by Neil M. Gunn
Hitherto the Dean had talked with a simple logic out of what was obviously a wide knowledge of his subject. But it was clear even while he was talking that he respected Geoffrey’s difficulties and appreciated his revolt, as if he knew that such an attitude on Geoffrey’s part was and must be inevitable. But by his very tone it could be seen that these physical marvels, like seeing with the eyes shut or entering closed rooms, interested him merely as by-products of a central and infinitely more important reality.
As he paused his eyes took on a depth, an effect of light, in which there glowed a profound kindliness and understanding. Helen was at once moved, felt herself waiting with a dumb excited expectancy, as if a soft hand had caught upward at her heart.
“Upon a man who has achieved, by effort and struggle, those higher powers of the mind there comes at last a clear consciousness of profound harmony. He realises that there has been added to him an extra dimension of being. I am aware that my words may convey nothing to you, or, at the best, so little that it is negligible over against the reality, so I beg you, in your forbearance, to allow me to illustrate it as best I can. I should put it like this, that the extension of perception that is achieved might be compared with what a blind man has added to him when he first acquires sight. If I say to you that it is as real, as truly a fact, as is the blind man’s new world to him, I should still hardly be telling the whole truth, because it is, to the person who experiences it, far more real, in the sense that it grasps not mere visual phenomena, appearances, but Reality itself. And I know this with as absolute a certainty as I know that if I put my hand to the bar of the grate there I should burn it, or if I put this glass to my lips I should feel the wine, and taste it, and get its bouquet. The trouble for you lies in my use of a word like Reality. I might illustrate that by referring to the Reality of you as the personality or spirit or whatever you call that thing which inhabits your body and which you usually designate as ‘I’. If you could think of the ‘I’ being extended, transformed, into a universal ‘I’, into a cosmic consciousness, and if you could think of yourself as coming in contact with, of being permeated by, that consciousness—the spirit within and behind all matter as the ‘I’ is within and behind the body—then you might vaguely get some sort of parallel. Though I suppose you wouldn’t really, because you would still be without the actual experience, as in the case of the blind man and the redness of wine. However, let me make one more effort at illustration, for all this has some bearing on second sight in the Highlands.”
He paused for a little, and then went on: “There comes to most human lives a period, often perhaps not a very long period, when the senses are enhanced, when the spirit is quickened, and when the very essence of life seems to change in meaning, in purpose, in aim, and in desire. Colour glows. Flowers, trees, the surface of our earth, are seen with what is called new eyes. Over all is a lovely light. The mind is transported. Beauty becomes so heightened that the frail, newly awakened spirit can hardly bear it; in fact, cannot bear it at times, and breaks down in tears, tears neither of joy nor of sorrow, that yet seem to perform a mysterious cleansing or purifying act. The person undergoing this experience acquires a new consideration for humanity, wants to do little acts of kindness, wants all the world to be happy, to be at peace, to be rid of struggle and wrangling and the diabolic horrors of war. Life before this change is seen to have been to a large degree meaningless, because it was without this intense conception of harmony, of a state of being that is recognised—whatever went before or comes after—as the most vivid and thrilling experience or fact that all existence contrived to offer. Many undergo this experience in an extreme degree, that fulfils itself to the highest or loses itself by frustration in the depths. Others experience it much more mildly. But all experience it in some degree. I am referring, as you will have guessed, to that condition termed ‘being in love’.”
Helen found his eyes on her. They were not questioning, yet she experienced for a moment the extraordinary illusion of holding converse with them, of opening her mind, of accepting their understanding, of saying in some inner region, “Yes”, and then, like the neophyte before the master, of bowing. And she actually bowed. Or, at least, her head drooped, and the dark-brown hair, with the straight parting on the left, was towards the Dean, and all the others, turning and looking at her, saw her head like that.
And to them all this silence, by virtue of some inward conviction, was the most eloquent passage of the evening.
“Now that blessed condition of being in love is to a small extent a parallel to that other higher condition,” the Dean went on as if the pause had been quite natural, while the others brought their faces from Helen and all their expressions, which each felt to be secret, could be read like the marked stops on an organ. “Just as the physicist discovers absolute harmony in the laws that govern or determine matter, so the mystic discovers absolute harmony in that higher condition to which his mind has won. There at last the psychical becomes supreme over the physical. Always our mind, in science as in everyday life, is trying to conquer matter in some form or other. The materialist is continuously engaged in the fight. There man succeeds. On the way to that condition the senses gain a power infinitely beyond, though of the same kind as, the little acts of premonition, telepathy, insight, intuition, silent understanding, identification with another, and with flowers and scents, which characterise human love. In a word, in that final state, which is a state of supreme love, everything is reconciled, all dualisms, all differences and divisions, in a feeling of an eternal Now, of a timelessness in which past, present, and future are fused. You are pervaded by a feeling of light, of bliss, of ease, of having at long last come into your own.
“Now I have tried to suggest to you the ultimate condition to which this psychical thinker, if we may so call him, strives to attain, in order that such by-products of his journey, as second sight typifies, may be seen in their secondary and to him quite unimportant light. For as I have said he develops these by-products far beyond anything comparable in the highest experience of human love, so that, for example, he can at last see that which is not within range of his physical eyes or which has not yet come before his physical eyes. And not only in the case of sight, but also of sound, and even of smell. To him these by-products are elementaries, and students are warned against playing with them, as I, a churchman, would warn my congregation against playing with carnal things. To him they were elementaries—over two thousand years ago.
“The strife here is between matter and mind, and mind will win through, because it is more important, more stupendous in its significance, than matter. A boy whistling a tune is a more wonderful phenomenon than the largest inert sun in all the universe, and we know it, and the materialist admits it. At times, matter will predominate and we become estranged from the things of the mind, of the spirit, by the force of external things, by excessive toil, by material greed, by all sorts of sensual cravings and excitements, by intrigues, by tyranny, by lust for power, and by the conjunction of all these in war. Not only does the mystic tell you that, not only the Christian, but even the so-called anti-Christian, anti-mystic, like the communist or socialist, tells you the same thing. Everyone who is for the freedom of the spirit, for its integrity and need for development, must tell you the same thing, and must damn and want to destroy all that which thwarts it and keeps it from its high adventure. Now the spirit will never be defeated. Not because it strives for what is easily called right or moral or religious or equalitarian, but because it does not want to be cheated out of its own fulfilment, out of attaining that state of freedom, of delight, of ecstasy, of which once or twice in a lifetime it has caught a glimpse. The materialist, the scoffer, the sceptic, may try to destroy that spirit. He can never succeed. In the struggle it is not the spirit he will destroy, it will be himself.”
The Dean paused for a moment. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he went on. “Science will help enormously, more perhaps than any other factor. Already, you see, Colonel
Brown is attempting to prove by mathematics the existence of the fourth dimension for the use of our spirit. We are here to-night discussing it. Which in itself is surely a remarkable thing. And always cropping up are these marvels concerning watches and ghosts and funerals and strange prophecies. All these are mere signs, intimations. I have dealt with Yoga because it happened to have been mentioned. I might have dealt with Plotinus, other men, other periods and places. For the spirit is in all men, and it is the same spirit.
“I might even have tried to deal with this land, this very beautiful land, the Highlands; have tried to show a manner of life, a humanism, concerned not with the outward show of material aggrandisement, but with the inward affairs of the spirit, as in poetry and music and good manners, in vanities and jealousies and strife, in a certain vividness, divine or diabolical, of the personal spirit. I do not wish to flatter this spirit. It appears, anyway, to be dying, to be passing out. But it had its day in an environment which forced the eyes at times to stare in contemplation. You have only to listen to their music, to perceive the way in which the finest, most sensitive spirits amongst them still become overborne by its rhythm, to see that what I say is true.
“But I am not going into that, fascinating as the subject may be, linking up rhythm and contemplation with the philosophies of the East, with the fundamental oneness of man. All I want to say is that I am not surprised that in this land in particular there should have lingered on these mental manifestations or marvels, grouped under the name of second sight. And when you examine them you find, as one should expect, that they do not refer exclusively to seeing or to such prophecy as the Brahan Seer’s ‘Doom of the House of Seaforth’. They also refer to other senses, as in India—though manifestly these simple people of a past age here, who could neither read nor write, had no knowledge of even the existence of Indian religion or philosophy; they refer to the sense of hearing—for example, the hearing of boards being sawn for coffins before they were actually sawn; even a forecasting of events by the sense of smell is by no means unknown. These marvels are in the case of the Highlands merely the manifestations of a spirit in decline—instead of, as they should be, the manifestations of a spirit exploring towards the light. And if I have spoken so much it is merely that I have tried to put them in proper perspective, to give them their elementary place, in this mysterious movement from the simple consciousness of the lower forms of life, through the self-consciousness of man to-day, to that higher consciousness which, I am afraid, I have failed even to suggest.”
The concluding words had a note of simple humility, and as the Dean smiled Helen turned her eyes away.
Presently Sir John said, “You have brought the East back to me. There were times often, I admit, when I was disturbed, disturbed more than I might care to say, though always just quite by what, it was difficult to know. You dismiss it, of course. You say, ‘Yes, seems pretty marvellous.’ You are sceptical, for you have to protect your own mind. But that certain of these thinkers had developed extraordinary gifts there could be no doubt. No question of deceit or fraud. On the contrary, there was a giving up of material things. They acted not for gain but for loss, if one may put it that way. To me they were almost completely incomprehensible, and would have been, I think, quite incomprehensible, were it not for one personal experience. However, I have enjoyed the talk. You haven’t lost the old gift for philosophy, David.”
“I think”, said Mr. Blair, “that Sir John should tell us his personal experience.”
Sir John smiled and shook his head.
Lady Marway looked at him and then got up. “I think it is really time we were going.”
“No, no, no!” cried Mr. Blair.
But now all were on their feet, and as Lady Marway went up to the Dean, the others got into little talk groups.
Mr. Blair said to Geoffrey, “By the way, did you ever hear or read of the prophecies of the Brahan Seer?”
Geoffrey pleaded ignorance and Mr. Blair turned to a bookshelf. “Read this. Don’t lose it. You’ll enjoy the curse on the House of Seaforth. Are you fond of that sort of curse, by the way? I have a very good collection of curses. Although I suppose this wasn’t properly a curse. But it’s quite a remarkable story.”
“Is it censored? I mean, are the curses really printed?” Joyce asked, raising innocent eyebrows.
Mr. Blair was delighted with what he took to be her wit.
She became quite struck by this rubicund little man and insisted that he tell the story there and then specially for her benefit.
Marjory said nothing. Geoffrey smiled. George backed up Joyce. “Very good,” said Mr. Blair, bowing gallantly and assuming his tortoiseshell glasses; for it was now obvious that Lady Marway, the Dean and Sir John were deep in personal discourse, while in Colonel Brown’s corner Harry and Helen were manifestly engaging that clear-headed army man in fourth-dimensional manœuvres.
“This Brahan Seer lived in the sixteen-hundreds. Brahan is near Dingwall. The seat of the Mackenzies, the Seaforths. This Seer made very remarkable prophecies, most of which were fulfilled.”
“One moment,” said Geoffrey. “Is all the evidence the usual traditional hearsay?”
“Well, pretty nearly,” replied Mr. Blair.
“Pardon my interruption. Please go on,” said Geoffrey.
“Except in two cases at least, where there does seem fairly clear evidence that knowledge of the prophecies was widespread before the events happened. One was in the case of Fairburn Tower, a thriving mansion house of a local laird. The Seer said that the Tower would fall into ruins and that a cow would climb to a high room and have a calf there. The family decayed, the Tower fell into ruins, and a cow duly climbed the turret stairs and had a calf in a top room. People who had long known of the prophecy came from Inverness to see the cow. They had to let her down by ropes from a top window.”
“But what on earth made the cow climb the stairs?” asked Joyce.
“It seems the local farmer had stored some of his straw in the top room. The cow had followed the fallen straws up the stairs.”
Geoffrey laughed and was going to ask something when Mr. Blair, turning over a final page, found his prophecy of doom.
“This Seer”, he explained, “was disliked by her Ladyship of Seaforth, because he could see too far into her affairs. She apparently was that sort of lady. Besides, he seemed to have had a fairly caustic tongue and was too obviously what we would call nowadays a democrat. So in the absence of her lord she got him tried by the church authorities for being a Satanic agent, and by all accounts the remarkable fellow was burned in a tar barrel near Fortrose. On his way to his unhappy end, he uttered Gaelic words to this effect:
“ ‘I see a Chief, the last of his House, both deaf and dumb. He will be the father of four fair sons, all of whom he shall follow to the tomb. He shall live careworn, and die mourning, knowing that the honours of his House are to be extinguished for ever, and that no future Chief of the Mackenzies shall rule in Kintail. After lamenting over the last and most promising of his sons, he himself shall sink into the grave, and the remnant of his possessions shall be inherited by a white-coifed lassie from the east, and she shall kill her sister. As a sign by which it shall be known that these things are coming to pass, there shall be four great lairds in the days of the last Seaforth (Gairloch, Chisholm, Grant, and Raasay), one of whom shall be buck-toothed, the second hare-lipped, the third half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer. Seaforth, when he looks round and sees them, may know that his sons are doomed to death, and that his broad lands shall pass away to the stranger, and that his line shall come to an end’.”
“Jehosophat!” exclaimed George. “You are not going to say next that all that really happened?”
“It did—but not for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The prophecy got around and people wrote letters about it before it happened, and credible men who survived the fulfilment of the prophecy told how widespread the prophecy had been throughout the country in their youth. When th
e last Seaforth died, the papers featured it at length. Sir Walter Scott knew about it. Historically all that seems quite certain. In fact, there were people who thought that the old Seer, as generation followed generation, had made a grave fool of himself. Then there came a Seaforth who had four sons and the whole affair happened as detailed. Colonel Brown tried to work out mathematically the reasonable probabilities. The factors: a laird who would in his life become deaf and dumb (for he was not born so); four sons; the death of those four sons before himself; the loss of his lands and the end of his line; the lassie from the east who would kill her sister (through an accident, as it happened, while she was driving a dog-cart); and the four contemporary chiefs with their remarkable malformities. Colonel Brown said that when you give odds to each factor and multiply them to get the degree of probability—or something like that, for I never was a mathematician—the final odds against the whole happening were so inconceivably vast that coincidence must definitely be ruled out. Do I make myself clear to you?”
“Perfectly,” said Geoffrey. “I should agree with Colonel Brown. But—I have not yet agreed with the evidence. When I read this I shall be able to show you its gaping lacunae. For example, in the letters that you assert referred to the curse before it was fulfilled, were those terms that you have read out explicitly stated?”