CHAPTER XIV.

My aim is to make this book practical, that is, to clothe its thought in such garb as to render it available for use, not to scholars merely, but to all thoughtful minds.

I shall endeavor in this chapter to gather up a few missing links in my train of thought, and afterwards endeavor to give you a glimpse of the Beyond. The question I seem called upon to answer is, How can a man be alive and dead at the same time? and in order to answer it, it will be necessary to analyze the thought called death, and separate it into its various parts.

The man is dead, says local report, and the consciousness of society undergoes that natural change in regard to the man which I have described.

His name becomes associated with things that were, but no longer are. Even those who theoretically believe that the man continues to live either in happiness or misery, have, most of them, so little confidence in the theory which they have subscribed to, that they never dream of putting forth a mental current based on the theory. To all intents and purposes, society consigns the average man to annihilation, with a half-careless "Poor fellow, so he's gone. We'll see no more of him. Well, no time to weep, seeing as he didn't leave me anything. What new device for entrapping the elusive dollar shall I conjure up to-day?"

I am dead, says the man himself as the shadows which have been gathering upon his senses culminate in a rayless silence, and every thought of motion becomes a recollection, a mere theory of fancy, that will not even approach the dominion of the will.

Death, as a state of consciousness, is a thing entirely new to him, but he cannot reason on the subject. To reason is to live, to set the brain in motion, to perform mental operations; this is no longer possible.

What shall this state be compared to? It is like that of one isolated in a secret cell of his own house, the key turned on him from the outside, every avenue of communication cut off, dead to the world and all that it contains. If a total loss of appetite can be associated with the state, it might continue for an indefinite period; and if the power of thought-transference comes in, a new kind of life has been begun.

But science says that no man is really dead who still retains his consciousness, by which statement science belies its name. Calling itself knowledge, it spreads abroad its own ignorance. How many a post-mortem has been held in the hope of finding the secret chamber wherein that part of man which cannot die has gone to rest! How often the sweet peace of death has become a conscious madness, by this means, God only knows. Gentlemen, desist.

To find a chamber whose occupant is invisible debars you forever from obtaining the proof that you have found it. But perhaps it is not the soul itself that is the object of this search, but rather some special physical representative that might be found still quivering with life and so betray its master. All folly.

The soul when uncontaminated informs the whole outward body. It has its pains and illnesses, more or less affecting the outer form, yet all unrecognized in materia medica, and when its mortal brother is struck with death, bends all its energies to make escape, lest it, too, take on mortality. Failing in its effort to make a doorway for its exit, it suffers for awhile through sympathy, till the final moment sets it free from pain within its small dark house, no longer small, because made clear, transparent, by the touch of death, when the dying has been brave. No trace of foreign matter may remain to start a dissolution, in which case the soul preserves the body from decay without more trouble than a little watchful care.

Sight, hearing, touch, through vibratory currents reach round the world and even touch the clouds; the body has become, in fact, a mansion perfectly adapted to the needs of its proprietor, who finds a new world open to his delighted consciousness, and thanks God fervently for his perfect victory over death, as well as for his comfort and protection within the white, still walls which form, in fact, the first abiding-place of the spirit.

With this still form as passive aid, the soul, with little pain, is able to make the mental transition which its change of circumstance requires. No longer concerned directly with any thought based on material needs or material changes, it finds itself in touch with the moral causes which underlie these changes; and because moral force is most familiarly manifest in and through people, these, and their relations to itself, fill all the mental horizon.

In this new field of perception, nothing impresses more than the enormous differences in spiritual rank and attainment existing among mortals who, judged by tape-line and scale, stood fairly equal, and whom human law necessarily places on a plane of perfect equality, or perhaps, through its deference to wealth, makes unequal in the wrong way.

The thoroughness with which past illusions are stripped away from the mind tends to leave the spirit fairly aghast at its previous blindness.

Frequently forgetting that the motor nerves of the physical form are no longer responsive to its touch, it starts to rise, that it may go and tell the world of these wonders just discovered, but finds itself in the firm and quiet grasp of death, a touch that seems to speak and say:

"Never mind; that is all right. You forget you are not free. Lie still and learn your lesson."

"But shall I not return?"

"Possibly, but the mortal life is no concern of yours at present. You are dead."

All this as in a flash, for words do not belong to this state, ideas rather, the spiritual essences of thought that seem to need no time whatever to make their mark upon the mind.

To some of these the mind is so receptive that they sink at once to the very core of being, while others are held upon the surface.

This last communication, You are dead, is sure to be so held. It seems such an evident conclusion to respond, If I am dead, there is no death but this seems such a contradiction to life's long lesson, namely, that amidst a wilderness of uncertainties, death is the one thing certain. And then the recollection of the shrinking of the soul at thought of death, how to account for that, if there were no reality behind appearances so countless?

This in another flash of ideation that leaves a sense of mystery as of a problem not worked out, and which may not be while death as a condition rests upon the form. I say, may not be, but would not be understood to mean that the hindrance is mechanical in this case. A pure soul, even in death, has certain reserve forces which can be put in action if the need is great enough, but the consciousness of being in a friend's control, especially when that control is apparently absolute, will tend to check all restless impulse in this region of the dark, till now all unexplored.