What do all spirit-lives see?

Imagine yourself capable of flying to the top of the highest mountain on earth—

Beyond this, suppose yourself in space—the air scintillating with light—

Through this illimitable space you are wheeling—around you speed gorgeous balls of light, glowing with varied colours of amethyst, ruby, topaz and emerald dyes, like mammoth gems whirling through the air, while beyond this pyrotechnic revolution of worlds, you see afar off the Land of Souls!

Look out on the heavens and count the stars! 

The homes of souls in eternity are more numerous than those shining points!

Among these scenes of sublimity you pursue your solitary way until you reach the confines of a new world—not diminutive, like the earth you have left, but a sphere whose vast dimensions are as the sun in size, and which, like that orb, seems to be a globe of light.

A strange tremor pervades your frame—an ardent desire—a longing possesses you to attain to this world and penetrate its atmosphere, which envelops it like a phosphorescent halo.

You obey this instinct—

As the bird aloft in the heavens dives through the air for its food, so the soul—with unerring instinct—descends through this luminous atmosphere and finds its food—

Its kindred, also—

All passed out of the earth's dominions—

Phantoms on the page of history—

Here they are—

Living in this world of Spirits!

Are these fair cities real? 

Are these trees and shrubs—

These mountains and plains, substantial and real? 

Is this a real world—

This electric ball, which flashes like a jewel, and whirls through space like the chariot-wheels of Jehovah?

Is it true that these powerful beings, with their many faculties, once inhabited that tiny globe called Earth? 

These wonderful beings who can traverse the air like archangels, who whirl through space like flaming meteors, were they once toilers over the heavy sands of earth?

Where there is no beginning, there is no end, and from where I stand on the opal heights, I can see in creation neither beginning nor end!

It is what I see— 

It is what all spirit-lives see. 

What mortal tongue can express the wonders that pass before eyes, which have been looking on spirit-life thousands of centuries! 

If men fail to understand the workings of the little globe earth, how can they comprehend the plans of this mighty world of souls?

I breathe an air so refined that it permeates my being and lifts me up among the gods! 

I am no longer a mortal—weak and ailing—shrinking from the storms of earth, but an immortal, ever-progressing inhabitant of a world whose breath is like the finest air of summer, as it steals over a garden of perfumed flowers.

—Spirit De Quincey