Violet Tweedale

“ The music fashioned the invisible link, and I was back again on a hillside where the mimosa grew in native abundance. Now, one thinks of France only as a hideous battle plain, but memory, the true dispensator of time, is never bound by years. She keeps ever fresh, in glowing colors, those ideal moments that gather up the utter joys of life into one divine sheaf of memory. [Pg 2]
It is not only for its great uses that we must have memory, but for its joys. It rends the gray veil shrouding present existence, and shows us life as what it really is. ”

“ However great its aspirations the soul but looks out upon an illimitable horizon, and sees the human pilgrimage as a long Emmæus walk, with hearts burning by the way. Always must there be mystery in life, because life is spiritual, not material. The presence of mystery in life is the presence of God, and the infinity of God shows that mystery must always exist.
Such glimpses beyond the veil are all transfiguring. They exalt the heart in a single flash to a glow point, and show the soul of the Universe in the incandescent crucible of the eternal. ”

“ Man's ingratitude to man is one of the cruelest tests imposed upon the soul of idealism. The soul that can bear it without a tinge of cynicism has risen to mighty heights.
Such grandeur of soul was possessed by Elsie Inglis. So impregnated was she with pure love of humanity, that when her own country virtually turned its back upon her, this irreparable disgrace, brought upon themselves by her own people, cast no shadow upon her soul. In the years before the war I often noted her lovely aura as I sat amongst an audience, and watched her on a platform fighting woman's battle. ”

“ The vision left me with a blank sense of utter disillusionment and failure. Nothing in me was finished or complete. My expression suggested a character which was horribly crude, imperfect and rudimentary. Looking at myself afterwards in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that it lied, or that in waking life I wear a mask.
It is salutary to behold one's spiritual portrait, a thing not visible to the mind alone but to the physical sight. In a flash comes the knowledge that dwelling in us are forces, not yet grasped by mortal mind, that cry for recognition. ”

“ Fashioned into the emblem of our Nation it becomes a sacred symbol, taken kneeling like a sacrament, which indeed it has become. What better shroud could any man ask for?
I am sorry that I have had no opportunity of seeing President Wilson's aura, the man who has turned his face towards a heavenly ideal, and is scattering the seed amongst all the nations. When a man sets out on such a long radiant path, he will carry visibly in the daylight an illuminated brow. He has brought to us the vision without which the people perish. ”

“ In the great silences, life, as we know it, is remote, and the immensity is a magic that draws the soul, fusing it in a strange passion, so that whatever fulfillment our existence holds is summed in that hour of solitude.
A pale wash of translucent gold is thrown across land and sea. On the far horizon a ship is set in relief, against a core of crimson flame which heralds the sun. A dove coos softly, and on a bare branch a thrush thrills in waves of sound, seeking in the universal ether to reproduce its divine instinct in other feathered hearts that are attuned to its melody. ”

“ We are all of us, in this world, strangers and pilgrims, and to each human being, in turn, and in varied ways, comes the knowledge, "A stranger with Thee and a sojourner as all my Fathers were."
Like ships that pass in the night "we exchange signals with one another," and pass on our different ways through the ocean of life. I think it is the sea that most clearly brings home to me the transitory nature of our pilgrimage. Leaning over the side of a ship in mid ocean, and watching a trail of smoke from another ship on the horizon, I am always impelled to wonder about its human cargo. ”

“ Behind all this lies the master passion of the born mystic for liberation. The constant ache and urge for real freedom, and power to be victorious over all circumstances. At home in all scenes, restful in all fortunes. There is the urge of the soul for universality of contact with all humanity, independent of race, color or creed. The urge of the spirit to smash the confines which pinion it down to earth. ”

“ When alone he racks his brains in vain. He is furious with himself for having heard the scream, and tells himself he must be "going dotty." He is puzzled, baffled, irritated, but more determined than ever to "stick it out." Who can the "joker" be who is demoralizing his household, who has even dared to lock him into his own room? He thinks of his wife and family, and of their shattered nerves; he thinks of his terrified servants, and of his dog, which can no longer be persuaded to enter the house. He feels he must look elsewhere for the disturber of his peace. ”

“ Whilst sitting in solitude it is interesting to let one's thoughts slip back to childhood, and trace the present life in the mirror of the old. I discover that in the immediate now there is nothing new, but only that which has its symbol in the old. I seem to get only the much clearer vision of what once was vague and cloudy, or wholly unconsidered by the mind of youth. [Pg 7]
In that garden of memory I can set old happenings in a new light, and measure my slow footprints in the age-long journey behind me. Two facts emerge from out such musings. ”

“ Such dawns beckon imperiously to the pilgrim, to leave the shelter of the roof-tree, and come forth to walk with the immortals whilst the Morning Star, the light-bringer, still shines, a white gold radiance in the heavens, and the distance is still dissolved in veils of pearl and opal.
Such daybreaks always rouse in me the urge for wider thought, for the broad day of the mind. Out of the limitless beyond comes the certain knowledge of a something unimagined, lying just outside human thought. I am sure there is so much not yet imagined, something more than mere existence. ”

“ If God is love, who could reconcile with any comprehensive idea of justice and law in the world the lives and experiences of common humanity? How reconcile the births taking place in one single day in their vast diversity, by the hell for the criminal, born, nurtured and killed in crime, who never had a chance, and Heaven for the happily [Pg 136] born, who need never have a temptation? What is the Divine Law lying behind this seeming hideous injustice? Undoubtedly the continuous evolution of the soul in bodies of matter. ”

“ They are glimpses gained at some great altitude, from which I can look down on the mortal pageant and behold mysteries in which I take no part, but by which I am encircled, as an island, by infinity. Such are luminous and splendid moments, when the soul beholds the world in its real mystic beauty. It is the hour of transfiguration, in which the veil drops from the heart and the film from the eyes, so that we see life as God means it to be. ”

“ There is always for the mystic the unmeasured immensity of soul land to explore, that Great Beyond and within which is infinite, eternal, and of which we are all a part.
Ah! but it may be said, all are not mystics, to which I would reply, all who desire can be mystics. For what, after all, is a mystic, but one who enters into possession of the inner life? One who becomes fully aware of her self-consciousness, and who gains thereby new faculties and enlightenment. ”

“ I have never been one of those timid women who are frightened by their own shadows. I require to be face to face with a tangible danger before I put faith in its existence, yet, I confess that at that moment I knew what actual fear meant. My heart beat thickly, then seemed to stop, and I was instantly bathed in cold perspiration. I knew that the servants were all in bed two flights of stairs below me, and my husband was out of London, so no calling for help was any use. ”

“ I was dimly conscious of human voices in the mews, of a window being thrown open. My cry had awakened other sleepers. I left my window open, and let the blind fall before it. Then I crept softly across to the opposite side of the room, whence the dying sound proceeded. The victim was almost dead. I could hear nothing but a gasping, rattling sigh, and then silence. The silence of death.
I was roused from my trance of horror by the measured tread of a policeman outside. ”

“ To offer Elsie Inglis a medal would have been a sacrilege. "Hands off such souls as hers," is the cry one's every instinct rings forth to the "bauble worshipers" of this world. Besides, and this is a very great besides, those who go with a rainbow about their heads are not destined for earthly honors. They have taken the great step, they have received the great Initiation, a jewel in the blazing crown of eternity, and for them no more are the laurel wreaths that perish. In justice to those throned on high on earth, the above should be remembered. ”

“ The stones were worn and grooved by the stream of human beings making their painful way to the foot of the Cross.
The atmosphere of Lourdes is very impressive to the Psychic. One breathes the concentrated essence of prayer. No one goes there who is not on prayer intent, and in the public streets, gardens and churches one comes across kneeling figures lost in Divine contemplation. No one heeds them; all are on a like mission, and sometimes men and women stand for hours with outstretched arms. Human crosses, oblivious to all, lost in a mystic rapture which takes count of neither time nor place. ”

“ No matter how skeptical, how resolutely material the tenants may be, the phenomena wear them down to a humble surrender at last. After all, what can people do but quit a residence which is constantly showing incontrovertible evidence that it is possessed by numerous unseen entities that defy analysis?
Every one is interested in getting rid of this weird disturbance, but how to do it? The skeptic is resolute in unmasking the fraud, but finds himself balked by intangibility. He hears the scream at his door, and rushes to arrest the miscreant, but sees no one to grapple with. ”

“ The vibrations were intensely strong, and still fresh and concentrated. I absorbed them so fully that still at times they steal back across the threshold of my subconsciousness, the vehicle which registers and retains all impressions.
During sleep, when one is off guard, the gate is often ajar, and old memories and incidents steal through, and range at will through the ordinary consciousness.
In daily, normal existence the mind is merely a whirlpool, but undoubtedly the criminal would concentrate mentally on every detail of her crime. ”

“ He liked to know the domestic conditions of those whom he honored with his friendship, and the first time I ever spoke to him, at a dance given by the Rothschilds in Piccadilly, I saw at once that the natural human simplicities of life absorbed him absolutely whilst under discussion. Though a man who would not tolerate a liberty, the easiest way to get on with him when alone, was to confide in him any personal difficulty, and to forget who he was, always providing that one had the good breeding to remember instantly that he was the king when speaking to him in public. ”

“ I have always found big audiences of the people very colorless in the main. Flashes of bright color would be apparent all over the hall, but there was no sustained glow. Whilst sitting on some one else's platform, often that of a great orator, I have marked exactly the same phenomenon. The soul of the people is still young and childlike. It has the indifference of extreme youth, the forgetfulness and ingratitude of extreme youth. ”

“ I have written of strange visitants from other realms, and of that vivid illumination which at moments lays bare the hidden springs of life, when the spirit emerges beyond the limit of human thought, and familiar things, beyond the horizon of life, and touches a sphere beyond immortality. It is a condition that the grave has nothing to do with, a beholding beyond the frontiers of the soul. ”

“ The contemplative mind beholds every day the passage of things invisible into sight, the transfer of the seen into the unseen, and all is natural. The life throb of the palpable world is a pulsation going forth every instant from the eternal energy, drawing out by an ethereal medium from the invisible and intangible, that which is visible and tangible. ”

“ I have had my vision, and I know. Therefore I am quite unmoved by criticism or ridicule.
I believe that what has come to me will come to all, and there is no need to hurry the process. We are simply a tiny part of a whole, which has neither beginning nor end. We live in a universe which is infinite in time and space, which has always existed in some form, and will go on in some form for ever. ”

“ What is that power which you still exert over those to whom your name is but a memory, but who still, when they think on you or look upon your pictured face, cry silently in their hearts for the lost House of Stuart? "Oh! waes me for Prince Charlie!"
One must be Scotch to understand that the Union did nothing to unite England and Scotland. To the Scottish plowman the Englishman is still a foreigner, whom he dislikes. Scotch and English servants do not work well in the same house. ”

“ Looking upon him in Court dress, in the royal [Pg 300] enclosure, on intimate terms with the great of the world, though perhaps not the great of the earth, knowing him to hold high office in the government, I marked the change. Then throwing back my mind to those poignant hours in the past, which he had created, I felt that nothing is too extraordinary to belong to the careers of some men; they live through several lives in one. Their Karma is so crowded with stirring events, in the working out of the past, in the makings of the future, that nothing human can be any longer strange to them. ”