V. Ecstasy and Vision

Esoteric Character

To the Sadhu, as has been already indicated, the great source of illumination, solace and physical refreshment is the recurrent state of Ecstasy in which he feels himself caught up to what he believes to be the place alluded to by St. Paul as "the third heaven" (II Cor. xii. 2).

"I never try to go into Ecstasy; nor do I advise other people to try. It is a gift to be accepted, but it should not be sought; if given, it is a pearl of great price. During the fourteen years of my life as a sadhu there have been many times when, suffering from hunger, thirst or persecution, I might have been tempted to give it up but for the gift of these times of Ecstasy, but these I would not give up for the whole world. "

Clearly, a study of the Sadhu 's religion would be gravely misleading which did not include an account of experiences to which he himself attaches such importance. Equally clearly the attempt to give one raises grave difficulties. Educated people, unless indeed they have studied the lives of the Mystics, are apt to question the mental balance of any one who not only sees Visions, but takes them seriously. The uneducated, on the other hand, especially in the East, may be inclined to regard both the seer and his revelations with that kind of superstitioiis veneration which the Sadhu himself is studiously anxious to preclude.

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The Sadhu is quite alive to the danger. In public addresses he never alludes to his Visions; he only mentions them, and that but rarely, when speaking to friends whose discernment and discretion he trusts. Giving an explanation of a certain religious difficulty he remarked, "This is a thing I often say in preaching, but I never say that I heard it in an Ecstasy, because people would not understand what I meant without long and elaborate explanation." Similarly, after attempting to give us an account of the things he had seen, he explained St. Paul's reticence about what he saw in the Third Heaven. " ' St. Paul was afraid people would misunderstand his meaning; and that is why he spoke of the experience as if it had been not his own but somebody else's, saying, 'I know a man in Christ who.' This was because he knew that, if he spoke of the Visions as his own, people would have come and bothered him by asking foolish questions, and would have misunderstood the answers he had given them."... "He was very wise not to try and tell them," added the Sadhu, with a smile that possibly expressed a half misgiving that he had been wiser had he imitated the Apostle's silence.

One friend has advised us to suppress this chapter altogether, but the Sadhu undoubtedly intended us to publish what he told us; and for better or worse the rumor is abroad already, and has appeared in print, that he does see Visions. Some of these, too, evince a delicacy of feeling and a depth of moral insight which makes it a greater responsibility to suppress, than to publish, them. In the long run, we feel sure, it will be doing a 1 Cf. p. 195,

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service to his reputation to make public an account of at least the most typical and most original of his Visions, which is really authentic. This, fortunately, we are in a position to do, since, for most of the material, the notes taken by one author could be checked by those of the other, and a considerable number of them were read and passed as correct by the Sadhu himself.

Visions of the Jewish Seers

The Sadhu 's Visions are of special interest on account of the light which they throw on the origin and development of the conceptions of Resurrection, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The traditional ideas on these and other eschatological questions were, in the main, — so recent research has shown — developed gradually in a long series of Apocalyptic writings of which the earliest considerable instance is the book of Daniel (166 b. c.) and the latest which matters for our purpose is the Revelation of Peter written about a. d. 120 and rediscovered some years ago in an Egyptian tomb.

Nearly every writer in the series makes some modification or adds some detail to the tradition. This revision of the tradition always occurs in the form of Visions seen by the reputed author of the book or of information communicated to him by angelic informants in a heavenly sphere. As we have them, the Visions have clearly undergone a considerable amount of editing by the actual author, and frequently also by later hands; but, that the Visions were originally seen as Visions and

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were for that reason regarded by the authors, as well as by the readers, as Divine Revelations, is, in our opinion, beyond reasonable doubt.

Often these Visions take the form of an amplification or a new elucidation of some outstanding text or leading idea in an Old Testament Prophet or of some Vision of an earlier Apocalyptist. They contain much that is trivial and much that is fantastic, but, for all that, it was through this channel that the great ideas of Judgment and Eternal Life first became established in that later phase of Jewish religion out of which Christianity arose. The point, however, which it most concerns us now to notice is that this revelation — or, if one prefers to call it so, this discovery — was attained to by men of intense religious devotion who were passionately seeking for some reconciliation of the facts of life with the goodness of God. They found it in conceptions of the nature of life beyond the grave which, with each generation of Apocalyptists, became progressively more satisfactory both morally and religiously, than the traditional views of their time.

Now, as has been already pointed out, the Sadhu, like the Apocalyptists, largely thinks in pictures; and, in general, his world-view on its intellectual side, is in many ways far nearer to that of the early Jewish writers than it is to ours. He too is faced with the problem of reconciling the goodness of God — a problem made more difficult to him than it was to them, precisely because he sees God always in terms of Christ — with traditional conceptions of the after-life. And to him, as to them, difficulties are solved by modifications of traditional conceptions which come to him in the form of Visions.

"St. John," says the Sadhu, "did not use the word

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" ecstasy"; he said 'in the spirit,' but he meant the same thing. " No one would repudiate more vehemently than the Sadhu himself any suggestion that his utterances should be put on a level with those of Scripture; but his claim to have enjoyed a spiritual experience which, if not identical with, is at least closely analogous to that of the author of the Apocalypse is, we feel sure, one which deserves very serious consideration. But, if so, it follows that a study of the Sadhu 's experience will throw light on the psychological mechanism through and by means of which religious truth was mediated to certain of the Biblical writers.

If we bear in mind that Truth is quite a different thing from the particular psychological mechanism by which it is apprehended, and also that any revelation of the Divine must be conditioned by the mental outlook, culture and general experience of the recipient, we shall not be inclined to deny that Visions may be a genuine revelation of truth. All nowadays would admit that any conception we may form of the nature of the future life must necessarily be of a symbolic character. The traditional doctrines of Heaven, Hell and Judgment are admitted to be symbolic. The Visions of the Sadhu, in so far as they touch on these matters, are no less symbolic; but, if we mistake not, their symbolism is more deeply Christian — and, if so, they are, by comparison with the traditional views, an advance in the apprehension of Divine truth.

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"We are far from maintaining that Visions are the only, or even the best, means of attaining to a knowledge of religious Truth. Quite the contrary. The majority of the Hebrew Prophets, the Psalmist, St. Paul, not to mention Christ Himself, seem to have derived very little of their teaching from this source. And in regard to the eschatological subjects dealt with in the Sadhu's Visions, the more valuable of his conclusions have been anticipated by liberal theologians solely by the use of rational reflection on the philosophical, moral and critical issues involved. We read him a passage from a recent volume on Immortality which closely resembled something in one of his Visions, remarking that it was curious that the writer should by these methods have reached a conclusion so very like that which had been given him in a Vision. He replied, 'I am not at all surprised. Truth is one; but different men may attain it by different paths. " Just so, all we are concerned to suggest is that, to the Sadhu as to the Apocalyptists, truths have come by way of Visions, which to men of their temperament and with their intellectual presuppositions probably could not have come, or at least not with equal force of conviction, in any other way.

Heaven

There are three Heavens, so it was revealed to the Sadhu once in Ecstasy.

The First Heaven is Heaven on earth — that wonderful inward peace and enjoyment of the presence of Christ which came as a result of his conversion, and which has been described in a previous chapter of this book.

The Second Heaven is an intermediate state; it is the

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Paradise of which Christ spoke on the Cross to the repentant thief. Here dwell for a time souls who are not yet sufficiently advanced in the spiritual life to enter the Third Heaven when they die. Here, as He said to the thief, they are with Christ; but they do not actually see Christ, though they feel His influence, as if waves of light were proceeding from him, and hear, as it were, a heavenly music.

The Third Heaven is Heaven proper, as it might be styled. To this all righteous people will ultimately attain; but it is granted to a certain few, of whom the Sadhu is privileged to be one, to make short visits there during their earthly life. 'I understood, " said the Sadhu, "what St. Paul meant when he said, 'Whether in the body or out of the body I know not,' because when I found myself there I seemed to have a body with form and shape, but all made, as it were, of light. But when I touched it (here he clasped his left arm with his hand) I felt nothing. This is what St. Paul speaks of as a spiritual body. " " In Heaven I see not with bodily but with spiritual eyes, and I was told that these spiritual eyes are the same as those which all men will use after permanently leaving the body. "

To all the Visions there is a constant background. It reflects, indeed it is the convincing proof — if further proof were needed — of the wholly Christocentric character of the Sadhu 's Mysticism.

" ' Christ on His throne is always in the center, a figure ineffable and indescribable. The face as I see it in Ecstasy, with my spiritual eyes, is very much the same as I saw it at my conversion with my bodily eyes. He has scars with blood flowing from them. The scars are not ugly but glowing and beautiful. He has a beard on

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His face. The long hair of His head is like gold, like glowing light. His face is like the sun, but its light does not dazzle me. It is a sweet face, always smiling —a loving glorious smile. Christ is not terrifying at all. "

"And all around the throne of Christ, extending to infinite distances, are multitudes of glorious spiritual Beings. Some of them are saints, some of them angels. These are indistinguishable. 'The difference,' they told me, 'is not important: we are all one here.' They all look younger brothers of Christ. They are all glorified, but His glory is far more glorious than their glory, and they differ among themselves in degree of glory, something like a difference of color, but not quite that. Their clothes are, as it were, made of light, not dazzling but many-colored. There are more colors there than in this world. There is nothing here so beautiful, not even diamonds and precious stones. When they speak to me they put their thoughts into my heart in a single moment; just as on earth one sometimes knows what a person is going to say before he says it. I did not have to learn the language of the spiritual world. When we leave the body and enter that world, we speak it as easily and naturally as a new-born baby breathes the moment it enters this world, though it has not done such a thing before."

" In these visions we have most wonderful talks. This is the real Communion of Saints which is spoken of in the Apostles' Creed. We talk about spiritual things, and problems which no one here can solve. This good company solves them easily. There are very many things which I see and hear there and of which I have a clear picture in my mind, but I can't express them even in Hindustani, much less in English,

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and some of them are things that it would be no use even trying to express, because their beauty would be lost if they could be taken out of that world and put into this. But I always carry with me fresh and vivid memories of these things also. Another feature of that world is, that one never gets tired of it, one never wants something different. In this world one gets tired after three or four hours even at times of the highest experience of peace, but one never tires in the heavenly world. At a certain convention I attended there was a simple village Christian who was praying. He was filled with the spirit: full of peace and happiness; and, trembling with excess of joy, he prayed, 'Lord, I thank Thee, I thank Thee, but no more or I die. Enough! Enough!' I was verymuch surprised at his desiring to bring this state to an end. Then I thought of the story of Moses and how God told him, 'No man can see my face and live,' and he was shown only the back part of the Lord. The spirit can stand these exalted experiences, but this body cannot. " " There is music, but no musical instrument. I looked about for an instrument, but there was none to be seen. The thing, however, which is most striking about this heavenly world is that I always feel at home. There is nothing I could wish otherwise, nothing awkward. I was told that if any two persons in that world, however far apart, wished to come together, they could do so in a moment of thought. I always find myself sitting among the others, perfectly familiarly and naturally. "

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" Anyone who has been there for one second says to himself, ' This is the place on which I have set my heart, here I am completely satisfied. No sorrow, no pain, only love, waves of love, perfect happiness.' (As he recalled the vision, the Sadhu's face was radiant.) And it is for ever, not merely for a thousand years. No one there claims any part of it for his own. All say 'our home.' No words can express it. I think that is why St. Paul said that he heard things unutterable. In that world there are many things which correspond to things of beauty in this world, mountains, trees and flowers, but with all imperfection taken away. The mountains, trees and flowers of this earth are only the shadow of what I see there. Everything there, even inanimate objects, are so made that they continually give praise, and all quite spontaneously. I can see millions of miles, I see mansions and walls, but these nowhere impede the view, and if one is in the midst of a crowd it is the same All are in a kind of a way transparent. One can see right through people; so no one hides their love or what is in their heart.

" ' There we realize not only the desires we have known in this life, but desires, wliich we did not even know that we had, are opened up and realized, because there is everything to satisfy them. There I am satisfied, there there is nothing more to ask. It is wonderful! That is our home.

" I asked one of the Spirits the meaning of the passage in St. John: ' I said. Ye are gods. ' I was told that man has innumerable desires, and that these show that he is going to make infinite progress when in Heaven. There we have more capacities than we have hairs of our head here. •

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" Another time I asked what Christ meant by saying, 'Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.' He did not say 'Be perfect as the angels or the prophets.' I had been puzzled by this. Does it mean that we shall become God; and, if so, shall we rebel against Him? They told me there that God wants us to be equal to Him, because Love always wants an object for affection equal to itself. Just as men are not satisfied with loving animals merely, so God wants us to be equal to Him. But if we became so, we could not rebel: for we should then have an infinite knowledge of the Love of God, and that would bring with it infinite thankfulness. There is no jealousy in Heaven. Our Heavenly Father wants us to be made equal to Him. There is no jealousy in Heaven. There are differences of degree, but there are no disagreements. Every one is always on every one else's side, and those who are low down in the scale feel so proud that their elder brothers are so big.

"In Ecstasy," we asked, "have you ever seen visions like those in the Revelation of St. John?"

"Yes, I have seen many things like the visions at the end of Revelation; and I thought when I saw them, ' Our elder brother two thousand years ago has been visiting these same places.' "

"Did you ever see visions like those in the middle part of Revelation? "

"No, never. Only like the end, in particular the passage describing the pure river of water of Life clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. When I saw these things I felt that I wanted to fall down and worship those who showed them to me, but they said to me, 'No, worship Him,' pointing to Christ.

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"I said, 'Where is the capital of Heaven?... Where He is sitting?' They told me, 'No, in every heart that loves Him, because there He reigns, not by sword or by force, but by Love in the heart. If there were no living souls there would be no reign. The royal seal is the image of Christ in the heart; and where this is in the heart it extends at the same time over the whole body. St. John says that the Name of the Lamb is written on the foreheads of the Saints. I looked, but I did not see anything written there, but I saw that their whole face looked like that of Christ, so I understood that that was 'what St. John meant."

" Did you ever see Cherubim or other winged creatures such as are described in Ezekiel and in Revelation?"

"No. I think that when these spoke of winged creatures it was due to the difficulty of finding human language to explain what they saw. I saw waves of light shining out from the spirits in Heaven, and at first these looked rather like wings, but they were not really wings.

"The faces of all the spirits whom I see in Heaven look like Christ, but in a lesser degree; just as the image of the Sun is reflected alike in a number of water-pots. Christ is the Image of God — that image in which God created man — this is the true image, but it is only imperfectly stamped on other men. This explains that feeling of recognition of Christ as one known long ago,

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which is experienced by all on their first entry to the heavenly state. It shows an original connection between man and Christ, even though one does not know it before. All sinners have within themselves a battered image of their Divine Creator, and so when converted they recognize and fall down and worship Him. I have had no chance of meeting others who have had Ecstasy like mine, otherwise I should have liked to ask them about this experience of recognition.

" ' I once asked how far this heavenly world is from the earth. They told me they did not know, but that it only took one moment to get there. I was surprised that they did not know.

"Before I became a Christian, whenever I saw anyone die, I used to long for a place where there would be no more death. I was repelled by the continual round of death and rebirth implied in the Hindu doctrine of transmigration. The first time I entered Heaven in Ecstasy I was quite certain that I had come into a place where there was no more death. '

The Resurrection of the Body

"Did you learn anything about the resurrection of the body?"

"I was told there that Christians leave behind them the physical body. That body is buried, but the spiritual body that is within is then free to come out, and in this we go to the Second or the Third Heaven according to our state of development. At least this is true of the majority of Christians; but there are grades in the spiritual life, and in the case of some few who have lived very close to Christ this physical body is slowly changed

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and is taken up into Heaven. It is completely spiritualized, for flesh, and blood cannot inherit eternal life, but it is the same physical body only completely transformed. I asked them whether this applied to Enoch and Elijah, who were taken up bodily into Heaven. They told me "Yes,' and that it also applied to Moses, and then they pointed out to me Moses and Elijah in Heaven, and they told me that they appeared at the Transfiguration in the same form and aspect in which I saw them then, for in Heaven we no longer change. God buried Moses, but they told me God's way of burying is not like ours. It is to enfold with a spiritual body. No one can enter into Heaven with a physical body, but in the case of those few that body is transformed; and this is what happened to the Body of Christ.

"But the majority of ordinary Christians leave the physical body behind and proceed in their spiritual body to the intermediate state or Second Heaven. Here they stay, some a few days, some a few months, some longer, until they are ready for the Third Heaven. Exceptional people, however, like St. Francis of Assisi and the author of The Imitation of Christ, are already so spiritually advanced that they enter the Third Heaven at once.

The Last Judgment

"I inquired once, 'Will the dead stand in a line all together and be judged?' I was told. No; after leaving the body the soul knows everything that has happened to it. The memory of it all is clear and fresh, and thereby they are judged. The heavenly light shows the wicked to themselves; they see at once that they cannot live in that fellowship of saints and angels. They feel

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so out of place there, they find everything so uncongenial that they ask to be allowed to go away from Heaven. Men are not turned out of Heaven by God. Heaven is not a place " with walls and gates where you have to ask for a ticket of admission. The ticket of admission is the life a man has led.

" Those who are bom again can see the Kingdom of Heaven and feel at home there, those who are not cannot do so. This is the real judgment, and it is a judgment that is going on every day. It is not effected by an act of God interposing between ourselves and Him, it is internal. The Last Judgment will be a proclamation of the final result, when every true servant of God will be exalted before the whole creation.

"I was also told that in this world our spiritual bodies are inside our material bodies, and that when we sin it is like when we press with a point on paper behind which is a sheet of carbon; on the outside of the paper there is a very slight mark, but inside there is a clear black mark. Thus our sins mark and scar our spiritual bodies, and the result of this will be seen when, after death, the spiritual body escapes from the material; and the revelation of the injury it has sustained will in itself be a large part of the judgment."

Hell

' " I was also told that the love of God operates even in Hell. God does not shine in His full light, because those there could not bear it, but He gradually shows them more and more light, and by and by brings them on and moves their conscience towards something better, although they think that the desire is entirely their own. Thus God works on their minds from within, something in the same way, though in the opposite direction, as that in which Satan suggests temptation to us here. Thus, what with God 's work within and the Light without, almost all those in Hell will ultimately be brought to Christ's feet. It will perhaps take millions of ages, but when it is attained they will be full of joy and thankfulness towards God; though they will still be less happy than those who have accepted Christ on earth. Thus Hell also is a training school, a place of preparation for Home. Those in Hell know that it is not their home because they suffer there. Men were not created for Hell and therefore do not enjoy it, and, when there, desire to escape to Heaven. They do so, but they find Heaven even more uncongenial than Hell, so they return. But this convinces them that there is something wrong in their lives, and thus they are gradually led to repentance. At least, that is the case with the majority, but there are some few personalities, Satan for instance, in regard to whom I was told, 'Don't ask about them.' And so I didn't like to ask, but I hoped that for them also there was some hope.

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" They also told me that the Saints help in the work of saving souls in Hell, because there can be no idleness in Heaven. Those in Hell will ultimately be brought to Heaven like the prodigal son, but with regard to the ultimate fate of a certain number you must not ask." The Sadhu is inclined to think that perhaps these few will be annihilated.

"Once I said, 'So many people will be lost because they have not heard of Christ.' They said, 'The contrary will be the case; very few will be lost. ' There is a

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kind of heavenly joke, no, joke is not a good word for it. 'Very few will be lost but many will be saved. It is so, but don't tell,' they said, as it were, in jest, 'because it will make men careless, and we want them to enjoy the First Heaven — that is the Heaven on earth — as well.' "

"If there were no hope for all the non-Christians in the world and all the Christians who die in sin, God would stop creating men. We must do our part here on earth to save sinners, but if they refuse we need not be without hope for them. "

The Sadhu's "universalism" recalls the famous " Shewing" to Mother Juliana of Norwich, "All manner of things shall be well," and her comments thereon —except that her respect for the authority of the Church precludes her making any suggestion how this may be possible. The Sadhu faithfully obeys the injunction, "Don't tell." In his popular teachings, as we shall see in the next chapter, he stresses the need of repentance, and the certainty of immediate judgment in the next life, but he never speaks of his hope of ultimate salvation even for the unrepentant.

Other Visions

The Sadhu 's visions are not only, or even mainly, concerned with Eschatology. Not a few of the parables and arguments he uses in his preaching appear to have come to him this way. Sometimes also he finds in Ecstasy answers to questions of Scriptural exegesis which have puzzled him.

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We quote an example which is characteristic of the man alike in its uncritical simplicity and its fine moral insight. "Why did not Abraham pray for Lot? God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham prayed for others. Why did he not pray for his nephew? Why did he not say, 'Save at least my nephew?' It was because something was wrong with Lot; for though he had lived in the place for years, he could not make even ten men righteous. He had not done his duty. So Abraham was ashamed to pray for him; but God remembered Abraham, and for his sake Lot was saved. In the same way Christians may be good, and yet if they are not trying to save others Christ will be ashamed to intercede for them as Abraham was ashamed to intercede for Lot. But," he added rather curiously, "I don't often mention this as there are so many people nowadays who do not believe that such men as Abraham and Lot ever existed. "

"On another occasion I asked, 'Whence is Life?' I was told that the one source of Life is behind everything. Our clothes are warm, because the body which they conceal is warm. There is no heat in the clothes, that comes from the body within. Just so the life in all living creatures is derived from the on© source of Life behind. Their life is from the Giver of life. Again, just as our body is hidden by our clothes, but the shape of the clothes as well as the heat comes from the body inside, so all the vegetables and animals that we see are but the outward forms upheld by the Giver of life.

"I saw waves of light and love coming out from Christ, in whom dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead embodied. I These give spiritual life. Also in a mysterious way these

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waves of life and love give life to living creatures of all grades. Matter and motion cannot produce life. The source of life is life.

" I was told that the waves of light which I saw were the Holy Spirit. Just as the moon seems to be straight overhead wherever we stand, so the glorious Christ with the waves coming out of Him was seen here, there and everywhere. I saw crowds of people with glorious bodies, all saying, "He is near me, "He is near me.' "

The Nature of the Ecstatic State

The student of Mysticism will desire some further materials if he is to form a scientifically considered estimate of the nature and significance of the Sadhu's Visions. Accordingly we now proceed to set forth in detail the Sadhu's own account of the nature of the ecstatic state.

"A friend once asked, 'What is Ecstasy?' I said, 'There are pearls in the sea, but to get them you have to dive to the bottom. Ecstasy is a dive to the bottom of spiritual things. It is not a trance; but it is like a dive, because, as a diver has to stop breathing, so in Ecstasy the outward senses must be stopped.'

" Whenever I am alone always something new comes to me, and that in a language without words; I feel surrounded, as it were, with a wonderful atmosphere, then something speaks in my heart, then I am in the state of Ecstasy. No words are spoken, but I see all pictured; in a moment problems are solved, easily and with pleasure, and with no burden to my brain."

In his early days as a Christian, Ecstasy was a comparatively rare occurrence. Now, although he does not

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know beforehand when he will enter into it, it is an almost everyday experience — or rather it might be so., did he not hold himself back. If he thought only of his own pleasure he would spend all his life thus with Christ, but he wants to help men. Ecstasy commonly ensues after about twenty minutes of prayer and meditation — sometimes while on his knees but more often in a sitting posture.

This frequency of the Sadhu's Ecstasies is a notable fact. So far as our information goes, with the Biblical writers and with most of the great Saints, Visions and Revelations were of comparatively rare occurrence.

While in the state of ecstasy, which sometimes lasts for several hours, he loses all perception of the external world; and he has no sense of the lapse of time, " there is no past and no future; everything is present. "

'Once a friend whom I had told not to disturb me if he found me in Ecstasy came in and found me with eyes wide open smiling and all but laughing: not knowing I was in Ecstasy he spoke to me, but as I did not hear him he desisted and told me about it afterwards. On another occasion I went into Ecstasy under a tree. "When I came back to ordinary life I discovered that I had been stung all over with hornets, so that my body was all swollen, but I had felt nothing. "

Once he was announced to speak at a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning. He began his prayer about five o'clock in the morning and involuntarily entered the ecstatic state. When he came out of Ecstasy he found it was nine o'clock. He had forgotten all about the meeting. The people, who had gathered in large numbers to hear his message, were wondering why he, who was generally so punctual, did not appear. After a while they dispersed with disappointment. He was very sorry that this should have happened, though he did not, or rather could not, explain to them the reason. " I do not generally speak of these experiences to others, because they would not understand me, but think I am foolish." While in cities he is very careful and checks himself from " slipping" — to use his own phrase — into Ecstasy. On the Himalayas, with more leisure at his command and with no definite appointments before him, there is no need for this restraint.

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"Do you find," we asked, "that you more often go into an Ecstasy when you are feeling physically strained and tired or when you are physically fresh? "

"Both. Perhaps more often when physically fresh; but if it happens to me when I am physically strained and tired out, or, as I recollect on more than one occasion, when I was feeling despondent because people had refused to listen to my preaching, the result is that I feel completely refreshed and invigorated. This is another of the reasons which proves to me that it is not an ordinary trance. When I used to practice Yoga there was no permanent refreshment, though the trance might be temporarily comforting. Indeed the great contrast between the state of Ecstasy and the Yogic states which I cultivated before becoming a Christian lies in the fact that in Ecstasy there is always the same feeling of calm satisfaction and being at home, whatever had been my state of mind before going into Ecstasy. Whereas in the Yogic state, if before the trance I was feeling sad, I used to weep in the trance, if cheerful I would smile. Also after an Ecstasy I always feel strengthened, invigorated and refreshed. This result did not follow Yoga.

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"The object of the Yogic trance is not to satisfy the heart but the head.

"The state of Ecstasy is not, as I believe Yoga to be, the result of self -hypnotism. I never try to get into it. Nor do I think on the same subject for an hour together in order to induce the state, as those do who practice Yoga.

"Ecstasy is not a disease or a form of hallucination. It is a waking, not a dream state. I can think in it steadily. At normal times the flow of my thoughts is disturbed by distractions, but not in the ecstatic state. Generally a thought remains in my mind only for a minute, being quickly followed by other thoughts; whereas, in the state of Ecstasy, I am able to think for a long time on the same subject. I am inclined to believe that this is because in that state the mental activities are no longer impeded by the material brain.

"While in Ecstasy I think on such themes as the love of God, and at the same time listen to spirits, especially the Holy Spirit, as they talk to me.

"When I come back to my body I find a great difference between what I have seen in Ecstasy and what I here see bodily with my eyes.

" Often when I come out of Ecstasy I think the whole world must be blind not to see what I see, everything is so near and so clear."

Occasionally he meets in Heaven people he has known t)n earth.

"Once in Ecstasy I saw a man with a glorious body. He was very happy. He asked me, 'Do you recognize me?' I said, 'No."Don't you remember seeing me?' I said, 'No.' Then he said, 'I was in a Leper Asylum

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which you visited. On account of leprosy I had lost my fingers and my face was disfigured. Now I am no more a leper. I have received this glorious life through Jesus Christ. I left that body and entered into this life on February 22, 1908.' Afterwards I verified the facts and found them to be true. He had died on the day and at the place mentioned in the vision. "

One is reminded by this last incident of the famous story of the Monk of Evesham, who went into a trance lasting three days, during which he reported that his spirit had visited Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. In Purgatory he saw the soul of a certain Abbess whose death had taken place during those three days, although news of it had not yet reached Evesham at the time he reported what he had seen. His contemporaries regarded this as conclusive evidence that his spirit had actually been into Purgatory — where, of course, the lady's soul would then be. The facts, however, admit another interpretation. Certain individuals, when in a state of trance, are peculiarly susceptible to telepathic influences. If the monk was one of these, thought transference, either from the dying Abbess herself or from her entourage, would explain his knowledge of her death and, by implication, therefore, of her present whereabouts.

"You have explained," we said, "that hearing what is spoken in the spirit world is quite a different thing from earthly hearing. Is there the same kind of difference between heavenly and earthly seeing?"

This was obviously a question the answer to which was perfectly clear in the Sadhu's own mind, but it was one that he felt could not be expressed in liuman language or by analogies drawn from this world. The impression which he conveyed was that the analogy between spiritual and bodily seeing was rather closer than that between spiritual and bodily hearing which he had previously described. The visions and pictures seen in that world are like things seen in this, but with a difference. ' " When in this world we see mountains, trees and flowers, we see and admire. In the world also we see and admire objects of the same sort, only there a kind of force comes from them which gives one an impulse to praise the Creator of it all, and that without any kind of effort, but simply as a spontaneous expression of the fullness of joy. In this world when I see flowers and other beautiful things, I admire, but they are passive. But in the spiritual world which I visit in Ecstasy it is the other way round. They are active, I am passive. "

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We tried to discover whether the Sadhu was conscious of any development in the type or quality of his Visions. But except for the fact that since the Fast they had become more frequent there seems to have been little change. Indeed he himself regards the richness of the revelations he received at a time when his own Christian experience was immature as a proof that the knowledge so obtained is derived from an external source and is not merely a dream product of his own mind.

An Unique Phenomenon

In the Sadhu 's account of his Ecstasies there are two important points which it will suffice to recall without further comment — the frequency of their occurrence, and the fact that they are never followed by exhaustion but always by refreshment both physical and mental. There are four others which demand consideration.

First, there is one feature in which his experiences differ from those of the Apocalyptic writers and — to the best of our knowledge — of the Western Mystics in general. The Sadhu does not in Ecstasy either travel from place to place himself, visiting Hell in person, for instance, nor does he see a series of vividly dramatic pictures of which the interpretation is either obvious at once or is given by an angel interpreter. One might say, indeed, that he has only a single Vision — the Third Heaven — a Vision evidently including within itself an inexhaustible variety yet always essentiall} the same. The information and ideas which are communicated to him in Ecstasy are not presented as separate " visions but rather as verbal communications from different spirits whom he meets on different occasions within the circuit, so to speak, of the one great constant Vision.

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Secondly, the Sadhu is far more concerned than are the Apocalyptic writers to affirm and reaffirm the ineffable character of his experience — the words are words but they are neither heard nor spoken, the sights are seen and yet not as if with eyes. " ' There is no language which will express the things which I see and hear in the spiritual world, I am like a dumb man who can taste and enjoy the sweets that are given him, but cannot express or explain it to others." He is not only aware, but is urgent to insist, that the sights and words he reports are but a shadowy reflection of the reality — in other words, that they are essentially symbolic.

Thirdly, Ecstasy to him is not, he says, a dream state — by which he means a state in which haphazard disconnected scenes and events pass meaninglessly by — but a waking state, a state of concentrated capacity of thought, of clearer and more continuous thought than he is capable of in ordinary life. The fact that in Ecstasy he can

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be so unconscious of external things as not to feel, for instance, the sting of hornets, confirms this statement. From sleep one can be easily awakened; but his Ecstasy is evidently, in its psychological aspect, a state of what is called "temporary dissociation" and it is one characterized by intense concentration of thought and emotion. "We may compare Wordsworth's lines — well known, not equally, perhaps, well understood — in which he speaks of an apparently frequent and highly valued experience of his own in language every word of which might have been used by the Sadhu to describe his Ecstasy:

... another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world. Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, Until, the breath of this coi'poreal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: "While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the hf e of things.

Fourthly, this concentration of thought and emotion is consummated in Visions in which in the center of the picture there is always Christ. Always as a dominant impression is the consciousness of being with Christ and of receiving from Him enhancement of insight, vitality and power. Not only are thought and feeling intense,

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but all along the whole being is focused on the concept of the Living and Eternal Christ.

The literature of Mysticism, Eastern and Western, is so vast that even those who have spent a life-time in its study can generalize on the subject only under correction; and the authors of this volume have no claim to speak as experts. But it is perhaps not too rash to affirm that, although parallels to each of the six features we have noted above could probably be found in some previous Mystic, Eastern or Western, their conjunction in a single individual is unique. But, if so, what is the explanation? It is not enough to say that every Mystic is in a sense unique. Very tentatively we hazard a suggestion. India is the land of Mystics, but the Sadhu is the first Indian — or rather the first whose experience we have on record — to become a Christocentric Mystic. We should expect that Christian Mysticism when naturalized in India would take a new and characteristically Indian form.

The Idea and its Symbol

A study of the recorded visions of Mystics and Apocalyptists leads one to emphasize the fundamental importance of the distinction between their content, that is, the idea or value apprehended, and the form or symbol in which they are expressed. We note also that the form and the content of a vision are respectively derived from, and conditioned by, entirely different elements in the mentality and experience of the individual who sees it. The form assumed by a vision would appear to depend partly on the dramatic quality of the mind of the subject, partly on the nature of the materials from

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which to build up its symbols that are provided by his previous experience and environment. In the Sadhu's case these materials are largely derived from that study of the Bible on which his emotions as well as his intellect have been concentrated so long. But the content of a vision is determined by quite other factors. First, the intellectual, ethical and religious insight of the seer — behind which, in the Sadhu's case, lies a lifetime of thought, prayer and sacrificing service. Secondly, the degree to which there are concentrated all the highest faculties of the soul, thought, love, aesthetic perception, on the problem which the vision solves. Thirdly, the extent to which all this takes place at a time when the whole personality is lifted up and inspired by intense conscious communion wdth the Divine — to the Sadhu, then as always, visualized and realized under the image of the Eternal Christ.

The form of the Sadhu's visions is beautiful and appropriate. But the degree of spiritual truth which they convey, their validity as inspired intuitions concerning the nature of inexpressible realities, their value as revelation, if you like to put it so, depends entirely on the three factors which have determined their content. The Visions are of value, not because they are visions, but because they are the Sadhu 's visions; and that, not merely because the Sadhu has an intuitive genius for things religious and is a man of prayer, but because in thought, word and deed he has lived a consistent life which has developed in him a personality completely unified; an I, lastly, not even because of this alone, but because they are the visions of the Sadhu in deep conscious communion with his Lord.

Did space allow we should go on to argue that exactly

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the same psychological principles have determined the form, and exactly the same factors of personal character and concentrated devotion account for the value (a value which, we should hold, is not the same in all cases) of the visions recorded in the Bible. We should connect this with the conception of Inspiration as being essentially a hyper-stimulation of the natural faculties of insight and understanding, which, in men of high ideals schooled by the discipline of a noble life, must inevitably follow from personal communion with a personal Divine. And, lastly, we should urge that the supreme degree of Inspiration which characterizes the great Hebrew writers is mainly conditioned by their standard of conduct —sane, stem, but, for that age, humane — by their intense concentration of interest on moral and religious issues, and by their deep experience of communion with the Divine.

Divine Guidancb

" The visions which you have described so far all give answers to theological questions. Were you ever," we asked, "given in a vision the solution to a practical problem which perplexed you — as, for instance, what is the next thing to be done?" In reply the Sadhu told the following story:

"Once when traveling in the Himalayas, I set out for the village of Rampur. I came to a place where two roads branched. I was not sure which was the road to Rampur. I took one of them and after walking a long

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distance I realized that I had chosen the wrong one. If I wanted to return I should have to walk back eleven miles. Distressed at the mistake, I went into the neighboring village of Nalthora. A local shopkeeper beckoned to me. When I went to him he hid the Hindi New Testament he had in his hand, thinking that I was a Hindu Sannyasi. After conversing a while he said to me, 'What do you think of Jesus Christ? "He is my Saviour,' I said. 'Do not be troubled,' he replied joyfully, ' at having lost your way and come here. For some time I have been studying these Gospels. I have many doubts and difficulties. I have been praying that the Lord would send me some one who would clear them up. He has brought you here in answer to my prayer. ' We continued late into the night talking about Christ, and I spent the next day also with him. His doubts were cleared away and he believed in Christ. Later on he was baptized. In this way God guides us when we entrust ourselves to him. We may think that we have lost our way. But He will take us to places where we are needed and so save souls. "

This did not exactly meet our question, so we repeated it later on and got a more direct reply.

"I have sometimes asked what will happen if I do so and so. I was told not to worry about the future. The future is in my good Father's hands. I must not worry about it, but do my present work. I shall probably be given twenty-four hours' notice of my death; and the spirits that I see in Heaven will come to meet me and conduct me there. I should myself like thus to have time to tell my friends beforehand of my death; like St. Paul

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my desire is to o away and be with Christ, but I wish also to stay here for the sake of those I can help.

"It will be a great thing at the time of death to be met by the saints from Heaven. The same dear friends I have so often met in Ecstasy will come and fetch me and will lead me there. Just as kind friends in London lead me — or I should get lost."

Perhaps even this reply, being mainly relevant to the particular problem of preparation for death, did not quite give the information we were seeking. We feel certain, however, that, while the Sadhu relies enormously on guidance in answer to prayer, such guidance does not come to him, any more than to the generality of Western Mystics, by way of explicit directions in the state of Ecstasy. This has been more or less implied by many little things he has said in conversation; and seems to be clearly expressed in the following answer to a question we put him on another occasion: " How do you find out the will of God?" "Those who live with God have no difficulty in finding out God 's will. Christians, who spend little time with God and are mainly concerned with the things of this world, may be perplexed. Men may find out God's will by their own convictions and feelings or by circumstances. Men who live with God have strong convictions that such and such is the will of God. They love and know the Father and therefore they know His will. " " Have you ever done anything which you thought was the Father's will, but afterwards found out to be your own will?" "No, for instance, fourteen years ago I became a sadhu under the conviction that it was my Father's will. I still believe it to be my Father's will."

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The Authority op the Church

Mediaeval Mystics often submitted their Visions to their confessor, and, on his report of their orthodoxy or value, decided whether they had come from God and should be published, or had come from Satan and should be suppressed. Accordingly we asked the Sadhu, "If ever anything which has been told you in Ecstasy seems to conflict with the traditional teaching of the Church, which authority do you prefer?"

"There are not in the Church enough men of the deepest spiritual experience to give final authority to what its teachers say. So I go direct to God. The Creeds were made by men who had spiritual experience, as is shown by their reference to the "Communion of Saints "; but now the people who repeat them have not the same rich experience. With me a revelation in Ecstasy counts for more than Church tradition. 'Churchianity' and 'Christianity' are not the same thing. John Wesley and General Booth followed God's guidance in opposition to the Church, and they proved to be right. Every one, however, is not a mystic, so the authority of Church tradition is necessary for the majority. Roman Catholics have gone too far in one direction, some Protestants in the other. But it is not enough to be a member of the Church, one must also be a member of Christ."

The Dangers of Ecstasy

" ' Since Ecstasy means so much to you, " we asked, " ' do you recommend the ordinary Christian to try and attain to it?"

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"No. Prayer is for every man and so is Meditation. If it is God's Will that he go further, God will lead him that way. If not, let him be content to stay at the stage of simple prayer.

"No longer now, but frequently some years ago, before getting into the state of Ecstasy, I used to hear voices and that with these ears (that is, not in the spiritual language of the heavenly world), and see lights or hear music, and I found out that this was due to Satan or some evil spirit. Sometimes it was as if there were sharp needles pricking me; and I saw light, but not a real light. I think there is something in the heart which enables one instinctively to judge whether such experiences are of God or not. I somehow felt that these were not from God. As soon as I heard the voice I recognized that it was not Christ's voice. The sheep hear His voice and recognize it. Mary thought that the man she saw in the garden was the gardener, but as soon as He began to speak she knew that it was Christ. Sometimes I felt a sort of heat, but there was no joy in it, and I found these experiences were a hindrance to my getting into the true Ecstasy. I recognized that they were not real. The fort, that is the heart, was not reached by them. Satan sometimes merely whispers; sometimes his words are clear. Sometimes he says, "You are wrong, this is not the way'; 'You have left Truth behind'; 'You are a sinner, you cannot be saved.' When I listened to the voices I felt troubled. When T prayed to the Lord to help me everything stopped, the heat, the whispering, the shiverings, and the prickings. Then I said, 'These things were from Satan, this other' (that is, the true Ecstasy which followed) 'is from my Lord who stopped them.'

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" Unless a man lives very close to Christ these preliminary states would be enough to deceive him. Even Christians and genuine seekers after truth, who have been the prophets of other religions, have been thus deceived. In this way false religions have arisen. Their founders thought that divine voices were speaking to them when it was really devils. But, if they had taken no notice of these preliminary voices and gone on beyond, they might have attained the true Ecstasy. Mystics should be very careful about these things, especially beginners. Those who have been living in the world very naturally think that these experiences are great things because they have seen nothing like them before, but they come from Satan or from other beings of the lower spirit world. '

The Sadhu here mentioned the names of certain theosophists and other well-known persons both dead and alive whom he believed to have been deluded by these false spirits, hinting, however, that it might be unwise for us to print them. "These spirits know something of the future but not a great deal. Just as in India we can prophesy what the weather will be like for some weeks ahead, so the lower spirits, through their superior knowledge of the tendency of things, can prophesy events a short time ahead, and this helps them in deceiving men. Prophets inspired by God can prophesy things many many years ahead. That is the difference.

"It is these spirits of the lower spirit world with which spiritualists get into contact. From them spiritualists get interesting things, but they are ultimately deceived by the spirits who begin by giving them ninetynine things that are true and one that is false, and gradually increase the proportion of false and decrease the

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true until they lead people on to atheism or some other false position. The truly spiritual man has that within him which feels an instinctive antipathy to the kind of things which are told him by spirits of the lower world. If we seek only what is interesting, we shall never reach as far as the real higher spirit world. "

The Catholic Mystics repeatedly assert that if you seek for visions you will get them — but they will be sent you by the Devil, not by God. The Sadhu 's opinion, we have seen, is much the same. But there are degrees of seeking. It is the lesson of modern psychology that in this matter it is better not even to desire.

It is very easy — as the history of Theosophy and Spiritualism, ancient and modem, shows — for people of a certain temperament consciously or accidentally to acquire the art of slipping into a trance-state and then seeing Visions full of curious information on the nature of the Universe, spheres of existence, the life to come. But the form of such Visions, at any rate in the main, comes from the thoughts and experiences, the tastes and the studies of a man 's waking life; the content, that is, its intellectual and spiritual quality, will depend on the quality of his own mind. A mind untrained in accurate thought, undisciplined by the moral effort to realize in practical life a stern and noble ideal, will be reflected in visions commonplace, melodramatic or bizarre, their form suggested by its favorite literature or meditation. If the visionary takes these seriously as evidence of a special personal gift of supernatural knowledge, and further if he, or she, has a little circle of admirers whose subtle flattery will encourage still more and more elaborate flights of fancy, then before he knows it he will be well on the way of a rake's progress of intoxicated

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vanity — soon to be the founder or the hierophant of some esoteric cult.

There is another reason for mistrusting dreams and visions. Modern medical Psychology has proved that the dream life is the expression of thoughts and emotions which have penetrated into the subconscious regions of the mind. Some dreams may be the expression of thoughts and emotions connected with the higher interests of the conscious self, which have penetrated deep into the subconscious. But dreams often tell a different tale. In our waking hours the tiger and the ape are more or less held in check by conscience, training, social convention. But the dreams are the holiday-time for the egoist, the sensualist or the craven that lives in most of us. The mechanism of dream symbolism enables these hidden passions, while finding expression for themselves, to disguise their true nature from conscious recognition. And this disguise is habitually effected with an ingenuity and a cunning which no one who has not studied long and carefully the recent researches of Psychology would regard as credible. So long as we regard dreams as merely dreams this does not matter. Indeed it is probable that dreams are often a kind of safety valve of the greatest value, enabling the personality to rid itself in harmless fantasies of passion which, without such outlet, would too insistently demand expression in word or act in waking life. But if we regard them as channels of revelation the case is altered.

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A man like the Sadhu has led a life of thought and prayer and of willing suffering for Christ's sake, which has remolded him to the very depths of heart and soul; in him subconscious and conscious alike have become completely consecrated to the Master; in him the tiger and the ape are all but subjugated; yet more important, even in ecstatic trance mind and soul are still directed wholly upon Christ, so that with him the mechanism of thought and of expression is Christ-controlled in Ecstasy as it is in normal life.

To him Ecstasy may not only be without danger but may bring actual profit. It is not so with the rest of us. The light that we must walk by is the light of conscious thought, with prayer and meditation. The specious Visions and Revelations which come by the easy path of a facile trance-practice, whether in ourselves or others, we are mistaken to admire, we are demented if we seek.

The story is told that Said, the servant of Muhammad, once came to his master with an enthusiastic account of an Ecstasy he had enjoyed:

In that hour All past eternity and all to come Was gathered up in one stupendous Now, —Let understanding marvel as it may, Where men see clouds, on the ninth heaven I gaze, And see the throne of God. All heaven and hell Are bare to me and all men's destinies. The heavens and earth, they vanish at my glance, The dead rise at my look. I tear the veil From aU the worlds, and in the hall of heaven I sit me central, radiant as the Sun. "

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Then spake the Prophet, "Friend, thy steed is warm:

Spur him no more. The mirror in thy heart

Did slip its fleshly case, now put it up—

Hide it once more, or thou wilt come to harm. "