Where do you get souls?

Where Souls Go Up and Down

My friend, there is nothing to fear in death. It is no harder than a trip to a foreign country―the first trip―to one who has grown oldish and settled in the habits of his own more or less narrow corner of the world.

When a man comes out here, the strangers whom he meets seem no stranger than the foreign peoples seem to one who first goes among them. He does not always understand them; there again, his experience is like a sojourn in a foreign country. Then, after a while, he begins to make friendly advances and to smile with the eyes. The question, “Where are you from?” meets with a similar response to that on earth. One is from California, another is from Boston, and another is from London. This is when we meet on the high roads of travel; for there are lanes of travel over here, where the souls go up and down as on the earth. Such a road is generally the most direct line between two great centres, but it is never on the line of a railway. There would be too much noise. We can hear sounds made on the earth. There is a certain shock to the etheric ear, which carries the vibration of sound to us.

Sometimes, one settles down for a long time in one place. I visited an old home in the State of Maine, where a man on this side of life had been stopping for I do not know how many years. He told me that the children had grown to be men and women and that a colt to which he became attached when he first came out had grown into a horse and had died of old age.

There are sluggards and dull people here, as with you. There are also brilliant and magnetic people, whose very presence is rejuvenating.

It seems almost absurd to say that we wear clothes, the same as you do, but we do not seem to need so many. I have not seen any trunks, but then I have been here only a short time.

Heat and cold do not matter much to me now, though I remember at first being rather uncomfortable by reason of the cold. But that is past.

―X