How to interact with the spirit world?

We labour under the delusion that the spiritual world is subject to the same physical laws as our own. 

This is a frequent mistake with those who come from the earth plane into the spirit world. 

They think that it will be dark every twelve hours and that they must provide against heat and cold. 

This is not the case. 

We think that because there is a spiritual counterpart to the matter on earth that there is a spiritual counterpart to the gaseous products of the earth, but this is not so since the gaseous products of matter are themselves in the nature of spirit. 

Hence, they are unable to possess a spiritual counterpart. 

The spirit world has, therefore, no fog, smoke, mist, clouds or other gaseous matter or vapour. There is a spiritual counterpart to water, but not to rain, which is vapour, and does not come under the spirit world's category of matter—neither does it have any counterpart of fire, which appertains only to our world. 

When we read of spirits seeing flames, vapour, fog, et cetera, we may assume that it is entirely subjective and denotes the inner condition of the seer.

Spirits do not perceive such appearances because they belong to a higher sphere and have no objective reality. 

If they wish to penetrate into the inner state of unhappy spirits, they can see by sympathy the appearances, which they are cognisant of. 

They see our fires, it is true, just as we see them, so far as regards the materials they consume, but the products of combustion have no existence in the spirit world, neither do they perceive any heat from fire or any cold from frost. Frozen water appears the same to them, as to us. 

Thus, we see they lose a great many of the disagreeables, as well as the agreeables of our life. 

People coming from our side of life find the spiritual world at first very enjoyable—the change from darkness, fog, rain and cold being rather delightful. 

We speak here, of course, of those who see things as they are, and who are not morally insane or hallucinated. 

They find themselves in the same locality they previously resided in, but all is changed as regards its climate. 

In their eyes, the sky is ever cloudless, the sun is always shining, if not always visible, for, of course, it disappears below the horizon, and the streets are free from fog, smoke and rain, and they feel neither thirst nor hunger. 

They soon miss the variety, which those changes of the atmosphere afforded, and perhaps some would have preferred the old state of things. For their part, however, they think it is a blessing that we who dwell on the earth plane are not distracted by a perpetual struggle with nature. 

It is true spirits see the exact counterpart of what we see, in the same colours and with the same distinctness in every respect, but they see a great deal more than we do, just as they also see all the same people that are visible to us, and many more unsightly ones besides of whom we are not cognisant. 

The spirit body is in a partially changed condition whilst the material body is awake. To spirits' senses, the physical body is transparent and spiritual, not material at all, and it is we who appear to them to be the ghosts. 

We think that to see people unconsciously walking through obstructions of this kind without evidencing any personal injury must make life in our streets very like the comic business in a pantomime, but we may rely on its being familiar enough to all spirits. 

We ought to observe here that the spirit body is not so solid as inanimate spirit matter, that is, it is not with spirit relatively as solid as our material bodies are when coming in contact with our matter. For instance, one spirit could not injure another spirit by striking him with an axe or other weapon. 

The blow would simply glide off because the will power of the person assailed would be sufficient to ward off the blow and prevent him from being injured. 

If however, he were taken unawares, he could by his will power, also restore himself to his former condition without the aid of external remedies. 

Should he not exercise his will power or be too weak to do so, he might suffer some injury, but such cases are very rare since the law of self-preservation would call forth sufficient will power to shield a man from any serious consequences and the injury, as compared with the damage to the material body, would comparatively speaking be a very slight one.