Chapter III
Day after day for two months, with the old man as our instructor, we gave our whole attention to a set of tablets which dealt entirely with characters, symbols, and their position, plan, and meaning. One morning early in March we went to the room in the temple, as usual, and found the old gentleman lying on the couch as though asleep. One of our party walked over and placed a hand on his arm to arouse him, then started back and exclaimed, “He is not breathing. I believe he is dead.” We gathered around the couch and were so absorbed in our own thoughts of death among these people that we did not hear anyone enter. We were aroused from our reverie by a voice saying, “Good morning.” We turned toward the door and there stood Emil. We had supposed that he was a thousand miles away and his sudden appearance had startled us. Before we had time to compose ourselves he had walked over and was shaking hands all around.
In a moment, Emil walked to the couch on which the old man was lying. Placing his hand upon the old man’s head, he said, “Here we have a dear brother who has departed from this earth but has not been able to finish his work among us. As one of your poets has said, `He has wrapped his mantle about him and has lain down to pleasant dreams.’ In other words, you have pronounced him dead. Your first thought is to get an undertaker and a coffin, to prepare a grave to hide the mortal part of him while it dissolves.
“Dear friends, kindly think for a moment. To whom did Jesus speak when he said, `Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me.’ He was not talking to the outer self, the me, the shell. He was recognizing and praising the Inner Self, the One Infinite, the All Hearing, All Knowing, All Seeing, the Great and Mighty Omnipresent God. Can you not see where the eyes of Jesus were turned as he stood at the tomb of Lazarus? Did he, like you, look into that tomb and see a dead and dissolving Lazarus? While your vision was upon the dead, he held his vision upon the living, the only begotten of God. His vision was fixed upon unchangeable, eternal, omnipresent Life and that Life transcends all. Now, with our vision held steadfastly toward the ever-present reality of God, we can behold His finished work.
“Here is a dear brother who never relied wholly on God but went on partially in his own strength, until he has reached this stage and given up and made the mistake which so many are making today, the mistake you look upon as death. This dear soul has not been able to let go of all doubt and fear and thus he has relied on his own strength and has not been able to finish the work set before all.
Should we leave him thus, his body will dissolve and he will be again sent forth to finish his mortal task, which is all but complete. In fact, so nearly complete is it that we can help him to finish and we feel this to be a great privilege.
“You asked if he can again be awakened to full consciousness. Yes, he can and so can all others who have similarly passed. Though he has passed, as you look upon it, we who have shared a part of his life with him can help and he will be able to understand quickly so that he may take his body with him. It is not necessary to leave the body to so-called death and dissolution even after one has apparently made the great mistake.”
Here the speaker stopped and, for a moment, appeared to be lost in deep meditation. In a very short time four of our friends from the village walked into the room. They gathered close together for a few moments as though in deep thought. Then two of them reached out their hands and motioned us to join them. We stepped up close and two placed their arms around two of our party and we in turn placed our arms around each other until the circle was complete. The circle extended around the couch that the form of the departed was lying upon. As we stood there for a moment without a word being spoken, the light in the room became brighter. We turned and Jesus And Pilate were standing in the room together, a few steps away. They came forward and joined us.
There was another deep silence. Then Jesus stepped forward to the couch and, raising both hands, said, “Dear ones, will you just step through the vale of death with me for a moment? It is not forbidden ground as you think. If you will just step through as we have done and view it from the other side, you will see that it is only what your thoughts have made it. There is life there, the same life that is here.” He stood for a moment with outstretched hands. “Dear friend and brother, you are with us and we are with you and we are all together with God. The sublime purity, peace, and harmony of God surrounds, embraces, and enriches all. This perfection now manifests so vividly to you, our dear one, that you may arise and be received unto your Father. Dear one, you see and know that it is not dust to dust and ashes to ashes, but it is Life, pure Life, Life Everlasting. Your body need not be left to mortal dissolution. You now perceive the glory of the Kingdom from which you come forth. You may now arise and go to your Father and the shout goes up, `All hail, all hail, the new born one, the risen Lord, the Christ among men.'”
Dear reader, words are but a travesty when the mortal attempts to picture the beauty and purity of the light that filled that room and, as that form arose, the light seemed to penetrate every object so that nothing cast a shadow, not even the form of our friend or our own bodies. The walls seemed to expand and become transparent until we seemed to be looking into infinite space. The glory of that picture cannot be told. Then we knew that, instead of standing in the presence of death, we were standing in the presence of Eternal Life, Life unspeakably grand, never diminishing but going on and on eternally.
What could we mortals do but stand and stare? In the uplift of those few moments we were carried, for a time, far beyond our most sanguine imagination of heaven and the beauty of it all. It was not a dream, but real. Thus the real can be greater than any dream. We were privileged to see through and beyond the shadow.
The beauty and tranquility of that scene and the great faith we had already placed in our friends carried us completely over the divide that day and today that divide is but a level plain. Yet in some way it was made clear that each one, for himself, must first scale the heights before the beauty beyond can be seen.
With every vestige of age gone, our friend, whom we looked upon as raised from the dead, turned toward his associates and, in a moment, began to speak. these are his words, as he stood facing our friends. It is as though they were cast in raised gold upon a tablet which stands always before me. The voice came forth with a majesty that I cannot express. There was no affectation, just a clear, deep note of sincerity and strength.
He said, “Dear ones, you cannot know the joy, the peace, the great bliss you have given me in awakening me as you have. Just a moment ago it was all dark; I stood, fearing to go on and yet I could not return. The only way that I can explain it is I seemed engulfed in a great blackness from which I suddenly seemed to awaken and now I am again with you.” Here his face became so radiant with joy that there was no mistaking his sincerity.
Then he turned to us and said, “Dear ones, how I love to think of our association. You can never know the joy it has given me to have clasped your hands; the great joy it has given me to see and know and feel the sincerity with which you have accepted these, my dear helpers, who at this moment I am able to call divine. Could you see through my eyes at this moment, you would be able to know the bliss that I am experiencing. The greatest joy of all is to know so fully that each of you will stand and know, just as I am standing and knowing. That joy you will know only when you stand as I stand. I can say that it is well to have lived a full life, to be able to enjoy one moment of this. Then to think that I can see all eternity unfolding. Do you wonder when I say that my eyes are almost blinded and I am dazed with the revelation? Do you wonder at my great longing to unfold this vision to you, and not only to you, but to every brother and sister in the whole wide universe of God? Dear brothers, if I could lay a transforming hand upon you and lift you to where I stand, it seems that my joy would be multiplied manyfold at this moment. I am shown I must not do that. I am shown that you, yourselves, must stretch forth this transforming hand, and when you have stretched it forth you will find God’s hand ready to clasp yours. You will be able to walk and talk with Him, and God will eternally bless you as He does all. The greatest joy of all is, I am shown that it does not matter what the caste or creed of church, all are welcome.”
In a moment he had disappeared from our view, just faded away, it seemed to us. Was this an ethereal vision? All my associates concluded that it was not, for two of them had clasped this man’s hand. I leave it to the reader to decide.
Then one of our friends from the village turned to us and said, “I know that you are doubting but won’t you understand that this was not staged for your benefit. This is but one of the emergencies in our lives and, when the emergency does arise, we are able to come up over the emergency. This dear one had not been able in his own strength to quite surmount the divide, as you call it. In fact, as you see it, he had passed on. The soul had left the body behind and one so enlightened can be helped at the crucial moment, so that the soul returns and the body finishes its perfection; then the body can be taken along. This brother longed too ardently to pass on and he left his body when just a few more steps, as it were, helped it over the divide and the perfection was complete. The help extended was our great privilege.”
