The Story of my Heart

I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspira­tions filled me. I found them in the grass fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, at sunrise, and in the night. There was a deeper meaning every­where. The sun burned with it, the broad front of morning beamed with it; a deep feeling entered me while gazing at the sky in the azure noon, and in the star-lit evening.—' The Story of my Heart.'1



Look at another person while liv­ing; the soul is not visible, only the body which it animates. Therefore, merely because after death the soul is not visible is no demonstration that it does not still live. The condition of being unseen is the same condition which occurs while the body is living-, so that intrinsically there is nothing exceptional, or supernatural, in the life of the soul after death.—'The Story of my Heart.'

My soul has never been, and never can be, dipped in time. Time has never existed, and never will; it is a purely artificial arrange­ment. It is eternity now, it always was eternity, and always will be. By no possible means could I get into time if I tried. I am in eternity now, and must there remain. Haste not, be at rest, this Now is eternity. Because the idea of time has left my mind—if ever it had any hold on it—to me the man interred in the tumulus is living now as I live. We are both in eternity. There is no separation—no past; eternity, the Now, is continuous. When all the stars have revolved they only produce Now again. The continuity of Now is for ever.—' The Story of my Heart.'

As I move about in the sunshine I feel in the midst of the super­natural: in the midst of im­mortal things. It is impossible to wrest the mind down to the same laws that rule pieces of timber, water, or earth. They do not control the soul, however rigidly they may bind matter.—'The Story of my Heart.’

The air, the sunlight, the night, all that surrounds me seems crowded with inexpressible powers, with the influence of souls, or existences, so that I walk in the midst of immortal things.—' The Story of my Heart.'

Sometimes I have concentrated myself, and driven away by con­tinued will all sense of outward appearances, looking straight with the full power of my mind inwards on myself. I find 'I' am there; an ‘I’ do not wholly understand or know, something is there distinct from earth and timber, from flesh and bones. Recognising it, I feel on the margin of a life unknown, very near, almost touching it: on the verge of powers which if I could grasp would give me an immense breadth of existence, and ability to execute what I now only conceive; most probably of far more than that. To see that 'I' is to know that I am surrounded with im­mortal things. If, when I die, that ‘I’ also dies, and becomes extinct, still even then I have had the exaltation of these ideas.—' The Story of my Heart.'

There is so much beyond all that has ever yet been im­agined. As I write these words, in the very moment, I feel that the whole air, the sunshine out yonder lighting up the ploughed earth, the distant sky, the circumambient ether, and that far space, is full of soul-secrets, soul-life, things outside the experience of all the ages.— 'The Story of my Heart.'

Twelve thousand years since the Caveman stood at the mouth of his cavern and gazed out at the night and the stars. He looked again and saw the sun rise beyond the sea. He reposed in the noontide heat under the shade of the trees, he closed his eyes and looked into himself. He was face to face with the earth, the sun, the night; face to face with himself. There was nothing between; no wall of written tradition; no built-up system of culture—his naked mind was confronted by naked earth. He made three idea-discoveries, wrest­ing- them from the unknown: the exist­ence of his soul, immortality, the deity. Now to-day, as I write, I stand in exactly the same position as the Caveman. Written tradition, systems of culture, modes of thought, have for me no exist­ence. If ever they took any hold of my mind it must have been very slight; they have long ago been erased. From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day, the trees, the hills, from my own soul—from these I think. I stand this moment at the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with nature, face to face with the supernatural, with myself. My naked mind confronts the unknown. —'The Story of my Heart.'

Is there any theory, philosophy, or creed, is there any system or cul­ture, any formulated method able to meet and satisfy each separate item of this agitated pool of human life? By which they may be guided, by which hope, by which look forward? Not a mere illusion of the craving heart-something real, as real as the solid walls of fact against which, like drifted seaweed, they are dashed; something to give each separate personality sun­shine and a flower in its own existence now; something to shape this million-handed labour to an end and outcome that will leave more sunshine and more flowers to those who must succeed? Something real now, and not in the spirit-land; in this hour now, as I stand and the sun burns. Can any creed, philosophy, system, or culture endure the test and remain unmolten in this fierce focus of human life? ... Full well aware that all has failed, yet, side by side with the sadness of that knowledge, there lives on in me an unquenchable belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet something to be found, something real, something to give each separate personality sunshine and flowers in its own existence now. Something to shape this million-handed labour to an end and outcome, leaving accumulated sunshine and flowers to those who shall succeed. It must be dragged forth by might of thought from the immense forces of the universe.—'The Story of my Heart.'

Of all the inventions of casuistry with which man for ages has in various ways manacled him­self and stayed his own advance, there is none equally potent with the supposi­tion that nothing more is possible. Once well impress on the mind that it has already all, that advance is impossible because there is nothing further, and it is chained like a horse to an iron pin in the ground. It is the most deadly—the most fatal poison of the mind. No such casuistry has ever for a moment held me, but still, if permitted, the constant routine of house-life, the same work, the same thought in the work, the little circumstances regularly recurring, will dull the keenest edge of thought. By daily pilgrimage, I escaped from it back to the sun.—'The Story of my Heart.'

The soul throbs like the sea for a larger life. No thought which I have ever had has satisfied my soul.—'The Story of my Heart.'

The pettiness of house life— chairs and tables—and the pettiness of observances, the petty necessity of useless labour, useless because productive of nothing, chafe me the year through. I want to be always in company with the sun, and sea, and earth. These and the stars by night are my natural companions.—'The Story of my Heart.'

O beautiful human life! Tears come in my eyes as I think of it. So beautiful, so inexpressibly beautiful! . . . How willingly I would strew the paths of all with flowers; how beautiful a de­light to make the world joyous! The song should never be silent, the dance never still, the laugh should sound like water which runs for ever.—' The Story of my Heart.'
THE credit given by the un­thinking to the statement that all affairs are directed has been the bane of the world since the days of the Egyptian papyri and the origin of superstition. So long as men firmly believe that everything is fixed for them, so long is progress impossible. If you argue yourself into the belief that you cannot walk to a place, you cannot walk there; but if you start, you can walk there easily.—'The Story of my Heart.'

I MYSELF maintain that the mind of man is practically infinite. It can understand anything brought before it. It has not the power of its own motion to bring everything before it, but when anything is brought it is understood. It is like sitting in a room with one window: you cannot compel everything to pass the window, but whatever does pass is seen. It is like a magnifying glass, which magnifies and explains everything brought into its focus.—'The Story of my Heart.'

SO wedded and so confirmed is the world in its narrow grove of self, so stolid and so complacent under the immense weight of misery, so callous to its own possibilities, and so grown to its chains, that I almost despair to see it awakened.—' The Story of my Heart.'

I verily believe that the earth in one year produces enough food to last for thirty. Why, then, have we not enough? Why do people die of starvation, or lead a miserable existence on the verge of it? Why have millions upon millions to toil from morning to evening- just to gain a mere crust of bread? Because of the absolute lack of organisation by which such labour should produce its effect, the absolute lack of distribution, the absolute lack even of the very idea that such things are possible, Nay, even to mention such things, to say that they are possible, is criminal with many. Madness could hardly go farther.—' The Story of my Heart.'

At this hour, out of thirty-four millions who inhabit this country, two-thirds—say twenty-two millions—live within thirty years of that abominable institution the poor-house. That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet 'pauper' is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the 'pauper'—O inexpressibly wicked word! it is the well-to-do who are the criminal classes. It matters not in the least if the poor be improvident, or drunken, or evil in any way. Food and drink, roof and clothes, are the inalienable right of every child born into the light. If the world does not provide it freely—not as a grudging- gift but as a right, as a son of the house sits down to breakfast—then is the world mad. But the world is not mad, only in ignorance—an interested ignorance, kept up by strenuous exer­tions, from which infernal darkness it will, in course of time, emerge, marvel­ling at the past as a man wonders at and glories in the light who has escaped from blindness.—' The Story of my Heart.'

We must endeavour to under­stand the crookedness and unfamiliar curves of the conditions of life. Beyond that still there are other ideas. Never, never rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider one is still possible. For my thought is like a hyperbola that continually widens ascending.—' The Story of my Heart.'

A river runs itself clear dur­ing the night, and in sleep thought becomes pellucid. All the hurrying to and fro, the unrest and stress, the agitation and confusion subside. Like a sweet pure spring, thought pours forth to meet the light, and is illumined to its depths. The dawn at my window ever causes a desire for larger thought, the recognition of the light at the moment of waking kindles afresh the wish for a broad day of the mind. There is a certainty that there are yet ideas further, and greater—that there is still a limitless beyond. I know at that moment that there is no limit to the things that may be yet in material and tangible shape besides the im­material perceptions of the soul. The dim white light of the dawn speaks it. This prophet which has come with its wonders to the bedside of every human being- for so many thousands of years faces me once again with the upheld finger of light. Where is the limit to that physical sign?—'The Story of my Heart.’

At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gaz­ing at the sky up through the boughs of an oak.
Here a beautiful star shines clearly; here a constellation is hidden by a branch; a universe by a leaf. Some mental instrument or organon is required to enable us to distinguish between the leaf which may be removed and a real void: when to cease to look in one direction, and to work in another.—'The Story of my Heart.'

Could we employ the ocean as a lens, and force truth from the sky, even then I think there would be much more beyond.—'The Story of my Heart.'

Before a bridge is built, or a structure erected, or an inter-oceanic canal made, there must be a plan, and before a plan the thought in the mind. So that it is correct to say the mind bores tunnels through the mountains, bridges the rivers, and con­structs the engines which are the pride of the world.—' The Story of my Heart.'

So great is the value of the soul that it seems to me, if the soul lived and received its aspirations it would not matter if the material uni­verse melted away as snow. Many turn aside the instant the soul is mentioned, and I sympathise with them in one sense: they fear lest, if they acknowledge it, they will be fettered by mediaeval conditions. My contention is that the restrictions of the mediaeval era should entirely be cast into oblivion, but the soul recognised and employed. Instead of slurring over the soul I desire to see it at its highest perfection.—' The Story of my Heart.'

The restriction of thought to purely mechanical grooves blocks progress in the same way as the restrictions of mediaeval superstition. Let the wind think, dream, imagine: let it have perfect freedom. To shut out the soul is to put us back more than twelve thousand years. Just as outside light, and the knowledge gained from light, there are, I think, other mediums from which, in times to come, intelligence will be obtained, so outside the mental and the spiritual
ideas we now possess I believe there exists a whole circle of ideas. In the conception of the idea that there are others, I lay claim to another idea. — 'The Story of my Heart.'

Give me life strong and full as the brimming ocean; give me thoughts wide as its plain; give me a soul beyond these. Sweet is the bitter sea by the shore where the faint blue pebbles are lapped by the green-grey wave, where the wind-quiver­ing foam is loth to leave the lashed stone. Sweet is the bitter sea, and the clear green in which the gaze seeks the soul, looking through the glass into itself. The sea thinks for me as I listen and ponder: the sea thinks, and every boom of the wave repeats my prayer. — 'The Story of my Heart.'

My soul cannot reach to its full desire of prayer. I need no earth, or sea, or sun to think my thought. If my thought-part—the psyche—were entirely separated from the body, and from the earth, I should of myself desire the same. In itself my soul desires; my existence, my soul-existence is in itself my prayer, and so long as it exists so long will it pray that I may have the fullest soul-life.— 'The Story of my Heart.'