Worst of all; my consciousness, my “I,” had apparently acquired the phenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decuplating itself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of time, in half-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various events of my life, at different epochs, and under the most dissimilar circumstances; though predominant over all was my spiritual experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the famous fugue in Don Giovanni, the heart-rending notes of Elvira’s aria of despair ring high above, but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed woes, the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision, the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang of my despair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes and events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was living through again, or interfere in any way the one with the other. It was a maddening experience! A series of contrapuntal, mental phantasmagoria from real life. Here was I, during the same half-a-minute of time, examining with cold curiosity the mangled remains of my sister’s husband; following with the same indifference the effects of the news on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and feeling at the same time hell-torture for these very events, as when I returned to consciousness. I was listening to the philosophical discourses of the Bonze, every word of which I heard and understood, and was trying to laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then a youth, hearing my mother’s and my sweet sister’s voices, admonishing me and teaching duty to all men. I was saving a friend from drowning, and was sneering at his aged father who thanks me for having saved a “soul” yet unprepared to meet his Maker.
“Speak of dual consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!”—I cried, in one of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me physical also, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have killed a dozen living men; “speak of your psychological and physiological experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and book-learning! Here am I to give you the lie....” And now I was reading the works and holding converse with learned professors and lecturers, who had led me to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing the impossibility of consciousness divorced from its brain, I was shedding tears of blood over the supposed fate of my nieces and nephews. More terrible than all: I knew, as only a liberated consciousness can know, that all I had seen in my vision at Japan, and all that I was seeing and hearing over and over again now, was true in every point and detail, that it was a long string of ghastly and terrible, still of real, actual, facts.
For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my attention on the needle of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations and was fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, that consciousness, is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be my punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal experience how the condemned sinners would feel—“were not eternal damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an ever progressing Universe”—I still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed; at this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness—now my synonym for “I”—had still the power of revolting at certain theological claims, of denying all their propositions, all—save ITSELF.... No; I denied the independent nature of my consciousness no longer, for I knew it now to be such. But is it eternal withal? O thou incomprehensible and terrible Reality! But if thou art eternal, who then art thou?—since there is no deity, no God. Whence dost thou come, and when didst thou first appear, if thou art not a part of the cold body lying yonder? And whither dost thou lead me, who am thyself, and shall our thought and fancy have an end? What is thy real name, thou unfathomable Reality, and impenetrable Mystery! Oh, I would fain annihilate thee.... “Soul-Vision”!—who speaks of Soul, and whose voice is this?... It says that I see now for myself, that there is a Soul in man, after all.... I deny this. My Soul, my vital Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expired with my body, with the gray matter of my brain. This “I” of mine, this consciousness, is not yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, in which the Bonze felt so anxious I should believe may be true.... Why not? Is not the flower born year after year from the same root? Hence this “I” once separated from its brain, losing its balance, and calling forth such a host of visions ... before reincarnating....
I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I was watching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out of the depths of its white face, saying: “In this case, I fear, you would only have to open and to shut the temple door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would seem to you an eternity.”...
The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice of my old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck; and I awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and faint with terror.
VIII
A Tale of Woe
We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who could hardly recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes I started for Nuremberg.
Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to the correctness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse than any expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward doomed to the most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terrible tragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law, killed under the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now rapidly sinking towards her end; my niece—the sweet flower of nature’s fairest work—dishonored, in a den of infamy; the little children dead of a contagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving nephew at sea, no one knew where. A whole house, a home of love and peace, scattered; and I, left alone, a witness of this world of death, of desolation and dishonor. The news filled me with infinite despair, and I sank helpless before this wholesale, dire disaster, which rose before me all at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted. The last thing I heard before entirely losing my consciousness was a remark of the Burgmeister: “Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed to the city authorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of coming home to take charge of your young relatives, we might have placed them elsewhere, and thus have saved them from their fate. No one knew that the children had a well-to-do relative. They were left paupers and had to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively strangers in Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate circumstances you could hardly have expected anything else.... I can only express my sincere sorrow.”
It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any rate, have saved my young niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect I had not done so, that was killing me. Had I but followed the friendly advice of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities some weeks previous to my return much might have been avoided. It was all this, coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt clairvoyance and clairaudience—the possibility of which I had so long denied—that brought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could avoid the censure of my fellow-creatures, but I could never escape the stings of my conscience, the reproaches of my own aching heart—no, not as long as I lived. I cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts, my early education, I cursed myself, and the whole world....
For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load, for I had a duty to perform to the dead and to the living. But my sister once rescued from the pauper’s asylum, placed under the care of the best physicians, with her daughter to attend to her last moments, and the Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime, safely lodged in jail—my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly a week after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving maniac, helpless in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I lay between life and death, the terrible disease defying the skill of the best physicians. At last my strong constitution prevailed, and—to my life-long sorrow—they proclaimed me saved.