How does a spirit guide work?

You say you have heard so much of spirit-guides to people on earth and want to know who appoints these, and why?

Guardian angels I suppose they used to be called.

Well, no one appoints them―

They are spirit-friends attracted by something in the individual, which appeals to them, and they try to influence and help those in whom they take an interest.

They may be earth-friends―or relatives who having passed on still keep the bond of affection that held them while here, though they are often strangers attracted by mutual interests who try literally to inspire those on earth.

This does not mean in religious matters only―it applies to art, science, engineering, medicine―or any other subject.

Can you imagine a musician here, revelling in beautiful harmonies, trying to instill into the mind of an earthly musician some of the glorious sound, which gives him such joy, and which he knows will benefit and uplift those still in the bonds of the flesh?―or an artist surrounded by this exquisite beauty trying to inspire the mind of a friend so that he may see with truer, clearer vision the hidden wonders that surround him?―or a (hu)man of science―or an engineer trying to impress the mind of a friend on earth with a new discovery―or invention?

These things are being done every day, and the flashes of genius, which illumine the world occasionally are the result of the influence of spirit-minds on the minds of those still in the world.

When you realise it is possible to get help from these sources, spirit-lives will do great things, for to those who have passed on the sources of information, though not limitless, are vast in comparison with those on earth.

The secrets of Atlantis and ancient Egypt are obtainable if they care to work to learn them.

I have told you, here, too, like attracts like.

If an individual is spiritually and intellectually undeveloped and lives only in the senses, the spirit-friends he attracts are of a very undesirable order.

They are the souls of those who had no wish to live anything, but a life of animal gratification, and still hang about the world and their old haunts continually, trying to get a kind of second-hand indirect pleasure from the doings of the people who now follow in their footsteps.

Claude's Book