Picture to your mind, if possible, what it would be like to lie physically helpless, with your outward consciousness telling you that you no longer appear as a man, or as a woman, but only as an infant to any eyes able to see you, while at the same time your mental vision is perfectly clear and takes in all your past life in every aspect of its relation to other lives, and especially in its relations to the great all-pervading life which seems now to be somehow lost out of all possible reach.
Suppose that while those reactions called pain and pleasure are more vitally potent than ever, because of a vastly heightened sensitiveness, mental as well as physical exertion has become impossible, a succession of states of consciousness taking their place; and then suppose a master hand, with all the resources of mesmerism at his command, should begin playing upon your organism, proving to you by every touch that not a line of all your past history but is an open book to him, and his only aim is to bring you to a willingness to confess your weaknesses and follies, your neglect of duties, as well as your open transgressions—one thing at least would surely result: you would discover, and never forget, that spiritual things are not less, but immensely more real than any physical entities with which you ever came in contact.
It is such a great mistake to suppose that because you have nothing in your experience corresponding to such a condition as that which I have just described, therefore you never will have.
What kind of reasoning can be weaker than this? Have you not two kinds of consciousness, one of the world and all it contains, and one of personal existence in its various relations? Do you not perceive that your body, vitally active as it is, and swayed by every thought you send out, belongs properly to the first of these fields of consciousness, while that which makes up your character—your preferences, your predilections, your faults, your foibles, your beliefs, and your prejudices—belongs to the second?
Can you not see that a suspension of the outward consciousness, in other words, a suspension of your power to sense the material world through your material senses, has no necessary connection with any suspension of your inner consciousness by which you might be able to say, I cannot move; I cannot see, hear, or feel anything, but I am still a white man, ready to swear by the flag and by my right to my personal liberty, and if any one takes the trouble to hunt me out he will find me the same man I always was?
Hundreds of thousands thus lie in their graves, thankful if they know its location, and waiting as only the dead can for the time of their deliverance.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Accept another glimpse of the Beyond. One of the most distinctive characteristics of this country or state of being is activity of mind. Let me explain why I say country or state of being. It is either the one or the other to the consciousness according to the point of view. Looked at externally, it is seen to be a new environment, a different kind of life; but when its atmosphere becomes yours, the effect upon your mental organism will be so great that you will rightly regard it as a state of being to which earth-life bears the relation of a pre-natal one. This comparison, however, has one defect, for while we of the earth have no conscious memory of our pre-natal life, they of the Beyond recall every leading event of earth-life as clearly as though no time had intervened.