The Child of the Dawn

by Arthur Christopher Benson

On the other hand, the intellectual processes of an embodied spirit are to a certain extent perceptible by a disembodied spirit; but there is a condition to this, and that is that some emotional sympathy must have existed between the two on earth. If there is no such sympathy, then the body is an absolute bar.

I could look into the mind of Amroth and see his thought take shape, as
I could look into a stream, and see a fish dart from a covert of weed.
But with those still in the body it is different. And I will therefore
proceed to describe a single experience which will illustrate my point.

I was ordered to study the case of a former friend of my own who was still living upon earth. Nothing was told me about him, but, sitting in my cell, I put myself into communication with him upon earth. He had been a contemporary of mine at the university, and we had many interests in common. He was a lawyer; we did not very often meet, but when we did meet it was always with great cordiality and sympathy. I now found him ill and suffering from overwork, in a very melancholy state. When I first visited him, he was sitting alone, in the garden of a little house in the country. I could see that he was ill and sad; he was making pretence to read, but the book was wholly disregarded.

When I attempted to put my mind into communication with his, it was very difficult to see the drift of his thoughts. I was like a man walking in a dense fog, who can just discern at intervals recognisable objects as they come within his view; but there was no general prospect and no distance. His mind seemed a confused current of distressing memories; but there came a time when his thought dwelt for a moment upon myself; he wished that I could be with him, that he might speak of some of his perplexities. In that instant, the whole grew clearer, and little by little I was enabled to trace the drift of his thoughts. I became aware that though he was indeed suffering from overwork, yet that his enforced rest only removed the mental distraction of his work, and left his mind free to revive a whole troop of painful thoughts. He had been a man of strong personal ambitions, and had for twenty years been endeavouring to realise them. Now a sense of the comparative worthlessness of his aims had come upon him. He had despised and slighted other emotions; and his mind had in consequence drifted away like a boat into a bitter and barren sea. He was a lonely man, and he was feeling that he had done ill in not multiplying human emotions and relations. He reflected much upon the way in which he had neglected and despised his home affections, while he had formed no ties of his own. Now, too, his career seemed to him at an end, and he had nothing to look forward to but a maimed and invalided life of solitude and failure. Many of his thoughts I could not discern at all—the mist, so to speak, involved them—while many were obscure to me. When he thought about scenes and people whom I had never known, the thought loomed shapeless and dark; but when he thought, as he often did, about his school and university days, and about his home circle, all of which scenes were familiar to me, I could read his mind with perfect clearness. At the bottom of all lay a sense of deep disappointment and resentment. He doubted the justice of God, and blamed himself but little for his miseries. It was a sad experience at first, because he was falling day by day into more hopeless dejection; while he refused the pathetic overtures of sympathy which the relations in whose house he was—a married sister with her husband and children—offered him. He bore himself with courtesy and consideration, but he was so much worn with fatigue and despondency that he could not take any initiative. But I became aware very gradually that he was learning the true worth and proportion of things—and the months which passed so heavily for him brought him perceptions of the value of which he was hardly aware. Let me say that it was now that the incredible swiftness of time in the spiritual region made itself felt for me. A month of his sufferings passed to me, contemplating them, like an hour.

I found to my surprise that his thoughts of myself were becoming more frequent; and one day when he was turning over some old letters and reading a number of mine, it seemed to me that his spirit almost recognised my presence in the words which came to his lips, "It seems like yesterday!" I then became blessedly aware that I was actually helping him, and that the very intentness of my own thought was quickening his own.

I discussed the whole case very closely and carefully with one of our instructors, who set me right on several points and made the whole state of things clear to me.

I said to him, "One thing bewilders me; it would almost seem that a man's work upon earth constituted an interruption and a distraction from spiritual influences. It cannot surely be that people in the body should avoid employment, and give themselves to secluded meditation? If the soul grows fast in sadness and despondency, it would seem that one should almost have courted sorrow on earth; and yet I cannot believe that to be the case."

"No," he said, "it is not the case; the body has here to be considered. No amount of active exertion clouds the eye of the soul, if only the motive of it is pure and lofty, and if the soul is only set patiently and faithfully upon the true end of life. The body indeed requires due labour and exercise, and the soul can gain health and clearness thereby. But what does cloud the spirit is if it gives itself wholly up to narrow personal aims and ambitions, and uses friendship and love as mere recreations and amusements. Sickness and sorrow are not, as we used to think, fortuitous things; they are given to those who need them, as high and rich opportunities; and they come as truly blessed gifts, when they break a man's thought off from material things, and make him fall back upon the loving affections and relations of life. When one re-enters the world, a woman's life is sometimes granted to a spirit, because a woman by circumstance and temperament is less tempted to decline upon meaner ambitions and interests than a man; but work and activity are no hindrances to spiritual growth, so long as the soul waits upon God, and desires to learn the lessons of life, rather than to enforce its own conclusions upon others."

"Yes," I said, "I see that. What, then, is the great hindrance in the life of men?"

"Authority," he said, "whether given or taken. That is by far the greatest difficulty that a soul has to contend with. The knowledge of the true conditions of life is so minute and yet so imperfect, when one is in the body, that the man or woman who thinks it a duty to disapprove, to correct, to censure, is in the gravest danger. In the first place it is so impossible to disentangle the true conditions of any human life; to know how far those failures which are lightly called sins are inherited instincts of the body, or the manifestation of immaturity of spirit. Complacency, hard righteousness, spiritual security, severe judgments, are the real foes of spiritual growth; and if a man is in a position to enforce his influence and his will upon others, he can fall very low indeed, and suspend his own growth for a very long and sad period. It is not the criticism or the analysis of others which hurts the soul, so long as it remains modest and sincere and conscious of its own weaknesses. It is when we indulge in secure or compassionate comparisons of our own superior worth that we go backwards."