Our Eternity

by Maurice Maeterlinck

Moreover, it would be requisite for these mediums, who are generally people of merely average intelligence, suddenly to become great poets in order thus to create, down to every detail, a series of characters, differing entirely one from the other, in which everything is in keeping—gestures, voice, temper, mind, thoughts, feeling—and ever ready to reply, in harmony with their inmost nature, to the most unexpected questions. It has been said that every man is a Shakspeare in his dreams; but have we not here to do with dreams which, in their uniformity, bear a singular resemblance to fact?

I think, therefore, that we may be allowed, until we receive evidence to the contrary, to leave fraud out of the question. Another objection that might be raised, as was done with respect to the Myers phantoms, is the insignificance of their revelations from beyond the grave. I would rather look on this as an argument in behalf of their good faith. Those whose imagination is rich enough to create the wonderful persons whom we see living in their sleep would doubtless find no great difficulty in inventing a few fantastic but plausible details on the subject of the next world. Not one of them thinks of it. They are Christians and therefore carry deep down in themselves the traditional terror of hell, the fear of purgatory and the vision of a paradise full of angels and palms. They never allude to any of it. Although they are most often ignorant of all the theories of reincarnation, they conform strictly to the theosophical or neospiritualistic hypothesis and are unconsciously faithful to it in their very indefiniteness: they speak vaguely of “the dark” in which they find themselves. They tell nothing, because they know nothing. It is impossible apparently for them to give any account of a state that is still illumined. In fact, it is very likely, if we admit the hypothesis of reincarnation and of evolution after death, that nature, here as elsewhere, does not proceed by bounds. There is no special reason why she should take a prodigious and inconceivable leap between life and death.

We did not find the dramatic change which, at first thought, we are rather inclined to expect. The spirit is first of all confused at losing its body and every one of its familiar ways; it only recovers itself by degrees. It resumes consciousness slowly. This consciousness is subsequently purified, exalted and extended, gradually and indefinitely, until, reaching other spheres, the principle of life that animates it ceases to reincarnate itself and loses all contact with us. This would explain why we never have any but minor and elementary revelations.

All that concerns this first phase of the survival is fairly probable, even to those who do not admit the theory of reincarnation. For the rest, we shall see presently that the solutions which man’s imagination finds there merely change the question and are inadequate and provisional.

3

We now come to the most serious objection, that of suggestion. Colonel de Rochas declares that he and all the other experimenters who have given themselves up to this study “have not only avoided everything that could put the subject on a definite tack, but have often tried in vain to lead him astray by different suggestions.” I am convinced of it: there can be no question of voluntary suggestion. But do we not know that, in these regions, unconscious and involuntary suggestion is often more powerful and effective than the other? In the hackneyed and rather childish experiment of table-turning, for instance, which, after all, is only a crude and elementary form of telepathy, the replies are nearly always dictated by the unconscious suggestion of a participant or a mere on-looker.[^[17]] We should therefore first of all have to make sure that neither the hypnotizer nor the onlookers, nor yet the subject himself, have ever heard of the reincarnated persons. It will be enough, I shall be told, to employ for the counter-tests another operator and different onlookers who are ignorant of the previous revelations. Yes, but the subject is not ignorant of them; and it is possible that the first suggestion has been so profound that it will remain for ever stamped upon the unconsciousness and that it will reproduce the same incarnations indefinitely, in the same order.

All this does not mean that the phenomena of suggestion are not themselves laden with mysteries; but that is another question. For the moment, as we see, the problem is almost insoluble and control impracticable. Meanwhile, since we have to choose between reincarnation and suggestion, it is right that we should confine ourselves, in the first instance, to the latter, in accordance with the principles which we have observed in the case of automatic speech and writing. Between two unknowns, common sense and prudence decree that we should turn first to the one on whose frontiers lie certain facts more frequently recorded, the one which shows a few familiar glimmers. Let us exhaust the mystery of our life before forsaking it for the mystery of our death. Throughout this vast expanse of treacherous ground, it is important that, until fresh evidence arrives, we should keep to one inflexible rule, namely, that thought-transference exists as long as it is not absolutely and physically impossible for the subject or some person in the room to have cognizance of the incident in question, whether the cognizance be conscious or not, forgotten or actual. Even this guarantee is not sufficient, for it is still possible, as we saw in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge’s watch, for some one taking no part in the sitting and even very far away from it to be placed in communication with the medium by some unknown means and to influence the medium at a distance and unwittingly. Lastly, to provide for every contingency, before letting death come upon the boards, it would be necessary to make certain that atavistic memory does not play an unforeseen part. Cannot a man, for instance, carry hidden in the depths of his being the recollection of events connected with the childhood of an ancestor whom he has never seen and communicate it to the medium by unconscious suggestion? It is not impossible. We carry in ourselves all the past, all the experience of our ancestors. If, by some magic, we could illumine the prodigious treasures of the subconscious memory, why should we not there discover the events and facts that form the sources of that experience? Before turning towards yonder unknown, we must utterly exhaust the possibilities of this terrestrial unknown. It is moreover remarkable but undeniable that, despite the strictness of a law which seems to shut out every other explanation, despite the almost unlimited and probably excessive scope allotted to the domain of suggestion, there nevertheless remain some facts which perhaps call for another interpretation.

But let us return to reincarnation and recognize, in passing, that it is very regrettable that the arguments of the theosophists and neospiritualists are not compelling, for there never was a more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and consoling, nor, to a certain point, a more probable creed than theirs. It alone, with its doctrine of successive expiations and purifications, accounts for all the physical and intellectual inequalities, all the social iniquities, all the hideous injustices of fate. But the quality of a creed is no evidence of its truth. Even though it is the religion of six hundred millions of mankind, the nearest to the mysterious origins, the only one that is not odious and the least absurd of all, it will have to do what the others have not done, to bring unimpeachable testimony; and what it has given us hitherto is but the first shadow of a proof begun.

4

And even that would not put an end to the riddle. In principle, reincarnation, sooner or later, is inevitable, since nothing can be lost nor remain stationary. What has not been demonstrated in any way and will perhaps remain indemonstrable is the reincarnation of the whole identical individual, notwithstanding the abolition of memory. But what matters to him that reincarnation, if he be unaware that he is still himself? All the problems of the conscious survival of man start up anew; and we have to begin all over again. Even if scientifically established, the doctrine of reincarnation, just like that of a survival, would not set a term to our questions. It replies to neither the first nor the last, those of the beginning and the end, the only ones that are essential. It simply shifts them, pushes them a few hundreds, a few thousands of years back, in the hope perhaps of losing or forgetting them in silence and space. But they have come from the depths of the most prodigious infinities and are not content with a tardy solution. I am most certainly interested in learning what is in store for me, what will happen to me immediately after my death. You tell me: