I would have you listen to my words.

How can you harmonise the dissimilar descriptions of the next world through different mediums? 

Through one, you depict it as an objective condition―through another, as subjective―the one describes it as possessing trees and flowers, hills and dales, rivulets and atmosphere, palaces and cottages, and many of the scientific and art appurtenances of earth-life―while through another medium, spirit-lives are described as living in states, which their own minds create. 

Spirit-lives, possessed of undue pride, are depicted as building walls of ice, and these states―or conditions are said to vanish―or grow according to the advanced―or retarded state of the patient!

My friends and readers―

These descriptions are both correct―one being the literal, and the other, the ideal―or soul condition of the spirit.

Even in your external world similar discrepancies in the portrayal of character, places, and things exist.

I endeavour to give a correct account of spirit-life through the mediums I control, yet my observations are coloured by their mental states, and also by my own mental condition at the time of control.

If I visit the polar regions, and converse with the Esquimaux, I use comparisons adapted to the climate to which these persons are accustomed, and which they are capable of understanding. 

They will be very different from the comparisons I use to an inhabitant of the tropics.

I have had the happiness of seeing and conversing with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, Buddha and Mahomet, Bacon, and Voltaire―but how shall I describe these interviews to you? 

Shall I tell you of the place and moment of occurrence? 

Shall I tell you how these renowned men were clothed, and how they looked to my eyes?

If I do so, you will reply that my description is too material. 

If I adopt the Oriental typical language, and say, as in the Apocalypse, that they were clothed with the sun, and that there was a sound as of a rushing mighty wind when they spoke―will either mode of speech convey a perfect idea of the fact to your mind?

It is difficult for most mediums to convey a natural impression of the spirit-world, for they are trammelled by their religious education. 

Take an Indian―or Chinese, and he will describe the spirit-world as a world of realities. 

But the inhabitants of Christendom have been taught to look on the soul as an impalpable nothing―a myth―a flame―something without shape―or consistency―an identity capable of feeling the burning of a material hell-fire without being consumed! 

They fail to comprehend spirit in its natural condition.

People do not recall the fact that all the wonderful machinery of man's design―the appliances of Nature's forces to the production of new results―the fabric of silks, laces and beautiful objects are the outcome of man's God-like powers, and that the higher he progresses in development, the more capable he becomes of designing and creating like a very God!

In the spirit-world, your capabilities increase ten-fold, and the objects you design increase in proportionate ratio. 

I would have you listen to my words―

Remember that in the spirit-world, as on the material earth, there are two states―the ideal, visionary one, and the real, materialistic condition. 

These states interlink one with the other, and mind always seeks for an expression of its idea in visible form. 

As the Creator has formed the millions of objective worlds in the sidereal heavens, and all the natural objects you view on the earth, so you will continue―like Him―to form in spirit-life objective articles as the result of your creative thought and live a life as real and objective as the one you now live on earth.

―The Judge