Except ye be as little children.

I once heard a man refer to this world, as the play world, for said he, we are all children here, and we create the environment that we desire. 

As a child at play can turn a chair into a tower or a prancing steed, so we, in this world, can make real for the moment whatever we imagine.

Has it never filled you with amusement that absolute vividness of the imagination of children? 

A child says unblushingly, and with conviction—

That rug is a garden—that plank in the floor is a river—that chair is a castle—and I am a king.

Why does he say these things? 

How can he say these things? 

Because—

And here is the point—

He still subconsciously remembers the life out here, which he so lately left. 

He has carried over with him into the life of earth something of his lost freedom and power of imagination.

That does not mean that all things in this world are imaginary—far from it. 

Objects here—objects existing in tenuous matter—are as real, and comparatively substantial, as with you, but there is the possibility of creation here—

Creation in a form of matter even more subtle still—thought-substance.

If you create something on earth in solid matter, you create it first in thought substance, but there is this difference between your creation and ours—

Until you have moulded solid matter around your thought-pattern, you do not believe that the thought-pattern really exists, save in your own fancy.

We out here can see the thought-creations of others if we—and they—will do so.

We can also, and I tell you this, for your comfort, we can also see your thought-creations, and by adding the strength of our will to yours, we can help you to realise them in substantial form.

Sometimes, we build here, bit by bit, in the four-dimensional world, especially when we wish to leave a thing for others to see and enjoy, or when we wish a thing to survive for a long time. 

A thought form is visible to all highly developed spirits.

Of course, you understand that not all spirits are highly developed. 

In fact, very few are far progressed, but the dullest man out here has something, which most of you have lost―

The faith in his own thought-creations.

Now, the power, which makes creation possible, is not lost to a soul when it takes on solid matter again. 

But the power is gradually overcome, and the imagination is discouraged by the incredulity of mature men and women who say constantly to the child—

That is only play; that is not really so; that is only imagination.

If you print these letters, I wish you would insert here fragments from the wonderful poem of Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar—

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home—

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

There is almost no limit to the possibilities of the imagination, but to get the full power of it, one must trust one’s imagination. 

If you say to yourself constantly, as the mother says to the child, But this is only play; this is not real, you never can make real the things you have created in thought.

The imagination itself is like a child and must be encouraged and believed in, or it cannot develop and do its perfect work.

It is really fortunate for some of you that I am out here. 

I can do more for you here than there because I have even greater faith in my imagination than I had before.

The man who called this the play world has been trying all sorts of experiments with the power in himself. 

I have not his permission to tell the stories he tells me, but they would surprise you. 

For one thing, he helped his wife, after his so-called death, to carry out a joint plan of theirs, which had seemed impossible to them before because of their lack of real faith. 

It was for the erection of a certain kind of house.

But do not fancy that most people here are trying to build houses on earth—far from it.

Most of my fellow-citizens are willing to work where they are, and to let the earth alone. 

Of course, there are dreamers like me who are not satisfied with one world and who like to have their fingers in both, but they are rather rare—as poets are rare on earth. 

To most men, the world they happen to be in is sufficient for the time being.

There is a certain fancy of mine, however, which will amuse me to help realise on earth.

You may not know that I am doing it, but I shall know. 

I would not, for the world, as you say, disturb anybody by even the thought that I am fussing around in affairs, which now are theirs. 

But, if unseen and unfelt, I can help with the power of my self-confident imagination—there will be no harm done and I shall have demonstrated something.

A man seeks what he desires.

By the vividness with which you feel my presence at times, you can judge of the intensity of the life that I am living.

I am no pallid spook, dripping with grave-dew.

I am real and quite as wholesome—or so it seems to me—as when I walked the earth in a more or less unhealthy body.

It would have been amazing had you been afraid of me.

But there are those who would be if they should sense my presence as you sense it.

One night, I knocked at the door of a friend’s chamber, half expecting a welcome.

He jumped out of bed in alarm, then jumped back again, and pulled the blanket over his head.

He was really afraid that it might be I!

So, as I did not wish to be responsible, for a case of heart failure, or for a shock of hair, which, like that in the old song, turned white in a single night, I went quietly away.

Doubtless he persuaded himself next day that there were mice in the wainscotting.

Had you been afraid of me though, I should have been ashamed of you, for you know better.

Most persons do not.

It is a real pleasure for me to come back and talk with you sometimes.

There are no friends like old friends, and the society of sylphs and spirits would never quite satisfy me if all those whom I had known and loved should turn their backs on me.

Speaking of sylphs, I met the Teacher last night, and asked him if that French magician I told you about could really make good his promise to his aerial companion and help her to acquire the kind of soul essential to incarnation on earth as a woman.

His answer was No.

Of course, I asked him why, and he answered that the elemental creatures, or units of force, inhabiting the elements, as we use that term, could not, during this life cycle, step out of their element into the human.

Can they ever do so? I asked.

I do not know, he replied, but I believe that all the less evolved units around the earth are working in the direction of man; that the human is a stage of development, which they will all reach some day, but not in this life cycle.

I asked the Teacher if he knew the magician in question, and he answered that he had known him, for a thousand years, that long ago, in a former life, the Paris magician had placed his feet upon the path, which leads to power, but that he had been sidetracked by the desire for selfish pleasures and that he might wander a long time before he found his way back to real and philosophical truth.

Is he to be blamed or pitied? I asked.

Pity cuts no figure in the problem, the Teacher replied. 

A man seeks what he desires.

After the Teacher went away, I began asking myself questions.

What was I seeking, and what did I desire?

The answer came quickly—

Knowledge.

A year ago, I might have answered power, but knowledge is the forerunner of power.

If I get true knowledge, I shall have power enough.

It is because I want to give to you, and possibly to others, a few scraps of knowledge, which might be inaccessible to you by any other means, that I am coming back, and coming back, time after time, to talk with you.

The greatest bit of knowledge that I have to offer you is this—

By the exercise of will, a man can retain his objective consciousness after death.

Many persons out here sink into a sort of subjective bliss, which makes them indifferent, as to what is going on upon the earth or in the heavens.

I could do so myself, easily.

As I believe I have said before, while man on earth has both subjective and objective consciousness, but functions mostly in the objective, out here he has still subjective and objective consciousness, but the tendency is towards the subjective.

At almost any time, on composing yourself, and looking in, you can fall into a state of subjective bliss, which is similar to that enjoyed by souls on this side of the dividing line called death.

In fact, it is by such subconscious experience that man has learned nearly all he knows, regarding the etheric world.

When the storms and passions of the body are stilled, man can catch a glimpse of his own interior life, and that interior life is the life of this fourth-dimensional plane.

Please do not accuse me of contradicting myself or of being obscure; I have said that the objective consciousness is as possible with us, as the subjective is with you, but that the tendency is merely the other way.

You may remember a pair of lovers about whom I wrote you a few weeks ago.

He had been out here some time, and had waited for her, and helped her over the uncertain marshlands, which lie between the two states of existence.

I saw these lovers again the other day, but they were not at all excited by my appearance.

On the contrary, I fancy that I put them out somewhat by awakening them—by calling them back from the state of subjective bliss into which they have sunk since being together at last.

While he waited for her all those years, he kept himself awake by expectation; while still on earth, she was always thinking of him out here, and so the polarity was sustained.

Now they have each other; they are in the little home, which he built for her with so much pleasure out of the tenuous materials of this tenuous world; they see each other’s faces whether they look out or in; they are content; they have nothing more to attain—or so they tell each other—and they consequently sink back into the arms of subjective bliss.

Now this state of bliss, of rumination, they have a right to enjoy.

No one can take it from them.

They have earned it by activity in the world and elsewhere; it is theirs by rhythmic justice.

They will enjoy it, I fancy, for a long time, living over the past experiences, which they have had together and apart.

Then, some day, one or the other of them will become surfeited with too much sweetness; the muscles of his or her soul will stretch for want of exercise; he or she will give a spiritual yawn, and by the law of reaction, pass out—not to return.

Where will he or she go, you ask?

Why, back to the earth, of course!

Let us imagine him or her awakening from that subjective state of bliss, which is known to them as attainment, and going for a short promenade in blessed and wholesome solitude.

Then, with a sort of morning alertness in the heart, and the eye, he or she draws near to a pair of earthly lovers.

Suddenly, the call of matter, the eager, terrible call of blood and warmth, of activity raised to the nth power, catches the half-awakened soul on the ethereal side of matter, and—

He has again entered the world of material formation.

He is sunk and hidden in the flesh of earth.

He awaits birth.

He will come out with great force—by reason of his former rest.

He might even become a captain of industry if he is a strong unit.

But I began by saying he or she.

Let me change the figure.

The man would be almost certain to awake first—by reason of his positive polarity.

Now, in drawing this imaginary picture of my lovers, I am not making a dogma of the way in which all souls return to earth.

I am merely guessing how these two will return, for she would probably follow him speedily when she awoke and found herself alone.

And the reason why I fancy they will return in that way is because they are indulging themselves in too much subjective bliss.

When will they go back? I cannot say.

Perhaps next year, perhaps in a hundred years.

Not knowing the numerical value of their unit of force, I cannot guess how much subjective bliss they can endure without a violent reaction.

I am sure that you are wondering if some day I shall myself sink into that state of bliss, which I have described.

Perhaps. I should enjoy it—but not for long and not yet.

However, I have no sweetheart out here to enjoy it with me.

What are the archives of the soul?

I have spoken of a determination to visit other planets when my work of writing these letters is ended, but I must not neglect to say that I consider such journeys to and fro in the universe of far less spiritual value than those of other journeys, which I have made, and shall make into the deep places of my own self. 

Travelling in actual space and time is important to a man, that he may gain knowledge of other lands and peoples, see the differences between these peoples and himself and learn the causes thereof; yet quiet meditation is even a greater factor in growth if a man whose spiritual perceptions are open can do but one of these two things, it would be better for him to sit in a cabin in the backwoods and seek in his own soul for the secrets which it guards, than to travel without such self-examination to the ends of the earth.

Get acquainted with your own soul. 

Know why you do this or that, why you feel this or that. 

Sit quietly when in doubt about any matter and let the truth rise from the deeps of yourself. 

Examine your motives always. 

Do not say I ought to do this act for such and such a reason; therefore, I do it for that reason.

Such argument is self-deception. 

If you do a kind act, ask yourself why. 

Perhaps you can find even in a kind action a hidden motive of self-seeking. 

If you should find such a motive, do not deny it to yourself. 

Acknowledge it to yourself, although you need not advertise it on the walls of your dwelling. 

Such a secret understanding will give you a greater sympathy and comprehension in judging the motives of others.

Strive always for the ideal, but do not label every emotion as an ideal emotion if it is not really that. 

Speak the truth to yourself. 

Until you can dare to do that, you will make little progress in the quest for your own soul.

Between earth lives is a good time to meditate, but one should form the habit of meditation while still in the flesh. 

Habits formed in the flesh have a tendency to continue after the flesh is laid aside. 

That is a reason why one should keep as free as possible from physical habits.

I have made wonderful discoveries in the archives of my own soul. 

There, I have found the memories of all my past, back to a time almost unbelievably distant. 

In seeing how the causes set up in one life have produced their effects in another life, I have learned more than I shall learn on my coming tour of the planets.

Everything exists in the soul; all knowledge is there. 

Grasp that idea if you can. 

The infallible part of us is the hidden part and it is for us to bring it to light. 

Do you understand now why I advise the disembodied to break away from the distractions and the dazzling mirages of the earthly life? 

Only in the stillness of detachment can the soul yield up her secrets. 

It is not that I am indifferent to earthly loves; on the contrary, I love more deeply than ever all those whom I loved on earth, but I realise that if I can love them wisely instead of unwisely, it will be better for them and for me.

Yet the call of the earth is loud sometimes and my heart answers from this side of the veil.

The wise one breathes at stated intervals and knows when the period is full

The struggle of men with each other in the selfishness of separation is like the struggle of the yogi not to inbreathe - the young and inexperienced yogi; for the wise one breathes at stated intervals and knows when the period is full.

The Judge [Last Letters from a Living Dead Man]

We cannot retard, save for a little while, the flow of the race-breath towards harmony and peace and love

You who have practiced yogi-breathing know how difficult it is to hold the breath out for more than a short time. It can only be done by force of will. The tendency is to return, as the tendency of the race is to return towards the Source from which it came. It is therefore I say that you cannot retard, save for a little while, the flow of the race-breath towards harmony and peace and love.

The Judge [Last Letters from a Living Dead Man]

The outgoing Breath rests and the indrawing Breath is about to begin

No new angels are being created now. The outgoing Breath rests and the indrawing Breath is about to begin.

The Judge

In the Last Analysis

In the last analysis, there is only one kind of matter in both worlds - but there is a great difference in vibration and tenuity.

The Judge

All that is, is God

All that is, is God. That must include me and all my fellow beings, human and animal; even the trees and the birds and the rivers must be a part of God, if God were all that is.


The Judge

Water is the Fluid of Life

You should also drink plenty of water. It feeds the astral body.

To get, one must give

To get, one must give. That is the Law.

Biblical Quotations

“and in the world to come eternal life.”

There is Nothing to Fear in Death

My friend, there is nothing to fear in death. It is no harder than a trip to a foreign country – the first trip – to one who has grown oldish and settled in the habits of his own more or less narrow corner of the world.

Do not fear death

Do not fear death but stay on earth as long as you can.

Life Between Lives

It is nothing to fear – this change of condition.

He Is and All That Is is He

Do you not also know that He is and that all that is, is He?”

What is God and Where is God?

What is God?

Where is God?

God is everywhere. God is.

What is He?

God is.

What do you mean?

God is, God is.

A Roman Toga

Letter 14

A Roman Toga

One thing which makes this country so interesting to me is its lack of conventionality. No two persons are dressed in the same way – or no, I do not mean that exactly but many are so eccentrically dressed that their appearance gives variety to the whole.

My own clothes are, as a rule, similar to those I wore on earth, though I have as an experiment, when dwelling in thought on one of my long-past lives, put on the garments of the period.

It is easy to get the clothes one wants here. I do not know how I became possessed of the garments which I wore on coming out but when I began to take notice of such things, I found myself dressed as usual. I am not yet sure whether I brought my clothes with me.

There are many people here in costumes of the ancient days. I do not infer from this fact that they have been here all those ages. I think they wear such clothes because they like them.

As a rule, most persons stay near the place where they lived on earth but I have been a wanderer from the first. I go rapidly from one country to another. One night (or day with you) I may take my rest in America; the next night I may rest in Paris. I have spent hours of repose on the divan in your sitting room and you did not know that I was there. I doubt, though, if I could stay for hours in your house when I was myself awake without your sensing my presence.

Do not think, however, from what I have just said that it is necessary for me to rest on the solid matter of your world. Not at all. We can rest on the tenuous substance of our own world.

One day, when I had been here only a short time, I saw a woman dressed in a Greek costume and asked her where she got her clothes. She replied that she had made them. I asked her how and she said:

“Why, first I made a pattern in my mind and then the thing became a garment.”

“Did you take every stitch?”

“Not as I should have done one earth.”

I looked closer and saw that the whole garment seemed to be in one piece and that it was caught on the shoulders by jewelled pins. I asked where she got the jewelled pins and she said that a friend had given them to her. Then I asked where the friend had got them. She told me that she did not know but that she would ask him. Soon after that she left me and I have not seen her since, so the question is still unanswered.

I began an experiment to see if I also could make things. It was then that I conceived the idea of wearing a Roman toga but for the life of me I could not remember what a Roman toga looked like.

When next I met the Teacher, I told him of my wish to wear a toga of my own making and he carefully showed me how to create garments such as I desired: To fix the pattern and shape clearly in my mind, to visualise it and then by power of desire to draw the subtle matter of the thought-world round the pattern, so as actually to form the garment.

“Then,” I said, “the matter of the thought-world, as you call it, is not the same kind of matter as that of my body, for instance?”

“In the last analysis,” he answered, “there is only one kind of matter in both worlds but there is a great difference in vibration and tenuity.”

Now the thought-substance of which our garments are formed seems to be an extremely tenuous form of matter, while our bodies seem to be pretty solid. We do not feel at all like transparent angels sitting on damp clouds. Were it not for the quickness with which I get over space, I should think sometimes that my body was as solid as ever.

I can often see you and to me you seem tenuous. It is all, I suppose, the old question of adjusting to environment. At first I could not do it and had some trouble in learning to adjust the amount of energy necessary for each particular action. So little energy is required here to move myself about that at first when I started to go a short distance – say, a few yards – I would find myself a mile away. But I am now pretty well adjusted.

I must be storing up energy here for a good hard life when I return to the earth again. The hardest work I do now is to come and write through your hand but you offer less and less resistance as time goes on. In the beginning it took all my strength; now it takes only a comparatively small effort. Yet I could not do it long at a time without using your own vitality and that I will not do.

You may have noticed that you are no longer fatigued after the writing, though you used to be at first.

But I was speaking of the lack of conventionality out here. Souls hail each other when they want to, without any ceremony. I have seen a few old women who were afraid to talk to a stranger but probably they had not been here long and the earth habits still clung to them.

Do not think, however, that society here is too free and easy. It is not that but men and women do not seem to be as afraid of each other as they were on earth.

Letters from a living dead man – Tell No Man

Letter 2

Tell No Man

I am opposite to you now in actual space, that is, I am directly in front of you, resting on something, which is probably a couch or divan.

It is easier to come to you after dark.

I remembered on going out that you might be able to let me speak through your hand.

I am already stronger. It is nothing to fear – this change of condition.

I cannot tell you yet how long I was silent. It did not seem long.

It was I who signed “X.” The Teacher helped me to make the connection.

You had better tell no one for a while, except -----, that I have come, as I do not want any obstructions to my coming when and where I will. 

Lend me your hand sometimes – I will not misuse it.

I am going to stay out here until I am ready to come back with power. 

Watch for me but not yet.

Things seem easier to me now than they have seemed for a long time. 

I carry less weight. 

I could have held on longer in the body, but it did not seem worth the effort.

I have seen the Teacher. 

He is near. 

His attitude to me is very comforting.

But I would like to go now. 

Good night.