building a large house and laying out a path, and they did it with marvellous alacrity. And there was no one to command them, to give directions, or point out anything.

The incredible swiftness with which the work advanced was due to the fact that each one of the builders, down to the very least, knew and comprehended the entire work and therefore did not need the slightest direction.

I understood these hints better and better, and more and more clearly comprehended what hindered man on his upward path - the dawning rays of pure universal blessedness shone for me ever more brightly from out the chaos of our confused personal and social life. But all the more tormentingly I felt my impotence to bring about an effectual reform.