Is there salvation?

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest was not spoken of the soul.

Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait.   

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

MOTHER!

I am here! I am so glad I am alive again. I never knew I could come back. I am alive, alive! I am alive! I am alive again and so happy.

I appear to be in a wonderful light, and in a marvellous country of perfect conditions. 

Everything is so beautiful—

You would love it. 

Beauty is all about me.

I am a happy little beggar in a wonderful state of life.

You need not grieve at all. 

It is a life such as you sometimes dream.

You never grow tired, and you are always interested and ready, for new and delightful experiences. 

Those who have developed their minds find they are able to go right on without any effort. Nothing is difficult. 

How do you understand love now?

Love is a vast and wonderful sense of life, and is the atmosphere you breathe.

Without love, you could not continue to live.

You are divided immediately on leaving earth—

There are many entrances—

I find myself among those who are young and strong and very ambitious. 

I am ambitious, but not in an earthly sense. 

There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. 

I want to know, and go on. 

I feel elated and uplifted by a sense of life and force and joy beyond expression. 

I know my life is just beginning, and I am conscious of every moment. 

I am like in a beautiful dream. 

Beautiful scenes of nature surround me, and I am conscious of an uplifting force of love. 

This love is a real, tangible thing, even more tangible than sunlight is to you. 

It is a force—

A marvellous certainty of never-ending, never-failing strength. 

In this life, nothing interferes with the real spiritual and intellectual exchange of ideas, and you soon find your own. 

Are you never lonely? 

Loneliness and happiness are incompatible. I am happy.

Do you have to eat and be clothed?

No more than you do in a beautiful dream.

You move about without effort by a mere wish or desire. 

Space and time do not exist. 

Your condition is of light and action. 

It is as though a wonderful intelligence is all that really existed, and that intelligence makes you perceive that your life is sustained by the most marvellous life-giving love. 

The life you lead on earth is your preparation for your life here, and your life here is the result of your previous development.

How are you taught? In classes? 

The exchange of ideas is without conversation. 

Your ideas and thoughts and desires are understood without expression, and received by those with whom you are in harmony.

This is a real and tremendous experience. 

You are not separated. 

Your natural body is separated, but I have never been so near, or so much in sympathy, as now.

There are no classes. 

I am instructed by a sort of absorption of this life-giving love. 

I am freed from all restraint. 

My real nature and love of the beautiful and the ideal is able to go on untrammelled. 

I long for the complete and full expression of my nature and know with a marvellous certainty that it is to come.

When I awoke, my surprise was very great. 

My joy abounded to think I was really alive with all the vigour and vitality of youth and all the joy of its most supreme moments fulfilled.

I have since learned that the mental condition of the dying always affects the first state of consciousness in this life.

Christ's teachings were pure and true, and if really lived would make earth a foretaste of heaven, for all that really matters in earthly life is that you should be honest—

The naked—real purpose—which underlies your acts; and sincere of purpose, and with a real love of your fellows. 

All are not strong enough to face the truth without fainting.

Love is essentially unselfish in its essence and beneficent in its results. 

It radiates and gives strength and joy and life becomes perfect in its warmth.

Here love has a different meaning. 

Life must be lived, for the good it radiates. 

It is not necessary to go far afield to search for work to do.

The everyday exercise of thought and love towards all is sufficient. 

Your intelligence is part of your divine essence, and persists when the envelope, or body, has been cast aside.

Earth's dogmas, with the exception of the two great laws, are superfluous, and more or less confusing. 

Love God above all things, and your neighbour as yourself.

From the first, I was quite conscious of my own old personality, with its desires and ideas—only the externals had disappeared. 

My curiosity to know was as great as ever, and it was as if I had suddenly been transported to some strange and delightful country, where conditions of climate and beauty of aspect were so perfect that the annoyances incident to earth life had vanished, and all the obstacles to perfect expression had dissipated.

I remembered my past but could realise its best aspirations, and felt free and happy, in the conscious strength given me by the transcendent atmosphere of Love. 

It is something of which earth gives you no idea.

The transcendent atmosphere of love is real, intelligent and exquisitely beautiful. 

It is exhilarating, and gives clearness of vision and strength of purpose, life and certainty of progression. 

In its light and joy, you know that the best is possible.

The joy that pervades life on this plane is difficult to put into words for you. 

Thoughts and ideas are interchanged by a sort of automatic intercourse, or rather, an interpenetration of mind. 

Words and languages have ceased to be necessary, as a vehicle of communication. 

I am sauntering along paths among exquisite flowers and trees in the glorious light of a perfect day.

This light is a marvellous pleasure to the senses you now possess. 

It is a glorious, enveloping, self-radiant glow that leaves no shade and comes from no sun. 

It seems to be self-generating, but does not seem to generate heat—only light and joy.

There is no hurry, and I know I can only see so far, as my development permits, but I know that there is no obstacle to perfection. 

My life is a purely intellectual one passed in the pursuit and absorption of knowledge, which becomes clearer every day.

There is clarity of vision here. 

No artificial obstacles come between the searcher and the truth—

No barriers are set up by personalities.

The mind is liberated from all bonds, and is not only perfectly free, but entirely capable of understanding more and more each day. 

There are many classes or conditions of life on this plane.

Do you remember how you felt in those rare moments of life when natural beauty was so great that words were not only superfluous but discordant? 

So; I feel, and my language stops before the beauty and glory of nature, as I see it.

You are permitted to progress, for no one was ever entirely bad. 

There are moments of aspiration for good in every life, and this divine spark of life, even if suffocated by evil deeds on earth, is eternal and inextinguishable.

Those whose lives on earth were sincerely and consistently devoted to their spiritual development—and to doing good to their fellows—are received in the light. 

They go on just where they left off, and their progress towards perfection is rapid.

The individual here is still endowed with free will and can choose the particular sphere in which he will work. 

It is among these that you find the searchers for truth and light who wish to remain in communication with earth. 

They bring some of the certainty they now possess of immortality to others still groping in the dark.

Many never think. 

They live superficially, and in a state of reflected morality, which is without force or character either for good or evil. 

They remain long in the shadows, or mist, and are slow to progress. 

At last, they gather strength from the force of love about them, and so begin to question and to grow. 

They are like bulbs buried in the earth—

They have glorious possibilities, but remain impervious to them until exposed to the sun of truth, which must penetrate the cloud of their ignorance. 

Until you recognise your own shortcomings, and ignorance, it is impossible to receive help.

Many who fall victim to the varied temptations in life suffer periods of purification, which are bitter and full of remorse. 

They realise that it is entirely through their own weakness that they have failed to follow the good they frequently glimpsed; for, in this pure and radiant light, they see their own lives.

They are permitted periods of repose and joy, which refresh and comfort them, and they themselves will to return to the expiation work, which they consciously undertake. 

The periods of exaltation, which they enjoy, make them realise that all that is best and noblest is within their grasp, and they gladly devote themselves to whatever work is given them.

I want to try to make a little clearer this expiation I mentioned. 

Despite great suffering and anguish, there can never be despair among them, for the periods of light casts an effulgence over their days of suffering. 

Their suffering is real, but it is voluntarily undertaken to expiate their past sins.

My work of expiation is partly this [Inter-communication]. 

It is a great joy, and a glorious privilege, but it entails suffering beyond your power to conceive, mingled with visions, so transcendently beautiful that no words can ever convey my gratitude to you, for the opportunity. 

I am in the radiance. 

I know by a knowledge, which comes to me through senses developed since coming here that immortality is a glorious fact—

You are still alive, and will have full opportunities of perfect fulfilment.

You are conscious of the sweetness of God’s love and its perfect reflection in our fellow-beings. 

The atmosphere, which surrounds you is like a tonic—

Giving you strength, joy and knowledge. 

The further you go, the more you are able to withstand this radiance. 

By your sincere regret of your past, you ask that you be permitted to do something to atone.

You gladly and consciously leave the glory of this radiant day, and return to the gloom, where you face your worst self, and others, in the same sad condition. 

You bring to them a glimpse of the light, and try to atone, for your sins of earth.

I have learned that heaven means Perfect Knowledge and Infinite Love, which generates Eternal Life.

Those who have been willingly and consciously bad suffer greatly here. 

Such are admitted to the light, but are as little children, and their education must be made. 

They are committed to the care of guardian spirits, and led gently to higher spheres. 

While the shadows are deep, and filled with suffering, there is never despair.

Those who are intellectually developed, but who have allowed their impulses of love and charity to dry up (spiritual atrophy), and who have lived selfishly, suffer greatly. 

They are enclosed in a shell formed by their own selfishness. 

They see outside this shell, but it is extremely difficult, for them to break through. 

Their attitude of mind has made it almost impossible, for them to ask for help, and love is more like a wave breaking against a rocky cliff than a soft spring rain being absorbed by the rich earth.

This voluntary return to darkness is not in the nature of a punishment. 

It is the inevitable result of clarified vision. 

Seeing more and more clearly, what is essential to spiritual progress, you long to share this knowledge with others still in the darkness of ignorance. 

Feeling more each day, the vitalising effect of God’s intelligence, you long to express your love, for real love is selfless and beneficent. 

The earthly mind cannot grasp the meaning of infinity.

It is a blessed dispensation that you are permitted to reflect the infinite love, which He gives so freely, and its realisation makes it inevitable that you should search a way of expressing it in your turn. 

The essence of God is life and love. 

Infinity fills all space, all time—

Infinity is All-knowing—

All-present—

All-powerful.

This knowledge is clear to you, and love vivifies to an extent undreamed on earth. 

You are the image of God—

You have in you a spark of the divinity. 

You cause actual and active harm through ignorance or faulty education or weakness engendered by habit and association. 

This evil is not real, in the eternal and unforgivable sense, but it forms vibrations, which go on indefinitely, and influence others. 

The mere ignoring or denying of wrong does not annihilate its effects.

Perfect Knowledge sees the innermost reasons of every act, and takes account of an individual’s limitations. 

There is salvation—

The realisation of God’s transcendent love for all—

But the road is long—

The trials are not limited to life on earth. 

It would be easier if you could know on earth what is really and eternally right and wrong—

This knowledge would help you to understand the possibility of a God of infinite love and goodness who is equally a God of justice.