What is reform in spirit-life?

It may not be generally known that the earth is surrounded by a belt, which appears like a luminous nebula. 

It extends just outside the earth's atmosphere and is the temporary abode of most persons after the decease of the body.

In this stratum of spiritualised earth congregate most who have grown to be drunkards, blacklegs, gamblers and villains. 

They congregate in this place not because they are forced to do so, but from their habits, they have no desire to mingle with a better class of society.

So great is its extent, it appears like a world, and every nation has its representative on it. 

The inhabitants are in close proximity to earth, and it is through them that materialisations and physical manifestations and all communications of a gross order are given.

On either side of this zone extends a desert―a dreary waste―to this place repair unhappy spirit-lives who desire to elude companionship―wretched beings who have brought their minds to such a mental state that they prefer to live in this wilderness and return to earth and give morbid descriptions of their spirit-homes.

Most spirit-lives are made better by improved conditions―by bright and cheerful surroundings―but the eye must be educated to perceive and the heart to appreciate before these advantages can be fully enjoyed. 

The work of reformation is very slow in those who have inherited depraved appetites and brutish tastes. 

It often takes a lifetime to break a habit acquired in a few years. 

It is for this reason that criminals are not immediately benefitted in the spirit-world though their surroundings may be better―

They carry with them their old earth proclivities.

A love for vice on earth encourages that love for a number of years, and the mere change of worlds will not bring about a change in desire and habits.

The time will come when lawgivers will be better informed on psychological matters, and will cease to send criminals to the spirit-world by way of punishment―

They will grow to understand that offenders can be reformed by being placed in better and healthier conditions on earth. 

Prisons should be surrounded by acres of tillable land, and hours for recreation, and study should be given to the most hardened criminal. 

It is only by kind treatment that radical reform can be attained, and unless a spirit-life can be entirely reformed, it will return to earth and instigate his companions in crime to greater evils than he himself had committed, for it is a law that when a spirit-life becomes disembodied and is free from gross matter, his power increases.

―Spirit Charles Kingsley