CHAPTER XXXI. A VISION.
HOW, when, and where this vision occurred it is unnecessary for me at present to state. It did not arise under the action of the laughing-gas or of chloroform, but by some much more real and immediate spiritual action. I had no perception of body or of matter, yet I felt that I was in the presence of a reasoning being of a different order from man. Language was not the means of our communication; yet it became necessary, in order to be intelligible, when I wrote down the facts immediately after that singular event—but language itself is quite insufficient to give an adequate idea of its immense apparent duration.
The first difficulty I felt in this communion with an unearthly Spirit was the notion of space. Our views of it differed widely. On many points, as, for instance, measure, we apprehended each other perfectly, for each referred to the height of an individual of his own race—of course about six feet. At last I discovered that my idea of space, which was founded upon vacuity, was exactly the reverse of that of the Spirit, which was based upon solidity. I will now, as far as I can, place before my reader the information I received.
〈THE CONSEQUENCES OF DOUBT.〉
The first desire I expressed to the Spirit was to learn, if possible, his view of the origin of all things. He stated that {407} the records of his race, which he declared was the highest in creation, went back, with great certainty, for myriads of years before all other created beings: that previously to this, their history was somewhat obscure, but had recently been placed upon a much surer footing by some of their most prominent Spirits.
(a.) In the beginning all space was fluid—apparently one universal whitish liquid extended in all directions through what we should call space; so I thought at first that this might have some relation to the “milky way.” Its temperature was considerable; and in about every thousand years a torrent of this fluid, of a still higher temperature, passed through space with a kind of gushing rush. It was peopled by myriads of happy spirits floating about in it.
After long ages of happiness a dispute arose between two Spirits as to the possibility of the existence of matter under any other form than that of a fluid. The Power which controlled their destiny, justly angry at their presumption, threw into the fluid a very small piece of what, as far as I could understand, was like organic matter.
(b.) The effect was astounding: all the fluid in contact with this intrusive piece of matter gradually lost its fluidity, and a new state of matter or of space arose which had been unknown in all past time. The change advanced slowly but certainly, on every side of the intruded matter. In its new form, as far as I could make out, space became elastic gelatinous matter. The two quarrelsome Spirits were the first to be surrounded in it. None in the immediate presence of this new kind of space could move away, and absorption went on rapidly imprisoning millions of beings.
A great controversy arose as to the state of those embedded in the jelly. Some supposed that they were miserably squeezed, {408} and maintained that they deserved to be thoroughly wretched. Whilst others asserted, that being entirely relieved from movement, theirs must be a state of perfect blessedness, their whole faculties being absorbed in contemplation. In the midst of these discussions the process of jellification was advancing more and more rapidly, and in ten thousand years the whole of infinite fluidity throughout all space, with all its myriads of Beings embedded in it, was transformed into this new form of space. From the description conveyed to me by the Spirit, I should infer that the whole of what we call infinite space had now become more nearly like blancmange than any other sub-aërial substance.
〈SPACE TOO LARGE FOR ITSELF.〉