Is this not a common cry?

Why do some suffer anguish of body and misery of soul, while others have no cross in their lot? 

The reason why our surroundings and destiny are so varied is simply from our shortsightedness— from the small, the very small portion of our life which alone is open to our gaze but which self-love and self-pity magnify until it fills not only our earthly but also our heavenly horizon. We must take large views of life if we would understand it at all clearly. We must think of ourselves 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 man—then disappearing to the eye of sense and living purely in the spirit.

As each human ego differs in manifested life from every other, it needs a different experience and to 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 so great as it appears, especially if we could take the sum of their experiences. If our eyes could see the heart as well as the life and 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 our estimation. Those crimes which shock us most are often small things in spirits' 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.

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 we can have. Then, when we have grown to manhood, we are passed on to the care of those in the psychic world and they watch over us and help us until the wounds are all healed and our strength restored so that we can begin a new and worthy life.

Every thought is a seed

Every thought is a seed and every word a root from which must spring up a harvest either of wheat or tares. Try to sow good seed that you may have sheaves of ripe corn to lay at the Master’s feet by-and-by.

A Mother’s Experience on Passing Away

A Mother’s experience on passing (addressed to her grown-up daughters)—

My Dear Daughters

I know you all thought and hoped that when your mother died, she went to heaven but since then you have learned more of the life after death and you will not be surprised when I tell you that I have not yet even seen the gates of heaven. Yet I am really happy; yes, very happy, as I could not have been if this place had been what I expected. When I first woke up, it seemed like earth, only I thought I had crossed somehow to a new country. I expected your father to join me by-and-by and bring the children with him (for I thought you were still all little ones). The air was so sweet and the people all so kind and I said I must not be idle until the others come, so I have work to do, clothes to make, it seemed to be. Then, one day, I remembered suddenly about Sunday and I asked where the church was. The person I asked smiled and said softly, This is the church—this world is the temple, not made with hands, where we worship the Father. As she spoke, a shock went through me and I heard hundreds of voices saying, Praise Him, praise the everlasting King. Then, in a moment, it was shown me that I had died and these were spirits round me; yet I had no fear at all, only a great wonder. I knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer, for that was all that I could remember just then. Although I knew, as I have said, that I had died, yet it seemed impossible to believe it, for everything was so different from what I had been taught to expect. I said to my friend—How is it that my body is here; I thought it would be left in the grave. She said, Yes, that body is in the grave; the one you have is a new one and very different from the old. Did you not think you were young? Yet when you died you were old and your body nearly worn out. Then I remembered the latter part of my life and things seemed stranger than ever. But I thought we should be like angels and have wings, I said. You do not have wings exactly, she replied, but if you want to pass quickly from this place to any other, you can—Take my hand and try. We seemed to fly and, in a moment, we were in a different place; I saw your father leading an old man by the hand and talking to him but my tongue was tied and I could not speak to him. Then we flew back again and I was left to myself to try and settle my thoughts, which were so confused. I said to myself that surely in heaven—for that was where I thought myself—in heaven, they all sing psalms and I cannot sing a note and they all wear white robes and have harps in their hands; yet I saw none of these things, nor any throne.

Then a voice seemed to whisper in my ear and it said—The white robe is what you have been working at here; it is ready now—the psalm was the Our Father, which sounded like music in my ear and the throne, my throne is in your heart. And then, my dear children, I first began really to understand and a deep peace came over me. But I could never tell you how I found out one thing after another; what new powers I had and how wonderful everything seemed but I kept saying, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth, while the voice continually whispered to me and taught me to understand. After that time, I did not do much work, for I was busy learning—I was told that as my life had been filled with outward work, work done mostly with my hands, I was now to be taught to think and because my life had been all taken up with my family, I was to live for a time with strangers—not that I had been wrong so much as one-sided, only half of me having grown. Now the other half is being made to grow and every day I learn about the mysteries of God and of our own life, which is just as wonderful. Perhaps you think that my life is too much like an earthly one but it is not; only I cannot explain to you the things that are quite different. It seems to me as if, on earth, people were like dead things compared to what we are here. One thing in the life here might seem strange to you—it is that the best and highest live almost constantly with those who are troubled and suffering—for there is suffering here—awful anguish sometimes but I need not tell you about that, as it would do no good. I am not called upon to take part in this service yet but when I am fit, I shall be willing. Your father has both suffered and been allowed to help others—his life is all busy, while mine is quiet or only busy in learning. I have not seen any angel or anyone but human beings yet. We have worship and the music and words are our own—each time they spring up in our hearts like a fountain, yet it all goes well together. I am never tired now, nor get weary of what I have to do—I do not know if the time is long or short but I suppose I have been here a few years now. It was given to me to come and tell you a few things and when others have written, I have always known what they have told you. Do you wonder what there is here to make me so happy? We are happy because we know God loves us and we love Him back and that makes us blessed. He teaches me by the voice of His dear Son and He will teach you all that when you join me here, you will not have so much to learn or so long to wait before getting your new soul and going up higher. I should like to look after some of the little motherless children who come here but I am not chosen to do that work.

Dear children, be sure to see that your minds and souls grow as well as your hearts and bodies. Every loving, true word and every simple, righteous action is treasure laid up in heaven. Live so that when you come over you may not be poor and ashamed but may be strong and able to help others. If you are lifted up in spirit while still living on the earth, you will draw up others as our Lord did. Every thought is a seed and every word a root from which must spring up a harvest either of wheat or tares. Try to sow good seed that you may have sheaves of ripe corn to lay at the Master’s feet by-and-by.

The Psyche's experience after the passing

The following history serves 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-life that I had at the first.

I will try to make our life a little clearer to 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 overwill 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. 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.

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 in 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. I am not permitted to see or know much of the two whose influence over my earthly life was so great but I am perfectly content to have it so. Neither have I yet gone into that higher sphere; there is some good reason for delay.

Second Life

When the time arrives for the psyche to quit the earthly plane and leave its earthly covering behind it, then the link which unites it to the physical is broken. This link partakes of the two natures and the only pain and struggle connected with this passing is when the soul is unwilling to loose its hold on the earthly or fears to do so. Then a moment of unconsciousness supervenes—a time of longer or shorter duration, according to circumstances. The psychical does not generally quit the body immediately but slowly withdraws itself and then only the body gradually decays and disintegrates—the lower forms of life escape to reincarnate themselves in some other form, while there must always be a certain degree of life abiding in each atom, for without it they would have no existence. So the spirit of the animal goes downward, remaining in the earthly sphere and the spirit goes upward, entering into the higher life.

We now have the departed spirit divested of his lower form, ready to enter into the intermediate state. And with what body does he come? With one that closely resembles the earthly one—very closely at first—but with powers enfolded within it that far transcend the old ones, though those powers are yet more or less dormant. The departed spirit is still far from being pure spirit; he bears a form which is in four dimensions and which cannot be seen by ordinary earthly vision. The old body is the matrix in which the new spirit is formed and from which he is parted to enter into his second life. How does the new spirit appear to other spirits? Spirit eyes do not see the physical (this we must always bear in mind) and what they see of the earthly is only the soul-image reflected in some medium. It is, therefore, after this uncovering that the newborn spirit appears within the scope of their vision. He awakes and finds himself in a state that seems to him at first the same to which he has been accustomed; he continues—as he thinks—his old life until the fact gradually dawns upon him that the great change has taken place and that he has passed from death unto life.

So He giveth His beloved sleep. 

And now the psyche sleeps for a while, for a few hours, days or years, according to our ideas of time. This sleep is not that of unconsciousness; 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 his being when he passed over—depend on what he was in his earthly life. 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. To some there is a reliving of the past life, a taking up of broken threads and a weaving 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.

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.

There is a fourth dimension, which we can easily understand, though we have not attained to it yet. Besides the line, the square and the cube, there is something, which represents what we might call the interpenetrative sphere. We have motion forward, upward, across but in the future there will also be motion through. At present, one has to move out of the way of another but then they will just interpenetrate. 

As we know, no two bodies touch but then, not only will so-called solid pass through solid by the separation of each molecule but there will also be a fusion of molecules and a separation again when desired. This is intersphericity or interpenetration of spheres.

What is the aspect in which spirits regard these sleepers and what is their connection with them? Spirits look upon them much as we do on very young children—spirits care for them and guard them in much the same way. There is no sense of unfitness in their ignorance and they 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 spirits 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 ours 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. The call comes to them in different ways to awake out of their sleep and arise from the earthly and walk in the newness of life—as one flower unfolds and expands differently from another, so is it with the soul.

Our Birth into Spirit Life

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar—

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

To God, who is our home.

Our birth into spirit life differs in almost every point from our birth into the earthly. We owe our earthly body to others; our psychic body to ourselves. That is, the state of development in which we arrive in the Spirit World depends greatly on our past life and we may be said to be born in the Spirit World as infants, children or mature beings according to the past life and the present state of the true self. Our psychic body is being formed within the earthly during our earthly life but the materials of which it is composed are not earthly but are finer, rarer, though still material and capable of outward manifestation to the psychic vision. 

Clothed in the likeness of God

He is not here, he is risen—come see the form where the Lord lay.

Behold, I show you a mystery—we shall all be changed—for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.

The change, which we call death—a change—really so natural, so simple, so universal—in its truest sense is no death. We see the death on our side and not the birth into spirit on the other side; we disappear and appear like a ship sinking below the horizon and appearing above the horizon of other lands without consciously rising or falling to whose on her decks.

There is no death even to the physical, if by death we understand destruction or annihilation—for what happens to the physical is merely disintegration—a dissolving of the natural that it may be built up again in a new form, while the true life escapes from its prison, for the psychical does not dwell in the physical rather it permeates and infuses the whole as a perfume inhabits a flower, as a sound fills space, as love fills the heart.

A Return to the Bosom of the Infinite

There is One—the nameless, the Infinite—

He becomes man and manifests himself in phenomena.

This manifestation becomes more and more complete until it may be said to again withdraw from phenomena and (though still self-conscious) return to the bosom of the Infinite.

We are One

We are not the victim of circumstances. We are placed in such surroundings as will aid us in our upward path. The true ego never sins and cannot; being born of God we are immaculate perfect; it is only in the physical and psychical that these dark shadows exist for a time to give shelter to the tender spirit.

No one can say to his brother, I have no need of you; we are one and to destroy a part, if that were possible, would be to destroy the whole.

Break free and rise

In the early stages of our life we say the kingdom of Heaven is at hand but when we have advanced a stage further in true wisdom we say the kingdom of Heaven is within us. Let us strive, then, to fight with and overcome these opposing but helping forces that in the striving we may become strong and may be reconciled with and united to those very things which seem to be against us—let us struggle to break free from the bondage of our physical nature when that holds us too firmly and let our folded wings expand and carry us to the psychical, bursting that covering and rising to the spiritual.