Why do we fail to progress?

Do children pass to a high sphere?

An absence of contamination ensures rapid passage through the spheres of purification, but an absence of experience and knowledge requires special care to train and educate these tender souls.

We do not gain when we are removed from earth life except where misuse of opportunities may have entailed greater loss and retarded progress. The soul that gains most is the soul that labours zealously for its own improvement. This is the soul, which has least to unlearn and which progresses rapidly.

All vanity and selfishness in every form, all sluggishness and indolence, all self-indulgence mars progress. The child gains in purity what it has lost in knowledge, but it must be taught. Such experience is essential and many spirits elect to return to earth to gain the special phase of experience, which they need―to experience suffering and sorrow or mental culture or balance, and so on.

The spirit who is purified by trial rises to the sphere set apart for the proven soul. All who return have their progress to gain.