No more a fettered earth-bound thing,
But freed from clay, and doubt, and slime,
Triumphant over death and time!
To the eternal ever cling!
P. H. D.
THE INVISIBLE WORLD.
In many of the tasks of life the first step costs the great effort, and the investigation of truth in the higher regions of Nature justifies the familiar maxim. The first step for the modern inquirer is that which carries his consciousness across the threshold of matter into the invisible world. Never mind for the moment whether occult progress be attempted by a direct onslaught on the defences of the invisible world, or by purely internal combats with the desires of the lower self. The unseen must first become a reality for anyone who seriously desires to enter into relations with it, whether he sets his will to work to vanquish his own frailties, or the forces of Nature on the astral plane. An internal struggle with material desire undertaken for a spiritual purpose, just as much as the other kind of contest, is a recognition of the superior realm; and it is not a struggle of the kind we are contemplating at all, if it is merely undertaken for a worldly purpose, as thrifty habits may be cultivated, for instance, at the bidding of the grossest material selfishness. But though a recognition of the invisible world must in this way have been forced, at an early stage of his inquiry, on the mind of everyone who becomes an earnest explorer of Nature’s higher laws, its invisibility is a terrible barrier in the way of the progress that would otherwise be made by the throngs of intelligent materialists who people civilised countries at this epoch of our history. From the point of view of conventional thinkers—of those alike who sacrifice their Sunday mornings to provide for the contingency that there may be something in religion after all, and of those who are frankly incredulous of any Nature lying beyond the reach of instrumental research—a tremendous revolution in all their views of life is accomplished if they are somehow brought face to face with the reality of super-material phenomena, if they ever discover the invisible world and come to know it, or any part of it, as an unequivocal fact.
Long experienced explorers of the unseen often forget how profoundly clouded the whole region seems from the shore of materialistic thought. Indeed, from the shore of other systems where habits of metaphysical speculation would lead men to repudiate the charge of materialism, the unseen appears to be equally impenetrable to all human faculties. It is as though we lived beside an ocean always shrouded from view by a belt of mist. A few persons are in the constant habit of pushing out beyond in boats, but these, when they come back, are told, “Nonsense! there is no ocean; you have been dreaming!” For the vast majority, the mist is an infinite void. Only by a minority have the few who have passed through it, been even encountered. Will anyone who knows his generation pretend to say that even among ordinary religious people the next world is a certain fact in Nature, like the next street? How many are there who do more than rest on the hypothesis that there may be somewhere a heaven to “go to” when the dreadful moment comes at which mortal man must perforce bid adieu to the warm precincts of the cheerful day. “God forbid!” a bishop is said to have piously remarked when warned, during danger at sea, that he would be in Heaven that night. The next world of commonplace orthodoxy is but too often regarded as a desperate resource for ruined men, whose fortune of life has been wrung from them to the last drop. For those who are bankrupt of breath, “let us trust” (as a frequent phrase expresses the idea) that some compensation may be provided by Providence hereafter, though it does all remain so hopelessly obscure.
“Ah, if you could only show me that there really is a life beyond this—a perpetuation of this real individual Me after I am what my friends will call dead—you would be giving me a blessing that no words could over-estimate.” That is a passionate cry from many hearts to those who talk of other lives for the soul—of spiritual rewards, or the fruit of Karma in future states of existence.
It is a cry which few people indeed, even among those who have been in contact with the invisible world, are in a position to satisfy. Most of us are obliged to reply: “This satisfaction can only be acquired by a resolute effort; it is impossible for us to bring you proof of what we know, to save you trouble. If you would know whether Africa exists, we cannot bring you Africa to prove it; we can only give you directions how to get there if you are willing to undertake the journey.” “But why,” we might ask, “cannot you believe the testimony of those who have had proof of the sort you require.” The answer always is in effect: “C’est le premier pas qui coute. It would be worth worlds to know, but to believe without personal knowledge—that would be an act of faith. I might as easily believe at once in the Roman Catholic Church.”