How would this world appear to us?

How would the spiritual world appear to us? 

In our world, we have visible, physical life in all stages of development and in all forms; the rock, the flower, the animal and the man. We have also mental life in all stages, from the simplest animal instinct to the most complex brain of man. So, in the spiritual world, spirit-souls have psychic life in all stages—that life which may be said to be outward and visible to their psychic senses. They have also spiritual life; unseen, except in its outcome, as it manifests itself through the psychic.

Thus, they have trees and stones, animals and man; all with the same kind of life running through them, but not to the same degree. How would this world appear to us, if we could enter it in our present body? The old simile of the fish and the bird would be true. The fish that sees, breathes and flies through the water could not change with the bird; the air would be too strong for him, and his powers, so perfect in themselves, could not adjust themselves to their new surroundings. We are the fish and they are the bird. We would find their air too strong for us and they should find ours too heavy for them. They enter into our world only through its reflected, but true soul form; they see the pictures of earthly things reflected in us, as we see things reflected by and on the eye.

Imagine yourself, however, in the next world. Try to see the new world. The first sensation would be of surprise that it is so much like our own—what would first strike us would be the resemblance—town and country, sea and grass; flowers and fruit; men and women and children; life and motion. But the differences would soon begin to press upon our notice. The absence of all dirt, sordid misery, haggard and overburdened faces and savage and sin-sodden countenances. Sorrowful ones we might see; grave faces as well as bright, shining, outgoing looks; we would see people at work of various kinds, but anything resembling the whip of the taskmaster would be absent. Weariness might occasionally be noticed, but not impatience or despair.

Perhaps the next thing we would notice would be the close fellowship we would have with all forms of nature around us and our power over what we call the lower—power for our good, but not for the injury of anything. The air we breathe out, for instance, is no longer poisoned for our brother’s use; the grass we walk on is not trodden down and spoiled for other feet; the flowers we gather do not leave bleeding stalks behind them to wither and become unpleasing to the eye.

The sea will no longer divide, or be an instrument of death, but rather a friend if only we trust ourselves to it. The mountain will no longer be a barrier for toilsome and dangerous climbing, but a friend from whose surface we may see a wider stretch of the new country. All things will be very good to us if we let our nature have full play and live according to its simple laws.

Should we hear music, we would find an answering strain rise up within our being. We might look in vain for any instrument from which the strains could have proceeded, but instead of an organ, the player would play upon the strings of our inner being and they would respond fully and perfectly to his touch.

Then again there is a great difference in the way we converse with those we meet. At first, we would naturally use our own language or seem to do so as in a dream (let us say). As we were understood and answered, it would seem as if they also spoke the same language, but in a little while, we would see that it was not the outward language, which they comprehended and replied to, but that we made them feel our meaning and they, in return, impressed their thoughts upon us.

Thus, we would find in a hundred ways that the old was passing away and that all things were becoming new.

I AWOKE! Conditions of Life on the Other Side, David Stott, London, 1895

Men reading their newspapers on a ferry, Sydney, 22 October 1940 | State Library of New South Wales