YES, I have seen angels, if by angels you mean spiritual beings who have never dwelt as men upon the earth.
As a man is to a rock, so is an angel to a man in vividness of life. If we ever experienced that state of etheric joy, we have lost it through long association with matter. Can we ever regain it? Perhaps. The event is in our hand.
Shall I tell you of one whom I call the Beautiful Being? If it has a name in heaven, I have not heard it. Is the Beautiful Being man or woman? Sometimes it seems to be one, sometimes the other. There is a mystery here which I cannot fathom.
One night I seemed to be reclining upon a moonbeam, which means that the poet which dwells in all men was awake in me. I seemed to be reclining upon a moonbeam, and ecstasy filled my heart. For the moment I had escaped the clutches of Time, and was living in that etheric quietude which is merely the activity of rapture raised to the last degree. I must have been enjoying a foretaste of that paradoxical state which the wise ones of the East call Nirvana.
I was vividly conscious of the moonbeam and of myself, and in myself seemed to be everything else in the universe. It was the nearest I ever came to a realisation of that supreme declaration, "I am."
The past and the future seemed equally present in the moment. Had a voice whispered that it was yesterday, I should have acquiesced in the assertion; had I been told that it was a million years hence, I should have been also assentive. But whether it was really yesterday or a million years hence mattered not in the least. Perhaps the Beautiful Being only comes to those for whom the moment and eternity are one. I heard a voice say:
"Brother, it is I."
There was no question in my mind as to who had spoken. "It is I" can only be uttered in such a voice by one whose individuality is so vast as to be almost universal, one who has dipped in the ocean of the All, yet who knows the minute by reason of its own inclusiveness.
Standing before me was the Beautiful Being, radiant in its own light. Had it been less lovely I might have gasped with wonder; but the very perfection of its form and presence diffused an atmosphere of calm. I marvelled not, because the state of my consciousness was marvel. I was lifted so far above the commonplace that I had no standard by which to measure the experience of that moment.
Imagine youth immortalised, the fleeting made eternal. Imagine the bloom of a child's face and the eyes of the ages of knowledge. Imagine the brilliancy of a thousand lives concentrated in those eyes, and the smile upon the lips of a love so pure that it asks no answering love from those it smiles upon.
But the language of earth cannot describe the unearthly, nor could the understanding of man grasp in a moment those joys which the Beautiful Being revealed to me in that hour of supreme life. For the possibilities of existence have been widened for me, the meanings of the soul have deepened. Those who behold the Beautiful Being are never the same again as they were before. They may forget for a time, and lose in the business of living the magic of that presence; but whenever they do remember, they are caught up again on the wings of the former rapture.
It may happen to one who is living upon the earth; it may happen to one in the spaces between the stars; but the experience must be the same when it comes to all; for only to one in the state in which it dwells could the Beautiful Being reveal itself at all.
A SONG OF THE BEAUTIFUL BEING
When you hear a rustling in the air, listen again: there
may be something there.
When you feel a warmth mysterious and lovely in the
heart, there may be something there, something
sent to you from a warm and lovely source.
When a joy unknown fills your being, and your soul
goes out, out ... toward some loved mystery, you
know not where, know that the mystery itself is
reaching toward you with warm and loving, though
invisible, arms.
We who live in the invisible are not invisible to each
other.
There are tender colours here and exquisite forms, and
the eye gloats on beauty never seen upon the earth.
Oh, the joy of simple life to be, and to sing in your soul
all day as the bird sings to its mate!
For you are singing to your mate whenever your soul
sings.
Did you fancy it was only the spring-time that thrilled
you and moved you to listen to the rustling of
wings?
The spring-time of the heart is all time, and the autumn
may never come.
Listen! When the lark sings, he sings to you. When
the waters sing, they sing to you.
And as your heart rejoices, there is always another heart
somewhere that responds; and the soul of the listening
heavens grows glad with the mother joy.
I am glad to be here, I am glad to be there. There is
beauty wherever I go.
Can you guess the reason, children of earth?
Come out and play with me in the daisy fields of space.
I will wait for you at the corner where the four
winds meet.
You will not lose your way, if you follow the gleam at
the end of the garden of hope.
There is music also beyond the roar of the earth as it
swishes through space:
There is music in keys unknown to the duller ears of
the earth, and harmonies whose chords are souls
attuned to each other.
Listen.... Do you hear them?
Oh, the ears are made for hearing, and the eyes are
made for seeing, and the heart is made for loving!
The hours go by and leave no mark, and the years are
as sylphs that dance on the air and leave no footprints,
and the centuries march solemn and slow.
But we smile, for joy is also in the solemn tread of the
centuries.
Joy, joy everywhere. It is for you and for me, and for
you as much as for me.
Will you meet me out where the four winds meet?
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