En Rapport with the Spirit World

All persons are more or less en rapport with the spirit world and their spirit friends know more of the thoughts that are directed against them than they do themselves. For instance, if anyone thinks ill of you, it immediately causes a ray of light to pass from them to you and your spirit friends can tell by the colour of that ray whether the thought is good or evil. This light is not visible to all spirits. It depends on their state of development. All spirits above the earth plane can thus see the thoughts of persons below them, whether in the body or out of the body. They are not affected by the condition of the atmosphere like an electric current, nor is there any necessity for wires as a means of conveying the thought. All thoughts are thus conveyed by a ray of light when persons think of one another. This is only in accordance with the law whereby spirits are able to interpret the thoughts of those who are in a lower plane of spiritual development than themselves. If spirits on their own level, embodied or disembodied, think of them, they are aware of it but thoughts not directed towards themselves, they cannot, in that case, interpret, excepting there be a strong tie of sympathy between them and the thinker. A person in the body may, of course, be spiritually on a higher plane than many disembodied spirits; in which case, the latter are unable to read his thoughts or enjoy his society, though they would, nevertheless, be able to overhear his conversation and spoken words. Hence, if we wish to avoid evil associates from the spirit world, we see how important it is to make spiritual progress and thereby attract higher spirit friends. Thus, as already explained, if a man enters the spirit world, he is at once aware what people think of him, though he is not aware what those same people are thinking of others and, consequently, he cannot find any consolation in the reflection that there are other people who are as ill-thought of as himself. Everyone he meets thinks badly of him because they know him to be a bad man by his personal appearance. His spiritual body and garments pronounce his true character and they think of him accordingly. If he could read the thoughts of his neighbours regarding others, it would take away the sting of their reproaches regarding himself, for the same reason that a man on earth, if abused by the public as an individual, feels it much more than if he were only abused as one of a number of other delinquents.