The story of a dream

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Chapter I. The Dreamer

This is the story of a dream. Not only a dream of the kind which visit souls by night, the God-sent, world-derided visions which mankind receives with half-veiled belief while still the night is dark, and laughs to scorn in the new-found bravery and presumption of the dawning day, but one of the longer dreams which mortals call Life. It is the story of the last period I spent on earth, but not the last I shall pass there, I fear, for I am far, very far, from perfection, and the earth is the school in which the kindly Law of Nature decrees that all souls must seek after and find this wondrous thing, the Holy Grail of which the poet-seers sing.

Am I dead? Oh yes, long since! How am I writing this? Do not ask. Suffice it to say that I died very long ago. So long ago, indeed, that I have almost forgotten how it 7 feels to have a material body, and it is only once in a decade or so that I feel the mad desire to live, to breathe, to feel the warm blood pulsing in m}^ veins and watch it coloring my limbs; to know, in a word, all the sweet, unappreciated, blissful pleasures which belong merely to living, the glorious joys men ceased to care for centuries ago. They went out of date and fashion together with the times of simple patriarchal existence, the times when men knew all a soul needs to know without the labor of studying, the times of happiness and health, the times which died when the desire for learning and accomplishments took possession of the mind of the race. Nature mourns for those days still, the winds wail, the rains weep, and the waters moan for its memory always; but the human children of the Great Mother, save only the wery old who have outgrown the hurry of life, the young who have not yet become drunken with its mad pace, and here and there a child-soul which still longs and pines for the old, sweet, simple days when life was one long joy, have forgotten their lost heritage, and rest content, nay, never content, — but satisfied, with the idols of Money, Fame and Ambition, which they have substituted for the keynote to which the harmony of the whole universe beat once, — the Song of Love. The eyes of the dumb beasts are still sad with the haunting memory of that joyous period, far back in the babyhood of mankind; the children and idiots who are not blind with the world’s knowledge live in it by seasons, but alas for humanity! It is a dream which only comes to older people verj^ rarely, in times of sorrow and extreme gladness; in the times when they turn to the Great Mother, and rest upon her wide, loving bosom, exactly as in times of childish gladness or trouble we all turn to the mother who bore us, and take comfort in her sympathy. But this happens seldom in an ordinary life; only, — at the end, when we are tired, and our hearts are worn out with aching or joy, and our souls and bodies alike bent with the burden of the years in which we have tried to live, but never succeeded, because men have learned so much that they have forgotten how to live, — at the end of all, we turn our faces to the wall and are gathered at last to the rest which the earth holds for all her children alike, be they good, bad, or worse than bad, — indifferent.

iO THE STORY OF A DREAM

What has all this to do with me, and my story of a dream? Much, very much. It is a kind of wandering record of the aggregate impressions I have learned since I left the earth, and came, not a step higher,perhaps,but at least a step farther on. I am telling you how life looks to those who no longer experience it, and I have looked at it often since I rashly took the Eternal Law in my own hands, and threw my body away.

For I was a suicide. I killed my body; not with steel or powder or poison, it is true; that is, not poison of the material world, but I murdered my body, and went far toward murdering my soul, with the subtler, more deadly poison of the mentality, bad thoughts, not exposed to the air of the world and the nullifying effects of the thing called “Fear of men’s Condemnation,” but shut up, prisoned, in the soul till they turned and rended it. I slew my body by the power of mine own unbridled passions, grown strong with ages and aeons of flourishing use and indulgence, and sent my shivering Ego out into a strange, cold world for which it was not yet ready.

I pass over the agonies I endured during the time which elapsed between the date of

II my bodily death and the day on which this should have occurred had I lived rightly, the time in which my personality, bound to the earth by that material body which I had loved so well and blindly, and to which I was irrevocably anchored so long as an atom of it remained mouldering in the earth, for there were none to have it disintegrated quickly by the kindly fire; the cruel time when I was but a dreaded phantom to the finer souls who were able to discern my astral body as it floated around the places where I had lived, going over and over the scenes which had especially impressed its soulless personality, — and come to the time when I found myself here in Devachan.

Where is Devachan? Who can tell? It is not a place but a state, and how I came here is beyond your comprehension, — and mine. But here I am, and here I have been for — how long? I do not know; time in Devachan is like that idea of it which the “sweet singer of Israel,” — ah me ! how far he had seen along the Shadowy Ages himself! — attributes to his deity. You remember,do you not? “A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years but as one day.”

THE STORY OE A DREAM

So it is here, in this Place of Souls; we know that time is, but we experience it not.

We do not live, we never die, for we are but awaiting another birth, another entrance into the struggle of life, higher or lower in the scale according to our former misdeeds or successes. Shall I ascend in the scale next time? How can I tell? I failed in my endeavors because I tried wrongly, and would have constrained Nature, but I labored long and faithfully, and the Law is kind as well as just. On earth men are kind or cruel, but they are never just. Here all is unfailing, inexorable, unalterable justice.

On earth men think that the Law, or God, as they phrase it, bias favorites ; they say He blesses one and curses another; here we know better. We know that we live in the houses we have builded with our own personalities; we know that we have laid out our own environments, and that as we have sown so must we reap, until the crop is all harvested; and on earth men continually plant afresh, — good dnd evil mixed together, — and yet they mourn that the crop is not all fine, pure grain.

How do we pass the time in Devachan? We need not to pass it. We have no pleasures, no sorrows. All sensation is alike to us, as to all souls which are naked and bare of the covering of thoughts with which they clothe and hide themselves from themselves and each other, and we need no amusements. We rest. Rest in an utter completeness of repose which mortals cannot comprehend while still they live on the earthly plane. We rest and rest simply.

Only, — we dream. Pleasant dreams always; that is, pleasant in the way that it is pleasant to read of varied experiences, for we dream of the lives of our dearest and nearest, — yes, I put the dearest first, for is it not true that oftentimes the ones we love best are bound to us by no tie of kinship or blood? — we see them pass before us in the astral light, but everything we see is tinged as with rosecolor, for the Law is kind and tender, as are all just things, and we know naught of pain or sorrow here, in our Land of Dreams. We know that sorrow and joy are alike both needful and good, and in finding the thing for which men have ever fought and battled, the thing for which all long, albeit under many different names, the thing which is not found on earth, and the lack of which has given the sad bitterness to the cry which rings up to us from the earth, in embracing Justice, undisguised as Forgiveness or Mercy, we have found peace.

Sometimes we dream of our own past lives, the lives which have lifted or lowered us in the waters of time and space, and sometimes our dreams are of that which is yet to be.

All the dreams which give happiness to men, every lovely vision after which they strive and seek, every glorious phantom for which they vainly reach, comes to us first.

Never a beautiful picture is painted, or a statue hewn, never a grand poem speaks to the soul of the world, never a lovely creation is brought into being but we see its astral counterpart, its foreshadowing, and we see them in a degree of beauty men never do, for we see the Ideal, and they the Real.

We see all the good and noble actions which help the world, too, even to the patient thoughts and aspirations of the Unknown Heroes who crowd the world unseen of men; we see how they sweeten the earthly atmosphere, we see their prayers and renunciations rising up like a golden mist, and sometimes we see how mistaken, how foolish are their sacrifices.

But we never wish to prevent them, to play Providence, for we know that all is well, and that even evil is but perverted good. And we know that a well-balanced reward awaits the good, and equally well-balanced punishment the evil among men. For this is the world in which cause and effect are practically one, and intentions are of more import than deeds.

In this state, too, we view our own actions as impartially as those of another, and we neither mourn for nor regret them.

But sometimes we dream dreams about ourselves, sad, strange, sweet dreams, and I often dream over all that has happened to me. . . And this is what I always dream of first.

Chapter II. A Dream Of The Heart Of The Story

Long, long ago, away back in the dim, far-away ages of the world, when mankind was yet in its primeval simplicity, and courts of law were unknown, there lived in the land of Assyria a youth and a maiden. And the youth loved tbe maiden as the apple of his eye, and all day as he tended his flocks and all night as he lay sleepless and gazed at the heavens, he thought but of her. The sunshine seemed bright or dim to him just as she smiled or frowned, the stars looked down upon him many times as he wept for the very love of her, and the moon witnessed his joy if she but looked kindly at him. The softly falling rain, the sparkling dew, the birds and the bees, the field-flowers and the waving grain all sang a joyously-sad song of which her name formed the refrain, with the wind and 16

A DREAM OF THE HEART OF THE STORY I'J

the thunder to fill out the harmony, and her face looked up from the brooklets, down from the clouds, and appeared to him in the heart of each summer rose which swayed in the wind. The very ground she trod on was sacred to him, while the poor lame lamb she once pitied led the life of a king.

Now the maiden, though she loved not the youth after this manner, yet she was but a maiden, and it pleased her well to be so loved ; so, knowing no other love, she yielded to his persuasions, and was given to him for wife, although she would not be espoused to him until the summer was past and gone. And as she went about her work each day, calm and peaceful, he lived but for her, and he pined for the summer to pass. Each day he thought of her beauty until his blood was like wine in his veins, and when her quietness chilled him, he thought also, “When the autumn comes, and she is mine own, she will wake and love me,” and striving to teach her the lesson so easy to learn, yet which cannot be taught, he trusted in God and was happy.

Now the heart of the maiden was like a prisoned bird, and it fluttered in her bosom when she was alone, but at the youth’s approach it grew colder and more heavy each day. Yet she thought not of the matter, and, living her simple life, was happy too.

But one day as she stood at the well ready to draw water, a man of the tribe of Israel rode by, and he looked at the maiden and loved her. And when the soft glance of her eyes had showed him that she too loved him, he lingered and talked with her, and went to sojourn at her father’s house. And it came to pass that on many days they met by the well, and their hearts grew more together every day. And the youth who had thought her his own became flushed with anger, but still he trusted in God to right his cause, and spake no word to the maiden. Yet as the days went by he thirsted for the blood of the Israelite, and the Hebrew smiled whenever they met and said naught of marriage to the maiden, for his religion forbade him to marry one of another race.

And when the autumn was nearly gone, he made ready to depart, and lo! the maiden wept sore to go with him, but he said: “How could I take an Ishmaelitish maiden to my father’s house ?” And as she still mourned and would not be comforted (after the manner of

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maidens who love in vain), the youth to whom she had been promised heard her, and his heart waxed hot within him.

And when he had reviled the Israelite, he said: “Shalt thou goto thine own country and, taking her heart with thee, leave her body behind? Verily thou shalt marry her, else will I kill thee.’’

But the other answered : “I war not with striplings,” and when the youth would have grappled with him he smote him and pierced him through the heart so that he died. And when he saw that the lad was dead, his spirit failed him, and he fled to his own country in haste; yet did he not take the maiden with him.

And she, mourning sore, regarded not the love of her kindred, nor the sorrow of her mother who bore her, but pined for the Israelite, and when the autumn rains began she drooped and died.

Now the soul of the Israelite was sore troubled when he knew that the damsel was dead and he mourned without ceasing, for he had loved her well, yet repented he not of the evil he had done her, but said: “How could I take an Ishmaelitish maiden to my father’s house?” and his heart was still hardened. And it came to pass that when the spring came again, he too died, and was astounded; for the soul of the Israelite and that of the Ishmaelite are but alike and as naked as new-born babes, in the sight of God.

Then the great Law of the Created Universe, the unalterable, infallible, inexorable Law of Justice, which is God, spake to the soul of the Israelite and said: “When next thou shalt visit the earth, thou must suffer for this wrong which thou hast done. As thou didst love the Ishmaelitish maiden, yet lacked the courage to marry her but didst flee and leave her to mourn, so in time to come shall she cause thee to love her, yet shall evade thy desire and thou shalt not be able to flee. As thou hast broken her heart, so shall thine own be rent in tw'ain ; as thou hast made one form of thy religion of more weight than Truth and Justice and hast raised it as a barrier between thyself and the maiden who loved thee, so, when next thou shalt meet, one self-made law of thy religious faith shall part thee yet again, shall bind thee with chains against which thou shalt struggle in vain, and shall make thy life a burden ; and as thou didst place the selfish

A DREAM OF THE HEART OF THE STORY 21 pleasure of the moment above all else, so shalt thou strive in vain to conquer thy natural desires.

“And as for the youth thou slowest: thou didst steal his desire and the light of his life, and didst kill him in despair, with the work of his years yet undone. So shall he pierce thy heart with a sword sharper than thine own, so shall he throw down the tower which thy labor shall build, and so shalt thou, too, die in despair. Yet in the end thou shalt conquer, though seemingly defeated, and at last all unknowingly come to a true knowledge of Me.”

And to the soul of the maiden the great Law said: “Thou hast loved and hungered for love, and when next thou livest thou shalt have love in plenty; yet as thou hast despised the tenderness of thine own people, the love of kindred shall for a time be denied thee, and thou must also suffer in a less degree. But thy wrongs shall be avenged, yea, thou thyself shalt avenge them, for to thee as to all of my frailest yet strongest, my last and dearest creation, the wondrous Mystery called Woman, shall be given the powers of all the universe with but thine own ignorance of them to serve as a shield for mankind, and thou Shalt have thy heart’s desire. Yet as thou hadst no faith in Me, the Law of Universal Good, and didst weakly yield to thy sorrow, thou, at thy next coming, must for awhile go faithless, and with a heavy heart.”

And to the youth God said: “Thy life was lived unselfishly and for others, so in thy next incarnation all things shall smile on thee, save that for a little, thou too must wander in darkness without faith in God or man, because thou didst trust too blindly, and lacked the courage to take thine own, or hold that which thou didst claim. Yet thou shalt have the priceless boon of happy confidence in thyself, only beware lest it grow into presumption. But where thou wast defeated thou shalt conquer, where thy heart hungered it shall be filled, and where thou didst mourn, thou shalt rejoice. For ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’”

And to all the souls God said: “Rest now for a little space, until in the fullness of time ye shall meet again, and, forgetting your past lives, shall, in working out your own salvation, bring joy and sorrow to each other.”

And all the souls heard the voice of God,

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though none knew that the other heard, and they knew that his name was Justice.

And it came to pass that a great sleep fell upon them all.

Chapter III. A Dream Of The Beginning Of The End

And when the dream of which I have spoken has passed from me, the dream in which I first knew and loved the woman for love of whom I killed my last body, and would fain have murdered my soul, I dream of her and myself under many skies, and in many strange circumstances. Sometimes I dream of the time when she was my wife, and would not love me; sometimes I dream of when she was the man and I the woman, of the life-dream in which I was her wife, and could not escape from her bondage; again I dream of when, ages later, I was a woman still, and loved her, still functioning as a man, to distraction, but the laws of the Molochs of Conventionality and Custom, bitter, heart-rending, accursed things, bound me a^ with chains of invisible iron, and kept me from wooing her, from firing her cold heart with the flame which seared my own.

Now and then I dream of myself, once more a man in body, as well as soul, fighting through the wars of the crusaders with her colors on my helmet and sword-hilt ; occasionally faint, dim visions of her, separated from me by the robe and cap of a convent, flit before me, and once in along, long while 1 see her as my beloved, torn from my arms by racial prejudice. Always I dream of her as separated from me in heart, or soul, or body; always I am following a false scent; always it is my own misguided sense of right, my own blind bowing down to the things which are, my own lack of the courage which breaks down barriers and leaps obstacles, which holds us apart, and always he, the man whom I slew, stands between us. Sometimes he is her father, forbidding us to marry because of family feuds; sometimes he is the priest who persuades me that Religion is higher than Truth or Love; sometimes he is the general who orders my company away to the wars in which I am to lose my life, — and her once more; sometimes he is the lover she prefers to me. My saddest, bitterest dream

\n is of the life in which I was born with the strong, stern soul of a man in the weak, frail body of a woman, and saw him, her husband then, punish us both through his cruelty to her; the dream which comes nearest to moving me to anger, if a bodiless soul could be otherwise than calm, is the remembrance of my own helplessness under the sight of what she, my darling child in that incarnation, bore in the way of indignities, sufferings, and slavery. What wonder that in my next life I, a man, espoused the cause of the weaker sex, the sex which is as strong in heart as it is weak in body, and broke my own heart in a pitiful, vain, useless struggle against the laws and conditions which bound her to slavery! I died a maniac that time. What wonder, I say, what wonder!

My sweetest dream is of the life when she loved him rather than me, but in which I was able to save her life at the cost of my own, and, dying, to hold her in my arms. Perhaps it is because I carried that impression into Devachan with me that it remains so clear and strong; perhaps it is because I am still a long way from the perfect, calm, sexless love one perfected Ego should hold to-

A DREAM OV' THE BEGINNING OF THE END

ward another. I cannot tell. Dwellers in Devachan know the futility of the human “because,” and “I know,” and rest satisfied with an impression, not seeking to analyze it, to pull it apart as a rose is shorn of its leaves in a useless effort to find the home of its sweet perfume.

But in all my dreams I have loved her, I do love her, I love her still, I shall love her always, and though through each life I have not known the reason of my suffering in her lack of love or the want of her, still at the end of each period I have, for a brief space, understood the mystery, and here in Devachan I know. I know, too, that she shall yet be mine in heart as she is in reality, for we twain were designed for each other and are in reality but one, and though when I go hence from here, I shall again not know how this shall be, I shall surely struggle upwards, and, having expiated my sin of long ago, having conquered the cause I set in motion in that far-away land of Assyria, we shall come together, surely, certainly, yea, even though the whole universe were between us, and each separate atom held us apart; and our lives shall melt together, even as two sunbeams melt into one, or two streams, coalescing, grow together indistinguishably.

And so I am happy and hopeful always, even when I think of how badly I remembered the lessons learned so hardlj^ in this last dream of mine, — and this is the substance of the dream.

I was a priest; not of the Roman Catholic order, which is protected from loving by at least the traditions of centuries, the established order of things, and the confidence of the world in their celibacy; I was ever too prone to be foolhardy to thus protect m3*self from suffering, and ever too fearful of restraint; I was a piiest of the Anglican Communion, with only mine own vow, made when I but diml^" comprehended the power and beauty of love, to stand between me and m^^ destruction.

But I was happy in mine own self-confidence, and dreamed not of falling. “For surely,” I thought in the depths of mine own conceit, “surel}^ my will is stronger than love.” But who can transcend the mighty Law of Karma, who can conquer Fate?

Until my thirtieth birthday had been passed I was happy in my work and the power I had obtained over my congregation, — and to do

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me justice, I wanted the power for good ends only, and really tried to induce obedience for the good of those who I fancied needed my care, — but suddenly a spasm of self-sacrifice enslaved me, and I left my church for a poorer one.

And then she came into my life, she whom in other bodies I had loved so long, — came and worked my undoing.

I was proceeding with vespers one evening, for I had instituted daily service, when I heard a voice thrilling out in the penitential psalm which I loved, for, with the idea of expiation which all unknowingly underran the glad current of my nature, I loved sad things, and reveled in penances and hard burdens. I spoke of love to my people, I told them of a Loving Father, but at heart I knew the God of my belief was a hard master, and I served him with tears and tribulations.

So it was that I loved the De Profundis, and I was already moved when I heard that voice. “Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord,” it sang in a sobbing, vibrating beauty which made me shiver, and cease to sing, — 1 sang much in that last life on earth, having a good voice and loving it as the true, nature-trained musician always loves his instrument, be it voice or harp, — and until the psalm was ended I could think of nothing but that wondrous voice, moaning out the trouble of the heart which lay behind it.

Did I tell you that here in Devachan we know that voices are soul-bodies, and that though a man may hide his heart, may train his face to tell continual falsehoods, he cannot control his voice ; it will always remain a faithful indicator of his spiritual condition?

And all the while 1 listened to that sweet, strong, deep tone, I knew that I had heard it many times before, heard it softly singing sweet love-songs, lilting happy melodies, murmuring tender cadences, and my whole heart responded to its call, the call which, unknown to either of us, it was sending from her heart to mine.

This is what I now know I knew; in the time when this came to pass, I would have thought such fancies worse than wicked, — foolish, — and I put the thought of that wondrous melody from me quickly. But when I rose from my knees and turned to face the congregation, I looked for the face belonging to it, and I recognized it immediately, although she was not singing then.

A DREAM OE THE BEGINNING OF THE END 3 I

She faced me, in a seat near the front, and her sweet eyes gazed swimmingly up to mine. She was crying, and when the people had gone I found her there praying, and learned her grief. She thought, and so I fancied, that she confided her sorrow to me because I wore a priestly cassock, but I knew later, when I came here, that the confidence between us was the result of that bygone intimacy, a deduction as simple as that two and two make four. So are many hearts drawn together in a way the world wots not of. We understood not what it was which drew us together.