What happens when you enter the spirit world?

How would this world appear to you if you could enter it in your present body?

The old simile of the fish and the bird would be true.

The fish that sees, breathes and flies through the water could not change with the bird—

The air would be too strong for him, and his powers, so perfect in themselves, could not adjust themselves to their new surroundings.

You are the fish and we are the bird. 

You would find our air too strong for you, and we should find yours too heavy for us.

We enter into your world only through its reflected, but true soul form—

We see the pictures of earthly things reflected in you, as you see things reflected by and on the eye.

Imagine yourself, however, over here, and with the help of what we have told you try to see the new world.

I think the first sensation would be of surprise that it is so much like your own—

What would first strike you would be the resemblance—town and country, sea and grass, flowers and fruit, men and women and children, life and motion.

But the differences would soon begin to press upon your notice.

The absence of all dirt, sordid misery, haggard and overburdened faces and savage and sin-sodden countenances.

Sorrowful ones you might see—

Grave faces, as well as bright, shining, outgoing looks—

You would see people at work of various kinds, but anything resembling the whip of the taskmaster would be absent.

Weariness might occasionally be noticed, but not impatience or despair.

Perhaps the next thing you would notice would be the close fellowship you would have with all forms of Nature around you and your power over what we call the lower power for your good, but not for the injury of anything.

The air you breathe out, for instance, is no longer poisoned for your brother’s use—

The grass you walk on is not trodden down and spoiled for other feet—

The flowers you gather do not leave bleeding stalks behind them to wither and become unpleasing to the eye.

The sea will no longer divide—or be an instrument of death, but rather a friend if only you trust yourself to it.

The mountain will no longer be a barrier for toilsome and dangerous climbing, but a friend from whose surface you may see a wider stretch of the new country.

All things will be very good to you if you let your nature have full play and live according to its simple laws.

Should you hear music, you would find an answering strain rise up within your being.

You might look in vain for any instrument from which the strains could have proceeded, but instead of an organ, the player would play upon the strings of your inner being and they would respond fully and perfectly to his touch.

Then again, there is a great difference in the way you converse with those you meet.

At first, you would naturally use your own language—or seem to do so as in a dream, let us say.

As you were understood and answered, it would seem as if they also spoke the same language, but in a little while you would see that it was not the outward language, which they comprehended and replied to, but that you made them feel your meaning, and they, in return, impressed their thoughts upon you.

Thus you would find in a hundred ways that the old was passing away and that all things were becoming new.

And so the soul, when it is freed at last from earthly bonds, flies from its prison-house to its true home.

On earth it was encumbered, incomplete, dumb and half-blind, struggling with earth and sin, striving and groping on its darkened way with the eternal question on its lips, eternally unanswered—

Why? until the angel comes with outstretched wings, dark underneath to him but light above—

That angel, which like two-faced Janus stands—one face forever turned towards the past, the other forward to the life to come—

That dreaded messenger from the unseen who is called death by you, but life by us.

When we speak of growth, childhood and manhood, of course, we do not mean growth in days or in years.

The psyche grows only in soul-ways—waxing strong in spirit—

That is, there comes to the soul increased power of manifesting itself, a more varied and fuller life.

This growth is not always at the same rate—sometimes indeed, the soul seems to remain stationary—or even decline for a while, but speaking generally, progress is the law of the new nature as of the old.