Study these revelations and think them over.

There is a warning in almost every line of this narrative.

Do not think that these revelations are unnecessary.

Study and think them over.

The Doorway Opens

Tell Carrie I am alive―

I am more alive than before.

I have had to learn much of what I should have learnt on earth.

At death, you join that set of people to which you naturally belong―those who hold the same sort of belief or non-belief.

It was lucky for me that I believed to some extent, or else I would have been with the set below us―those who did not believe.

It saves a lot of time if you believe that you live after death.

I am very glad I believed as much as I did.

I wish I had believed more.

I used to say it did not matter much what a man believed, but I am learning I was wrong.

It makes a big difference.

The set above us are those who believed, but did not fully act up to their beliefs.

It matters what you believe.

You are instructed in what you are lacking, and when that lack has been made good, you move on to the next set.

There is much more variety in the next set.

You expect to see many old friends, and may not, but they are probably only in another set.

It is funny—

I died on my birthday and was really born here on it.

Purgatory corresponds roughly to where we all go―only it is more a place of learning than of punishment.

Still, I cannot help regretting the time I wasted on earth, which would have got me into a more congenial set.

You learn, but it is slow work.

I feel like a schoolboy again.

I have to begin my schooling all over again.

I am here all the time―

The spirit-world impinges on earth.

I hate similes, but I can best explain it by one.

Do you know those Pepper’s Ghosts?*

Pepper’s Ghost* is an illusionary technique used in theatre and magic tricks.

Using a plate glass and special lighting techniques, it can make objects seem to appear or disappear, become transparent or make one object morph into another.

The viewer must be able to see into the main room, but not into the hidden room for the illusion to work.

The edge of the glass may be hidden by a cleverly designed pattern in the floor.

The hidden room may be an identical mirror-image of the main room so that its reflected image matches that of the main room.

This approach is useful in making objects seem to appear or disappear.

This effect can also be used to make an actor reflected in the mirror appear to turn into an actor behind the mirror (or vice versa).

This is the principle behind the Girl-to-Gorilla trick found in many haunted houses and in the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever.

The hidden room may instead be painted black with only light-coloured objects in it.

When light is cast on the room only, the objects reflect the light and appear in the glass, making them seem as ghostly images superimposed in the visible room.

The reflections in the glass create the appearance of three-dimensional, translucent ghosts.

In the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland/Disney World, this is used to make ghosts appear to be dancing through the ballroom, seeming to interact with props in the physical ballroom, and disappearing when the lights on the animatronics are turned off.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

A viewer looking through the red rectangle sees a ghost floating next to the table.

The illusion is created by a large piece of glass or a half-silvered mirror situated between viewer and scene (green outline).

The glass reflects a mirror-image room (left) that is hidden from the viewer.

If the mirror-image room (left) is darkened, it does not reflect well in the glass.

The empty room (top) is brightly lit, making it very visible to the viewer.

When the lights in the mirror-image room are raised (with the empty room being dimmed slightly to compensate), the ghost appears out of nowhere.

Compare us to a thought.

It is as if we were thrown onto your stage with our scenery and characters walking about you unseen―just as a real man on such a stage would not see the phantoms, which surrounded him, but the audience sees both him and them.

Or else, like a bank of clouds, which blends into a range of hills, so, it is hard to say which are hills and which are clouds.

Telepathy links the next world to earth.

It is the outer edge of those faculties, which spirit-lives have to develop in the spirit-world.

Speech does not exist with them.

You cannot tell lies here, or be deceived, for every thought exists of itself, and spirit-lives can see them all.

This explains those sayings in the Bible about nothing shall be hid,* and the Catholics’ doctrine that a really evil thought is worse than a venial sin.

For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was anything kept secret but that it should come abroad.

―Mark 4:22 (King James Bible, Cambridge Edition)

My punishment is largely this―

I should add that it's rather like a hideous nightmare―

All one’s dead thoughts come crowding round.

All your evil deeds and thoughts rise up before you in as real a shape as I yourself possess.

They are there with all the surrounding impedimenta.

Do you mean to say that there is no difference between the fault thought of and one committed?

It all depends on the reason why it was not.

Supposing your better nature gains the upper hand and you refuse to act as your lower nature prompts you―

After seeing the evil thought, you will be refreshed by seeing the good one, for all your good deeds and thoughts come here, also.

If the sin had not been committed solely because you were prevented by something else, there would be no good thought to refresh your weary spirit.

You may be momentarily prevented from giving way to an evil passion and rejoice that it should have been so.

You will see all that on the other side.

Does this state remain constant or do your former thoughts haunt you less?

As your fresh thoughts are of a nobler nature than your thinking on earth, these refresh and enable you to bear more easily the grief you feel for your former faults.

You progress as you learn and things become easier.

Gone West―Three Narratives of After-death Experiences | Sequel to Gone West―A Subaltern in Spirit Land