And in my brain was, as I have told, the knowledge that had come to me
in all the years of my life in the Redoubt; and yet until that moment,
this Man of this Present Time had no knowledge of that future
existence; and now I stood and had suddenly the knowledge of a life
already spent in that strange land, and deeper within me the misty
knowings of this our present Age, and, maybe, also of some others
. To the North-West I looked through the queer spy-glass, and saw a
landscape that I had looked upon and pored upon through all the years of
that life, so that I knew how to name this thing and that thing, and
give the very distances of each and every one from the "Centre-Point" of
the Pyramid, which was that which had neither length nor breadth, and
was made of polished metal in the Room of Mathematics, where I went
daily to my studies.
To the North-West I looked, and in the wide field of my glass, saw plain
the bright glare of the fire from the Red Pit, shine upwards against the
underside of the vast chin of the North-West Watcher--The Watching Thing
of the North-West.... "That which hath Watched from the Beginning, and
until the opening of the Gateway of Eternity" came into my thoughts, as
I looked through the glass ... the words of Aesworpth, the Ancient
Poet (though incredibly future to this our time). And suddenly they
seemed at fault; for I looked deep down into my being, and saw, as
dreams are seen, the sunlight and splendour of this our Present Age.
And I was amazed.
And here I must make it clear to all that, even as I waked from this
Age, suddenly into that life, so must I--that youth there in the
embrasure--have awakened then to the knowledge of this far-back life
of ours--seeming to him a vision of the very beginnings of eternity, in
the dawn of the world. Oh! I do but dread I make it not sufficient clear
that I and he were both I--the same soul. He of that far date seeing
vaguely the life that was (that I do now live in this present Age);
and I of this time beholding the life that I yet shall live. How utterly
strange!
And yet, I do not know that I speak holy truth to say that I, in that
future time, had no knowledge of this life and Age, before that
awakening; for I woke to find that I was one who stood apart from the
other youths, in that I had a dim knowledge--visionary, as it were, of
the past, which confounded, whilst yet it angered, those who were the
men of learning of that age; though of this matter, more anon. But this
I do know, that from that time, onwards, my knowledge and assuredness of
the Past was tenfold; for this my memory of that life told me.