The Child of the Dawn, Page 4

  II

  I knew quite well what had happened to me; that I had passed throughwhat mortals call Death: and two thoughts came to me; one was this.There had been times on earth when one had felt sure with a sort of deepinstinct that one could not really ever die; yet there had been hours ofweariness and despair when one had wondered whether death would not meana silent blankness. That thought had troubled me most, when I hadfollowed to the grave some friend or some beloved. The mouldering form,shut into the narrow box, was thrust with a sense of shame and disgraceinto the clay, and no word or sign returned to show that the spiritlived on, or that one would ever find that dear proximity again. Howfoolish it seemed now ever to have doubted, ever to have been troubled!Of course it was all eternal and everlasting. And then, too, came asecond thought. One had learned in life, alas, so often to separate whatwas holy and sacred from daily life; there were prayers, liturgies,religious exercises, solemnities, Sabbaths--an oppressive strain, toooften, and a banishing of active life. Brought up as one had been, therehad been a mournful overshadowing of thought, that after death, and withGod, it would be all grave and constrained and serious, a perpetualliturgy, an unending Sabbath. But now all was deliciously mergedtogether. All of beautiful and gracious that there had been in religion,all of joyful and animated and eager that there had been in secularlife, everything that amused, interested, excited, all fine pictures,great poems, lovely scenes, intrepid thoughts, exercise, work, jests,laughter, perceptions, fancies--they were all one now; only sorrow andweariness and dulness and ugliness and greediness were gone. Thethought was fresh, pure, delicate, full of a great and mirthful content.

  There were no divisions of time in my great peace; past, present, andfuture were alike all merged. How can I explain that? It seems soimpossible, having once seen it, that it should be otherwise. The daydid not broaden to the noon, nor fade to evening. There was no nightthere. More than that. In the other life, the dark low-hung days, oneseemed to have lived so little, and always to have been makingarrangements to live; so much time spent in plans and schemes, inalterations and regrets. There was this to be done and that to becompleted; one thing to be begun, another to be cleared away; always insearch of the peace which one never found; and if one did achieve it,then it was surrounded, like some cast carrion, by a cloud of poisonousthoughts, like buzzing blue-flies. Now at last one lived indeed; butthere grew up in the soul, very gradually and sweetly, the sense thatone was resting, growing accustomed to something, learning the ways ofthe new place. I became more and more aware that I was not alone; it wasnot that I met, or encountered, or was definitely conscious of anythought that was not my own; but there were motions as of great winds inthe untroubled calm in which I lay, of vast deeps drawing past me. Therewere hoverings and poisings of unseen creatures, which gave me neitherawe nor surprise, because they were not in the range of my thought asyet; but it was enough to show me that I was not alone, that there waslife about me, purposes going forward, high activities.

  The first time I experienced anything more definite was when suddenly Ibecame aware of a great crystalline globe that rose like a bubble out ofthe sea. It was of an incredible vastness; but I was conscious that Idid not perceive it as I had perceived things upon the earth, but thatI apprehended it all together, within and without. It rose softly andswiftly out of the expanse. The surface of it was all alive. It hadseas and continents, hills and valleys, woods and fields, like our ownearth. There were cities and houses thronged with living beings; it wasa world like our own, and yet there was hardly a form upon it thatresembled any earthly form, though all were articulate and definite,ranging from growths which I knew to be vegetable, with a dumb andsightless life of their own, up to beings of intelligence and purpose.It was a world, in fact, on which a history like that of our own worldwas working itself out; but the whole was of a crystalline texture, iftexture it can be called; there was no colour or solidity, nothing butform and silence, and I realised that I saw, if not materially yet inthought, and recognised then, that all the qualities of matter, thesounds, the colours, the scents--all that depends upon materialvibration--were abstracted from it; while form, of which the idea existsin the mind apart from all concrete manifestations, was still present.For some time after that, a series of these crystalline globes passedthrough the atmosphere where I dwelt, some near, some far; and I saw inan instant, in each case, the life and history of each. Some were stillall aflame, mere currents of molten heat and flying vapour. Some had thefirst signs of rudimentary life--some, again, had a full and organisedlife, such as ours on earth, with a clash of nations, a stream ofcommerce, a perfecting of knowledge. Others were growing cold, and thelife upon them was artificial and strange, only achieved by a highlyintellectual and noble race, with an extraordinary command of naturalforces, fighting in wonderfully constructed and guarded dwellingsagainst the growing deathliness of a frozen world, and with a tortureddespair in their minds at the extinction which threatened them. Therewere others, again, which were frozen and dead, where the drifting snowpiled itself up over the gigantic and pathetic contrivances of a raceliving underground, with huge vents and chimneys, burrowing furtherinto the earth in search of shelter, and nurturing life by amazingprocesses which I cannot here describe. They were marvellously wise,those pale and shadowy creatures, with a vitality infinitely ahead ofour own, a vitality out of which all weakly or diseased elements hadlong been eliminated. And again there were globes upon which all seemeddead and frozen to the core, slipping onwards in some infinite progress.But though I saw life under a myriad of new conditions, and with anendless variety of forms, the nature of it was the same as ours. Therewas the same ignorance of the future, the same doubts and uncertainties,the same pathetic leaning of heart to heart, the same wistful desireafter permanence and happiness, which could not be there or so attained.

  Then, too, I saw wild eddies of matter taking shape, of a subtlety thatis as far beyond any known earthly conditions of matter as steam isabove frozen stone. Great tornadoes whirled and poised; globes ofspinning fire flew off on distant errands of their own, as when theheavens were made; and I saw, too, the crash of world with world, whensatellites that had lost their impetus drooped inwards upon some centralsun, and merged themselves at last with a titanic leap. All this enacteditself before me, while life itself flew like a pulse from system tosystem, never diminished, never increased, withdrawn from one to settleon another. All this I saw and knew.