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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 5, Winter 1944-1945
Page 95
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 95 the curvature of time, and if we imagine time as a circle, eternity will signify eternal movement along this curve, eternal repetition, eternal recurrence; eternity, according to Ouspensky, for our mind is conceivable only under two forms, either under the form of co-existence, or under the form of repetition. Thus one aspect of Ouspensky's thought holds that somewhere there exist things identical with those here, and some time everything will be repeated or is repeated. He is scornful of the idea of reincarnation in the future, but believes in reincarnation in the past. For most people this reincarnation consists of repeating from beginning to end the exact sequence of their lives. But since he also makes use of the concept of a "spiral of time," he maintains that it is sometimes possible to make a change in the over-recurring pattern, through self-control or renunciation. And thus sometimes, through reincarnation in the past, one may change the past by seeking and destroying the causes of evil, and so change the future course of events. This sort of reincarnation is only possible when a soul through lives of struggle becomes free, or goes back into the vacancy left when a soul dies. One must also suppose that the life of a man while repeating "at one place in time" simultaneously occurs at "another place in time." It will be easier to see what all this is supposed to mean if we look at the literary illustrations of the ideas. In Deeping's Man Who Went Back, the twentieth-century man finds himself in the body of a fifth-century coward --- a soul which presumably has died. Through his bravery in fighting against the Saxons, he changes the course of events as history has recorded them, and thus has presumably changed the future---our present---when next it circles around. In this respect the story is fourth-dimensional. But it also hints of reincarnation in the more common meaning of the term, because the hero meets people in the fifth century who remind him of acquaintances whom he had known---or was to know---in the twentieth. Again, in Shelia Kaye-Smith's Ember Lane, a girl finds that she can walk into an eighteenth-century world which co-exists with her own time. J. B. Priestley uses the same idea in his plays, We Have Been Here Before and Of Time and the Conways. So does Margaret Irwin in And Still She Wished for Company. Allison Uttley's Traveller in Time is similar to Ember Lane in that the idea of physical reincarnation is not stressed in the plot---although the same types are present in the family---and the clairvoyant heroine moves backward and forward in time without benefit of blows on the head or magic spells. Here too we find parallel "places in time" with a full cast of characters which apparently live and move and have their being simultaneously, the material settings interpenetrating. Only the heroine, of course, in those movements when she is fey, is aware of both and can live through a sequence of events in one "place in time" while the clock hands stand still in other. This story belongs rather to the Berkeley Square type, in that the modern traveler in time falls in love with a person of the earlier period---so too in The Men Who Went Back. A minor characteristic of this type is also almost standard---the modern man or woman knows the future which was or is his present, and knows something of the historic past. His revelation of this knowledge terrifies the inhabitants of the section of the section of the past in which he finds himself. The best example of this Berkeley Square genre is Lady Eleanor Smith's Lovers' Meeting which apparently is a deliberate rehandling of the Henry James theme. The period here is that of the Regency, and the novel is full and beautifully worked out. Its plot, however, illustrates almost all the typical methods and motifs. A pair of lovers---a nice girl and her impoverished tutor---in 1812 transport themselves to the twentieth century with the help of an old book of spells. There is also in it a strong hint of Karma---the expiation of errors or the balancing up of inequalities in successive lives. Selfishness has twice
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 95 the curvature of time, and if we imagine time as a circle, eternity will signify eternal movement along this curve, eternal repetition, eternal recurrence; eternity, according to Ouspensky, for our mind is conceivable only under two forms, either under the form of co-existence, or under the form of repetition. Thus one aspect of Ouspensky's thought holds that somewhere there exist things identical with those here, and some time everything will be repeated or is repeated. He is scornful of the idea of reincarnation in the future, but believes in reincarnation in the past. For most people this reincarnation consists of repeating from beginning to end the exact sequence of their lives. But since he also makes use of the concept of a "spiral of time," he maintains that it is sometimes possible to make a change in the over-recurring pattern, through self-control or renunciation. And thus sometimes, through reincarnation in the past, one may change the past by seeking and destroying the causes of evil, and so change the future course of events. This sort of reincarnation is only possible when a soul through lives of struggle becomes free, or goes back into the vacancy left when a soul dies. One must also suppose that the life of a man while repeating "at one place in time" simultaneously occurs at "another place in time." It will be easier to see what all this is supposed to mean if we look at the literary illustrations of the ideas. In Deeping's Man Who Went Back, the twentieth-century man finds himself in the body of a fifth-century coward --- a soul which presumably has died. Through his bravery in fighting against the Saxons, he changes the course of events as history has recorded them, and thus has presumably changed the future---our present---when next it circles around. In this respect the story is fourth-dimensional. But it also hints of reincarnation in the more common meaning of the term, because the hero meets people in the fifth century who remind him of acquaintances whom he had known---or was to know---in the twentieth. Again, in Shelia Kaye-Smith's Ember Lane, a girl finds that she can walk into an eighteenth-century world which co-exists with her own time. J. B. Priestley uses the same idea in his plays, We Have Been Here Before and Of Time and the Conways. So does Margaret Irwin in And Still She Wished for Company. Allison Uttley's Traveller in Time is similar to Ember Lane in that the idea of physical reincarnation is not stressed in the plot---although the same types are present in the family---and the clairvoyant heroine moves backward and forward in time without benefit of blows on the head or magic spells. Here too we find parallel "places in time" with a full cast of characters which apparently live and move and have their being simultaneously, the material settings interpenetrating. Only the heroine, of course, in those movements when she is fey, is aware of both and can live through a sequence of events in one "place in time" while the clock hands stand still in other. This story belongs rather to the Berkeley Square type, in that the modern traveler in time falls in love with a person of the earlier period---so too in The Men Who Went Back. A minor characteristic of this type is also almost standard---the modern man or woman knows the future which was or is his present, and knows something of the historic past. His revelation of this knowledge terrifies the inhabitants of the section of the section of the past in which he finds himself. The best example of this Berkeley Square genre is Lady Eleanor Smith's Lovers' Meeting which apparently is a deliberate rehandling of the Henry James theme. The period here is that of the Regency, and the novel is full and beautifully worked out. Its plot, however, illustrates almost all the typical methods and motifs. A pair of lovers---a nice girl and her impoverished tutor---in 1812 transport themselves to the twentieth century with the help of an old book of spells. There is also in it a strong hint of Karma---the expiation of errors or the balancing up of inequalities in successive lives. Selfishness has twice
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