Seen and Unseen Part 38

E. K. B.--Why is Imperator so slow in throwing off his own spiritual limitations?

H. D.--I can read your mind so easily. It is quick and alert, and has already answered its own question. It is because he has a work to do on your plane amongst those who could not come in touch with a higher spiritual development. There are spiritual as well as scientific martyrs, you must remember; and he is one of them. But the Divine Economy works very beautifully here. He is not conscious of any spiritual limitation, and therefore he is happy in his work, and the martyrdom I spoke of is _unconscious_. When it becomes conscious, with him it will mean that his present plane of work is finished, and that he will be removed to another "_Form_" so soon as he is prepared to teach there.

He is essentially a teacher, and a valuable one, for those who have not soared beyond his present perceptions. It is all so much more simple and reasonable than you suppose. It is these crusted old creeds that have misrepresented actual conditions, and yet they also have been, as Imperator; doing their own work amongst the people to whom they have acted as necessary stepping-stones.

That is enough for to-day; take a rest now. H. D.

V

The following conversation between Mr Denton and myself (the last of the series which I propose to give) took place, I see, at Buxton, 4th September 1906.

There had been some correspondence in _The Daily Telegraph_ about Time as a fourth Dimension, and I asked my friend if he could say anything to me on the subject. His reply was as follows:--

Time is really a form of perception, _not a thing in itself_--do you understand?

Your limitation of perception you call _Time_.

Another limitation is called _Distance_.

This also is an illusion, or a limitation, whichever you choose to call it.

_The White Ray is the Absolute._ The spectroscope gives you the limitation which makes the colours perceptible to your human eyes. For the one who is free from these limitations, all colours exist and are present in consciousness at the same moment. But they must be split up and observed severally to enter into the earth consciousness. It is exactly the parallel of Time.

_Events in Time coincide with the colours in the Ray._ All exist simultaneously for the one who is free from limitations. All must be brought into sequence for the one who is bound by limitations.

This is really the key to so many puzzles, and accounts for so many occult phenomena.

As we transcend the normal earth limits ever so little, so do we develop these abnormal powers, as they are called. But here, as everywhere, the reality is just the converse of the apparent.

The true norm is the Perfect Ray--the Ceaseless Sound--the Perfect Vision; and the abnormal is the limitation upon the earth, or upon any succeeding plane, short of the Absolute. But naturally we consider that normal which happens to be our standpoint for the moment.

Already to me the earth limitations appear _abnormal_, and my more extended capacities mark the norm of existence for me. This must be the case naturally.

_Prevision_ would be more accurately termed _Whole vision_--seeing the whole and not the tiny section.

In moments of intense joy or realisation of any kind, Time seems to cease, and a moment may hold an Eternity. Any absorbing emotion, joyful or sorrowful, may bring this experience. For the moment _you are out of yourselves_. This is literally true. You are living in the next Dimension. Time and s.p.a.ce no longer exist for you. Most of you have had some such experience, but of necessity it can be a flash only in the midst of your normal life. Ask me something now.

E. K. B.--A man writing lately in _The Daily Telegraph_ of Time as a fourth Dimension said something about the cube as being an infinite number of flat planes of infinite tenuity, heaped up one over the other.

To the person who knew only length and breadth, the cube would have no existence. Such a person would realise only an infinite number of planes in sequence. Yet they would all _co-exist_ for the three-dimensional man of the present day. The suggestion appeared to be that, in exactly a similar way, events which to the three-dimensional man can only be perceived normally _in sequence_, would _co-exist_ for a four-dimensional being. This would mean practically the annihilation of Time, as giving sequence. Do you see Truth in this idea, and can you tell me if it extends also to s.p.a.ce?

H. D.--Certainly. That is just what I meant as regards Distance. _All_ limitations are mental, as a matter of fact. We have them here, but infinitely fewer than in the old earth life.

Mind has always been able to flash from pole to pole and to affect those at a distance, because mind and distance occupy two different planes.

The latter is an earth limitation. As the veil lifts a little, even on your side, so you become conscious that mind has these powers; but the powers were always there. It merely means that you have come up with your own mental capacities to some small degree.

E. K. B.--Is there any help here for my constant problem: Why should one's individual life be only _now_ evolving in Eternity? Do you see what I mean?

H. D.--Yes; but I hardly know the answer to that tremendous problem.

Still, I will try to suggest a few thoughts to you.

To be conscious of holiness and virtue we must have known its ant.i.thesis--evil and separation, which are really synonymous. Separation from Holiness _is_ evil. It is a condition, a limitation.

It is to the Divine Essence just such a limitation as Time is to the mortal. Separation is therefore the antecedent cause of all limitations. These _must_ exist where the Wholeness or Holiness is absent.

I must use the language of earth or you would not understand. Logically, of course, Holiness can never be absent, since it is the cause of all Existence; but it is _apparently absent_, and this apparent absence, this separation, this evil in fact, acts as a spectroscope. _It a.n.a.lyses, and thus brings into our consciousness the White Ray of the Divine Nature._

We can go no further than that. The Divine Chemistry, beyond this fact, must remain a mystery, probably for ages to come.

We cannot tell _why_ things are thus arranged; we only know that it is so.

As well ask _why_ the White Ray of Light gives out its colours only through separating them.

But it is easier to speak of the co-ordination of _events_. Take your own suggestion of the cube--that will help us best.

Take it that each life is a cube of planes, of experiences. These experiences are co-existent and knit together, as firmly in the life of a human being as the many planes are co-existing, and knit together in a mathematical cube. You can dissect the cube and slice off infinitesimal small planes in sections.

So is the individual life sliced off into an infinite number of planes by the sequences of Time (our three-dimensional condition).

But these experiences--great or small, important or trivial (from your point of view)--_exist in the cube of that person's earth pilgrimage_, as the colours exist in the White Ray.

The Ray may be split up into sequence, but the colours belong to it all the same, and by a _perfectly seeing eye_ would be known and recognised without the help of the spectroscope.

The true seer is the one who sees the cube of your life; before whom it is spread out, without Time Separations, into planes of experience. This is the real secret of all _foretelling_. Such people, when honest, have some amount of access to the cube of earth life, some more, some less.

Many mix up and confuse what they see; but they do see beyond the plane section which Time gives to the normal human being.

I think you have taken enough now.

I will only add that, of course--as you know--there is nothing arbitrary in the cube of life, as I have called it. It is built up of necessary experiences and necessary consequences. But it is built up by Love and Wisdom, the two Elements of the Divine Nature, in which we live and move and have our being. H. D.

VI

The next selection that I shall give from my automatic script comes from an entirely different personality, which can be sufficiently indicated by the initials E. G.

E. G.--Wors.h.i.+p is a necessary part of each soul's training, and we can only wors.h.i.+p that which we feel to be above and beyond ourselves. As we grow older and become more developed in spiritual consciousness, so do we tend more and more to wors.h.i.+p the inner and intangible, rather than the outer and manifest. So whilst the instinct of wors.h.i.+p is always the same, the objects and methods must continually change with our own advancing realisation and unfolding consciousness.

Those limitations which once made for reverence are in time found to be cramping and to lead to superst.i.tion.

It is the same with the education of either children or of childish nations.

In both cases a _display_ of power is necessary to command obedience, because the childish mind can only apprehend from the outer, and realise the existence of that which it sees physically demonstrated. Tell a child of tender years that to be naughty is to be unhappy, and in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred he will neither understand nor believe you. But take away his toys or his sweets or put him in a corner; make him, in fact, _physically_ aware of the truth that to be naughty is to bring unpleasant consequences upon himself, and you have taken the only argument which he is capable of realising at a certain point of consciousness.