When does the reality of existence begin?

Is it possible for you to realise that you are in a state of chrysalis—

Your true self—

Your soul is in a state of being formed within the shell or enveloping shadow, which is your earthly body? 

When it becomes finished, whether it be completed as the gorgeous butterfly or as the homely grey moth, it will wing its flight from the realm of shadows to begin its growth in its native ether where no shadows fall. 

Then begins the reality of existence.

Does the Niagara not form a perfect shadow of its falls by a spray of cloud reflected high in the air? 

If you were in a balloon, and should pass through the cloud, you would observe its shape while passing through it.

You could see the shape of the fall of water and hear its roaring while so near that you could spring into it. 

Water is a thing natural to your sense and perception. 

The vapour is not. 

You cannot hear, touch, taste, smell or see a cloud while passing through it—

It merely obscures things from your view. 

You would never think of investigating the cloud above the fall to discover what the real thing—the fall—is made of.

Well, your dear old earth is just as much an unreal, intangible thing to the senses of a departed soul, as is the cloud of vapour to you.

Departed souls do not visit the earth—

They do not enter again into its materiality to know of its conditions and happenings.

They can see the human souls within the clay while the clay itself appears more like a shadow or covering enveloping them.

Yet they can see you and your friend plainer than you can see your friend though you stand face-to-face with him. 

Have you never looked into the eyes of your friend and listened to his voice striving to convey an idea of his thoughts to your mind, yet wondered all the while what was the idea, struggling behind the shadow of eyes and voice, which you strove to pierce with your senses to find the real thing anxious to reveal itself to you?

Did you never yourself find words entirely inadequate to express the strength and shades of your feeling?

I say departed souls do not visit the earth. 

Naturally, they do not! 

If time and development have not removed them too far from the attraction of old influences, they may under certain conditions enter temporarily within the shadowy covering of an unliberated soul without displacing the natural soul. 

The moment the natural soul was removed or displaced, the shadow would become untenantable. 

What departed spirit ever seeks to reveal itself through a corpse, a discarded shell? and view material things from his state of existence through his dim glass of vision. 

Or if skilful enough, a departed soul may weave for himself from corresponding essences a covering so similar to the earthly shell that he may reveal and even see and hear and speak and touch and taste and smell through it, as long as he can concentrate will enough to hold it together.

Thus when you say you see the sun, the moon and the stars, it is not the real planet that you see, but you see its shadow of materiality through the shell that encompasses yourself. 

The clear light of the object itself, as departed souls see it, you could not bear.

Until it gains use of its new faculties, a soul that enters the spiritual life needs as gentle care as a newborn babe in earthly life.

Thus you perceive departed souls from the earth can no more visit other worlds than they can their own, that is, the materiality of other worlds—to take on their conditions of life and see as the world-bound souls of those other worlds see from their own plane of vision.

And they cannot make for themselves a covering similar to the inhabitants of those other worlds because there are points of dissimilarity between their own souls and those other souls.

Nor would there be attraction enough between them and a world-bound soul of foreign worlds to hold them to the worldly condition sufficiently close for any sort of communication.

But the advanced spirits from earth may and do meet and exchange ideas and knowledge with spirits from other worlds.

There is a universal spirit language where one is advanced enough to comprehend it—

A language, which is a reflection of thought—

No words, as you understand the language being used or needed.

The real or spirit homes of the inhabitants of other worlds may be visited yet it is not a common thing, and one that requires the development of a larger power of will than may be attained in less than ages of thought and discipline. 

If a medium sometimes tells you when entranced that he visits other worlds, he may think his soul is taken there, but it is not so—

The thoughts from souls, which know of other worlds are reflected upon his own thoughts and reproduced mechanically by his organs of speech to you—as visions are given, which are merely the concentration of thoughts or memories from an individual operating mind en rapport with and reproduced by the will of the operating mind upon the under receptive mind. 

Do you expect the reflection can be exact?

If souls could return to worlds promiscuously, what confusion there would be of thoughts and ideas in our own world generated from influences of spirits differing in nature from our own, as one star differs from another in glory!

But the nearer they advance toward one great source or centre, the nearer they must approach in characteristics—

Like rays in their conveyance.

When advanced enough to feel an attraction—to give or receive—then they exchange with each other, but then they have passed so far from the attraction of their former worldly condition that ideas must be transmitted through many grades of mind and refracted and lost in their passage more or less in each transmission until the image given would be very dim indeed—scarcely worth the while. 

No; you will never be able to hail the inhabitants of other worlds through any medium clearer than our own telescope!

But there is much that you can discover of other worlds, as you see them by your own powers and efforts.

The light that is given to you to see by is the best for you in your present state of chrysalis and if used to the best of your ability will be a priceless revenue to you always. 

And there is much for you to see.

Remember; you can find out in your present condition things pertaining to the materiality of your life and world, which no departed soul can know from after experiences of his own.

There are discoveries made on earth, which help to unravel the mysteries of laws whose workings are witnessed but uncomprehended in the spirit world! 

There is much in our own world to learn. 

The scientist who makes one discovery of an actual fact is as helpful in his way to his race and thus a benefactor to all races, as is a prophet or seer.

He, like all who are able to discover truths, whether material, moral or spiritual, is a mediator between the Divine Mind from whence all truth flows and the creatures partaking of the Divine-mind essence—of breathings of divinity, which require these discoveries of truth as channels through which their own soul waters may flow in their round of eternal progression back again to the fount from whose overflow they were started on their way—were breathed into existence.

Poets and artists are the second mediators, which turn these truths into ways to present their different aspects to the duller mind. 

Following these are writers, ministers and lecturers—

Teachers of all kinds who enlarge and explain, as their minds have received to minds, which require such agitation to awaken their own perceptions of things. 

All have a use divine.

How often do you say—

I desired to learn—

To know of this or that when I was younger, but now I am so old—

I shall soon die—

I could make little use of such knowledge now—

It is not worth my while. 

Such a reflection shows how prevalent is the thought in the world that death will either put an end to the working of the mind or materially change its powers of working. 

And feeling his bodily powers failing, he lets his soul become all covered over with the rust of disuse. 

If only you could realise that because your earthly time grows short, the more you should make of it with your more mature powers of the mind to know, discover, observe, compare and reflect while you could still see to measure the shape of the shadows.

The owl perchance sees gradations in the dark, which eyes formed for daylight may not detect! 

And you would not fall into the dotage of old age being merely a healthy animal with his powers of mind lying dormant if you kept them bright with constant use.

The spirit, feeling more and more its newborn powers, would drop the old body as easily as a garment grown threadbare is torn at the slightest strain.

M. Karl, Leaflets of Truth; Or, Light From the Shadow Land, 1886, Chicago