What is life like in the spirit world?

Do you have rain, snow and frost, as we do? 

No. 

Then do plants grow there without rain? 

We have moisture, dews. 

Do you have the sun, moon and stars there, as we have? 

Yes. 

Do you feel the heat of the sun, as we do here? 

We control all such conditions by thought. 

Is medicine used there? 

Yes―elixirs. Water here too. 

Has every plane its corresponding valley? 

Yes―all.

Are there towns and cities over there? 

No―we live in groups. 

Not in families in separate homes? 

In groups. 

Families are not together in definite groups? 

No. No! 

Case of birds of a feather flock together! 

Yes―if you want to be graphic.

Have you met Canada's great woman poet, Isabella Valancy Crawford? 

No―she is on the thirtieth plane. A beautiful poet. 

Is she so regarded over there? 

Very much so. 

Isabella Valancy Crawford

Please tell us how you know the future? 

We see causes set in motion. 

But the astral plane is right here, is it not? 

I am about 500 miles above the earth plane. I am home―my thought is projected to you. 

Tell us exactly what you mean by home on the astral plane? 

Residence. We have our nooks. Twenty is the average group in a home. Mother is in our group. She knew she could reach you through such a group. That is her reason for living with us. 

Can you live with any group you like? 

Yes―but governed by character. 

Does one feel a desire for stimulants on the astral planes if one has had the appetite here? 

For a period.  

The earth plane, having been described as the fifth plane, the question is asked—

What about the four planes below the earth plane? 

My thought about them is hazy. They are hazy planes. Let it go at that. 

Do inhabitants diminish in number on the higher planes? 

On planes near the fifth, more people than here. The ratio increases until the tenth is reached. On 1,000th, there are very few. You know—types like Plato, Socrates, Bahai, et cetera. There is no end to progress, but we cannot comprehend beyond the 1,000th. 

Is there much difference between successive planes? 

Yes―as between people on your plane. The numbering is done to show the steps of a ladder as it were, but only in a general sense―not arbitrarily at all. Just a symbol system. 

Are all systems of numbering astral planes and sub-planes also merely symbolical? 

Arbitrary. Too supposedly exact and therefore erroneous. Stumbling to light through the darkness. 

—Dorothy Wordsworth

I suppose it does not matter just how one numbers them? 

Freedom is a beacon light that says―

Ever on. 

There is no end to their number? 

No. 

There is no end to any good? 

No―I must leave. I wave a hand of love. 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is there much writing there? 

None―except records. No books. The voice is a better medium than the cold page. But the voice is evanescent―the cold page permanent. I meant here. We can recall all at the behest of desire. Desires are commands here. We have all the libraries here in counterpart. 

Sanskrit is preserved as the most sacred language. 

Thought belongs to the universal. Our thinking is like your music—the language understood by all. We speak with the glance of an eye, the heaving of the bosom, the walk of courage, the head held high. I will quote a translation now from the Greek to express my thought—

Behold Æschylus, as he strides along, his head erect, a man above them all. The body, the effort, the thought here is a part of the language.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Have you met Fox? 

And Chatham, the elder. Walpole is here. 

Do you live in groups on the Twenty-first plane? 

Yes―groups. Your group is something like ours here. Those of the same rate of vibration and the same pitch and keynote are naturally singing together in groups. 

Do you visit plane Twenty? 

Yes. 

Is the landscape there similar to yours? 

Things become to us shrines of everlasting grandeur. 

Is that on the Twenty-first plane? 

On the Twentieth, too. As the moon observed in the Venetian city from a gondola is more beautiful than the moon of the desert, so the splendour of this plane is more sublime than that of the Venetian sky.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Have you any interest in the Irish question? 

Yes—but it is in a chaotic form, so let the cauldron boil. The residue will be pure gold. 

Was Parnell* a great man? 

Very—and she was his viper. Stung him to death. How cruel the vampire is when it sucks blood! Reason, sense, dignity, courage, the control of high purpose are all gone. 

The love worthwhile should stimulate these should it not? 

Yes—and now I must go and think thoughts for oration. May I come again with Fox? 

—Edmund Burke

*Charles Stewart Parnell (Irish—Cathal Stiúbhard Parnell; 27 June 1846—6 October 1891) was an Irish landlord, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was one of the most important figures in 19th Century Great Britain and Ireland. Source—Wikipedia (Charles Stewart Parnell, Wikipedia)

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Was Kate Wordsworth of whom Dorothy spoke the wife of her nephew, Charles Wordsworth? 

More of her anon. 

What colour is Dorothy's hair? 

As the sun burnished by Jove. 

Her eyes? 

As the blue depths of the Morning's glory. 

Her gown? 

The drapery of flowing clouds of white. I always thought Mrs Eddy was a very beautiful soul. 

—Mother

But Edith Cavell when she came here and wakened amid the flowers and trees of this plane was perhaps the most wonderful vision of beauty in repose that we have ever seen. Dora is a wild pagan of glory. Mary is the quiet beauty of thought―Edith is the sleeping beauty of time. Now, brother quill-user, I will depart. The pool you saw was the vision of this plane reconverted to you*. Water finds its level. And now in your eyes the Twentieth plane comprehension―in your soul, the spirit of our life―in your life, the idealism back of the purpose of things—all in contact are along the road to immortality, so be not faint.

*This was a reference to a line the transcriber discovered in his consciousness on waking a day or two previously—The silvery pool that dreams in the moonlight.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley