The True and Inner Religion of the Heart

I believe in one God.

I am the Son of God.

I know that my Redeemer liveth.

When we pass the “article of death” and go through the first stages of spiritual life and emerge from the mental confusion consequent on our change of environment, then naturally to most must come a readjustment of their religious faith. To nearly all the surroundings in which they find themselves are immensely different from what they had expected; consequently, there is a great change in their mental attitude.

Spirits have no means of proving the existence of God other than we have—they neither see nor handle the Invisible; there is no possibility of outward proof that God is! Their faith rests on the intuitions of their deepest spirit, on the needs of their being and on their reason but of any tangible proof they have none. So we must understand that everything in the Spirit World that is not purely psychic (answering to our physical) is a matter of belief and not of actual proof.

Thus religious belief in the Spirit World springs from much the same sources that it does with us, except that with them it does not depend on what they have been taught or have heard from others; religion is for each, whatever form it may take, the real and sincere outcome of the inner state. The truth with regard to God and Man becomes the faith of most, if not all, sooner or later. But, at first, there is great variety of creed. Some believe that this state—which spirits speak of as a passing and intermediate one—is final. They say—“We always knew that man had a double nature; that the physical was not all; our mistake was in thinking that his higher nature was fully developed on earth. We see that here those higher powers have full play, therefore we are now complete and this state is the final one. Let us, then, devote these powers to humanity and do all we can to help our brethren to make the best of this new and brighter world.

Such people often lead beautiful, self-sacrificing lives in the Spirit World, for they work with the energy of those who believe that the day is short and the night is at hand.

Others, again, whose natures lie somewhat open on the spiritual side but who are still bound in the old grave-clothes of injustice and selfishness believe that to those only who have faith an entrance into the heavenly spheres will be granted.

Some, looking backwards rather than forwards in their views of life and growth believe that they will be reincarnated on the earth from whence they came; such seek rather for their own perfection than for their union with the great stream of life, with each other and with the highest.

To some the worship of nature is sufficient, others seem to find all they need in the concentration of their faculties on their life and work; while others again who come over with their hearts full of faith in a personal God—a special Saviour for a favoured few—often endure great anguish of spirit and cry—“They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him!” But this anguish is the furnace in which all selfish egotism is burned away and so by various paths, they are led to true unity of thought, of life and of essential being.

James was quite right when he defined religion as personal holiness and self-sacrificing love. In spirit life the law of spiritual being is, first, that we should sorrow for failure in past or present; failure to reach our highest ideal whatever that ideal may be and then next that we should seek to live not unto ourselves but for our brethren.

The Law of Change

When the Master was living his earthly life, the spirit world, our world 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 Spirit 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 in the Spirit World 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 do not need it, there is as much freedom as if they existed alone in the universe.

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

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

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

To those who are out of harmony with this divine order this earth may often seem 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. 

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

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

Spirit Communities

Spirits are not isolated units in the Spirit World, with merely individualistic needs and desires—rather they live under different governments, answering somewhat to our different nations. Two characteristics of earthly governments are, however, eliminated—all interference on the part of any and all wilful misconduct. Their methods resemble an ideal patriarchal government. The father in experience and wisdom advises, protects and instructs those who are related to him in pyschic 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 re-enacted, for where there is no harmony of purpose, there comes confusion of language and they 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 them to such things and people as can give them pure joy or cause them to grow in the healthiest way possible.

Schools in Spirit Life

One marked feature of Spiritual Life is that system of united work or study, which spirits call the “Schools.” As the spirit author* illustrates—

I speak of myself as belonging to the School of Giotto and there are the Schools of Paul, of Zoroaster, of Howard, etc. At least these names would best represent our idea to you. They come about in this way—when the man begins to look round him and ask himself to what use he had best put his new powers, he begins to think of those things of which he was most ignorant when on earth; he is then drawn by a law of natural attraction to some who are pursuing the same course and he finds among them those who have acquired knowledge that has been handed down from the long past or who are learning by practical life to make such knowledge their own.

Our School, for instance, was in past ages begun by a few who had been drawn to Giotto when he came over. Led and taught by him, they laid up a store of knowledge which should be for others like the stream of health pouring into the veins when one goes from impure to purer air. As there are always some who are studying the beautiful, so there are always students in our university. Of course, I have never seen Giotto, he has long ago passed over but it is the spirit and power of Giotto which, like the prophet’s mantle rests upon this place.

Again, there are some who, for many reasons, do not find a home, a domestic life congenial to them; yet such need not live solitary; that would be in most cases hurtful. In place of a home, they seek the companionship of those who are walking in a similar path and for months or years they live and work together.

I, myself, had given little thought on earth to beauty; had thought its study only an excuse for an idle or inexact order of mind. I had, when I passed over, a great wish to make up for this neglect. Being drawn to these friends, I said—“Teach me what beauty is; let me learn what are its lines and curves; show me how to produce its forms so as to give satisfaction to myself and pleasure to others.” There was much narrowness and self-conceit in this request. I thought “ Now I shall know the true canon of beauty and surely I shall appreciate it so well that I shall be an apt scholar.” One of our leaders impressed on me a look of divine compassion—“We will teach you,” he said, “or rather you shall teach yourself. Go out from this home away yonder in the distance; live there alone and depend on the exertions of your willpower to produce food and shelter for yourself” I went, of course, knowing there was some good reason for his command. I found what seemed a desolate barren spot. I sowed and reaped; removed obstructions; studied nature and then after a long time felt myself incited to return. “Now go,” said my guide, “to yonder city; live there.” I found in the part to which I seemed drawn a home full of suffering and deformity—or at least incompleteness of nature—but love was there and in the midst of their anguish each tried to give a cup of cold water to the other. When I returned again, my friend said—“Beauty is not a matter of angles and curves; it is not an abstract idea. It comes only through the struggle of the lower with the higher or rather it is in the higher and can best be seen when that is breaking through the lower. You brought beauty out of the earth and you saw love bringing beauty out of pain; you have learnt much; now abide here for a time and help others; then you shall go to fresh fields later on.”

Like ourselves, spirits cannot be in two places at the same time. When spirits speak of “going and coming,” their power of passing to and fro is greatly increased, as is also the amount of thought and work which can be compressed into a short space of time.

The spirit author continues her narrative—

My next change was to what I have called the School of Howard, for I felt drawn to take some active share in the work of helping and healing. I was received with expressions of pleasure and one said to me—We are just in need of help from one in your state of advancement. There is a home near here where the life lived seems a beautiful one to some of us and repulsive to others. You know what true beauty is; tell us if the repulsiveness is in the home we speak of or in ourselves.”

Then they made me see, as in a vision, this home; I followed in spirit the lives of its inhabitants and I saw that the ugliness was caused by want of true insight in the observer. Yes; we dare not here endeavour to help another until we are sure that he needs that help; often we find that there is a beam in our own eye, rather than a mote in his. I now began to see more clearly that knowledge was not a thing of the intellect at all and I returned home humbler and wiser. There is no need to go here and there to seek for work, it lies at one’s right hand, ready whenever there is sufficient daylight in our spirit to enable us to work aright. Truly it is often night with us when no man can work.

You will see by what I have said about “Schools” that, though they resemble in a few points your universities, art schools and unions of men for kindred purposes, yet we learn and work in other ways from yours; ways that may seem less direct but are really the truest. We do not separate art from life, beauty from the soul, nor do we separate work from beauty or life from art. The outer and inner correspond and we only know any art really when we have translated it into action.

There are also many communities for other purposes; for cultivating the earth—for though always beautiful because unstained yet it is barren in some directions and needs culture that it may yield delight to the psychic senses. We are not obliged to go to all such centres, for if need be, we can be taught much by others who cause true pictures to arise before our vision so that we can see all the processes and then put them into action. Nor are we confined to those with whom we live for fellowship and intercourse. It is true we have both more fully with them but if need arises I can be made to hear and see what goes on in any sphere and can communicate and be communicated with. Then again, we listen with delight to the talks and ripe experience of some whose nature it is to give out to his fellows; someone who on earth, probably, was a poet or a preacher. He, in speaking to us can see exactly the effect produced upon us by his words and he directs and modifies his speech accordingly—we answer him, as it were, without interrupting him and he need therefore never be out of harmony with his audience.

* I AWOKE! Conditions of Life on the other Side, Author Unknown, David Stott, London, 1895

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.