The vision left me with a blank sense of utter disillusionment and failure. Nothing in me was finished or complete. My expression suggested a character which was horribly crude, imperfect and rudimentary. Looking at myself afterwards in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that it lied, or that in waking life I wear a mask.

It is salutary to behold one's spiritual portrait, a thing not visible to the mind alone but to the physical sight. In a flash comes the knowledge that dwelling in us are forces, not yet grasped by mortal mind, that cry for recognition. There have been moments in all lives, I believe, when a glimpse is caught of the Olympian heights to which it is possible to rise. Glimpses, alas! of the evanescent thing we know ourselves in truth to be.

Sometimes, on the Astral plane, it happens that friends meet under strange circ.u.mstances, and one figures largely in the doings of another.

The memory of those nocturnal adventures is brought through and clearly recollected in the morning.

One such occurrence I will relate, and it is peculiar and unusual.

An old friend of ours, a man who has devoted his life to the development of his spiritual faculties (not to be confused with the development of mediumship and phenomena), had a series of dreams in which he appeared to be two people. He himself was the same tall, slender man he is in daily life, but in this psychic experience a much smaller man moved always on his left side, and somehow seemed to symbolize his waking personality.

The central figure in one of these unusual experiences was a young man who was unknown to our friend, and who had died abroad. His body had been embalmed and brought home for burial, and our friend had been shown photographs of him, and had also communicated with him through automatic writing. This much was imprinted on his physical memory.

Now, whilst lying asleep one night, the spiritual counterpart of our friend became aware that the body of the young man was exposed and could be seen. His companion, or other self, the shorter man who moved by his side, shrank back with horror from such a suggestion, just as our friend would instinctively have done in waking consciousness, but he himself was determined to see the body, and went straight through a door facing him, into a room where it was lying on a low table.

Now comes the moment when I began to figure in this experience. I was standing on the opposite side of the table, making vigorous pa.s.ses over the young man's body, which appeared to be fashioned out of pinkish clay. The trunk and legs looked as though I had roughly modeled them with my hands. The head was more highly finished. It was sharp and distinct in outline, and our friend recognized it instantly as being a representation of the young man whose portraits he had seen. He stared at the face with great interest, and taking up a cloth, gently wiped the cheek where a fleck of foam lay. This action seemed to vivify the body, for it began to mutter and murmur indistinctly. Apparently it was alive, and not dead.

Our friend relates that this discovery gave him such a shock that he lost the thread of memory which he was bringing back to his physical body on the bed. The next moment he woke up. My recollection, a perfectly clear one, of these happenings, was that he simply vanished from the scene, leaving me alone with the body, which I continued to manipulate.

Afterwards, through automatic writing, our friend was told by the departed young man, that this astral vision signified the collecting of etheric matter to fashion a body in which he could function on etheric planes.

On another occasion our friend had the experience of walking about on the other side with the young man, who was dressed in an ordinary tweed suit, and being taken by him to various acquaintances, to whom he was introduced. With the exception of the above experience, he believes that this was the first time he had ever seen him. The interesting point of both experiences is, that both I and our friend brought back on waking, a clear and similar recollection of the episode in which we were jointly concerned.

This friend of ours is a disciple of "The Flaming Heart," called by Catholics "The Sacred Heart." He writes to me thus:--

"I see now more clearly than before that the Christ self within uses its powers as a whole, just as the personal man uses intellect, will, and feeling, all three being energized by love, which is the element of interest in the several activities."

"So the self of love works out and manifests as--

Love and Life Beauty.

Love and Power Goodness.

Love and Knowledge Wisdom.

"The Love element saves us from wrong living, wrong doing or wrong thinking. So we go from strength to strength, by yielding the lower self to the trans.m.u.ting power of the Higher."

It was long before I came to understand the full significance of the Flaming Heart. It was plain to see what its realization meant to our friend. He radiates an extraordinary serenity of mind, an atmosphere of strength and peace, a calm in the midst of storm which apparently nothing can shake. Pre-eminently, when in his presence, one is conscious of a commanding power which will only be used for exalted purposes. This clear subjection of the lower self, to the trans.m.u.ting power of the Higher self, has worked such marvels in him that one longs to grasp the secret of his success.

A few years pa.s.sed, and still the heart of the mystery eluded me. This year, 1918, it came to me in a flash.

The experience I am about to relate may have happened to many others. To me, it was a tremendous revelation.

I was kneeling one morning in front of the Altar, at Early Celebration.

I have always felt, through the Eucharist, the possibility of great spiritual development, and often there comes to me at such moments, a mystical response to the inner mysteries of the Sacrament. I have never looked for supernatural happenings, hallucinations, or psychic excitements, but my spiritual instincts are always alive and craving satisfaction. This they have never before received in any really lasting degree.

Now came a new Divine illumination.

Two clergymen were officiating at the celebration. I had just received the bread from the one, and had raised my head and hands to receive the cup from the other, when suddenly I went quite blind.

The vicar, who was moving towards me, was blotted out. I stared at a black veil utterly impenetrable, and I was aware of a tremendous internal dislocation. My heart beat tumultuously, and felt as if thrust out of place. Then my sight was restored.

I saw before me, not the man, bearing in his hands the chalice, but a flaming heart of fire, from which radiated out living, scintillating streams of golden light. They filled the background with their quivering radiance, and I was conscious of shrinking back, and bowing my head as the supernal vision approached me and enveloped me in Its aura.

The cup had been trans.m.u.ted by Divine alchemy into the Flaming Heart of love's sacrifice, and I was given to taste of the living waters of Life.

For a few minutes I was quite unconscious of where I was. I had been, indeed, caught up into the seventh Heaven. I know now that I acted mechanically, and to outward semblance I behaved in the orthodox manner, but when I raised my head again the vicar had pa.s.sed on and the vision had vanished. Nothing had happened to distract the attention of others.

I returned to my seat conscious that I had been taught the meaning and marvelous significance of the Flaming Heart. I understood the words of the great mystic, St. John.

"In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

"And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness overcame it not.

"There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world."

I know that the Flaming Heart of Divinity dwells in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all humanity, that the soul is no empty sh.e.l.l, but the shrine of the Divine Presence, and that Presence is the Guide and Light of Life.

I have seen revealed the inner mystery of the sacramental life. Through a rift in the veil of the material, the hidden life of eternity was symbolized for me in the Flaming Heart, the true Eucharistic Mystery.

CHAPTER XV

THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN

To some people life is an unspeakable tragedy; to others it is a mere farce. To all it is a profound mystery.

What am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? What is this mysterious ego that thinks and acts?

From Darwin we learn that the human body has taken a million years to evolve its present form. Is it logical to suppose that there is no scheme of evolution for the immortal soul, in which it can preserve its individuality through the ages? The mills of G.o.d grind slowly, and what is seventy or eighty years in eternity, in which we develop the highest and most complex organism we can conceive of--the Soul?

Five hundred and thirty-five years B. C. Pythagoras was teaching the reincarnation of the immortal soul in his celebrated school. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Philo, Virgil, Cicero, Euclid, the Egyptians and the Hindoos taught the same doctrine. In the days of Christ the transmigration of souls was an accepted belief, and in 250 A. D. Origen, the greatest of the Christian Fathers, was still teaching the same doctrine. Justin Martyr recognized the presence of the Logos in Jesus, and Socrates and Clement of Alexandria affirmed that the same philosophy had brought the Greeks to Christ. To this day it remains the belief of three-fourths of the human race.

In our country, though a rapidly growing faith, Buddhism fails to command the attention it otherwise would, for two reasons. Firstly, we have never been a religious-minded people, and are now very much less so than formerly. What are loosely termed religious subjects interest a very few, and bore intensely the great majority. Out of our forty-four million souls, a mere handful are interested in a future life. The rest prefer not to take the problem into consideration, though they are ready to accept a small dose of conventional religion, ready-made and pre-digested. Secondly, faith in the transmigration of souls in a succession of physical bodies only becomes an urgent mental necessity, a vitally necessary explanation of life's inequalities, to those who mix with the outcast poor. Such persons are again comparatively few, and, to those of them who think, life without reincarnation is simply an incomprehensible and chaotic puzzle.

Once the faith is grasped that life between birth and death is only a tiny fragment of the aeons allotted to us, in which to develop spiritually, divine harmony; love and justice reappear. Only thus can one see light. But if the tardy growth of this all-sufficient illumination is slow to take root, it must be remembered that to the ordinary, well-to-do person it makes no appeal.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" is generally answered in the negative, and the hypocritical rejoinder, covering a mountain of selfishness, that it is an impertinence to pry into the lives of the poor, is the facile excuse for sitting at ease and cozening the conscience into the belief that the poor are G.o.d's affair. Even the devout and pious, who may feel deep compa.s.sion for the sorrow of the dest.i.tute, have no spur to p.r.i.c.k their mental apathy, unless they mix freely and constantly with the poor and oppressed. Only then will come the perplexed question: Where can I see in all this overwhelming misery the Divine hand of love and justice?

The Christ who established his Brotherhood with us, by proclaiming G.o.d the Universal Father, told us that "Before Abraham was, I am," and I suppose that most people, who accept anything, accept the pre-existence of Christ. Yet how few of us can remember anything of our own past lives, and how merciful it is that we cannot. How utterly overwhelming such memory would be! The future is as carefully hidden from us as the past, yet our previous lives have been by no means unfruitful.

The experiences we have gathered in the past years of this life are nearly all forgotten, yet our development has gone on, and the records are stored in the subconsciousness, sometimes to be pulled across the threshold and displayed in a complete panorama before the dying eyes.

The statements to this effect made by those who have been resuscitated when at the point of death by drowning, are too numerous to be discarded as mere fables.

Undoubtedly we all contain the germs of sin at birth, but few educated people now accept the statements that we are born sinful because our parents sinned, or because of the moral delinquencies of those of Eden.

Certainly we all bear the consequences of others' sins, but the cruel injustice of a G.o.d who deliberately punishes present humanity for the sins of past humanity is too revolting a conception of the Creator to gain acceptance to-day.

This very fact shows that we have advanced spiritually. So base a conception of the Almighty is violently repugnant to serious thinkers.