I suppose, the old question of adjusting to environment. At first I
could not do it, and had some trouble in learning to adjust the amount
of energy necessary for each particular action. So little energy is
required here to move myself about that at first when I started to go a
short distance--say, a few yards--I would find myself a mile away. But
I am now pretty well adjusted.
I must be storing up energy here for a good hard life when I return
to the earth again. The hardest work I do now is to come and write
through your hand, but you offer less and less resistance as time
goes on. In the beginning it took all my strength; now it takes only
a comparatively small effort. Yet I could not do it long at a time
without using your own vitality, and that I will not do.
You may have noticed that you are no longer fatigued after the
writing, though you used to be at first.
But I was speaking of the lack of conventionality out here. Souls hail
each other when they want to, without much ceremony. I have seen a few
old women who were afraid to talk to a stranger, but probably they had
not been here long and the earth habits still clung to them.
Do not think, however, that society here is too free and easy. It is
not that, but men and women do not seem to be so afraid of each other
as they were on earth.
LETTER XVI
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
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 seems sometimes 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 night time 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--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.
LETTER XVII
THE SECOND WIFE OVER THERE
I AM often called upon here to decide matters for others. Many people
call me simply “the Judge”; but we bear, as a rule, the name that we
last bore on earth.
Men and women come to me to settle all sorts of questions for them,
questions of ethics, questions of expediency, even quarrels. Did
you suppose that no one quarrelled here? Many do. There are even
long-standing feuds among them.
The holders of different opinions on religion are often hot in their
arguments. Coming here with the same beliefs they had on earth, and
being able to visualise their ideals and actually to experience the
things they are expecting, two men who hold opposite creeds forcibly
are each more intolerant than ever before. Each is certain that he
is right and that the other is wrong. This stubbornness of belief is
strongest with those who have been here only a short time. After a
while they fall into a larger tolerance, living their own lives more
and more, and enjoying the world of proofs and realisations which each
soul builds for itself.
But I want to give you an illustration of the sort of questions on
which I am asked to pass judgment.
There are two women here who in life were both married to one man,
though not at the same time. The first woman died, then the man married
again, and soon--not more than a year or two after--the man and his
second wife both came out. The first wife considers herself the man’s
only wife, and she follows him about everywhere. She says that he
promised to meet her in heaven. He is more inclined to the second wife,
though he still feels affection for Wife No. 1. He is rather impatient
at what he calls her unreasonableness. He told me one day that he would
gladly give them both up, if he could be left in peace to carry out
certain studies in which he is interested. These were among the people
I met soon after I began to be strong myself here--it was not so very
long ago; and the man has sought my society so much that the women, in
order to be near him, have come along too.
One day they all three came to me and propounded their question--or,
rather, Wife No. 1 propounded it. She said:
“This man is my husband. Should not, therefore, this other woman go far
away and leave him altogether to me?”
I asked Wife No. 2 what she had to say. Her answer was that she would
be all alone here but for her husband, and that as she had had him
last, he now belonged more to her than to the other.
In a flash the memory came to me of those Sadducees who propounded
a similar question to Christ, and I quoted His answer as nearly as
I could remember it: that “when they shall rise from the dead, they
neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which
are in heaven.”
My answer was as much a staggerer for them as their question had been
for me, and they went away to think about it.
When they were gone I began myself to ponder the question. I had
already observed that, whether or not all here are as the angels in
heaven, there does seem to be a good deal of mating and rejoining of
former mates. The sex distinction is as real here as on the earth,
though, of course, its expression is not exactly the same. I asked
myself a good many questions which perhaps would never have occurred
to me but for the troubles of this interesting triad, and I thought of
the man I had somewhere read about, who said that he never knew his own
opinion of anything until he tried to express it to somebody.
After a while the three came to me again and said that they had been
talking things over, perhaps after the manner of angels in heaven; for
Wife No. 1 told me that she had decided to “let” her husband spend a
part of his time with the other woman, if he wanted to.
Now, the man had a sweetheart, a girl sweetheart, before he had either
of his wives. The girl is out here somewhere, and the man often has a
strong desire to try to find her. What opportunity he will now have
to do so, I cannot say. The situation is rather depressing for the
poor fellow. It is bad enough to have one person who insists on every
minute of your society, without having two. And I think his case is not
unusual. Perhaps the only way in which he can get free from his two
insistent companions is by going back to the earth.
There is a way, however, by which he could secure solitude; but he does
not know of it. A man who knows how can isolate himself here as well as
he could on earth; he can build round himself a wall which only the
eyes of a great initiate can pierce. I have not told this secret to my
friend; but perhaps I shall some day, if it seems necessary for his
development that he have a little solitude. At present it seems to me
that he will learn more from adjusting to this double claim and trying
to find the truth that lies in it. Perhaps he may learn that really,
essentially, fundamentally, he does not “belong” to either of these
women. The souls out here seem to belong to themselves, and after the
first few years they get to love liberty so much that they are ready to
yield a little of their claim upon others.
This is a great place in which to grow, if one really wants to grow;
though few persons take advantage of its possibilities. Most are
content to assimilate the experiences they had on earth. It would
be depressing to one who did not realise that will is free, to see
how souls let slip their opportunities here, even as they did on the
moon-guarded planet.
There are teachers here who stand ready to help anyone who wishes their
help in making real and deep studies in the mysteries of life--the life
here, the life there, and in the remote past.
If a man understands that his recent sojourn on earth was merely the
latest of a long series of lives, and if he concentrates his mind
towards recovering the memories of the distant past, he can recover
them. Some persons may think that the mere dropping of the veil of
matter should free the soul from all obscuration; but, as on earth so
out here, “things are not thus and so because they ought to be, but
because they are.”
We draw to ourselves the experiences which we are ready for and which
we demand, and most souls do not demand enough here, any more than they
did in life. Tell them to demand more, and the demand will be answered.
LETTER XVIII
INDIVIDUAL HELLS
SOME time ago I told you of my intention to visit hell; but when I
began investigations on that line there proved to be many hells.
Each man who is not content with the orthodox hell of fire and
brimstone builds one out of mind-stuff suited to his imaginative need.
I believe that men place themselves in hell, that no God puts them
there. I began looking for a hell of fire and brimstone, and found it.
Dante must have seen the same things I saw.
But there are other and individual hells----
(_The writing suddenly stopped, for no apparent reason, and was not
continued that night._)
LETTER XIX
A LITTLE HOME IN HEAVEN
I HAVE met a very interesting man since last I wrote to you. He is a
lover who for ten years waited here for his love to come to him.
They said on earth that he was dead, and they urged her to love
another; but she could not forget him, for every night he met her soul
in dreams, every night she came out to him here, and sometimes she
could recall on waking all that he had said to her in sleep. She had
told him that she would not delay long in the sunshine world, but would
come out to him in the self-lighted world.
Only a little while ago she came. He had been long getting ready for
her coming, and had built in the substance of this world the little
home he had planned to build for her in the outer world.
He told me how one night when she came to him in dream, she said that
she would rejoin him on the morrow, never to leave him again. He was
startled, and would almost have stayed her; because he had died a
sudden and painful death, and he dreaded pain for her. Always he had
watched over her, warning her of danger; but this time he felt, after
the first shock of the message was over, that she was really coming.
And he was very happy.
He had found no other love out here; for when one leaves the earth
full of a great affection, and when the earthly loved one does not
forget, the tie can hold for many years unweakened. You on the earth
have forgotten so much of what you learned here that you do not realise
how your thought of us can make us happy, do not realise how your
forgetfulness of us can throw us back entirely upon ourselves.
Often those who go farthest here, who really grow in spirituality, are
those whose loves have forgotten them on earth; but it is sad to be
forgotten, nevertheless.
It is a bitter power you make possible to us when you thus throw us
back upon ourselves; and not all souls are strong enough or aspiring
enough to make use of the lonely impetus that might help them to scale
the ladder of spiritual knowledge.
But to return to my lovers. All that day he remained near her. He would
not rest; for, as I have told you, we generally rest a little when
the sun shines on the earth. All that day he remained near her. He
could not see her body, for the rays of sunlight were too strong for
him. But, after hours of waiting, suddenly he felt a hand in his, and
though she was invisible to him, yet he knew that she was _here_.
And he spoke to her, using such words as he would have used on earth.
She did not seem to understand. He spoke again, and still she did not
answer; but he knew from the pressure of her hand that she realised
his presence. So hand in hand they stood there in the darkness of the
sunlight, the man able to speak because of his long experience in this
world of subtle sounds, the woman speechless and bewildered, but still
clinging to his hand.
When the sunshine went away he was able to see her face, and her eyes
were wide and frightened; but still she seemed held to the room in
which lay the body which had been she. It was summer, and the windows
were open. He sought to draw her away into the perfumed night which to
them was day; but she held his hand and would not let him go.
At last he drew her away a short distance and spoke to her again. Now
she heard and answered him.
“Beloved,” she said, “which is I? For I see myself--I feel
myself--back there also. I seem to be in two places. Which I is really
I?”
He comforted her with loving words. He was still afraid to caress her,
for the touch of souls is very keen, and he feared lest she should go
back into the form which seemed to be so near them, and thus be lost to
him again. But though she had often come to him in dreams, it had not
been so vividly as this time, and he felt that she had really passed
through the great change.
She still clung to his hand, yet seemed afraid to go out with him--out
and away from _it_. He stayed there with her all that night and
all the next day, when the darkening sun came again, and again he could
not see her.
Once the well-meaning friends of his beloved disturbed her body, doing
those sacred offices which seem so necessary to the living, but which
may sorely disturb the dead.
He stayed with her the second night and all the second day. He could
hear the sobs of her grieving parents, though they could not see
either him or their daughter; but on the second night the little dog
of his love came into the room where _it_ lay, the room in which
their two souls still stood, and the little dog saw them and whined
piteously. The man could hear it, and she also could hear it.
And now she could hear him more plainly when he spoke to her.
“Where will they take _it_?” she asked him.
He recalled the time when he had been held spellbound near his own
lifeless form, over which his loved one had shed bitter tears. And he
asked her if it would not be better to come away altogether; but she
could not, or thought she could not.
On the third day he knew from the agitation of his love that they
were placing her body in the coffin. After a while he felt, though he
could not see, that many other persons were in the room, and he heard
mournful music. Music can reach from one world to another, can be heard
far more plainly than human voices, which generally cannot be heard at
all except by the trained listener.
By and by his love was sorely agitated, and he also, through sympathy
with her; and they felt themselves going slowly--oh, so slowly!--along.
And he said to her:
“Do not be grieved. They are taking _it_ to the burial; but you
are safe with me.” He knew that she was much troubled.
It is not for nothing that over the house of death there always hangs
a strange hush, not to be explained by the mere losing of the loved
one. Those who remain behind feel, though they cannot see, the soul of
the one who has gone out. Their souls are full of sympathy for him in
his bewilderment.
The change need not be painful if one would only remember that it has
been passed through before; but one so easily forgets. We sometimes
call the earth the Valley of Forgetfulness.
During the days and weeks that followed this lover remained with
his loved one, ever trying to draw her away from the earth and from
_it_, which had for her, as for so many, a fearsome fascination.
It is said that the souls of those who have lived long on earth more
easily detach themselves; but this woman was still young, only about
thirty; and even with the help of her lover it was a little time before
she could get free.
But one day (or night, as you would say) he showed her the home which
he had built for her, and it was literally a mansion in the sky. She
entered with him, and it became their home.
Sometimes he leaves her for a little while, or she leaves him; for
the joy of being together is heightened here, as on the earth, by an
occasional separation; but not until she was content and accustomed to
the new life did he leave her at all.
During the first days the habit of earthly hunger often held her, and
he tried to appease it by giving her the softer substance which we know
here. Gradually she became weaned altogether from the earth and the
habits of the earth, only going back occasionally in a dream to her
father and mother.
Do not disregard your dreams about the dead. They always mean
something. They do not always mean what the dream would seem to
signify; for the door between the two worlds is very narrow, and
thoughts are often shaken out of place in passing through. But dreams
about the dead mean something. We can reach you in that way.
I came to you in a dream the other night, standing behind and outside
the gate of a walled garden in which you were enclosed. I smiled and
beckoned you to come out to me; but I did not wish you to come out to
stay. I only meant that you should come out in spirit; for if you come
out occasionally it is easier for me to go into your world.
Good night.
LETTER XX
THE MAN WHO FOUND GOD
THERE seems to be no way in which I can better teach you about
this life, so strange to you, than by telling my experiences and
conversations with men and women here.
I said one night not long ago that I had met more saints than
philosophers, and I want to tell you now about a man who seems to be a
genuine saint. Yes, there are little saints and great saints, as there
are little and great sinners.