--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Nelson, N. L. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 32 number: 5 published: 1929-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "N. L. Nelson, “The Veil: Its Use and Abuse,” *Improvement Era* 32, no. 5 (March 1929): 368–377." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3205unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3205unse start_page: 368 end_page: 377 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1929-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3205unse publication_year: 1929 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1929, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Veil: Its Use and Abuse The Veil: Its Use and Abuse By Professor N. L. Nelson /. Its Divine Uses "The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened. We saw the Lord standing upon the breastwork of the pulpit."- — Vision manifested to Joseph the Seer and Oliver Coivdery, in the Kirtland temple. PERHAPS every mortal being who has given the question any attention recognizes what the Veil is; viz., that mysterious curtain which confines our perceptions to the natural world; limits our eyes, our ears, and all our other senses to the sphere of the here and now. But not everybody has asked himself, "Where is the Veil?" Is it something outside of us or something within us? Does the Veil, for instance, hang in the air between me and my sainted mother who has just come into my room? I do not see her, but she may easily be there, blessing and encouraging me, for all that. In the temple, while taking their endowments, men and women often see those for whom work is being done, and sometimes hear what they interpret to be a heavenly choir. Is there a veil of sight and sound surrounding others in the same company — others who do not see and hear these things? Happily the question is answered by no less an authority than the Prophet Joseph Smith, in the quotation at the head of this article. The Veil, or barrier between the spiritual and the natural world, lies deep within the soul itself; just as do the rosy morn, the vivid flash of lightning and the startling crash of thunder. Outside the mind — that is to say, in objective space — all sensa- tions are resolvable to mere vibrations either of the air or of the etheric medium which fills the universe. To the extent that our minds are accurate receiving stations for these multiform waves of energy we see, we feel, we taste, we smell; in a word, we perceive — that is to say, we mentally construct pictures involving form, color, sound, motion, — pictures also including ideas, thoughts, and feel- ings,— and project them outwardly into space where the original causes are acting, or seem to be acting. This explanation of how we "take in" ideas is now a common- place of psychology. It accounts perfectly for what happens when any of the senses are defective. The physical eyes of the blind, for instance, may receive the same vibrations as those of the seeing; but, Mar.. 1929 THE VEIL 369 the soul's receiving station being out of order, a patch of blackness is projected out into space where the most marvelous forms and colors may be playing for him who sees. So also of the deaf, the paralyzed, and so on. Instead of the historic five senses, psychology has now elabor- ated some fourteen avenues whereby vibrations from the outer world may reach the mind; but apparently science still hesitates about admitting waves of intelligence from beyond the Veil, or about granting a receiving station for them in the soul of man. Nor is this conservatism at all out of keeping with history. The centuries-long fight of religion against the new ideas of science is now reversed. The average scientist doggedly ignores or else ridicules the new and far-seeing reaches of religion. Since Darwin started the pendulum in the direction of materialism, it has become increasingly perilous to the scientist's prestige to admit anything whatever beyond the natural world; and as moral courage is not necessarily an asset of delvers into the natural world, he waves the subject aside by ex- claiming, "Spooks — hallucination — ghostland!" and straightway poses as eminently sane! But the pendulum is at length on the return. A few daring spirits, like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Alfred Russel Wallace, have announced that the evidences for a world beyond this need no further scientific bolstering. For half a century these evi- dences have been accumulating and need now only to be assimilated to place sensations from the beyond among the established facts of science. With this dictum of advanced scientific thinkers, no less than from the positive teaching of holy writ, as also from my own spirit- ual perceptions, I shall assume that there is an organized world preceding this one, from which streams of intelligent beings are coming through the gateway of birth; and another organized world following this one, into which those same beings, after a short stay, are moving onward through the gateway of death; also that the mind of man is inherently constituted to receive and interpret vibra- tions from beyond the limitations of the natural world, and that, too, without need of other mechanism than the psychic extension of his well-known mental powers. With, however, this important qualification: that, in the words of Paul, "We now see through a glass darkly," and the gift or faculty, though innate in all, is more or less static for the most of mankind. Nevertheless, those in whom the faculty is awakened do truly see and feel spiritual reality, and with increasing clearness as they give attention and discrimination to their sensations. Growth in spirit- ual discernment implies exercise, as in the case of any natural faculty, 370 IMPROVEMENT ERA Mar., 19Z9 and exercise implies faith. Scepticism is ever the snow and frost above the soil of any faculty otherwise ready to sprout and grow. If it were as complete respecting the sight-and-sound worlds, as it often is respecting the spiritual sphere surrounding and interpenetrat- ing the natural sphere, men would be both blind and deaf, from no other defect than want of faith. Thousands, for instance, believe as I do, that in the "First Vision" the boy Joseph beheld the Father and the Son, and heard the message which opened this dispensation; but had the sectarian minister in whom the youthful seer afterwards confided been on the spot with the youthful prophet, he would probably have seen or heard nothing. Nor will his spiritual blindness ever change, as long as he clings to the inertia of his scepticism. So also Paul on his way to Damascus beheld the Savior, and heard his gracious voice calling him to his life's mission; but his companions merely perceived a light and heard vague sounds. Taken the world through, perhaps nine men out of every ten would, under similar circumstances, have seen or heard nothing at all. But what of it? Their combined judgment could not count one whit against Paul's positive declaration. Would it be reasonable to give any credence whatever to the negative testimony of ninety-nine acorns that didn't sprout, as against one that grew to be a sturdy oak? Passing again to our theme, the reader should note how very suggestive is the word Veil for the barrier between the spiritual and natural worlds. A veil is different from a wall or a chasm, either of which might completely shut off communication. A veil may, in- deed, be opaque at one extreme, if its material be black; but at the other, it may be almost transparent, if it be made of filmy white. Between these two poles are all degrees of translucency. Then, too, a veil is a movable scene: it can be lifted or drawn close. Also silhouettes from the other side are often visible upon its surface. It is, moreover, an effective screen only as its sacredness is acquiesced in. Men may violate that sacredness at will; for a veil rarely fails to give up messages more or less distorted to the Paul Pry who sits with all his senses strained to detect its secrets. All these various mean- ings, applicable to a human veil, say, the veil between adjoining apartments, have real analogies when applied to the mysterious cur- tain which at once shuts out and yet reveals the spiritual world be- hind and within the natural world; which various analogies it is hoped this discussion may further serve to show. Let us first give attention then to what seems to be the opaque extreme of the Veil, by which I mean, the people without faith either in a fore or an after-world. Spiritual density of this type is oc- Mar.. 1929 THE VEIL 371 casionally found within family groups otherwise fervent in the inner light. Deep darkness also settles occasionally over whole nations, and during long periods of history. As before noted, the unexampled attention given during the last century purely to things of the natural world — justified as it has been in the marvelous ad- vancement of the material side of civilization — has nevertheless all but overwhelmed man's faith in the larger spiritual sphere, of which this same natural world is probably but a temporal or a passing phase. Similar epochs of scepticism characterized the palmiest days of Greece and Rome. The Veil became black to them — that is to say, doubt and infidelity obscured their spiritual horizon — not be- cause spiritual intuition was dead, but because it was quite dis- credited by selfishness and intellectual pride. The same thing is probably true in our day. "The very concept of immortality bores me to death," ex- claimed a savant in one of the discussions at Clark University. "Life here is tiresome enough; to have it prolonged into eternity would be insufferable." Such sentiments are never expressed by the men or women whose hearts are full of love, and whose lives are unselfishly devoted to the welfare of their fellow-men. Here is the problem: To be incarnated — immured, as it were — in the matter of the natural world, is without doubt an essential step in eternal progress; but to be so deeply buried in the affairs of earth as to perceive no light whatever from the larger or spiritual sphere of being, is a calamity. Exclaims Whittier: "Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees! Who. hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play. Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever Lord of Death, And love can never lose its own!" The view of the intellectual concerning the boredom of life can hardly be called normal. It probably represents the early atrophy of the psychic norms through studied indifference to spiritual-things, and perhaps by contrast an unbalanced zeal for the things of sense; in other words, to selfishness; for in the accumulation of earthly things is to be found nearly every variety of sensual gratification. Spiritual inertia — soul-laziness, or unwillingness to make sacrifices — lies prob- ably at the bottom of all carnal-mindedness; for the pleasures of sense grow, as it were, by the way-side and can be plucked and eaten without exertion. Aliveness to self-indulgence is the aspect of life 372 IMPROVEMENT ERA Mar., iw which man shares with the brute creation. To the extent that he revels in the lusts of the flesh, to that extent the eternal, spiritual being within him is lulled to an ignoble rest. How long will it take for the sybarite — by which term I mean the "lover of pleasure more than lover of God" — to learn with finality that no progress whatever is reached down the stream called pleasure? At first it has many an exhilarating, rapid and picturesque waterfall; but, followed as an end in life, it gradually but inevitably loses its sparkle of movement, becomes sluggish by choking up its own channel, and ends finally in the quagmire which we call satiety and disgust. What then? An opaque Veil, which is ever the cover and excuse for earthly self-indulgence, lasts at most for only a short span. Death brushes it aside. No doubt the lazy spirit thus again made naked in the pathway of eternal progress — which means spiritual progress — must suffer for his earthly stagnation — suffer among the hosts who give themselves over to "weeping and wailing and gnash- ing of teeth," — because of lost opportunity. But even so, the norm of faith in the plan of salvation is not dead — it is only dormant. As Paul says, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable." Let us be- lieve, therefore, that the sluggards will rise again to the strenuous life of spiritual achievement, whence alone springs joy; and not drop — at least, not all of them — to another level of inertia, which yields at best only a constantly duller tang of self-indulgence. Let us next consider the other extreme of the Veil, that which approaches transparency. This is the achievement of prophet, seer, and revelator, and of those choice spirits on earth who have learned to "live in the light as he is in the light." It is the possible goal of every man and woman who has made covenants with God in sacred places; the possible, let us say, but still rarely achieved in mortality; for it means a life of such consecration to righteousness as to insure an unbroken stream of truthness from the Source of all truth. Many, indeed, are called, but few are chosen. The chief mark of the radiant Veil is an up-to-the-minute testi- mony of the Gospel; that is to say, a testimony which recognizes as of God, not only all past dispensations of his dealings with man, but also the divine authority of the present dispensation, with its new revelations, its restored Priesthood, its sacred rites and ordinances, and its eternal obligations: even to the last detail of daily conduct, upon him or her who has entered unto covenant with our Father in heaven. Such a testimony stands for the beginning of eternal Life, or. in scriptural phrase, the "passing from death unto life." It is the Mar.. 1929 THE VEIL 373 meaning of "heaven" in the here and now, or the "Kingdom of God within you." Daily to such a one the Lord's prayer is fulfilled: "Thy kingdom come" to me this day; "thy will be done" by me this day as it is done by all who are in heaven. As this stream of truthness lights up the inner being, its sensa- tions are love, joy, peace, comfort, spiritual insight, and whatever other fruits of the spirit the soul stands in need of. Nor does this inner light detach a person from the lowly duties of earth life: it rather transfigures them — finds in the doing of them with the "single eye" the very means, if not the only means, of growth in the direction of intelligence, or the glory of God. The radiant Veil means the light of the celestial glory already beginning to quicken our earthly tabernacles. And this light evi- dently grows in brightness until, in the resurrection, it shall burst into full divine effulgence: "Ye who are quickened by a portion of the celestial glory," says our Lord, "shall then receive of the same even a fulness." But howsoever nearly transparent the spirit Veil becomes, it still remains a veil. Actually to see a heavenly being, or hear an articulated spirit voice, as the Prophet Joseph did, implies the lifting or taking away of the Veil; and this is always an event rather than a soul status. It follows that while we sojourn on earth, we see as through a glass more or less darkly; but the time at length comes, so says Paul, when we "shall see even as we are seen." It becomes important then to inquire, how we ourselves are seen, — that is to say, by our Father in heaven. "Unto me," says the Lord, "all things are spiritual." Never- theless, he recognizes that to man there is a Veil hiding this real world, and disclosing another — a temporal, or as it were a shadow- world, the here and now of our physical senses. Curiously enough, philosophy, reasoning from quite another angle, finds equally the apparent insubstantiality of the natural world. But be this mortal habitat what it may. God ordained it to be what it is; for only thus could the plan of salvation be brought about. "By the power of my spirit, created I all things both spirit- ual and temporal: firstly spiritual, [Does he not refer to pre-exist- ence?] secondly, temporal, [Does he not here refer to the Fall?], which is the beginning of my work; and again firstly temporal, [Is not this the state in which the Gospel finds man?], and secondly, spiritual, which is the last of my work."* There can be no doubt about the meaning of the last "spiritual." It is the state toward which man's eternal emancipation is now tending, when, as Paul ♦Doctrine and Covenants 29:31-34. 374 IMPROVEMENT ERA Mar., i9Z9 says, "we shall sec even as we are seen." All things will then be spiritual to us as they are now to our Father in heaven. We have thus far considered the two extremes of the Veil as viewed by mortal beings: on the one hand, the blackness of opacity representing either atrophied spiritual insight, or else that pride of intellect which rejects all spiritual intuitions as mere hallucinations; and on the other, that Nathaniel-like development which brings the possessor very "nigh unto the kingdom of God" — nay, admits him within its portals. In both extreme zones are comparatively few souls. This brings us to a consideration of the vast middle range of spiritual vision, that of translucency. By a translucent Veil we mean one permitting light to pass through, but not forms or figures. As regards mankind, it varies from near-opaque to near-transparency. The fact that practically all peoples, whether ancient or modern, heathen or Christian, civilized, barbarous, or savage, have had, and do now have an innate sense, glimmering though it sometimes be, of a hereafter-world, is the most comforting generalization that can be made of the human race. It shows that the All-Father, when he sent his children earthward for experience, left the door ajar; left the sky-light of their souls trans- lucent, that they might in all their dark wanderings here below, not be without orientation. As to what the light, which thus streams darkly or brightly through the Veil, may mean to this people or that, the interpretation is as various — grotesque, rational, artistic, or profound — as the civilization to which these peoples respectively have attained. What matters it, however, so far as the outstanding central fact of faith in the continuity of things is concerned, that one people conceives the Beyond as a happy hunting-ground; another as Valhalla; another as a beautiful Garden with houris to minister to appetite and passion; another as Nirvana, where the individual-soul finally dissolves into the All-Soul? If faith in a Beyond is really there to keep their faces turned toward God, then sometime and somewhere the Christ ideal will reach them; viz., that life is continuous, and that the hereafter is a progressive enlargement of the here and now, till man shall master, and then use creatively, all the forces of the universe. To repeat: The thing that really matters is the question asked by Job: "If a man die, shall he live again?" He shall. Such is the common denominator of all interpretations of the Veil. That each re- ligion out of this basic life-germ unfolds into that system of tenets, duties, rites, and ceremonies which seems the best preparation for the supreme fact of living beyond the grave — what else could be ex- pected? Only let the soul keep in view, as an active hope and guide, this central truth, that man lives on through all vicissitudes, that Mar., 1929 THE VEIL 375 love is the dynamo of life, and eternal progress its destiny; let the soul but dimly respond to this glowing spark of faith, and of what significance by comparison are form and doctrine, tenet and cere- mony? Without that spark ceremonies are nothing. Suppose them to be crude and grotesque. Have you not seen a magnificent pine growing skyward out of gnarled and crooked branches — limbs dead or dying, which it sloughs again and again? The faith which lives behind and below form and ceremony, the faith which even dimly lights the inner man, may be compared to the spirit of the pine — that stream of light which the Father allows to shine through the Veil into every normal soul. Because of it, man too shall slough his wooden creeds — the first crude outreachings of his soul toward that light — as his head is lifted higher into the blue of heaven. Right here, therefore, it is appropriate to consider the means whereby our Father reaches even his remotest children, and causes them to give up their first dumb responses to the spiritual world — the worship of idols, human sacrifices, burying the living with the dead, fetiches, charms, incantations — and to adopt instead those principles of right living which constitute life as God would have man live, and which alone are entitled to the name of true religion. In the vision to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon concerning the three glories, it is pointed out that beings from the Celestial minister to the inhabitants of the Terrestrial; and likewise beings from the Terrestrial to inhabitants of the Telestial; also that the Father gives special missions to his angels to minister in all the glories, wherever souls may be uplifted thereby, and made to advance in the scale of eternal progress. Is not this, in a general way, a true likeness of what has taken place and is now taking place on earth? For let us not forget that the three glories are already here, though perhaps not so clearly de- fined as they will be there. And is it not the Celestial that first ministers to the Terrestrial here? What other meaning can you give to the visions and revelations that have ushered in the new dispensa- tion? And when men who have received the Priesthood, and are enlightened by the Holy Ghost, go into the world to preach, is it not the Celestial again ministering to the Terrestrial? The truths as to right living which they disseminate, — that is to say, the Gospel or plan of salvation, — spread first into the lands called enlightened; but do they not travel from there by a thousand roads and by-paths into the barbarous and benighted parts of the earth? And shall we deny that God sometimes sends angels direct to these remote parts of the earth? And shall we deny that God sometimes sends angels direct to these remote peoples, with such truths as they are fitted to 376 IMPROVEMENT ERA ««■■ ">-" assimilate, and sets up a Zoroaster, a Buddha, a Confucius, a Mo- hamet? Trace by a swift glance the ever- widening "sea of glory" set moving by Christ's ministry on earth. Then read through again that matchless hymn beginning. "From Greenland's icy mountains To India's coral strand. Where Africa's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand; From many an ancient river. From many a palmy plain They call us to delive Their land from error's chain. Read this hymn, I repeat, if you would realize how truly the Celestial administers to the Terrestrial, and the Terrestrial to the Telestial. And by what the Meridian or middle dispensation did in this direction, measure what the dispensation of the Fulness of Times has already accomplished, and will yet accomplish, among the chil- dren of men. The Millennium, if we could but fully realize what the word stands for in spiritual evolution, would be our swiftest summing up of the Celestial-terrestrial-telestial forces now at work among mankind. To bring the discussion back to our theme, let me ask: In virtue of what principle are these marvels of human salvation pos- sible— this final human solidarity, in other words, this gradual, ever- widening acceptance of the Father's plan to bring about the spiritual unity of his children? Is it not because of the inner light which streams translucent through the Veil? Without the living faith- chain which this light awakens in man. and which links all men to the Father of Spirits, as well preach love, unity, and progress to the beasts of the forest as to the tribes of men. Thus far the discussion has aimed to show how our Father in heaven uses the Veil to conserve and develop his children's spiritual ideals: how by making this mysterious curtain luminous and mov- able, rather than dark and rigid, he leaves in each soul a witness of himself, or if not so tangible a thing as that, at least a deep, wonder- ing, reaching-out feeling after the Source of their being; how, to chosen spirits called prophets, he lifts the Veil that mankind may gain thereby the "word of scripture" which shall satisfy this reach- ing-out hunger: and how at the same time he commissions men to deliver the glad message to every kindred, tongue, and people. Earth life, however, is too transitory for the true message to reach all men in any given generation; in lieu of which every people, during successive generations, builds up its own interpretation of the Uar.,i9Z9 THE VEIL 377 Veil. Gradually, however, even on the earth-plane, these false re- ligions give way to the true; and if this is true on the earth-plane, with its swift change of generations, how much more truly will the real supplant the false behind the Veil, whither we all go with eternity before us for readjustment. Thus it follows that all men will finally "bow the knee," and come into divine harmony, save the sons of perdition: not necessarily with the same exaltation, but still in a kingdom of glory. And at the final analysis it would seem that this stupendous result becomes possible because divine Mercy left our inner or subconscious life con- tinuous: that is to say, it dimmed but did not quite put out the light of the Veil. But the greater question remains: viz.. granting that our inner life is left continuous, why our outer or conscious life is left dis- continuous, why there should be a Veil at ail: why our backward look upon pre-existence should be obliterated, and our forward-look toward after-life existence should be barred? Space will not permit of an extended answer. Says the poet: "For a wise and glorious purpose Thou hast placed me here on earth. And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth." Manifestly that "wise and glorious purpose" is to be looked for in the nature of mortal life itself, t If God intercepts our vision both at birth and at death, backward and forward, his evident meaning must be that we are to use our senses, our judgment, and our will to master the lessons of the here and now. and not lose time picking holes in the Veil. And now I wonder whether my making so much depend upon a translucent Veil will be understood, or whether I must disclose the golden text I have been following: viz.. "That was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man that cometh unto the world" ? There remain the "silhouettes" which appear on the surface of the Veil; the Paul (and Pauline ) Prys. who cease to live the glorious life which our Father provides for us here below, and spend their time instead in scrutinizing the Veil, if perchance they may thereby surprise some of its secrets: also the men and women who violently tear aside the Veil, thereby admitting upon the earth-plane devils from the pre-existence plane, and human derelicts from the plane of the after-life world. These will next be considered under. "Human Abuses of the Veil." fFor an extended discussion of this aspect, see Prof. Nelson's article on the "Purpose of the Temporal Life'' in the Era for May. 1922.