What the Spirit does

With spirits, the purely physical is past and the newborn soul finds it difficult to exercise his new powers as the untaught boy to use the artist’s brush. Only by degrees, quicker or slower according to past life and present powers, is he able to work and act with the soul, instead of with the body. Instead of the hands building houses, the trained will builds them. If anything is needed and willed, it stands complete but such power is not attained all at once; it is gradual. The desires, the reason, the affections must be in harmony and then they can do their work. Imagine yourself then in the Spiritual World with your first psychic sleep over, the early stages of repentance and faith past and you now ready to be a citizen of the new Jerusalem.

Hitherto your wants have been supplied by others; now—let us say—you wish to make for yourself a home where you may wait for the loved ones to join you. If this is best for you, you can then think out what you want. Perhaps your thought will be broken, incomplete and what rises before your psychic vision may be faulty and incongruous. Well, you will then dissolve it again into the unseen but real “elements” and try again.

You have no money, of course, to buy from others what they may possess but if you need anything, it will be gladly and freely given you; only in return, you must give something—gratitude, sympathy or some other soul gift.

Having got rid of so much that is physical, we have lost two things that make much of the discomfort of our world—dirt and decay. In our world, the repulsive form which decay takes is owing to the very slow way in which dead or dying matter disintegrates but with spirit all change of that sort is more rapid—the life escapes easily from its psychic form to reappear in others; therefore, they have dissolution but not decay.

At first, you will need food, more or less frequently but as time goes on this food will be less and less necessary and the senses will be satisfied in other ways—the perfume, the beauty of the fruit will be sufficient. This food has a close relationship to ours but is strictly vegetable and simple; that is, you eat the seed or the fruit as it grows, without changing or combining—such fruit you can cultivate for yourself or receive from others if you should be engaged in other forms of work.

The clothing or outward form in which you appear to others grows on you, so-to-speak, and is the outcome of your true state; more or less affording pleasure to those who see you, as it is more or less harmonious and the reflex of a true and earnest spirit.

Sleep falls upon you as the mind needs rest. If your new powers are overtaxed, then a period of rest—longer or shorter—comes upon you, for the psyche can tire as the mind or brain tires upon earth.

Then as to occupation—the soul naturally turns to some occupation most closely resembling that to which it has been accustomed but it is not permitted to remain in it too long. The nature all round has to be cultivated and as no wisdom is gained apart from learning and experience, so it is necessary that one who in his past life has yielded to others should learn to advise, control and help—that one who has lived apart from nature in the world of books or the imagination should now sow, reap and understand the beauty of the new earth into which he has passed. Or again, the one who has lived entirely in the outward must learn to withdraw into himself or to study the wisdom of those who have climbed the steeps of knowledge before him.

The great, the unspeakable difference, however, between the old and the new is the absolute freedom of the new. No one can either hinder or compel another in any way and no one wishes to do so.

There are faults and imperfections, mistakes and weaknesses but a great spirit of love and unselfishness is the very atmosphere of the place and none would cast the smallest stumblingblock in the way of his brother.

Life so full, so deep and satisfying that the past is only as the shadow of a dream that passes away in the light of a new day.

Then as to language—spirits do not speak another language from those of earth, that is, not another added to, yet different from those, as Hebrew is another language differing from English. Their language is a universal, primaeval instinct (so-to-speak). They impress their thoughts on one another by and through will power and their language is limited, not by words, but by their own power of feeling and by the hearer’s power of sympathy. This language is only the perfection of those powers which are in every human being though nearly dormant and which have been weakened through long ages of disuse and by a more artificial speech. There are many things, such as the universal needs of the body or the simple passions which can be expressed and understood by all independently of mere words. Joy, fear, grief, hunger, love need no words and can be expressed by and through the eye. Even the outward is not always necessary, for one can influence and control the thoughts and feelings of others even without the bodily presence. So spirits impress their thoughts on others first in a weak and broken manner like a child learning to talk and then more and more fully as the soul expands; also, as they gain more experience in this life their vocabulary increases. Then with regard to others’ powers of understanding them—this, too, does not depend on any artificial acquirement of mere words, nor yet on what would answer to the power of the intellect, for a philosopher does not necessarily understand you better than a child but the power of comprehension equals the power of sympathy and by sympathy, the capability of feeling as the speaker does were you in his circumstances.

Again, this is only the natural human method enlarged and rectified, for the knowledge of words alone does not enable you to enter into the heart and mind of the speaker. Linnaeus kneeling before the glorious works of God, with hands folded and eyes upraised in worship would be to some a true child of nature, acting in the most natural and simple manner—to another, he might be only a fool or a drunkard. “These men are filled with new wine,” some say, while others—“we do hear in our own language the wonderful works of God” and yet again to others it might be merely “a pleasant sound as of one playing on an instrument.”

Still, they are not in their world without that joy which arises from musical sounds; only such sounds are not caused by vibrations of the atmosphere but by vibrations of the soul-currents, which are heard inwardly by those whose souls are attuned to the same key.

You will say, perhaps, why should I need a house now I have got rid of my more material body? It is true that a house is not essential anymore than it is essential on earth but the instincts underneath, the desire for shelter, safety, privacy—the closer companionship of some than of all; these feelings still exist, especially at first.

Until the psyche becomes perfect in strength and beauty, there will be at times a sense of discord with his surroundings, which will be as a cold or wet day to our bodies. Then again, the timid or suffering soul may and does often shrink from the presence and inspection of those to whom it feels as you do to strangers who may be unsympathetic to you. All such feelings or many of them remain when the soul is parted from the body and it is sometime before they modify or disappear. Because there is no real cause for such fear is no reason why it should not exist, for one has not changed in any essential point and will only pass from the lower to the higher by slow and patient striving. After a time, there is no need to shrink from any; you learn that the power to read another’s thoughts or to enter into his feelings depends first on the will of the person observed and secondly on the sympathetic insight. Therefore, I am an impenetrable enigma to all unless I wish to unfold myself to them and even if the wish first exists in me, there must be the response in them. There may be many there, a world within a world, of whom I have no knowledge, simply because I do not hold the key of sympathy which would unlock their gates.

In our world, we are at once eternally separated from every other being and yet open to the cold, curious gaze of the crowd. With spirit, you can have the deepest and truest union and you can also be truly and really withdrawn if you wish.

As simply as a flower grows

The gulf that lies between Paradise and hell is not one of physical distance—no such barrier as that exists—the two may lie closer together than two who are living in the same house; as close as grief and joy sometimes lie in the same heart. Wherever suffering is needed—not as a punishment for past misdeeds but as fire to burn away the dross—it will be found there. Naturally, this pain comes generally when we first pass over and then when the anguish of the soul is great much may be done to teach and support it by those who have already emerged from the furnace.

In the homes of all the “saints” may be found such sufferers; tenderly watched over, helped and guarded while the hard lessons are being learnt. Such learners have cast off but few of the old instincts and need to be fed and protected until they learn to exercise those new powers which can provide them with all they need as simply as a flower grows.

The Inner Law of Possession

Spirits have possessions; things outside of themselves that can take shape and be but yet which, if not rightly used will vanish away. The true and inner law of possession is more binding in the Spirit World than with us—I can have nothing unless I need it for myself or for another and I must use it or it will leave me, vanishing away as though they had not been. Spirits have the outward as well as the inward but they are always intimately related—the strength that is not used in highest service vanishes away and the outward beauty which typifies that strength vanishes likewise.

The Fourth Dimension

The fourth dimension, which we only guess at is our first. To understand this more easily, think of the simile used of the man who could only walk in two dimensions. We can walk in three but in the future, there will be four—up, down, across, through.

A symbol might be added to the line, the square and the cube—a hollow sphere, with other hollow and smaller spheres enclosed within it, something like the balls within balls cut by the Chinese. These spheres must be thought of as composed of a kind of elastic fluid; the larger compressed spheres passable through the smaller and the smaller by expansion passable through the larger. Thus, each sphere can be within or without the others. Solid can become fluid, pass through solid and then resume its first form.

Ball of Canton, Soumaya Museum, Mexico City, Mexico—Diego Delso—Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

This power, when perfected, would give absolute power of progression in every direction and in every part of the universe. We could pass through the heart of mountains or rise into the atmosphere to any height by altering, as it were, our own density and the density of our path; nothing would prove a hindrance.

We have been taught that our world and the next world are not like two globes side by side and independent of each other but as a spirit inhabits a body, so the next world inhabits ours. To pass from our world to the next requires transition. We cannot pass to the next world nor the spirit to us but in very exceptional and partial ways. But there will be a time when the limits of our visible world will be its limits no longer and from the seen to the unseen, we shall be able to pass with the greatest rapidity and ease. The Son of Man attained to this power for a time and in a limited degree and there have been prophecies and hints of it at different times but in future, as easily as our thought passes from place to place, so shall we or those who come after us.

Let us call the fourth dimension interprogression, then the fifth might be called transprogression. 

As we rise from dimension to dimension, our powers are changed and increased in many ways. It is not simply an added power of progression but an opening of new faculties in many directions. On the other side, there are beings who come over so undeveloped in any higher part that all to which they can attain is the power of passing from place to place without let or hindrance, a kind of animal life. Some linger in the atmosphere of our world, seeking to feed their feeble earthbound souls and it is from this class that most physical manifestations are obtained, the link that binds their lower nature to earth not being yet broken.

These dimensional laws begin very low down in the purely physical and gradually rise as the powers of the being are developed and increased. There is no sharp division, as we know, between the physical and psychical; psychical and spiritual and again between spiritual and that higher state still which we call Divine.

The sixth dimension begins to enter upon higher ground. The first five have to do with space; the next series has to do more directly with time.

In the first time-dimension, the experience of the being is that he is no longer limited by time in the way we are; time is neither long or short; a lifetime may be lived through in a moment or a moment may extend to a lifetime; one day is with Him as a thousand years or a thousand years as one day.

Do we need to perform any action? Time does not bound or hamper us. So the Master produced the wheaten bread in a moment or restored the wasted tissues of the human frame in a few brief seconds; while on other occasions the power seemed to fail Him and He cried, I have a work to do, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished. This dimension is the normal state for higher spirits.

Next the seventh or second time-dimension. In this the being advances a stage farther; here the limitations of time fall from him more completely than before, for time may be said to have no existence. The past (or what has been called past) to Him is the same as the present and only the future lies still closed to Him; something of the spirit and power of the Eternal I AM is within him and he approaches still more nearly the Divine.

Our memory is limited to those ineffaceable marks on the rock of our being made at some period by the waves of our conscious life.

But to him this is not so; all things lie within his memory. More than that, they can, in a real manner, unfold themselves before him at his will. This power adds largely to the joy of those higher spheres in which he dwells.

This power was hinted at by the Master when He said, Before Abraham was, I am.

After the time-dimensions come those that belong more directly to the human will, its powers and its limitations.

Complete at last

The casting-off of the physical body depends on the degree of development that we have already attained. We are now psyche and spirit. Our psychical body is the image of our physical one; not inferior but superior; the blossom of the seed, yet still the blossom of that particular seed and not of another. Now we have 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, we are ready to depart into the heavenlies, having finished the task that was given us to do.

At first, the psyche is generally supreme. The life then is much like the earthly one; food is necessary, we live in houses, we work, we rest but yet with a difference. We need food and rest at stated intervals but in the spirit world, they are only needed when the spirit is not strong enough to supply the body. Some fast in our world when the will is strong enough to control the body. With spirits, it is always so, that is, 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 first become 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 the Hades or 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.

We are still not what we shall be

We must remember that in the next world, we are still in an intermediate and transitory state—that even there, we are not what we shall be; that we are still limited in various ways and degrees.

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.