Visionary & Mystical Experience

I grow more and more what they call a mystic. Nothing interests me except listening for the secret harmonies of nature, I cannot bear plan art, yet I see how godlike they are.

The oar has fallen from my hand, the sail has sent away. I have no means to steer my boat. There shines the polestar, I keep my eye fixed upon it. — friendly waves, will ye not drift me to the needed heaven!

If I meet men for a brief time, they check and veil the music like draperies near an instrument, but if they stay near me long I fill them till they vibrate.

But this music is sweet in my soul to very pain. I cannot utter it, and the hour when I should do so seems afar, yet it ravells my heart painfully, Thoughts move and push forth from my heart like young birds from the nest, but as yet, if any tries to take wing it falls back into the nest baffled and trembling with cold.

There is no need of an Inferno, it will be punishment enough for every fault, if we never become creators!

Three forms approached. Two of them well I knew, One loved, the third I could not well discern, But ’twas suspected from his company. He, too, was of the stern, and yet serene, Scholastic, stern, and philosophic kind, Whose calm eyes deeply see, yet ne’er see all. Whose grave lips wisely speak, yet not all wise.

On me they smiled, (The one I loved with Saadi’s silvery beam) And yet with elder air as who should say “Sweet child, dear child, but yet a child, thou art, A princely child, but we thy uncles are, And we know not that we will let thee reign;” Yet friendly was their look in this disdain, And I cared not that they should give me more.

But then the form drew near. So radiant rapturous in other dreams, Electric flashing on the waking eye. But now so still, so calm, so almost sad, Yet beautiful, how purely beautiful! My inmost heart bent to the purity.

I know not what was said, except, he said, That the eighteenth of April was the day That gave him birth; and then all passed away, Yet left me comforted in my lone life, Yet gave me energy to fill that life Anew…

Ellery and I had a good afternoon at Mt Auburn. He was wondering why men had expressed so little of any worth about death. I said I thought they attached too much importance to it. On this subject I always feel that I can speak with some certainty, having been on the verge of bodily dissolution. I felt at that time disengaged from the body, hovering and calm. And in moments of profound thought or feeling, or when after violent pain in the head my body exhausted loses power to have me in. I have felt changes more important than then.

I believe that the mere death of the body has no great importance except when it is in no sense accidental, ie when the mind by operations not vie to it has gradually cast aside its covering and is ready for a new one, But this is seldom the case, persons die very generally not as a natural thing, but from extraneous causes, then it must be a change only one degree more important than going to sleep.

for what the mind wants to develop it, it must have here or elsewhere. A death from love would be perfectly natural,

Now that I have discerned law; let me persist in venerating it, thus alone may I be permitted to return, only by bearing the full weight of the cross, and when sinking under the anguish still saying “Weep not for me”, but for your children which do not yet see the truth can I be redeemed from Cain o great transgression.

Each moment is an age between me, and the consummation of my existence, I have realized the phenomenal nature of outward action, and can there find refuge and rest never again, Only by deepening the fountains of Spirit can I obtain any peace, At present I can only wait as I may. I die daily, yet cannot plunge down to rise again into heaven.

I wandered in the subterranean scapes, the light was darkness; my feet bled with the sharp stones I would not see to avoid; chills pierced my ardent breast; cold and foreign substances slid on either side from my seeking hands. Gleams of light came sometimes only to show me that the path wound on and on. Suddenly a wide blaze of meteoric light showed me the cave with its diamond pillars and river path, which had been waiting for ages the seeker who must try the depths as well as scale the heights I looked around a moment at the glittering walls, then plunged in with brow serene; the waters were cold but I did not shrink…

A daily Death, dread Agony, Privation, dry Sterility; Who is well entered in these wayes Fittst man to read my fifty layes.

I struggle now as one in a dream in this pit of sorrow, but I have the sense that each struggle draws me deeper down —

Sleep is all the relief I have but every night I sleep many hours, and sweetest sleep, as an innocent captive condemned to the stake. In dreams the mind loses its dulness, and flies to homes of healthful joy, Life is born out of death. Last night I was in a castle, the castle was girt about with snows and morasses, across which was no path for the world, but on the hearth within a fire burned steadily, domestic gods smiled benignly…

Then I was with Abraham on the plains of Mamre, this was a dream worth noting I never even thought of the situation before. The flocks lay white and tender beneath sun-clouds get fairer, the patriarch stood with brow broad, pale, uplifted to heaven, forms, reclined around in reverent peace, the angels came, to me not unknown, they greeted me also; – in this vision my individuality passed wholly, it is the greatest refreshment I have had this dreadful month…

I feel within myself an immense power, but I cannot bring it out. I stand as barren vine stock from which no grape will swell though the richest wine is slumbering in its root, I never doubt my eventual perfection, but I doubt whether this life be my climate, or will ripen my fruit.