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Heaven, Hell And The Astral Plane

I was standing thoughtlessly in the railroad fairway some time ago, how long I cannot exactly say. For there is no time up here and I have forgotten how to record its passing.

When I say thoughtlessly, I do not mean that nay mind was an utter blank, for, little as it was capable of appreciating the realities of the Hereafter in those days, I cannot say that it ever ran down entirely like a worn-out watch spring or a superannuated professor.

All I mean is that it unfortunately omitted to notice certain elements in the situation, despite the rigid training I had given it in Mill's methods of agreement and difference, which might have led it to suspect that all mortals who remained sufficiently long on railway lines were enclosed the day after in little tin boxes and laid in the cold dank earth to nourish the roots of a cypress tree.

When it did come to this conclusion the time for action had departed, and it was utterly impotent except to cause the blue blood from my adrenal glands to mix with the tears that started from my eyes, and the red blood that started from my heart until a stream gushed out dyeing the railway sleepers red, white and blue in my last deed of patriotic fervour.

There was a crashing about my ears, and swift lighting in my eyes. There passed a veil over my vision, but beyond in the vasty vault of the heavens I heard the trump of Gabriel and his angels winging in sky-wide clouds of living fire to call to judgment the souls of men, and over me passed a rocketing ricochet like the serried battalions of the damned marching with crashing step over the broken earth to their last long resting place. I felt a vivid foreboding of the agonies that awaited them there.

Across my head was a white hot searing pain and in my red-baked throat all the gathered thirst of multitudinous Gehenna.

So real was my sympathy with those tossing, eddying ranks that I shed tears of frenzied desperation. And I am convinced that they really did march across the vault of Heaven and out beyond the stars, because although the veil was before my eyes and I saw them not, yet the Book of Revelation says that it was so.

The veil moved before my eyes like a cinematograph picture within my head—a kaleidescope of colour. On it were embroidered in mystic unknown shades and fairy pigments all the deeds of my life, the wicked lies I had told when I was a babe, and the wicked truths that I told when I became a man, and the garnered dust of all centuries which, sitting at the feet of the professors, I had swallowed during my sojourn at Victoria College.

And thinking on my sinful life, my tears flowed no longer for the lost battalions of the damned but for my wretched erring self and for thinking on what I should say when T stood at the feet of God—for all the blasphemies which I had uttered against His Holy Name and behind His Holy Back; for all my contempt of His page 17 ministers, who, here on earth, ordained the fulfilment of his purposes, in his well-beloved Dominion; for all the obloquy which I had hurled upon His Saints; for all my stiffness of neck and uncurbed pride of spirit.

And I thought that I would say; "Lord, the world is rent asunder with thy wars, its multitudes are starved with the emptiness of Thy air and the barrenness of Thy deserts, and the plagues of Thy heart's delight are wide-east through Thy peoples. Who art Thou, 0 Deviser of Devilry, that Thou shouldst judge me?"

But a shudder shook me as I thought upon the awful might of God, and reflected that my excuse for the evil I had wrought would not wash white in the surpassing radiance of the snow-blackening emanations of His Divine Beneficence. And in a moment I recanted all my former wickedness, and as the veil quivered and was shred from before my eyes a great blackness fell upon me, and all things passed away from me, as I fell down and away, and away and down into bottomless space murmuring "Hallejulah, Hallejulah, Blessed be Thy Holy Name, and oh! the brilliance of Thy Throne and the timeless serenity of Thy Countenance." And the spheres echoed Hallejulah as they whirled through chaos. And then fell silence, deeper, blacker than before, voluminously heavy, portentously terrible.

Aeons passed over my head, heavens fell and stars collided—and they dragged a mangled shell off the railway line, and the way was clear for the next express—but of these things I knew nothing....

Vague stirrings came restlessly, insidiously into my legarthic mind. I was enshrined in an atmosphere of beatific calm. A friend's arms were about me and the warmth of his (or her) cheeks was pressed close to mine. Snatches of music came dispersedly from the distance. Wafted through the heavy air came the odour of clover blossom, and heavy-grassed hay fields.

Languorously I opened my eyes. "Good God," I said fervently.

"Not at all, not at all" he disclaimed modestly, "not at all'.

"Hell, then," I said resignedly, dispassionately.

"Not at all, not at all," returned the presence.

"I took a third look.

"Colonel Smythe, D.S.O.,' I exclaimed, sitting up rapturously, "My dear departed friend; so it's all come true at last."

"Not at all," he returned, glancing angrily at his watch. "You took 36 hours' 6 minutes 32 seconds, which means that our calculations were incorrect."

I stood up lithely and remarked that I was feeling very fit and well—but a trifle cold. I wished I could find some clothes some where.

A Norfolk coat and a pair of green knickers hurtled through the air and ran over my head and feet respectively. I pinched myself, gingerly, apprehensively. There was no response from the place that once had been flesh and blood. I shrieked, swayed, fainted.

There was a voice in the distance, far away, indistinct, obscure It called, reiterated, entreated, whispered, re-echoed, with ever the same intonation, ever the same half-comprehended significance. It surged nearer and nearer, growing louder and louder until it broke into a bellow "Wish to wake up, wish to wake up!"

I wished, and in a flash I had regained complete consciousness.

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"Don't do that again," admonished the Colonel. "Wish it to hurt before you begin to pinch, and then it'll be all right."

I wished, then pinched. The response came quick as a thunderclap.

I grovelled at the feet of the Theosophiral Colonel, prayed prayers, vowed vows, invoked invocations until there came surging up a rolling paean from the far off memories of my childhood, the grand old words of the Nune Dimittis: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in——"

"Cut out the mushy .stuff," said the Colonel. "Come and have a drink."

Spirit No. 55X, G.H.Q., Plane 4Y.