You yourself are judge and jury.

On the whole, this [the world of spirits] is the place for a square deal. You get what is yours, and get nothing more nor less. 

You yourself are judge and jury. 

That is the slick part of the arrangement. Self-accused, you have no escape. You get a true line on your own past, your own true motives, and this innate force within does the rest. I cannot but admire the simplicity and the lack of waste of the plan. Omar is right—

Thou thyself art heaven and hell.

Think of the labour-saving device it is. The system sets a soul free, leaves it alone, and the contained ingredients do the rest. 

Can you beat that?

—Spirit Harry

The spirit world is full of lonely souls.

In A wanderer in the spirit lands,* spirit author, Franchezzo, tells that the spirit world is full of lonely souls, all eager to return and show that they still live, still think of those whom they have left, still feel an interest in their struggles, and are as ready, and often more able to advise and help than when they were on earth, were they not shutout by the barriers of the flesh. 

He explains that he has seen many spirits hanging about the earth plane when they might have gone on to some bright sphere were it not for their affection for some beloved ones left to struggle with the trials of earth, and grieving in deepest sorrow for their death.  These spirits hang about them, hoping for some chance, which will make the living soul conscious of their presence and constant love.

Could these, says Franchezzo, but communicate, as friends do on earth when one has to go to a distant country and leave the other behind, there would not be such hopelessness of sorrow. 

Franchezzo has known a mother to follow her son for years, striving in vain to impress him with the sense of her presence that she might warn and save him from his path of sin. 

He has seen spirits in such sorrow, such despair, trying in vain to win one conscious look, one single thought, to show that their presence was felt and understood (Franchezzo has seen them in their despair cast themselves down before the individual, and seek to hold a hand, dress; anything). 

There is no despair of earth, great as it often is, equal to the despair a spirit feels when he realises the barrier, which death has placed between him and the world of living souls. 

*A. Farnese, A wanderer in the spirit lands by Franchezzo (Spirit), London, W. J. Sinkins, 1896

I want to say a word to those who are about to die.

Letter 15

A Thing To Be Forgotten

I want to say a word to those who are about to die. I want to beg them to forget their bodies as soon as possible, after the change, which they call death.

Oh; the terrible curiosity to go back and look upon that thing, which we once believed to be ourselves! 

The thought comes to us now and then so powerfully that it acts in a way against our will and draws us back to it. 

With some it is a morbid obsession, and many cannot get free from it while there remains a shred of flesh on the bones, which they once leaned upon.

Tell them to forget it altogether, to force the thought away, to go out into the other life free. Looking back upon the past is sometimes good, but not upon this relic of the past.

It is so easy to look into the coffin because the body, which we wear now, is itself a light in a dark place, and it can penetrate grosser matter. 

I have been back myself a few times, but am determined to go back no more. 

Yet some day the thought may come to me again with compelling insistence to see how it is getting on.

I do not want to shock or pain you―only to warn you.

It is sad to see the sight, which inevitably meets one in the grave. 

That may be the reason why many souls who have not been here long are so melancholy. 

They return again and again to the place which they should not visit.

You know that out here if we think intently of a place, we are apt to find ourselves there. 

The body, which we use, is so light that it can follow thought almost without effort. 

Tell them not to do it.

One day, while walking down an avenue of trees―for we have trees here―I met a tall woman in a long black garment. 

She was weeping―for we have tears here also. 

I asked her why she wept, and she turned to me in eyes of unutterable sadness.

I have been back to it, she said.

My heart ached for her because I knew how she felt. 

The shock of the first visit is repeated each time, as the thing one sees is less and less what we like to think of ourselves as being.

Often I remember that tall woman in black, walking down the avenue of trees and weeping. 

It is partly curiosity that draws one back, partly magnetic attraction, but it can do no good. It is better to forget it.

I have sometimes longed, from sheer scientific interest, to ask my boy Lionel if he had been back to his body, but I have not asked him, for fear of putting the idea into his mind. He has such a restless curiosity. Perhaps those who go out as children have less of that morbid instinct than we have.

If we could only remember in life that the form, which we call ourselves, is not our real immortal self at all, we would not give it such an exaggerated importance, though we would nevertheless take needful care of it.

As a rule, those who say that they have been long here do not seem old. 

I asked the Teacher why, and he said that after a time an old person forgets that he is old, that the tendency is to grow young in thought, and, therefore, young in appearance, that the body tends to take the form, which we hold of it in our minds, that the law of rhythm works here as elsewhere.

Children grow up out here and they may even go on to a sort of old age if that is the expectation of the mind, but the tendency is to keep the prime, to go forward or back towards the best period and then to hold that until the irresistible attraction of the earth asserts itself again.

Most of the men and women here do not know that they have lived many times in flesh. 

They remember their latest life more or less vividly, but all before that seems like a dream. 

One should always keep the memory of the past as clear as possible. It helps one to construct the future.

Those people who think of their departed friends as being all-wise, how disappointed they would be if they could know that the life on this side is only an extension of the life on earth! 

If the thoughts and desires there have been only for material pleasures, the thoughts and desires here are likely to be the same. 

I have met veritable saints since coming out, but they have been men and women who held in earth life the saintly ideal, and who now are free to live it.

Life can be so free here! 

There is none of that machinery of living which makes people on earth such slaves. 

In our world, a man is held only by his thoughts. If they are free, he is free.

Few though are of my philosophic spirit. 

There are more saints here than philosophers, as the highest ideal of most persons, when intensely active, has been towards the religious rather than the philosophic life.

I think the happiest people I have met on this side have been the painters. 

Our matter is so light and subtle, and so easily handled, that it falls readily into the forms of the imagination. 

There are beautiful pictures here. 

Some of our artists try to impress their pictures upon the mental eyes of the artists of earth, and they often succeed in doing so.

There is joy in the heart of one of our real artists when a fellow craftsman on your side catches an idea from him and puts it into execution. 

He may not always be able to see clearly how well the second man works out the idea, for it requires a special gift, or a special training, to see from one form of matter into the other, but the inspiring spirit catches the thought in the inspired one’s mind and knows that a conception of his own is being executed upon the earth.

With poets, it is the same. 

There are lovely lyrics composed out here and impressed upon the receptive minds of earthly poets. 

A poet told me that it was easier to do that with a short lyric than with an epic or a drama, where a long-continued effort was necessary.

It is much the same with musicians. 

Whenever you go to a concert where beautiful music is being played, there is probably all round you a crowd of music-loving spirits, drinking in the harmonies. 

Music on earth is much enjoyed on this side. It can be heard.

But no sensitive spirit likes to go near a place where bad strumming is going on. 

We prefer the music of stringed instruments. 

Of all earthly things, sound reaches most directly into this plane of life. Tell that to the musicians.

If they could only hear our music!

I did not understand music on earth, but now my ears are becoming adjusted. It sometimes seems as if you must hear our music over there, as we hear yours.

You may have wondered how I spend my time, and where I go. 

There is a lovely spot in the country, which I never tire of visiting. 

It is on the side of a mountain, not far from my own city. 

There is a little road winding round a hill, and just above the road is a hut, a roofed enclosure with the lower side open. 

Sometimes I stay there for hours and listen to the rippling of the brook, which runs beside the road. 

The tall slender trees have become like brothers to me. 

At first, I cannot see the material trees very clearly, but I go into the little hut, which is made of fresh clean boards with a sweet smell, and I lie down on the shelf or bunk along the wall, then I close my eyes, and by an effort―or, no; it is not what I would call an effort, but by a sort of drifting―I can see the beautiful place. 

But you must know that this is in the nighttime there, and I see it by the light of myself.

That is why we travel in the dark part of the twenty-four hours, for in the bright sunlight, we cannot see at all. 

Our light is put out by the cruder light of the sun.

One night, I took the boy Lionel there with me, leaving him in the hut while I went a little distance away. 

Looking back, I saw the whole hut illuminated by a lovely radiance―the radiance of Lionel himself. 

The little building, which has a peaked roof, looked like a pearl lighted from within. 

It was a beautiful experience.

I then went to Lionel, and told him to go, in his turn, a little distance away, while I took his place in the hut. I was curious to know if he would see the same phenomenon when I lay there, if I could shed such a light through dense matter―through the boards of the building.

When I called him to me afterwards and asked if he had seen anything strange, he said―

What a wonderful man you are, Father!

 

How did you make that hut seem to be on fire?

Then I knew that he had seen the same thing I had seen.

But I am tired now and can write no more.

Good night and may you have pleasant dreams.

Have earth's joys proved faithless?

There is a heritage to come!

Section of M51 with progenitor star | NASA/ESA/W. Li and A. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley)/S. Beckwith (STScI)/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The Higher Life

The Higher Life

On the earth the broken arcs, 

In the heaven a perfect round.

Before we try to describe the spirit body and its functions, it will be well to speak of the new sphere in which the Spirit-soul is now manifesting.

This sphere is not one and single as the intermediate is, but is seven spheres closely connected together.

Perhaps a diagram will make this clearer.

The three central are the Unity Spheres; the side ones are the Duality Spheres.

The Diagram

I. The first Unity Sphere. Introductory, for strengthening and improving the character and the new powers.

III. The second Unity Sphere. For action and exercise of powers.

V. Third Unity Sphere. Peace; rest; the equipoise of the perfectly manifested being.

2. The first Duality Spheres. Discipline—the growth, guidance and strengthening of such parts of the being as were still weak and imperfect.

4. Second Duality Spheres. Discipline on a higher plane—the completion of the work. The man now passes into the last Unity Sphere, the sphere of perfection, and beyond that who shall say! 

The Duality Spheres are so-called, chiefly because the old double consciousness (which is almost dormant in the Unity Spheres) is again in force. In force, that is, in the sense of conflict of one part of our nature with another; not merely in the ability to think of ourselves as if we were two beings. This double consciousness is revived in the dual spheres because it is then easier for the ego to see its own weaknesses; to condemn and struggle against them.

Thus these spheres are dual as being in pairs; dual in the divided experience, and above all dual as to the double consciousness.

The unity are so-called, not only or chiefly because they are the one sphere for all, but because there this unity of consciousness is existent.

The unity of the whole seven in one is shown in the oneness of the man’s manifestation through all he dwells in his spirit-body; through all, he is a man of seven dimensions until he comes to the perfection of his being, as far as we can judge of perfection.

No spirit, we believe, ever passes through more than one of each of the two spheres marked 2 and 4—that is, he goes to the right, or to the left, but not to both. (The words right and left, of course, are used only in reference to the diagram).

What, then, causes him to enter one of these spheres rather than the other? 

It is the bent of his deep soul-character. There is no uniformity in mankind, rather there is infinite diversity. Yet it divides, broadly speaking, into two classes, call them by what name you please, say—

The religious and the scientific—

The imaginative and the practical—

The introspective and the outlooking.

Now, the soul that has the one bent passes into the opposite sphere, that his nature may be so cultivated and disciplined that he shall be a perfect and not a one-sided being.

When we speak of perfect and imperfect I think you understand our meaning. Sin—as you know it—is a wilful failure to do the thing that is known to be right, or the equally wilful doing of the wrong, sin, I say, is left behind finally in the psychic. By perfect I mean the essential being fully manifested and by imperfect we mean not fully manifested. 

Man, then, is not perfect until he reaches the seventh sphere; the Unity in Peace.

Man thus passes through only five of the seven spheres, but the seven are so closely connected by a constant stream of life circling through all, that he may be said to inhabit them all.

Finally, the three unity spheres are specialised thus—

I.—Is that state where all the qualities developed in the physical life reach their highest stage.

III.—The same, only psychical.

V.—The perfection of the pneumatic.

And now with what words can we describe the spirit-body? 

It is not like unto the physical or the psychical. It is not an etherealised earthly body, yet it resembles it at one point, it manifests the real man in various ways. You manifest yourself by speech and look, and perceive others by the touch and the ear. So the spirit has its spirit-vision, hearing, speech, etc.

Communicated by automatic writing; “I AWOKE!” Conditions of Life on the other Side, 1895, David Stott, London, Part II, The Pneuma, The Higher Life, 118-123

How are spirits governed in spirit life?

How are spirits governed in spirit life?

Government

We are not isolated units here, with merely individualistic needs and desires—rather we live under different governments, answering somewhat to your different nations. 

Two characteristics of earthly governments are, however, eliminated—e.g., all interference on the part of any, and all wilful misconduct. Our methods resemble an ideal patriarchal government.

The father in experience and wisdom advises, protects, and instructs those who are related to him in psychic bonds; that is in character and bent of the soul, but who are yet young and tender in the new life. 

All force, all necessity, all tyranny are absent, and one is guided or controlled most willingly or not at all. 

There is no possible place for punishment of any kind; to such as may in any way transgress the divine law there comes a sense of separation, which lasts until the faculties of the soul are readjusted. 

The old myth of the Tower of Babel is reenacted, for where there is no harmony of purpose, there confusion of language comes, and we do not understand each other’s speech; while, on the contrary, when all goes well, all will hear in their own language, whoever the speaker may be.

Just as the eye, the ear, and the palate choose and prefer some things to others, so the soul senses draw us to such things and people as can give us pure joy, or cause us to grow in the most healthy way possible.

When the Master was living his earthly life, your world, ours, and the next, all lay open to him much more fully than to most. There was so much in his nature that responded to heavenly influences, and so little to obstruct, that he may be said to have lived in all three at different periods of the same life. This openness of his is clearly shown in the story of his life, for the power was so abundant that even those around could not help sharing—they heard voices, they saw the heavenly messengers like birds descending; they saw the psychic body shine through the physical. The Master, then, knew enough of our life to promise to his disciples that if they fulfilled certain conditions they should attain certain planes of being. 

If they followed and obeyed—not a person, but those inner principles which belong to humanity—then they would be fit to lead others. 

So those who govern here are not the great ones of the earth, nor yet those who have been distinguished for great intellectual gifts—they are those men or women who, whatever position they may have filled, have been truest to their own nature, obeying the law within, without that parleying with the inner voice which leads to self-deception and crooked ways. 

Such govern and are as fathers to those who need help; while to others who need it not, there is as much freedom as if they existed alone in the universe.

We begin, then, generally as children, and gradually grow up to independent maturity; we become as fathers; we pass on to other worlds, while others take our vacant places.

Thus the law of change is still universal—the flowers change from one beauty to another or disappear from our view to reappear in other forms—the earth changes and beautifies under our faithful labour; our friends grow in spirit and sometimes they too pass away; our work, our thought, change and pass from one order to another.

A simple, natural life is ours with the sanctified will as the motive power; no machinery, no tools, no storehouse or barns; we are clothed upon as the lilies are; we gather the fruit for our healing straight from the tree of life. 

To those who are out of harmony with this divine order, this earth may often seem like a wilderness and the pools of living water like dreary wastes of sand—but this is only while their hour of tribulation lasts; only until they yield themselves to the law of their being, and become united, one, a whole creation. 

Our joys and sorrows, our trials and triumphs lie closely together, as they do in your world, but the joys are greater, and the triumphs more just and unsullied. 

We put our lower nature in its proper place of subjection under our feet and thus ruling it we rise to perfect manhood, and share the throne of all perfect humanity, and then we rise by and by to greater heights and share the throne of the Divine.

Communicated by automatic writing; “I AWOKE!” Conditions of Life on the other Side, 1895, David Stott, London, Part I, The Psyche, Government, 81-85

What is the Psyche?

The Psyche

Before proceeding to describe life in the world of spirits more fully, it may be well to say something about the human ego itself, and the reason why its surroundings and destiny are so varied.

Why hast thou made us to differ? Why do some suffer the anguish of the body and misery of the soul, while others have no cross in their lot? Is this not a common cry?

But it arises simply from your short-sightedness—from the small, the very small portion of your life, which alone is open to spiritual gaze, but which self-love and self-pity magnify until it fills not only your earthly but also your heavenly horizon. 

You must take large views of life if you would understand it all clearly. 

You must think of the human ego as passing from eternity to eternity across the narrow bridge of time—as coming from the invisible All-Father—made manifest for a brief day, and then returning to the bosom of the Infinite. Incarnated first in the lowest phenomena; rising through the dead stone, the living plant, the animal, to the human ego—then disappearing to the eye of sense and living purely in the spirit.

Now as each human ego differs in manifested life from every other, it needs a different experience, and each is given the material (so to speak) from which it can derive the food best suited to its special needs. 

Some can only grow when their roots have struck deep in the black earth of sin; others require the knife of the pruner freely applied to them; while to others only sunshine and the dews of heaven seem necessary—to each the best and most suitable surroundings are given.

As souls pass over in all stages of their development, their life has to be very varied. On the other hand, the difference between one man’s destiny and another’s is not as great as it appears, especially if you could take the sum of their experiences. 

If your eyes could see the heart, as well as the life, understand the deepest springs of motive, and know fully all the powers of inherited evil, of susceptibility to influence, then many of the good and evil would stand on a greater equality in your estimation. 

Those crimes that shock you most are often small things in spiritual eyes, for much belongs to the physical and will drop off from the psyche at death, as the outer covering of the leaf-bud when it comes forth in its perfection. 

It is that spirit which says to its brother—Am I thy keeper? which is most hurtful to the soul, but whatever it may be, sin or suffering, good or evil, joy or misery, all shall have the appointed end in nursing the infant soul.

I used these well-known words as a heading because it seems as if the Father said to Nature, with reference to the soul—Take this child and nurse it for me, and the physical proves the best nurse that you can have. Then when you have grown to adulthood you are passed on to the care of those in the psychic world, and they watch over you and help you until the wounds are all healed, and your strength restored so that you can begin a new and worthy life.

The state of the human ego when it casts off its physical body depends on the degree of development that it has already attained.

The ego is now the psyche and spirit. Its psychical body is the image of its physical one; not inferior, but superior; the blossom of the seed, yet still the blossom of that particular seed, and not of another. 

Now it has to go through varied experiences until instead of the psychic dominating the spirit, or the two being evenly balanced, the spirit becomes entirely the master, and the psyche, the servant. Then the ego is ready to depart into the heavens, having finished the task that was given it to do.

 

At first, the psyche is generally supreme. Life then is much like the earthly one; food is necessary, spirits live in houses, they work, they rest, but yet with a difference. You need food and rest at stated intervals, but here they are only needed when the spirit is not strong enough to supply the body. 

With spirits, the will is strong enough to control the body. The body only needs refreshment when the faith fails, or is too weak. Gradually, and with many failures and retrogressive steps, the soul and spirit become first equal, then the spirit is master, and finally, the psychic envelope is burst, and the spirit rises free and untrammelled. 

The pneuma, when it is strong enough, goes to its home for a time, and then returns. This it may do often and over a long period before it finally leaves. Generally, however, about half a century is the limit of its stay in Hades or an intermediate state.

And then the Ship

Complete at last—loosed from its earthly bonds,

Glides from its birthplace to the sea—

Which yielding, yet supporting, bears it on.

Out from the land-locked harbour to the deep.

Cumbrous before, it lay upon the stocks

Like some dead thing, neither of earth nor air—

But now it lives and guided by the winds

Leaves earth behind it, and sails onward to the sun.

Communicated by automatic writing; “I AWOKE!” Conditions of Life on the Other Side, 1895, David Stott, London, Part I, The Psyche, The Psyche, 54-59

Conditions of Life in the Psychic World

Conditions of Life in the Psychic World

Time’s wheel runs back or stops;

Potter and clay endure.

You must remember that we are still in an intermediate and transitory state—that even here we are not what we shall be; that we are still limited in various ways and degrees.

Time—One day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

Goddard Beauties, Hubble solves the mystery of the source of a supernova in a nearby galaxy | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | NASA, ESA, CXC, SAO, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and J. Hughes (Rutgers University)

In the earthly life, the limitations of time are greatest in the physical, less in the mental and still less in the spiritual side of your nature. In strict reality, the moments roll on, one by one, each filled by the same amount of motion and active force in the invisible atoms making up the molecules of which phenomena consist—but in the mental life the thoughts, the memory can live through a year in a few moments, or mental anguish may draw out a moment into an hour. The spirit seems almost beyond these laws of time— love, truth, justice and pity are not of time, but beyond it. In our life we enter into the second of these states which becomes our lower one, we are not beyond the influence of time, but we are less strictly bound by it.

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Two may pass over from your world on the same day, and may awake from the psychic sleep together; yet one may have had almost a lifetime’s experience, and the other may have been only conscious of the passing of a few days. No time with us seems long when we live as we ought—nor on the contrary, does any work lack completion for want of time for its accomplishment. 

And the angel being caused to fly swiftly came unto Daniel at the time of evening sacrifice.

This well represents our state—are we called to any work it can be done, but should the duty not be laid upon us, then the opportunity would not be given. These bonds of time do not fall from us immediately but are rather loosened, and with other earthly limitations, they fall from us one by one.

Goddard Beauties, A Star-Formation Laboratory | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Space—To what has already been said in dimensions, we need only add that we go wheresoever a true need or worthy desire may lead us—we are with those who are one with us in spirit, and though many in all stages of experience and character may be said to be literally in the same place, yet they are not truly with us unless we can help them in some way.

When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.

Hearing—Vision—This was no vain boast, nor yet a miracle—but the Master, as being more perfect than most, and having His psychic powers already far developed, could see all that He truly needed to see; both of outward things and of inner secrets of the heart. We, too, read each other’s hearts when the wish or need to do so arises; our powers in all these matters, you will understand, not being perfunctory, can only be exercised where and to what degree the soul truly requires. So also with speech; my words or audible thoughts can only reach another if those words will help or interest him, or express my love to him—no others can be interpreted by any; they would only fall upon his ear like the sighing of the breeze or the wordless sounds with which your world is so full. The old grave clothes, you see, are being cast off, folded away, and in white and shining garments the new man prepares to rise to another still better and fairer state.

Communicated by automatic writing; “I AWOKE!” Conditions of Life on the other Side, 1895, David Stott, London, Part I, The Psyche, Conditions of Life in the Psychic World, 51-53

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The Psychic Sleep

The Psychic Sleep

So He giveth His beloved sleep.

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And now the psyche* sleeps for a while, for a few hours, days or years. This sleep is not that of unconsciousness—we call it so because it resembles your sleep greatly in this—that the sleeper is unconscious of his actual surroundings, while he moves and lives in fancy in other times and states. The length and character of this sleep depend entirely on the state of the man when he passed over—depend on what he was in his earthly life.

*Google define—the psyche as the human soul, mind, or spirit.

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What are the soul experiences during this sleep, and what are the appearance and actions of the sleeper as viewed by us?

His experiences are as manifold, as different the one from the other as he differs in himself, for no two souls are alike, and no two can have exactly the same experience—diversity in unity is the law of our nature.

Diversity in unity is the law of our nature.

To some, there is a reliving of the past life, a taking up of broken threads, and a weaving of them together in a more finished manner—perhaps the failings are now first seen in their true light; the clouds of self-deception caused by self-love, wilful transgression, etc., fade away, and a soul can look back upon his past life with a clear and true vision, and when the soul thus truly sees and knows good and evil, it can but choose the good and refuse the evil. Others imagine that they continue their life, and starting with all the old habits and prejudices they gradually drop the evil and are strengthened in the good.

Goddard Beauties, Hubble paints a spattering of blue | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | ESA / Hubble, NASA, D. Calzetti (UMass) and the LEGUS Team

Paul said We shall not all sleep and there is much truth in this, for to some it is of such a brief duration that it may be more truly called a change, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

We now ask—

What is the aspect in which we regard these sleepers, and what is their connection with us?

We look upon them much as you do on very young children—we care for them and guard them in much the same way. There is no sense of unfitness in their ignorance, and we can feel neither surprise when they awake quickly, nor impatience if the state is prolonged, for it is simply that their new powers are not yet adjusted to their new environment. They are not purposely deceived as to their state, but even if we should wish to tell them where and what they were, it would be as incomprehensible to them as deep philosophy to a young child. Then they need food—food which is the counterpart of

yours and they need employment in such ways as most resemble the old duties. In these and other ways, their past life is gently and gradually withdrawn from the prominent place in their mental horizon which it formerly filled, and the new rises, like a new day, upon their clearer vision. In different ways, the call comes to them to awake out of their sleep, arise from the earthly, and walk in the newness of life.

Will you always bear in mind that when we say—such and such things occur, or in this way the soul develops—we do not lay down any hard and fast law as to manner or sequence of development; rather we give you what is most general in our circle and in our experience. But as one flower unfolds and expands differently from another, so is it with the soul.

Goddard Beauties, Hubble shows the Milky Way is destined for a head-on collision | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | NASA / ESA / Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas and A. Mellinger

The following history was received at an earlier period and has been inserted here that it may serve as an illustration of the Psyche's experience after the passing—

When I first awoke, I thought I was a girl again, and that the latter part of my earthly life had not yet been lived, but that my memory of it was only a dream, an imagination. Then, in a kind of vision (but I thought it a reality), I continued my life from my girlhood, and in the hour of great temptation—remembering my supposed dream—I withstood. Again the scene changed, and again I took up the thread of life at the same part as before. This time I yielded to temptation, but instead of keeping the birth of my child secret, I brought him up as my own and trained him as well as I could. One day I awoke to the consciousness that I had died, and oh! the rest and peace were great. After some time, I met my sister and began my real life here, but it has been much easier for that vision of life that I had at the first.

I will try to make our life a little clearer for you. 

In your world, the will can only produce things when joined to power of some sort. With us, the will can and does create our surroundings.

I mean by this that what we earnestly desire is in a moment evolved and completed, provided that our will is in harmony with the over-will of the Divine. If I will a home, that home stands immediately complete before me. When I met my sister it had been her wish to live alone.

Her life, therefore, was not so complete as it might have been. For my sake, however, she gave up her wanderings, and at a wish our home was ready, and we have dwelt there ever since.

Our life and our home closely resemble the lives and homes of earth, and this resemblance they will keep for some time, but as progress is the law for everyone, and as in their turn these new bodies of ours will seem gross and earthly, so we must cast them off and pass into higher spheres.

Goddard Beauties, Hubble's panoramic view of a turbulent star-making region | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | NASA / ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (University of Sheffield), A. de Koter (University of Amsterdam), C. Evans (UKATC/STFC, Edinburgh), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Langer (AifA, Bonn), I. Platais (JHU), and H. Sana (University of Amsterdam)

But even here we are far in advance of you. If we really desire to know anything we know it without mistake. If we really desire to do anything for another, we see clearly what to do, and can do it. Only the will is needed, then there is no limit unless it would be hurtful to anyone.

If we need what we had not got for anyone, a wish would produce it, just as the Master could produce the loaves when he had a strong feeling of pity for the poor hungry souls around him.

Goddard Beauties, Hubble spies a UFO | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | ESA/Hubble & NASA

Our life is portioned out into what answers to your mental and manual employments. We have the outward, and we have the inward; we work and we play; we talk and we think; we meet those that we love, and are parted from them again; we make new friends, and we love more and more the old ones. There is no mistake and no failure, as I say, except our own will fails. In that case, sorrow and repentance have to follow—we try again, and walk on a plain path in which there is no need to stumble.

Since I have been in this new home I have known what peace, love, and joy really are—all three unbroken, and increasing every day.

Goddard Beauties, Dark matter core defies explanation | National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) | NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis) and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)