What is your understanding about death?

Testimony of Light 

an illustrated abridged version of Testimony of Light by Helen Greaves.

In his private publication, Life—Now and Hereafter, author Aart Jurriaanse offers this advice—

Anybody genuinely interested in the afterlife should make every endeavour to obtain a copy of this lovely little book [Testimony of Light—An Extraordinary Message of Life After Death], in which Helen Greaves has so effectively pictured conditions apparently prevailing on the other side of the veil.

The state of existence described, and which the average well-meaning individual may reasonably expect to encounter on passing over, seems so attractive that the condition commonly known as death really appears to be something to look forward to, instead of being dreaded, as is the case at present with the vast majority of humankind.

Helen Greaves and Frances Banks were close friends. Shortly after Frances' passing over in 1965, she established telepathic contact with Helen. By means of this channel, Frances was enabled to provide fairly detailed descriptions of conditions she encountered in the etheric worlds. Helen has recorded the gist of these telepathic communications in Testimony of Light.

Helen begins by providing a brief biographical introduction, followed by a description of Frances’ return to the spheres of the spirit. The rest of the book consists of the actual scripts provided by Frances, and is the source from which the following extracts have been selected.

Helen—Biographical Introduction

The scripts in this book have, I believe, been communicated to me by telepathy and inspiration from the surviving mind of Frances Banks, M.A., who left this world on 2 November 1965. 

No doubt this will be challenged as a bold statement. I make it in perfect faith and with integrity.

If the reader has studied my book, The Dissolving Veil, published in 1967 by the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, he will realise that this work of telepathy and communication between the worlds was not a working of my choosing.

The extrasensory perceptions of clairaudience and telepathy, which have been developed into a receiving-set for these communications were never thought by me. I do not use these perceptions professionally or for personal gain of any sort.

Frances Banks was an intimate friend of mine. For the last eight years of her life, we worked together psychically and spiritually. We also explored the deep levels of meditation.

Miss Banks was an outstanding woman in many fields of endeavour. She was the author of many books on psychology―one on the education of prisoners, Teach Them to Live (after some years of experience as Tutor-organizer at Maidstone Gaol), and her last book was Frontiers of Revelation, being an account of research into psychic and mystical phenomena.

Those who knew Frances Banks intimately will recognise her signature in these scripts.

In her earthly life, she was a pioneer, and she exhibits by her frank communication and interpretation of her life in the spiritual realms that she still merits that epithet. She was ever striving to learn―to discover, and then to impart that which she has made her own to others when she lived among us, and she has carried this characteristic with her into the beyond.

Frances had indicated that these accounts, which are of an inspirational teaching nature, should be made public in the hope that a first-hand report of that phase of living to which we are all graduating may be of value.

The Return

Frances Banks died, as she had lived, fully conscious of what she was doing and where she hoped to go. She refused drugs until the very end, bearing her pain with fortitude.

 

At the last, she spoke of seeing incarnate and discarnate entities in her room. 

She arranged her material affairs, and said farewell to those of her friends who were near enough to visit her. She astonished the good Scottish doctor who attended her at the last by saying cheerfully, a day or so before she lapsed into a coma—

"Goodbye, Doctor. See you in the next world!"

After her death, I felt cut off from all spiritual contact. My mind was dry and arid. For some weeks, I found it most difficult to meditate or even to withdraw into the quietness of the soul at all. Then, one evening, a Sunday, about three weeks after Frances’ death, as I was sitting alone beside my fire listening to radio music, I became aware of a presence. The air seemed to take on a great stillness and a hush of expectancy. I switched off the radio and allowed myself to relax in this peace. 

No thought of a possible communicator from another world occurred to me. 

No word was spoken in my mind. 

I was very still and quiescent. 

Slowly, my whole being seemed to be caught up in a wave of peace and beauty that I cannot describe.

This beauty was both around and within me. 

Almost imperceptibly, I passed into a state of deep meditation in which I was conscious of being immersed in light.

I was part of the light, yet the light issued from beyond me.

I felt a oneness with all that was highest and best and with the eternal self within me.

 

I felt the nearness of spiritual presences.

I was swept on into a meditation in which Frances and I had participated some years before. 

I even heard my mind repeating invocations from that meditation. 

Gently, and with great reverence, it was borne in upon me that I was not only in touch with my own immortal soul, but also with the soul of Frances Banks. It was some days later when I felt Frances’ mind impinging on mine, as it had often done in our time together on earth. 

Words dropped into my thoughts, which did not come from my consciousness. 

I knew that her discarnate mind and my incarnate one had linked together again in telepathic communication.

Frances had something to say!

She wished to get her message across. I was the one who had been her ‘Celestial Telephone,’ as she had called it.

What more natural than that she should wish now to speak and not merely to listen?

She was now in the position of ‘seeing a little farther.’

I knew from my personal experience of her that Frances never wasted a minute when she could be about her Father’s business. 

Now that she was evidently restored to consciousness and awareness after the change into her new life, her first burning desire would be to make known all that was happening―to send back first-hand. 

She would now be able to demonstrate the next life, of which she had written and spoken, to expound with authority on the subject, which had been so close to her heart―the Reality of Life Everlasting―the continued progress of the spirit.

I sat down, took my pen, and began to write. Words, thoughts, and sentences tumbled out on the paper. It was almost as though I took dictation. Yet this was not automatic writing. I was perfectly in control.

I could feel that her mind was using mine. This was a composite effort. 

Her mind ‘inspired’ the subject matter, the experiences, and later, the stories of her fellow travelers in the Life Beyond. She explored the potential of my mind and enabled me to employ the craft of writing, which I had learned in my journalistic work. 

At a further period in the writing of the scripts, Frances explained that she herself was working with, and under the inspiration of a group or band, for this transmitting of her impressions of the Life Beyond to be translated into a book.

Later, as I became more used to this method, I was even able to ask a question and receive an immediate answer. 

I wrote for an hour. My pen scarcely lifted from the page. 

When I read through what I had written, my astonishment grew. This happened for several days, and I became more astounded at the subjects upon which I had written. 

I could not without effort and without definitely searching my limited imagination have invented such stories as poured through me. It was exactly as though I was simply registering and translating her thoughts at certain times.

During this time, though, I was perfectly aware that I was ‘under compulsion’ to carry on with the work until all that she wished had been communicated.

Many may ridicule, but if only a few are strengthened in consciousness and helped to live closer to Reality, then our partnership has not been in vain.

Frances was convinced of the fact of communion with the spiritual worlds and of the reality of the higher self in each one of us. She trusted implicitly in the survival of mind and personality beyond death, and she was reverently aware of the Spirit within, which urged her on—the Christ-in-You of Christianity.

Always she strove for a ‘breakthrough’ to Spirit, and by this, I do not mean only psychic communication. Her belief was that through meditation―through retiring into the deep centre of oneself and finding the place of the silence of the soul, communion could be established with advanced souls―higher beings, great ones whom we call Saints. 

This, she felt, was the message for the New Age into which we are now emerging―a greater extension of man’s consciousness, so that even during the limitation of earthly life, he can enter the beauty of the spiritual worlds and receive inspiration therefrom. She stressed, also, that man should realise and accept his place in a Divine Scheme.

Frances ‘dictates’ a script to Helen. 

I am in a kind of rest home now. It is run by the Sisters of the community to which I belonged when in incarnation. They are so kind and gentle with me.

I am now lying in a bed, high up on a terrace that looks out over a vast sunlit plain. It is a beautiful scene, and so restful. I am recuperating from the illness, which brought disintegration to my physical body. 

I feel content and calm and at peace. 

I shall stay here. Indeed, I have already told Mother Florence that I want to work with her here when I am ready.

Souls are brought here from the earth, and from other places, but I do not know much of those places, when they are ready. They are ‘nursed’ and taken care of here, as am I. 

After I have become adjusted to this life, I think I shall stay on here and teach with the Sisters if they will have me! And if I can really be useful. You see how my ‘earth psychology’ will come in useful, together with the explanations of the further stages of progress when I have learnt more myself.

How I shall enjoy co-relating the two ‘psychologies’ in any classes I have, and in individual talks! It is going to be rather like a return to the prison work I did at Maidstone Gaol, only of course, on a different level.

Here, there is no compulsory confinement and no punishment, except what you mete out to yourself!

 

You can come and go, of course, but I realise already that you can only ‘go’ elsewhere when you are ready.

I am so glad that I can continue to work. It will be good for me, too, to do a job of work where I am not noticed. Beware of becoming noticed too much. Therein lies temptation.

I have met Father Joseph, our ‘Dominic.’ He is a wonderful person. He seems to emanate such goodness, love, and strength.

I shall try to tell you what happened—after the Change was over, and I was free of my earthly ‘covering,’ I ‘woke up’ here in this hospital of the Rest Home. My room had no walls, and the sunlight seemed to flow over one all the time. I opened my eyes―or I came back to consciousness, and there was Mother Florence just as she used to be, and as I had remembered her for so many years. She took my hand. She said, 

So you have arrived safely?

But I must have been very weary, for I can remember little more. I think I slept again.

A long time later, it seemed a long time later, I found myself lying here gazing out at this tranquil and beautiful scenery around me. Suddenly, I ‘knew’ that someone was beside me. 

I looked around and gave my attention to this new idea. 

There was Father Joseph, just as I had always remembered him. He sat down beside me and took my hand in his. “Well, Sister?” he said. That was all. Just “Well, Sister?” as if we were both back in my study in the college in South Africa. I felt such power and strength flow out from him. 

I think I must have wept—it was all too wonderful. 

He did not say much―or I was too tired to pay attention. For I must have drifted into sleep again. When I gathered my thoughts together again to speak to him, he had gone. But he will come again. Mother Florence tells me now that he comes quite often to see his patients. 

Oh! but I shall not be a patient here for long, you know!

As soon as I can re-orient myself sufficiently, I shall be teaching or tutoring again. It is the service I can give.

I have discovered that I can use telepathy both ways―to receive and relay.

There are not the difficulties here that we experienced on earth. This holds out all sorts of exciting possibilities.

Indeed, I am already able to contact your mind, and what is more important to hold that contact so as to pour ideas out to you! 

This has infinite possibilities.

In the following script, Frances describes her experience of ‘awakening.’ Frances’ account is consistent with the accounts that Near-Death Experiencers give on 're-entry’ into their physical bodies. 

Later―as soon as I was able to bring myself to a conscious state of mind after my withdrawal from my worn-out body, 

I knew that I was the same in essence. True, I felt light, and there was a new sense of freedom that was bewildering. I was the same—yet not the same!

With a flash of realisation, I decided that I must be stone deaf, for I could no longer hear any of the usual sounds of everyday life, the chatter and movement of human beings around me, the whistles of trains, the twittering of birds. There were no noises in this new consciousness.

One of my first recollections was “I am still conscious."

"The Change has taken place but I cannot hear, neither can I see!”

And for a space of time, I seemed to lose my identity.

I recall endeavouring anxiously to pierce through this new state to recall memory.

Who am I?

What did I do?

 

It was a strange, almost eerie experience, for the name I had borne for over seventy years eluded me. At length, I recall telling myself to “Give it up and go to sleep,” and in a way, this is what I must have done. At least consciousness went from me. I remembered nothing more.

How long this went on I have no possible way of knowing—perhaps in earth time, for a very short space. But when next I came back to consciousness I seemed to be pulling myself up out of a thin sea of silver. Those are the only words I can use to describe the experience.

And the first face I saw was the smiling one of my dear Mother in religion—Mother Florence. 

I was so overwhelmed I could not speak.

From then on I remember that I seemed to be in and out of consciousness. But now I found that I was lying on an open porch with a vista of blue and silver before me. 

This was beautiful beyond words and calming to my spirit.

Trouble, anxiety, and all sense of loss abated―a great feeling of peace enwrapped me.

“This is it” I kept assuring myself in wonder, “I have made The Change!”

I realised then that I could both see and hear as before, only now in a more intense way.

I thought immediately, 'I wonder whether I can ‘get through.’ I must tell Helen about this.” Later, as I grew more accustomed to this new consciousness, I was able to ‘commune’ (I cannot explain this by any of our former terms) with both Mother Florence and Father Joseph.

How delighted I was to meet them! 

And to know that Father Joseph was indeed the same splendid, wise soul I had known in my community days. He was again able to help me much. He gave me confidence. I felt as if I was ‘convalescing,’ as indeed I suppose I was from the effects of my last painful illness. Then just as inexplicably as I had become part of these scenes, it all faded.

I was lying here at peace. So this is death―life separated by density, that is all.

Elation filled me. I knew now that I could ‘tune in’ and even ‘see’ the earth plane if the desire was strong enough to loosen the barrier between your world and my new one. 

The possibility rested with me. This, I realised, was my first lesson.

Now I dwelt in a Realm of Thought, and such Thought Power, when rightly implemented, can penetrate the dense plane, which is the world of human habitation. 

I did not feel that I had really gone away into a far country—

I could still keep in touch. With this blessed feeling of consolation, I must have drifted again—or slipped into a state of passivity.

12 December 1965

I am remaining in the Rest Home, though I am now occupying a ‘cottage’ of my own. It is a lovely peaceful little place with a very pretty garden. I still belong to the Home, of course, and I go back there frequently.

I have been having long talks with Mother Florence and Sister Mary and Sister Hilda. They explain this new adventure to me.

I still have the same experiences, the same problems, the same hopes, with even greater and wider aspirations for work, only now I view them from an entirely different angle and with far greater dawning comprehension.

Now I am learning to apprehend the meaning of much that happened to me. 

I see it as a background pattern. In a way, I am beginning to realise the effects of my thoughts and to view the events that were set in motion by these very thoughts and ideas. 

This is indeed a most sobering exercise.

When in the body one is so limited by environment, emotions and difficulties that it is very hard to judge accurately such results as might possibly ensue from the planning, and when we do try to assess the value, we are so often wrong because we ourselves (our small egotistic selves) get in the way and deflect the purpose. 

Here we live so much more in the Realm of Mind. 

As we ponder over an experience or a purpose, the mind stretches out to see all sides of the problem. 

This is a new and not always exciting or pleasant experience. It is rather like a chain reaction, much more potent and real than the old association of ideas of earth psychology. Here, as one thinks—one is.

I shall try to make this clearer. There is no compulsion, of course, to review one’s past life on earth as soon as one arrives and the new life here begins. Some take a long while to tackle the problem. They dread to see the effects of mistakes and failures.

Somewhere, in the deeps of my mind, two ‘blueprints’ are brought forward into my consciousness. These are so clear that I can (literally) take them out, materialise them and study them. One is the Perfect Idea with which my spirit went bravely into incarnation. The other is the resultant of only a partially-understood plan, in fact, my life as it was actually lived.

It was a shock to me, and a very salutary experience to find that these two plans differed exceedingly. 

And yet, one learns so much by facing the results.

In a way, the blueprints resemble maps, with coloured places, light and dark patches, and a kind of glowing ‘sun’ for the highlights.

First of all, the mind looks at the whole comparison and sets the blueprints side by side.

This is the first shock―a true humbling of yourself to find that you did so little when you would have done so much―that you went wrong so often when you were sure that you were right.

During this experience, the whole cycle of your life-term unfolds before you in a kaleidoscopic series of pictures. During this crisis, one seems to be entirely alone.

Yours is the judgment.

You stand at your own bar of judgment.

You make your own decisions.

You take your own blame.

You are the accused, the judge, and the jury.

This is where quite a few souls in this rest home have become immobilised. Their pictures were too searing in their exposures. 

So we try to help them along, but only when they have made the ‘inner desire’ to right their wrongs. Until that decision, I do not know what happens to them, but I should think that they are ‘prisoners of self.’

‘Someone’ is beside you. 

Whether it is your own high spirit or a great helper, I have yet to discover. Only now, as you ponder, work out, go over, tabulate and judge what you did AND WHY AND WHAT WERE THE RESULTS (good or bad), you are gloriously ‘aware’ of this great being beside you, giving strength, peace, tranquility, and helping with constructive criticism. 

This is a wonderful experience, though harrowing at times, but very cleansing and bringing new hope.

Lots of those here have got ‘stuck’ on their ‘first picture.’ So we (the sisters here in the home) try to link up with these great ones and bring help and strength to the stumblers’ level. Mother Florence is marvelous at this. She has a real technique, and this technique is what I am trying, not exactly to copy, but to adapt to my own particular methods of work.

I must tell you about my garden. Yes, it is quite lovely. 

And I still do gardening. 

Oh, not in the same way, as when you used to look at me on my knees, grubbing at the soil, and say to yourself, “There she is again―she should not be doing it!” No, I still go on my knees, but in a different way, and not to grub in the soil! (This has a double meaning).

18 December 1965

Here one does not waste effort in regretting blindly. There is too much to learn in a positive manner and to apply to one’s future progress.

 

And always there are souls in far worse predicaments from whom lessons can be learned. I speak of the patients here.

I said we had all grades and classes in the home—illiterate, uneducated, educated and cultured, rather as I had to teach when I worked as a Tutor-Organizer in the Maidstone prison experiment. Only those were prisoners of the State, segregated from their fellows by rule and power.

Here no one is kept against his will or desire.

Mostly the patients are happy enough and wish to stay in this temporary security. They cannot move on until they have (literally) seen the Light―or at least as much of the Light, as they can assimilate at their present stages. 

We do not alter fundamentally. 

But bit by bit, we move away from earth's ideas and limitations and advance more into Light and wisdom.

Light! How much I am learning about the meaning of that word here!

How deeply I am beginning to realise the depth of those words ‘Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’ How paltry is our concept and understanding of that Light!

As our consciousness expands, we let in more Light! So now I can really say, with a deeper understanding—“Let Light descend on earth!”

No soul coming here from earth’s limitations, however advanced it may be in spiritual truth, is able to stand the stepped-up vibrations or the Translucent Light of these high planes. It appears from my observation during my time here that one has to earn every step of advancement. 

Man will die, as he has ever done. As long as he believes that death is the end, disease and destruction will last.

Humankind is using palliatives when the cure is within its grasp. Change the angle of belief, do away with the dread and fear of death, and teach the eternal oneness of life. That is redemption, both of man and of the earth. This may take thousands of years. But there are millions of years behind us. Man has taken centuries to lift his inert response thus far, but he is on an upward path.

Here is the old answer again. Light, and yet more Light―Light of understanding, knowledge, wisdom and true perception to penetrate this fog of illusion in which the mass of humankind still wanders.

As for my own ‘life’ here, I retire more and more to the deep joy and peace and rest of my garden amongst the flowers. You recall that I could never sit and enjoy relaxation in my garden when on earth. I was always too anxious to get on with my jobs.

Over here there is no such urgency.

More and more I am learning to let go of urgency and to let my soul sink deeply and refreshingly into contemplating the joy of the spirit. This develops into what you would call a ‘dream-life,’ yet it is really stretching out of the soul to a wider consciousness. 

I revel in Light and peace and new joy. I cannot describe it more clearly than that. If I say that now I understand the meaning of the phrase ‘Rest in the Lord’ that might help. Yet there is no personality to this experience. God is Light, Energy, and Joy to me. I rest in that Light and am healed from my mistakes. And I live a more abundant life.

11 January 1966

What an illusion thought is! I thought I was real enough on earth. Now I realise that what seemed important and substantial and worthwhile was but a shadow!

I am not really real here! This, too, is merely the shadow, which is but a shell or covering of something else.

I am on a journey still, perhaps to the Centre, certainly to a higher point, but what this is I scarcely dare to imagine. I have only peeled off the outer shadow, yet the outer skin, rather like peeling skins from an onion. 

One goes on shedding—it seems an eternal process.

In my long contemplative times, when the spirit in me rises and seems to take flight towards the next step, I become uplifted and eager, so very eager, for that succeeding stage. 

Yet I know that I have to remain where I am and do just what I am doing until I have shed more of the ‘shadow-covering.’

You know I always wanted to go forward too quickly. Often I visualised happenings and an incarnation ahead. 

Remember how we used to talk? 

I would envisage great beings, walking with men on earth. That time will come, no doubt. Perhaps it is already happening, but men have no vision to see. Now, of course, I recognise the drawbacks―man would not yet be ready to receive them. Even in this stage beyond the physical limitations, our patients would not be able to believe, let alone accept, the appearance of the great ones. I have been blessed indeed, for I have been permitted to meet such a great one in the beloved physician of the doctors' group. But then I came here expecting such!

The planes of the spirit stretch onward into infinity. What joy it will be going forwards, gravitating, even though slowly, to one’s true place!

I presume each plane will seem real and have more reality than the preceding one. That sounds like a paradox! 

But reality itself? It is quite beyond our comprehension.

I have talked long with Mother Florence upon this. She is so much further advanced―she seems to pass at will between the planes. Yet she admits there is so much more, infinitely much more beyond that to which she is admitted. I long to go on―to view those planes of Light―to touch those great lives, yet I am content here and happy. 

As one must be!

You cannot push yourself into the heavens beyond you―the Law of Progression is exact. 

But I am trying to shed some of the clutter of my personality. We all have to do that. And there are three ways in which to carry it out here.

By self-judgment and true assessment of experiences, by service to one’s fellows and by aspiration. 

Not so different, you will say, from the earth life after all! But oh, with so many, many compensations!

I can express it best in this thought―the ‘subjective’ of the earth plane mind has become the ‘objective’ in this new state of being. This I begin to comprehend is the Law of Progress. By it, we advance onwards into realms of incredible beauty and wonder.

How can I make this clear?

The ‘subjective,’ inner content of my thoughts, aspirations and desires here and now will fashion the ‘objective’ place to which I will pass on the next stage of my journey, just as the inner life of the soul within the body-mind on earth decides the first future ‘home’ on this level.

More and more important, therefore, and invaluable is the inner life of meditation and atonement with divine beauty and truth.

The saying on earth ‘As a man thinks, so is he’ is true in essence―truer than our ideas can conceive.

Through man’s thoughts and inspirations, he weaves for himself his future place in this dimension. This is logical law.

In the earth life, he can build a façade about himself. Here he has no such mask. He is known here for what he is and for what his inner subjective life has made him.

Think then of the importance of Light in the Soul.

The intensity and power with which Light illumines the inner life are objectified here―the newly transported soul graduates always to its rightful place―to the place it has earned and prepared.

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven may be taken as having a factual meaning.

13 January 1966

We had an ‘arrival’ who did not stay with us. After a rest, she continued on her way. This was an interesting case―this was a woman who had been a nurse and missionary for many years of her life in Africa, and had lived the Christian religion. She was put to death when there had been an uprising by the natives. This is a woman whom if I had not learned better I could find within myself to envy. She is such a beautiful soul, with the Light of Love surrounding her like a halo.

Her first words, when she became conscious of her surroundings, were “I knew I would wake up amongst sisters. Thank God! It is wonderful!”

There was, in her mind, no question of surviving the terrible ordeal through which she had met death―there were no recriminations, no fears, and most impressive of all, no hatreds. She exuded unselfish love.

Our missionary rested with us. To me, she was a lesson without words!

How much I learned from her! For she was indeed one of the Chosen. Her brief sojourn with us here helped me to rethink my old set of values.

We do make the mistake of valuing intellect too highly in the earth life, scorning the simple follower of reality.

This woman has intelligence, but not a trained or well-developed intellect. But she lived daily from the true centre of herself. 

In other words, the spirit was her daily guide, and every problem, every difficulty and every joy she took to this master within. 

She radiated peace and love and joy, and death had meant little to her. She was well acquainted with the inner voice and obeyed the higher will. It had taken her through strange experiences, yet it was clear that she had brought a divine ray into the world with her, lowly and far from clever as she was. She had lived what so many of us had talked about.

The values are awry on earth.

Intellect and a trained brain-mind are great adjuncts, but they often become barriers to truth and a true expression of divine love.

Man’s reasoning mind must learn to be obedient to and co-operative with the inner self―the Christ in every man of the teaching of the Master Jesus and the Light within of eastern sages.

To me, this has been demonstrated very clearly by the ‘passing through’ our station of this great soul, so simple, yet profound in her understanding of atonement with truth.

Mother Florence has told me about her departure. She and our missionary were talking together on the terrace here when Mother Florence observed that her patient appeared to have gone into deep contemplation. They remained still and silent.

Mother felt a great presence, as of an Angel of Light with them―she held her soul in quiet expectation. Then the Light grew stronger about them, the air more potent, there was a ‘feeling of music’. Her missionary friend, she says, impulsively stirred, put out her hand and touched Mother Florence. “Thank you, and bless you all for your kind reception of me,” she whispered. “How splendid your work is here! And I realise that it is entirely voluntary. But your true place is waiting for you all when you have completed your service. May I often come and visit with you?” Mother Florence felt that she had no words with which to reply except “God bless you.”

The Light grew and multiplied about them, and Mother said that her eyes were only able to perceive the Light, and nothing more. She felt swept upwards into enlightenment. When her ‘spirit returned’ (those are her words), our missionary had left. She had gone to her rightful place. 

Love had been translated to higher spheres. What a lesson for us here and for those on earth! Please record it.

15 January 1966

Our Doctor X has made many visits to his medical fraternity. He returns to us filled with new hope, new eagerness to proceed with his progress and his future work. On his last visit, he came to me, shining with happiness. “It’s wonderful, Sister,” he burst out. “I have learned so much." "Why, oh why, couldn’t I have known of this when I lived on earth?"

"What a marvellous purpose and plan there is to life! And how small, almost insignificant, the struggles, fallacies and failures of the last earth life appear now.” 

I urged him to go on and to tell me more of his discoveries. He is thrilled, he admits, with the prospect of future work and research. He sees how this devoted band of medical men under their teacher and leader is fast finding ways of relieving humanity of some of its suffering.

“We are still only on the palliative side, as Curie puts it,” he said, ‘for man must be allowed to go on and use his discoveries for destruction and evoking fear and submission in his fellows until he learns better. But meanwhile, the band is helping to ‘put through’ ideas on the origin and treatment of disease.”

He told me much that I could not quite understand, but back we came to the great truth I am imbibing more and more, though its meaning was apparent in all our teachings on earth if only we could follow them.

Light! Light! And yet more Light!

Light to educate and uplift the minds of the people, bringing calmness and peace in a sure reliance on life’s purpose and the wonder of divine creation. Light in their souls and in their minds to lift them above the illusion of earth life's fears―

Light in their minds to teach them how to ‘tune in’ any frustration of the life or personality to the great reality of divine love. Naturally, this is the fact in Doctor’s X revelations which appeals to me.

Before the present century is out, Doctor X tells me, this method of employing Light will have become a great medical art and treatment to alleviate and arrest suffering. At the same time, man will be learning to govern himself, his mind, his emotions, and his reactions to the purpose of creative thought.

Research is being pursued actively, and the ‘seed-thoughts’ of these revolutionary ideas are now being ‘projected’ into the minds of scientists and researchers in all nations, which nation will get the ‘breakthrough’ first is an interesting speculation.

17 January 1966

More and more positively, I am stretching out into the Light. By thought and will, the realisation of Light, surrounding me, interpenetrating through every stratum of my being has become my study, concentration and meditation at this stage.

When I am not ‘on duty’ with the souls in the home who need care and help (and even then I make use of the Light), I will myself into Light, asking that Light may be afforded me, that my soul and spirit may become as One Infused Light, that I may live and move in the Light, which is the Creative Will. This is a wonderful, thrilling experience.

When I caught but a glimpse of Light on earth, and it uplifted and changed me, and changed also the direction of my life, that impermanent glimpse was as nothing to the immersion of Light that is possible here.

I appear to lie in my garden, yet in the power of this Light, my mind and spirit stretch out into a glorious extension. I become conscious, if only partially, of the world beyond the world of thought, even beyond thought into being. 

Psychiatrists would call these ‘subjective experiences.’ Yet what do any of us really know of the subjective extensions of the mind?

Here we are mind, stepped down to our individual potency, I grant, but still mind, untrammelled by the destructive and apparent reality of matter. 

Therefore, by thought and will we can travel far out beyond what constitutes our immediate circumstances if we wish.

I was always too precipitate, always a seeker too eager to go on and go forward, to break by force the frontiers of revelation. On earth I had envisaged a University of the Spirit―I had longed to be part of such a movement. I had worked with this glimpse of the vision in my mind. 

The vision may have been right, but the approach to it savoured of egoism―the egoism of the limited human mind, which has to be cleaned and stripped before the higher pattern of the spirit can manifest.

I see now that the thought pattern on earth is not geared sufficiently high above the material and personal to hold such a possibility. I have had to learn, too, that I am far from ready to participate, as I had hoped. I am not yet entitled it seems to be enrolled in the outer courts of these halls of learning. Perhaps by the time of another incarnation? Who knows?

One can only realise one’s errors and go forward into greater understanding.

But now I am content. The vision is still with me, complete and satisfying―the hope of further teaching and progress. I must make myself ready by continued service, as well as by facing myself, and learning of my defects, ready for that transition to a sphere for which my whole soul yearns. Meanwhile, there is much to do, much to learn, so many new facets of this life with which to experiment, and finally to which to adjust, 

Always the Light is here―that Light of the Spirit, which must be enhanced in me, so that I can abide in It and It in me.

When this has at last been accomplished, even to some small measure, I know that I shall be allowed to proceed onwards towards my soul’s desire, that is, to become a pupil in the outer courts, to mingle with those of great and exalted minds, to listen to truths propounded by masters and teachers of wisdom, to imbibe such wisdom and have my soul opened to the eternal realities.

Nothing stops one from doing what one wishes here except one’s own inadequacies!

This is a world of thought indeed! So is the earth plane, you will say, from which I have just graduated. Only there, thought is slower in action because all vibration, and hence all results or effects are slower, and one has a façade, a person with which to mask thought.

Here one seems to be naked. There is no mask, even for thought―one’s inmost thought, and sometimes I shudder at the realisation that our fellows here can read us as we can read books, illustrating character and thought and action on earth. Here, one’s thoughts return to one, like boomerangs, potent and immediate in their effects. As a thought, negative or positive, comes into mind, it is crystallised into immediate action.

In the human mind, a negative thought can creep in and insinuate itself between all one’s good intentions, lying apparently dormant. Then it becomes a nucleus, attracting to itself thoughts of similar content until it takes on a semblance of force through emotion―later the results, physical, material or spiritual are manifested. But in this new life, the potency of thought is stepped up into a frequency, which permits no side-stepping. The effects are immediate.

Here the thought pattern is determinate of one’s welfare, one’s progress, one’s happiness and joy. As one thinks, so one is, in environment, appearance, and in company!

We have to learn to live in this new frequency, to guard the doors of one’s mind, to anticipate the boomerang action of negative emotions.

This is the way of life on these planes, and every soul must assimilate the way before proceeding onwards into planes of even higher frequencies. This is light and darkness as we know it―the day and night of the soul.

 

18 January 1966

There are stations on this plane where communication with the earth plane is possible.

I always had an idea of this, but now it is a fact. In these stations, there are helpers and servers who have dedicated their knowledge and service to help those who long to send messages to loved ones still on earth. 

The technique employed I understand is quite ‘special,’ and very difficult at first to follow, even by those who desire to use it. But there are stations, there are directors for this work, and there are administrators and in a sense technicians to run them.

I shall keep to the methods that seem to suit the work I am trying to do, I mean, of course, our telepathic contact, and with others, in which my mind becomes ‘tuned’ to yours, and can transmit and receive without the need for other help, even that of a possibly bewildering technique.

For on this telepathic wave, I can write with you these scraps of information on the all-controversial subject of life after death though we are merely touching the fringe of all the wonders here and hereafter with I trust satisfactory results, sufficient anyway to help those who may read this.

This is part of my task now, and you who knew me so well were aware of my characteristic, that when I got my teeth into a subject, I would never let go until sufficient knowledge had been extracted to satisfy me. That trait serves me well here!

But now I am at liberty to tell you that this is not a solo performance on my part. Not by any means! There is a band who helps and guides me in the selection of incidents to be telepathed to you. In this, Father Joseph is most helpful, as he had contacted your mind previously, your husband also helped in opening the way and was instrumental in your listening to my mind in the first instance.

There are others in the band, and I understand that we are merely instruments in this work. The veil between the worlds must be rent asunder or dissolved, as you suggest.

People living on earth, the erudite, the cultured and clever minds, as well as the devotional and religious minds, and the uneducated, the illiterate, and the closed minds must all be reached. 

l need this knowledge to remove the fear, which is one of the darkest and most powerful earth emotions that has to be fought and conquered before peace and progress can come to earth.

23 January 1966

It seems to me now that we only understand properly and without emotional prejudices when we are separated from life on earth. 

This seems such a pity.

How useless is remorse here, remorse for those things we did not do, as well as for those we did, our actions mostly resulting from the fact that our minds and our reactions to circumstances were clouded by partial judgment, preconceived, and often totally wrong conclusions. 

We here do regret these lacks very acutely, all the more so because scales have fallen from our eyes and we behold truth―or perhaps I would be safer in saying ‘a wider state of truth’ than could penetrate and neutralise the negative emotions of the body mind.

I said that remorse here is useless, but that statement might have been too sweeping. To know all is to forgive all, so the more constructive thought one brings to bear on these regrets, the better.

Forgiveness―yes!

You should know well enough that ‘get on with the job’ was one of my precepts. Even with all eternity then before us, it seems oddly wasteful to me to use up my energy repining. Understanding of what was lacking, and what went wrong, and confession to oneself, of the sins of commission and omission, together with the acceptance of shame and failure. 

Then a new beginning, as the knowledge is turned into wisdom, an effort to right those wrongs, to help by love and concentrated direct thought, to help where help is needed.

Some of the souls who come to our side and who have perpetrated much evil take a great deal of advice and help on this point. 

Remorse overwhelms them, and often they choose to live in the gloom of regret.

This is rightly termed ‘gloom,’ and I am not referring to the Place of Shadows because even here by their sadness and remorse, they are shutting themselves away from the very Light that could illuminate their minds, dissolve their guilts, and bring a constructive ray to bear on their problems. 

I have visited the ‘lower regions’ though I assure you with conductors who were able to guide and protect us.

Believe me, it is a terrible region―or regions of semi-gloom, of unwholesome ‘sticky’ emotions, of utter distortion of all that is beautiful.

One's feelings are wrung by the pitiful sights, compassion flows out for those poor half-alive creatures in their self-darkness. There are wonderful helpers in these regions.

These have to be advanced souls, strong in themselves, and firm in the Light before they can choose to do such work. Whilst I was there on a visit, I saw the face of a being of such beauty that I was arrested in my progress onwards, and had to stop awhile just to be in the aura of this great one. I learned afterward that he had been almost a saint on earth. He was a great mystic though an unlettered philosopher. Now he is the leader of a band of helpers here, and the light of his countenance, though toned down for his patients to the potency they can stand, is glorious. My conductor told me that this is his final training work, and is a preparation for a high mission on which this great soul will embark. I was not sure whether this presaged a return to earth conditions, as a great teacher or seer or whether this is a prelude to undergoing further initiation into greater mysteries.

I asked as many questions on the subject as could be answered, and was informed that he was indeed a Master of Wisdom, and a most saintly soul, devoted to the Christ, and one of a great band of potential world redeemers.

He has been in the spheres for more than three centuries, as time is reckoned on earth, and has ‘passed through’ many of the higher planes being a member of a Brotherhood of Light. His selfless service here is an unspoken lesson. The sisters reverence him. Some of them have joined his band of helpers, and have worked under his direction, returning to the home for rest and recuperation after the arduous duties. I know that Father Joseph often visits here and works in the band.

I ‘returned’ to my cottage and my golden garden with a feeling of relief, together with great joy and appreciation of the Light here.

I thought a lot about those words—‘They that sit in darkness and the shadow of death,’ and a new meaning and connotation were added to our old scriptural one. 

That place was a shadow indeed.

The shadow of death, but not so definitely the death of the body, as the death of the mind, for there the mind is inert in the density caused by the wrong use of a God-given faculty―man's mind and free will. 

This density causes the soul to be starved to such a deficiency as to render it ‘cut-off,’ and its light shut away.

This to me is far more frightening in its implications than the explanation we on earth accept for that phrase.

Death of the body is merely a change.

The ‘shadow’ of death is a gruesome fact, but, thank God, a fact that will never be experienced by those who try to live the good life and open their minds to truth. 

And to this phrase ‘the good life,’ I do not attach any sloppy interpretation.

The good life, as those here see it is not a sentimental vague dream of good, neither is it the ego-swelling do-gooding and praying publicly which Jesus condemned in the Pharisees.

As I am learning here, the following of the true inner Light, the obedience to the guiding of that Light, and the consequent work and action prescribed by the wisdom of that Light, these constitute the good life, the full life, the life more abundant of the scriptures of all religions.

‘A soul-infused personality,’ remember, was a phrase I used very much on earth and probably with a false interpretation of its true meaning? Now that I have seen this great Master-Soul in his humble capacity and service, the realisation of what soul is has been impressed upon me, never, I trust, to be forgotten.

The soul is Light-infused―or infused Light. The shutting away of the soul is darkness.

As the sun is the carrier of light beams to the earth, so is the Son, the Second Manifestation of the Divine Energy of Creative Mind, the Transmitter of Light beams to the soul.

‘They that sit in darkness’ reject the beams from the Son, and so are in death, the shadow of death.

May Light descend on earth. Then the terrible illusions of these shadow places will be dispelled forever.

7 February 1966

Yes―I teach, and I am being taught. 

I am able to give service to others who through unfortunate circumstances of birth or environment or owing to prejudice, which is often a component of ignorance have not learnt even the rudiments of living.

Many who arrive here are either completely overwhelmed by the fact of further existence―or disillusioned because in their narrow creeds, they have envisaged heaven of utter delight, which to such crude imaginations, included the joyful inference that from henceforth no efforts would ever be needed by them.

In fact, a blessed state of negativity, of passive acceptance, of paradise―a kind of super-welfare state where they would dream away eternity. But this is certainly not a super-welfare state.

It is indeed a state of welfare, which has a different meaning altogether, and super―yes, if by that adjective we describe an existence where beauty is manifest, where negative or unkind thoughts are prohibitive because such thoughts are visible and audible, where help and love are always at hand to help the traveller, and where every circumstance points to a greater life, a wider understanding, and the glorious certainty of progress after effort and exertion.

This is an existence in another dimension of thought―disease, poverty, cruelty and suffering, as it is known on earth could not possibly exist here because the Light of the Spirit opens our vision and we seek the way to higher worlds of even more glorious beauty.

Yes―I am teaching here. I am also learning compassion for the limited consciousness, which belongs to those who did not have the opportunities afforded to me of studying the mysteries of life. Our work is to be on hand when those newly arrived entities awake to awareness.

Sometimes, their friends and loved ones already in these realms have been ‘alerted.’ Then we wait in the background until the greetings are over. In other cases, ours are the first ‘countenances’ they see―ours are the words of comfort, assurance and welcome. Our ‘patients’ stay with us until they have adjusted to this new life and are ready to join their dear ones or their special groups.

This may be only a short passing phase or a longer ‘period,’ according to their state of development.

According to the reactions after the first shock of individual examinations of blueprints of their lives, so is our method of helping them. With understanding, extreme gentleness, and certainly no hint of censure, the sisters explain the rest home and its purpose. The newcomers are then introduced to the idea of expanding progress and are encouraged to right the wrongs they have done in their earth lives by concentrated thoughts of forgiveness and compassion.

I suppose you could call this a hospital―a home of rest upon the way, and a ‘kindergarten’ teaching centre. All these terms would be correct.

The weary souls, the frightened souls, the ignorant, the ‘fallen’ souls, together with those who have been ‘rescued’ from the ‘Land of Shadows,’ require understanding and explanation of their sore states, and there are some to whom survival has to be explained, even demonstrated. Many will not accept the fact of death―or prefer to consider that they still dream. 

You see how wide our work is and how by teaching we ourselves learn. 

 

By demonstrating the results of other lives, I myself have learned much, and I am still learning.

17 February 1966

Let me tell you about Jeannie.

 

Jeannie lived to be nearly twelve years old on earth. She was a pretty, fairy-like child, daintily made. Her whole ambition was to become a dancer, and she began to train when she was very young, showing, I believe, a fair talent. Unfortunately, at the age of eight, she contracted polio, a very severe case, and was for some months kept in an iron lung. She recovered, but one leg was shrunken―it continued to shrink, the muscles, appearing to be withering away. 

The poor child was in and out of hospitals for months.

She underwent several operations―she wore a brace on her leg, but the muscles continued to shrink until one leg was noticeably shorter than the other. She was often in much pain, but the greatest sadness to this child was in the loss of her dancing life. She could not bear to think that she would never dance again, never be in the Corps de Ballet―never have the happiness of performing what she loved to do. In the hope of having the leg restored to a normal state, she stoically underwent several tortures of stretching tackles, iron clamps, and further operations. In the end, and at the age of eleven years, she knew that she would never be like other girls―she would never hop, jump or run again.

The agony to her mind and emotions of this realisation, and the constant bouts of illness weakened her constitution. At twelve years old, after a chill, she died of pneumonia.

When Jeannie ‘woke up’ here in our home, Mother Florence and I were at her bedside. 

The child looked about her, trying to focus her sight on these new surroundings. 

At last, she saw us. She stared hard, then her little face crumpled and she burst into tears. “It's the Sister. I'm back in the hospital again” she wept. Please, please don't make me have any more operations.” Mother Florence patted her hand. “You are only in our home for a rest,” she said. 

“You're going to be quite well again, Jeannie—quite, quite,” she emphasised the word ‘well.’ 

The child looked at Mother Florence. “Are you the matron?” she asked. Mother nodded. “If you like to call me that. But this is not a hospital, only a rest home, and you are getting well very quickly.” Jeannie turned her head away. “No,” she said, “I'll never be well. I've got a shrunken leg.” “Not now, Jeannie,” I volunteered, “Not anymore. Your leg is well, quite well and strong.” The child shook her head. “Look at it yourself” Mother urged. “It's just as long as the other one. Take a look and see.” “But I know it isn't,” Jeannie could not be persuaded. “I know you're only saying that. Where is my Mummy?” “You can go and see her presently” Mother suggested, “when you've learned to run again.” “Run?” Jeannie's attention was caught. “Yes, run.” I bent over her. “We're going to teach you to run and play and dance here, Jeannie.” Her eyes brightened. “Dance?” “Yes, dance.” I took hold of her legs, gently raising them. 

“Look, Jeannie, they're both the same length, see?” 

Jeannie stared. She looked from one to the other of us. Slowly, she sat up. She ran her hands up and down her calves, over the ankles, fingering the bones of the feet carefully and then back to the knees. 

She did this over and over, as if she could not believe that she could feel and see. She was silent―puzzled. It evidently never occurred to her to try to stand up. The habit was still too strong.

She just sat there, holding her legs, and gazing down at her feet. Presently, she looked up at us. 

“Is it a miracle?” she asked in an awed voice.

“You could call it a miracle,” Mother answered, and the smile that illumined her face was truly beautiful. Jeannie was silent, considering this. 

“Are you the Virgin Mary?” she asked at last.

“No, I'm not the Virgin Mary, dear.” “You look like her," and I, too, thought how lovely was the face beneath the plain veil, “and she does miracles.” Mother smiled.

“Supposing you get up and stand,” she suggested. “Without my crutches?” “Yes. Try.” “Will it hurt?” “No. You won't have any pain. You'll never have that old pain again, Jeannie.” 

"You promise? I really won't?” Suddenly Jeannie caught my hand and clung to it. “I promise,” we both said. She nodded. It was plain that she was not sure that she could trust us.

“Won't you try to stand?” asked Mother again. She did not make an answer, but she allowed me to lift her legs and set them down. We held her little body, and slowly we raised her to her feet. She staggered and swayed, terrified to put any faith in the once-crippled leg. After waiting, she put down her foot, but still clutched at our support. 

Slowly her expression changed. Surprise, incredulity, belief and joy spread over her face. She let go of us. She stood erect, balancing on both feet. She even moved forward a few paces.

“It's true. It's true. It is a miracle!” Suddenly, overcome with this great and joyful awakening, she sank back onto the bed and sobbed for pure happiness. 

“I'll walk again,” she cried. “I'm well. I'm like other girls!” Her eyes clouded, she looked piteously at me. "Unless I'm dreaming.”

“You are well, Jeannie," I insisted, “and it isn't a dream. It's true.” She smiled. It was obvious that this had all been a great strain for her. She was becoming weary. She would need rest. 

One's first return to consciousness after one's transition is often overwhelming and this was no exception. 

“Then if this is true, we must say a prayer, thanks, a Hail Mary.” Mother Florence bent over the child. “Would you like us all to thank God with you?” she asked gently. The girl nodded. She closed her eyes. As we prayed, Jeannie slipped back into the passive state of the newly awakened into this consciousness. So we let her rest.

Jeannie was my constant companion. 

We went for long walks together, we vied with each other in finding the most beautiful flowers, we ran hand in hand down the long slopes of the hills, and it was a joy to watch the child. She danced and whirled and twirled about as lightly as a butterfly. She ran from flowers to flowers—she skipped and sang and laughed for pure joy.

I have discovered that she has a well-developed mind. Perhaps the years of sickness, the enforced rests, and the consequent periods of reading and thinking have developed a deeper stratum of thought than was usual in children of her age. She has a philosophical bent and a wisdom that is surprising in one so young.

Did I say young? Her soul is not young. She is, I should judge, an advanced soul. She seems to ‘know’ so much without even having been told. I recall her manner of accepting death, naturally and solemnly. Nobody had actually said anything of this transition. She was allowed to rest until ready to move. Then she walked about the grounds of this beautiful home to her heart's content. She was carefully shielded, of course, from our ‘sick’ patients.

I came upon her in my garden. “Do you want to see my flowers?” I asked. She shook her head. “I've come to see you, Sister.” There was a pause. Her eyes regarded me with direct candor. “I've just realised something.” I waited. “I've realised that I'm not dreaming,” she said quietly. “I'm dead.” Her gaze held mine. “We're all dead. That's true, isn't it?”

“Yes. It's true, Jeannie,” I answered her, “but you see we're really more alive than ever. You've only got rid of your sick old body and found a new one.” She accepted this.

“I suppose this is a sort of Heaven.”

“It's the beginning of Heaven, Jeannie.”

“You mean we are only starting? We're not there yet?”

“Not in the Heaven you mean, Jeannie. But we're on our way there.”

She digested this. “But it's so beautiful here. Everyone's so kind, and—and—angelic.”

“We're certainly not angels,” I retorted, and we both laughed at that. She was quiet suddenly.

“Then where's God?” she demanded.

“Much too far away for us even to see Him. We're not ready for His Glory yet. But we're all going forwards—on towards His Heaven.”

“You mean His Heaven could be better than this?”

“Oh—much, much better! Far more beautiful and full of Light, and angels, Angels of Light.”

She smiled at me. We were both silent whilst she thought this out.

“I see,” she agreed. Her face lit up. “I like that—Angels of Light.”

Jeannie recovered very quickly from the strangeness of her transition. She adjusted to this new life with all the flexibility of a child's unspoiled nature. To her, everything was a revelation. I shall ever think of her as a happy, dancing soul. One of the band of beauty in God's plan.

She left us very quietly. One moment she was there, laughing, dancing, chattering amongst us all. Then we became aware of a being standing beyond the shade of the trees—a man of Light, tall, graceful, with the beautiful limbs of a dancer. He stood in the Light and he held out his hand. “Come, Jeannie,” he said. She ran to him immediately. Then she turned. Her little face was transfigured with joy. 

“It's the messenger,” she cried. “Isn't it wonderful! Wonderful.”

She waved to us all. “Thank you for what you have done for me. Thank you for helping me get well. Now I shall really dance. You will come to the beautiful place to see me sometimes, won't you?” She put her hand with perfect trust into the hand of the messenger. 

“Goodbye.” “Farewell for a space,” we called back.

Together the two walked down the long sunlit slopes, and the Light of the messenger seemed even brighter than the Light shimmering over our gardens. They were gone, and I for one felt that we had given back a ray of sunshine to the great Creative Sun.

Later—

There are heavens—I myself can vouch for the little heaven of beauty, tranquility and loving service, which it has been my happy lot to contract here. 

But there are spheres of unimaginable joy and beauty beyond, building up and extending out of every state of development—right on to the spiritual worlds of divine thought, far beyond any conception you and I can have of them. Such is the progress of the soul towards these spheres of perfection, and it is assuring to realise that we have all eternity in which to journey onwards and ‘upwards.'

But there are also hells, though certainly differing from the physical hells and everlasting fiery torments of man's warped imagination.

There are hells of the spirit and the mind, confining states of misery—dark, depressing, and as real as the tortured consciousness of the dweller therein makes them.

Yet these hells are not eternal.

The man in these mental torments needs to stay there no longer than his desires keep him. He is free to resist the hatreds, cruelties and lusts of his lower nature, which he has retained from his earth life, and which are keeping him in dark dungeons amid like-minded inhabitants. He can always choose to follow the Light of Love, Forgiveness and Harmony, and always there are souls ready to help, to guide, comfort and assist.

No soul is ever left comfortless unless he wishes it.

“That sounds like a paradox, but then much that we learn here is very different from the teachings of man, even good men who are limited in their ideas. 

Existence on earth is a state of living in a thought world, illusory, and much restricted and enclosed by the glamorous web of matter.

Beyond physical death, the thought world is more apparent and certainly far more potent in its effects.

Cause and effect is still the Law on this plane of astral matter, as it is on earth.

 

I understand that only as the soul proceeds onward in its progress into higher realms can this law be superseded, and then other, and higher laws, must be obeyed.

19 February 1966

I am finding peace. I am at peace. I am absorbed in the atmosphere of peace. I have found tranquility in the measure in which I can accept and appreciate it.

I no longer need to strive and struggle, as I did in the earth life. Always there I worked too hard. I strove. I battled forward. I followed every channel, every path, which seemed to lead to that ‘breakthrough’ of the spirit, for which my soul yearned so deeply. I obeyed the precepts, followed the doctrines, studied and examined all theories, which could ‘explain’ the spirit—drove myself with the whip of iron will, read, marked, digested the sciences (so-called) of the human mind and its reactions to stimuli, as well as the human psyche and its reaching forward into revelation. 

All this with a great purpose, as I supposed, of illumination. I strove always for the ‘breakthrough’ to spirit, union with the soul, contact with the great forces, and always, driving my mind and my personal will was the hope, the glory, the bliss of a 'breakthrough’ to spirit. And now as I look back over my earth life, I realise that so much was an illusion. I sought the spirit and the spirit was there all the time!

He came unto His own and His own received Him not. As I rest now in this Reality I see with sadness the truth of those words.

I knew Him not.

I struggled, fasted and sought for what was already present, perfect and everlasting within me.

Like most of us in the body life I was an illusion, lost in glamour. I looked for the spirit to reveal itself to me when all that was necessary was ‘relaxation unto God.’

The Spirit was always with me, veiled because physical sight could not view it. The great secret of finding that spirit was the ‘letting go’ of self.

I who longed so much for the touch of the divine, who dedicated my life to religious work, who read lives of the saints for their examples, who delved into the sciences of psychology, extrasensory perception, and all psychic phenomena, as well as into the occult sciences, who denied myself that usual sensual and reproductive life of a human being—who truly tried to obey the precepts of the Master, as related in the New Testament, I had not accepted the simple reality of those words—“Behold, I am with you even unto the end.”

I had not been able to let go and let the spirit absorb me.

As I now see my thoughts, actions and aspirations from this angle, I am realising that the very tenseness of my striving was my undoing, and it barred the way to that very union for which my soul longed. I battered at the veil, which hid the face of divinity, trying by my mind and will to tear it away, the more intense my thought, the more real did I create the illusion. 

For the veil was, as I now realise, the veil of my own setting. Light, divinity, reality, all-pervading consciousness were there for my acceptance.

Much greater progress would have been made by ‘letting go’ of all these human images, and by allowing the spirit to absorb me.

Relax and allow the spirit to stream through you. Swim with the tide of the spirit. That is the great lesson I am learning here as I review my mistakes.

Now I am ‘in the Spirit.’ There was no ‘breakthrough’ to spirit, of which I once so glibly talked. 

There is only a gradual absorption of that amount or degree of spirit, which the openness of the soul can accept. This degree, as I appreciate now, must be governed by the Law of Progress, for the spirit is never limited, only ourselves, as receptacles, govern the degree of its entrance. This is indeed a salutary lesson.

I am aware, too, that in the last life experience I repeated old struggles. None of it was new. No adventure into matter, into the exterior, is ever entirely fresh or untried. It has all been worked to its end perhaps hundreds of times before though under different circumstances, perhaps in different worlds. 

I cannot be sure of that yet—and it will be worked again and again until we as souls learn to ‘carry the Light’ with us through our personalities.

Freewill, the development of the logical mind, the illusions of the senses, all these tend to extinguish—or at least dim the Light of Divinity. 

Now I perceive more clearly, for I am no longer cluttered by illusions, that the great purpose of life in matter is to illumine matter with Spirit.

Even here in my new life, I have been rushing hither and thither in search of adventure, of experience, of progress, and such,  as I have discovered, I have tried to relate in my account. 

But now, I let go. I seek for nothing. I absorb, and am absorbed by the spirit of Light, Love and Beauty. 

I know that I am being remade.

Consciousness is expanding to acknowledge and accept the fact of being a child of the Living Light, of already having in consciousness all that is needed and reflecting as much of the spirit as my awareness will permit.

Life still goes on about me.

The work of helping others who may be also bogged down in their illusions of separateness still occupies me, and is a joy. I no longer crave to pass on to the next stage—that of being allowed to be a student in the outer courts of the universities here. 

Such glorious adventure will be mine when my consciousness is ready for it.

Until such awareness is alive and active in me, and I have achieved the maintenance of the deep tranquility of this knowledge, I am content to remain here and benefit from the loving atmosphere. Until this new peace has become an integrated part of me, until all old regrets have been dissolved in love and service, until I have learned to rest completely in this new consciousness of the spirit, I shall remain where I am.

Time does not exist here. Consciousness has taken its place.

By the degree of consciousness of the spirit can we measure the extent of the habitation of varying states in our onward progress. To you still in the concepts of time, this could be months, years or centuries. 

For me now, the state of consciousness of the living spirit and the serenity such consciousness works in my soul is my present and my future in this life everlasting.

25 February 1966

I have changed, and yet I have not changed.

My mind is still the same—eager and thirsting for knowledge, as when I was in the third dimension of earth life, only now the Frontiers of Revelation are open and welcoming, avenues of research lead into domains of the spirit, which even in my most aspiring dreams had never manifested themselves. 

I am free, as far as my progress will allow, and believe me, the barriers are in one's own consciousness, to pursue my explorations into the Nature of Eternity.

The only hindrances to progress are from one's limited reception of Light. 

I can only liken this to the transmission of electricity.

Intenser electric light and power need greater voltage, greater voltage requires thicker cables of connecting wires. 

One must have developed the ‘thicker cable’ with all the leads-in united and ‘plugged in.’ 

With cables of lesser voltage, there will be lesser light—it is as simple as that.

For the exploration to which I can look forward with sure joy, I must clear my lines of all the old faults and errors.

I have to develop within me more ‘lines of communication’ and more ‘wire transmissions’ to increase the voltage. 

For these reasons and anticipations, I am content to meditate upon past mistakes and to see how they can be reconciled into the Pattern, as well as to learn lessons of incarnation from the stories of those who come to us here. 

And with it all, life and service here fill everything with joy, and I am finding an exciting approach to truth. 

There are always those who have travelled further into Reality to whom to turn for instruction and advice. 

There is beauty in its fullness, there is freedom of soul, and there is the wonderful realisation that I am the same, that I who was also masked and belaboured by the egoism of the personality, am changed, and yet not changed.

The essential remains.

The unessentials are slowly being stripped away, so that joy of the spirit remains and an abiding peace.

In my Father's House are many mansions!

This temporary dwelling place of the spirit is my rightful ‘mansion’ now. But what joy to know, as well as to anticipate, other mansions for further states of living!

This is the message, which I desire so much, to put through this work.

After the death of the physical body, we gravitate to our rightful place―a mansion, a cottage, even a hovel, as we have earned. It is essential, therefore, to regard life experience while in incarnation on the earth plane, as a preparation for this existence.

Live life in eternity now.

9 March 1966

I passed through the experience of death firmly believing in the Resurrection, but not of the body that clothed me on earth.

How could I ever desire to bring an old, worn-out thing into this new life? Or ever to occupy it again at any future experience?

Here I have a body, certainly, but it is of finer composition than my late physical body. Here I look as I did on earth―or relatively as I looked, but here I am free to refashion this body by thought.

I am beginning that adventure of breaking out of the prison of those creeds, which limited the reality of life.

Here I dwell temporarily amongst my fellow religious in a community, which is entirely dedicated to helping souls to awaken to greater freedom before they proceed onwards to their ‘rightful places,’ and to the extent to which I am allowed to participate, I am learning more and more of the true values of each soul's experience in all the worlds through which it is destined to pass in its progress towards divinity.

There are no tenets, no creeds, no formulae, no hard and fast rules devised by any mind to restrict or confine progress here.

All is individual, and yet all is for the good of the whole―for the advancement of the group. It is a ‘forward and backward’ movement if I may be allowed to use a contradictory expression.

Each soul and each group moves onward towards greater expansion, towards the divine conception of an illimitable creation, individually and collectively.

Yet at the same time, each group and each soul directs ‘backward’ to the plane below its present achievement the fruits of its knowledge. These ideas, ideals and conceptions fit into and make manifest the Divine Pattern or Plan, as far as this can be accepted by the souls still steeped in the illusion and glamour of matter.

No acceptance of another soul's belief colours progress.

The soul must judge for itself—must make its own progress, must choose what to accept as truth for itself.

No soul is coerced, forced or bound by creeds.

If he believes that this is Heaven. or conversely, that he is in Hell, then for him that is so at his present state of progress.

Helpers and teachers and great souls there are in number to explain such errors of thinking, but there are no rules to follow and obey except the divine precepts of Love, Light, Wisdom and Understanding.

Jesus said—“I am the Light of the World,” and truly He had found and could live in that Light.

We are striving to live also, in the Light, as it presents itself as truth to us individually. This is the glory of the Christian religion, as of all religions―this inner stamp of divinity in each soul whether blinded and deafened by material thinking or not.

Our ‘inner eyes’ are opened gradually or swiftly to the errors of our old patterns of thinking and acting.

We are allowed to progress into such experiences as will help us to put right these errors. 

In some, this means remaining in one state until the effects of the disasters of their actions in earth lives have been resolved, and love and harmony have healed the hurts. For others, this means joining a group where the omissions in their thinking and feeling can be remedied. Yet still for others, there is service to their fellows, whilst to those happy few advanced souls, there is swift progress to other and higher spheres.

The ‘serial’ life from one plane to another, from one experience to another, from one group to another, from one adventure to another, from partial understanding to deeper comprehension, from apparent separation to inherent unity, and on into the bliss of Divine Reality, that seems to me, as far as I have progressed, and as clearly as my growing understanding has shown me, to be the ‘glorious truths.’

25 March 1966

As a point of interest, I will reiterate that which I told you before.

These scripts are organised and impressed upon me by a band of souls. Thus, I am being used as a telepathic link to you and to the earth by these souls.

This group then is the next stage for me to which I look forward with joyful anticipation.

I shall still be a part of the community, and I shall be able to return here whenever I wish for service and refreshment, but I shall also be absorbed into the higher group. It is always easier to step back into a former group than it is to progress on into the atmosphere of groups of wider consciousness until one is completely ready. I shall therefore be connected with these two groups, as well as my family group, which I have not mentioned here, as it is personal to me.

Can you appreciate now what I mean by group work and group souls?

One group is within another, within the next, and the next, into the highest beam of Light, which is Divine Life Itself—or God.

All is progress. Nothing is static. Imagination passes and grows from the emotional to the mental to the spiritual levels. Life is a continuing path towards one's particular group, one's individual experiences, one's own progress, and onwards into the Arc of Ascendancy. To me, this is a far more heartening process than the glory of static heaven with angels and golden floors.

Angels, of course, there are―great beings of Light who do the will of the Divine Creator, and who carry and transmit Power and Beauty and Light. But they, too, are in the process of progress, advancement towards their own great centres.

All is order, advancement and progress. And All is Unity. Life cells within life cells, centres within centres, groups within groups, into the very heart of divinity.

14 April 1966

I can use my ‘inner mind’ so much more now.

On earth, it was difficult to ‘breakthrough’ to spirit, for long enough periods to be lasting in effect. I tried meditation, and I did succeed in stilling the conscious mind, but I did not then achieve a measure of living in the spiritual mind, as I am now able to do. 

Yes—I still have several ‘parts’ or ‘bodies,’ and I marvel more as I recognise them. The ‘purely personal’ part of me is being cleansed and purified.

I live mostly now in an astral body, and that gives a measure of greater freedom than a dense physical body, but I am very aware of my higher body―or if you wish, my inner self, much more aware of it than when in incarnation in the physical plane of matter.

I am now learning and achieving, I trust, a higher balance of living.

By this I mean that I am becoming aware of my spiritual body, and in so doing, I am enabled to absent myself from this plane of thought, the astral or emotional, and slip away in consciousness to the higher mental and spiritual planes of thought.

With the transition from this consciousness to that of the higher comes an exquisite sense of peace and freedom such as I can scarcely explain.

I cannot hope even to transmit the enveloping peace, the sense of tranquil being that envelops one with this transition of consciousness. It is the breakthrough for which I longed when on earth and which I only experienced in infinitesimal moments of union. It is the reality of being. It is joy beyond words. It is in truth an ecstasy of living, of being a live, alert self in a world of live and glorious selves within a consciousness of a great Creative Self.

I cannot express this feeling of inner spirit more clearly. And I must add that I am, but a tyro yet in achieving even this measure of consciousness. Neither can I hold it indefinitely at my present stage of evolution. Perhaps the intensity of it would, so to speak, burn me up until I am attuned to this stepped-up frequency of vibration.

It is an intense joy, unqualified bliss, the aim and acme of all the struggles to discover the spirit. 

And still only can I achieve it in ‘periods’ of consciousness. Yet I can be content, as I become more fully alert to the possibilities of the higher planes.

15—16 April 1966—Shedding the Astral Cloak

I am like a creature hibernating, and yet at the same time, sloughing off a skin, which I no longer will be needing. 

I feel, sometimes, like a snake gradually shedding its skin.

These coils of lower density are slipping away from me. I am emerging from regrets of earth memories, from disillusions, from idealisations, which become illusions, ephemeral and of no true worth. 

I am viewing each piece of skin, which peels off from me in its right connection with the true self, which it served to obscure. And more and more, I become thankful for the reality, which was there beneath the skin all the time. This is the self, which is now becoming more and more outstanding, more revealed, more substantial. That self is substantial Light. Perhaps that last sentence rings oddly to you.

I am trying not to become too obscure, but one's angle of vision alters on this plane of living.

I realise that what is passing from me, like sloughing a skin, is insubstantial, impermanent, decomposing, as it drops from me into a dusty nothingness. What is left is essentially Light, is Reality, is permanent, and is True. 

I call this, my new body of Light, and that indeed is what it truly is. 

A body of Light, not dense and material and dull and heavy, as the physical body, not insubstantial, shadowy and unreal, as the astral body, in which I have been sheltering, but brilliant, ‘encelled’ with Light, ethereal, in that there is no weight, no dragging down into matter, but is enmeshed with colour and beauty into form and substance. Is that a difficult conception?

You must remember that I am forming this, my spiritual body―or should I be more correct in saying, I am merging into it.

I still have a mind, I still have a body, but both are inevitably changing, and because of that I feel as if I am emerging, like a grub from a chrysalis, to a butterfly. Gradually, I can function more readily, and for deeper periods in my body of Light, and in it can commune with more advanced souls and imbibe their wisdom.

I am trying to function more and more in the body of Light. I cannot sustain it for long yet, but I have the joy and bliss of the certainty of a further expansion, which is available to us all.

This is the next step in progression, the stepping out of illusion into the consciousness of the functioning of the higher self, an emergence into a wider consciousness and an awareness of spiritual beings and of forces from the All-creative Mind of God.

This is a gradual process and may take years in earth consciousness of time to fulfil. I feel as though I am starting on a path of Light, which leads upwards and onwards into realms of unimaginable beauty and wonder, and of which I have as yet but the faintest glimmer of comprehension.

At this stage, the communications between Frances Banks and Helen Greaves were temporarily disrupted. This interlude was apparently caused by Frances' transition from the astral plane to higher spheres of activity, and this required certain adaptations. However, after a silence of nearly seventeen months, Frances again contacted Helen to transmit a few final telepathic messages from which the following have been extracted for present purposes—

11 September 1967

For I have now passed on from my spate of service in the home to becoming one of a group, in other words, to take my place, as a newcomer, a very humble, ignorant one, in what I like to call an extension group.

Expansion. That is the keyword now in this phase of my existence as a soul.

We still live in an expanding Universe, and I emphasise the word still because we always have inhabited this world, and the death of the physical sheath only serves to clear our vision.

The world of the physical is expanding, changing endlessly, though most souls in that state of physical existence cannot make the link with the ephemeral personality strong enough to be able to realise that expansion.

Even when the personality does survive death in a more attenuated form, is released into conscious expansion, it still exists. In an entity, which had become deeply sunk into the illusion of material existence―or which has never developed the mental body of thought, nor made any contact with the soul, this new state of existence can be one of extreme difficulty and confusion. 

This explains why there are differing states or planes of expansion here, as I tried to show in my former communications from the home.

The shadow lands do exist for those who cannot accept release from the imprisoned self, and in these shadows, the poor entities remain until they themselves wish to find other and lighter abodes.

We always possess a soul body―or, can I put it another way? 

A soul extends out to each of us, but for millions of those in physical incarnation, the link with the soul body is so ephemeral, as to be almost non-existent. Thus, on arrival here, after the physical change called death, such entities find themselves naked to their brethren. 

That does not mean without clothing in the physical sense, but minus the protective and creative vibrations of the soul. It is as though they lacked an outer skin, also, they no longer feel in command of themselves or their situation. They are lost and confused, therefore prey to unprogressed entities who lurk in the shadows. 

Sometimes, they feel still bound to familiar scenes of their earth life. Sometimes, they exist in a semiconscious dream whilst helpers and loved ones await their return to awareness. The duration and density of this state must necessarily depend on the reality of materialism to them, that is, the glamour of earth life, the illusion of the temporal state.

A good man or woman, kindly, unselfish, seeking God during life, yet without knowledge or understanding of survival has nothing to fear.

His good deeds have already attracted those who can guide and help him to adjust to these new conditions, and under instruction, he will learn the aspirational approach to the soul.

That brings me to what I am trying to convey about expansion in this realm.

The soul expands its knowledge and wisdom into the surviving personality. This process may be disseminated over long periods of earth time, sometimes, even hundreds of your earth years, according to the progression or non-progression of the entity. 

But always there are brethren of the way to assist one who desires progress. 

The desire originates in the entity itself after reparation has been made for wrongs done and existing lower passions have been cleansed, healed and released.

When partial cleansing has been effected, the next step towards Light is service, and many dear souls spend their transition stages in service to those still living in the hells of their own creation. 

Such service, voluntary and compassionate, strengthens the link with the waiting self. Yet always that self waits to expand into the entity. There are many facets of such expansion. 

Loving service is but one.

The progressing entity is still in need of education into that knowledge and wisdom which the soul possesses, and for this purpose, numbers of groups exist here, and function on every plane. 

The progressing entity is drawn by the Law of Attraction to a group progressed to that stage, which will express for him the intensity of awareness, which he is now capable of receiving. All is expansion here, but expansion in stages. This law is exact.

No entity can propel itself forward into a group until its emotional, mental and spiritual expansion at least is comparable with the fringe of that group's awareness.

This is an important statement. Think it well through to its conclusions. Here, illusion, glamour and self-deception are of no avail. One reveals what one is. One advertises oneself even in one's apparel. The mask has been shed with the physical body. The developing Light body, its dimness or its brilliance is apparent, especially to members of the group to which the quality of such Light permits graduation.

14 October 1967

How did I contact this group?

This was not a case of contacting, as though for the first instance, this group. From time immemorial it seems that I have been attached to it. Now, this is a reunion.

Is this such a mystery?

Every soul has its place in the divine scheme of living. Every soul belongs to a group and forms an integral part of a group soul.  I do. You do. The meanest beggar in the street does, and the greatest genius does. 

A group soul is constituted of souls at individual levels of progress, each complementing the others to make a whole. One is part of a group soul, as one is part of a family in the physical sense―a family relationship may be temporary, but a soul relationship is eternal.

The question of twin souls about which much nonsense and speculation is made on earth can be explained by the hypothesis of two souls, belonging to the same group, but drawn close in harmony because they are at equal stages of progression and because they have advanced conspicuously together. 

This gives them similar vibrations and a corresponding ‘pull’ of attraction.

But all souls, constituting a group soul experience this ‘drawing together in harmony’ towards each other whether they are functioning in material bodies or are traversing the stages here in the life of the spirit. 

Group souls preside over universal movements, over great causes, and thus members of one spiritual family are often attracted to each other by mutual interests, by a special life work, as well as by external links. They work together, may indeed share their lives in partnership or may only meet occasionally, as they work on some particular project.

15 October 1967

I have a new home. I share a beautiful estate with others in the group. This place has wide sloping grasslands, trees and flowers of the most exquisite beauty, and avenues of Light―

I have no other words for this for meditation and contemplation. 

As we here are closer in vibration to the spiritual worlds, the echoes of the music of the spheres along these avenues become a glory, sweeping our thoughts and aspirations into contemplation of the mystery of divinity and eternal life.

We are free, of course, to follow our own pursuits.

There are no college rules or compulsory attendances, but I for one find myself at the halls of learning almost continually. Again, you notice, I repeat the pattern―that avid desire for spiritual knowledge, which I now realise characterised all my excursions into different experiences on earth, and which I now comprehend, albeit vaguely, as having been the focus of those personalities with which I have returned to incarnation. This avidity may not be an asset!

I can travel in the mind, and this I often do.

I have visited countries of the world, which I did not know about. I have seen much and learned much. I return often to familiar scenes. I attend some meetings and meditation groups, and sometimes contact the friends and companions I had loved on earth. 

I do not find it an easy matter to ‘speak through’ a medium. 

 

As you appreciate, I have the conviction that there is no necessity for this.

On this level of thought, telepathy is developed to greater potential than was practised on earth.

By means of thought transference, I endeavour to reach the minds of old and dear friends still in physical existence. Sometimes, I am happy to think that my efforts meet with a certain response. In others, the veil of illusion even in those who should know better interferes with the reception and the contact is faulty―or is even rejected.

But this will be so whilst those on earth still cling to the theory of separativeness.

That which I am learning here, in this wider state of consciousness, is a joyous apprehension of the vast wonder of the Unity of Creative Mind in which all, every atom, every soul fragment, every group soul, every creative thought, is One.

10 December 1967

 

This will be my last script for the book. If there is a message in these writings, it is the simple statement that All is Unity and that Unity is Light.

That statement may be interpreted symbolically by my readers, as referring to the Light of Wisdom, of Knowledge, of Understanding, of the Unity of the Life in All Things. But a difficult point I would try to make clear is that in this further phase of our existence on this plane, the reference to Light is to be interpreted literally.

The reference to Light is to be interpreted literally. We are progressing into Light, and yet more Light.

To us now, references to the ‘Golden Throne of God,’ which formed part of our religious instruction on earth now reveal definite hidden truths. 

The utmost of such Light is beyond our comprehension, which is still limited―or even beyond our highest aspirations. The Light here is literally the substance and matter of our thought life. Thus, as our thoughts become attuned to the vibration of creative divinity, the substance of our bodies changes, becoming less dense and reflecting more Light. We carry our own Light.

The greater, therefore, the selflessness and illumination of our minds and the more positive our response to the higher frequency of vibration, the purer and brighter is the Light we transmit.

 

We spoke of the group soul.

Thus, as I begin to comprehend now, the purer and stronger the Light from each unit soul of the group, the greater the advancement of the Group Soul itself towards ultimate bliss of union―towards that ineffable light, which will ever be the mystery and wonder of divinity.

Yet each ‘unit’ must be proved, that is, its Light must be subjected to the test of veils of density in other spheres of action. 

So many units return again and again to the nothingness of dense matter, bravely asserting the lasting reality of their illumination. So often such units, clothed in their passing personalities, fall into ignorance, becoming subject to materialistic concepts. Some are blessed on their journeys by Flashes into the Light, and in rare cases, the Light gained in these spiritual worlds holds steady, shining through the fleshly masks to bless and encourage their fellow travellers in the darkness of supposed separativeness. 

The Light shines from the eyes of these advanced egos and is reflected in the magnetic fields, which surround their dense bodies.

Perhaps my greatest regret now is the realisation that whilst I was seeking and searching mentally, psychically and occultly to discover that ‘breakthrough’ to spirit for which I longed, the Light of Unity with all things, all creatures, all beings, all hosts, all powers, dwelt within me in ineffable glory.

I am the Light of the World means just that.

Jesus, the Master, reflected that Light pure and untrammelled during His dwelling in the density of crude matter.

The Light dwells in all of us, as a shining effulgence, the Light of Oneness with All Spirit, the blessed awareness and acknowledgement of unity with all creation from the lesser to the higher orders, even to the Throne of Grace itself. Let your Light so shine before men is essentially a fact here where each is revealed by his light.

May it be true then of those who read these words on earth. May the Light of Awareness of Divine Unity shine through the illusive and temporal veils of assumed personalities, so that in preparation for this further experience, they may indeed be known by their Light. 

God bless you all!