An Astral Prophet
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Every educated Englishman has heard the name
of General Yermoloff, one of the great military heroes
of this age; and if at all familiar with the history of
the Caucasian wars, he must be acquainted with the exploits
of one of the chief conquerors of the land of those impregnable
fastnesses where Shamil and his predecessors have defied for years
the skill and strategy of the Russian armies.
Be it as it may, the strange event herein narrated by the
Caucasian hero himself, may interest students of psychology.
That which follows is a verbatim translation from V.
Potto's Russian work "The War in Caucasus." In
volume II, chapter The period of Yermoloff (pp.
829-30-3I and 832) one reads these lines:
Silently and imperceptibly glided away at Moscow the last days
allotted to the hero. On April the 19th, 186I,
he died in his 85th year, seated in his favorite arm-chair,
with one hand on the table, the other on his knee;
but a few minutes before, in accordance with an old habit
of his, he was tapping the floor with his foot.
It is impossible to better express the feelings of Russia at the
news of this death than by quoting the obituary notice from the
(Russian) Daily "Caucasus," which did not say
a word more than was deserved.
On April the l2th, at 11¼ a.m., at Moscow,
the Artillery General, famous throughout Russia – Alexéy
Petrovitch Yermoloff, breathed his last. Every Russian
knows the name; it is allied with the most brilliant records
of our national glory: Valutino, Borodino,
Kulm, Paris, and the Caucasus, will be ever
transmitting the name of the hero, – the pride and ornament
of the Russian army and nation. We will not enumerate the
services of Yermoloff. His name and titles are:
a true son of Russia, in the full significance of the
term.
It is a curious fact that his death did not escape its own legend,
one of a strange and mystical character. This is what a
friend who knew Yermoloff well, writes of him:
Once, when leaving Moscow, I called on Yermoloff
to say good bye, and found myself unable to conceal my
emotion at parting.
"Fear not," he said to me, "we will
yet meet; I shall not die before your return."
This was eighteen months before his death.
"In life and death God alone is the Master!" I observed.
"And I tell you most positively that my death will not occur
in a year, but a few months later" – he answered,
"Come with me" – and with these words he led me into
his study; where, getting out of a locked chest
a written sheet of paper, he placed it before me,
and asked – "whose handwriting is this?" "Yours,"
I said. "Read it then." I complied.
It was a kind of memorandum, a record of dates,
since the year when Yermoloff was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant
Colonel, showing, as in a programme, every
significant event that was to happen in his life, so full
of such events. He followed me in my reading, and
when I was at the last paragraph, he covered the last line
with his hand. "This you need not read,"
he said. "On this line, the year, the
month, and the day, of my death are given.
All that you have read was written by me beforehand, and
has come to pass to the smallest details, and this is how
I came to write it.
"When I was yet a young Lieutenant-Colonel I was sent on
some business to a small district town. My lodging consisted
of two rooms – one for the servants, the other for my personal
use. There was no access into the latter but through the
former. Once, late at night, as I sat writing
at my desk, I fell into a reverie, when suddenly
on lifting my eyes I saw standing before me across the desk a
stranger, a man, judging by his dress, belonging
to the lower classes of society. Before I had time to ask
him who he was or what he wanted, the stranger said,
'Take your pen and write.' Feeling myself under the influence
of an irresistible power, I obeyed in silence. Then
he dictated to me all that was going to happen to me during
my whole life, concluding with the date and hour of my
death. With the last word he vanished from the spot.
A few minutes elapsed before I regained my full consciousness,
when, jumping from my seat, I rushed into the adjoining
room, which the stranger could not by any means avoid passing
through. Opening the door, I saw my clerk writing
by the light of a candle, and my orderly lying asleep on
the floor across the entrance door, which door was securely
locked and bolted. To my question 'who was it who has just
been here?' – the astonished clerk answered, 'No one.'
To this day I have never told this to any one. I knew beforehand
that while some would suspect me of having invented the whole
thing, others would see in me a man subject to hallucinations.
But for myself, personally, the whole thing is a
most undeniable fact, an objective and palpable fact,
the proof of which is in this very written document."
The last date found on the latter proved, after the death
of the General, to be the correct one. He died on
the very day and hour of the year recorded in his own handwriting.
Yermoloff is buried at Orel. An inextinguishable lamp,
made of a fragment of a bomb-shell, burns before his tomb.
On the cast-iron of the shell these words are wrought by an unskilled
hand, "The Caucasian soldiers who served on the Goonib."l The ever burning lamp is established through the zeal and
grateful love of the lower ranks of the Caucasian Army,
who collected among themselves from their poor pittance (copeck
by copeck, verily!) the needed sum. And this simple
monument is more valued and admired than would be the richest
mausoleum. There is no other monument to Yermoloff in Russia.
But the proud and lofty rocks of the Caucasus are the imperishable
pedestal on which every true Russian will always behold the majestic
image of General Yermoloff, surrounded by the aureole of
an everlasting and immortal glory.
And now for a few words about the nature of the apparition.
No doubt every word of General Yermoloff's concise and clear narrative
is true to a dot. He was pre-eminently a matter-of-fact,
sincere, and clear-headed man, with not the slightest
taint of mysticism about him, a true soldier, honorable,
and straightforward. Moreover, this episode of his
life was testified to by his elder son, known to the present
writer and her family personally, for many years during
our residence at Tiflis. All this is a good warrant for
the genuineness of the phenomenon, testified to furthermore
by the written document left by the General, bearing the
correct and precise date of his death. And now what about
the mysterious visitor? Spiritualists will, of course,
see in it a disembodied Entity, a "materialized Spirit."
It will be claimed that a human Spirit alone could prophecy
a whole series of events and see so clearly in Futurity.
So we say, too. But having agreed on that point,
we diverge in all the rest; i.e., while
Spiritualists would say that the apparition was that of a Spirit
distinct from and independent of the Higher Ego of the General,
we maintain precisely the reverse, and say it was that
Ego. Let us argue dispassionately.
Where is the raison d'être, the rationale
of such apparition of prophecy; and why should you
or I, for instance, once dead, appear to
a perfect stranger for the pleasure of informing him of that which
was to happen to him? Had the General recognized in the visitor
some dear relative, his own father, mother,
brother, or bosom friend, and received from him
some beneficent warning, slight proof as it would have
been, there would still be something in it to hang such
theory upon. But it was nothing of the kind: simply
"a stranger, a man, judging by his dress,
belonging to the lower classes of society." If so,
why should the soul of a poor disembodied tradesman, or
a laborer, trouble itself to appear to a mere stranger?
And if the "Spirit" only assumed such appearance,
then why this disguise and masquerading, such post-mortem
mystification, at all? If such visits are made of a
"Spirit's" free will; if such revelations can
occur at the sweet pleasure of a disembodied Entity, and
independently of any established law of intercourse between the
two worlds – what can be the reason alleged for that particular
"Spirit" playing at soothsaying Cassandra with the General?
None whatever. To insist upon it, is simply to add
one more absurd and repulsive feature to the theory of "Spirit-visitation,"
and to throw an additional element of ridicule on the sacredness
of death. The materializing of an immaterial
Spirit – a divine Breath – by the Spiritualists, is on
a par with the anthropomorphizing of the Absolute, by the
Theologians. It is these two claims which have dug an almost
impassable abyss between the Theosophist-Occultists and the Spiritualists
on the one hand, and the Theosophists and the Church Christians
on the other.
And now this is how a Theosophist-Occultist would explain the
vision, in accordance with esoteric philosophy.
He would premise by reminding the reader that the Higher Consciousness
in us, with its sui generis laws and conditions
of manifestation, is still almost entirely terra incognita
for all (Spiritualists included) and the men of Science pre-eminently.
Then he would remind the reader of one of the fundamental teachings
of Occultism. He would say that besides the attribute of
divine omniscience in its own nature and sphere of action,
there exists in Eternity for the individual immortal Ego
neither Past nor Future, but only one everlasting
PRESENT. Now, once this doctrine
is admitted, or amply postulated, it becomes only
natural that the whole life, from birth to death,
of the Personality which that Ego informs, should be as
plainly visible to the Higher Ego as it is invisible to,
and concealed from, the limited vision of its temporary
and mortal Form. Hence, this is what must have happened
according to the Occult Philosophy.
The friend is told by General Yermoloff that while writing late
in the night he had suddenly fallen into a reverie,
when he suddenly perceived upon lifting the eyes a stranger
standing before him. Now that reverie was most likely a
sudden doze, brought on by fatigue and overwork,
during which a mechanical action of purely somnambulic character
took place. The Personality becoming suddenly alive
to the Presence of its Higher SELF,
the human sleeping automaton fell under the sway of the Individuality,
and forthwith the hand that had been occupied with writing for
several hours before resumed mechanically its task. Upon
awakening the Personality thought that the document before
him had been written at the dictation of a visitor whose voice
he had heard, whereas, in truth, he had been
simply recording the innermost thoughts – or shall we say knowledge – of
his own divine "Ego," a prophetic, because
all-knowing Spirit. The "voice" of the latter
was simply the translation by the physical memory, at the
instant of awakening, of the mental knowledge concerning
the life of the mortal man reflected on the lower by the Higher
consciousness. All the other details recorded by the
memory are as amenable to a natural explanation.
Thus, the stranger clothed in the raiments of a poor little
tradesman or laborer, who was speaking to him outside
of himself, belongs, as well as the "voice,"
to that class of well-known phenomena familiar to us as the association
of ideas and reminiscences in our dreams. The
pictures and scenes we see in sleep, the events we live
through for hours, days, sometimes for years in
our dreams, all this takes less time, in reality,
than is occupied by a flash of lightning during the instant of
awakening and the return to full consciousness. Of such
instances of the power and rapidity of fancy physiology gives
numerous examples. We rebel against the materialistic deductions
of modern science, but no one can controvert its facts,
patiently and carefully recorded throughout long years of experiments
and observations by its specialists, and these support
our argument. General Yermoloff had passed several days
previously holding an inquest in a small town, in which
official business he had probably examined dozens of men of the
poorer classes; and this explains his fancy – vivid as reality
itself – suggesting to his imagination the vision of a small tradesman.
Let us turn to the experiences and explanations of a long series
of philosophers and Initiates, thoroughly acquainted with
the mysteries of the Inner Self, before we father
upon "departed spirits" actions, motives for
which could never be explained upon any reasonable grounds.
1 "Goonib" is the name of the last stronghold
of the Circassians, on which the famous Murid Shamil
the Priest-Sovereign of the Mountaineers was conquered and captured
by the Russians, after years of a desperate struggle.
Goonib is a gigantic rock, deemed for a long time impregnable
but finally stormed and ascended by the Russian soldiers at an
enormous sacrifice of life. Its capture put virtually an
end to the war in the Caucasus. a struggle which had lasted
for over sixty years, and assured its conquest.
[Ed. |