THE ANGEL OF LOURDES
One lovely summer evening I was standing in a hotel bedroom, washing my hands. I was in Lourdes, and I was pondering upon a certain long flight of stone steps that I could see quite clearly from my window. At the top of the steps, which were cut in the face of the wooded hillside, stood a great Calvary, and from dawn till darkness pilgrims made the hard ascent upon their knees. The stones were worn and grooved by the stream of human beings making their painful way to the foot of the Cross.
The atmosphere of Lourdes is very impressive to the Psychic. One breathes the concentrated essence of prayer. No one goes there who is not on prayer intent, and in the public streets, gardens and churches one comes across kneeling figures lost in Divine contemplation. No one heeds them; all are on a like mission, and sometimes men and women stand for hours with outstretched arms. Human crosses, oblivious to all, lost in a mystic rapture which takes count of neither time nor place.
I turned my head towards the window. The sun had just set behind the mountains, and the sky was illuminated by a rosy afterglow. Down in the valley the shadows were beginning to lengthen, but I could still see the Calvary on the hillside, and the dark human stream slowly moving up the stony way, the Via Dolorosa of the Cross.
At that moment the sense of a presence swung into my field of consciousness, and contracted my vague faculties to focus. Something moving in the sky above caught my eye.
How shall I describe the sight?
I saw an angel floating above the mountains.
The figure, wingless, yet floating in erect grace, was of great size, and wrapped entirely in cloudy gray. The head was bare and slightly bent, as if looking down on earth. The movements were smooth and gliding, as a feather floats in the wind. The distance was too great—I judged about a quarter of a mile—for me to distinguish the features, but owing to its great size the figure was clearly visible and deeply inspiring.
It was a vision on which none could look intently without feeling the weight of a mighty awe. It gathered up the wandering emotions of the heart, and all a lifetime's ideals of beauty, grandeur, sublimity, in one serene presentation.
The vision floated on majestically, across the valley and the little town with its praying multitudes. In about three minutes It had passed, and was lost in the pearly mists of the gathering night.
And whilst the vision lasted I was acutely conscious of that innumerable concourse of kneeling forms below, all struggling upwards to the Cross.
It seems to me that the devout, of other faiths than that of Rome, lose much by not taking advantage of Lourdes. For many years, thousands of pilgrims from all corners of the earth have bent their steps towards the shrine, and poured out their souls in a passion of supplication. This tremendous concentration of faith, love and fervent adoration, often ecstatic thanksgiving for answered prayer, must find an echo in the Heaven World to which they are sent.
It is so easy at Lourdes to feel that the Throne of Grace has been actually reached, because one can sense the pathway, the ladder made by human love, praise and faith, down which, I doubt not, the Angels of God are always passing. It is easier to concentrate the mind in a place where religious thought has been poured out for many years, because one insensibly becomes calmed, and tranquilized, and aided by the atmosphere thousands of others have created.
At Lourdes there is nothing to attract the scoffer, and thousands of hearts filled with reverence and devotion reënforce each year the already powerful vibrations, and leave the place the better and richer for their presence.
How few people realize that they have never seen themselves? How many can tell what they really look like?
A very, very few can, and I am amongst the number.
I wakened one morning in summer, and opened my eyes on my sunlit bedroom at home. Instantly I saw something which thrilled me with vivid interest. I saw myself!
I was emerging out of a corner of the room, and composedly approaching the bed. There was no doubt as to recognition. I knew instantly I was looking on my own face for the first time, and it was something of a shock to discover that I was more or less of a stranger to myself. I saw how false a looking-glass can be. I had not begun to know myself.
With absorbed interest I stared very hard, in my intense desire to imprint on my memory my own image. I approached the bed, and as I did so, I seemed to shrink, fade, and waver. Then suddenly I vanished—into my recumbent body.
For a few minutes afterwards I was too concerned with my physical condition to ponder on the vision of my real self. I was tossing violently in the bed, in an inner distraughtness which was most disturbing. Then, as my nervous system began to calm down, I strove to imprint on my memory the recollection of what I really looked like.
My face, even in the wonder of those few moments in which I had seen it, expressed emotions I had never seemed to know. Nothing was as I had believed it to be. All the traits that went to form my character needed readjusting, and all seemed curiously imperfect. I could not remember how I was clothed, though I had seen myself from head to foot. I suppose I was too engrossed in studying my face to think of my body.
The vision left me with a blank sense of utter disillusionment and failure. Nothing in me was finished or complete. My expression suggested a character which was horribly crude, imperfect and rudimentary. Looking at myself afterwards in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that it lied, or that in waking life I wear a mask.
It is salutary to behold one's spiritual portrait, a thing not visible to the mind alone but to the physical sight. In a flash comes the knowledge that dwelling in us are forces, not yet grasped by mortal mind, that cry for recognition. There have been moments in all lives, I believe, when a glimpse is caught of the Olympian heights to which it is possible to rise. Glimpses, alas! of the evanescent thing we know ourselves in truth to be.
Sometimes, on the Astral plane, it happens that friends meet under strange circumstances, and one figures largely in the doings of another. The memory of those nocturnal adventures is brought through and clearly recollected in the morning.
One such occurrence I will relate, and it is peculiar and unusual.
An old friend of ours, a man who has devoted his life to the development of his spiritual faculties (not to be confused with the development of mediumship and phenomena), had a series of dreams in which he appeared to be two people. He himself was the same tall, slender man he is in daily life, but in this psychic experience a much smaller man moved always on his left side, and somehow seemed to symbolize his waking personality.
The central figure in one of these unusual experiences was a young man who was unknown to our friend, and who had died abroad. His body had been embalmed and brought home for burial, and our friend had been shown photographs of him, and had also communicated with him through automatic writing. This much was imprinted on his physical memory.
Now, whilst lying asleep one night, the spiritual counterpart of our friend became aware that the body of the young man was exposed and could be seen. His companion, or other self, the shorter man who moved by his side, shrank back with horror from such a suggestion, just as our friend would instinctively have done in waking consciousness, but he himself was determined to see the body, and went straight through a door facing him, into a room where it was lying on a low table.
Now comes the moment when I began to figure in this experience. I was standing on the opposite side of the table, making vigorous passes over the young man's body, which appeared to be fashioned out of pinkish clay. The trunk and legs looked as though I had roughly modeled them with my hands. The head was more highly finished. It was sharp and distinct in outline, and our friend recognized it instantly as being a representation of the young man whose portraits he had seen. He stared at the face with great interest, and taking up a cloth, gently wiped the cheek where a fleck of foam lay. This action seemed to vivify the body, for it began to mutter and murmur indistinctly. Apparently it was alive, and not dead.
Our friend relates that this discovery gave him such a shock that he lost the thread of memory which he was bringing back to his physical body on the bed. The next moment he woke up. My recollection, a perfectly clear one, of these happenings, was that he simply vanished from the scene, leaving me alone with the body, which I continued to manipulate.
Afterwards, through automatic writing, our friend was told by the departed young man, that this astral vision signified the collecting of etheric matter to fashion a body in which he could function on etheric planes.
On another occasion our friend had the experience of walking about on the other side with the young man, who was dressed in an ordinary tweed suit, and being taken by him to various acquaintances, to whom he was introduced. With the exception of the above experience, he believes that this was the first time he had ever seen him. The interesting point of both experiences is, that both I and our friend brought back on waking, a clear and similar recollection of the episode in which we were jointly concerned.
This friend of ours is a disciple of "The Flaming Heart," called by Catholics "The Sacred Heart." He writes to me thus:—
"I see now more clearly than before that the Christ self within uses its powers as a whole, just as the personal man uses intellect, will, and feeling, all three being energized by love, which is the element of interest in the several activities."
"So the self of love works out and manifests as—
| Love and Life | Beauty. |
| Love and Power | Goodness. |
| Love and Knowledge | Wisdom. |
"The Love element saves us from wrong living, wrong doing or wrong thinking. So we go from strength to strength, by yielding the lower self to the transmuting power of the Higher."
It was long before I came to understand the full significance of the Flaming Heart. It was plain to see what its realization meant to our friend. He radiates an extraordinary serenity of mind, an atmosphere of strength and peace, a calm in the midst of storm which apparently nothing can shake. Pre-eminently, when in his presence, one is conscious of a commanding power which will only be used for exalted purposes. This clear subjection of the lower self, to the transmuting power of the Higher self, has worked such marvels in him that one longs to grasp the secret of his success.
A few years passed, and still the heart of the mystery eluded me. This year, 1918, it came to me in a flash.
The experience I am about to relate may have happened to many others. To me, it was a tremendous revelation.
I was kneeling one morning in front of the Altar, at Early Celebration. I have always felt, through the Eucharist, the possibility of great spiritual development, and often there comes to me at such moments, a mystical response to the inner mysteries of the Sacrament. I have never looked for supernatural happenings, hallucinations, or psychic excitements, but my spiritual instincts are always alive and craving satisfaction. This they have never before received in any really lasting degree.
Now came a new Divine illumination.
Two clergymen were officiating at the celebration. I had just received the bread from the one, and had raised my head and hands to receive the cup from the other, when suddenly I went quite blind.
The vicar, who was moving towards me, was blotted out. I stared at a black veil utterly impenetrable, and I was aware of a tremendous internal dislocation. My heart beat tumultuously, and felt as if thrust out of place. Then my sight was restored.
I saw before me, not the man, bearing in his hands the chalice, but a flaming heart of fire, from which radiated out living, scintillating streams of golden light. They filled the background with their quivering radiance, and I was conscious of shrinking back, and bowing my head as the supernal vision approached me and enveloped me in Its aura.
The cup had been transmuted by Divine alchemy into the Flaming Heart of love's sacrifice, and I was given to taste of the living waters of Life.
For a few minutes I was quite unconscious of where I was. I had been, indeed, caught up into the seventh Heaven. I know now that I acted mechanically, and to outward semblance I behaved in the orthodox manner, but when I raised my head again the vicar had passed on and the vision had vanished. Nothing had happened to distract the attention of others.
I returned to my seat conscious that I had been taught the meaning and marvelous significance of the Flaming Heart. I understood the words of the great mystic, St. John.
"In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
"And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness overcame it not.
"There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world."
I know that the Flaming Heart of Divinity dwells in the breasts of all humanity, that the soul is no empty shell, but the shrine of the Divine Presence, and that Presence is the Guide and Light of Life.
I have seen revealed the inner mystery of the sacramental life. Through a rift in the veil of the material, the hidden life of eternity was symbolized for me in the Flaming Heart, the true Eucharistic Mystery.