Are there jobs in the afterlife?

The Spirit world is not only a land of equal opportunity for every soul, but the opportunities are so vast that we who are still incarnate can have the least conception of its magnitude. 

Opportunities for what? 

Opportunities for good, useful, interesting work.

The Spirit world is not a land of idleness—not a land where its inhabitants spend the whole of their lives in a super-ecstatic atmosphere of religious exercises, formally offering up “prayer and praise” to the Great Throne in a never-ceasing flow. 

There is an uninterrupted flow, but it comes about in a very different way. 

It surges up from the hearts of all who are happy to be here, and thankful withal.

Your thoughts will at once turn to the many and varied occupations of the earth, covering every shade of earthly activity. 

But behind the earth's occupations is the ever-driving necessity of earning a living—of providing the physical body with food and drink, clothing, and a habitation of some sort. 

Food and drink they never need—the clothing and habitation they have provided for themselves by their lives upon earth. 

As their lives have been on earth, so will their clothing and domicile be when they come to Spirit lands. 

They have no physical necessity to work, but they do have a mental necessity to work, and it is because of the latter that all work is a pleasure with them here.

Imagine yourself in a world where no one works for a living, but where everyone works for the sheer joy of doing something that will be of service to others. 

Just imagine that, and you will begin to understand something of the life in Spirit lands.

They need never wonder what they are fitted for—they will soon find something, which attracts their attention and draws their interest. 

And it will not be long before they are joining their fellows in learning some new occupation and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Scores of people upon the earth love gardens and gardening. 

Some have engaged in the latter as their calling, and enjoyed doing it. 

What better than to continue with their work here in the Spirit world, unrestrained by physical exigencies, free and unhampered, and with the inexhaustible resources of the Spirit world at their command? 

Their occupation is their own. 

They can, and do stop whenever they wish, and they can resume whenever they wish. 

And there is no one to exert his will upon them. 

And what is the result? 

Happiness for themselves because by creating a beautiful work of horticultural art, they have added more beauty to an already beautiful realm and so they have brought happiness to others. 

So their task goes on, altering, rearranging, planning, beautifying, building anew, and ever acquiring skill and still greater skill. 

Thus, they continue until such time as they wish to change their work—or until their spiritual progression carries them on to fresh fields of endeavour in other realms.

The wish to do so is really all that is required, although, naturally, an aptitude is a great help. 

But it is very surprising how quickly efficiency is gained by the stimulus of desire. 

The “wish to do” becomes translated into the “ability to do” in a very short time. 

Keen interest and predilection for the work are all that are asked.

Inside the hall of music we find libraries of music where students are busy at their studies and pupils with their musician teachers. 

Most of the people whom you meet are learning to be practical musicians, that is, they are learning to play some one—or more instruments. 

And someone has to provide them with the necessary instruments. 

The hall of music does that, but somebody must create them for the hall of music. 

And so the instrument makers of the earth find themselves at home in their craft if they wish to continue with it in the Spirit world.

Now, it may be suggested that a lifetime on earth spent in one particular form of work would be quite enough for the average person, and that when he comes into the Spirit world, the last thing he would want to do would be to take up again his old earthly occupation with its interminable routine and drudgery. 

No one is compelled either by force of circumstances—or from the mere need of subsistence to do any work at all in the Spirit world. 

Remember that all work is undertaken willingly, freely, for the love of doing it, for the pride in creating something, for the desire of being of service to one's fellow inhabitants and to the realm in general, and you will see that the maker of musical instruments—to adduce one occupation among thousands—is just as happy as they all are in these realms. 

So he continues to make his instruments, brings happiness to himself and to so many other people who will pleasurably and usefully bring joy to still more through the creation of his mind.

In many a home here, there reposes, and not as a mere ornament! a beautiful pianoforte, built by clever hands who have learned the spirit methods of creation. 

These things cannot be bought. 

They are spiritual rewards. 

It would be useless to try to possess that to which they have no right. 

They should simply find themselves without it and with no means of getting it. 

No one could create it for them, whatever it might be. 

If they were to try, they would find that their power would not function in that direction.

Before we pass on from the hall of music, we might just look at the library. 

Here are musical scores by the thousand, together with the various parts from which the instrumentalists play. 

Most of the large orchestras here obtain their music from the hall of music. 

It is free for all to borrow whenever they wish, but someone has to duplicate it. 

And that is another important and productive occupation. 

The librarians who take care of all this music, and who attend to people's wants in this connection, fulfill another useful task. 

And so the details could be multiplied, covering the whole range of musical endeavour, from the person who does no more than love and enjoy music to those who are instrumentalists and leaders in the musical art.

In the hall of fabrics, they will find the same industry, the same happiness among all those who are working there. 

They can obtain all the different materials they need from the hall of fabrics—or, as in the case of music, they can ask some craftsman to make what they require. 

They will never have a refusal, nor will they have to wait an interminable time before they receive what they want. 

There are plenty of craftsmen to supply all their needs.

In the same hall, there are students learning the art of designing and they are instructed by masters in the art. 

Experimentation is continually going on in producing new types of cloth and new designs. 

These various materials have nothing whatever to do with theit own spirit clothes. 

That is a personal matter. 

The products of the fabric hall are used for general purposes, such as, for instance, in the garniture of their  homes and in the larger halls and buildings. 

Many a Spirit doctor has guided the hand of an earthly surgeon when he is performing an operation. 

The earthly doctor is perfectly unaware of the fact, and would ridicule any suggestion that he is receiving assistance from an unseen source. 

The doctor in Spirit is contented to serve without acknowledgment from him whom he serves. 

It is the successful issue that he is concerned about, not who shall have the credit. 

The scientist, too, continues his researches when he comes here. 

In whatever branch of science he may be concerned, he will find enough, and more than enough, to engage his attention for a long time to come. 

And so with the engineer, and scores upon scores of others. 

All that they have in their halls and houses, in their homes and gardens, has to be made—to be fashioned—or created, and it requires someone to do it. 

The need is constant, and the supply is constant, and it will ever be so.

There is another department of industry, though, which is vitally necessary, and it is peculiar to the spirit world.

The percentage is low, deplorably low, of people who come into the Spirit world with any knowledge at all of their new life and the Spirit world in general. 

All the countless souls without this knowledge have to be taken care of and helped in their difficulties and perplexities. 

In the great halls of rest, there are expert nurses and Spirit doctors ready to treat those whose last earthly illness has been long and painful—or whose passing into spirit has been sudden or violent. 

There are many such homes, especially for the latter. 

These homes are a standing monument of shame to the earth that they should be obliged to exist at all. 

Passings may be sudden and violent—that is inevitable at present, but it is to the eternal shame of the earth that so many souls should arrive here in woeful ignorance of what lies before them. 

They have special colleges where those desiring to take up this particular work can become fully conversant with it. 

Here they learn much that scientifically concerns the Spirit body itself, and the Spirit mind. 

They are given a general knowledge of the ways of Spirit life since they will have to deal with people who for the most part have no knowledge whatever of their new state. 

They will have to know the facts of intercommunication between this world and ours since such numbers of people ask about this important matter the instant they realise what has taken place in their lives. 

It is astonishing how many of them want to rush back to the earth plane to try to tell those they have left behind of the great discovery they have made of the fact that they are alive and in another world!

Spirits are living in a practical spirit world where they are busy upon their own individual and useful tasks.

But what of the person who has never done a useful thing during his earth life? 

Such a person will not find himself in these realms until he has worked his way here.

Entrance is by service alone.

To make a complete list of all spirit occupations would take a very large volume to do so, for they seem to be inexhaustible.

Science and engineering being closely allied in the Spirit world, far-reaching discoveries are constantly being made and inventions are ever being perfected. 

The earth has given a poor exhibition of what has been sent through to it from the Spirit world by putting to base uses what has been given for its benefit. 

We have exercised our own free will, but we have been exercising it in a direction that ultimately brings destruction. 

Hence, much is held back from the earth until a higher state of development is reached. 

That day will assuredly arrive, and a torrent of new inventions will come pouring through from the Spirit world to our world.

In the meantime, the work goes on—research, investigation, discovery and invention, and it is work that absorbs great hosts of interested people and provides them with useful employment in their Spirit life. 

Nothing ever disturbs the ordered routine of their  work. 

While the work continues, they may be retiring from it for a space, either to rest—or to follow some other line of endeavour. 

They have no disputes, no domestic upheavals, no rivalries that produce dissatisfaction and unpleasantness. 

They have no discontented folk. 

They may have the urge to be doing something of greater moment, but that is not discontent, but the prompting from within that denotes the steps of their spiritual progression. 

The humblest Spirit is made to feel that whatever his work, however insignificant it may appear beside other and seemingly greater tasks, he is performing something vital and significant that will bring with it its own inevitable reward that none can withhold from it—none can take away. 

In the Spirit world, to work is to be profoundly happy.