A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



Nothing can be more interesting than the ex 

 perience of a man who has lived for years on the 

 periphery of life, and is suddenly plunged into 

 the dark of his own being. It is not unlike that 

 other experience which most of us have had at 

 some time, of waking up in a dark room at night 

 and feeling that cold shadow of consciousness 

 creeping upon us that we do not know where we 

 are. In such experiences you try to remember 

 where the window is or was, you try to make 

 memory take the place of cognition, and under 

 take to reconstruct your place in the universe. 

 But for the time being you have lost your own 

 trail. Then there is a slight cold shudder in the 

 soul for a moment. A voice cries out, &quot; I am 

 lost.&quot; It is only a passing spasm of the sub- 

 consciousness, but you never forget it. I think, 

 myself, it is a prescient apprehension by the soul, 

 and pre-figures in a dumb way the experience 

 that awaits all souls when they pass from one 

 condition of existence to another. I recall that 

 once, at what purported to be a spiritual seance, 

 an unexpected message was received from what 

 claimed to be a spirit one who had been a very 

 dissolute, but withal a very lovable man. It 

 came among a number of incoherent, impossible, 

 and puerile messages, and threw a momentary 

 chill on the party. The question that had been 

 put was, &quot; Where are you, Bob ? &quot; and the 

 answer was, &quot; Wandering in the cold and dark 

 between time and eternity.&quot; 



A man can try the dark-cell experiment by 

 100 



