Cosmic Consciousness

THIS CASE IS GIVEN as that of a man who spent several years in what has been called above the twilight of Cosmic Consciousness but upon whom the sun did not rise. In this connection the man is an exceedingly interesting study to all those who care about the subject matter of the present volume, and the more so because he has written a book in which he gives us what is undoubtedly a straightforward and candid account of his spiritual life down to his thirty-fifth year. He seems to have entered early into the twilight above referred to, and it seems probable that Jefferies would have entered into at least momentary Cosmic Consciousness at about the usual age had it not been that before that time came, when thirty-three years old, he was seized with a fatal sickness which weakened and tortured him from that time until his death, which took place in his thirty-ninth year. Be this as it may, the book named represents the highest spiritual altitude attained by Jefferies–a spiritual altitude clearly above that of mere self consciousness and as clearly below the mental status of complete Cosmic Consciousness.

The book, of course, should be read as a whole–and it will well repay perusal–but for the purposes of the present volume the passages found below must suffice.

1. At eighteen years of age he enters into the twilight of the Cosmic Sense. But neither then nor afterwards present themselves any of the characteristic phenomena of entrance into Cosmic Consciousness.

2. Jefferies is always longing, always aspiring, always reaching out and striving. He intensely feels that there is something infinitely desirable just beyond his outstretched hand, but he never actually touches it.

3. Of such passages as these Salt says: “Jefferies now writes without disguise, as one who has received a solemn revelation of the inner beauty of the universe.” But note especially his love of external nature is always a longing, becoming intense but never fulfilled, to become the object. But perhaps the essence of the Cosmic Sense, from the point of view of the intellect, is the realization that the subject and object are one. See supra the words of E. C. and of the Vagasaneyi-Samhita-Upanishad also: “Strange and hard that paradox true I give, objects gross and the unseen soul are one.” But Gautama says that “within him there arose the eye to perceive, the knowledge, the understanding, the wisdom that lights the true path, the light that expels darkness.”

4.He has the feeling of continuous life – it does not seem that he can die. If he had attained to Cosmic Consciousness he would have entered into eternal life, and there would be no “seems” about it.

5. “Why, who makes much of a miracle? To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle”, etc.

6. He feels that he has not realized – that there is something just out of reach; his contentment is never complete or only so by flashes. On the other hand, those who have fully entered Cosmic Consciousness–upon whom the sun has risen–who have achieved Nirvāna – the kingdom of heaven – are at rest and happy. “I am satisfied,” says Whitman, “I exist as I am. That is enough.” “I know I am solid and sound.” “I know I am deathless;” and all the fully illumined from Gautama down to E. C., both inclusive, declare the same complete fulfillment of desire.

8.”I believe in the flesh and the appetites. Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out!”

9. In these passages is positive evidence that Jefferies never really attained to the Cosmic Sense–that is, he never became conscious of the cosmic order–the vision of the “eternal wheels” of the “chain of causation” was not granted him.

10. So Blake said of “Jerusalem”: “I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without premeditation and even against my will.” This feeling of external or internal domination by something or somebody is common if not universal with men having the Cosmic Sense. Even as in the case of those who have entered the holy of holies, so Jefferies, though the revelation to him was far from complete, saw more than he found it easy to express in our language of the self conscious mind.

CHAPTER 29 Case of C. M. C. in Her Own Words

IT IS IMPORTANT TO CLEARLY realize that in writing the following pages C. M. C. (and the same may be truly said of every person whose evidence is included in this volume) had no prior or contemporary case before her mind upon which, if she were capable of so doing, she could have modeled her narrative. This latter is, beyond all question, a faithful account (as simple and straightforward as she could make it) of her actual psychological experience as she lived through it.

I was born in the year 1844. I have been told that as a child I never seemed young–that is, that along with my youth there was an air of thoughtfulness that belongs to more advanced years. I cannot remember a time when I did not think and wonder about God. The beauty and sublimity of nature have always, from early childhood, impressed me deeply. Went to church and Sunday school, listened attentively to the prayers and sermons – thought over the latter more than was probably supposed. The sermons were old time Presbyterian–the Day of Judgment, the sinner’s lost condition, the unpardonable sin, and all those things so dreadful to a serious, imaginative child. The older I grew and the more I thought the more puzzled and bewildered I became. Over the sufferings of Jesus I wept bitter tears, grieving that my sins should have nailed him to the cross. How he could be God I could not understand, yet never doubted but that it must be true. I studied the Bible and catechism, and especially the “Confession of Faith,” not only because it was a duty but because I felt as if I must find out the truth about things. How terribly I felt when I learned that without the gospel the heathen could not be saved. The cruelty and injustice of it made me almost hate God for making the world so. I joined the church, however, thinking that it might bring me peace and rest; but although feeling safer I was just as far as ever from being satisfied. While still quite a girl we began taking some rather liberal church papers which I read and which were to a certain extent a comfort to me, since they showed me that the narrow doctrines in which I had been brought up were not the whole of Christianity. At this time Paradise Lost, Pollock’s Course of Time and Pilgrim’s Progress were favorite books. The Course of Time, however, left me depressed for many weeks. The vastness and grandeur of the God which I felt in nature I could never reconcile with the God in the Bible, try as I would, and of course I felt myself a wicked skeptic in consequence.

So it went on and though to all appearance I was happy and full of life like other girls, there was always that undercurrent–a vein of sadness deep down, out of sight. Often as I have walked out under the stars, looking up into those silent depths with unspeakable longing for some answer to the wordless questions within me, I have dropped down upon the ground in a perfect agony of aspiration. But if the stars knew the secret I sought they gave no sign. My experience was no doubt ordinary – largely that of the average girl living the average commonplace life – with aspirations and ideals to all appearance beyond any hope of fulfillment. At twenty-two I was married. Ten years later a change of place broke up the old routine of my life, giving me new associates and new interests. I was thrown into relation with people of more liberal tendencies, and soon began reading the books and magazines (Popular Science Monthly, etc.) which I found in the hands of my new acquaintances. Tyndall’s Belfast Address, one of the books in question, was the first really thoughtful book (from the point of view of modern science) I had ever read, and it was a revelation to me. From that time, without my going very deeply into the subject, a general idea of evolution was gained, and gradually the old conceptions gave place to more rational ones, and more in accordance with my own feelings. The questions of design or purpose in nature, of individual immortality, etc., were left for scientific research to discover, if to be discovered at all. My attitude was that of an agnostic.¹

There I rested, not altogether content, it is true. Something in life had been missed which it seemed ought to be there; depths in my own nature which had never been sounded; heights I could see, which had not been reached. The chasm between what I was and what I needed to be was deep and wide, but as this same incompleteness was obvious in the lives of others, it was accepted as my share in the common lot. But now into this life, past its meridian and apparently fixed for good or ill, was to come a new element, which should transform me, my life and the world to me. The soul, the deeper self, was to awake, and demand its own! An irresistible force was to be aroused which should, with mighty throes, rend the veil behind which nature hides her secrets. An illness, combining extreme bodily prostration with equally extreme mental and emotional disturbance, revealed to me the depths in my own nature. After some months my strength was restored and my mental condition to some extent improved, but the deep unrest remained. With the power to suffer came the power of sympathy with all suffering. What I had hitherto known or realized of life was as the prick of a pin to the thrust of a dagger. I had been living on the surface; now I was going down into the depths, and as I went deeper and deeper the barriers which had separated me from my fellow men were broken down, the sense of kinship with every living creature had deepened, so that I was oppressed with a double burden. Was I never to know rest or peace again? It seemed not. Life had many blessings – home, husband, children, friends – yet it was with dismay that I thought of the coming years till death should set me free.

Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass, had portrayed with wonderful power and sublimity this phase of mental and spiritual development, as those who look deeply into their own natures must see. In those wonderful poems nature herself utters her voice, pouring out the elemental pain and passion in living, burning words as lava is poured in torrents from the crater of a volcano – not his voice alone, but that of the soul of humanity imprisoned, struggling to break the bonds which enclose and hold it in. How sweet to lean upon that great soul! To feel that tender human sympathy! and seeing what heights he had reached, and knowing the road he had traveled, what courage!

Passing over the interval between this time and September, 1893, as unimportant, except for the constant struggle within me, I proceed to describe, as well as may be, the supreme event of my life, which undoubtedly is related to all else, and is the outcome of those years of passionate search.

I had come to see that my need was greater even than I had thought. The pain and tension deep in the core and centre of my being was so great that I felt as might some creature which had outgrown its shell, and yet could not escape. What it was I knew not, except that it was a great yearning – for freedom, for larger life–for deeper love. There seemed to be no response in nature to that infinite need. The great tide swept on uncaring, pitiless, and strength gone, every resource exhausted, nothing remained but submission. So I said: There must be a reason for it, a purpose in it, even if I cannot grasp it. The Power in whose hands I am may do with me as it will! It was several days after this resolve before the point of complete surrender was reached. Meantime, with every internal sense, I searched for that principle, whatever it was, which would hold me when I let go.²

At last, subdued, with a curious, growing strength in my weakness, I let go of myself! In a short time, to my surprise, I began to feel a sense of physical comfort, of rest, as if some strain or tension was removed. Never before had I experienced such a feeling of perfect health. I wondered at it. And how bright and beautiful the day! I looked out at the sky, the hills and the river, amazed that I had never before realized how divinely beautiful the world was! The sense of lightness and expansion kept increasing, the wrinkles smoothed out of everything, there was nothing in all the world that seemed out of place. At dinner I remarked: “How strangely happy I am today!” If I had realized then, as I did afterwards, what a great thing was happening to me, I should doubtless have dropped my work and given myself up to the contemplation of it, but it seemed so simple and natural (with all the wonder of it) that I and my affairs went on as usual. The light and color glowed, the atmosphere seemed to quiver and vibrate around and within me. Perfect rest and peace and joy were everywhere, and, stranger than all, there came to me a sense as of some serene, magnetic presence grand and all pervading. The life and joy within me were becoming so intense that by evening I became restless and wandered about the rooms, scarcely knowing what to do with myself. Retiring early that I might be alone, soon all objective phenomena were shut out. I was seeing and comprehending the sublime meaning of things, the reasons for all that had before been hidden and dark. The great truth that life is a spiritual evolution, that this life is but a passing phase in the soul’s progression, burst upon my astonished vision with overwhelming grandeur. Oh, I thought, if this is what it means, if this is the outcome, then pain is sublime! Welcome centuries, eons, of suffering if it brings us to this! And still the splendor increased. Presently what seemed to be a swift, oncoming tidal wave of splendor and glory ineffable came down upon me, and I felt myself being enveloped, swallowed up.³

I felt myself going, losing myself. Then I was terrified, but with a sweet terror. I was losing my consciousness, my identity, but was powerless to hold myself. Now came a period of rapture, so intense that the universe stood still, as if amazed at the unutterable majesty of the spectacle! Only one in all the infinite universe! The All loving, the Perfect One! The Perfect Wisdom, truth, love and purity! And with the rapture came the insight. In that same wonderful moment of what might be called supernal bliss, came illumination. I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed – I know not whether material or spiritual – rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order. What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain – not a link left out – everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole. Universal life, synonymous with universal love!⁴

How long that period of intense rapture lasted I do not know – it seemed an eternity – it might have been but a few moments. Then came relaxation, the happy tears, the murmured, rapturous expression. I was safe; I was on the great highway, the upward road which humanity had trod with bleeding feet, but with deathless hope in the heart and songs of love and trust on the lips. I understood, now, the old eternal truths, yet fresh and new and sweet as the dawn. How long the vision lasted I cannot tell. In the morning I awoke with a slight headache, but with the spiritual sense so strong that what we call the actual, material things surrounding me seemed shadowy and unreal. My point of view was entirely changed. Old things had passed away and all had become new. The ideal had become real, the old real had lost its former reality and had become shadowy. This shadowy unreality of external things did not last many days. Every longing of the heart was satisfied, every question answered, the “pent up, aching rivers” had reached the ocean–I loved infinitely and was infinitely loved! The universal tide flowed in upon me in waves of joy and gladness, pouring down over me as in torrents of fragrant balm.⁵

This describes an actual sensation. The infinite love and tenderness seemed to really stream down over me like holy oil healing all my hurts and bruises. How foolish, how childish, now seemed petulance and discontent in presence of that serene majesty! I had learned the grand lesson, that suffering is the price which must be paid for all that is worth having; that in some mysterious way we are refined and sensitized, doubtless largely by it, so that we are made susceptible to nature’s higher and finer influences – this, if true of one, is true of all. And feeling and knowing this, I do not now rave as once I did, but am “silent” “as I sit and look out upon all the sorrow of the world” – ”upon all the meanness and agony without end.” That sweet eternal smile on nature’s face!* There is nothing in the universe to compare with it – such joyous repose and sweet unconcern – saying to us, with tenderest love: All is well, always has been and will always be. The “subjective light” (it seems to me) is magnetic or electric – some force is liberated in the brain and nervous system–some explosion takes place–the fire that burned in the breast is now a mounting flame. On several occasions, weeks after the illumination described, I distinctly felt electric sparks shoot from my eyes. In my experience the “subjective light” was not something seen – a sensation as distinct from an emotion – it was emotion itself – ecstasy. It was the gladness and rapture of love, so intensified that it became an ocean of living, palpitating light, the brightness of which outshone the brightness of the sun. Its glow, warmth and tenderness filling the universe. That infinite ocean was the eternal love, the soul of nature and all one endless smile.⁶.

What astonished me beyond all else was, as the months went on (from that September), a deepening sense of a Holy Presence. There was a hush on everything, as if nature were holding her breath in adoration. There were times when the feeling came over me with such force as to become oppressive, almost painful. It would not have surprised me if the very rocks and hills had burst forth in one great anthem of praise. At times I felt as if they must, to relieve my feelings.

“The rent veil,” “the holy of holies,” “the cherubim with folded wings,” “tabernacles” and “temples”–I saw that they were symbols – the attempts of man to give expression to an inward experience. Nature touched me too closely; I sometimes felt oppressed by it, such extreme exaltation exhausted me, and I was glad when I could have a common day. I looked forward with somewhat of dread to the summer, and when it came its light and its profusion of color, although delightful, were almost more than I could bear. We think we see, but we are really blind – if we could see!

One day, for a moment, my eyes were opened. It was in the morning, in the early summer of 1894, I went out in happy, tranquil mood, to look at the flowers, putting my face down into the sweet peas, enjoying their fragrance, observing how vivid and distinct were their form and color. The pleasure I felt deepened into rapture; I was thrilled through and through, and was just beginning to wonder at it, when deep within me a veil, or curtain, suddenly parted, and I became aware that the flowers were alive and conscious! They were in commotion! And I knew they were emitting electric sparks! What a revelation it was! The feeling that came to me with the vision is indescribable – I turned and went into the house, filled with unspeakable awe.⁷

There was and is still, though not so noticeable as earlier, a very decided and peculiar feeling across the brow above the eyes, as of tension gone, a feeling of more room. That is the physical sensation. The mental is a sense of majesty, of serenity, which is more noticeable when out of doors. Another very decided and peculiar effect followed the phenomena above described – that of being centered, or of being a centre. It was as if surrounding and touching me closely on all sides were the softest, downiest pillows. Lean in what direction I might there they were. A pillow or pillows which fitted every tired spot, so that though I was distinctly conscious of that lightest touch there. was not the least resistance or obstruction to movement, and yet the support was as permanent and solid as the universe. It was “the everlasting arms.” I was anchored at last! But to what? To something outside myself.⁸.

The consciousness of completeness and permanence in myself is one with that of the completeness and permanence of nature. This feeling is quite distinct from any that I had before illumination and has sprung from that. I often ponder on it and wonder what has happened – what change can have taken place in me to so poise and individualize me. My feeling is as if I were as distinct and separate from all other beings and things as is the moon in space and at the same time indissolubly one with all nature.

Out of this experience was born an unfaltering trust. Deep in the soul, below pain, below all the distraction of life, is a silence vast and grand – an infinite ocean of calm, which nothing can disturb; Nature’s own exceeding peace, which “passes understanding.”

That which we seek with passionate longing, here and there, upward and outward, we find at last within ourselves. The kingdom within! The indwelling God! Are words whose sublime meaning we never shall fathom.⁹

The subjoined note was sent the editor by a younger sister of C. M. C. in reply to inquiry made by him as to whether or not any change in the appearance of C. M. C. had been noticed at the time of or subsequent to her experiences given above. The note is dated February 2nd, 1895, and is, word for word, as follows:

It was in December, three months after, that I saw my sister for the first time after the experience described, and her changed appearance made such a deep impression on me that I shall never forget it. Her looks and manner were so changed that she scarcely seemed the same person. There was a clear, bright, peaceful light in her eyes, lighting her whole face, and she was so happy and contented–so satisfied with things as they were. It seemed as though some heavy weight had been lifted and she was free. As she talked to me I felt that she was living in a new world of thought and feeling unknown to me. Sincerely, P. M.

1. C. M. C. seems to have had the mental constitution (as far as the evidence goes) of persons who, when the proper age arrives, reach Cosmic Consciousness.

2. All readers of this book will have noticed the apparent incompatibility between the so called religions – in other words, the churches – and Cosmic Consciousness. The man who enters or is to enter the latter either never belonged to a church, as Walt Whitman, or leaves the church before illumination, as C. M. C. did, or immediately upon illumination. Almost the only exception to this rule was John Yepes – an exception to be explained by the great breadth of the Catholic Church, which allowed him to interpret his experience in terms of the current religion. Churches are inevitable and doubtless indispensable on the plane of self consciousness, but are probably (in any shape) impossible on the Cosmic Conscious plane.

3. I let go! Carpenter tells us that the “suppression of thought” and the “effacement of projects and purposes” are the chief things insisted upon by the Indian experts or yogis in the attainment of the Siddhi or miraculous powers (meaning illumination – Nirvāna). The same doctrine has evidently been taught in India for ages. In the Bhagavad Gita it is laid down that the “working of the mind and senses” must be restrained–that, in fact, an absolute mental vacancy or blank is the condition in which to receive illumination. This seems to be the basis of the teaching of Jesus, that we shall not allow ourselves to be preoccupied with care tor money, food, clothing, household needs. But one thing is needful, he says: Nirvana, the kingdom of God. And worrying about these worldly matters only tends to keep us from that, while if we attain to the worldly things which we seek nothing is gained, for they are valueless. So Balzac says: The self conscious life “is the glory and scourge of the world; glorious, it creates societies; baneful, it exempts man from entering the path of specialism, which leads to the Infinite.” So Whitman: “What do you seek?” he says. “Do you think it is love?” ‘’Yes,” he continues, “love is great, but,” he says (referring to the Cosmic Sense), “there is something else very great: it makes the whole coincide; it, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all.” If you have that you want nothing else.

4. The fear that has been noted a dozen times in this volume: Order to order: This is the cosmic vision–the Brahmic Splendor–the sense or consciousness of the cosmos, which lies (apparently) at the root of this whole business, just as the sense or consciousness of self is the central fact in humanity as we see it today about us. It is the “Chain of Causation” of Gautama, the “eternal wheels” of Dante, the “measured and perfect motion” of the “procession of the universe” of Whitman.

5.”At other times,” says John Yepes, “the divine light strikes the soul with such force that the darkness is unfelt and the light unheeded; the soul seems unconscious of all it knows and is therefore lost, as it were, in forgetfulness, knowing not where it is nor what happened to it, unaware of the lapse of time” Every longing of the heart was satisfied: The abolition or extinction of the passions and desires belonging to the self conscious life (hence the name Nirvana) is one of the characteristic features (as we have seen many times already) of the kingdom of heaven–the Cosmic Sense. This point is noted in every genuine case, but is nowhere better expressed than in the following words: “Jesus said unto her, If thou knowest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink: thou wouldest have asked of him and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence hast thou that living water? Jesus answered and said unto her, Everyone that drinketh of this water [that is, whoever seeks to quench, by satisfying them, the appetites, passions and desires of the self conscious life] shall thirst again [for these cannot be satisfied and quieted by gratification]: but whosoever drinketh of the water [the kingdom of heaven–the Cosmic Sense] that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life”.

6. Our light affliction (which is for the moment) worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.

“That which I was seeing,” says Dante, under the same circumstances, “seemed to me a smile of the universe. O joy! O ineffable gladness!” Outshone the brightness of the sun: “Above the brightness of the sun,” says Paul. Mohammed saw “a flood of light of such intolerable splendor that he swooned away.” Yepes was for some days partially blinded by it. In Dante’s experience, “On a sudden, day seemed to be added to day, as if He who is able had adorned the heaven with another sun;” and Whitman was dazzled by “Another sun ineffable, and all the orbs I knew, and brighter, unknown orbs.”

7.A parallel experience is related of Böhme. He sat down in a green field, “and, viewing the herbs and grass, he saw into their essences, uses and properties”.

8. When out of doors: So Carpenter tells us that in transcribing the thoughts and emotions of the Cosmic Sense he found it “necessary to write in the open air,” for he says: “What I sought to convey refused itself from me within doors.” So also the Cosmic Sense, speaking through Whitman, says: “I will never translate myself at all only to him or to her who privately stays with me in the open air.”

9. The sense of immortality, eternal life, which belongs to Cosmic Consciousness.

CHAPTER 30 The Case of M. C. L. in His Own Words

1853–?

IT IS A DIFFICULT MATTER to write about myself, especially touching an experience which for four or five years has been one of the most sacredly guarded events of my life. Dr. M. described to me your theory of Cosmic Consciousness, which I at once recognized as defining, in a general way, a certain experience in my own life. I did not communicate the details to the doctor. I never had to anyone, lest I should be charged with superstition or madness.

Early in my career a reputation as a popular preacher was won, and the power to interest and hold an audience achieved. As a minister I wrestled with the intellectual problems of the age, not only in the theological but in the physical, sociological and psychical realms. My desire for information was eager, and the search for truth honest and persistent.

In the month of February, 1890, just following my thirty-seventh birthday, Rev. J. E. L., of Canada, came to assist me in a series of special meetings in my church. My affection for him gained during his stay. He had been gone three days when, thinking of him far through the night – the gray of the morning was already in the heavens – the conviction came to me that in him I had met an incarnation of Christ. I stood a moment transfixed with the thought. Was that which I had held as a theory to be realized as a fact? My friend was forgotten in the vision of Christ, who had come to me, not from without, but through the gates which open inwardly. I knew him, was conscious of him in my own spirit, soul and body. Then with that unfolding consciousness there came a suffusion, as of a delicate cloud or haze, which searched the entire body, was more invasive than light, more penetrating than heat, more inreaching than electricity. It was as if I had been plunged into a bath of fluid more subtle and permeating than ether. Against the inflow and outflow of that enswathing essence the body was not as resistant as the air to a bird’s wing or a morning mist to the sunbeam. The rapture, the exaltation, the divinity of that moment passes knowledge. Then swiftly came the awe of the mysterious presence that filled me, and the consciousness of the whole creation, universe, went thrilling through me, not as a thought, a sensation, an emotion, but as the vital breath of God. This grew until I found myself rising and expanding into the Infinite, being diffused and lost therein, and the mind and body reeled. Feeling myself falling, I exclaimed: “The vision is too much! I cannot look upon the face of God and live! Father in heaven, it is enough!” And the voice answered. I sank on my bed and slept like a child. A few hours later I woke in joy which was unspeakable and full of glory. I knew what Paul meant by the “unspeakable gift.” The experience was to me the “election” – the calling of sonship to do the Father’s will. I went to my pulpit vibrant from subjection to the holy breath, and preached upon the text: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” The sermon became intense. I saw the cross before me as the necessity of my life. Its agony and fear possessed me, the mind could not bear up under it, I staggered from my pulpit, the congregation awed by the anguish on my face and in my words.

My family were alarmed and a physician was called. He pronounced that I was suffering from nervous prostration, but found no symptoms of insanity, the horror of which had oppressed me. The exhaustion was such that I felt the need of rest and went to my mother, in the old homestead among the hills of Connecticut. To her I told the story. She said: “My boy, I have been expecting this. Now you know the truth of a Living Christ.”

The character of my preaching completely changed. The old popularity has waned, but larger powers of mind have come and the perception of truth is clearer. The holy breath kills lust, passion, hate; fills the heart with laughter and the soul with peace.

I know the eternal Christ of Paul and John, the Christ manifested in the Nazarene, and who in the manifestation was the interpretation of the Cosmic Consciousness of the past and the form of the new race in whom that consciousness is evolved. It is the race of the Sons of God, who, like Moses, have stood in the presence and been bathed in the glory of His beauty and the blessedness of His joy. Cosmic Consciousness is the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.*

In answer to a request for further particulars M. C. L. adds:

The haze or light was more felt than seen. The nearest approach to the sensation I ever knew was experienced when I was at Niagara and visited the Cave of the Winds. And also when, from my window, at Hotel Coutet, in Chamouni, I saw the sun rise on Mt. Blanc. The tinge, subtler than the waves of color, was that of these experiences–a fluid beryl or watery emerald.

The mind slowly passed from fear into a distinct consciousness of some seemingly extra natural event. At first my thought was, “This is a stroke of paralysis,” and I tested every function of body and mind; then the mind opened to understand something of what was going on. It kept pace with the sensation, and each progress of experience involved a mental process.

I am inclined to locate the point of contact in the mind. I use the word mind as synonymous with the psyche, which of course involves the personality. I always have believed that the event primarily was subjective, but a subjective experience which was in perfect accord with the entire objective universe. It was the exaltation of the subjective in me to a new relation with the objective in earth and heaven.

This is the first attempt I have ever made to give a verbal history of that holy hour, and it has been with something of a feeling of hesitancy that I have written; but what is written is written.

*Compare Bhagavad Gita: “Objects of sense draw back from a person who is abstinent; not so the taste for these objects. But even the taste departs from him when he has seen the Supreme”.

CHAPTER 31 Case of J. W. W.,

Largely in His Own Words

HE WAS BORN August 11, 1853. The date of his illumination was January 20, 1885. He is an architect. He has always been an earnest man, anxious to know the right and to do it. After the momentary attainment of Cosmic Consciousness he became still more bent upon pursuing the same path. Before his illumination he was an agnostic and skeptic, as the annexed auto-biographic sketch will show. Not only did he not believe but he had no hope. After illumination he never again doubted the infinite beneficence of the central and overruling power of the universe. Although in this case the Cosmic Sense came for a moment only and then passed away, probably for the remainder of life, yet was the man by it incredibly ennobled. That seems the best term for the change that took place in him. Though not a Buddha, a Christ or a Whitman, he was, from that time, clearly superior to the average man. In proof of which statement the fact may be cited that a number of the best young men of his town sought him out and constituted him, under the name of “Master,” their spiritual leader. These men have, as the present writer can personally testify, for years tendered this man their personal affection and reverence for no other reason than that they saw clearly in him a superior spiritual nature, which superiority was never detected or suspected in him until after the oncoming of the Cosmic Sense in 1885. J. W. W. has since his illumination devoted his life to the intellectual and moral elevation of himself and his friends.

Here follows an autobiographic sketch, written for the purpose of showing in what manner and under what circumstances he entered into the new life. The pages were not written for this book nor at the instigation of the writer of it. They were, in fact, written before the present writer knew J. W. W., and for that reason are all the more valuable in this place. Neither were they written to illustrate or support any theory. J. W. W. had and has no theory on the subject. All he knows, or perhaps cares to know, in this connection is that he at that moment entered into relation with a higher form of life, and learned, as Paul says, “unspeakable things”–such things, at all events, as were and are of quite unspeakable importance to him, any doubt of the truth of which things has been, and (as he thinks) always will be, entirely out of the question.

J. W. W., then, addressing his intimate friends, the young and middle aged men mentioned above, who surround him, and, as said, call him “Master,” spoke as follows:

Today, the 20th of January, 1890, is the anniversary of my mother’s death, five years ago. I have decided to celebrate it by giving you some account of circumstances which I have hitherto kept to myself, and sacred in the recesses of my own heart and memory.

I need not tell you, I think, that my mother’s last illness and death were, by immeasurable odds, the heaviest grief and pain I have ever known, or shall, probably, ever know. But it is also true that the memory of them is for all time my most precious and priceless possession.

That period was the supreme moment of my life and its deepest experience. In ordinary life we live only on the surface of things, our attention distracted endlessly by the shallowest illusions and baubles.

We discuss with a light heart, and very much at our own ease, the great problems we have been discussing lately in the college (of immortality and the infinite goodness), but are not deeply concerned in them, and care but little what their solutions may be.

But a great bereavement strips the scales from our eyes and compels us, in the intense solitude of our own souls, to gaze into the unfathomable depths in which we float and to question their vast and solemn meanings. It comes upon us clothed in thick darkness and mystery, and pierces our hearts with unutterable agony and grief, but it may be that the darkest hours of its visitation, the supreme moment itself, may also prove a revelation to our souls of the Highest and bring us into the very presence of the Infinite Love and Tenderness.

For myself I cannot doubt that this was my own experience. To speak of it is to profane it. I am unworthy to so much as hint at it. But it has been the comfort of my life ever since.

Alas, for the years that have followed! One momentary glimpse into the ineffable brightness, followed by gathering clouds and darkness, painful stumbling and wide errors, unsupported by any recognizable spiritual aid or presence, the heavens deaf and careless to my most earnest prayers and agonizing, nay, even slighting them, so far as appeared. But through it all, like the steadfast shining of a clear star, the memory of that sacred time has remained deep in my heart, and I have never really doubted for a moment that an Infinite Wisdom and Love does encircle all our lives–tender, pitying, and sympathizing. We may pass our lives without ever realizing it, doubting it, nay, flatly denying it. But it is there; and he to whom the vision has ever come at all, though in the briefest transient flash of momentary consciousness, can never again forget it, though his whole after path may be enveloped in darkness and he himself may fall into gross error and backsliding.

I received the ordinary orthodox training of the Presbyterian Church. I was baptized and was a regular attendant at church and Sunday School till well on in my teens.

I attribute at least equal importance, in the formative elements of my religious training, to the daily practice at home, while I was a boy, of family worship. I recall now, as I write, with reverent emotion, the tender tones of my mother’s voice, as it pleaded especially for her only deeply loved child.

I was always a lover of books, and I was not far in my teens before I began to learn something of the opposition between the teaching of science and many of the beliefs I had been taught. This discovery was a gradual one, and I will only give a brief outline of the position in which I was ultimately landed.

I learned that the first chapter of Genesis was, at least, a very crude statement of the actual fact. At one time I was an ardent and enthusiastic student of Hugh Miller’s books and rested content with the reconciliation he sought to establish between the teaching of his beloved science, Geology, and the Biblical record. But I had to give it up when I came to read and study Darwin’s and other books and to acquaint myself with the most recent geological discoveries. I remember well the enthusiasm with which I copied in writing Professor Huxley’s famous address to the Geological Section of the British Association, in which he traced the pedigree of the horse to its progenitors in the Eocene period and the clear evidence of its evolution.

Darwinism demolished for me the Biblical account of creation, the authority of the Bible and the account it gives of the origin of evil and the fall of man. This last clearly involves the whole theological superstructure based upon it, including the so called scheme of redemption and the doctrine of the atonement. The legends of the flood, the tower of Babel, the dispersion of man and the origin of different languages were minor matters of comparatively trifling importance.

I remember the delight with which I read Tyndall’s book Heat: a Mode of Motion, and re-read it again and again. I read, too, his lectures on Sound. These were my introduction to physics, from which I learned the great doctrines of the conservation and correlation of forces, as I had previously learned to realize in some degree the unity and uniformity of nature. In presence of such majestic and august conceptions the ordinary ideas of prayer and miracles seemed childish. I remember reading Tyndall’s Fragments of Science and feeling this yet more strongly. I came in time to abandon the habit of prayer entirely.

One cannot read much in physiological science without serious reflection on the nature of consciousness, the relation between mind and physical structure and the bearings of all this on the belief in personal immortality. It has always seemed clear to me that the only logical outcome of the considerations put forward by science are flatly and altogether opposed to such belief.

To sum up: Science destroyed for me all belief in the Biblical legends of the creation and the fall of man, etc., and in the doctrine of the atonement, and at least gravely questioned all narratives of miracle, the probability of answer to prayer and the idea of personal immortality. The whole idea, too, of the divine incarnation of Christ on our insignificant atom of a world seemed out of keeping with the august spectacle of the infinite universe and its immeasurable duration. But my reading was never exclusively scientific, and my thoughts accordingly were always modified by other considerations.

I learned something of Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Spinoza. What the effect of it all was upon me it is impossible for me now to analyze or to tell. But let a man once get fairly into his head the teaching of Kant that time and space only exist as the condition of our consciousness, and the discussion of immortality will seem irrelevant–he will feel the very basis of his speculations crumble beneath his feet. From my earliest youth I have acknowledged two masters, to whom I continually turned and whom I have studied with ever fresh interest and delight–Carlyle and Emerson–two widely different men but fundamentally alike in the absolute honesty and sincerity of their teaching, their noble and heroic character, and their steady, lifelong consecration to the service of the highest. Both of them rejected the materialistic conception of the world, which they regarded as spiritual in its essence, and each believed in his own way in a divine purpose–Emerson with genial and growing optimism, Carlyle with an accompanying Hebraic sense of the mystery and terror of evil.

But neither from Carlyle nor Emerson will a student derive any firm conviction on the subject of individual immortality. Carlyle preferred to leave it a mystery, about which nothing can be definitely said with true assurance, but about which much may be hoped. Emerson, in the main, really believed it, but may be quoted on both sides of the subject. “The questions we lust to have answered are,” he declared, “a confession of sin.” He preached an unconditional submission and trust. Believe with all your heart and soul that all is well and ask no questions. If it is best that you should continue you will do so; if not, you should not wish it. And the whole subject, he believed, belongs to a much higher plane than that on which it is usually discussed.

It is fifteen years since I carefully studied Tennyson, and especially his In Memoriam. His arguments, however, seemed to me unconvincing though powerful. I came to prize the two volumes I had of Browning’s selections, but could not give complete adhesion to his views either. My judgment was suspended with a leaning of the heart to the “Larger Hope.” George Macdonald did me great and growing service, though I could never accept all his conclusions nor admire greatly his logic. On the other hand, the logic of George Eliot’s creed seemed to me faultless, and her sympathy with opposite views complete. And her rigid and faithful devotion to truth and fact alone seemed to me to be rewarded in her art. George Macdonald’s creations as a rule seem ghostly abstractions. George Eliot’s are alive; prick them and they bleed. But the melancholy which her books create is undeniable, and the heart instinctively revolts from her creed. Matthew Arnold did me immense service by his theological books, and opened the Bible for me again as a book of living interest. But his famous axiom that miracles do not happen, and his elimination of the supernatural element, are unmistakable. But a careful study of Isaiah, with the help of his notes, gave me a clue to a higher view, in my judgment, than the one he himself arrived at. He, too, deprecates the ascription of personality to God, and so does away with the impulse to pray. For who can pray to a “stream of tendency”? Here, again, however, the light which he throws upon the character and teaching of St. Paul helps one also to realize better the teaching of Paul himself, which is higher than that of the critic. Ruskin believed in these things, but his authority is weakened by the evangelical teaching which he himself in time discarded. The great masters seemed to me inconclusive. The whole value of Dante’s teaching is vitiated by his false and horrible presentations of eternal punishment. Shakespeare holds himself aloof from the subject, and his opinions do not lie on the surface. Goethe I believed to more explicitly teach the efficacy of prayer and individual immortality than he actually did. I had long had a slight knowledge of and much curiosity about Whitman, and twelve months before my mother died I read for the first time complete copies of Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days, and felt the deep thrill of contact with a mighty spirit. And it seemed a great thing that he, of all men, taught the doctrine of immortality with quite new emphasis and authority.

The foregoing are only very crude and sketchy outlines of the intellectual groupings, questionings, studies and complex, many sided experiences and difficulties of many years. But they will help you to partially understand my position at the time I write of.

And now to my narrative: I will not trouble you with any particulars which do not seem to me necessary for my purpose. And these I will give as briefly as is consistent with the clearness and right coloring of the picture I want to present. I feel, however, that I must, at the outset, make a disclaimer. I do not want you to judge of my character as a son from my devotion to my mother on her deathbed. As a matter of fact I was never in the true sense “a good son.” I have too many grave faults and strong opposing idiosyncrasies for that. And I have innumerable bitter memories of harshness, temper, selfish want of consideration and sympathy, things left undone that I ought to have done and things done that I ought to have left undone. They are past recall or expiation now, and I can only pray and strive for a better nature in future.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to speak of my mother. She was not without faults or weaknesses either. She had good qualities in an exceptional degree that I need not analyze or speak of. But it is necessary for my purpose that I should refer to what was her ruling passion–a deep, constant, absorbing, and self-sacrificing love for her only son. Everyone knows something of the sacred depths of a mother’s love. But very few can sound their profound abysses as it has been my lot to do.

Many circumstances threw us more together than is usual. For one thing, my father was much from home. My own tastes and pursuits kept me more closely at home than is the case with most young men. Our natures, too, were similar in many ways. Naturally I was in many things my mother’s confidant. Her sufferings and declining strength made her more and more dependent upon me and knit our hearts together more closely as time went on.

She suffered excruciating pains at times. She became lame and lost the power to stand. If my father was at home he would carry her upstairs at night to bed; if not, she crept to the foot of the stairs and pulled herself up step by step. But on no account would she let me carry her, fearing that I might strain or hurt myself. But eventually she had to allow me, and after that I always carried her upstairs.

She was always poorly in the morning and suffered great internal pain. I used to regularly take her up a cup of tea to breakfast, but she ate next to nothing.

Some eighteen months before she died she told me that she believed she suffered from an internal cancer. I had long urged her to let me call in a doctor, and I now insisted upon it.

For a long time she would not allow it, but finally yielded, and Dr. R. was called in. She seemed more bright and cheerful after his visit. She told me that his verdict was that it was not a cancer, but the facts which led her to think it was were the results of her rheumatism. It was a happy relief to me, and I dismissed altogether the dreadful ideas which had weighed like lead upon my heart. As a matter of fact it was a cancer, and my mother soon came to know it without a shadow of doubt. But in her self-sacrificing regard for me she kept all knowledge back from me, and in the weary, painful, and gloomy months that followed I lived in absolute ignorance of the real facts of the case. Perhaps it was better so. I really believe that if I had known, the dreadful knowledge would have killed me. As it was I was supported by groundless hopes. And even so, the pain of it and the daily strain on my heart and mind were almost more than I could bear, and their effects have remained with me ever since.

I will say as little as possible of that time. I will only note her visibly declining strength, the solitude and many miseries of her lot, her absorbing and endless solicitude for me, her complete indifference to self and her constant spirit of loving self-sacrifice and a love in both our hearts that grew more tender and profound as we realized more and more the coming and inevitable end. The countless heartaches and pains of those days only revealed more clearly the depth and strength of a love which was mightier than all adverse circumstances, even death itself.

So the days and weeks and months dragged on in ever deepening gloom, till the fateful month of January, 1885. As my mother’s strength became less and less her time for going to bed grew earlier, from ten to half-past-nine, to nine, to half-past-eight, to eight. It pained me excessively to note this, and every night after she had gone I felt unspeakably sad and wretched as I thought of the future. I could not bear to part with her. I used to keep her as long as possible, joke with her and do my best to cheer her as well as myself. But her weariness getting too great she would often lose patience and say, with pathetic entreaty, “Willie, do take me,” “Why don’t you take me?” or “Willie, do let me go.” After that there was nothing for it but to take her at once.

On the 9th of January, 1885, I went to a birthday party. I was far from well, and I had no heart for it, but I went to tea, came home at eight to take my mother to bed (for the last time it turned out) and went back, not returning till between one and two. During the night I was awakened by my mother knocking at the wall. She felt faint, she said, and asked me to bring her a glass of water. I asked if I should make tea, and she said she preferred water, which I got her. I grieve to say that I was altogether harsh, unsympathetic, and ungracious. I ought to have known that she needed more, and without a moment’s thought for myself should have got it. She thanked me with her usual tenderness and I went to bed again.

Next morning when I took her tea it all came out. During the night she had crept out of bed and fainted on the floor. On recovery she had managed with much painful effort to get into bed again. She would not disturb or trouble me, knowing what she did, but felt compelled at last to rouse me and ask for a glass of water. Fancy it! Cold water! And rendered with unsympathetic grumbling at that. I have never forgiven myself for my far worse than stupidity and callousness. My mother, however, in her sweet, serene charity and loving kindness forgave me from the first.

I will not go into details of the illness that followed. She did not get up that day, though serenely cheerful, hopeful, and loving. My father came home in the afternoon and she seemed a little better, but at night grew worse and slightly delirious. Early next morning (Sunday) I brought the doctor, and I learned for the first time, what others knew, that she had been really suffering from cancer all the time and that recovery was impossible, though the inevitable end might possibly be averted for a time. It was a horrible blow to me. I hunted up a nurse and was in constant attendance on her myself till the end came – nine days after.

On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday she continued to improve, and my heart grew lighter and more cheerful. Then she began to grow worse and went step by step down, down into the Valley of the Shadow.

I will pass on rapidly to the closing scenes. But I must note first the following traits of my mother’s behavior: An utter and complete forgetfulness of self, unfailing love and charity to all, serene cheerfulness and even gaiety, exerting herself always to cheer me with bright and loving smiles and consoling, hopeful words. This, of course, only while she was able. At night she always grew delirious, of which, more anon.

I am sorry to give you painful details, and I only do so where it is necessary for my ultimate purpose. But I am compelled to give you some details of closing scenes.

The night but one before she died was the most horrible night I ever spent. As usual, in such wasting diseases, the waste of the body, after devastating the muscular system, attacks the nervous system. When this stage is reached the patient enters on a period of horrible unrest and weariness, passionately longing for rest and incessantly and vainly seeking it by a change of position. Every night, in the delirium of her illness, she felt something of this weariness and would, at the close of the day, call on me, in the old familiar words, “Willie, do take me upstairs; do take me.” On this particular night, similar cries rang in my ears the whole horrible night long–”Willie, do take me,” “Do let me go,” “Why don’t you let me go?” The words pierced my heart. I knew that the rest she sought could only come in death, and my heart was hot in angry rebellion. I could not let her go. Fate was too much for me. But it was an unspeakable cruel fate, and every faculty in me rose in passionate protest and resentment. I changed her position again and again, adjusted and smoothed her pillow, and for a few brief moments she would lie quiet. Then again the old, incessant, heart piercing cries, “Willie, do let me go,” “Do take me,” “Why don’t you let me go?” And so, again and again, through the whole length of the horrible night.

Next day she was quieter. The doctor said it was only a question of hours. In the afternoon she seemed utterly exhausted and for a time we thought she was dying. My father, Mrs. D. (the nurse) and I stood looking on in momentary expectation of the end. I was quite tired out, heart and body, sullen and resentful. It was of a piece with the whole horrible thing that she should die thus, without any sign or leave taking. But it was not to be so and she revived again. About seven o’clock that night I was alone with her. She was unconscious. I kneeled at her bedside, my face down on the bed. My brain felt scorched and the whole thing a horrible nightmare. It was no longer my mother lying there but a ghastly automaton, I myself an automaton, both alike driven in a vast world machine, remorseless, brainless and heartless, crushing all before it. Later on, my father, coming upstairs, must have been alarmed about me and compelled me to go an errand, which he declared absolutely necessary. I think it probable that my going out for a short time saved my reason. Late at night my father drove me to bed. I refused. I could not go, or lose any of the precious time now left me with my mother, but I agreed ultimately to go for two hours at most, if he would rouse me sooner in case of change. Very reluctantly I went, but I was quite spent and I slept soundly till six, my father letting me sleep on. I at once hastened to the room and stayed there till the end, about one o’clock.

My mother was apparently the same, but weaker. She welcomed me with the sweet old smile, and responded always, as before, with loving kisses to mine. She was quite conscious but too weak to speak. The morning dragged on till noon, when I heard Mr. T. in the kitchen with my father. I asked her if she would like him to come up, and she nodded a pleased expression of her wish. He came and prayed at her bedside, my mother following it all with full appreciation, her head supported by my arm, shaking with the extreme palsy of coming death. She tried to express her thanks and followed him with grateful eyes as he left the room. Later, about one o’clock, my father and the nurse went downstairs. Mrs. D. remained, but I asked her to go, too, and leave me alone with my mother. I then asked mother if she would like me to pray with her. I had never done so, but I fancied that she wished it, and she assented with evident satisfaction. Standing at the foot of the bed I prayed briefly to God, our Father, to mercifully release my mother from her suffering and take her to Himself and guide and help me in the lonely path that lay before me. I then turned away a minute or two to the window. Looking around, I saw instantly that the last change had come. I hastened to moisten her lips, but her tongue was rigid. I went to the top of the stair and called to my father. He hastened up and was just in time to catch the last futile attempt at breath. In an access of strong emotion I cried out: “Thanks be to God, that giveth us the victory,” and it seemed to my excited fancy that my mother’s spirit nodded assent. It seemed to me for the moment that I stood in the very presence of the Infinite Love and felt it through my being.

I went downstairs and told Mrs. D. and the nurse that all was over, and they went upstairs to render the last sad offices. I came into this room (the room in which this paper was read) and gave myself up to a long, heavy fit of sobbing–sobbing, however, no longer of grief, but of great relief, recognition of the mighty comfort that had come into my heart and of resigned and loving farewell.

During the days that followed and until after the funeral I felt a great calm and peace of mind and heart, a peace of mind which I venture to say was no other than “the peace of God that passeth all understanding.” It passed away, but the memory of it remained. Grief and the sense of irrecoverable loss had their natural course, and I spent many weeks of sleeplessness and tears.

I have no hope that my words will convey more than a poor fraction of the real facts. At best I can only sketch these in rudest outline. But I will ask you to consider a few of the most prominent in the narrative I have given you.

Remember what I have said of the spiritual questionings of many years and their results. Consider how my mother’s long and frightful suffering revealed and strengthened as nothing else could, not only the sweet and lovable qualities of her heart and mind and the strength of the hope and faith which sustained her through it all, but also the length and breadth and depth of her wonderful self sacrificing love for me, which grew only stronger, deeper and more tender as she advanced further into the shadow of our inevitable parting. And when the last stroke fell upon her and she was confined to her bed never to rise again, think how grateful and sweet to me were those days of slight improvement, when I was privileged to attend her constantly and show her, as I never could before, the reality and depth of my responding love and receive her entire forgiveness for all the thoughtlessness and wrongdoing of the past and her heartfelt blessing. And hastening on to the closing scene: Think of the horrible night, when her incessant cries rang out to me to “let her go,” and I knew that it meant let her go to the last rest of death, and my heart stood out in passionate resentment and protest against a cruel and merciless fate. Think of that scene next day, when her strength seemed gone and we watched for the end and I felt, with sullen resentment, that it was only of a piece with all the rest that she should die thus, without any sign or leave taking, in the presence of comparative aliens, not of her own household, while I, her son, born of her body, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, the one person whom she loved with all the mighty love of her great heart, stood as an outsider beyond her consciousness. Think of the hour that evening when, with scorched brain, I felt through and through my being the dreadful significance of the materialistic creed, that we were mere automatic parts of a vast machine, brainless, heartless, merciless and cruel. Think of the providence by which restoring and healing sleep was granted me to make me capable of a truer vision. Think of the tender grace of our next morning’s communion, my mother’s full consciousness and the sweet tokens of her undying love. Think of the providence which led Mr. T. to come within an hour of the end and offer up solemn prayer, in which my mot her could join with full appreciation in company with my father and myself. Think of the fitness of the arrangement by which, at the last moment, my mother and I were left alone, as she would have wished. Think of the divine training by which my rebellious heart was bowed into acquiescence and resignation. Think of the course by which my antagonism and skepticism were laid low, and I was led, with my mother’s pleased concurrence, at last to “let her go” and to call audibly on the Divine Father of all to take her to Himself. And think how immediately the prayer was answered and God revealed himself to me and I felt through all my being, in the moment of her death, the presence of the Infinite Love, the Divine Comforter, soothing me with a strange and ineffable peace.

Human words are poor instruments for the expression of such realities. But beyond the touch of all possible argument, despite the apparent experiences of my life since and my backslidings, I knew that a divine providence was at work in my hour of utmost need summing up the long gropings and processes of the past, and despite all earthly darkness and sin illumining all my future course with an infinite hope.

I no longer trouble myself with the difficulties raised by metaphysics and philosophy about the personality of God, for, however that may be, I know that there is that in Him to which I may address myself as to a loving friend and father. I no longer trouble myself with the discussions about God’s providence and the contrary evidences of life and experiences, for I have seen His providence visibly at work, summing up in a crowning experience the processes of long years, in events which were entirely natural in their order and course, but were also visibly supernatural and miraculous, too. I no longer trouble myself with doubts about God’s love, and the contrary evidences furnished by the world’s sin and endless miseries, for in the midst of the heaviest grief of my own life I have seen an ineffable tenderness and love revealed, which crowned and justified the sufferings which preceded it, and illumined much that lay dark and mysterious in the past. However this poor outline may strike you, I know that the actual facts were more fit and beautiful than any earthly poet could have conceived in his most gracious and tender mood. I no longer trouble myself with the current discussions about immortality, for I know that my mother is secure and that all is well with her, for, unworthy as I am, I have myself seen the ineffable glory of the love which received her when she was taken from me.

Summary

a. J. W. W.’s narrative makes it quite clear that he had the earnestness of mind and desire for spiritual growth which, as we have seen, seem to be prerequisites to illumination

b. His age, upon the occurrence of this last, was thirty-one and a half years

c. There was no experience of subjective light

d. Intellectual illumination was well marked

e. And moral exaltation still more so

f. Although he does not give details (perhaps could not do so), it is clear that he experienced something very near akin to the. Cosmic vision, if he did not even see the Brahmic Splendor itself

g. The “peace and knowledge” spoken of by Whitman and referred to by all the cases as one of the chief results of the attainment of Nirvana – the Cosmic Sense – came to J. W. W. unmistakably, instantaneously.

h. The strict parallelism of this case with all the others given will be recognized by every careful reader.

CHAPTER 32 Case of J. William Lloyd, in His Own Words

YOU ASK FOR A BRIEF statement of my life and spiritual evolution. I was born in Westfield, N. J., June 4, 1857. My parents were English, and had had but a few months’ schooling apiece. My father was a carpenter, my mother a seam-stress. My mother was a woman of broad, gentle nature, spiritual, poetic, a great reader. My father was an intense abolitionist. My schooling was scant, at a district school. We lived near a great wood. I cared not much for other children, but spent my time with books and the trees. I loved the trees like conscious friends.

The disagreeable side of religion was never shown me. I talked with God when an infant as naturally as with my mother. Some old book on philosophy (I do not know its name) fell into my hands, and I commenced to think to the core. I read the Bible, commentaries, a book on “All Religions.” At thirteen I was atheist, then turned quickly, experienced conversion, and, as I read, became Calvinist, Arminian, Swedenborgian. At fifteen I was apprenticed to a carpenter, but work failed in 1873, and I became a gardener. At seventeen I was a leader in prayer meetings, an exhorter, a disputant with ministers on points of orthodoxy. At eighteen I went to Trail’s Hygienic College at Florence, N. J., as a working student. All radical questions met me here, and the woman who became my wife. Trail died, the college failed, I went to Kansas as a pioneer, was a herder, a homesteader, married in 1879, acted as hygienic physician for my neighbors, read the Boston Index and Theodore Parker, and became a member of the Free Religious Association. Three years’ drought drove me from Kansas to a sanitarium in Vinton, Iowa, where I was an assistant. I Became agnostic. Read Ingersoll and the scientists. Joined a hygienic colony in Tennessee in January, 1883. Again a pioneer in the woods. Accepted Karl Heingen’s Democracy, and grew more confirmed in writing poems, which I had first commenced just before going to Kansas. Accepted free love, which I had fought for years. Colony failed, and I went to another similar one in Florida, Many spiritualists here. Read Tucker’s Liberty and became an enthusiastic anarchist. Orange grower, farm laborer and pioneer. Colony and work failed, and went to Palatka. Poultry farmer. Wife died in September, 1888, after nearly a decade of most happy married life. Came North to old home, with two little children, and became a professional nurse. Here found more books, and read the poets – Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Spencer, Darwin, Carpenter, William Morris. I loved the Transcendentalists, but did not understand them very well. I lived mostly in poetry and sociologic science.

As to my illumination: I was going to New York City one morning in January, 1897, on a train, to do some hospital work. I was reading Carpenter. It was a beautiful winter morning. I think I was near the Bay Bridge, or on it, when the Thought came. There was no particular sensation, except that something beautiful and great seemed to have happened me, which I could only describe in terms of light. Yet it was purely mental. But everything looked different to me. I went about the city that day calm, but glad and uplifted. The thing I remember most was a wonder how soon the sensation, or impression, would leave me. I was latently skeptical, and thought it a temporary inspiration, like that of a poem. But days, weeks, months, passed, and I found the shoot which had broken ground that winter morning was ever growing, strengthening and changing all the scenery of my life. I continually questioned and tested, and at last, after a year’s trial, began to write. All the early part of the book was written at night, while I nursed and guarded a lunatic boy, whose yells, laughs, curses and filthy jests made the room ring as I wrote. Yet I wrote easily, swiftly, without any conscious cerebration, and with a sort of wonder at the words I wrote, as if they had no connection with me. Part of the book was written in the following summer, when at home, part of it in the winter of 1899–1900, while getting ready for the press, but always with the same sensations of ease and inspiration. And still, when I read the book, it seemed to me something apart, in whose construction I had had no hand. As to how I felt when I received the Thought, you have yourself most accurately described the symptoms on pages 10 and 11 of your pamphlet: “With the intellectual illumination comes an indescribable moral elevation, an intense and exalted joyfulness, and, along with this, a sense of immortality; not merely a belief in a future life – that would be a small matter – but a consciousness that the life now being lived is eternal, death being seen as a trivial incident which does not affect its continuity. Further, there are annihilation of the sense of sin and an intellectual competency not simply surpassing the old, but on a new and higher plane.” Also many of the marks of Arahatship, as taught by Buddha, describe accurately the feeling.

What proves J. William Lloyd to be a case of Cosmic Consciousness is not so much the above account of himself (although that could hardly have been written without some such an experience as illumination) as the volume [110a] which he produced after the occurrence in question. This volume, which contains overwhelming evidence of the fact, is easily accessible and will doubtless be read by every person who feels an interest in the subject.

The oncoming of Cosmic Consciousness in this case was very similar to the same fact in the case of Edward Carpenter. There was a clearly marked moment when the light began to break through, but illumination came gradually. There was no subjective light. There was well marked intellectual illumination and moral elevation, but the Cosmic vision, the Brahmic Splendor, of the great cases does not appear to have been present. If not, this cannot be said to be a complete case, and still J. William Lloyd’s book shows a most excellent insight into the cosmic order. It must be remembered that illumination that comes gradually may be as complete as that which comes instantly. Why there should be such difference in the awakening in different cases cannot at present be explained.

As far as our facts will carry us it would appear that the cases in which the Cosmic Sense makes its appearance full grown, instantly and, as it were, in a flash, are those in which there is marked subjective light–such cases as that of Dante, Yepes, Paul, Pascal and others. When, on the contrary, the new sense comes more gradually there may be no subjective light, as in the cases of Carpenter and Lloyd. It seems tolerably certain that with illumination there occurs actual, physical, molecular rearrangement somewhere in the cerebral centers and that it is this molecular rearrangement which, when considerable and sudden, gives rise to the phenomenon of the subjective light.

CHAPTER 33 Horace Traubel

WAS BORN DECEMBER 19, 1858, and was therefore in his thirty-first year at time of his first illumination. His experience is here given in his own words. It is all of it full of interest, but perhaps the most significant thing about it is the manner the intelligence of it was received by Walt Whitman, whose matter of fact, simple words, “I knew it would come to you,” carry a depth of meaning quite out of the common. H. T. tells the story of his awakening in this colloquial and direct way, in answer to the inquiries of the editor:

You are quite familiar with the path of my spiritual development–with the course taken by my mental self in arriving at its present state. You know I have come to my own, whatever that may be, mostly by immediate contact with experience rather than through books, though I have read in books of the most miscellaneous character and at one period in appalling numbers. But, somehow, the scholar in me never seems to have obscured the man. I suppose my intense early reading was in Emerson, Carlyle, Hugo and whatever else I could get hold of having to do with the world of myth and the ante Christian Scriptures of the race. I do not seem to have known a time when I have not read Leaves of Grass. But previous to May, 1889, I do not seem to have got that (in a sense) final grasp of its mystery which now imparts to it its primary and supernatural significance. May, 1889. Then, again, two years later, 1891. A third time, 1893 or 4, on the historic night (historic to me) when circumstance made me the spokesman of the dissentient group of Ethicist in Philadelphia, on the occasion of the split of the Ethical Society there. May, 1889. That overwhelming night, as I leaned over the railing of the ferryboat, lost this world for another, and in the anguish and joy of a few minutes saw things heretofore withheld from me revealed. Those who have had such an encounter will understand what this means, others will not, or will perhaps only realize it by intimation. I could not separate the physical and spiritual of that moment. My physical body went through the experience of a disappearance in spiritual light. All severe lines in the front of phenomena relaxed. I was one with God, Love, the Universe, arrived at last face to face with myself. I was sensible of peculiar moral and mental disturbances and readjustments. There was an immediateness to it all–an indissoluble unity of the several energies of my being in one force. I was no more boating it on a river than winging it in space or taking star leaps, a traveler from one to another on the peopled orbs. While I stood there the boat had got into the slip and was almost ready to go out again. A deckhand who knew me came up and tapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t you intend going off the boat?” he asked. And he added when I faced him and said “Yes:” “You look wonderfully well and happy to night, Mr. Traubel.” I did not see Walt till the next day, evening. In the meantime I had lived through twenty-four hours of ecstasy mixed with some doubts as to whether I had not had a crack in the skull and gone mad rather than fallen under some light and made a discovery. But the first words Walt add ressed to me when I sallied into his room were reassuring: “Horace, you have the look of great happiness on your face tonight. Have you had a run of good luck?” I sat down and tried in a few words to indicate that I had had a run of good luck, though not perhaps the good luck he had in mind for me at the moment. He did not seem at all surprised at what I told him, merely remarking, as he put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes: “I knew it would come to you.” I suggested: “I have been wondering all day if I am not crazy.” He laughed gravely: “No, sane. Now at last you are sane.”

It was a month before the immediate effect of this experience wore off. The reflex effect was of course fixed. I can say now (writing 1901) that from that day to this I have never known one moment of despair concerning my spiritual relations to man and the universe. I have my earth troubles and my earth foibles. But the essential faith is adamantine. I have never had any suspicion of immortality. The glimpse of that minute–and of the repeated experiences on the two after occasions mentioned above–into the eternal law left no blot or qualification. I had often said before, in speaking of Whitman (making in a way a true guess): “Whitman’s notion of immortality is not one of logic but is pictorial. He does not believe in immortality. He sees it.” Many times Whitman had said to me regarding that explanation: “It is every word true. You hit the nail on the head.” Now I knew better than I had before–not only better but in a way I could not have known before–what I myself meant when I used the expression: “Whitman sees.” I see around and through phenomena. Phenomena is never a wall or a veil. I have been able to do my work as never before. It has brought me friends and the cheer of sympathetic greetings from all parts of the world. One feature of my writing I ought to mention. I think I told you long ago that I become in effect automatic when I am engaged in any serious composition. I do not seem to write. The writing seems done through me. I take up my pen and hardly know what I write. After I have written I am often surprised at the things I have said. They are as new to me as to any reader. All the writing which has brought me any returns–congratulations–has been done in that mood.

On the night of the Ethical split I was in a position which forced me to be the main spokesman of the party of freedom. I made a speech upon which my enemies even more than my friends congratulated me. Yet when I got on my feet on the floor and plunged into talk I was instantly immersed in the strange light which had visited me on the first experience and simply uttered without thought or reason, formally speaking, the words of the mightier power that possessed me. I have found since that on occasions of crisis I have merely to throw myself back again on this resource to discover that every strength–spiritually speaking–it imparted once it imparts again. In my very busy life, which has its temporal distresses, this is more than a balance in bank and contributes more than any ephemera of material prosperity could towards my victories: in fact is the first and last letter of my power. When the little affairs of every day seem most mixed up, most to be past solution, I am sure finally to make my escape by the avenue of these ameliorating revelations. Not once has the spirit deserted me–not once has the light, in some degree of its radiance, not always of course in full power, failed to appear. The difference it makes in one’s life is the difference between preparation and consummation. On the occasion of my second experience (April, 1891), which was not outwardly momentous, I found that my initial self suspicion–my question, Am I unbuilt or built?–did not reappear.

If you take my verse “Illumination” [and a great deal of H.T’s verse and prose written since that year], and compare it statistically, you will find that I have expressed a series of experiences of profound significance to all who have been similarly blessed. I find that my members are no longer at war with each other. When I was a youngster I read my way vigorously and sympathetically back especially into Oriental literature of the religious class blazed a path for the spirit. After 1889 (a hiatus in such reading having intervened) I found myself driven into that old world again, to review these my original impressions. The new light had made my voyage easier and more richly endowed its fruits. Once I felt that religions were all of them religions of despair: now I saw that no religion despairs–that all religion before it becomes and as soon as it ceases to be an affair of institutions resolves itself essentially into light and immortality.

I should perhaps say that it has invariably happened that someone–and sometimes many persons–have commented to me, and felicitated me, upon my appearance, upon the occasions of my direct contact with what I have grown to call my subliminal self. This may mean much or nothing. But no one could live through what I do at such periods and not in some way outwardly give it witness.

You have said to me: “State this thing in plain prose.” But how can I? I could never state it in the prose that would be understood by one who has not shared my sensations. I could never state it in words which would not make it, if you please, prose to those who can enter collaterally into the channels of its august revelation. After asking you: How can I? I have shown you how I could.

Some things I have said may seem to savor of egotism. But they are simply candid. I am not measuring myself as a genius or an idiot, but as a simple third person whose word and career must be to himself absolute law. I have written you this memorandum impulsively, with no attempt to dress it up, if, indeed, until now it is done, and now I have read it, with any actual understanding of what my pen would commit me to or confess.

The following poem was written by Horace Traubel shortly after his illumination and of course strictly belongs here:

The nights, the days, hold me in thrall,

Toils of men and women drag my faith to the earth –

Furrowed with pain, the casual cares,

I long – I look – I reach forth to life.

Release! Escape!

Shall I speak of the door swung wide, of the unbarred gates?

After the vigil I step across the borderline,

I take my place with the pioneers.

Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal?

Now is my name called, now the lip of my love has spoken:

Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? Is it after all some other soul that is hailed?

My self is my answer:

There’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond!

Bond that does not bind – bond that frees – bond that discovers and bestows.

Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions!

The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep.

O world! Not dead to you – only seeing you, knowing you, at last,

Mixed with countless worlds, knowing with you your companions also:

O year! Not dead to you – only seeing you, knowing you, at last,

Mixed with all time, untangling the knotted thread:

O world! O year! – Before birth seeing birth, after life seeing life!

The infinite blue, heaven’s fond eye, opens upon me.

O voice, mastering me, making me too master – My ear is close, I hear the syllables fall,

Waves on shores of the farther worlds, waves on shores of the day.

The clouds part: O face – O face – O face! – Face smiling upon me – smiling me wings, buoyant beyond the discarded cheapened present.

(You, too, O present, still remaining,

Duly visiting my heart, not forbidden,

Yet yielding the place supreme).

I am all eye – O God! you are all speech:

Melody celestial – sight and voice, color and tone, warring no more,

In the boundless blue uplifted.

Whose hand touches me? – my brow – my breast – my own unasking hand – Leading me out of self to self?

Divine form – mother, father – sex only now standing revealed, the union irreversible:

Divine form, I made whole in you,

The elements diverse here blended.

This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me,

The endless drift of soul, the long stretch of faces, all lit by the divine sun – Or swift or slow or early or late the line not anywhere broken,

All – all – equally sustained, swept in the same destiny, on sea and land of life,

The peak lit for all, the triumph inevitable.

O my soul! look yet again:

There too are you, a figure in the panorama,

On your brow the dawn has set its beauteous beam,

Here with me – there not with me.

Death fills me with its abundance.

What is this flood, overcoming body and sense?

I feel the walls of my skull crack, the barriers part, the sun flood enter – Love, lore, not lost, only magnified, floating eternal seas of essence – Before and behind births and deaths, spiritual gravitation, the emergence ever more expanding.

O soul, have I lost you or found you?

Found! the faultless circle born at last to you,

After the waiting years.

Far eras behind, far eras ahead, the simple few years I finger,

Shafts from the central sun,

Speeding for fuller fruition the orbs of space.

Back to the first word of speech,

On to the last utterance of seers,

My soul, knowing its own, wrapped in its protean habit, catches the perfect song.

God! I am circled – I am drunk with the influx of life – Wheeled in your orbit – given the word I would speak yet must withhold – Leaving you, O my brother, each one, to say it for yourself.

Brothers, worlds, I greet you!

The wheel turns, the boundless prospect opens:

All, all complicate – the light bearing limitlessly the burdens of all.

Do you think that you are missed, that the large heart beats not for you?

That somewhere on the road you must faint and die?

Strength will be given for all your need,

And the weakest, when the night comes which is the day,

Will greet the king, a giant in stature and grace.

Now the immortal years, the ceaseless round realized – The doubts shorn of wing and foot,

The farthest league nearest, and the multiplied infinities choking here in my breast.

O my questioner! you do not suspect me – you suspect yourself:

Tomorrow, seeing yourself, you will see me,

And the illumined spirit, passing the portal,

God grown, will hail me proudly.

Had we no other writings by this man, these lines alone to all who can understand them – and they are as clear as day from the point of view of this volume – would be proof of illumination. But we have much else. A series of writings in prose and verse extending over the last ten years gives us more evidence than is needed.

Then there is something else to say. Horace Traubel (as he intimates himself in his own words, above) belongs with Blake, Yepes, Böhme, Swedenborg and others, in the class of what may be called automatic writers. These men give their inspiration free way–they drop the reins on his neck and let the horse go. What they write under the divine impulse, for those who can follow their thought, is divine, but to those who can not, is, as Paul says, just in this connection, “foolishness.”

Perhaps all these men write automatically, but, in the case of some of them, the expression as it flows from the Cosmic Sense, or as afterwards modified by the self conscious intellect, is more intelligible to the “natural man” than in the case of others. In not one of them does the meaning lie on the surface–they all call for and demand long continued and thoughtful reading. Whitman and Paul are just as unintelligible as Böhme or Swedenborg, until the right point of view is reached, although Whitman (for his part) wrought his whole life, “returning upon (his) poems, lingering long,” in order to render them absorbable by the race.

Horace Traubel has not escaped the curse of his tribe – unintelligibility. But in spite of it he has produced his effect. And this is the strangest thing of all – that it should be possible for a man to speak or write what cannot be understood, but to do it in such a divine way that his words shall be revered and remembered through the ages. The Shakespeare sonnets have never been understood, and are yet accepted for what they really are–a revelation.

Horace Traubel has many readers who understand him, and even those who do not comprehend him fully are impressed by his personality, through which streams unmistakably the divine light.

CHAPTER 34 The Case of Paul Tyner, in His Own Words

I WAS BORN MARCH 7, 1860, about midnight, in the city of Cork, Ireland. My mother being Irish, of an old family, the Sarfields, one of whom is celebrated by Macaulay in his account of the conflict in Ireland between the Stuart forces and those under William of Orange. My father was the representative in Ireland of an important London publishing house. He used to say that one of his ancestors fought under William of Orange, and I believe came over with him from Holland.

I was brought to America at the age of four, educated in the public schools of Albany, N. Y., afterwards taking the law course in Columbia College, New York City, but exchanging law for journalism at the age of twenty, when I joined the staff of the New York “World,” in which service I remained about eight years, uninterruptedly. In 1887 I went to Central America, to engage in silver mining, exploration and travel. After a year in Honduras, I went to Costa Rica, where I edited and published a daily paper, called “El Comercio,” in English and Spanish, for about six months, when I returned to New York and reengaged in journalistic work there, as editorial writer on the staff of the New York Press.

The bent of my mind in the direction of mysticism, which has so largely influenced my later work, probably had its beginnings during a year’s retirement in the Shaker community, at Mt. Lebanon, N. Y. (1891–2). This experience was followed by a special course of study in social economics and history with Professor Richard T. Ely, of the University of Wisconsin. In the early morning of the 11th of May, 1895, came the crowning experience of my life. On the evening of that day I set down in my diary an exact and full account of the whole episode, as then seen by me. This memorandum I here transcribe:

“With this day’s dawn come the great revelation and the great charge. ‘Crowned with thorns’ was the waking thought; then buffeted and spat upon, mocked, insulted, scourged and in the pillory, ‘a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief,’ nailed to the cross, pierced in the side, utterly ‘despised and rejected of men,’ killed as a malefactor, buried; and then the great thought–the truth which maketh free; the absolute demonstration of man’s mastery of fate and command of all conditions–the victory of man–all men in this racial man, this elder brother of mankind in his triumph over sin, fear and death!

“But one thing had remained in my mind as necessary to prove to the mass of men today man’s absolute supremacy over death in all its forms as an at tribute of his oneness with God, with Eternal Life, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice, Omniscience and Omnipotence, the visible appearance of a man who living longer than the recorded years of any man who had seen death still lived in the flesh without shadow of change or decay. And I said to myself, this would be worth waiting and watching and working a thousand years for! Yet I wished the greater emancipation were not so far off. And lo! in the dawning of this day I know–know absolutely as a fact–a truth nothing can destroy, that the man who triumphed ever death on Calvary nearly two thousand years ago lives–lives on earth in a body of flesh made perfect, a man among men, sharing our struggles and sorrows, our joys and grief, working with us heart to heart and shoulder to shoulder–inspiring, guiding, leading, supporting, as may be, in every human advance.

“The glory of this truth, the grandeur of this character, the supreme nobility, patience, wisdom and love of this life, thrilled me with ecstasy and awe unspeakable–filled me, possessed me. He lives, not in some distant heaven on a great white throne, but here and now; is not coming, but is here with us, loving, helping, living, cheering and inspiring the race to which he belongs, as wholly and as truly as the race belongs to him. Now, indeed, it is plain, that being lifted up he shall lift all men with him–has lifted, is lifting and must ever continue to lift out of the very essence of his transcendent humanity. Immortality is no longer an hypothesis of the theologian, a figment of the imagination, a dream of the poet. Men shall live forever, because man, invincible to all effects of time and change, and even of murderous violence, lives today in the fullness of life and power that he enjoyed in his thirty-third year, with only added glory of goodness and greatness and beauty–although the world counts 1895 years since his last birth upon this earth.

“This is the truth given age upon age to all men in all lands, and persistently misunderstood–the truth at last to be seen of all men in its fullness and purity. Man is to know himself, and with full command of his conditions and unlimited time for action, is not only to soar toward, but absolutely attain to heights of being and of beauty hitherto undreamed of, and bringing fairly within his realization a heaven on earth, in true grandeur and happiness as far transcending the heaven of the orthodox Christian as that heaven transcends the heaven of the savage.

“This is the fact I am given to know; the proof must come in good time. My mission is to bear witness to it–to be the voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord! make straight his paths.’

“And in the light of this truth I live anew; I rise up vitalized and energized in every nerve and fibre. Soul and body, no longer strained apart, are linked and glorified. I will be worthy of the great charge of Truth Bearer to my kind, and will manifest in my body, in my thought and words, my life and actions, the truth that has become part of me–the truth of man’s oneness with eternal life …

“With these thoughts filling me and dissolving me in happy tears, I sprang from my bed about five o’clock and walked up and down the room in a fervor of adoration and love, for what love is like unto this man’s? All this time the atmosphere of the room was vibrant with an intense white light. The presence which had been revealed in the first waking moments seemed now diffused and continuing through the universe. After bathing and dressing I went out for an early walk. The morning was chilly, cloudy, raw and gusty, but the sweet scented, light filled air, full of vivid, tender green of spring and vibrant with life, seemed to share my sensation of joy and uplift.”

I may add, that my mind, being naturally analytical, I have been able to trace as distinct factors in the mental evolution here indicated, first (and perhaps most of all), Wagner’s Lohengrin and Parsifal; second, The Venus of Milo; third, Munkacsy’s Christ Before Pilate; all of them, however, blended, expanded and illumined by the grand soul of Walt Whitman.

In reply to your question: I do not know whether any change in my physical appearance followed what may be called my illumination and would rather someone else would speak of that. I have been told, however, that my face was that of one aflame, and that is distinctly my own feeling as to the change physically. There is a consciousness of a steady glow which is light and warmth in all my being. It is certain that ever since that morning I have had a larger and surer hold on life and have been able to work with clearer and more active brain and body.

Being asked to explain more fully the continuous life of Christ on earth in a human body, Paul Tyner answered as follows:

In asserting the continued existence on earth of the man Jesus, in the body of flesh and blood, it is by no means intended to deny the law demonstrated throughout the universe in all forms of life, simple or complex, of the passage from birth to maturity, and maturity to decay, so far as outer form is concerned. What this continued existence of Jesus in a body of flesh and blood means is dominion and control over the law of construction, destruction and reconstruction going on in all forms, its deliberate and conscious direction at all times. As a matter of fact, flexibility is the very essence of form, and this is especially true in regard to the human form. The spirit, which is the man himself, formless and unsubstantial, is continually building and rebuilding, calling to himself out of the universal ocean of matter and force all the elements he needs, and rejecting and expelling that which he has used, when it no longer serves his purpose, or when he has taken from it all that he requires.

In the true sense, there is no such thing as disembodied spirit. Spirit must embody itself for manifestation and expression. Jesus, having attained to spiritual self consciousness, deliberately and consciously chose and chooses his embodiment, molding it from day to day, into greater and greater responsiveness to his will–in his case the Cosmic will, the will of the Father. He is able to pass through closed doors and stone walls in this body, because of his power to change its vibrations. That is to say, he passes through stone walls, as ethers or gases pass through substances of lower vibrations or greater density. The component elements of his body, while governed to some extent by normal human anatomical structure and organization, is in what might be called a state of flux. The old Greeks considered the universe in a state of flux, as indeed it is.

Fully aware, as I am, of the difficulties in the way of describing a phenomenon, not merely unfamiliar, but unthinkable by most men, I can only ask the reader who desires a keener comprehension of what is meant by this “immortalization of the flesh,” to imagine by way of analogy, and yet an analogy conveying a very close approximate to the actuality–to imagine an architect who has planned a very beautiful and perfect dwelling, whose mind holds the plan very distinctly and completely, and who is himself a master builder, with unlimited command of the materials needed to embody his plan, and unerring knowledge of the best method of building. Imagine, further, that this architect, standing in the midst of the dwelling he has planned and built, should find that the materials he used, by some chance. or rather law, burned up every night without, however, burning him, or in the least injuring his powers. Remember that the plan remains intact. Remember that the builder’s skill is not consumed; that his command of material, sufficient to his needs and instantaneous in supply, remains with him. What would happen? He would reproduce this dwelling as quickly as it was destroyed; in fact, there would be no apparent break in the continuity of the dwelling. The only possible changes would be that, with experience and growth, the material part of the building would become ever finer and finer, the adjustments of its various parts one to another more and more exact. This in a rough way, conveys an idea of what is meant by the immortal man in an immortal embodiment.

No difficulty appears to be found in conceiving of the immortal principle in man embodying itself in a succession of bodies, on an ascending or descending scale, any more than we find it difficult to conceive of the universal principle of life embodying itself in a variety of forms in an ascending or descending scale. And yet, any such process must be considered complex and uncertain, compared to the simple and definite processes of the cosmically conscious man consciously and deliberately rebuilding, from day to day, that embodiment which best expresses his thought and answers to his requirements. In this, as in other things, evolution of forms and of processes are all in the direction of increased simplicity–of economy and efficiency in the doing of our work. It is not the personal Jesus that is immortalized, or that has the power of immortalizing the flesh, but the Christ principle clothed in that personality, embodied in it and using it simply as one of its modes of motion, so to speak. The Christ in Jesus, however, came into such fullness and plainness of manifestation that his personality is indeed made the Light of the world that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

As regards the appearance of Paul Tyner at the time of illumination, I am informed by H. C. as follows: “I am in a position to give a positive statement as to the appearance of Mr. Paul Tyner on the morning of the 11th of May, 1895. His color was unaltered, his flesh warm and natural, his expression peculiarly sweet and bright. His face had at the time and retained for days afterwards, the illuminated look we see at times on the face of the dying, a look of ecstasy, bright, uplifted–it was as if lit up with a glow from some unseen source. No lapse of the ordinary faculties, no failure of full health, both mental and bodily, but on the contrary apparently superabundant health. His day’s work (a very large one) was done that day as usual.”

It only remains to quote two short passages from a book written and published before Paul Tyner had ever heard of the present editor or his theories:

At daybreak of Friday, the 11th of May, 1895, I woke into full and absolute knowledge of the great fact which to me proves man’s immortality here and now, and in the body of flesh we know. I know that a man had lived nearly nineteen hundred years, and, knowing only fuller and fuller life with the passing of the years, had lived and still lives in the same body in which, in the beginning of that period, he walked the earth a man of flesh and blood. This man, in whom humanity came to full flower with the conscious manifestation of his oneness with eternal life in the thirty-third year of his present incarnation, has really destroyed the last enemy, which is death.

Today, in Europe and America, Australia and Africa, India and the isles of the sea, wherever the Father is worshiped in spirit and in truth–as in the Judea of Herod the Great–Jesus the Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, lives in the midst of us! For this cause came he into the world; that he might be a witness to the truth; a living, unimpeachable witness of the truth that shall make us free–the truth of man’s religion (reunion) with God, through absolute spiritual self consciousness–with God–with the Eternal, Omnipotent and Omniscient Source and Fountain of Life, “in whom we live and move and have our being,” without whom we are not!

I have said I knew this greatest fact in the history of humanity in a moment; that what before was as unknown to me as was the Western continent to Columbus before he sighted land, became in an instant a known reality, as much a part of my consciousness as was the air I breathed; a truth as yet faintly comprehended in its fullness, but a truth firmly grasped, irrevocable and indestructible; an eternal verity written in the letters of fire on my brain and in my heart–and so on the mind and in the heart of this age, and of all future ages.

Opening my eyes on the first rays of morning light illuminating my room, I thought of the oneness of Eternal Light and Life in a vague way, when my attention was seemingly diverted by the image of a monk’s tonsured head; and I thought of the crown of thorns it symbolized. Then the whole sublime tragedy of the passion moved vividly and rapidly before my eyes; the scourging, the pillory, the cuffs and blows, the jibes and jeers, the mockery and derision of that crowning with thorns; the painful progress of Golgotha, hooted by the blind and cruel mob; the torture and ignominy of the nailing to the cross, the cry of agony telling that the last dregs of the cup had been drained; the shout of victory that proclaimed “It is finished!” I saw then the spear thrust;

I saw the burial, the sublime temple of the Divine thus laid low, and I saw–the resurrection on the third day.

At this point my mind opened to the great fact, as to a flood of life. He rose from the dead. He never died again! He lives! The air in my room seemed to vibrate with a more intense light than was ever seen on land or sea. My brain and nerves, my blood and muscles, all my being vibrated in sympathetic unison with this light, and in the midst of its shining glory I beheld the Divine Man, the Undying Man–beheld him face to face, and knew that it was he in very flesh and bones, as in flesh transcending soul; knew that it was he and not another.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you that he that believeth on me hath everlasting life” [John vi, 47]. In these words Jesus announced a scientific principle of the utmost importance. Belief is essential to the attainment of immortality (in or out of the body). Belief in what? Belief in immortality–a state of consciousness of the fact of immortality. Belief in Jesus, in any real sense, is belief in the immortality of man. It is a belief in him who is “the way, the truth and the life”–in body and soul together; and with belief, a realization of oneness with him.

I offer no criticism of the specific belief of Paul Tyner as to “The Living Christ.” It is simply a question as to how the words are understood. Christ (as Paul named the Cosmic Sense) is of course living and will always live.

From the point of view of this present book Paul Tyner is almost a typical case of Cosmic Consciousness.

a. The subjective light was well-marked

b. There was the characteristic moral elevation

c. Also the usual intellectual illumination

d. The sense of immortality

e. The suddenness of the onset, the instantaneousness of the awakening

f. The previous mental life of the man was such as is likely to lead to illumination

g. His age of illumination, thirty-five years and two months

h. He attained Cosmic Consciousness in the spring, 11th of May

i. There was the characteristic change in appearance upon illumination.

CHAPTER 35 The Case of C. Y. E., in Her Own Words

I WAS BORN April 21, 1864. I was brought up a member of the Church of England, accepted its teaching and loved its services and liturgy. I believed in Christ as God Incarnate–the word made flesh. The doctrine of the atonement, taken in the sense of a sacrifice necessary to appease the anger of an avenging God, had long been rejected by me. I was married on January 1, 1891. My husband possessed an intense and earnest desire for truth. He was an agnostic. Our common ground was a firm conviction that God is Love, that He is also Light and that in Him is no darkness at all. Two years after our marriage my husband became an enthusiastic and ardent admirer of the writings of Walt Whitman, and here, to my sorrow, I was left behind. I tried to read Leaves of Grass, but could not understand a word of it. I could hear the music of the verse, but the language in which it was written was to me an unknown tongue. I recognized that there was something, and perhaps something beyond the common, in this man’s writing, but I was simply unable to see what it was.

In the autumn of 1893 we moved into the country and settled in a little village in Yorkshire. Soon afterwards my husband went to Bolton to meet the “Eagle College” men there. He returned home delighted with the new comrades he had found, with the hearty love and good fellowship with which he had been received, at the indisputable evidence of the powerful magnetism of the man Walt Whitman, who could draw together men of all sorts, diverse in country, calling, habits, station, indeed in everything but this wonderful sense of comradeship. I became still more mystified. Then in September, 1894, a remarkable young Philadelphian, named P. D., who was deeply imbued with Whitman’s philosophy, visited us. On Monday and again on Tuesday evening P. D., my husband and myself had long talks about Whitman and his teaching. On the afternoon of Wednesday I went to see a friend, a farmer’s wife, and we drove over the harvest fields to take some refreshment to her husband who was working with his men. When I was going away she gave me two very beautiful Maréchal Niel roses. I had always had a passionate love of flowers, but the scent of these and their exquisite form and color appealed to me with quite exceptional force and vividness. I left my friend and was walking slowly homeward, enjoying the calm beauty of the evening, when I became conscious of an unutterable stillness, and simultaneously every object about me became bathed in a soft light, clearer and more ethereal than I had ever before seen. Then a voice whispered in my soul: “God is all. He is not far away in the heaven; He is here. This grass under your feet is He; this bountiful harvest, that blue sky, those roses in your hand–you yourself are all one with Him. All is well for ever and ever, for there is no place or time where God is not.” Then the earth and air and sky thrilled and vibrated to one song, and the burden of it was “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will toward men.”

On my return home both my husband and his sister remarked a change in my face. An infinite peace and joy filled my heart, worldly ambitions and cares died in the light of the glorious truth that was revealed to me–all anxiety and trouble about the future had utterly left me, and my life is one long song of love and peace. When I wake in the night or rise from my bed in the morning–nay, at all hours of the day and night–the song is ever with me, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth, peace, good will toward men.”

Now I could read Walt Whitman. Read him! Indeed, it seemed more than reading, for my soul, eagerly drinking in his words, was thereby refreshed and invigorated.

The effects of this experience on my daily life have been many, chiefly, I think, after the deep underlying joy and peace came a faith in the eternal rightness of all things; a ceasing to fret and worry over the problem of evil; a desire to live in the open air as much as possible and an ever growing delight in the beauties of nature at all times and seasons of the year; a strong tendency towards simplicity of life and deepening sense of the equality and brotherhood of all men.

Summary

a. It will be noticed that the subjective light was well, though not strongly marked in the case

b. That moral elevation was a prominent feature

c. Intellectual illumination seems to have been present, though we have no conclusive evidence of it

d. The sense of immortality was pronounced

e. Fear of death was lost

f. We are not told in so many words, but it seems plain that there could be no sense of sin in the mental condition which accompanied and followed the experience

g. The change was sudden, instantaneous

h. The previous character of the person’s mind would mark her as a likely person to have such an experience as this

i. She was of the right age–in her thirty-first year

j. The present writer cannot speak of any added charm to the personality of Mrs. E., but it seems to him we must gather from what we are told that such occurred upon her illumination.

k. The phenomnon which in the great cases has been called transfiguration was present in moderate degree in this. It was noticed by both her husband and her sister.

Only one thing more remains to say. What may be called the mental suspension which seems to be a necessary preliminary to illumination was noticed and reported by Mrs. E. “I became conscious of an unutterable stillness,” and “simultaneously” she was wrapped in the subjective light. It seems remarkable that this fact should have been noted by the old Hindu seers, and it is not surprising that it was somewhat misinterpreted by them. It seems that they thought that this mental suspension was not only an inevitable accompaniment of illumination but an efficient cause of it. They therefore laid down the strictest rules for inducing the mental condition in question in the hope and expectation that, that being secured, illumination would follow. So we have such directions as these: “A devotee should constantly devote himself to abstraction, remaining in a secret place, alone, with his mind and self restrained, without expectation and without belongings”. And again: “That mental condition, in which the mind restrained by practice of abstraction, ceases to work”. This was supposed to be the mental state out of which Nirvāna must arise. It is the state out of which it arises, but it does not follow and does not appear that the state of mental suspension has any casual relation to the state of illumination or Nirvāna.

This is perhaps as good a place as any for a quotation from Gibbon, which will shed some light on the history of opinion on the above point, and will also show how a great student and great man may utterly fail to see facts, which, though brought immediately to his notice, are out of accord with his preconceptions. He says of the Emperor Cantacuzene that he “defended the divine light of Mount Tabor, a memorable question which consummates the religious follies of the Greeks. The fakirs of India, and the monks of the Oriental church were alike persuaded that in total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinion and practice of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. ‘When thou art alone in thy cell,’ says the ascetic teacher, ‘shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel, and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless, but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy, and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light.’ This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself.”

Gibbon has correctly reported the recommendations of the Indian sages. The truth of the matter seems to be as follows: When, without forethought, knowledge or endeavor (as in all the Western cases as far as the writer knows) illumination comes spontaneously, it is preceded (for an instant at least) by what we may call mental suspension. That fact having been noted by the Eastern adepts, who sought to reduce Nirvāna to an art, it was supposed that, mental suspension being secured, illumination would follow-that the first was, in fact, in some way, the cause of the second. Now it seems to the writer certain that where you have a subject on the verge (as it were) of the Cosmic Sense it may be possible to induce this by following the directions given in, for instance, the Bhagavad Gita, when, nothing being done, illumination would not spontaneously supervene. But the Cosmic Sense (though in any case more valuable than all the riches of the earth) when self induced, as by such methods as referred to, is less valuable, probably much less valuable–less potent and masterful–less creative–than it is in cases in which it bursts forth (as it were) of its own strength–self delivered–triumphant.

It seems certain that the monks of Mount Athos really knew of the state here called “Cosmic Consciousness,” otherwise how could they have specified, as they did, the subjective light? From whence would they have derived the knowledge of it and of the “ineffable joy” which accompanies it? Concerning the adoration of the Cosmic Sense as God, perhaps it is so.

CHAPTER 36 Case of A. J. S.

I WAS BORN ON THE 24th of January, 1871, in a country village, the seventh of a family of nine. I was the youngest of six girls. My father, mother, and all of us children were very musical–the girls having fine voices. When I was three or four years old I was taken about to different places to sing, and at that age could sing a song through if it were sung to me. When a little older I would make believe I was a great singer and would spend hours thumping on an old desk of my father’s rather than play on the organ, because I would hear the sound I made on the latter, which did not always please me, while from the other there came no sound to interfere with that created in my own imagination. To this day I sometimes wonder whether I did not really hear coming from the old desk the music which my fancy created in myself. I was always very frail. Much of the time I did not care to play with other children, but liked better to listen to this spiritual music which fascinated me. In the end this dream was dissipated by the tragic death of my father, and by an accident which happened to myself. Or did I, perhaps, simply grow out of it?

The thought of becoming a public singer was constantly held before me by my family and friends, and I was sent to a musical school in Boston. It appeared that my voice had all the quality supposed, but my frail physique and some results of the accident alluded to stood in my way; yet I would not give up.

I was married early and afterwards worked at my music harder than ever, and my husband felt that my heart was so much in singing that it would probably kill me to give it up. Soon, however, I broke down entirely as the result of over-work. Everything possible was done for me, but to no avail. I failed steadily and was in constant pain from the effect of a fall in childhood by which my spine was injured. I took various remedies to make me sleep, but they only brought on excitement and delirium. I was sent at last to a sanatorium, took to my bed in a darkened room and refused to see any of my friends. For a time my life was despaired of, and I only rallied to plan to take my life when I should have an opportunity.

At last a time came when I had given up all hope and felt there was nothing more for me to live for or to look forward to. One day while in this state I was lying quietly in my bed when a great calmness seemed to come over me. I fell asleep only to wake a few hours after to find myself in a flood of light. I was alarmed. Then I seemed to hear the words, “Peace, be still,” over and over again. I cannot say it was a voice, but I heard the words plainly and distinctly just as I had heard the music coming out of the old desk in my childhood. I put my head under the pillow to shut out the sound, but heard it just the same. I lay for what seemed to me, then, a long time in that condition, when gradually I was again in the dark. I sat up in my bed. I would not call the nurse, as I felt she would not understand. I did not, of course, understand myself, but I felt it meant something. This same calmness came to me often, and it always came before the light.

After that night my recovery was steady without the aid in any way of a physician or medicine. When the light came to me again later I asked my husband if he did not see it, but he did not. I have not tried to cultivate it, as I do not understand it. I only know that whereas formerly I was a wreck I am today well and strong physically and mentally, and whereas I loved the excitement of a public life I now love the quiet of home life and a few friends. With this calmness has come a power (as I call it) to heal others. With a touch or in some cases by catching the eye I can in many cases induce sleep.

In other cases the person will say to me: “Why is it I feel so restful when I am near you?” When friends have asked me to tell them of my experience I have declined except in one or two cases. It is all so real to me, and I fear that to others it will seem foolish; but some day these things will all be explained, and I hope they may be soon.

At the time I first saw the light I was twenty-four years old. I have seen it three times altogether. Now as to the intellectual and moral experiences that immediately follow the light: It is about impossible to set these forth, for words are very poor as a medium to express either the feeling or the vision that came to me at that time. I think the intellect could never give to me in worlds of study what is revealed to me during this experience and immediately following the presence of the light. To me it is beyond intellectual expression. It is seeing inwardly, and the word harmony would perhaps express part of what is seen.

Humanity goes on and on almost in despair, hoping some time to find rest and peace and fullness of life in the undefined future, when, in fact, all these and more are here now if we would (could?) only reach out our hand and take them.

My supreme desire is to be of help to humanity, but when I have had this light come to me I have been so filled with the desire to reveal what I see to mankind that it seems as though I were not doing anything at all.

The mental experiences following the light are always essentially the same, namely, an intense desire to reveal man to himself and to aid those who are trying to find something worth living for in what they call “this life.”

I do not feel that I have made myself intelligible, but I repeat that, in this subject, at least, words offer a most inadequate medium of expression.

CHAPTER 32

Case of J. William Lloyd, in His Own Words

CHAPTER 33

Horace Traubel

CHAPTER 34

The Case of Paul Tyner, in His Own Words

CHAPTER 35

The Case of C. Y. E., in Her Own Words

Summary

CHAPTER 36

Case of A. J. S.

CHAPTER 28

Richard Jefferies

1848–1887

CHAPTER 29

Case of C. M. C. in Her Own Words

CHAPTER 30

The Case of M. C. L. in His Own Words

1853–?

CHAPTER 31

Case of J. W. W.,

Largely in His Own Words

Summary