For a while Marcus listened to him closely, but presently his mind wandered, and he thought of boys who had given way to the kind of temptation about which the Head was speaking. He remembered watching two of them during just such a sermon as this and wondering what they were thinking—and then he began to feel as if it were he himself who was preaching. He felt himself leaning forward towards the congregation, appealing to them, yearning to fill them with a desire for purity and goodness, to make them want, and be strong enough, to lead straight, upright lives.
The boys he saw now were different from those he had seen when he first came in. One or two of the older ones wore soft, silky moustaches, which they fingered surreptitiously, and self-consciously. It was to one of these in particular that the preacher seemed to be appealing. . . . And suddenly the organ began again before the sermon was finished. Marcus looked at the boys and the masters. For a moment there was that confusion of sight to which he was becoming accustomed, faces looking through faces, like a photograph when two exposures have been made on the same piece of film. In an instant it was all clear again; the faces were those Marcus had seen on his arrival. Everyone was standing up. They began to sing the end of term hymn, ‘Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing.’
Marcus went back to Mr. Burnaby and described what had happened.
“You’ll have to be more careful now,” Mr. Burnaby warned him. “They won’t all be good spirits, you know, and it may be some of the worst who will want you to join in their experience.”
“I suppose that was some old headmaster,” Marcus said. “Their clothes were all different—the boys’ clothes I mean—not very much, but they just didn’t look the same.”
“Perhaps he had used the same text,” Mr. Burnaby reflected. “I should think it must be a favourite with headmasters. I suppose the old man hadn’t half finished. Your man was brief in accordance with modern practice. At any rate it’s a very good text for you.”
Marcus flushed. “How do you mean?”
“I mean you’re going to have a great many of these experiences. Some of them will be unpleasant. You will have to learn which to avoid, which are safe.”
“But shouldn’t I know everything, and experience everything?” Marcus asked. “Shouldn’t I see life whole?”
“To know fire it is not necessary to be burned alive,” Mr. Burnaby replied. “If you are wise you will flee from everything that is horrible at first sight: even so you will see enough to give you unpleasant memories: you don’t want to be haunted.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Marcus said. “Why am I only going to see things now?”
“Tonight,” Mr. Burnaby told him, “you encountered the spirit of a man who died a great many years ago. You didn’t see him, but being in the same place as he was, and in something of the same mood, you saw for a time what he saw. Fortunately for you he was a good man. I should think, probably, he was one of those ‘great’ headmasters of the nineteenth century: Arnold of Rugby is the best-known example. These men devoted themselves, their whole selves, their whole time, to their schools, and it is not surprising to find the spirit of one of them lingering over the scene of his work.
“Most people, I think, when they come to die are ready to leave this world, or at least to leave their old affections and occupations. But there are some, who for one reason or another, are not. They feel that their work is incomplete; or there is someone or something they love, or hate, too strongly to part with. These are what are called ghosts, and in certain extraordinary circumstances they become visible to ordinary people. There are far more ghosts than are ever seen. From now on you will get to know many of them. Places are haunted by ghosts, but to an even greater extent are the ghosts haunted by places, and by scenes that have occurred in those places during their physical lives. Sometimes these scenes are of violence so terrible that they have left too strong an impression on the participants for the act of death to bring forgetfulness or peace. Sometimes the haunting spirit is the victim and sometimes the perpetrator of the wrong. Sometimes there is no wrong but only a memory so clear that it cannot be forgotten. You will learn all this for yourself. I only say to you, be careful. Do not allow yourself to become haunted in your turn.”
“But why do we never see it happening?” Marcus asked. “When we try to follow the dead they always go on beyond us, beyond where we can go with them.”
“Because they nearly all do go on,” Mr. Burnaby explained. “At any time you may come on one who doesn’t, but it will be a rare chance, and an unlikely one.”
“But aren’t there other spirits,” Marcus said, “spirits who have come back?”
“Yes, I think so,” Mr. Burnaby agreed with a touch of impatience. “I don’t understand everything, you know. I believe I have an inkling of the way things work, but there are some things I don’t completely understand: they may fit in one way or another. It may be that some individuals have work to do after death, work which necessitates the retention of their individualities; or it may be that some individualities are too strong to be quickly absorbed: such individualities might shuttle to and fro, for a time in contact with the mind of the whole, and then for another period with the physical or mortal part—not I suppose that any part is really mortal: there is probably a spiritual fluidity just as there is a physical fluidity—and each of us is a microcosm of both. The individuals you are thinking of may be in touch at the same time with the spiritual whole and with various beings here who are incarnate parts of that whole. It is even possible that complete attributes of the spiritual side of the whole are constantly incarnate—dwelling in the flesh, I mean: it’s difficult to find the right words—or that complete attributes may for a time be incarnate in one individual. If that were so, such an individual would appear to have a complete spiritual immortality in himself. The existence of an individual of this kind seems unlikely. No one would understand him; for as he possessed the whole of his quality, nobody else would have even sufficient of that quality to be able to appreciate it in him. What is it Beckford says—‘Not an animal comprehends me!’, though that of course doesn’t mean that there was no one capable of comprehending him.
“As I said before we can’t understand—I can’t understand—everything. I have met the sort of spirits I think you mean—or encountered them rather: one doesn’t really meet them in the full sense of the word: one is aware of them, one just gets in touch with them, or with part of them. They appear to know what is going on here; but are they the spirits they seem to be?—or are they something greater? Do they appear to us as they do appear, only because we cannot see them more completely? Are they in fact a portion of the whole on which for a moment we can shine a light? Whatever they know they seem incapable of imparting to us—or more likely we are incapable of taking it in. That’s it, you know: we can’t conceive of life without smelling, feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting—or without the imagination of these things—life in silent intangible darkness, knowing. Sight, real or imaginary, is the hardest to part with; yet sight is just as much a physical experience as any of them.”
“Oh but no,” Marcus objected, realizing suddenly that this was something about which he could argue. “You can see without your body. You can see with just your spirit.”
“Oh but no,” Mr. Burnaby mimicked, “or at least you can’t be certain. Your spirit may know what’s there and from that imagine seeing it, hearing it. . . . and all the rest: but you can’t be sure there’s any more than that.”
“You could say the same about all our physical sensations,” Marcus pointed out, “that we imagine feeling, that we imagine seeing. . . . ”
“I know you could,” he admitted, “just as no one can prove the existence of anything apart from his own mind—the rest may be imagination.”
“All the same,” Marcus said, “we all believe there is more than one of us—at least in that wa
y—the other is just a sort of philosophical joke. Anyhow, even our ordinary seeing is partly imagination: we become aware of things through our eyes, but we don’t know that what you see and what I see is the same, or what relation it bears to reality. Your red may be my green, or we may each have a different spectrum with not a single colour like anyone else’s.”
“I hardly think it’s likely.”
“It’s not,” Marcus agreed, “but what I mean is that all our seeing, and hearing, and feeling is largely the imaginative interpretation of physical phenomena, and if when we’re out of our bodies it’s all imagination, it’s still as much seeing. Colour and sound and smell may be real things—real things of the imagination—and our eyes and ears and noses only the physical means by which we become aware of them. Don’t you see, and smell, and feel in dreams?”
This started Mr. Burnaby on a new tack and quite characteristically he immediately forgot about the subject under discussion. “Did you ever wake up crying?” he asked.
Marcus was embarrassed. “I don’t remember,” he prevaricated. “I mean I’m not sure.”
“Well if you haven’t,” Mr. Burnaby retorted, with a little twitch of his eyebrows, “it’s an experience you’ve missed. I wasn’t going to inquire what about.”
Marcus had studied the behaviour of Mr. Burnaby’s eyebrows. They twitched like that when he was making fun of somebody, or enjoying a semi-private joke. “I maybe have, some time or other,” he confessed cautiously.
“Probably a dream of self-pity,” Mr. Burnaby commented unkindly. “It’s the most sincere form of pity. The point is that one’s dream griefs have an intensity, an exquisite purity that far excels any unhappiness one can experience when awake. In dreams all the emotions can be pure—happiness and unhappiness, love and sadness, are all more intense, more tender, but not in every dream, only when the body is quiescent, when there are no physical sensations to distort the vision of the mind.”
CHAPTER XXXII
AS a writer I am dissatisfied with the ending of the last chapter. I have to break off through lack of material. I don’t know whether Mr. Burnaby went on talking about dreams or whether they both went to bed.
The account of Marcus’s visit to the school chapel is taken partly from Mr. Burnaby’s notes, partly from the autobiography Marcus wrote after Mr. Burnaby’s death. An account of the conversation which followed is also in the autobiography, but it is reported more fully in Marcus’s journal.
Since Mr. Burnaby had given up taking part in the work himself, Marcus had stopped taking notes. He described his experiments to Mr. Burnaby, and Mr. Burnaby made notes: he had little else to do. Marcus did however continue to write in his journal. It was his one emotional outlet, and it was only at the very end that he lost interest in it.
The spring and summer of 1934 is very well documented indeed. Mr. Burnaby’s notes and journal, and Marcus’s journal were all better kept than at any other time. The first to deteriorate at all was Mr. Burnaby’s journal. In it he complained increasingly of being tired, of physical weakness, of the uncontrollable twitchings in his muscles. Finally his journal became merely a catalogue of the symptoms of his illness. About Christmas the quality of his notes too began to change. They degenerated from careful descriptions into jottings; shortly after the New Year they ceased.
Why Marcus did not begin taking notes again himself when Mr. Burnaby stopped, I do not know. I imagine that it was due partly to laziness. Certainly there was a streak of laziness in him, and this laziness, more than anything else, affected the course of the rest of his life.
There is another possible reason. By this time Marcus knew exactly when Mr. Burnaby’s death would take place. He had told Mr. Burnaby, and Mr. Burnaby had immediately proceeded to discuss the details of ‘The Last Experiment,’ about which he had talked to Marcus on many occasions. Shortly before the time of Mr. Burnaby’s death, Marcus was to lock himself into his bedroom. He was then to project himself and to get into contact with Mr. Burnaby’s spirit. Mr. Burnaby undertook that when death occurred he would not try to elude Marcus, but instead would endeavour to communicate to him whatever he might discover. I think it likely that if Marcus knew so much about Mr. Burnaby’s death, he may also have known the result of the experiment. Probably he knew a great deal more. Perhaps he wished to keep this knowledge from Mr. Burnaby; perhaps he knew something so dismal that he did not wish to put it down at all. He seems to have been growing indifferent to the implications his work would have for Humanity at large. He was interested in it only for its own sake—or for his own sake. He didn’t really feel that he was a human being any more. Only when he projected himself out of his body could he be fully alive. Only then can he have felt happy.
In any case there is no further direct record of the experiments Marcus was making, though indirectly it is clear that these experiments were increasingly successful. Marcus achieved, or thought he achieved, periods of complete unity with the universal mind. His journal claims that in this state he had complete knowledge—past, present and future were all open to him, though it would appear that at first he was only able to report to the mind of the physical Marcus Brownlow a small proportion of his knowledge. He brought back a series of snapshots, rather like flashes from a cinema newsreel. Many of them he did not understand. A few of them are identifiable in the light of what has happened since. Some appear completely trivial: one or two are connected with events, which when they actually occurred, received world-wide publicity.
Gradually Marcus must have learned to be able to make a voluntary selection from what he knew in his disembodied state. It was probably done by limiting the degree of his submergence, by preserving his own identity at the same time as it sank into the universal. Whatever the means, it presently became possible for him to choose what he saw, or to choose what he would remember and bring back. So the vision of the future that he obtained, that the embodied Marcus Brownlow obtained, gradually became a vision of his own future. He saw more than he wanted to see. He was oppressed with a sense of the inevitable. His course was set. His every action was determined by a host of other actions. It was useless for him to think of his future, to try to decide anything. Yet he would think, and he would make decisions, and be conscious that every thought, every decision, was predetermined: he was running on rails; all the points were set; all the signals were down.
Mr. Burnaby grew more feeble. The convulsive twitching of his muscles became more noticeable. It was unpleasant to look at. He ate less. He became thinner and the bones in his face stood out. Like Marcus his life was no more than the colouring of a pattern which was already complete. It was no good trying to eat more, or to husband his strength. He knew the day and the hour.
The tower stairs troubled him. For a while he laboured up them doggedly three times a day. An armchair was put on the first landing and he would sit in it for a little before starting on the last flight. Marcus suggested that he should have his bed moved to one of the rooms over the kitchen and use the library as a study. It was a useless suggestion. He knew it to be useless. Yet for his own sake he longed for it to be accepted. If it had been all his knowledge would have been proved false. He would have had another chance. He could have looked forward to Mr. Burnaby’s death as a release from his bondage.
Mr. Burnaby refused to move. The tower had become almost a part of him. He was determined to die there.
Through the spring and early summer Mr. Burnaby grew steadily weaker. Towards the end of July he caught a chill. It began with attacks of shivering, and soon he developed a cough. Marcus took his temperature and found it was 103 degrees.
“You’d better get the doctor,” Mr. Burnaby said. “He won’t do any good, but unless you get him now there may be trouble about a death certificate.”
So Doctor Sheehan, the dispensary doctor from Portmallagh, was called in. He examined Mr. Burnaby careful
ly, but didn’t say very much till he was alone with Marcus. Then he questioned him about Mr. Burnaby’s health during the last few months.
“He’s got pneumonia now,” he pronounced, “and in his state there’s not much chance for him. He’ll maybe last seven or eight days, but he wasn’t long for this world in any case, poor gentleman. Perhaps it’s just as well it happened this way.”
“Why, how do you mean?” Marcus asked uncomfortably, for he felt that the doctor might have guessed something of his own part in bringing about Mr. Burnaby’s original ill-health.
“He’s suffering from a form of paralysis,” the Doctor answered, “—progressive muscular atrophy, I would say. He has very little power in his legs and arms, and you must have noticed this twitching in his muscles.”
“Oh yes,” Marcus said, “but he wouldn’t let me get you, you know. Of course, he’s been getting weak for a long time.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Oh well, there are a lot of old people like that—afraid to know what is wrong with them—and it wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run.”
Mr. Burnaby died on the third of August, 1935 at twenty-nine minutes to three in the afternoon. He was exactly on time. Two days later he was buried in his own grounds half-way between the house and the sea.
The Burnaby Experiments Page 28