WILLIAM SHARP—"FIONA MACLEOD"
A pronounced instance of the two phases of consciousness, is that of the late William Sharp, one of the best known writers of the modern English school.
It was not until after the death of William Sharp, that the secret of this dual personality was given to the public, although a few of his most intimates had known it for several years. In the "Memoirs" compiled by Elizabeth Sharp, wife of the writer, we find the following:
"The life of William Sharp divides itself naturally into two halves: the first ends with the publication by William Sharp of 'Vistas,' and the second begins with 'Pharais,' the first book signed Fiona Macleod."
In these memoirs, the point is made obvious that Fiona Macleod is not merely a nom de plume; neither is she an obsessing personality; a guide or "control," as the Spiritualists know that phenomenon. Fiona Macleod, always referred to by William Sharp as "she," is his own higher Self—the cosmic consciousness of the spiritual man which was so nearly balanced in the personality of William Sharp as to appear to the casual observer as another person.
It is said that the identity of Fiona Macleod, as expressed in the manuscript put out under that name, was seldom suspected to be that of William Sharp, so different was the style and the tone of the work of these two phases of the same personality.
In this connection it may be well to quote his wife's opinion regarding the two phases of personality, answering the belief of Yeats the Irish poet that he believed William Sharp to be the most extraordinary psychic he ever encountered and saying that Fiona Macleod was evidently a distinct personality. In the Memoirs, Mrs. Sharp comments upon this and says:
"It is true, as I have said, that William Sharp seemed a different person when the Fiona mood was on him; but that he had no recollection of what he said in that mood was not the case—the psychic visionary power belonged exclusively to neither; it influenced both and was dictated by laws he did not understand."
Mrs. Sharp refers to William Sharp and Fiona, as two persons, saying that "it influenced both," but both sides of his personality rather than both personalities, is what she claims. In further explanation she writes:
"I remember from early days how he would speak of the momentary curious 'dazzle in the brain,' which preceded the falling away of all material things and precluded some inner vision of great beauty, or great presences, or some symbolic import—that would pass as rapidly as it came. I have been beside him when he has been in trance and I have felt the room throb with heightened vibration."
One of the "dream-visions" which William Sharp experienced shortly before his last illness, is headed "Elemental Symbolism," and was recorded by him in these beautiful words:
"I saw Self, or Life, symbolized all about me as a limitless, fathomless and lonely sea. I took a handful and threw it into the grey silence of ocean air, and it returned at once as a swift and potent flame, a red fire crested with brown sunrise, rushing from between the lips of sky and sea to the sound as of innumerable trumpets."
"In another dream he visited a land where there was no more war, where all men and women were equal; where humans, birds and beasts were no longer at enmity, or preyed on one another. And he was told that the young men of the land had to serve two years as missionaries to those who lived at the uttermost boundaries. 'To what end?' he asked. 'To cast out fear, our last enemy.' In the house of his host he was struck by the beauty of a framed painting that seemed to vibrate with rich colors. 'Who painted that?' he asked. His host smiled, 'We have long since ceased to use brushes and paints. That is a thought projected from the artist's brain, and its duration will be proportionate with its truth.'"
In explanation of why he chose to put out so much of the creative work of his brain under the signature of a woman, and how he happened to use the name Fiona Macleod, Sharp explained that when he began to realize how strong was the feminine element in the book Pharais, he decided to issue the book under a woman's name and Fiona Macleod "flashed ready-made" into his mind. "My truest self, the self who is below all other selves must find expression," he explained. The Self that is above the other self is what he should have said. The following extracts are from the Fiona Macleod phase of William Sharp and are characteristic of the Self, as evidenced in all instances of Illumination, particularly as these expressions refer to the nothingness of death, and the beauty and power of Love. "Do not speak of the spiritual life as 'another life'; there is no 'other life'; what we mean by that, is with us now. The great misconception of death is that it is the only door to another world." This testimony corroborates that of Whitman as well as of St. Paul, notwithstanding all the centuries that separate the two. St. Paul did not say that man will have a spiritual body, but that he has a spiritual body as well as a corporeal body.
After the experience of his illumination, William Sharp, writing as Fiona Macleod constantly testified to the ever-present reality of his spiritual life; a life far more real to him than the sense-conscious life although he alluded to it as his dream. In one place he says:
"Now truly, is dreamland no longer a phantasy of sleep, but a loveliness so great that, like deep music, there could be no words wherewith to measure it, but only the breathless unspoken speech of the soul upon whom has fallen the secret dews."
Of the impossibility of adequately explaining the mystery of Illumination and the sensations it inspires, he says, speaking through the Self of Fiona Macleod: "I write, not because I know a mystery, and would reveal it, but because I have known a mystery and am to-day as a child before it, and can neither reveal nor interpret it."
This is comparable with Whitman's "when I try to describe the best, I can not. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots."
Another sentence from Fiona:
"There is a great serenity in the thought of death, when it is known to be the gate of Life."
Like all who have gained the Great Blessing, the revelation to the mind of that higher Self, that we are, William Sharp suffered keenly. The despair of the world was his, co-equal with the Joy of the Spirit. Indeed, his is at once the gift and the burden of the Illuminati.
Mrs. Mona Caird said of him: "He was almost encumbered by the infinity of his perceptions; by the thronging interests, intuitions, glimpses of wonders, beauties, and mysteries which made life for him a pageant and a splendor such as is only disclosed to the soul that has to bear the torment and revelations of genius."
The burden of the world's sorrow; the longings and aspirations of the soul that has glimpsed, or that has more fully cognized the realms of the Spirit which are its rightful home; are ever a part of the price of liberation. The illumined mind sees and hears and feels the vibrations that emanate from all who are travailing in the meshes of the sense-conscious life; but through all the sympathetic sorrow, there runs the thread of a divine assurance and certainty of profound joy—a bliss that passes comprehension or description.
Mrs. Sharp, in the final conclusion of the Memoirs says "to quote my husband's own words—ever below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his toil, lay the beauty of his dream."
In accordance with an oft-repeated request, these lines are inscribed on the Iona cross carved in lava, which marks the grave wherein is laid to rest the earthly form of William Sharp:
"Farewell to the known and exhausted,
Welcome the unknown and illimitable."
And this:
"Love is more great than we conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions."
They are from his higher Self; from the illumined "Dominion of Dreams."