Such grandeur of soul was possessed by Elsie Inglis. So impregnated was she with pure love of humanity, that when her own country virtually turned its back upon her, this irreparable disgrace, brought upon themselves by her own people, cast no shadow upon her soul. In the years before the war I often noted her lovely aura as I sat amongst an audience, and watched her on a platform fighting woman"s battle.
After the war broke out I only saw her once, by the merest chance. It was then I marked that a rainbow was now about her head, and I knew at once that tremendous events were in store for her, though the British Government had refused her services. Ah! the poor little cramped mind of England"s officialism! yet has not this very poverty of imagination, this iron-bound worship of worn-out tradition, brought to birth an internationalism which could never have been ours without it? It drove forth hundreds, thousands of ardent souls, to other lands. Rejected by their own, they clasped the pierced hands of strangers, and laid down their own incomparably gallant lives at the foot of a cross, whereon hung those who had at length become their brothers through a commune of agony.
Elsie Inglis received no honor or decoration from the people, or the "Great of England." Only the body, worn very thin in the service of humanity, was at last honored in death. Knowing the woman, and the stuff she was made of, one can only feel intensely this was all as it should have been. To offer Elsie Inglis a medal would have been a sacrilege.
"Hands off such souls as hers," is the cry one"s every instinct rings forth to the "bauble worshipers" of this world. Besides, and this is a very great besides, those who go with a rainbow about their heads are not destined for earthly honors. They have taken the great step, they have received the great Initiation, a jewel in the blazing crown of eternity, and for them no more are the laurel wreaths that perish. In justice to those throned on high on earth, the above should be remembered. If it is with Elsie Inglis, as I fully believe, she would have understood that for her G.o.d and Mammon were eternally divorced, and any attempt at worldly recognition would have been frustrated by "The Lords of Eternal Light and Wisdom," whose chosen disciple she had become.
The psychology of the people is a very interesting and curious study, to the aura seer. The a.n.a.lysis of the collective mind awaits some great writer who will give us a book of absorbing interest. Those who can see auras have a great advantage, if they are public speakers. During the period of my life, when I had a great deal of political platform work, I was always very sensitive to my audiences, because I could see how they were taking my remarks. I have always found big audiences of the people very colorless in the main. Flashes of bright color would be apparent all over the hall, but there was no sustained glow. Whilst sitting on some one else"s platform, often that of a great orator, I have marked exactly the same phenomenon. The soul of the people is still young and childlike. It has the indifference of extreme youth, the forgetfulness and ingrat.i.tude of extreme youth.
I look back upon the fall of Parnell and Dilke, great minds whose earthly careers were destroyed by the people. All the world knows why.
To-day I look on the "perpetrators" of the Gallipoli and Mesopotamia tragedies, and I see they have all gone up higher in the esteem of the people. They have risen in the world, and are looked upon as ripe for even higher office. The poor human brain reels before such anomalies. I was in London when the Gallipoli reports were given to the public. They shook me to the very foundation of my being. I think they were given out towards the end of the week, because I remember saying to myself, "on Sunday morning the British working man and woman will read all this abomination of desolation and crime in their Sunday paper."
Purposely I strolled about the London parks in the lovely afternoon of that Sunday. Crowds were there, reading, courting, sleeping. I went home realizing that no one cared. The collective aura of the people was as serene and indifferent as ever.
I have come to think more kindly of our people"s pathetic indifference, because I am sure it is the indifference of very young souls, who have pa.s.sed through but few incarnations, and "know not what they do." I see them exploited by the politicians, given a rag doll to amuse themselves with, anything will do, from the big loaf to the "Kayzer," and sent to the polls hugging their golliwog, but I doubt the returning troops being so easily amused and deluded.
The state of the Universe is the expression of man"s desire, and man is really the builder of his own body, that "house not made with hands,"
though in his youthful ignorance he attributes both to an over-ruling intelligence, whom he alternately blesses and curses. When men learn that they must work with, and not against the mental laws, they will no longer ask why G.o.d permits the world to be so full of misery. They will cease to erect a scapegoat, because they will have learned that they are the makers of their own misery or happiness.
Many people seem to think that the power to see auras must be very useful in helping one to distinguish between friends and foes, but such is not really the case. Auras exemplify individual character, not individual predilections, and some of my friends being very bad characters, indeed, have shocking auras. I had one great friend who, at the beginning of our acquaintance, spent much of his time in prison, which was really a blessing for his ill-used wife. His aura was literally in tatters, just a little irregular circle of rags and patches.
I had just succeeded in making him sober, by insisting constantly and most seriously that he was "a cut above the public-house," and much too superior a man to mix with such degraded companions, when the war broke out. He went to the front, and on his first return to Blighty, badly ga.s.sed, he came at once to see me. I really felt a sort of personal pride in him, and an actual sense of personal possession in his enormously grown aura. It was clear evidence of his sprouting soul. He went back to France, but was wounded and again ga.s.sed, and this time his return was final, as he was of no further use.
For a few months he did odd jobs with great difficulty, then, finally, he succ.u.mbed to pneumonia. I was very proud indeed of his aura as I sat beside his bed, his hand in mine. There was real love in my heart for him that day. Here, indeed, was an infant soul that had begun to develop on the right road, and the tattered aura of rags and patches had become a neatly trimmed little halo round his poor tired head.
So he went west, and his broken body, wrapped in the British flag, went to a soldier"s grave, and a firing party gave him the Last Post.
His wife returned home to find that her neighbors, anxious to celebrate the occasion, had brought their best china and had arranged a tea-party.
As we sat down, she turned to me and said:
"Well, thank G.o.d, my man"s been buried like a gentleman."
When I came to think it over I arrived at the conclusion that "the worst character in the slums" had not done so badly with his life, after all.
He had died like a gentleman. The British Flag is a strange case of transubstantiation. At first, just so many pieces of common material sold across a counter. Fashioned into the emblem of our Nation it becomes a sacred symbol, taken kneeling like a sacrament, which indeed it has become. What better shroud could any man ask for?
I am sorry that I have had no opportunity of seeing President Wilson"s aura, the man who has turned his face towards a heavenly ideal, and is scattering the seed amongst all the nations. When a man sets out on such a long radiant path, he will carry visibly in the daylight an illuminated brow. He has brought to us the vision without which the people perish.
The life of the heart has always meant much more to me than the life of the head. The rebel by nature can only be held by love, and I have been blest by twenty-eight years of perfect union with one who has given me love for love, faith for faith, and complete intellectual understanding.
My life has also been wonderfully gifted by staunchest friends, who have loved me through sunshine and storm, and who still clasp hands with me across continents and seas.
I suppose I must have enemies. They say every one has, but they have never made me aware of their enmity, perhaps because there is no room in a very full heart to receive aught but love. If I were to single apart one outstanding feature in my life, it would be the wonderful kindness and friendship that has been given to me. Ah! how easy that makes it to write lovingly of others.
Behind all this lies the master pa.s.sion of the born mystic for liberation. The constant ache and urge for real freedom, and power to be victorious over all circ.u.mstances. At home in all scenes, restful in all fortunes. There is the urge of the soul for universality of contact with all humanity, independent of race, color or creed. The urge of the spirit to smash the confines which pinion it down to earth.
I think it is really the urge of reincarnating life still clinging to me. The knowledge that my immortal soul must return to the House of Bondage, until perfection is reached, and there is the going out no more from the Father"s House, from a freedom which has become supreme.
CHAPTER XXIV
ADIEU
To-day there are many, an ever-swelling number, who behold with joy the gates ajar, who standing in the twilight catch momentary glimpses of dawn upon the horizon of time, who know by personal experience that they have come into touch with a region where vast schemes are conceived, and universal laws of boundless magnitude connected with the soul"s eternal pilgrimage are carried out.
Again, there are others, timid, shrinking souls to whom, by a mere chance combination of circ.u.mstances, a glimpse has been shown which is none too welcome. Such affrighted ones drop the eyelids from the startling vision. They will have none of it, and they are free to accept or reject, go on, or stand still.
Others, again, have actually been born with that super-normal sight which can discern the workings behind the drop scene shrouding the stupendous drama of cosmic government.
I have long been conscious that the veil has worn very thin between myself and another world lying around me. As the years draw swiftly on, and every second thrown back into eternity brings me nearer to blessed deliverance I find the rents in the veil grow more numerous. They bring single shining moments, which reveal the spirit of life, its motives and consecration.
Through the driving storm wrack there will come quite suddenly a brilliant heavenly glimpse. It never lasts long, but long enough to show me reality. Something of the vastness of cosmos and the pathetic minuteness of this earth, just a speck of star dust in the palm of G.o.d, an atom of world stuff swinging in boundless s.p.a.ce.
Something of the reality of those shining ones who guide the progression of natural order, embodiments of resistless energy and of stateliest imperial mien.
Glimpses that show to me what was in the mind of the great Christian Mystic when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire."
Behind such visions extend vast ranges of being, quite outside my ken, yet, nevertheless, speaking to me of things, for the expression of which no words have yet been coined. Infinitely greater than anything that can be said. Significant in meaning beyond expression, and far transcending imagination.
Such glimpses show to me lives that as compared with ours, are as ours to the tiniest insect afloat for an hour on the breath of the south wind. Lives which ordain the fateful hour when the rise and fall of empires, the destruction of nations, and the clash of worlds, and their cosmic significance in world history shall begin or end. Where things life promised but never gave come to full fruition.
Other glimpses and echoes from the Great Beyond bring to me the answer to a problem, a few notes and a new melody, a new energy of hope and love, an inspiration from the Great Brotherhood, whose lowliest disciple I am, whose work to establish the Brotherhood, the true affinity of humanity upon earth I hold most dear, most high.
In the present dark hour all the world is drinking of one chalice, its wine the life outpoured for others. All humanity is partaking of one bread, a body which has most truly and literally being given to be broken. Death has left many songs unsung, a myriad graves are filled, youth is blighted in the bud, in this white winter men call death, and its cup is pressed close to the lips of love. Many are the hopes that lie folded away in the quiet cemetery of the heart, where we lay flowers of tender reminiscence. Yet, this sacrament of fellowship which is eclipsed in the awful impoverishment of human life will one day be swelled by the return of the young, fallen on the Field of Honor, glorified and purified for their G.o.d-appointed work in evolution.
Perhaps I have gone a few steps farther than most people into the mysterious beyond, come nearer reading the great riddle, for the creature who is not afraid of thought and worldly condemnation, who is not afraid of solitude or ridicule, will soon come near the truth, will quickly catch the incommunicable thrill of advancing destinies. She will cease to live under the despotism of days, the tyranny of years. She will know that the swiftest touch cannot put a finger on the present, and that there is but one recorder of time, the great star clock of the sky.
The symbol of life is the Circle, not the Straight line, and each of us lives over again the story of humanity, as in the shadow of pre-natal gloom we repeat the physical evolution of the race. The increase of knowledge but widens the horizon of the unknown promised land, to which we are moving onward and upward throughout the ages.
However far the mind travels there is always deep down in the soul stores of information awaiting transference to the surface of consciousness. Rich mines of knowledge are there awaiting the day when they will be uncovered, waiting in patience the day when some Divine Adventurer will search for them and bring them to light.
However great its aspirations the soul but looks out upon an illimitable horizon, and sees the human pilgrimage as a long Emmaeus walk, with hearts burning by the way. Always must there be mystery in life, because life is spiritual, not material. The presence of mystery in life is the presence of G.o.d, and the infinity of G.o.d shows that mystery must always exist.
Such glimpses beyond the veil are all transfiguring. They exalt the heart in a single flash to a glow point, and show the soul of the Universe in the incandescent crucible of the eternal. In a deeply beshadowed time such visions tell us all that we need know, and it is this: G.o.d is with us and in us. Though obscure for the moment His transcendence stands outside the change and flux of time, and His awful sovereignty sways irresistibly the tides of human circ.u.mstances.
Hours must come when the pen falls from the nerveless fingers, the task is left undone, when the weary cry goes up, "There is nothing we can do!" We have been doing for so many thousand years, the years which the locusts hath eaten. What have we achieved?
When such hours come, as come they must, is there nothing to fall back upon but this awful confession of failure, this haunting undertone of all our mortal life that many ages have not hushed?
Surely, yes! There is always for the mystic the unmeasured immensity of soul land to explore, that Great Beyond and within which is infinite, eternal, and of which we are all a part.
Ah! but it may be said, all are not mystics, to which I would reply, all who desire can be mystics. For what, after all, is a mystic, but one who enters into possession of the inner life? One who becomes fully aware of her self-consciousness, and who gains thereby new faculties and enlightenment. It places her in touch with that supreme reality which some call G.o.d and some The Great Creative Power. The mystic knows that power is to be found within through identification and submergence with the Primordial Force which const.i.tutes the ocean of life. She can always pa.s.s the sky and clouds of earth, and enter the great, deep, real world outside. It is always possible to her to seek a fairer world where the only things that matter are the eternal verities, which should be taken kneeling, like a sacrament.
Love and life which is Beauty.
Love and power which is Goodness.
Love and knowledge which is Wisdom.
The Road of the Flaming Sacred Heart is strewn with insight, kindness and sympathy, which gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a voice to the dumb! It is paved with love that serves the humble and defends the disinherited. Bravely it walks the _Via Dolorosa_, and it "Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, its reward to know the love of G.o.d, unutterable even to them that know."