“I stood in a remote chamber at the top of a colossal building and the whole fabric beneath me was steadily growing into the air. Higher-higher-on, on fore ever in to the lonely dome of God’s infinite universe we towered ceaselessly. the years flew me, and from cycle to cycle, from life to life I careered mote in eternity and space.”
“Now through the street, with measured tread, an armed host passed by. The heavy beat of their footfalls, and the grinding of their brazen corslet-rings alone broke the silence, for among them there was no more speech nor music than in a battalion of the dead. It was the army of the ages going by into eternity. A god like sublimity swallowed up my soul. I was overwhelmed in a fathomless barathrum of time, but I leaned on God., and was immortal through all the changes. Looking at his watch he realized he had travelled through all that immeasurable chain of dreams in thirty seconds. “My God, ‘I cried, ‘I am in eternity.’ In the presence of that first sublime revelation of the soul’s own time, and her capacity for an infinite life, I stood trembling with breathless awe. Till I die, that moment of unveiling will stand in clear relief from all the rest of my existence I hold it still in unimpaired remembrance as one of the unutterable sanctities of my being.”
Then follow more and more ecstasies, with celestial music “such as I shall never hear again out for the great Presence”
Under the named circumstances, and same doses of Hashish will produce diametrically opposite effects. Or from a;large dose may result a scarcely perceptible phenomenon., yet a dose of but half that quantity may cause the agonies of suffering of a martyr, or rejoicing in a perfect frenzy. But if, during the Hashish delirium another dose, however small, is taken to prolong the condition, such agony will inevitably ensue as will make the soul shudder at its own possibility of endurance without annihilation. The wise of it after any other stimulus will produce consequences as appealing.
“I began to be lifted into that tremendous produce, so often characteristic of the fantasia. My powers became superhuman; my knowledge covered the universe; my scope of sight was infinite.
Repeatedly I have wondered past doors and houses which in my ordinary condition were as well known as my own, and have at last given up the search for them in utter hopelessness, recognizing not the faintest familiar trace in their aspect. Certainly a Hashish eater should never be alone.
Then an extraordinary case of clairvoyance is detailed Threw himself on a sofa and asked a pianist to play him some piece of music, without naming any in particular. The prelude began: and the dreamer was at once lifted in to the choir of a grand cathedral. The windows of nave and transept were emblazoned, in the most gorgeous colouring, with incidents culled from saintly lives. Far off in the cancel monks were loading the air with essences that streamed from their golden censers: on the pavement of inimitable music knelt a host of worshippers in silent prayer. Suddenly behind the great organ began a plaintive minor, like the murmur of some bard relieving his heart in threnody. This was joined by a gentle treble voice among the choir. The low wail rose and fell with the expression of wholly human emotion. One by one the remaining singers joined in; and now he heard, thrilling to the very roof of the cathedral, a wondrous miserere. At the far end of the nave a great door sound open, and bier entered supported by solemn bearers. On it lay a coffin covered by a pall, which being removed, as the bier was set down in the chance, discovered the face of the sleeper. It was the dead Mendelssohn! The last cadenza of the death chant died away, the bearers with heavy tread, carried the coffin through an iron door to its place in the vault: one by one the crowd passed out of the cathedral till the dreamer stood alone. He turned to depart and, awakened to complete consciousness, saw the pianist just resting from the keys. “What piece have you been playing? “he asked. There play was, “Mendelssohn’s Funeral March.” This piece he had never heard before.”Certainly it is as remarkable an instance of sympathetic clairvoyance as I ever knew.”
“A colossal music filled the whole hemisphere above me, and I thrilled upwards through its environment on visionless wings. It was not song, it was not instruments, but the inexpressible spirit of sublime sound-like nothing I ever heard-intense; the ideal of harmony, yet distinguishable into multiplicity of exquisite parts Like a map the arcade of the universe typifies but springs forth from some mighty spiritual law as its off spring, its necessary external development, not the mere clothing of the essence, but the essence incarnate.”
“From the ethereal heights I had been dropped into the midst of Acherontian fog. I awaited extinction. The shapes that moved about me in t the outer world seemed like galvanized corpses: the living would of nature had gone out like the flame for a candle. The very existence for the outer world seemed a base of mockery, a cruel sham of some remembered possibility which had been glorious with speechless beauty. I hated flowers, for I had seen the enameled meads of Paradise: I cursed the rocks because they were mute stone; the sky, because there were mute stone; the sky, because it rang with no music; and earth and sky seemed to throw back my curse.”
Truly Cannabis indica is a great medicine-for those who know how to use it for the cure of that which it can induce.
Among it sensations one notices the unreality, the loneliness the dual consciousness, the levitation, and senses its value in delirium, in delirium tremens, in the grandiose delusion of G.P.I., in hydrophobia, in catalepsy, where being “of the stuff that dreams are made of”, it should be useful for such persons as suffer terribly with frightful dreams-and that from year’s end to year’s end. One such came to Out-patients only yesterday!.
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