How do we become spiritually transformed?

Life, you must know, is upon a gigantic scale here in the spirit world, how gigantic you can have very little conception until you yourself come to dwell among us. But because its magnitude is vast that is not to say that it is proportionately complex. Indeed, when one comes to compare the earth world with the spirit world, it is at once apparent how complex the earth world is, and how much simpler is life in the spirit world. This may seem an astonishing statement to make—nevertheless, it is a true one. 

—Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson

Now you may wonder how spirits come to know when their services are needed, and who or what directs those services into the required quarter. 

The answer is a simple one—the Office of Records and Inquiries. 

It is not part of spirits' normal functions to be fully acquainted with all or any of the methods employed in the gathering of information by this central office. 

All that spirits are called upon to do is to apprise this office with the fact that we are both free to undertake whatever task may present itself, and we follow the simple procedure of awaiting notification that our services are desired.

For it is by the application of this knowledge that he is enabled to send upon their various missions those of us who are exactly suited to the specific task in hand.

This man is a genial soul, of great kindness and comprehension, and his knowledge of those who work for him is prodigious. Every ‘death’ is treated and served with strict regard to its essential requirements. So that we are allotted our various tasks with one eye, as it were, upon our capabilities, experience, temperament, and so on. 

As you can imagine, a great deal of patience has at times to be exercised when they are confronted with minds that are tenacious of old beliefs and ideas that bear no relationship with the truth and facts and realities of spirit life, and it may take much arduous work to free the newly arrived person of so much that is mentally inhibiting and spiritually retarding. 

You will see then the wisdom of choosing instruments who are ably suited in all respects to the work in hand, so that a difficult or awkward case may not be rendered more so.

The spirit world never does things by halves, to use a familiar expression, and what might appear to be sheer precocity to the incarnate is clear wisdom to them who have to carry out the work. 

No trouble is spared. 

They have an infinity of time, a vast amount of patience, together with the services of a multitude of people always available. There is no bungling, there are no mistakes—nothing is left to chance. You will no doubt wonder how spirits are directed at the outset of their ‘labours’ to the actual ‘chamber of death,’ to use a most lugubrious phrase. 

Incidentally, what a wealth of gloom and lamentation it conjures up! 

The knowledge that a transition is about to take place, together with its precise location, is the result of a remarkable conveyance of information, passed from one to another, commencing with that important functionary, the individual's personal spirit guide, and terminating with us who undertake the work of escorting folk from the earth world to their homes in the spirit world. Between the former and the latter there is a clear concatenation of minds an exchange of information carried out by thought transmission, accurately and rapidly.

By a sort of confidence and confluence spirit guides are brought into the ‘thought-beam.’  

We were now in direct rapport with our attendant friend ‘at the other end,’  as you would say. And now, to use very unscientific language, we had but to project ourselves along this thought-beam to find ourselves in the exact spot where our services were needed. 

To the relatives in the bedchamber, the boy was ‘dead’ and ‘gone.’ To spirit guides, he is alive and present.