The Passion for Life

by Joseph Hocking

  XXVII

  VISION

  And now I have come to that part of my experiences which I finddifficult to relate. It is probable that if these lines are read by eyesother than my own, they will be disbelieved, yet I will set them down asI remember them. This is no easy matter, for I feel as though I wererecalling the incidents which happened in a far-off dream rather thansomething which actually took place. And yet not altogether. What I amgoing to tell is very real to me, even although the reality is utterlydifferent from what I ever experienced before. Even as I remember, Ifind myself thinking out of ordinary grooves, and my thoughts are ofsuch a nature that I find no language sufficient to express them.

  I was dead. I knew that my spirit, my essential self, had left my body,and that I was no longer a habitant of the world in which I had lived.

  My first sensation, for I can find no better word to express my thought,was that of freedom, and with that sense of freedom came a consciousnessof utter loneliness. I felt as the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge'simmortal poem must have felt:

  "Alone, alone, all alone, Alone on a wild, wide sea, So lonely it was that God Himself, Scarce seemed there to be."

  I felt no pain, no weariness, and I was free; but I was alone.

  I do not know that I felt fear; no terror possessed me; I did not thinkof my past life with dread, neither did past scenes haunt me. My thoughtof the past was rather the thought of emptiness, of purposelessness, ofvacancy; it seemed to me as though my life had been a great opportunityof which I had failed to avail myself.

  I had a feeling, too, that it was very cold. I seemed to be floating ininfinite space, through sunless air.

  Kipling, I remember, in one of the most vivid poems he ever wrote,described a man who, when he died, was carried far away:

  "Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford, the roar of the Milky Way. Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down, and drone and cease....

  Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there For thenaked stars gleamed overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare. But thewind that blows between the worlds had cut him like a knife...."

  But the poet's imagination never saw in his vision an experience likemine. No winds blew between the worlds; there was no roar as of arain-fed ford; all was silence. Not the silence of narrow spaces, noteven the silence of night, when the ears of listeners are filled withnoise made by silence; it was the silence of illimitable spaces, thesilence of eternity.

  I thought my spirit was mounting; at least that was the impression leftupon me; I was going upward, not downward. But here words fail me again,because, as it seemed to me, there was no upward and no downward. Morethan that, there seemed to be a lack of standards whereby one couldmeasure anything. There was no more time, and as a consequence there wasno past, no present, no future. Everything, as I thought, was formless,meaningless.

  I know I have failed to give a true idea of what I saw and felt. As aboy, I was for a short time fascinated by the study of astronomy, and Iremember being made afraid by the thought of the distances between theworlds. Now all that was changed; I was floating, it appeared to me,between unnumbered worlds, but in a way they were near to me, so nearthat I could see what was happening on them.

  How long I was alone I do not know, for, as I have said, time had nomeaning. In a sense I felt as though I wandered through the silences foraeons, although scenes flashed before me with the speed of light. Myexperiences make me think of the words of the old Hebrew poet:

  "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is passed, and as a watch in the night."

  I have said that the worlds I saw were near me, so near that I could seetheir inhabitants and watch their movements and activities. But even inthis I convey a wrong impression, for while I had this sense ofnearness, I had also the consciousness that they were separated by vastdistances. It was just as though I had a glimpse of the Universe. Therewere millions of worlds around me, and all were inhabited; everywherewas life, life that expressed itself in thought and action. On everyhand were sentient thinking beings who played their part and did theirwork in the world from which they drew their life.

  A sense of unutterable awe possessed me. I was between the worlds. Icould watch what was being done on those worlds, and I felt myself to bethe merest speck in infinity.

  As I have stated, the thought which possessed me was that I was utterlyalone, and that while I suffered no pain, and while I had aconsciousness of freedom which made me exultant, my loneliness wasbeyond all thought....

  I felt a presence; at least that is the only word I can think of toexpress my thought. I had no consciousness of a person being near me,and yet that Something was all around me, an Intelligence, a Will, aPower. What it was I could not tell, but that Something answered thequestions which came to me....

  The one predominating thought or consciousness which flooded andoverwhelmed everything was the consciousness of God. While I had been inthe body, something hid from me the reality of God; now everything wasGod. I lived in God; everything was submerged in this one great Fact ofFacts, and I wondered at my blindness when I was alive. And yet I wasoverwhelmed by what, for want of a better word, I call the immensity ofeverything. I remember asking myself how God could care for such a lifeas mine; how He could take an interest in the myriads of beings whoinhabited the worlds; how He, Who controlled planets and suns, couldcare for the little lives of men. For I seemed so infinitely little; Iwas but a speck in infinite space, less to the Universe than the tiniestinsect which crawled upon the face of the globe on which I had lived.

  But even as the thought came to me came also the answer: because God wasinfinite in thought, in love, in power, so His Being enveloped all; thatbecause He governed the infinitely Great, so He cared for the tiniestspeck of life He had created....

  I saw the world from which I had come; I was able to locate my owncountry. Europe stretched out before me like a plain, and there I sawthe nations at war. At first the war appeared only like the struggle ofants upon their little hills, and it seemed of no more importance as towhich army should conquer the other than if they had been so manyinsects at war.

  "How little we must be to God!" I thought. "On earth we regarded theEuropean War as something beyond all thought, all comprehension, yetseen from here it is less than a struggle of gnats. What does it matterto God whether England or Germany wins in what we call the Great WorldStruggle?" But even as the thought flashed through my spirit came theanswer that God did care; that because we were the breath of His life wehad a destiny to fulfil, a work to do; that the energies of God were onthe side of those who sought to express His will.

  It was all infinitely beyond me; I could not understand, and yet I hadthe consciousness that God watched the struggle of the creatures He hadmade, and that He was on the side of those who, perhaps unknown tothemselves, were moving towards His own purposes. As I watched, theworld seemed to become nearer to me, and such was my power of visionthat I was able to visualize all the struggle and all the deadly warfarefrom Russia to France. I heard the boom of guns, I saw the flash ofbayonets, I could plainly see the men in their trenches and could hearthem talking with each other. I saw shells flying from the mouths of theguns, I watched their passage through the air. I beheld them as theyfell, and I saw the stain on the battle-fields. I realized everything asI had never realized it before. I saw men in their death agony, I heardtheir groans, their shrieks of pain. I saw thousands of torn, mangledbodies, bodies which a moment before were full of life and vigor.

  Then, as it seemed to me, I beheld the agony of the world. I sawblighted homes, broken lives, bleeding, broken hearts.

  "O God!" I cried out, "let me not see! I cannot bear it!"

  For death was horrible to me, and life a mockery. How could God carewhen He allowed these young lives, so full of hope and promise, toperish in a moment?

  Then out of all the mad carnage and above the din and horror of war camea voice th
at filled my being and rang through the worlds:

  "Fear not them who can kill the body, but are not able to kill thesoul."

  I saw that the great tragedy of the world was not the tragedy caused bywar, but the tragedy of men killing their souls even while their bodieslived; that the death of those on the battle-fields was as nothingcompared to the death of those who seemed to live and yet who were dead,because they had sacrificed truth and honor and love, and that death wasimpossible while honor and truth and love lived.

  Then I looked again, and behold, the heavens were full of the spirits ofthose who had offered their all on the altar of duty, and that for themthere was no death. I saw that instruments of war had no power to touchthe real life of these men; that each had a Divine Spark of life, andthat that life was still under the overshadowing wing of the Eternallove....

  Ages appeared to pass; how long I knew not, cared not, for time had nomeaning. I saw that the Eternal Love and the Eternal Life, which waseverywhere, was bringing out of all that at first seemed a meaninglesschaos an infinite order; that even the War of the World in which menlost their lives by thousands and hundreds of thousands, in which unholypassions seemed to prevail, and in which Death stalked triumphant: I sayI saw evolving out of all this, confused and contradictory as it allappeared, a higher life and a higher thought--a movement towards theEternal Will and towards the Eternal Purpose which was behindeverything.

  I know I have badly expressed all this, because I find no wordswherewith to make clear that which came to me; for in truth thought waslost in consciousness, and language fails to express that consciousness.I only know that I saw order coming out of chaos, light out of darkness,love out of hatred, divinity out of bestiality, life out of death.

  For life and love were all.

  I did not see God--that is, I was not able to visualize His Presence. Idid not talk with God as a man talketh with his friend, and yet my wholebeing seemed to be filled with His Light and Love and Peace. I felt thatI was breathing God, because God was all; that nothing was outside HisCare, that nothing was too small for His Love. I wondered at my doubtsand at my absence of faith, for God was everywhere, in everything; inall purposes, plans, desires. I was conscious that He was shaping anddirecting and controlling all the thoughts of men, and that everythingwas moving towards His Eternal Purposes.

  In the light of what I saw, pain and wrong and misery were beingoverruled by the Eternal Love, so that even they were speeding mentowards the greater, fuller life, and that in the march of untold agesLife and Love were everything.

  A sense of triumph, of exultation filled me, bore me up as if on thewings of eagles. I saw everything from a new perspective. I realized asI never realized before the meaning of the words of the Apostle:

  "Our light affliction, which is but for a _moment_, worketh for us a farmore exceeding and Eternal weight of glory."

  I saw that all things--all wrong, all pain, all darkness, everythingwhich made life dark and terrible--were only for a _moment_, and thatthey were overruled by the Eternal God, so that those who suffered themmerged through the ages into Eternal Love and Eternal Light.

  How long I was in this state I do not know, for, as I have said, timehad no meaning to me. All life's standards seemed to melt away. I onlyknew that I was, that I felt, that I was filled with an overwhelmingjoy, because I knew that darkness would end in Eternal Light, that painwould end in Infinite Peace.

  Then slowly everything began to fade away; the worlds by which I wassurrounded ceased to be. I lost the power, of visualizing; my thoughtsbecame dim and indistinct. Presently all became darkness save for onespeck of light. Sometimes that speck of light became very small;sometimes it grew larger, but it was always there, and I was consciousof an unspeakable peace.