LETTER XXX
THE SYLPH AND THE MAGICIAN

 

IF your eyes could pierce the veil of matter, and you could see what goes on in the tenuous world around and above that city of Paris, you would gasp with wonder. I have spent much time in Paris lately. Shall I tell you some of the strange things I have seen?

 

In a street on the left bank of the river, called the rue de Vaugirard, there lives a man of middle age and sedentary habits who is a sort of magician. He is constantly attended and served by one of the elemental spirits known as sylphs. This sylph he calls Meriline. I do not know from what language he got the name, for he seems to speak several, and to know Hebrew. I have seen this Meriline coming and going to and from his apartment. No, it would not be right for me to tell you where it is. The man could be identified, though the sylph would elude the census taker.

132            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

Meriline does not make his bed or cook his broth, for which humble service he has a charwoman; but the sylph runs errands and discovers things for him. He is a collector of old books and manuscripts, and many of his treasures have been located by Meriline in the stalls which lie along the banks of the Seine, and also in more pretentious bookshops.

 

This man is not a devil-worshipper. He is only a harmless enthusiast, fond of occult things, and striving to pierce the veil which shuts the elemental world from his eyes. A little less brandy and wine, and he might be able to see clearly, for he is a true student. But he is fond of the flesh, and it preys upon the spirit.

 

One day I encountered Meriline going upon one of his errands, and I introduced myself by signalling with my hands and calling my name. This attracted the attention of the sprite, who came and stood beside me.

 

"Where are you going?" I asked; and she nodded towards the other side of the river.

 

The thought came to me that perhaps I ought not to question this servant of the good magician as to her master's business, so I hesitated. She also hesitated; then she said:

 

"But he is interested in the spirits of men."

THE SYLPH AND THE MAGICIAN                    133

 

 This made the matter simpler, and I asked:

"You do his errands?"

"Yes, always."

"Why do you do his errands?" "Because I love to serve him."

"And why do you love to serve him?" "Because I belong to him."

"I thought every soul belonged to itself." "But I am not a soul!" "Then what are you?" "A sylph."

"Do you ever expect to be a soul?"

"Oh, yes! He has promised that I shall be, if I serve him

faithfully."

"But how can he make you to be a soul?" "I don't know; but he will." "How do you know that he will?" "Because I trust him." "What makes you trust him?" "Because he trusts me." "And you always tell him the truth?" "Always."

"Who taught you what truth is?" "He did."

"How?"

 

This seemed to puzzle the being before me,

134            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

and I feared she would go away; so I detained her by saying, quickly:

 

"I do not want to worry you with questions which you cannot answer. Tell me how you first came into his service." "Ought I?"

"So you have a conscience?"

"Yes, he taught me to have."

"But you say that he is interested in the spirits of men." "Yes, and I also know good spirits from bad ones." "Did he teach you that?"

"No."

"How did you learn?"

"I always knew."

"Then you have lived a long time?" "Oh, yes!"

"And when do you expect to have, or to become a soul?" "When he comes out here, into this world where we are."

 

This staggered me by its daring. Had the good magician been deceiving his sylph, or did he really believe what he promised?

 

"What did he say about it?" I asked.

THE SYLPH AND THE MAGICIAN                    135

 

"That if I would serve him now, he would serve me later." "And how is he going to do it?"

"I don't know."

"Suppose you ask him?"

"I never ask questions. I answer them."

"For instance, what sort of questions?"

"I tell him where such and such a person is, and what he or she is doing."

"Can you tell him what these people are thinking?" "Not often—or not always. Sometimes I can." "How can you tell?"

"By the feel of them. If I am warm in their presence, I know they are friendly to him; if I am cold, I know they are his enemies. If I feel nothing at all, then I know that they are not thinking of him, or are indifferent."

"And your errand this evening?"

"To see a lady."

"And you are not jealous?"

"What is 'jealous'?"

"You are not displeased that he should interest himself in ladies?"

"Why should I be?"

 

This was a question I could not answer, not

136            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

knowing the nature of sylphs. She surprised me a little, for I had supposed that all female things were jealous. But, fearing again that she might leave me, I hurried to question her further.

 

"How did you make his acquaintance?" I asked. "He called me."

"How?"

"By the incantation."

"What incantation?"

"The call of the sylphs."

"Oh," I said, "he called the sylphs and you came!"

"Yes, of course. I liked him for his kindness, and I made him see me."

"How did you manage it?"

"I dazzled his eyes until he closed them, and then he could see me."

"Can he always see you now?"

"No, but he knows I am there."

"He can see you sometimes still?"

"Yes, often."

"And when he saw you first?"

"He was delighted, and called me loving names, and made me promises."

"The promise of a soul—that first time?" "Yes."

THE SYLPH AND THE MAGICIAN                    137

 

"Then you had wanted to have a soul?" "Oh, yes!"

"But why?"

"Many of us want to be men. We love men—that is, most of us do."

"Why do you love men?"

"It is our nature."

"But not the nature of all of you?"

"There are malignant spirits of the air."

"And what will you do when you have a soul?" "I will take a body, and live on earth." "And leave your friend whom you now serve?"

"Oh, no! It is to be with him that I specially want a body." "Then will he come back to the earth with you?" "He says so."

 

This again staggered me. I was becoming interested in this magician; he had a daring imagination.

 

Could a spirit of the air develop into a human soul? I asked myself. Was the man self-deceived? Or, again, was he deceiving his lovely messenger?

 

I thought a little too long this time, for when I turned again to speak to my strange companion, she had left me. I tried to follow, but could

138            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

not find her; and if she returned soon, it must have been by some other road. Though I looked in all directions, she was invisible to me.

 

Now, the question will arise in your mind: In what language did I talk with this aerial servant of a French magician? I seemed to speak in my own tongue, and she seemed to respond in the same. How is that? I cannot say, unless we really used the subtle language of thought itself.

 

You may often, on meeting with a person whose language you do not speak, feel an interchange of ideas, by the look of the eyes, by the expression of the face, by gestures. Now imagine that, intensified a hundredfold. Might it not extend to the simple questions and answers which I exchanged with the sylph? I do not say that it would, but I think it might; for, as I said before, I seemed to speak and she seemed to reply in my own language.

 

What strange experiences one has out here! I rather dread to go back into the world, where it will be so dull for me for a long time. Can I exchange this freedom and vivid life for a long period of somnolence, afterwards to suck a bottle and learn the multiplication table and Greek and Latin verbs? I suppose I must—but not yet.

LETTER XXXI
A PROBLEM IN CELESTIAL MATHEMATICS

 

BY the vividness with which you feel my presence at times, you can judge of the intensity of the life that I am living. I am no pallid spook, dripping with grave-dew. I am real, and quite as wholesome—or so it seems to me—as when I walked the earth in a more or less unhealthy body. The ghastly spectres, when they return, do not talk as I talk. Ask those who have seen and heard them.

 

It is well that you have kept yourself comparatively free of communications "from the other world."

 

It would have been amazing had you been afraid of me. But there are those who would be, if they should sense my presence as you sense it.

 

One night I knocked at the door of a friend's chamber, half expecting a welcome. He jumped

140            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

out of bed in alarm, then jumped back again, and pulled the blanket over his head. He was really afraid that it might be I! So, as I did not wish to be responsible for a case of heart failure, or for a shock of hair which, like that in the old song, "turned white in a single night," I went quietly away. Doubtless he persuaded himself next day that there were mice in the wainscotting.

 

Had you been afraid of me, though, I should have been ashamed of you; for you know better. Most persons do not.

 

It is a real pleasure for me to come back and talk with you sometimes. "There are no friends like the old friends," and the society of sylphs and spirits would never quite satisfy me if all those whom I had known and loved should turn their backs on me.

 

Speaking of sylphs, I met the Teacher last night, and asked him if that French magician I told you about could really make good his promise to his aerial companion, and help her to acquire the kind of soul essential to incarnation on earth as a woman. His answer was, "No."

 

Of course I asked him why, and he answered that the elemental creatures, or units of force inhabiting the elements, as we use that term, could

A PROBLEM IN CELESTIAL MATHEMATICS 141

not, during this life cycle, step out of their element into the human. "Can they ever do so?" I asked.

 

"I do not know," he replied; "but I believe that all the less evolved units around the earth are working in the direction of man; that the human is a stage of development which they will all reach some day, but not in this life cycle."

 

I asked the Teacher if he knew the magician in question, and he answered that he had known him for a thousand years, that long ago, in a former life, the Paris magician had placed his feet upon the path which leads to power; but that he had been side-tracked by the desire for selfish pleasures, and that he might wander a long time before he found his way back to real and philosophical truth.

 

"Is he to be blamed or pitied?" I asked.

 

"Pity cuts no figure in the problem," the Teacher replied. "A man seeks what he desires."

 

After the Teacher went away I began asking myself questions. What was I seeking, and what did I desire? The answer came quickly: "Knowledge." A year ago I might have answered "Power," but knowledge is the forerunner of

142            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

power. If I get true knowledge, I shall have power enough.

 

It is because I want to give to you, and possibly to others, a few scraps of knowledge which might be inaccessible to you by any other means, that I am coming back, and coming back, time after time, to talk with you.

 

The greatest bit of knowledge that I have to offer you is this: that by the exercise of will a man can retain his objective consciousness after death. Many persons out here sink into a sort of subjective bliss which makes them indifferent as to what is going on upon the earth or in the heavens. I could do so myself, easily.

 

As I believe I have said before, while man on earth has both subjective and objective consciousness, but functions mostly in the objective, out here he has still subjective and objective consciousness, but the tendency is towards the subjective.

 

At almost any time, on composing yourself and looking in, you can fall into a state of subjective bliss which is similar to that enjoyed by souls on this side of the dividing line called death. In fact, it is by such subconscious experience that man has learned nearly all he knows regarding the etheric world. When the storms and passions of the body are stilled, man, can catch a glimpse

A PROBLEM IN CELESTIAL MATHEMATICS 143

 

of his own interior life, and that interior life is the life of this fourth-dimensional plane. Please do not accuse me of contradicting myself or of being obscure; I have said that the objective consciousness is as possible with us as the subjective is with you, but that the tendency is merely the other way.

 

You may remember a pair of lovers about whom I wrote you a few weeks ago. He had been out here some time, and had waited for her, and helped her over the uncertain marsh-lands which lie between the two states of existence.

 

I saw these lovers again the other day, but they were not at all excited by my appearance. On the contrary, I fancy that I put them out somewhat by awakening them, by calling them back from the state of subjective bliss into which they have sunk since being together at last.

 

While he waited for her all those years, he kept himself awake by expectation; while still on earth she was always thinking of him out here, and so the polarity was sustained. Now they have each other; they are in "the little home" which he built for her with so much pleasure out of the tenuous materials of this tenuous world; they see each other's faces whether they look out

144            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

or in; they are content; they have nothing more to attain (or so they tell each other), and they consequently sink back into the arms of subjective bliss.

 

Now this state of bliss, of rumination, they have a right to enjoy. No one can take it from them. They have earned it by activity in the world and elsewhere, it is theirs by rhythmic justice. They will enjoy it, I fancy, for a long time, living over the past experiences which they have had together and apart. Then some day one or the other of them will become surfeited with too much sweetness; the muscles of his (or her) soul will stretch for want of exercise; he (or she) will give a spiritual yawn, and by the law of reaction, pass out—not to return.

 

Where will he (or she) go, you ask? Why, back to the earth, of course!

 

Let us imagine him (or her) awaking from that subjective state of bliss which is known to them as attainment, and going for a short promenade in blessed and wholesome solitude. Then, with a sort of morning alertness in the heart and the eye, he (or she) draws near to a pair of earthly lovers. Suddenly the call of matter, the eager, terrible call of blood and warmth, of activity raised to the nth power, catches the half

A PROBLEM IN CELESTIAL MATHEMATICS 145

awakened soul on the ethereal side of matter, and—

 

He has again entered the world of material formation. He is sunk and hidden in the flesh of earth. He awaits birth. He will come out with great force, by reason of his former rest. He might even become a "captain of industry," if he is a strong unit. But I began by saying "he or she." Let me change the figure. The man would be almost certain to awake first, by reason of his positive polarity.

 

Now, in drawing this imaginary picture of my lovers, I am not making a dogma of the way in which all souls return to earth. I am merely guessing how these two will return (for she would probably follow him speedily when she awoke and found herself alone). And the reason why I fancy they will return in that way is because they are indulging themselves in too much subjective bliss.

 

When will they go back? I cannot say. Perhaps next year, perhaps in a hundred years. Not knowing the numerical value of their unit of force, I cannot guess how much subjective bliss they can endure without a violent reaction.

 

I am sure that you are wondering if some day

146            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

I shall myself sink into that state of bliss which I have described. Perhaps. I should enjoy it but not for long, and not yet. However, I have no sweetheart out here to enjoy it with me.

LETTER XXXII
A CHANGE OF FOCUS

 

WITH the guidance of the Teacher, during the last few weeks I have been going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it. You smile at the veiled reference. But have not certain friends of yours actually feared me, as if I were the devil of the Book of Job?

 

Now, to be serious, I have been visiting those lands and cities where in former lives I lived and worked among men. One of the many advantages of travel is that it helps a man to remember his former existences. There is certainly a magic in places.

 

I have been in Egypt, in India, in Persia, in Spain, in Italy; I have been in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Turkey, and many other lands. The Dardanelles were not closed to me recently, when by reason of the war you could not have passed through. There are advantages to almost every condition, even my present one; for the law of compensation holds good.

148            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

In certain lives of the past I was a wide traveller.

 

Now you may wonder how it is that I pass easily from this world to yours, seeing into both. But you must remember that your world and mine occupy about the same space; that the plane of the earth's surface is one of the lower and more material planes of our world, using the word "plane" as you would use the word "layer."

 

As I have said before, there are also places accessible to us which lie at some distance above the earth's surface. "Mansions in the skies" are more than figurative.

 

I have only slightly to change my focus at any time, to find myself in your world. That I cannot be seen there with the naked eye is no proof that I am not there. Without that change of focus, which is done through an action of will and by knowing the method, I might even be occupying the same space as something in your world and not know it. Note well this point, for it is only half of something which I have to say. The other half is, that you also may at any time be—so far as space is concerned—in the immediate neighbourhood of interesting things in our world, and not know that you are there.

 

But if you focus to this world you are more

A CHANGE OF FOCUS                            149

 

or less conscious of it. So when I, knowing how, focus to your world, I am there in consciousness and can enjoy the varied sights of many cities, the changing aspects of many lands.

 

When I first came out I could not see my way about the earth very well, but now I can see better.

 

No, I am not going to give you a formula to give to other people by which you or they could change focus at will and enter into relation with this world, because such knowledge at the present stage of human progress would do more harm than good. I merely state the fact, and leave the application for those who have the curiosity and the ability to demonstrate it.

 

My object in writing these letters is primarily to convince a few persons—to strengthen their certainty in the fact of immortality, or the survival of the soul after the bodily change which is called death. Many think they believe who are not certain whether they believe or not. If I can make my presence as a living and vital entity felt in these letters, it will have the effect of strengthening the belief of certain persons in the doctrine of immortality.

 

This is a materialistic age. A large percentage of men and women have no real interest in the

150            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

life beyond the grave. But they will all have to come out here sooner or later, and perhaps a few will find the change easier, the journey less formidable, by reason of what I shall have taught them. Is it not worth while? Is it not worth a little effort on your part as well as on mine?

 

Any person approaching the great change who shall seriously study these letters and lay their principles to heart, and who shall will to remember them after passing out, need not fear anything.

 

We all fail in much that we undertake, but I hope I shall not fail in this. Do not you fail on your side. I could not do this work without you, nor could you do it without me. That is in answer to the supposition that I am your subconscious mind.

 

I have been in Constantinople and have stood in the very room where I once had a remarkable experience, hundreds of years ago. I have seen the walls, I have touched them, I have read the etheric records of their history, and my own history in connection therewith.

 

I have walked the rose-gardens of Persia and have smelled the flowers—the grandchildren, hundreds of times removed, of those roses whose

A CHANGE OF FOCUS                            151

 

fragrance was an ecstasy to me when, watching with the bulbul, I paced there in another form and with intentions different to mine now. It was the perfume of the roses which made me remember.

 

In Greece also I have lived over the old days. Before their degeneration began, what a race they were! I think that concentration was the secret of their power. The ether around that peninsula is written over with their exploits, in daring thought as well as daring action. The old etheric records are so vivid that they shine through the later writings; for you must know that what are called astral records lie layer against layer everywhere. We read one layer instead of another, either by affinity or by will. It is no more strange than that a man may go among the millions of volumes in the British Museum and select the one he wants. The most marvellous things are always simple of explanation if one has the key to unlock their secret.

 

There has been much nonsense written about vibration, but nevertheless truth lies thereabouts. Where there is so much smoke there must be fire.

 

In India I have met with yogis in meditation. Do you know why their peculiar way of breathing

152            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

produces psychic results? No, you do not. Now let me tell you: By holding the breath long a certain—shall I say poison?—is produced in the body, which poison, acting on the psychic nature, changes the vibration. That is all. Volumes have been written about yoga, but have any of them said that? The untrained healthy lungs, in the ordinary operation, get rid of this poison by processes well known to physiologists,—that is, in the natural man, adjusted to and working contentedly on the material plane. But in order for a man still living on the material plane to become adjusted to the psychic world, a change of vibration is necessary. This change of vibration may be produced by a slight overdose of the above­mentioned poison. Is it dangerous? Yes, to the ignorant. To those who are learned in its use it is no more dangerous than most of the drugs in the pharmacopoeia.

 

Another time I will tell you about other secrets which I have discovered going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it.

LETTER XXXIII
FIVE RESOLUTIONS

 

I HAVE stood at night on the roof of an Oriental palace and watched the stars. You who can see into the invisible world by changing your focus, can easily understand how I, by a reverse process, can see into the world of dense matter. Yes, it is the same thing, only turned the other way.

 

I stood on the roof of an Oriental palace and watched the stars. No mortal was near me. Looking down upon the sleeping city, I have seen the cloud of souls which kept watch above it, have seen the messengers coming and going. Once or twice a wan, half­frightened face appeared among the cloud of spirits, and I knew that down below in the city someone had died.

 

But I had seen so many spirits since coming out here that I was more interested in watching the stars. I used to love them, and I love them

154            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

still. Some day, if it is permitted, I hope to know more about them. But I shall not leave the neighbourhood of the earth until these letters are finished. From the distance of the planet Jupiter I might not be able to write at all. It is true that one can come and go, almost with the quickness of thought; but something tells me that it is better to postpone for a time my more extensive travelling. Perhaps when I get out there I shall not want to come back for a long time.

 

It means much to me this correspondence with earth. During my illness I used to wonder if I could come back sometimes, but I never imagined anything like this. I would not have supposed it possible to find any well-balanced and responsible person with daring enough to join me in the experiment.

 

I could not have written through the hand of a person of untrained mind unless he or she had been fully hypnotised. I could not have written through the hand of the average intellectual person, because such persons cannot make themselves sufficiently passive.

 

Be at peace. You are not a spirit medium, using the word as it is commonly used, signifying a passive instrument, an aeolian harp, set in an

FIVE RESOLUTIONS                              155

 

aperture between the two worlds and played upon by any wind that blows.

 

Except as illustrating the fact that it can be done, there is no great object in my telling you of the things I have seen in your world since coming to this other one. The next time you look out into this plane of life and see the wonderful landscapes and the people, remember that it is in a similar way that I look back into your plane of existence. It is interesting to live in two worlds, going back and forth at will. But when I go into yours it is only as a visitor, and I shall never attempt to take a hand in its government. There is such a rigorous custom-house on the frontier between the two worlds that the traveller back and forth cannot afford to carry anything with him—not even a prejudice.

 

If you should come out here with a determination to see only certain things, you might give a wrong value to what you would see. Many have come out here at death with that mental attitude, and so have learned little or nothing. It is the traveller with the open mind who makes discoveries.

 

I brought over with me only a few resolutions: To preserve my identity;

156            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

To hold my memory of earth life, and to carry back the memory of this life when I should return to the world;

 

To see the great Teachers;

 

To recover the memories of my past incarnations;

 

To lay the necessary foundations for a great earth life when I should go back next time.

 

That sounds simple, does it not? Already I have done much besides; but if I had not borne these points in mind I might have accomplished little.

 

The only really sad thing about death is that the average man learns so little from it. Only my realisation of the fact that the chain of earth lives is relatively endless could keep me from regret that most persons make so little progress in each life. But I comfort myself with the assurance that there is no hurry; that the pearls in the chain of existence, though small, are all in their inevitable places, and that the chain is a circle, the symbol of eternity.

 

And it seems to me, with my still finite view, that most men on this side waste their lives even as they do on your side. That shows how far I am yet from the ideal knowledge.

 

Viewed from the stars, whence I hope some

FIVE RESOLUTIONS                              157

 

day to view them, all these flat stretches in the landscape of life may be softened by distance, and the whole picture may take on a perspective of beauty which I had not dreamed of while I myself was but a speck upon the canvas.

LETTER XXXIV
THE PASSING OF LIONEL

 

I HAVE lost my boy Lionel. He has gone—I started to say the way of all flesh; but I must revise the figure and say the way of all spirits, sooner or later, and that way is back to the earth.

 

One day not long ago I found him absorbed in thought in our favourite resting-place, the little hut beside a stream at the foot of a wooded hill, which I told you about in one of my former letters.

 

I waited for a time until the boy opened his eyes and looked at me.

 

"Father," he said, "my favourite teacher is going to be married to-morrow."

 

"How do you know?" I asked.

 

"Why, I have been listening!" he answered. "Every little while I go back and pay her a visit, though she does not know I am there. I have been aware that there was something in the wind."

 

"Why?"

"Because she has been so shining; there is a light around her which was not there before."

THE PASSING OF LIONEL                         159

 

"What caused the light, Lionel?"

"Well, I suppose she is what they call in love." "You are a phenomenally wise child," I said. He looked at me with his large, honest eyes.

"I am not really a child at all, he answered. "I am as old as the hills, as you, or as anybody. Have you not told me that we are all immortal, without end or beginning?"

"Yes, but go on, tell me about your teacher."

"She is in love with the big brother of one of MY playfellows. I used to know him when I was a little boy. He let me use his magnet, and taught me kite-flying, and showed me how machinery went. He is an engineer."

"Oh!" I said. "In this case, of course, you are glad that your favourite teacher is going to marry him."

Lionel's eyes were larger than ever as he said:

"I shall be sorry to leave you, Father; but it is a chance I cannot afford to miss."

"What!"

"It is my opportunity to go back. I've been watching for it a long time."

"But are you ready?"

"What is it to be ready? I want to go."

"And leave me?"

160            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

"I shall find you again. And—Oh, Father!—when you come back I shall be older than you." This idea seemed to delight him.

 

I was still human enough to be sorry that the boy was going of his own free will; but as will is free, I would not make any effort to detain him. Though young in that form, which had not yet had time to grow up in the tenuous world since he came out as a child, yet he was old in thought.

 

"Yes," I said, "perhaps you can help me along when I also shall be. a child again."

 

"You see," he went on, "with a father like Victor I shall learn all I want to know about machinery—that is, all that he can teach me; but when I am grown I shall find out for myself many things which he does not know. You remember the little machine I have been working with, up in the pattern world?"

 

"Yes."

 

"When I am back on the earth I shall make it a reality. Why, it actually runs now with the electricity from my fingers!"

 

"But will it, when you have fixed it in material form, in steel, or whatever it is to be made of?"

 

"Yes, of course it will. It is my invention. I shall be a famous man."

"But supposing that somebody else finds it first?" "I don't think anybody will."

THE PASSING OF LIONEL                         161

 

"Shall I help you to lay a spell around the pattern, so that no one can touch it?"

 

"Could you do that, Father?" "I think so."

 

"Then let us go up there at once," he said, "and do it immediately. I may have to leave this world in a day or two."

 

I could not help smiling at the boy's desire to hurry. Doubtless he would be present at that wedding, and I should see little or nothing of him afterwards.

 

We went up to the pattern world, and with his assistance I drew a circle around the little machine—a spell which, I think, will protect it until he is ready to make his claim.

 

Oh inspiration! Oh invention! Genius! Little do the men of earth know the meaning of those words. Perhaps the poet's famous poem was sung before his birth; perhaps the engineer's invention lay in the pattern world, protected by his spell, while he grew to manhood and advanced in science and made ready to claim it for his own, his prior and spiritual creation. Perhaps, when two men discover or invent the same thing at

162            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

about the same time, one has succeeded in appropriating the design which the other left behind him when he came back to earth. Sometimes, perhaps, both have taken from the invisible the creation of a third man, who still awaits rebirth.

 

Lionel babbled on to me about the life to come, and of what a charming mother Miss —— would be. She had always been good to him.

 

"Perhaps," I said, "many of us who return almost immediately, as you hope to do, seek out those who have been good to us in a former life."

 

"There is another point," Lionel said. "Miss —— is a friend of my own mother, the one I left a few years ago. It will be so good to have her hold my hand again."

 

"Do you think she will recognise you?" I asked.

 

"Who knows? She believes in rebirth."

 

"How can you say that? You were so little when you came out!"

 

"I was seven years old, and already she had told me that we live many lives on earth."

 

"Bless the souls who first brought that belief to the Western world!" I exclaimed. "And now, my boy, is there anything that I can do for you after you leave me?"

THE PASSING OF LIONEL                         163

 

"Yes, of course; you can watch over my new mother, and warn her if any danger threatens her or me."

 

"Then make me acquainted with her now."

 

We went out into the material world, the boy and I. Already I have told you how we go.

 

He took me to a little house in one of the suburbs of Boston. We entered a room—it was then about eleven o'clock at night upon that part of the earth,—and I saw a fair young woman kneeling beside her bed, praying to God that He would bless the union of the morrow which was to give her to the man she loved.

 

Lionel went close to her and threw his arms about her neck.

 

She started, as if she actually felt the contact, and sprang to her feet.

 

"Miss ——, Miss ——, don't you know me?" he cried; but while I could hear him, she evidently could not, though she looked about her in a half-frightened way.

 

Then, supposing that the touch and the presence she had felt were imaginary, she again fell upon her knees and went on with her interrupted prayer.

164            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

"Come away," I said to the boy; and we left her there with her dreams and her devotions.

 

That was the last I saw of Lionel. He bade me good-bye, saying:

 

"I shall stay near her for a few days. Perhaps I shall go back and forth, from her to you; but if I do not return, I will meet you again in a few years."

 

"Yes," I said, "it is affinity and desire which draw souls together, either on earth or in the other world."

 

When next I met the Teacher I told him about Lionel, and asked him if he thought the boy could come out to me now and then, after his life on earth had begun, as an unborn entity in the shelter of his mother's form.

 

"Probably not," he replied. "If he were an adept soul, he might do that; but with a soul of even high development, lacking real adeptship, it would be impossible."

 

"Yet," I said, "men living on earth do come out here in dreams."

 

"Yes, but when the soul enters matter, preparing for rebirth, it enters potentiality, if we may use the term, and all its strength is needed in the herculean effort to form the new body and

THE PASSING OF LIONEL                         165

 

adjust to it. After birth, when the eyes are opened, and the lungs are expanded to the air, the task is easier, and there may be left enough unused energy to bridge the gulf.

 

"But," he went on, "those who are soon to be mothers are often vaguely conscious of the souls they harbour. Even when they do not grasp the full significance of the miracle that is being performed through them, they have strange dreams and visions, which are mostly glimpses into the past incarnations of the unborn child. They see dream countries where the entity within has dwelt in the past; they feel desires which they cannot explain—reflected desires which are merely the latent yearnings of the unborn one; they experience groundless fears which are its former dreads and terrors. The mother who nourishes a truly great soul, during this period of formation may herself grow spiritually beyond her own unaided possibility; while the mother of an unborn criminal often develops strange perversities, quite unlike her normal state of mind.

 

"If a woman were sufficiently intelligent and informed, she could judge from her own feelings and ideas what sort of soul was to be her child some day, and prepare to guide it accordingly.

More knowledge is needed, here as elsewhere."

166            LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN

 

So, as in all my experiences, I learned something through the passing out of Lionel.