"You have heard part of my story, that portion which I am commanded to
make known now, and you have learned how, by natural methods, I passed
by successive steps while in the body, to the door that death only, as
yet, opens to humanity. You understand also that, although of human
form, I am not as other men (for with me matter is subservient to mind),
and as you have promised, so you must act, and do my bidding concerning
the manuscript."
"But there is surely more to follow. You will tell me of what you saw
and experienced beyond the end of earth, within the possessions of
Etidorhpa. Tell me of that Unknown Country."
"No," he answered; "this is the end, at least so far as my connection
with you is concerned. You still question certain portions of my
narrative, I perceive, notwithstanding the provings I have given you,
and yet as time passes investigation will show that every word I have
read or uttered is true, historically, philosophically, and spiritually
(which you now doubt), and men will yet readily understand how the
seemingly profound, unfathomable phenomena I have encountered may be
verified. I have studied and learned by bitter experience in a school
that teaches from the outgoings of a deeper philosophy than human
science has reached, especially modern materialistic science which,
however, step by step it is destined to reach. And yet I have recorded
but a small part of the experiences that I have undergone. What I have
related is only a foretaste of the inexhaustible feast which, in the
wisdom expanse of the future, will yet be spread before man, and which
tempts him onward and upward. This narrative, which rests against the
beginning of my real story, the Unknown Country and its possibilities
should therefore incite to renewed exertions, both mental and
experimental, those permitted to review it. I have carried my history to
the point at which I can say to you, very soon afterward I gave up my
body temporarily, by a perfectly natural process, a method that man can
yet employ, and passed as a spiritual being into the ethereal spaces,
through those many mansions which I am not permitted to describe at this
time, and from which I have been forced unwillingly to return and take
up the semblance of my body, in order to meet you and record these
events. I must await the development and expansion of mind that will
permit men to accept this faithful record of my history before
completing the narrative, for men are yet unprepared. Men must seriously
consider those truths which, under inflexible natural laws, govern the
destiny of man, but which, if mentioned at this day can only be viewed
as the hallucinations of a disordered mind. To many this manuscript will
prove a passing romance, to others an enigma, to others still it will be
a pleasing study. Men are not now in a condition to receive even this
paper. That fact I know full well, and I have accordingly arranged that
thirty years shall pass before it is made public.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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