Should I worry about past mistakes?

In the Encyclopaedia of Death and Life in the Spirit World—Opinions and Experiences from Eminent Sources, Spirit Lucretus describes a miser's fate— 

That miser's soul never vibrated in sympathy for those whom his well-filled coffers could have aided. 

No one ever leaned on him for advice or aid. 

His soul was dark and miserably wretched, for it knew nothing of charity, brotherly love, or tender human feelings. 

I see him now near the earth where his buried treasures lies. 

He was gazing at the shining dollars with unfeigned pleasure, counting them again and again, while his selfish spirit had little about it that resembled a human being. 

Good deeds illuminate the soul, but selfishness darkens it. 

He was a poverty-stricken spirit, living on the insane hope of realising happiness from his secreted treasures. As he stood before me, his sunken eyes, wan expression and trembling bearing reflected his earthlier experience. 

In that spirit you could not easily detect the presence of the least tender sympathetic love—it never had an existence to any great extent in his darkened soul. 

Charity to him—it was a meaningless word! He lived on earth for self, and now he was alone! He hated humanity, and now in a desolate waste, like his own nature, he lived. 

Oh! no flowers, smiling through their tinted hues, greeted his vision. The fields were the emblems of selfishness—they gave forth nothing! 

As that miser produced nothing on earth, he has gravitated to a sphere just like himself, that produced nothing, and which was just as selfish and desolate in nature as he was. 

I saw him standing on the bleak, dark shore of what seemed to be surging, turbid billows. No birds flitted through the air, no fish enlivened the waters.

What a horrible picture!

He was reaping what he sowed. Language failed me in describing the desolation around him. 

This sphere was the personification of selfishness, like the miser, it gave forth nothing! 

He saw himself reflected there in everything! His life in spirit was just what he had made it. While on earth he adapted himself for a particular place in the spirit realms, and to that locality he naturally gravitated. 

The pathway of death led him thither. 

Despair lingered on his features, now burning with an intensity that indicated the absence of all hope. He gazed out on the dashing, wild waters of the infernal ocean, as if to catch a glimpse of an incoming ship. 

Why give those who have made missteps in life, or who have been so intensely selfish and miserly such a home as that? This looks like returning evil for evil. I cannot see any genuine philanthropy manifested in such an arrangement. If the pathway from the earth to the spirit world leads to such a clime as that, it had better be abolished altogether—annihilation is preferable.

Oh! I readily comprehend your meaning. It is a Law of the Universe, that which a man sows he shall reap! The pathway to the spirit realms leads a person to the locality where he can reap what he has sowed, or feel the presence of his own acts. 

That miser's life was a selfish one—all his deeds were selfish, and the pathway to the spirit world conducted him, as it were, to a selfish locality. If any beauties there, divinity wisely conceals them for a special purpose. 

He now realises his condition. As he, while on earth, would deprive others of substantial enjoyment, and by his usurious business transactions grind them to the earth, as he stands in a dark, loathsome desert, he feels the pernicious effects of his own vile deeds.

Your position seems plausible, but I can hardly realise that there is such a locality.

There is and in no other way could an intensely selfish, miserly person like him sense his true status without being conducted to it. 

Now I see him leave his desolate position—his haggard expression of despair is enough to melt a heart of stone. 

For many years he has been roaming around this dark, dreary waste, and now he is just beginning to know his true condition. 

He has reaped what he sowed. 

Every act of his hard-hearted life towards others has reacted, and he realises fully the enormity of his crimes.

Action and reaction are equal. Oh! I wish I could impress that sublime fact upon the children of earth. 

If you render the life of anyone desolate, if you make him wretched and miserable, the action and reaction will be equal, and you will receive in the desolation experienced in your own person, just what you meted out to him. The miser's whole life was devoted to rendering the existence of others cheerless—on earth was the action, and here, in that bleak sphere, is the reaction. 

Your position is correct in a physical point of view, but I never supposed it was true morally and spiritually.

Child of earth, pause a moment. How does a person calculate the extent or effect of his own actions without reaction? How could that miserable, unhappy being realise the extent of the great wrongs he had perpetrated unless he feel the effects of them himself.

The pathway to spirit life places him in a position to keenly realise the effects of all his acts. 

Action and reaction being equal, he can now measure the full extent of his evil deeds—he knows now how he made others suffer. No Saviour, no spirit friends, no agent in the spirit world, can interpose a staying hand and hold back the reaction that has come to him. 

Impress on the children of earth this fact, that whatsoever they sow they shall reap, and you will do more to moralise and refine them than in any other way.

I now see that miser, standing on a rugged cliff, and what seems to be a bleak, cold wind dashes against him with powerful violence! Oh! how he shivers! He constantly changes his position as if to escape the force of the fearful blast! Oh! how I pity him!

What is this for?

Could you not guess? Did I not tell you that whatsoever a man sows, that he shall reap? Did he not, one night in midwinter, ruthlessly drive a poor woman and her little child out into the cold, not heeding her tender appeals to be allowed to remain until morning? She and her darling babe perished in the terrific storm while she sent forth to God a tender prayer, appealing for her tyrant's forgiveness. 

Now the reaction has come, and he sees before him the prostrate forms of those his vile selfishness drove forth into the cold storm. 

I see him suffer—he feels the effect of his wrongdoing—it comes with fearful violence against him, standing alone and desolate on the barren place. It chills my soul to gaze upon him, and his suffering. By-and-by he will be allowed to leave that place, but he may be compelled to return again and again to witness the same scene. 

This is the wretched life he lives. 

If the pathway to spirit life leads to such desolate regions, seemingly it had better be abolished. It leads one to the sphere he is adapted to occupy. 

The outer covering of the soul of the indwelling conscious self is composed exactly of such material as the sphere to which it gravitates. 

While on earth our physical organisations are evolved from the various elements, and connected with it is the indwelling spirit. Acts of licentiousness, intense selfishness, and a life in the purlieus of vice, modify the character and texture of the latter, and prepare it for a sphere, corresponding with the life led here.

All of the earth deeds of that miser were accompanied with selfishness, and his mind seemed to nurse a venomous hate, and consequently, his spirit became dark. 

The natural tendency of his selfishness was to paralyze and contract the spirit until it became a mere pigmy in dimension, rendering his appearance more hideous than it otherwise would have been. 

Now he has but little resemblance to a human being [deformed and darkened spiritual body].