What is the spiritual realm of the soul?

I will now take you to our home in the Summerland—the home where we spend our quiet and happy intervals of rest and repose and gather sweet inspiration to renew our life work with ecstasies of delight.

Here are golden-coloured mystic rivers, which give forth enchanting sounds, like cymbals or finely strung bells of smallest size, which so blend in tone and sweetness that they lull to repose and rest.

Such a beautiful river flows near our retreat with ambrosial flowers on its banks, with grottoes and statuary of the noble and grand of earth's history, here and there surrounded by sparkling fountains, whose crystal waters give a musical cadence, soft and sweet, where we love to retire to meditate and ask inspiration of higher power.

Often the inhabitants of other planets visit our loved home and wander amidst its beautiful scenery, gathering mementoes to carry to their loved sphere, where they are kept as tokens of remembrance.

We often revisit and hold heavenly converse on the wonderful soul realm of eternal life.

The physical cares or fatigues of soul life are not ours. We drop those with our garments at the gateway of earth before entering the portals of our heavenly home, and take upon us our vestal garments of shining and purified texture, which we change as easily as the rainbow its hues, adapting ourselves to the conditions of change through different spheres.

Imagine if you can some lovely spot of earth, where the undulating scenery and picturesque beauty of mountains and valleys carries the soul out into some fairyland, whose towering mountains are covered with rich verdure and lofty trees, whose leafy branches breathe fragrance and coolness to the soul, while the valleys slope gently down to the crystal waters of a beautiful river, whose branches are spreading like veins through the surrounding country, with lakes dotted here and there, while a broad expanse of waters like the ocean sparkles and ripples in the distance.

The lazy sunshine gives a halo to the scene, the soft notes of sweet singing birds and the little fairy insect world are lending a harmonial chord to lull with the singing waters a weary-worn spirit to rest.

Such then may you imagine, but still a much brighter picture than this of our dear Summerland.

We have a variety of scenery so beautiful that it has never entered into the mind of mortal to conceive of the glories that await the pilgrim stranger to this fairyland. We find so many things like earth in the floral kingdom and among the feathered songsters, that we never lose the individuality of earth, but there are many beautiful flowers that bloom with us that do not bloom on earth, such as the music flower, which makes the sweetest music, chiming with the cymbal waters, thrilling the soul with joy.

Cymbal is the name given to certain bodies of water, which give a sweet sound like tinkling bells, yet not distinct and apart, but sweetly blending in symphony.

Our grottoes are very beautiful when covered with those singing flowers whose fragrance greets the stranger with a wonderful rapture similar to the fragrance that fills the atmosphere when roses are in bloom in your earth.

We do not live in houses like those of earth, but have glorious sheeny apartments, which screen from the outward observer and yield a sweet protection in which our souls revel and rest.

Outward on a beautiful mountain, we behold the retreat of those who are mingling soul with the scenery, and gradually does it blend with those inspirational beings where everything tends to elevate from this beautiful scene.

Here live poets in their beautiful visions of higher life, artists, sculptors, inventors who have laboratories or schools of design whereby to perfect their glorious ideas or conceptions. Here they can study thoughts from the earth plane thousands of years before man had any knowledge or communication. This knowledge will yet be handed down to earth before your scientist will gather it from the laboratory of earth through the investigations of geological research, yet they will compare perfectly when brought together.

―Mary Washington in Spirit