Accounts of Death
These accounts were given publically via trance discourse by Cora L. V. Richmond during the period 1874–1899. These have been slightly edited from the original transcript, with portions that are not part of the spirit account omitted. — David Chilstrom.
Where Am I? In Heaven or in Hell?
Into the region of that world which lies beyond death, and into that portion of it which it has been my good fortune to dwell for many years, I invite your cordial presence; a presence which is possible if you will only free your minds from all fears concerning death, and assume that it is simply a voyage through another country, narrated to you by a traveler who has sojourned there.
It is usual to you to disencumber your minds so much of time and space that, either with panoramic view, or with the aid of word pictures which the traveler can portray, you easily traverse distant countries, become accustomed to the habits and manners of the inhabitants there, familiar with their laws, and, indeed, know as much of them as though you were really there in person. This is possible concerning the spiritual life. If you unbar the doors of death, take away from the gateway of the angels the terror and fear that have so long sat there, and disencumber your minds of the thought that there is aught in connection with the future life of which man has need to be afraid, you will then easily perform the journey.
Death is no barrier at the gate of life; death is no fiend, shaped in hideous image to frighten you from the precincts of immortality, only a natural change—one which all must inherit, and sooner or later pass through; the method of it is familiar to those who have watched the departure of friends or dearly loved ones; the consciousness of it is present ever, alike to the studious and to the thoughtless. Surely in this theme there is nothing that should inspire with fear nor profane the silent shadow with terror or despair. Birth into your world were a more fitting opportunity for sadness and mourning, since you do not know into what scene of terror or misfortune the newly born infant may be plunged in after life; but in the spirit world, when the body has fulfilled its outward function, and is again gathered to dust, there is nothing to fear aside from what a man may take with him into that world, namely, his own spiritual condition. No fiends of terror await to plunge him into abysmal torment; no one watchful with vindictive glance to judge of his slightest look, word, or deed in life; he has no more severe monitor than his own conscience; than consciousness, when disrobed from outward life, of being in spirit, perhaps impoverished by a lack of excellence in his external life and knowledge.
Into the spiritual state, therefore, the usual human being enters as freely and as gladly as you would pass from the winter clime of the frigid zone to the regions of tropical warmth and beauty. Into the spiritual life usually the spirit enters gladly, as though freed from a prison, unfettered from chains, and released from the thralldom of the encasing physical clay, that even to the best of human beings is to some extent a bond upon the spirit. I can therefore say that with the fullness of years and the consciousness of having tried to do my duty, death came to me as a welcome messenger.
I knew little of the state into which I would enter, but I had an abiding faith that the Infinite Power over rules these things and that we enter that state for which we are best fitted, and that to me there could come nothing worse than, what I had encountered, and in some way triumphed over during my earthly pilgrimage.
I assure you, friends, the consciousness of this fact abode with me for many years before my departure from the earthly life, I assure you that I had gleamings of this sublime philosophy that fills the void between the outer and the loftier life, and that I therefore was somewhat prepared for the reception which seemed to await me in the spiritual spheres; a reception that more than surpassed all earthly recognition, all visitation to home and friends, all possible conceptions of outward life, since it was not marred by any thought of the absent, or by any approaching severance of the chord by another change of death.
The needs of the human spirit speedily force themselves upon the consciousness of the newly departed.
I found that affection, kindness, charity, the graces and thoughts that I had admired in my earthly friends, were the real inheritance into which I came when I entered spiritual life. I found that external surroundings, shapes of beauty, or usefulness, were in accordance simply with the needs of the spirit, and secondary to it, while all that pertained to the vital existence of life—I mean to the thought of life, to its good qualities, to those things that make up the real man or woman—these were apparent and manifest in the surroundings that awaited me.
Hence, in the abode of family affections, to which I was first admitted, I found the kindred of my fireside, and of my spirit awaiting me as joyously as though I had been in long banishment, or exile, and was returning to them. I found my youth, all impulses and hopes of early manhood, every form of young life, restored and more than fulfilled in the fruition of the spirit, I found that the physiological change of death had wrought a greater miracle than Arabian wonders; it had wrought the miracle of absolute departure of age, of infirmity, of pain, and the consciousness of it—of all things connected with matter, so far as physical suffering was concerned.
I found to my sorrow that much of my life was not perfect, and that the portion which was not perfect was reflected in my brain, to which my friends, however, kindly seemed to turn a blind eye and deaf ear, and only allowed me to discover the imperfections. These imperfections were the results which, of course, every human being possesses, and must ultimately become aware of—any lack in the mental or moral perfection of the nature on earth. Such lack is distinctly portrayed in the spirit, and unless there is very great moral perversion the spirit becomes distinctly aware of it the moment disenthrallment from the earthly body takes place.
Nevertheless I was admitted into the abode prepared for me by the aspirations of love and the loved ones, who were present. I did not find the distance far, although I presume upon actual measurement it would be many thousand leagues from the earth; but so rapid was the transition, and so sudden was the rising from earth, that it seemed an instant and I was there, though I could look back upon the earth, and it appeared as a speck or atom of dust in the atmosphere.
I found that the spheres of spiritual life are not of necessity connected with the earth’s atmosphere, except by mental or spiritual ties, and that those having friends upon earth still hold an interlinking chain; but the orbit that connects them with the earth and with the spiritual state may be far away.
I found the sphere into which I entered was a vast belt of interstellar light, which seemed at first, as I approached it, to be like the Milky Way, of those nebulous masses that the astronomer discovers when contemplating the heavens. This belt was not limited to any especial planet or world, but seemed to stretch far away in different directions through the orbed spaces, and each planet seemed to have an interlinking avenue connecting with this interstellar belt.
I asked one who appeared to me as a luminous star of light what sphere, by name or number, I had entered.
He said: “The spheres are not numbered to us, but for the purpose of external information they are frequently numbered. This is the second or interstellar sphere—the heavens indirectly removed from the earth or other planets—that state which the spirit enters in its second stage of spiritual growth.”
I said: “Then is there another sphere nearer the earth?” “You have passed through one,” he says, “which connects those spirits with the earth who are more nearly allied to it, and whose affections and ties are of an external nature. Such spirits are earth bound, and have yet their passions, their prejudices, their human proclivities, to overcome. Look back !”
I looked back, and I discovered what I had not seen while passing through it. Dense masses, seemingly of vapor, floating over the speck that I called the earth. These dense masses the spirit, who seemed luminous and orbed with light, told me were the first spheres of spiritual life beyond the earth into which those spirits entered that from moral obliquity, earthly ties, selfish habits, or any external cause whatever, were still bound near the earth.
I noticed, however, that even the dark masses swept away toward towards other planets, and he said there was a connecting link between the atmosphere of earth and the atmosphere of every other planet in a similar stage of spiritual growth, so that these lower spirits, or spirits less spiritually developed, were connected with whatever planet represented their average state, and frequently received an augmentation of their own shadow by the shadow reflected from the planet equally undeveloped.
Into the sphere, however, which I had entered, there seemed no absolute moral obliquity. There were imperfections enough, the results no doubt of failures in earthly life to fully comprehend the nature of the spirit and its latent powers. I could readily see that these failures were not the result of intention, and that they were soon overcome, as indeed my own delinquencies seemed to be overcome by my earnest desire to have them overcome. I prayed, that is, I strove earnestly with myself to overcome whatever of personal pride, ambition or earthliness might remain with me, and I beheld, as I entered nearer and nearer the abode of my loved ones, a shining stream that seemed to flow all around the borders of this sphere into which I had entered, through which I must pass to enter their abode.
Without hesitation I plunged into the stream, but instead of water, according to the standard of that substance upon earth, I found each globule seemed life like, and was laden with some essential pungent power, that probed the weakness of my moral nature and expurgated it from me. Every globule seemed distinct, and like a lash would scourge, at the same time leaving no sting but the consciousness of renovation.
This was the sphere or state of self examination; and during my passage through this stream I distinctly remember that all of the faults and failings and mental imperfections of my earthly life seemed to pass before my mind. I distinctly remember that I judged them all, one by one, and wished that they might pass from me.
As I emerged upon the other side I beheld my dearest friends extending to meet me; the members of my own family fireside group who had long since passed from gaze were there awaiting me. These had prepared, as it were, an encircling bower, that shut out all view of the surroundings and scenery, but at the same time might open out any time directing my volition to it.
Here was my wealth, here was my greeting; here was the reception which for a long time I had awaited; how long I know not, for an age would seem as nothing and a moment an age in the consciousness of the joy of being disenthralled from earthly sense, and in greeting again the friends whom I knew upon earth.
As we passed out again into what seemed an open space, I was led by the spirit that appeared from a luminous body of spirits, to contemplate the change that had come upon me. I found substances, new in name, but apparently as tangible as those of earth life, and I found structures that had no resemblance to earthly things, but at the same time were typical of the thought, wish or desire of those who inhabited them. I found that the atoms of these spiritual existences were transparent; that I could see all the performances of life within my own frame as well as in the frames of those with whom I came in contact. Thought itself seemed luminous, and I could distinctly tell by the radiations of light around my companions and friends that their thoughts were toward me. I soon understood that we had no speech; that it was not necessary to make vocal signs, as the thought itself became palpable to the comprehension of the spiritual vision or consciousness of the other.
I then said: “Have we no physical senses here? Speech does not seem to be necessary, and I do not require to hear when you think.”
“Physical senses,” was the answer, “are but the measure of the human body and its weakness. The spirit only wants avenues of expression and avenues of understanding. If senses were here they would blockade and prevent the expression which you so much covet.”
“They do upon the earth,” I said. “The sight is limited, the hearing can only be relied upon at random, and the physical senses impede frequently the expression of the spirit.”
“How much more, then, in the spiritual state will they do so,” said my attendant, “when the spirit itself requires none of these outward avenues, but has avenues of expression according to its own state !”
I then speedily discovered that every mental vibration produced as distinct an impression upon the atmosphere as though a photographic plate had been there to receive its rays, and that this aura surrounding a spirit was at once a sign and token of the condition of the spirit, and of the, different thoughts emanating from the brain.
“Is thought then a substance?” said I.
“Not a substance per se, but it affiliates with the substance of spiritual life, producing vibrations upon it, as sound does upon the external or earthly air. Hence if a person thinks in spiritual life it is equivalent to speaking in earthly life, the effect being just as palpable on the finer substances of spiritual existence as is the vibration of sound upon outward substance.”
“Then in what manner is thought received?” I said.
“By vibrations. The corresponding wave of thought reaches your own spirit and produces impression there, just as the wave of sound reaches the hearing and produces impression there.”
“Then,” I said, “of what use is this form?” for I perceived that I had a form distinct and conforming in shape, and I judged in appearance, with my earthly form, except that there were no lines of age, or care, or pain upon it.
He said: “The organs of physical sensation are but the expression outwardly of spiritual sensation, hence they are a symbolic representation externally of what, the spirit really possesses in a greater degree. Hence, sight and physical touch, then, in spiritual life become submerged into one sense, but each of the avenues are preserved to complete the oneness, just as a complete sound or chord is made by several notes in unison; so the senses of the spirit are as separate notes of music out of which a chord of melody is made; or better still, are as separate rays of light, of which a single perfect beam of light is made. You do not use the senses separately in spirit life, as on earth, but all sensation is alive at once through all the avenues, quickening, or receiving, in proportion as the spirit thinks, or is acted upon, by surrounding spiritual intelligence.”
Of course I then discovered that the methods of this life must be widely different from those of earth, that the slowness and inadaptability of earthly life are vastly unfitted and unqualified to sustain anything like the rapidity with which thought itself acts upon the mind and brain of another. Speech itself is slow to human consciousness; thought is rapid in its vibrations. The movements of the physical form are necessarily cumbersome, and vary in grace according to the ability or construction of form. In spirit life gracefulness of thought depends upon its perfection, not upon the external expression, and he represents the most perfect beauty and symmetry of form and shape of life whose thoughts are the most perfectly formed, and therefore who expresses them the most perfectly.
I saw an entire change to my comprehension in the manner of construction of things. In the external life, you will observe that all things proceed from organic properties and functions, and that life unfolds gradually from the germ that is acted upon by extraneous influences and substances. I discovered in spirit life that all emanations proceed from the spirit itself; all attractions, or accretions of matter, are the result of a greater or less degree of perfection in the mind or in the spirit, and that therefore there is no necessity for organic construction; that whatever construction takes place in spiritual life, is what you term subjective in earthly life, but to the spirit is certainly objective; while all forms of earthly substance and organic life upon earth seem to the spirit in my stage of existence purely subjective and shadowy.
I see the radiations of matter, as I shall presently show you, not from the external but from the spiritual standpoint, and will endeavor to portray the changes in my senses and consciousness, while comparing the two stages of life, and my observation of substances in each.
As I soon became interested in these forms of external observation concerning myself, of course my immediate interest in home ties and home friends disappeared, and I became anxious to enter a wider range of observation, where, I could discover the various processes of the life into which I had entered. I perceived forms all about me, of beauty and comeliness, some of them similar to forms on earth. I mean external objects, but all of them seemingly dependent upon the radiations of some given mind. Hence if I approached the habitation of a spirit there were flowers and forms of beauty, foliage, external objects it is true, but these all, seemed dependent upon and radiating around the spirit that was their life and centre. If that spirit moved, the whole of this structure seemed scintillant with the thought of the spirit; if there, was a pulsation of joy it seemed as though the leaves and foliage were conscious of it; and even the habitation in which the spirit dwelt became more luminous; and I speedily discovered that the thought of the inhabiting spirit affected all substances within the orb of its life, and hence that the attraction of other spirits, the home ties and all, were a congregation of spirits of similar grade, who formed their habitation by the attraction of as much substance as their own minds could control; and that the power of the spiritual will, its volition or consciousness, became the secret spring where with these substances were attracted.
I then said: “how was it that my own habitation was prepared without my presence here?”
“You have been living upon earth,” the attendant spirit said; “you have had thoughts and occupations there, and whatever thought belonged to this stage of life, instead of to the earthly, produced its impression upon this stage and upon the corresponding substances here; so that your spiritual structure was fashioned by you while you were an inhabitant of the earth life.”
“Then we build our spiritual habitations,” I said, “while upon the earth?”
“Yes and perfectly or imperfectly; the structure is fashioned according to the perfection or imperfection of your thoughts; if they are continually broken and shattered by external things, or if the ties of matter encroach too strongly upon the spirit, it makes habitation appear fragmentary and frequently very imperfect, but that is speedily remedied by the spirit when it comes to this state of existence.”
“Then,” I said, “Is there a continual connecting link between the earthly state and this state of spiritual life?”
“Most certainly; there are connecting links,” says the attendant spirit, “between all atoms of matter in the universe, and certainly there are connecting links between all atoms of spiritual substances that make up the vast spheres of spiritual life.”
I then discovered that the occupations of the spirit begin not externally, as they do upon earth, but inwardly. For instance, if on earth a young man wishes to build a home he saves up a few dollars, he gathers together his earnings, and he makes a habitation out of such substances as accord with his means. While his mind may be very lofty, his aspirations very meritorious, he cannot build a greater habitation than the dollars which he has will warrant him in erecting. He, builds his habitation and takes his companion, and they together make up the home; first, of course, from their affections, but the external property from the substances around them.
In spirit life the novice enters seemingly without a possession, but be soon finds that he has laid up his treasures, or his lack of them, in heaven. His lack of them will consist of a vacant space, which certainly he may occupy, and which, if he has any friends or kindred or loving thoughts, will be measurably peopled by their kindness; but if he has been entirely lacking in spiritual graces and aspirations it will seem to be an impoverished country into which he has entered. I am told that in the lower stratum of spiritual existences there are vast barren plains inhabited by persons who have not had aspirations sufficiently spiritual to make populous their home with any living thing.
I am told that there are barren deserts stretching far away into space, the outgrowth of the earth and other planets, which souls must for a time inhabit, because they themselves have failed to create beauty in their thoughts. But in this sphere which I entered there was no such desolate places; there were certainly many imperfect, and many that seemed devoid of what I would consider grace and beauty. My habitation, when I entered that part of it that I myself had created, was sufficiently imperfect, and I found it like another famous place in history “paved with good intentions,” and I speedily set to work to rear upon this somewhat substantial basis the edifice of my new life. In doing this I did not look around for wood or marble, or any outward substance; I was told that I had to build from within. I said, “How shall I do this? I know the trees grow and all things unfold from within upon earth by attraction of atoms from the sunlight and the various substances of the soil; but I am not aware of any such property in man, except indirectly.”
“You shall see,” answered my attendant. “Give yourself no uneasiness about your habitation, but try to reform the methods of your thought.”
“Reform the methods of my thought? Have I then been inebriate? Have I been imprudent? Have I been immoral? Have I misjudged my kind? “
“You are to decide.”
I looked within my mental structure, and I discovered that the walls had largely crumbled away since I passed from earth-life; that things very real and very substantial to me in the external life were nothing; that precepts and maxims which I had considered essential and important, became as nothing; that they were mere shreds and sophisms. For instance, I discovered that the external policy of honesty, unless accompanied by the genuine impulse, is void. Of course I always thought so, but I stated it wrongly. I discovered that an external morality typical of life is void, unless there be a corresponding probity of spirit. I understood this, but I was not sufficiently alert to its importance of being first a Spiritual state. I was of the opinion upon the earth that the external inculcation will eventually produce the right kind of state, and that the semblance of it ought to be cultivated that the real may come. I discovered that no semblance can imitate the reality; that the real foundation of all moral excellence must be by inculcation of it from within.
I believed in modern science that outward observation and the pursuit of various mechanical and mathematical discoveries would eventually lead to the perfection of truth. I now perceived that wall, also, crumbling away, and an insight entering my mind that outward science is but the form or clothing of the spiritual principle, and if that principle be not correct the science itself is void.
In religion also I found that while I had no creed which made a barrier between me and my Deity, or between myself and my kind, there was still a mistake in the fact that I failed to recognize the absolute nature of the Divine Personality in the guidance of all worlds and men. Of course I believed that too much can be done by man himself; I recognized too little the unseen agencies that are alive in the universe to shape and govern all things.
I must be pardoned if I seem prolix, but in order to arrive at an accurate comprehension of the change which every spirit must pass through, I must give these individual experiences.
I then discovered that as I unraveled one by one the meshes of external sophism or external philosophy, I seemed to be ensphered in an atmosphere far more luminous. There were certain indications of fabric growing around me; I perceived that as my thoughts regulated themselves harmoniously there were spherical arches, and various forms of beauty like rainbow lights, around me.
I said, “What is this?” The attendant, seemingly watching me from without, said, “You will soon discover.” And I at last found that my entire method of thought became inverted, or introverted; that I looked upon substance as a shadow, and upon what men call shadow as substance; that I discovered in the external life no organic property separate from spirit. Remember this: “In atoms no organic property separate from spirit”—that I probed to the very foundation of my philosophy and discovered that nature has of herself no activity independent of the spirit inhabiting nature. I found this out in my own structure, and in the spiritual body which my soul animated and the life into which I was admitted.
I then said: “From this standpoint can I investigate outward science? Can I now become familiar with the processes of the contact of elements in external nature?”
The attendant said: “From this standpoint only can you understand the processes; the external scientific man has no groundwork; he perceives at random; he discovers seemingly, by accident; he follows no line of investigation, and if he arrive at the truth it is simply because the truth is in his way, not because he has a correct aim. “
Then I said: “I may safely study the elements of than earth’s atmosphere and planetary substances, and the laws governing their control?”
“Most certainly,” he said. “But you are not fitted to enter upon this study until you shall have at first perfected your own habitation. By this I mean,” he says, “until you shall have become self-centered, properly poised in your own sphere of life, and understand thoroughly the scenes by which you are surrounded.”
I then said: “I will follow your Instructions; I seek only for guidance. Let me know the methods.”
“The methods are still self-examination, still self-scrutiny, still the undoing or perhaps the overthrowing of the thoughts that were with you on earth.”
Then I leaned still more toward inward contemplation, and thought that I had not sufficient power of spiritual growth to reach the point of my desire in the pursuit of the investigation of the sciences connected with the elements of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Soon, however, I became tranquil, and my mind was breathed upon by a consciousness of humility.
I said: “I will study as a little child, and listen to these spirits or witness what they shall do until II learn.”
I then perceived groups further and further away nearing us, and that each seemed to be occupied with their own pursuits, not intruding nor interfering with the others, but ranged in family groupings and in social order and occupation.
I said: “How busily and constantly employed they seem to be! and yet I have no clue as to what their occupation may mean, or the effect that it may have upon themselves or others.”
I sat down in contemplation with the habitation unfinished, much as one would sit on an unbuilt edifice for which he had no capital to proceed further. My capital was gone; I had nothing further to invest; I did not know how to proceed. By observation I discovered lines of sympathetic light extending from one spirit to another, that formed these groups. These lines of sympathetic light radiated, or scintillated, as they approached one another, and of one accord they seemed to understand, as I described previously. They then seemed to pass off in groups further and further away, either into space, or sometimes they seemed to me to descend into darkness.
I said. “What do they do? I then thought intently with a desire to know their occupation. I discovered that these were self-centered family groups, or social circles, who had a distinct line of thought and occupation in spiritual life, and that this line of thought and occupation was connected with some social state beneath them, or some planet to which they might be attracted for use or for work.
Then I said: “I have the clue: it mast be what they do for others that gives them capacity to increase their power of building their own habitations.” Instantly all the atoms in the fabric of my own habitation thrilled with this new light.
I said: “I will seek some person, or spirit, or state, that is not as attractive as my own, and see what good I can accomplish.” I was not long in seeking. I seemed to pass into a stratum of atmosphere beneath and darker than my own, among persons who seemed to be without the power to rise, and some without the aspiration; and I thought, as I breathed upon them from my mind—this breathing being a real exhalation of my spirit—“Would you like to enter a region of greater brightness?” And a spirit looked upward and said: “Oh, I cannot; there seems to be no way; I am hopeless. I have no unhappiness, no fixed condition of misery, but I am inert.”
I said: “Do something,” giving the same advice that I myself had sought.
“What shall I do? there is no outward work for me to perform. Clothing is unnecessary, we wave it seemingly of our thoughts; we, do not feed upon substances like those upon earth. I have no necessity for these things; and one cannot always think; it is too inactive.”
But I said: “Do you not know one in outward life whom you wish to benefit? Is there no such one living upon earth?” I ventured this without even knowing that I myself could do it. “Is there no one that you would wish to benefit upon the earth?”
Oh, if I might,” said be, “communicate with some one whom I love, that I might tell of the inertia that fills my mind, it would even be a blessing to do that !”
I said: “Think intently of the one whom you would like to communicate with.” And I saw that he was thinking, and with that thought he disappeared toward earth, and there followed a portion of the light which seemed to come from the sphere that I inhabited with him as he went upon his way.
I returned to my spiritual habitation, and behold! a recognition had taken place; the formless portions were shaped and in order, and all around the base was seemingly the foundation of a perfect structure. It is well, I thought; I will try again; and so little by little I went beyond the precincts of my own habitation, seeking to influence minds that were evidently less employed than myself. To my utter delight I discovered on each return from such a visitation that my habitation grew more and more complete; and when I had finished it so far as it is possible for any spiritual state to be finished, I then was conscious of the presence of the attendant who had advised me.
He said: “You have found the process now of increasing your activity and powers; now you are fitted to study the elements.”
I said: “Why now?” “Because the spiritual is the centre here, and that must be in order and well balanced before any material thing can be touched. You cannot even become conscious the methods of outward life until you are conscious of the methods of spiritual life.”
Then I said: “Are there no spirits in communication with the planets and with the external elements save those that are spiritually self-centered? “
Then I said: “Are there no spirits in communication with the planets and with the external elements save those that are spiritually self-centered? “
“Certainly; but they are not consciously so, and have no knowledge of their office or employment; they perform it mechanically, and act under the impulsion of higher minds. I take it that you wish to act intelligently.”
“Certainly I do.”
“Then,” he says, “come with me.”
I passed to the stratum of atmosphere that we had seen as I was passing from earthly life. I found there various unemployed spirits upon barren plains; found them in habitations that seemed to be void of beauty and intelligence.
He said: Do you wish to perform anything upon earth?”
I said: “ I would like to find out, if possible, the methods whereby spiritual beings, or spiritual forces, control and act upon earthly beings.”
“You then,” he said, “wish to enter the sphere of study of the elements in connection with spiritual beings and intelligences?”
I said: “yes.”
He said: “Select from these persons whom you see those whom you consider most fitted to act upon.”
“How am I to select?” I said. “Think toward them,” said he.
As I fixed my mind upon one and another, I saw them in various degrees of promptitude or slowness turn toward me and gradually come near. Those who came the most readily, and those who seemed the most anxious to respond to my thought, were chosen.
He said: “Now, anything that you will these persons to do they can perform, but it must be through your will and your knowledge, and not theirs.”
I then became aware that other spirits had in the same manner gathered around these groups of spirits that occupy the plane nearest the earth; that they were intent upon solving the problem of communication between the outward sphere, which is the earth-life, and the spiritual spheres; not only in the manner of impression and guardianship, which I discovered to be a distinct spiritual power, but in the manner of affecting the currents of the atmosphere and occult forces lying around the earth. I joined this school. I speedily found that my attendant was one of the number, and that in the second sphere, which was my home, in a higher grade beyond me, was their habitation and group, or council, and that I really was to be admitted to this council as one of the message-bearers to the earth ! One of the message-bearers! The thought itself electrified me. Could it be possible then to open a direct line of communication?
I bethought me of the subtle force that a portion of my life had occupied intently my thought and mind. Could it be through some such force as electricity in one or other or both of its vibrations? Was there some method whereby this substance which was spiritual and yet tangible to me, could be brought in direct contact with matter, and made to reveal the consciousness of man’s spiritual life by the stepping-stone of physical science? Here was a problem.
I commenced first studying gradually the forces surrounding the earth. I discarded the idea of electricity very soon, as I found it too material in its vibrations and too directly connected with the elemental contact of the earth.
Magnetism I found also governed by the laws and currents affecting the earth and its atmospheres. Then I said there must be a still more subtle force, which is amenable to the direct control of the individual will, and is not so sensitive to the casual currents or changes of the external atmosphere as electricity seems to be.
To my surprise I found electricity to be a simple vibration, and the result of counteracting currents of magnetic life upon the earth, and which in their various orders and rotations may be easily measured and guarded against, and placed In accord with the various electric mechanisms of the earth, and adjusted according to human wants and needs.
This certainly was not the force to be employed in connection with the contact of spiritual beings with earth, or with earthly matter. I looked still further. I discovered a subtle force or aura, surrounding minerals, and surrounding all vegetable substances, and finally surrounding all human beings. I found that the aura surrounding mineral substances was not amenable to the action of spiritual volition or will-power. I found that the aura surrounding vegetable substances was not amenable to the action of will-power in the individual capacity. I found the substances surrounding animals, especially the dog and horse, or bird, to some degree amenable; so that under some circumstances of human contact or surroundings, these animals could be made to express an unusual degree of supposed intelligence, and to give tokens or signs of what would seem to be supernatural power.
By experimenting upon these, I found that gradually the substances surrounding human beings, by an action upon the organs of the brain and sensation, would become susceptible to the expression of volition, independently of the human being.
This was the desired element. ‘Upon this element, then, all the force in the school of message-bearers, to which I belonged, was intently fixed, and into a particular vein or current of thought, which we, by converging our minds at a given time and place, were able to send into that centre of thought.
We made our first expression of individual contact with matter, in connection with the modern phase of Spiritualism. (See Rochester Knockings.) I then said, “Is this a new thing? Is it for the first time discovered?”
“By no means,” “said the eldest and centre of the band; “this has been known for ages, was practiced in all the various forms of magic in ancient times, and is the key that will finally unravel all these ancient mysteries”
“Of course,” he says, “ It is the first time that it has systematically been presented to the thought of modern science, in the light of science; but it will soon grow to that degree of observation externally that it can be tested, at least, by the usual methods of scientific observation, and finally tested by actual scientific apparatus.”
I found that no measure of electricity or external mineral magnetism could affect, or alter in any degree, the manifestations from our world. I found that the outward atmosphere only affected them, by depressing or changing the nervous currents of the medial organization, and not because of any superabundance of electricity or magnetism.
I found that the nerve-aura consists of minute particles or globules, that form in themselves a radiating atmosphere around every human being, and which, when properly directed, constitute the means of motion of the physical organism, as well as constitute the means whereby a disembodied spirit independently of that organism moves bodies and produces concussions in the atmosphere. The concussions in the atmosphere are not the result of what may be called vacuum, are not the result of electric vibrations, but are the result of this nerve-aura which is centered at a given place, and which produces by the rapidity of action, or volition, the action upon table, chair, musical instrument., or the atmosphere itself.
The capabilities of spirits in connection with these manifestations must be limited at the present time by their own knowledge, by the nature of the instruments that they have to employ upon earth or other planets, and by the intermediate stages of thought and observation that qualify human beings to understand, step by step, the stages of these manifestations. The capabilities at the present time are limited, as I say, by these things, and by another—that accompanying every external step in any science, and preceding it there must be a prophecy of the philosophy itself. Spiritualism has had that prophecy and that philosophy, and these must go hand in hand, or the attestation of the physical proof of it will have no corresponding soul to vitalize it and keep pace with it.
Hence the manifestations are continually checked by falsehood, by deception, by discoveries of fraud, by the various temptation to which humanity is liable, for the reason that the soul and its growth must keep parallel to the manifestation and its demonstration; but remember that this is only in connection with an intelligent contact of the two worlds, physically. Behind all this is a substratum of spiritual laws and forces of interlinking sympathies and amenities, that continually unites the two worlds, whether there is any outward demonstration or not, and makes up a complete chain of inspiration, even if there had never been a physical manifestation in the world. Remember that the external expression is only the smallest portion of the sublime contact of the earthly and spiritual states, and of your subjection to spiritual beings and impressions by them. In whatever sphere of life, or in whatever state, morally or spiritually, you may be, you are acted upon continually by spiritual powers, for good or ill, for your elevation or depression. These spiritual powers, by continually acting upon your affections and sympathies, move your capabilities to surpassing excellencies, or gravitate with you toward those darksome places and conditions that at some time form the bane of human life.
The possibilities of spiritual existence I can only portray to you in a faint and dim outline, an outline itself so glorious that it can scarcely be believed by those still immured in the external plane, but of which I as much have assurance as I have of my existence as a disembodied spirit.
If a spirit can move one atom of external substance to do its bidding in response to its intelligent wish and will, then it solves all the problems of the heavenly bodies, places us in communication with the great forces that lie behind nature, and makes the revelation to our consciousness that planets and systems, as well as men and immortal souls, are under the guidance of angelic powers as the agents of the Divine Mind.
No orb is left to perform its functions and rotations without an ever-present and ever-active intelligence; and yon lovely flower, [referring to a bouquet on the table] that is painted in the summer sunlight or destroyed by the cold wintry blast, is in its every atom and function guided by the intelligent power that lies behind the ray of light and behind the wintry blast, to the end of doing the work of the spirit.
These possibilities are within the human grasp. Do you not govern substances? Is not the earth itself amenable to you? Is there any place upon it that man does not intend to inspect? And may you not with the power of mechanism, with the grand inventions of human thought, with the continued explorations and impressions from spiritual sources, finally hope to vanquish that which has been nearly vanquished—time and space and substance—altogether?
If the swift-winged messenger of electricity has already made the distance between the two opposite portions of the world almost nothing, may not the more rapid method of thought itself finally supplant the slow method of electricity, until at last you shall converse together by vibrations of human thought?
If the power of steam hag caused the ancient coach to disappear and the methods of usual locomotion to seem tedious and heavy, may not the more rapid transit of aerial navigation, by some still more occult force, become within the possibility and grasp of the next half or full century of time? And is it too much to suppose that that mind which sets upon these substances from the external with so great success, is also able, when freed from the external form and fetters, to act upon it with still greater success, if not by moving worlds in their orbed places and guiding the elements to their appointed tasks, doing lesser things, not for the individual benefit of sections or classes of people or conditions upon earth, but for the great expression of the perfection of the planet or world ?
I see behind all these forces and mechanisms of nature the guidance of an intelligent power and will. I see, as you see behind the helm of the ship; as you see behind the engine that bears you across the country; as you see behind the messenger that carries with lightning speed your thought to the dearly loved one; so behind all these forces I see the powers of great disembodied minds that have risen from the limited comprehension of the narrow place upon earth to a loftier and diviner comprehension of the elements of life. They lie in the comprehension and the possibility of the soul of man.
I find it no fable that Jupiter commanded lightnings or that Hercules might overturn the world. I find these powers embodied in the thought of man; and the divine intelligence that shapes the infant’s feet to do the simple act of uplifting the body for the first time from the dust, is capable of shaping the winged angel to the fulfillment of the task of moving a world or a solar system.
These are some of the gradations of thought that have come to me since I understand the glimmerings of that science by which man as an external and man as a spiritual being can rise from the dust and triumph over human clay.
Tonight I have been invited to give you an account of my transition from the outer to the inner world, and of my reception in spirit life. You must bear with me. I am unaccustomed to this kind of control, though it was perfectly familiar to me as an observer when on earth. Up to the last hour of my mortal existence I had as positive knowledge as is given to mortals to have, of the existence upon which I was about to enter. Death came to me no unwelcome visitor; friends on both sides, equally dear, summoned me to both lands, but the time allotted to humanity had already transpired; and my life, as you know, had been right in faith, if not in deed, for many years. That faith which was born of knowledge was no holiday gift, no bestowment of intellectual spasm, and no result of morbid theological fancy. For twenty years I have had knowledge; for fifteen years I have never had a doubt of the existence beyond death, and the possibility of spirits to communicate with mortals. But as the morning gradually dawns upon the earth, as the summer-time constantly approaches in the footsteps of spring, and brings her own peculiar loveliness, that no prophecy of morning or spring can afford, so the transition from knowledge to experience, from observation on your side of life to observation on the spiritual side, is as great as the advent of day after the night. I speak with no hyperbolical language; there is no word to express the change which death brings to the spirit; there is no language to typify the life of which for the first time I became certain that I was the real inheritor. The knowledge which I believed I possessed upon earth was indeed knowledge, so far as the senses could give it; the knowledge which came to me on my departure from earth was the certainty of absolute possession. No moment of the expiring or receding ray of mortal existence was lost to my spiritual consciousness; at no interval of time did I feel that I was going to sleep, or that the power of my individual life was fading from me; at no instant did I feel severed from either world; conscious alike of the ministering power of beloved ones on earth, and gradually becoming more and more conscious of the ministering power of spirit friends, I found my spirit-land all about me. I was not borne through the air; I experienced no sensation of sleep, no interval of time between the outer and the inner consciousness; I saw gradually what I had not seen before—what seemed to fall to my vision as the revelation after a veil had been removed—the people of the spiritual existence near me, as though they had been waiting for me always. I saw that the film fell from my eye as the bodily strength decreased, and I gradually became aware of spiritual existence and spirit scenes, as one standing in a mist among the mountains might suddenly, as the clouds would rise and disappear, become aware of the landscape around him.
My spirit-world was where I died, the friends who had proceeded me into spirit existence were there, they smiled upon me as though they had known I was coming for a long time, they were ready to receive me as if they had been waiting by my side for many a day expecting that I would slip out from my earthly tabernacle, they seemed aware that my sojourn on earth had nearly expired; and there was my father, benign, not in his old age, but in full vigor of manhood, smiling at me as though I were a boy again, and he had come to teach me something new. All this was so familiar and so entirely in keeping with what I expected, that I was not even astonished, not certainly at the presence of my friends, the dearest one of my household my family, who had preceded me, but there was a surprise. It came in my own consciousness and feeling, it came in the possession of powers of which I was not aware, it came in that transcendent sense of life which I never experienced on earth, not like youth, not like early manhood, not like any intoxication which any draught could give was the sense which came to me of inexpressible life, a feeling of buoyancy as though there had never been a physical bond, as though pain, and dust, and weight, and time, and sense, had all departed. If I could prefigure to you, or convey in one word the term and meaning of that transcendent experience when for the first time the soul feels fetterless, when the freedom of the spirit to think and feel is absolute and seemingly boundless, when all possibilities seem to rise at once as accomplished facts, and every hope and desire of the mind seems capable of fulfillment, because of the possession of the power which is within! This is no exceptional state in me; aware that from long habit of thought, and from accustomed communion with spirit life my mind was well prepared for this, I know since that many spirits who have no such outward knowledge are in reality prepared spiritually for this higher birth. It is a spiritual state, it is a state of exaltation, it is a redemption which comes to man after the fatigue and labor and comparative toll of life is over. Easy as was my daily path when I made it so by my word and pen, and easy as were the allotted hours of my appointed labors upon earth, and easy as were the subjects of contemplation to grasp when thought and determination were set to bear upon them, I found obstacles which had perplexed me were suddenly removed, as if I had come from behind a ledge of rocks, and now could see the gray sky and ocean before me.
This sensation of death you will not experience, probably, until you pass through the change clairvoyants transfigure. Many persons who pass into abnormal conditions may realize it somewhat, but the unfettering of the soul from the body is the one thing that death reveals, and with it the hidden powers that otherwise seem to slumber, and are in some measure hampered by the physical senses. I observed strangely enough that my physical body was still perfectly apparent to me, that the friends upon earth were still visible, and I only seemed to have had an added glimpse of life, of scene, of atmosphere, of being, that I could not see with my mortal vision. Not being clairvoyant upon earth, never having seen except such manifestations as were given through others, possessing knowledge only through the physical senses, I could not previously understand, as I now do, the meaning of that inward light, that perception of the spirit which seems to comprehend all senses, and makes mind as well as matter visible to disembodied spirits. Tonight, therefore, as really in your midst, the double faculty of seeing your body and, perceiving the spiritual atmosphere is mine, and with that the perception of all the spiritual realm that lies about you, which I find is not removed to some remote point in space, but accompanies you, hovers near you, attends upon your footsteps, is a portion of your daily life, and when the soul breaks through the barriers of time and sense, reveals the beloved one by your side. The spirit-land is no far-off realm. I find not a few spirits who have no thoughts beyond the earth, but if they have sympathies with human beings who are aspiring to lofty thoughts, they remain near to inspire and uplift them, and this atmosphere of which I speak is a portion of the spiritual atmosphere surrounding you. I do indeed perceive that there are dense places upon the earth and spirit atmospheres above the earth where it would seem scarcely possible for spiritual light to penetrate, but even there some redeeming thought or some kindly deed frequently illumines the surrounding darkness, and higher spirits attend.
But for the most part the spiritual existence of your friends who are newly departed is quite near to you; they are taken charge of, are made familiar with the scenes of spirit-life, and those who are in sympathy with them abide near them, and they abide near to you; and my affection being about equally divided between the spiritual and the earthly life, I assure you I have no intention of leaving the atmosphere of earth until, by communication and by constant effort, I shall possess myself of the facts on this side of existence as wholly as I did upon the mortal side. I mean to make every effort, not only to express myself in this manner, which by permission of her guides and the gifts of this medium I am enabled to do tonight, but also to try my powers at every form of manifestation which I have ever witnessed, to possess myself of the required information, that I may, if possible, state it in a manner which I often longed to have stated to me while I was still an investigator, and which, for the benefit of other investigators, I shall certainly endeavor to state from this side of existence. I now find that the aspirations and certainties concerning spiritual existence which came to me were not only real in the sense of manifestations and presence, but real in a more transcendent sense than this; that all the thought or hope of spiritual life, all the aspiration for the reality of friendship and the continuance of genial companionship is more than realized. You and I have experienced these things—that is, some of us—in a degree, that we were severed from time and space and death by conversation, by hallowed experiences, by our own intelligent and intellectual pursuits; I find spiritual life is even more than personal, and especially gratifying to the social, the intellectual and the spiritual thought of men. I find that real here which was not real upon earth; the sympathy of friends becomes the strongest tie here, and no outward change of circumstance or distance seems to affect that bond. As spiritual life is not a material substance compared with the substance of earth, so whatever composes the happiness or unhappiness of a spirit is the result of his or her inward state.
The spheres of which you hear so much I find to be conditions or states of spiritual life depending upon the thought and spiritual growth, and liable to exist any where; so that tonight there may be numberless spheres represented in this room, and your spirit friends attending upon you may represent as many grades of thought as yours. As spirits are not dependent upon material substance for existence, as they do not require shelter from the elements, as there is no necessity for any particular time or space, a spirit sphere may be near you, and that attendant spirit which abides by you represents the sphere of his or her existence, so that the state itself defines the sphere, and not the place or distance, nor the position with reference to the earth. I am thus explicit, not because it is impossible for spirits to exist at a distance from the earth, but because much mistaken materialism has grown out of the thought of distinct locality as being necessary for spiritual existence, and while I find that in the highest spiritual state to which I have been permitted to enter, I seem to be removed and absolved from earthly things and earthly communion, I do not realize the distance that separates me, but in an instant, if I so desire, I can be back to the earth again, or back to the friends that I wish to communicate with. Space is literally annihilated; there is no necessity for time, except when we wish to converse with mortals; and therefore one mile, or a thousand or a million, are as readily traversed by the spirit having the wish to traverse that distance. I find that the knowledge of the spirits affects very materially their powers, and that some spirits reside near the earth, more slowly upon the earth’s surface, hover about the places of their former occupations, without seeming to know that they have the power to pass more rapidly from point to point, it seems being there they are held there, and this probably constitutes their spiritual bondage; but for the short period of time that I have inhabited the spiritual state I find time and space are no barriers. Many things, sufficient to fill volumes, have come into my consciousness, and of which I had no power of analysis before. With the throwing off of the mortal body, clearness of perception and comprehension of spiritual principles, absolute sight of material substances that are sealed to mortal vision, and perception of laws and forces of nature, before unknown, occult powers that seem to be withholden from mortals’ view, are entirely clear and perfectly understood by the mind as soon as brought in contact with them. To use these powers perfectly, to make one’s self familiar with them, to study them closely in the effect of union between the two worlds is to be my occupation for some time to come, since I regard this revelation, now that I have entered spirit-life as even more important than I did while still among the inhabitants of earth, since I regard any added knowledge, or any light thrown upon its philosophy as being so much more important than that upon any other subject with which I was comparatively familiar.
And now I have an admission to make: I have wished since I passed into spirit-life that I had more and more revealed what I know of Spiritualism while upon the earth. It is true I talked about it with my friends constantly; it is true that when called upon I made statements to the public; it is true that my works are before you; but if I had known as I now know the absolute nature of the importance of these manifestations, I would have daily and hourly devoted my energies to making manifest to the public, or to any human being who desired it, the testimony which I have witnessed in proof of spirit communion. So much the more easily can spirits communicate when there is even an awakened power in the human mind; but the avenues of communication are so few, and the channels so imperfect at best, that could I have thrown the whole weight of my experience on your side of existence, I would now have the consciousness that I had not delayed in expressing that which to every human being must be the highest possible revealment of human life, the certainty of existence beyond death. If tardy in this duty, it was through conscientiousness; I did not wish to force my opinions upon others; I was reluctant to ask people to believe that which they had not themselves witnessed; but I now know that the value of human testimony is not to be underrated, and that the manifestations which I saw might have led many to an inquiry who otherwise were prevented from so doing. With this acknowledgment I will say that the states and conditions of the spirit-life by which spirits manifest themselves to mortals are as varied as the circumstances under which mortals abide or exist, and that a spirit is obliged to overcome every one of certain outward conditions before he can intelligently reach the mortal mind. Finding this to be the case, I sought a familiar channel of communication in several places, and found myself able to express my thoughts through those accustomed channels; not seeking it in one or two other places, where there was no previously existing mediumship, I found I could only make an impression, and a very slight impression, upon the brow or mind, and while I have been able to converse in meditation with my friends who have thought of me since my departure from earth, I have not been able to make them aware, as I could wish, of my personal presence because of those intermediate barriers. To remove these barriers, to set them aside one by one, on your side of life as well as on ours, is the mission and work of true spiritual philosophy; to make intelligent research a pursuit which shall not be that of curiosity; to ask candid inquiry into the phenomena, and especially instruction in the philosophy of spiritual communion; to make some sort of preparation so that the upper world shall not be hampered with the conditions of earthly life as well as all those of ignorance in the minds of men—this is what I wish especially to plead for. But borne upon the wings of the new-found life, and conscious of the unbounded knowledge which I had yet to gain, and aware that those who had preceded me in spiritual state must be more familiar than myself with those methods, I have waited and shall wait until I receive such knowledge by observation or instruction as shall enable me to carry forward this research intelligently; but meanwhile no opportunity will be lost and none indeed neglected whereby I can speak or even manifest through any channel the light which has come to me, and which is the fulfillment of life itself.
If the reunion of long absent friends, if the silent communion of similar thought and souls upon earth, if the steady preparation for the long voyage that at last culminates in absolute realization, if to find the hopes of my youth and manhood more than verified, transcendently realized, if to feel that there is no change except as an added endearment in the friends that preceded me into spiritual state, if to recognize as of one accord those minds whom I have long revered and held sacred, and those friends that with me have withstood the brunt and battle of persecution, if to be thus heralded and thus received into soul communion and into confidence, greeted as one worthy, though I felt my unworthiness, made an equal though I felt my inequality, if this be the realization of heaven, then I am in that heaven. No fabled wonder, no city of gold, no gems nor precious stones arose to greet my vision, no heaven of theology. I never believed it, I could not; but the spiritual union, the welcome of friends, the sunlight of love upon an atmosphere made buoyant by truth and hope, to feel the constant fervor, the absolute life of awakening intelligence merging more and more into reality, this was what I found; the love of the soul unquenched and purified, the transfiguration of thought made beautiful by all the images and symbols of art, the true reverence of the spirit for the Infinite Creator imaged in lives of self-forgetfulness and ministration, the busy spiritual world where thought itself is supreme, and where each messenger is a ministering spirit—this is what I found. Assemblages of spirits, into whose presence my father conveyed me after I had first received the benediction and greeting of my friends, assemblages of minds working together in community of purpose and thought for the amelioration of the condition of man, the social problem which my father commenced on earth and I but feebly followed to fulfill, these all made more clear, and the solution of them found in this higher and purer atmosphere: The faith and hope, and certainty of human alleviation, that the States, socially, morally and politically, would finally be better, the absolute plan of the uplifting of humanity by steady and constant spirit ministration, the instruction of the masses in the way and means of spiritual life, so that every human being would become aware of his or her individual importance. In one conversation with my father since I passed from earthly to spirit-life concerning the society or association which he first endeavored to form in the Old and then in the New World, I said, “Is the scheme correct which you formed? Is it possible for any considerable number of human beings to live together in associative bodies, including their moral and spiritual uplifting?” He said, “My thought upon earth was only a prophecy; I did not fulfill it because I had not found the true key.” “What is the true key?” I asked. He said, “It is spiritual adaptation in classes. I supposed that a community, external interests and a common bond of sympathy in external pursuits, would ultimately unite them spiritually. I find now,” he said, “that there can be no real community without a base of unity in the spirit, and all associations formed merely for external purposes must fail, excepting in the external sense, while socially and morally and religiously, the world would remain as it is. You will witness,” he said in continuation, “that those associated bodies bound together by a common religious impulse generally remain steadfast, and though their impulse be not correct, it still is a bond of unity among them. Now,” he said, “what we intend to do is to pour out upon the world such a flood of spiritual intelligence as to sweep away the barriers of materialism, and bind men together upon the common basis of spiritual welfare.” “But,” I said, “that is what the Christian churches have been trying to do for two thousand years.” “Oh, yes,” he said, “but they have only done it in an exclusive way; what the world wants to-day is not only Christianity, but a religion or a Spiritualism that shall include everybody, and the moment you do this you place all on their proper level, they seek their associations, they become equally as important in the great project of creation the one as the other, and in time, society itself will combine together upon principles not external, but spiritual. If there shall be an association formed,” he said, “under the direction of spiritual beings, that shall be intelligently carried out, it will combine spiritual with material purposes, and the spiritual will be first. No one will be called upon or expected to join the association who is not practically capable of following the Golden Rule.” “Well then,” I said, “you will have to wait until the millennium.” “Not so,” he said; “there are many minds upon the earth today ready to practically demonstrate this, many who are longing for the opportunity, but they cannot combine, because of the wide severance in earthly matters. Now let every one of these be summoned to a community or association equally adapted, set aside selfishness, and work together for the whole good, and the problem is solved—the individual is swallowed up in the whole, and yet the individual is not neglected.”
This was one conversation. And had you seen as I saw the deceased and risen students of social philosophy, Fourier, all who have taken the lead in the long line of reformers and socialists, many who had risen from the bloody fields of carnage in Europe, many who rose out of the Commune with imperfect and fragmentary ideas of social life, with many who have illustrated by their lives and example the possibility of self-forgetfulness, had you seen the myriads of souls intent upon this problem, and conscious that it is dawning upon the earth, you would not have been surprised at the vast manifestation which has recently taken place with reference to labor, nor would you blame that spirit of true freedom which—although in the existence of the present customs it makes carnage and destruction—indicates a wrong at the basis of your social order. [Applause] Had you seen what I saw, you would not be surprised at the terrible echoes running all along through the various arteries of commerce, and the aisles and corridors of vast speculations in this country and in the Old World, a tremor which will not cease and will not pass until it becomes a loud voice and powerful protest against the injustice of the present system of social and commercial life which binds man to man by any servitude whatever. Had you seen the hope and the joy which spread all through those lines of intelligent spirits when they found any united purpose in the appeal for man, you would know that there is no end to disturbance on earth until injustice shall cease; and while we do not seek warfare, and while every one deplores the shedding of blood, that there is no responsibility upon those who seek redress for their wrongs. And then I said, “Will it be possible that this shall come about without general warfare and conflict? Will there not be shedding of blood and serious disturbances? Shall we not finally have a war that shall involve the whole country, and perhaps nations in ruin, bringing anarchy instead of freedom?” “There is no need of this warfare,” said my kind parent; “the shedding of blood is not a proper atonement for sins today any more than in any past age; there can be no respite for wrong by committing added wrong; we shall make voices to instruct the people in their rights, to see that they steadily unite and maintain them, and above all to make their spirits calm and steadfast, that the injustice may not be perpetuated, that they may not seek for redress by injustice, but that they may protest against it intelligently, acting so unitedly that all will be won by the simple power of intelligence and spiritual truth.” And then I saw far off in the coming time, though not so far as one would imagine, that there will rise up teachers under the influence of that sphere of spiritual life, who will instruct man, first of all, that his spiritual nature is the highest, that he has no right to inflict injury upon his fellows, even in redressing wrong, but that he has a right, steadily and persistently, to protest against wrongs until the wrongs shall disappear, that he shall live above them and beyond, and that this is the inauguration of the new social state.
I passed into other fields of thought, of science, of philosophy, of art, of religion; I found no idleness, I found none unemployed, I found none indifferent, I found all acting and working for the benefit of others, and thereby gaining knowledge for themselves. I found that in proportion to their ministration and communication of knowledge was the attainment of knowledge. I found the seclusion of students and the possibilities of fraternal communings alike permissible and alike the result of unselfish desire for truth and the wish to communicate it to others. Above all things I found an increasing desire in myself not only to discover the various methods of spiritual existence, but to communicate them to others, to my friends upon earth. Oh that so-and-so could know this! oh that my friends who expressed such a doubt could be aware of this! And then I thought for all minds in spirit-life who have this yearning and desire, how few are the channels through which they can converse with mortals, and how long the time that it takes for preparation to inaugurate an intelligent system of converse between the two worlds. Friends, remove the barriers, take down the walls fear and prejudice, invite union at the family circle, let the mediums by your firesides be unfolded, let the daughter, the child that is clairvoyant, see visions of spirit-life, let there be this steady flow of intelligence; it will uplift, sustain and strengthen, nor will it mar the pursuits of daily life, but on the contrary make them more and more ennobling by infusing this clement of spiritual existence into your daily drudgery. If I had a thousand voices and could speak through a thousand tongues this night, I would say let the spiritual life receive its due proportion of consideration at your hands; let there be no putting off to a more convenient season of that investigation which interests you; let it take possession of your daily life, let it become a portion of your existence, as your food, and the air that you breathe; thereby you will come to breathe more and more the spiritual atmosphere, and thereby you will—like some of my friends whom I see here and who have already passed beyond the fear of death—have entered the spiritual life even before your bodies pass through the final change.
As for me, I know that without boasting I can say I fulfilled the prophecy of John in the wonderful Apocalypse. “There was no death,” and the new Jerusalem that came down to me adorned like a bride for the bridegroom, was indeed the life, the immortality, into which, as with a spring, I plunged fearlessly and buoyantly, and that awakened all that endearing association which now thrills and fills my life. I would communicate to you that you too may seek and know, until all the air of earth shall cease to resound with dismal fear and complaining and murmuring about death, and you shall abide in the spiritual state where I now find myself one with them and one with you.
Feeble as is this utterance, I thank you for your attention and for listening to me in this manner. Again and again I shall try, until at last I shall be able to perfectly, through this and through other instrumentalities, express myself to you, individually as friend and collectively as brother and kindred spirit. Goodnight. [Applause.]
I speak to you this night, I am aware, under difficulties. No longer in possession of my own form, through the kindness of other spirits, I address you through this organism. But across the space called death and the river called life, I bring my testimony on behalf of that immortality that now seems certain, surely on behalf of that existence continued beyond death.
In the majority of cases, I am told, there is not such sudden and absolute reaction as in my own case. Depressed from long illness, feeling the burden of years, I was caught up into sudden youth and sudden rapture of the full vigor of manhood. Without the loss of my intellectual power during the change called death, it was a transfusion of life and subtle element pouring through every avenue of my being, that restored memory, vitality, intellectual power, and all the powers of manhood. Nor can I picture in this place as vividly, perhaps, as I did on one other occasion through this organism, the change called death, since other and pressing incidents have crowded close upon my spirit, and I seem to have been admitted at once into the absolute vestibule of thought. I don’t know how this affects others, that is, I do not know it from experience, but I know that to me the augmented power was a power of spirit, the augmented force was a force of mind, the augmented reality was the reality of conviction, the augmented longing was the longing for more truth, and the one sublime word, the one rapturous thought that possessed me was; Now I am free to learn everything. That one word, freedom, the guerdon of the nations, that for which humanity struggles, that for which we so often urged the tyrants of earth to bend and bow, that which we have sought for others, we find ourselves at death; freedom from the thraldom of the senses, freedom from the tyranny and domination of disease, freedom from the fading faculties that evade and elude our grasp, when we would endeavor to use them as of old; freedom from the oppressiveness of that weakness that comes to the strongest mind and the strongest body when over-worn and over-exerted; freedom from all the constraints and complainings that are caused by physical reaction; but chiefly comes the restoration. What shall I name it? Theologians would call it “redemption,” save that we do not exist in an utter, absolute heaven, nor have I been aware of any exercise of that particular religious faculty which brings that which is called “salvation.” I would call it “resurrection,” save that I am not conscious of having died, but only of having been more and more merged into life, into existence.
I have wakened from a death that is the thraldom of disease in the body. I have wakened from a prison-house, the prison-house of the senses. I am in existence, but I have not been resurrected. The same powers dominate; the same impulses move and lead me; the same purposes control, but with augmented force, with augmented fervor, with increased activity, with actual possession.
My description to you of existence in spirit-life will, perhaps, differ from that of many spirits. I am not aware that I can portray in language, scenery, physical surroundings, objects as they appear, to the human senses. I find myself placed in a different position with reference to the objective universe. It is true there are the sun and planets that I can perceive; they bear no relationship to what I am doing; they do not seem to be a part of the system or universe in which I act and live. The light in which I move is not derived from the sun; the atmosphere that I breathe has no relationship to your planet. I am not conscious of being affected by the law of gravitation; heat and cold do not overcome me. I can enter the atmosphere when I know by your intelligence and its reflection in my own mind, that it is depressingly cold, and it produces no effect upon me. I can enter other atmospheres and in other portions of the world where I know the sun’s rays are intensely warm; it does not affect me.
I am repelled or attracted by your thoughts. The atmosphere is clear or cloudy according to your receptivity of light. I move in the light of what seems to radiate from a spiritual source. It is above and around, but chiefly within me. I see in proportion to that light. Upon subjects that I have no knowledge of, I am in darkness. Upon subjects where I have some knowledge, I am in twilight. Upon subjects where I seem to be most informed, I have light as of the noon-day sun. I am not in shadow or sorrow; I find no remorse possessing me, but I find utter and absolute humility as to my qualifications for the existence into which I am ushered.
Powers possessed me that I was not aware of. I have faculties and gifts that I knew nothing about, and that are not cultivated. I may try to walk and think with earthly methods instead of spiritual, when the spiritual alone are adequate. I cannot reason from the same premises as before, because the basis of existence is changed. I am transferred from the feeble structure of the earth to the supernal structure of spiritual law and power, and the name of that law and power is intelligence. I am extremely conscious of mental purpose, extremely conscious of subjects in my mind, extremely aware of the feelings and thoughts of others. I am possessed and surrounded by these; I have no time to consider whether there are mountains or valleys in my home. I have the affections of those whom I love. I have nothing to do with building the external structure or habitation; it was prepared by my aspirations seemingly, and is imperfect or perfect as those aspirations and actions were.
I find myself in possession of myself. I find that my surroundings are a reflection of me. I find that the objects which I most sought are here the most real, and the affections dearest to me are here the nearest to me. I do not find myself driven hither and thither by any external laws that seem at variance with my wishes or desires. I am not compelled to travel by railway or steam to reach you; I desire to be here and I am here; I am requested to attend and my presence cannot be withdrawn, because my desire is among you.
The spirit is so moved and so governed that its activities and forces seem to be upon an entirely different basis of existence; nevertheless I am utterly and absolutely conscious of being alive; I am supremely and wholly conscious of being myself, and I know that no other being in existence is like me, any more than any one can be like you, but that each individuality is expressed in its spiritual and mental state with augmented power and purpose.
Feeling, affection, sympathy, whatever constitutes the real spirituality of love, abide forever; but passion, all external convenience, that which attracts us on a temporal basis merely, seems to vanish.
I did not find myself drawn to friends as a matter of policy; I did not find it convenient to serve those whom I did not respect. Having never been accustomed to this in my material form, I am less inclined to do it now. I find that I am drawn only to those whom I love and revere; that I am to associate only with those whom I can aid, or who can benefit me, and that the strong ties, the attractions, the affections, the very foundation of social life is transplanted to spiritual existence with augmented force and power.
Prepared for me as a shrine, a place of habitation, was the home of my affections. My companion preceded me some months into spiritual life, awaited me there, and I found her with the other ones of our household, the first to greet me; but among the first were also those with whom there had been earnest labour and active thought for human emancipation; those to whom the young impulses and ardors of my life were given for the disenthrallment of man from the persecution of human tyranny.
You will remember when the Corn Laws were abolished in England what a shout of rejoicing went up from the people because we had not pleaded in vain. You will remember, when having lived during the later portion of my life to see the fruition of the abolition of slavery, what rejoicing there was in all our hearts, enfeebled though the pulsations were by years and by disease. But no rejoicings like that can compare with the rejoicing that comes to every spirit on release from the thraldom of physical sense and from that of terror, that half-tyranny that I think comes to almost all when the very gateway is swinging open. Is it to be annihilation or life? The supreme moment when the supreme question of existence is answered, when the soul stands on the verge of infinitude, or of destruction, that moment is the moment of universal suspense.
In the longing and expectation which took possession of my being, merged with the consciousness of those that were departed, there was such rapture, such consciousness of freedom, that I said, “All nations of the earth must sometime be free, since death is such a blessing.”
Nor do I say this to augment the burden of life. Far be it from me to picture the change as one which one must covet unless life is completed. But I only tell it as the last, the final hope, as the hope and ecstasy to crown the despair, the labour, and the weariness of years.
For my own part, in my earthly life I found no time to tremble at death, no time to fear that which should await me in the hereafter. In the later years my life was crowned with this supreme hope that is born of knowledge, creeping stealthily but surely into every avenue of my consciousness and intelligence, until at the final moment I knew. But as this is not the boon of all, as all minds are not so constituted, as this crown of existence does not always come to the material senses, as you are not aware of ministration always, and as many lead lives of labour, mentally and physically, that seem to forbid this consciousness,—to these I will say, that your longings, the very burden and intensity of hope, is in itself the prophecy of reality, and I know of nothing, save annihilation, that would be so great a mockery to human existence as that same terror of penalty in after-life—a penalty that is without recourse or redress, a penalty that is inevitable; but such laws are in existence, as I shall presently portray.
During the period of my earthly life I was not conscious of having knowingly wronged a human being; yet I am perfectly aware in spirit-life of having had such imperfections, such human frailties, such pride, or such ambition of excelling, or such other blunt upon mind and character as in spirit-life render me imperfect in ways that I would gladly avoid. I am aware that there were some superficialities, some subtle hypocrisies, some pride, or some ambition in my nature that prevented me from rising to the full height of manhood. But such is the nature of spiritual life that one is not made aware of these imperfections by the criticisms of others, and the guardian angel who stands forever by the gateway of our existence is not the one to point out the defects in our being.
We become aware that we cannot see, that we are blind in certain directions, that our perceptions are inadequate, that we are not one with those who are most exalted, that there is a void between us and those whom we would seek to emulate; and this renders us conscious of that imperfection, whatsoever it may be.
But I know of nothing more severe than man’s censure of himself. I know of nothing more torturing than that condemnation which comes from supreme consciousness of one’s own defects. The eyes that cannot see, the ears that cannot hear, the limbs that refuse to walk, the body that is deformed and dwarfed, do not bring such pain and penalty to the spirit as does the mind that is inadequate, the spirit that has not been wholly triumphant, or the soul that is impoverished and serves the human senses.
I conjure you, then, in all thoughts of futurity, to remember the seclusion of your own self-consciousness, when, with honesty, integrity of purpose, and with subtlety that belongs to self-examination, you find your spirits arraigned before the inward bar of communion, and you yourself are judge and censor.
Into such supreme consciousness the soul enters; through such a tribunal the spirit passes; and if you can escape without discovering your own imperfections, then you must be made of finer or more deadened material than I have discovered in any spirit that has passed from earth.
It is the testimony of those who abide in spirit-life, that these sensations are quickened, that the imperfections are more and more consciously enforced upon the mind by entrance into the abodes of those you love.
You will remember in Dante, when in the sublime vision Beatrice stood across the river, and when he became aware of supreme self-condemnation for having ever turned away from her, even in his slightest thought, he felt almost as though there were, perhaps forever, to be those waves dividing them. So when I come in contact with the great, the wise, or the good, with the affectionate, the true, the sincere—whatever in my nature has been less than these, I am made aware of at once, and my soul in self- condemnation stands silently waiting an opportunity to attest its longing and fervor to do to the uttermost what is within me—to in some measure fulfill, in some measure replace, that which is lacking in my being.
Occupied with these thoughts, possessed with this consciousness, divided in my affections between those who are in spirit-life and my dear daughters who remain upon earth, I breathe out to you as I would to them, this testimony, were they here present among you. Occupied with these thoughts, and with the companionship of some of my contemporaries who had passed from earthly life, I breathe out to those who are still living upon earth, my fellow-workers for humanity, my co-workers on behalf of human freedom, those who have sought to disenthrall men from the bondage of physical slavery, that now there is stronger hope, higher certainty for the disenthrallment of man from the spiritual bondage.
Whatsoever was in me of picturing to humanity the horrors of enslaving man, whatsoever was in me of portraying that injustice, that wrong of man to his fellows, is now augmented and increased: when I consider that the thralldom of the human spirit is a greater bondage, and that the fear of death, and the terror of eternal punishment constitute a more abject slavery than that in which any human being can ever have been enchained.
And I stand now, from this height, and from this standpoint, not a height of pride, but simply of having passed the one step which you have not traversed, of having experienced the one change which you have yet to experience— I stand here to say to you, “Plead with humanity against the terror and fear of death; plead with them forever against despair of that which is to come after death. Rouse them from their present state of darkness; rouse them from the present inactivity; let that higher life be awakened within them; breathe into them the consciousness of immortality.”
The chains must melt and fade away as they did from my own mind while upon earth.
I cannot conceive of a greater destiny. Humanity is born, not for earth, but for eternity. The hours are numbered of material life; but that spiritual value that is attached to existence comes from the augmented strength of every hour and day of earthly life, that no affection shall be squandered uselessly in the dust, that no clayey structure shall be reared around the eternal fabric, that no bondage of fear and of the senses shall enslave the immortal soul; that the power and purpose of that respite from despair is to uplift humanity to the grander altitude of loftier hope, of earnest endeavor, of endless activity, of absolute pursuit of truth in all her departments.
I would speak to you of the mother separated from her child by death, who finds no assuagement of her grief in the theory given by human religion, but who, uplifted by hope, and prompted by an inward faith, plants flowers above the grave in the consciousness that the child in heaven will somehow know that the flowers are blooming there. I will reverse the picture:—that the child passing from earth has no thought that does not move toward mother with some sweet flower of Paradise; and when tears are shed above the grave that blossom into daisies, the mother is blessed by a vision that comes from angel-life, for the spirit of her child is there.
When the father’s heart is torn with anguish at the loss of a dearly beloved child, and the gray head is bowed with grief that death gathered, instead of the ripened sheaf, the flower in its first bloom, I have known that pang to be shot through with a ray of light born of hope, and faith, and immortality, and the thought that somehow in the region of her new existence the child of his love could feel the heart-beats and their agony. Let me reverse the picture; I have known of no instance where the spirit has departed and the parent is bowed in agony, but the child does not, with longing and with ever-earnest love, hover near, seeking to impress into that aching heart some knowledge of the higher joy that has been attained, some glory of that life that is hers; and every comforting thought, every inspiring word of sacred love; every breathed utterance of comfort from her soul vibrated upon his being, and would fain uplift him from despair.
I have seen friends bowed down with grief at the loss of dearly loved friends, with whom companionship in early years and in later life had become so fixed a fact, that severance was almost like dividing one’s self in twain; and when one went away there was a loss as though half of the being had vanished, as though the better portion of the body had fled, as though the mind had not its accustomed balance; and there was wonder if in the high state—should there ever be existence after death—there would be recognition, reunion.
As well ask if yonder orbed moon, now partially hidden from your sight because of the shadow which earth throws between it and the sun, is not a complete orb; as well ask if an eclipse is the blotting out of the star, as to suppose that the shadow called death that comes between you and the brighter life of your loved one, is a severance or separation of you. On the contrary, when the eclipse is passed and the earthly gloom is over, and the earth-side is turned away so that the full sun of eternity can shine upon your completed being, how wonderful is the light, how glorious the recognition, how absolute the sympathy, how complete the light of your existence.
Then shall we doubt and clamor? Shall you be depressed and in agony over that which sets at least a portion free; which gives to at least a portion the light, the intelligence, the power, and the fervor of spiritual being?
The ways and avenues of human thought are endless; consequently there is no fading and faltering in minds for occupation. Man wearies of the countless routine and turmoil of material life, but the mind never grows weary of that which it loves. The study of truth, the pursuit of knowledge, the endeavor to gain all that it is possible for you to grasp and hold—this produces no weariness; you are baffled only by your ignorance; you are limited only by the capacities and development of the mind, but truth itself is so eternal and universal that it flows toward the spirit in countless streams of occupation, and the mind is never weary, and the soul is never unstrung, and the heart is never unnerved by fruitless effort and endeavor. I mean this, of course, where the mind is qualified to search, where the spirit has unfoldment to seek for knowledge.
I have seen states of lesser happiness. I have witnessed spirits less fortunate. I have seen those trembling on the verge of darkness. I have seen those who seemed to be surrounded by the shadows of material existence with which they are vainly striving to live in spiritual life. Some of these shadows I have myself been obliged to meet; some of them I have not yet vanquished. I find myself constantly reverting to material usages and views, to the methods of the senses, to the external structure of the visible universe, as the foundation of life. When I revert to this, that portion of my dwelling fades away; when I revert to it, that standpoint disappears, and I am left totally at a loss for foundation or structure. I do not know the beginning nor ending of any hypothesis now that has its foundation in material life. But I do know that where the vacancy is of spiritual truth—that is, where there is something spiritual that I have yet to learn—I seek those foundations; I hunt out those chasms; I desire those dark spots to be discovered, that I may know through avenues of mind and thought I am to seek to perfect the being that is entrusted to me.
The rapture and consciousness of being perpetually employed, of having no idle moments, no time wasted, of not frittering away uselessly in material aims and objects one’s existence, is such a rapture that I would convey it even by reflection to you.
There are those in earthly life—and I confess myself to have had somewhat of the same thoughts—who say, “What shall we do in spiritual existence if there is no body to sustain, no physical structure to upbuild, no temporal needs to comply with?” What will there be? With some minds, until the spiritual powers are awakened there must needs be inactivity, inertia, a sort of twilight of existence that is aimless, and, like flowers without color, or like fishes in the Mammoth Cave that have no eyes, these move in an existence that seems to be void of aim and purpose. But the majority of human minds have intellectual and spiritual aims; the majority have foundation of conviction, some sort of central point from which to start in the pursuit of spiritual occupation, and that employment begins with an effort to do others good, with an effort to communicate a joy or a rapture to another.
My first thought, after knowing that I was in existence, was to breathe that thought to my children. My next thought was to discover if there was any way of conferring with them upon the rapture of the change concerning which we have spoken so frequently, concerning which there had been poured into my ears from my faithful child the words of inspiration and immortality in verse and prose, from lips well accustomed to teach. Until I could acknowledge that one state, until I breathed that one word of indebtedness and gratitude, it seemed that I could not live in my new-found life.
This overwhelming consciousness of endurance of affection, of the fact that love is not lessened but augmented, that it is a spiritual and not a material principle, that it abides in the very heart and nature of existence, that it does not belong to the tie of consanguinity merely, but is a tie that unites soul with soul in the immortal spheres—affection of parent and child, of husband and wife, of father and sister and mother and friend, abiding forever, affection of that fraternity that binds kindred souls in the same aspiration and endeavor, and links heroes, prophets, statesmen, and seers of every age,—to live and find these things real, to know that existence is impelled from within and not from without, that the blind forces of nature are not urging us on forever to destruction, but that we move and are not moved, that we are and do not pass and change—I assure you, that this overwhelming thought almost seemed to overcome me. It came to me as a vision upon an oasis, as an ocean having seemed to be void of shore, reveals at last the shore all along the horizon, or as a glory of the morning that first with trembling lines lights up the sky, leads down to the valley, thrills upon the waters, the trees, the flowers, and the waves, warbles in the song of the birds, and at last breaks forth into one glad anthem of light and praise. Even so comes the knowledge of immortality to the human spirit.
And I am glad, and am not afraid; and I stand in your midst this day to say, that whatsoever be the earthly night, the morning surely is there, and all that I have pictured.
Mr. Chairman and Friends: That which I am about to relate to you is no vision, no imagination, but the reality of an experience of more than twelve months. A little more than a year ago I passed from the earthly to the spiritual life. That there was no terror in that change to me, to whom for over twenty years, in fact for a quarter of a century, Spiritualism had been a reality, many of you are perhaps aware. Familiar faces and minds greet me here at this moment; but it is owing to no individual merit, it is owing to no especial dispensation on my behalf, that I am permitted to be here at this hour. The law of spirit communion affects the high and the low, the exalted and the humble, and affects me in this capacity, that having a wish and permission to address you, I do so at this hour. Your presence testifies that you desire to hear from me, and as one who, having journeyed far, brings tidings that you perhaps knew before, but are glad to hear reaffirmed; as one who, launching upon a sea traversed by many ships and mariners, yet ever freighted with new experiences and bounded by shores that are ever varying according to the individual mind, I give you my individual experience.
I did not die; I did not lose consciousness; I did not sleep; I awoke. The sufferings of the physical body, the feebleness of the last few moments of earthly life, the waning faculties of the physical body, affected me in the latter moments, but I was alive in every essential particular. Nor was I aware of the cessation of thought for a single instant of time. I kept count of the pulsations of life as they ebbed away; I was in the room where my body was, and the spirit kept vigilant watch for the last heart-beat. I was aware of all that was around; of every object, every sensation, every word, every thought of those present. I wondered they did not see me, for I stood close beside the bed, and could almost touch each one of them with my hand. I wondered, too, that they did not discover in my new state how real I was. I was not the man of that preceding hour—not the man that you had seen growing feebler with years and suffering. I was the man of twenty-five or thirty years ago. I had risen to my youthfulness, my ripened manhood. I could feel the life-currents tingling in my veins; I could see the form clothed upon with the exact appearance of the physical body; I could look at my own hands and touch them, thus knowing it was myself; I could place my hand on my head and discover that I was there in completeness, as fully a human being as any of you; and yet no one saw me save with the eyes of the spirit. I could discern every object in the room that was familiar; I could see the time-piece, the hour—all things. But I was a spirit disembodied, and they were human and still in the body.
How strange it seemed that, speaking words distinctly, they did not fall upon any human ear! How strange it seemed that, passing toward the door that seemed necessary for the egress of my own body, I passed through it without opening it! How strange it seemed that, passing into another apartment, the wall opened and I was not necessitated to pass through the usual hallway! And, further still, it seemed strange that, passing down the stairway as was my custom, I found that it would not have been necessary had I only willed myself to be on the street; but, willing myself to go down the stairs, I went down them as a matter of usual custom. Passing along the thoroughfare, every object familiar, no one knew me. I met many persons who had not heard of my decease, and I would have bowed to them, but they did not look at me, and, conscious of being among people whom I knew very well, and being in full vigor of life and health, and yet not recognized, produced a painful and startling sensation of being alone in the world. Spirit-forms attended me. I returned to my room, or the room where my body lay, and found those dearest and nearest in earthly life considering me—dead? No, but passed from sight evermore; and, with one hand upon each of my friends, with a benediction upon those of my household, I spoke the words that form the commencement of this discourse: “He, being dead, yet speaketh,” and no one heard me. I then more keenly knew what before I had known—that I was in spirit-life. I knew my friends were around me; gradually they grew visible to me by a singular formation of sight that had not before touched my consciousness. I had been aware of material things and familiar sights only; now I was aware of another sight. All about and above me were those who had passed to spirit-life, the members of my own household and family, the nearest and dearest in kindred, willing to receive me, and gradually, as from a mist, their faces came to me, and I was prepared to recognize them. They had been invisible to me as I have been invisible to you. They were able to make me see them. Could I make my friends see me? There were mediums in this city within an hour who saw me; there were those in this city within three hours with whom I conversed; there were many within twenty-four hours who were aware of my presence as really as when in earthly life, and this owing to my will and intensity of desire that it should be so. I would break the bond of silence in some way, not making my voice audible directly, but ministering through mediums, as mediumship was a subject familiar to me then. What delight and transport it afforded to have the recognition of my presence on the very day of the funeral services here! to have perhaps one hundred seers perceive my spirit-presence, clothed upon with spirit-form and faculties, with attributes resembling the earthly, and the appearance of frail humanity! What gratification it was, still more, to have those who through long and wearying watchfulness and months of patient serving and years of devotion, who felt at that hour perhaps desolate and for the time stricken—to have these feel that in that moment of triumph their loss was my gain! It was a gain. I say it reverently and without self-consciousness; I was born again, renewed from suffering, from much earthly-trial, many imperfections. I had risen; I was born into the kingdom of the spirit.
What that kingdom is I will endeavor to tell you. I am no inhabitant of the heaven of theology. Had I found myself there, I would have prayed to be free. I am no inhabitant of a sphere of celestial light. Aware of my imperfections, conscious that I have an eternity of growth before me, I can say to you at this moment that I am happy. The happiness is not final, nor will it be complete until you, my friends, shall clasp hands beside me in the world that I inhabit; nor will it be complete, then, until we have passed through many spheres and states of spiritual growth and the higher accomplishment of knowledge and truth. But if to be released from years, and especially months of suffering; if to be freed from consciousness of increasing infirmities of physical life; if to find more than real the fact of spiritual existence that had been demonstrated to my earthly mind and sensation; if to be able to return and speak through many channels that are ever open to me, and to many minds and hearts that ever gladly receive me; if to receive from those who are above me wisest counsel and tenderest care, the love that is clothed in charity, the truth that, while it pierces me, still exalts and uplifts; if to find the promises of years, that my own imperfections had well-nigh broken, fulfilled and realized, and to find the promise that this realization is to be still higher and greater, is happiness, then at this moment I am happy—happy in the life of the spirit, happy in its activities and usefulness, happy in ministering to other spirits who do not know of this light as you at this moment know it, happy in receiving from spiritual teachers such knowledge as will enable me to carry forward the work that, with all my faults of manner, you know was nearest and dearest to my heart—the work of disrobing death of its terror and robbing creed and dogma of their slavery and sting. Fearless now as then, my escutcheon may bear loss of aggression and antagonism; nor would you expect through this channel, nor could I speak here at this hour if the rougher edges and sharper points of my human nature had not been worn off by the sufferings which antedated my birth into spirit-life, by the gentle charities of those who covered my every fault with their kind consideration, and left me alone to overcome them, until I could discover within myself that the blemishes of earthly existence were wearing themselves away beneath the very benignity of their kindness and charity.
I speak to you, my friends, freely of my faults. No spirit can enter the world of souls robbed of the mortal form and disrobed of any outward deceit that might have been within, without knowing that spirit reveals itself in the spiritual countenance. I wore not the blemishes of age nor of disease, but I did wear the blemishes of my spirit. Whatever was unworthy within me, whatever my life had yielded that did not belong to the highest that was mine, whatever there was of outward passion, there was certainly honesty of purpose, devotion to conviction, and a desire to benefit others in my feeble way. That consciousness abides with me now. I speak to you now not as one who has the power to benefit you much, but as one who has the power to give assurance of the life that is mutually yours and mine—mine by experience at this day; yours, by promise and prophecy and conviction, when your earthly life is fulfilled.
Spiritualism taught me that every human being is a spirit, and lives in the spiritual world. Now, in this life, I have learned that lesson anew. You are each in your spirit-world. It is fashioned by yourselves. Your thoughts and deeds form your surroundings. They shape the images of your spirit-home, acting upon the subtler substances of spirit-life and the more occult forces of spiritual being. You are at this moment forming your habitation. Mine was formed. There were many rough and rugged places I would gladly have obliterated; there were many blemishes I would gladly have concealed; there were many shadows that I would fain have had illumined by some gentler and milder presence; but in its roughness and ruggedness the picture was at least mine. No priest had carved for me those rocky walls and splendid outlooks toward the spirit-world. No one had chained me down to the narrow limits of individual salvation. If I was not saved, I was not alone. My heaven was not for me alone, for thousands of beings, some of whom I had known and many of whom you knew, thronged around to greet me, and clasped my hand as a friend and beckoned me to their spiritual abodes. For my part, I had a home. It was fashioned on one side of the rocks and caves that had shaped the somewhat imperfect intention of my life; on the other was a garden, not laid out with utmost perfection, but beautified here and there with the very choicest flowers; and when I had finished gazing upon this structure, that looked for all the world just like me, only it was in rocks and caves and trees, instead of a human form, I turned to the gentler picture and found the garden consisted of whatever deed or word of kindness, unregarded by me in memory, had wrought its work in my life. I found there small flowers that were blossoms of charity; I found paths and winding ways that led to some spirit whom I had unconsciously aided; I found lilies that were aspirations, and thoughts of my mind oftentimes not accomplished but sincerely intended, and these were set there as portions of my life-record; I found a shining stream that seemed sparkling with the brightest waters, flowing down beside the garden near which was my home—a beautiful structure; a structure like that which I would have formed had my earthly life and means been equal to it, and in which were those to whom I would have bestowed such a gift had it been within my province when they were in earthly life. And this home had its secret place, from which were concealed and hidden the faults for which I most censured myself. The very things which I found in myself to condemn were swept away utterly, and there was no reminder of them within all this beautiful abode. It is not fashioned of any substance known on earth, but has the appearance of substances familiar to me: the carved wood, the plain walls, the floor with a soft surface, which resembles the fabrics and substances of earth, but which are attracted rather than grown. I am told by those familiar with spiritual science that those fabrics are attracted by our own thoughts, and that we manufacture in spirit the imitation of earthly things by the aggregation of substances. I do not know the process, but this I know—that my home seems complete; and yet each time a new idea is awakened in my mind, I find a new apartment there, as if it had been created by the birth of the idea.
I have met in spirit-life with many familiar forms—both those who sympathized and those who did not sympathize with me in this spiritual movement. In the instance of those who sympathized with me, there seemed preparations to meet me. In the instance of those who did not sympathize, yet who knew me personally, like Prof. Fenton(?) of Harvard College, there was surprise at the recognition and confession of my being right and of his being mistaken; and although he was greater than I in earthly knowledge and endowments, the one fact of my knowledge of spiritual truth seemed for the time to make me capable of being his teacher. You would smile at this, and so would I, but I knew a truth worth all of his learning. I had knowledge, and he had scarcely faith, he told me, though this was not admitted while on earth. Having this possession, it atoned for many deficiencies in the cultivation of mind; it atoned for many deficiencies in the expressions of earthly feeling. Every form takes here the shape of the perfection of the thought. If I have a thought that is imperfect upon any subject, that which I would do in that direction fails. If I have a thought that is complete, as a desire to do good, a generous impulse of charity and ministration to others, like what I am doing at this moment, that has its origin in a perfectly formed wish and desire, it is instantly expressed around me; and at this moment in my spirit-home the words or thoughts spoken to you here are conveyed to every spirit inhabiting that sphere, though they may not be personally present in this place. Every thought also takes expression in some form that resembles it. I mean by this, as the symbolism of a flower. If I have a thought of purity, I not only express that to you in language, but it expresses itself in the language of form within my abode, and the garden of life becomes in this manner peopled with flowers, and the symbols of existence become in this manner the language of the soul, if I would send to a friend a message that I cannot bear in person and cannot be the direct instrument of imparting, that message takes the form of a bird; and this interprets to you the ancient symbol, I am told, of the dove, which signified message, and consequently the spirit that descended in the form of a dove at the baptism of Christ by John was the form of a message that came out of heaven. I give you this to show you the manner in which forms exist. I am told they do not have—nor do I perceive them to have—the same kind of generic growth that they do in earthly life; but they are nevertheless real forms to me, and every need of my life is responded to by the forms around me and the objects that I come in contact with, or the spirits who are my companions and friends. I do not say this to differ from any spirit who has spoken through any medium. I say it only to prove and show to you that different spirits have different spheres and experiences, and that I am not yet aware of being beyond the necessity of form, of expression, of contact, in the usual ways of life. By this I mean that I shake hands when I meet my spirit-friends; by this I mean that we speak to one another. Whether that consciousness or sound would be audible to you, is another question. It is audible to me. I hear it with my spirit-ears. I see with my eyes, I touch with my hands, I walk with my feet on spirit-ground. When I am here I float, because the spirit-substance is not attracted by specific gravity to the earth. I do not need to walk on the earth, although I can do so, and the law that governs the usual attraction of bodies does not govern me in my spirit-body, because I can go wherever I will to go: and you do this, excepting that you walk upon earth instead of above it. The atmosphere that you breathe is about dense enough for a spirit-form to walk upon, and that walking is not discoverable to you because you are on the opaque side of it instead of on the transparent side. A spirit perceives other spirits walking the earth, and this is why many mediums perceive spirits walking upon other planets that do not in any way correspond with the inhabitants of those planets; they see the outer spiritual atmosphere, and not the real planetary structure and organic bodies. To a spirit, this world would be peopled not simply by human beings walking the earth, but by spiritual beings, embodied and disembodied; the embodied human beings walking the earth in physical forms, the disembodied beings walking the earthly atmosphere in spiritual forms. I approach you with my spirit-form, I touch you with my spirit-hand, I look upon you with my spirit-eyes, and I see both your physical and your spiritual forms as I do so. I see your spirit-forms more distinctly than your physical, although I see your physical forms from the inward rather than the outward standpoint. I mean by this, they are transparent to me; and were I to prescribe for you now, with the knowledge that the spirit can have and the perception of the spirit, I could discover the causes of disease, because the physical body would be transparent to me. This explains what I knew in theory, but had not experienced before—the law of clairvoyance. The clairvoyant sees not only the physical or surface structure, but also the interior physical structure and the spiritual causes of life. If there is sufficient knowledge to give expression to what the clairvoyant sees, there is no reason why disease may not only be seen, but a proper and efficient method of removing disease clearly discovered.
This brings me to another point—a subject in which I was very much interested while in earthly life—and that is spirit-healing, or healing by magnetism and clairvoyance, instead of by the remedies prescribed by earthly knowledge. Long ago the conviction took possession of my mind that the real sources of knowledge of disease must be through clairvoyance; the conviction took possession of my mind that the real sources of cure were through magnetic or spirit-power. Whatever medicines are prescribed by spirits, they are prescribed as a vehicle for magnetism, not as sources of remedy; and I find the cause of this to be that even the thought contained in a certain remedy or accompanying it, bears greater power than the drug itself, and that the [attrition?] of spirit-power can be conveyed not simply by regular contact, but by lines of magnetic vibration that reach from the person or from the spirit to the subject or the patient. This would be a most interesting subject for my discourse had I sufficient time, and were I not well aware that thoughts will crowd upon me of more importance than this. But that which you most desire to know, that which you have the greatest difficulty in obtaining, and that upon which there is such variety of statement from the spirit-world, is the subject which I wish most to speak upon—I mean as to the objective forms in spirit-life. To me the spirit-world is just as real, is just as objective, as were the forms of earth. There is growth, not organic, but by aggregation. There is water, there are trees, and there are beautiful or other scenes. The scenery, however, is, I am quite aware, the result of our own condition. There are no mountains or valleys or streams waiting for us, excepting those that are the emanations from our earthly life, and these shape themselves in the spiritual strata above us, to receive us when we come. These forms our spirit friends alter according to their power and adaptation, and may clothe them with their own beauty, which we can readily discern when we enter there. Supposing I build a house, I fashion it according to my own taste, and some one—wife, or friend, or sister—passes into that dwelling and hangs here a flower and there some drapery. I at once exclaim when I pass into the dwelling, “This is some of your work; I know it is not mine!” So in our spirit-homes what we have done ourselves we easily recognize. The walls are formed in their barrenness or jaggedness, in their beauty and perfection as the result of our lives; but whatever another hand has done to embellish or beautify or to give us as a token of their appreciation, we recognize as theirs. So our friends are literally woven into the walls of our dwellings and have their places in our gardens. We know whose hand might plant a favorite tree, we know whose gentle hand might plant a lily, and our thoughts of those friends fashion the gardens, while their thoughts of us fashion the flowers within those gardens.
Not sufficiently poetical, like the spirit “Ouina,” not sufficiently profound, like those who speak through this instrument, I cannot clothe my speech in the language which will adequately convey to you what I feel; but the spirit-life is a beautiful land, a land of reality, the home of the affections, and whatever is most exalted and noblest within us. The baser part dies away gradually, having nothing to feed upon, nor is it encouraged in spirit-life by any abject service, to selfishness or blind following of the God Mammon. Thank God, I was not sordid, and this releases me from many bonds that I see around others who, less fortunate than myself in knowledge of spirit-life, and perhaps less fortunately endowed in that direction, were models of propriety and piety on earth. Chained by the golden god to earth, they still many of them worship at its shrine and follow in the weary wake of those who delve for gold. Today, upon the shafts in the higher kingdom, the mechanism is busy grinding out the pure ore of spiritual life. Happy are they who, having shares in this, consider it the highest treasure and the chosen object of their lives.
My friends, I bless you for this hour! I thank you for this silence and attention. It is a great boon. My spirit would burst could I not unburden it here. Take with you my blessing. If you have thought of me kindly, do so still. If you have thought of me unkindly, remember, the spirit-world is the equalizer, and that your fault and my fault are merged in the perfection of that life which conquers with charity and unfolds with love and truth forever. Nor is my spirit-home far away. It is enshrined for the time near to the earthly life. I partake of your joys and sorrows, and I send to each one of you my heartfelt greeting, and to one and all I would breathe a word of kindness and love; let it be spoken in all truth and sincerity. My chiefest passport to the heavenly kingdom was by that kindness and charity. I bless you for it.
There is no pain in dying. It is as the ebbing of a tide; as the flowing away of a stream; as the passing out of daylight into twilight; as the coming on of autumn sunsets, wherein the whole of the western sky is flooded with a glow of light. And yet it is a wonderful surprise, even to one who is accustomed to think of a future state while on earth; to one whose mind has been carefully trained in all the schools of thought concerning immortality; to one whose religion and intellectual conviction both hinge with absolute certainty on the spiritual state. To find oneself floating out from the fastnesses of time into the immeasurable space of eternity is such a matchless experience that only those who pass through the portal of death can understand.
The greatest surprise of all is that you feel the gliding away of human things without a pang, or regret, or grief, or pain—feel that pain itself is departed, and that a pure, ineffable flood is coming to you just across the harbors bow. The loosening of the human affections, the hurt that comes to the heart when you hear the sob of loved ones close beside you, and cannot reply, is overbalanced by the thrill that accompanies this loosening of the mortal tie, and you feel glad of death even while it is upon you. One can not understand, unless one has passed to mountain heights and seen the glory of the sun rise far out upon the sea as the sun suddenly comes up, tipping for the moment, the waves with crimson and gold, and then rise in full glory, as though night had never been there.
The realism of life besets one continually, and one longs to drag the mortal part into the immortal world, the shell into pinions, the root and germ into the flower.
One forgets that to every stage of life there is preparation and growth, and it is as though one wished to take their baby garments with them and wear them in manhood. We cling to the rags of clay, we cling to the fastenings of time; the moorings of the senses beset us here and gird us round about. Oh, what a sublime thing it is to feel suddenly grown to full manhood; those barriers broken, the bonds of sense dispersed: to know that oneself is every inch alive, and to feel not only all present consciousness but all past consciousness, and I might say all future consciousness, crowds upon you.
The greatest wonder of all is that everything in material life remains the same, but transfigured; that all sensation and consciousness grows more and more palpable, until the very heartbeats of one’s friends are audible as the spirit is passing away. As an over-strung instrument responds to every sound, so the consciousness of the departing one, as you term it, is more and more exhilarated, until the very thought which you think becomes palpable to the one who is not dying, but about to be born. You stand in the presence of death;—to you it is a receding wave. In my mortal past I have stood there many times, watching with questioning mind the receding wave of life and the passing from the mortal to the immortal, and ere I knew the great splendor of spiritual truth I watched with sadness, with regret, with indefinable doubt and horror, the thing men call death; but in the greater measure of late manhood, and in the full strength and power of the last years of life, I knew of spiritual existence, but I did not conceive what it could be like.
If you have inhaled the perfume of a flower, but have never seen one; if you have read musical notes, but have never heard them expressed; if you have dreamed a dream of loveliness, but never saw it embodied or impersonated; if you have thought of love but never loved, you can then imagine what the mortal state is compared to the immortal; awake, alive, active, the dull lethargy of pain and suffering departing as with a breath, and the strong strength of active life, with its full vigor, surging above, around, beneath; the ineffable rest floating out into an infinity of certainty, while all material things, save love and consciousness, seemed evanescent—this was the experience. I could feel all thoughts of those who stood near me; I could contemplate the mind and heart wrung with bodily anguish, but glad for me, for the release. I could hear my friends thinking afar off: “This is now about the time that he must go;” and when the news spread with electric speed, I could hear them say: “One more worker is gone,” though I knew thousands of miles intervened between them and where my body was. I could hear my friends think the world over. There were silent heart-throbs answering to my life, and the ineffable questioning of what he is doing now that would rise to the lips of those who heard afar off that the mortal frame had ceased to breathe.
Oh, but the quickening of the spirit! I cannot tell you what it is like. It is like a symphony compared to one note; like an oratorio compared to the simplest melody; like the poem of Dante, like the ineffable Milton, like the crowning light of Shakespeare, all-pervading and all-glorious; like love itself, that vanquishes the night of time and pain and death. Myself was before me; my thoughts, all of past life, were impersonated. Everything I had done or thought came before me in form, in beauty, or deformity. Children, the waifs of my fancy, supposed to have been conjured out of the teeming brain of mortal life, were before me in reality; characters that I had supposed purely ideal and imaginative, drawn with fanciful pen and sent forth to illustrate a moral principle, came up before me as living realities, saying: “I was the one of whom you wrote; I was the spirit inspiring such and such a thought,” and every crowded fancy became impersonated, until, like little people seen in fairy visions, all ideals were realized, and I laughed with these children of my fancy to find them so real, standing around me, claiming me for their spiritual parent and saying they were mine forever.
Could you believe this? It is no imagination, but a reality, that those of whom we write, and of whom poets weave solemn and grand songs, that fairies that are pictured in visions for children to read, become realities in spirit life, and are clothed with spiritual substance, peopling all the air with rich and varied images. Love itself, most populous of the peopled cities of the skies, and winged deities of unsurpassing splendor, came thronging around one as one awakes from the dream of life. Loves told long ago, and seemingly half buried beneath the withering hopes of manhood, came up and claimed again their recognition. Friendship, that in the crowded and busy mart of human things had been forgotten, well nigh, came up again as a living image and asked for its own return. All love survives, and how it peoples the space that elsewhere would seem infinite and void!
I cannot think what death would be to him who has never thought a truth or dreamed a noble thing for humanity, or loved any one. I am told there are barren wastes in human souls devoid of love. I am told there are wildernesses in spirit-life devoid of flowers and children’s faces and sweet smiles, of grateful acknowledgment from those whom one tried to succor and redeem in outward life. I am told this, but I cannot think what the spirit would be without the peopled cities of the imagination; I cannot think what it would be without the created images of thought. Mine, crude as they were, unbeautiful as they seemed in the dear light of the spirit, dimmed somewhat by the faults and failings and fallacies of my material nature, seemed very dear to me; and this city is awake; its peopled habitation is my new world. I did not pass through space to find them; I did go to a distant planet. Space came to me, and was at once inhabited.
I saw all friends of the earthly life as really as I saw them before passing away, but from a different vision. I saw them afar off, on the line of light of memory. I saw them more clearly because I saw their spirits—this friendship that I had valued too little, another that I had valued too much; this mind that seemed a brilliant and shining light through the human lens grew, perhaps, less brilliant, while another that I had scarcely recognized suddenly loomed up before me as a burning, shining planet.
In the spirit all things become real. We are no longer masked by selfish desires and impulses; we see things without the tinge of the external body. Even the material brain loses its power to delude us; we are no longer sophists. There is nothing upon which sophism can weave its web or tissue of falsities. All things are made clear. We are spontaneous; we grew to become what our thought is, and our life and light are made beautiful by the grandeur of the image that we have builded for humanity. Upon a thin and slender foundation of goodness we rear the matchless fabric of immortality, and eliminate all faults, of which we instantly become more aware than in material life.
I cannot veil from you the fact that it must be to him who has no conception of the immortal state a disappointment. The realistic mind of earth will find things so much more real in the spiritual state that his shadows will vanish, and then for the time he is lost. I was grateful for that birth out of materialism that gave me consciousness of spiritual life. I was grateful for that slight touch of fancy that could weave around human things the splendor of great thought for humanity. I know now why I have ineffable hope for every race beneath the sun, because all races are peopled from the skies. I now know why I had every hope for the uplifting of every child of earth to the highest splendor. I now know why womankind forever appealed to me with mute lips and longing eyes to be released and redeemed from the thraldom of the subtle chain that ages have woven around her—because out of the spiritual firmament the angel of life is dual, and man and woman are fashioned in the image of God. I now know why every secret hope, whether veiled within the skin of the African, or bound down by the narrow limits of Oriental custom, or veiled in the red man, appeal to me as belonging to somewhat beyond what matter and man had bestowed—because of the spiritual life that foretells everything, makes speechless the wrongs of the nations—that they may rise one day in magnificence and be redressed through the power of the spirit. I now know why the world of politics, of struggles for Mammon, of all things that men pursue for gain, had no allurements for me, not because I was wiser or better, but because I was chosen to do some other thing, and that other thing was to hope always ineffably and sublimely that out of the darkness light would come, and out of the seeming evils and intricate threads of human existence there would rise the blessed humanity of the future.
Coming toward me, space seemed filled with all I had hoped and prophesied of, and in the very antechamber which I entered immediately after death I could see so much of eternity that it would take mortal breath away, as it almost did the breath of the spirit. There was no low, dim twilight. There was no simple fading of existence and inanition. There was no uncertainty; there was no bewilderment; there was no pausing, as if in sleep, upon the threshold of that immortal state, while tender hands would prepare, as they sometimes do, the immortal state. Suddenly, and with full power, I sprang upright, and was aware immediately of being a form, a being whose intensity pervaded and thrilled me, until I seemed a part of all the universe around, a form that was so like the form that lay at my feet that I was startled at the resemblance, save that one was shadowy, pale, and wan with disease, and suffering, and labour, and the other was more than crowned with the rigor of youth and manhood, so like myself that I was fain to put away one form, so distressing is it to see one’s own very resemblance so near; and as one has sometimes seen oneself in a mirror and wondered who it could be, so I gazed upon the form and I considered the reality and wondered for an instant which would endure; but as that was already the shadow, as no part of the individual me remained; as there was not even breath, nor warmth, nor coloring; as it was really but the shadow, I was glad when it was laid away out of earthly and human sight, since it could no longer mock the eyes of the loved ones; and all the while I was there with the great longing of my heart, with the enfolding arms and the love that spoke audibly to the spiritual ear, yet they did not hear. To talk forever to one’s loved ones and not be heard were insufferable. To think forever in spirit toward those who are left behind and find no response would drive me mad. I do not know what those spirits do whose friends put them away in the tomb or in heaven and never let them talk to them. If I were such a spirit, day and night I would haunt the chambers of their souls; I would speak out from the silence of the air and compel them to hear. But my friends do not do this. Already I have spoken elsewhere; already reported myself, but my word must here be received. I must speak until the ears of the spirit shall hear, until the quickened understanding of the human brain shall know what a measureless thing is death, Until you shall know that enfolds you, encompasses you, girds you round about, encircles you with its life-giving arms, for the very thing that men call death is that which makes life endurable, and fills you with the possibilities of being. But for those who were dead to outward life, who existed in the air above me and in my consciousness, I had no peopled fancies of brain, no thought of philosophy, no aspiring hope; but for those whom you call dead your days and nights would be void of ambition; you would have no mental air to breathe; the higher strata of existence would be cut off; the supersensuous nature would be starved; you would be stifled and famished in the prison-house, and the little feeble spark of life would die out, leaving the bodies shriven, shrunken, lifeless automatons. But for that which you call death, that vital breath, that living instance of being, that sheltering and protecting power, that harmony and splendor of all things, you were not here this night; there would be nothing to move you here; the spiritual impulses of the universe would be forgotten; there would be no fountains of inspiration, no thought of religion, no touchstone to immortality. Men are played upon by spiritual beings as harps by the wind. They hear the sound but they do not know the source, and as the red man turns his ear toward the pine trees, listening to the solemn music, and thinking it the voice of the Infinite, or of those who have gone to the hunting-ground afar off, so when you hear this solemn music in the air above you, you wonder what it is and turn away to your daily task, forgetting that without it you were lifeless, cold, and dumb.
I am here to testify to death. As I once testified to humanity, as feebly and faintly as one human being might who hoped for the best and strove always to find the truth, so now with a greater strength, and with this born not alone of thought but of being, I am here to testify of death. It is the living splendor of the universe. Without it there is no spring time blossom; without it there is no rare transmutation of things that changes night into day; without it there is rid struggling of the atom toward diviner possibilities of being; without it there is no removal of the relentless curse of nature, which is a hardened form, and dull tune, and space, and sense. Without it the ebb and flow of human affairs would become solidified and crystallized, and man today would be petrified the midst of all his sin and crime, forever to remain a solemn mockery in the great book of eternity. Without death you could never rid yourselves of your errors; without it you could not grow into diviner manhood and womanhood. Without it love would be voiceless—there would be no clasping, of immortal hands, and no tremblings of immortal thoughts along the corridors of being. Without it all life would be meaningless, for there would be no love; you would be immured in sepulchers; your bodily existence would be a bane and mockery. The breath of the spirit taken away, there could be no time and no eternity.
In the midst of this solemn splendor, where all of life throngs around one, and where that which is basest and meanest departs and slinks away into the shadows, fain would hide itself from the light of the surpassing power of the spirit—in the midst of this splendor, where every good thing survives and every base thing perishes by its own inactivity and inanition, where gradually the shadows, the infirmities, of time and the deformities of sense give place to the perfections of spirit and mind,—in the midst of this I testify that that which has come to me has come through death; I am transfigured; the being that was seen and known on earth is me; and I am more than this, I am all that I hoped to be, I am all that I aspired to be; I was not wicked nor sinful; I was imperfect as human beings usually are below, as they sometimes are, struggling for higher possibilities. But I am more than I dared to dream; I am better than I dared to hope; I am the humblest in the kingdom of the spirit, but I am greater than the greatest aspires to be. So are you unveiled from your mortal elements, the worst side of which reveals itself in human life, you become also transfigured; you are no longer the weaklings that you seem; humanity is no longer that which through time, and pain, and sense, bears the mocking image of the divine, but humanity becomes divine. Even the slave—I do not mean him who wears the shackles in form—but even the slave in soul; who comes cringing into the world of spirit by the gateway of death, even he who creeps fend crawls with terror toward the tomb; is greater in spirit than he seems, greater than you would dare to dream that he might be.
Oh, what a revelator is death! I Stand before you this night, not of you, but perceiving that which is highest and best in every soul, knowing that every thought and feeling and aspiration toward goodness has its prototype in splendor in the spiritual being; and I could show how to you your other selves; that which is the possession of your immortal part, its grand; as divine, as glorious as you dream, and the best of it is that death makes all this possible to be known; that it gives you the key to the temple of your own life, that there is but one other way that you can know it, and that way dimly; I mean by inspiration; I mean by spiritual perception; It was denied me to have the direct inspiration that many have; I was obliged to take the testimony of others largely; but when I know that there are those endowed with windows that look heavenward; and know that they cannot begin to see the glory that is mine, I wonder sometimes that they do not burst the barrier and be free. But the restraining hand of life is upon them, and the higher restraint of that wisdom that forbids the bursting of a bond until you have won your freedom. He who seeks to avoid any difficulty in life by hurrying into the world of spirit, finds the same impenetrable barrier before him, namely himself; he has not escaped, from himself, nor from any weakness that was within him. He must now meet it face to face; it comes nearer and nearer; it crowds upon him; he must overcome it in spirit as he failed to overcome it in earthly life.
Ah, do not think that death will lead you to escape any responsibilities. It brings you all your treasures; it yields to you all your possessions; it restores to you all your faded hopes; it gives back every blessed and good promise of life, but it will not relieve you from responsibility. These are yours; you inherit them; they belong to you as a part of the infinite plan, and sooner or later, in one world or another, in one state of being or another, you must meet and vanquish them, one by one.
Sublime is death! Beautiful is the gateway! Intense as is the rapture of the spirit when conscious of being, and of form, and of life, there is nothing to allure one to the neglect of any duty, or the fulfillment of any purpose, for your poverty of spirit is revealed by death, as is your riches, and you must bear the test which the divine scrutiny brings.
Again I encompass you with this life; again I stretch out the hands of my spirit in greeting to all who have known me; again I say that which I believed I know, that which I testified to is now mine; that which I bore evidence of through human intellect and brain, and such power as was given me, I now bear evidence of in the over sweeping and overwhelming power of spiritual existence. Through whatever brain I may best speak, in whatever form I may best manifest, I will come and speak to those on earth, to those whom I love; there is no need of the added voice; I must speak to their hearts in any way; they must hear my voice audibly in their souls; they must make room for me in their lives; for I should cry aloud and make them hear though they were in the midst of the thunders of Niagara. To the world there shall be a voice; not one, but many; not feeble and faint, as of one man crying in the wilderness, but the voice of multitudes, millions upon millions of souls speaking audibly by the gateway of life, and speaking to the hearts of humanity. You will hear them, they cry father; you will hear them, they cry mother, husband, wife, and child, and you pause in your daily career and wonder what voice resembles one long silent in death. I tell you they will crowd upon you until you must hear. They will speak to you until you cease to put them afar off: they will look into your eye from the spiritual world until you see that they live and recognize them; they will people your streets; they will image themselves in every form that is possible; they will manifest by signs and tokens to the senses; they will grapple with your understanding; they will make you aware of the philosophies of being; they will solve to you the mighty mysteries that you have put far from you and will not listen to; they will have you know that life, not death, is the destiny of man, and that the sweet thing you have named death is no longer noxious, dark and terrible, but the beauty of all existence, the crown of all being, the freedom of all slavery, the triumph of all vanquishment, the gateway beyond the walls of human limitations in which you live, leading to the celestial and eternal city where all are free in the light of their wisdom and love.
Oh, voiceless yet audible sounds! Oh, millions of souls that come thronging out of space! Ye speak with a sound more mighty than the surging of the sea, more vocal than the voice of the thunder of Niagara, more potent than the sweeping winds over myriads of forests, more divine than the rushing melodies of the many mighty masters attuning their harps in sublime oratorios of existence. Death and life are one, and these voices are the voices of your loved ones.
I was known upon earth as Epes Sargent.
“Then I saw through a glass darkly. Now it is face to face.”
This transposition of the words of the apostle is ever ringing in my thoughts. since the solemn change which you call death, but which I now have learned to call another birth. What this change implies, dear friends, no one can fully tell until each spirit has passed that solemn bound; but I must try, for the thoughts burn for utterance, and the spirit can not remain in its heavenly home unless some word reaches the earth and those who are left behind.
I found on awakening from mortal life that after the first shock of physical wounding, there was no hope of recovery, that the time which was spent in the attempt to restore the body in the healing of physicians, in the nursing of kind attendants and the loving care of friends, as well as the prayers of the nation, was but a preparation for my spiritual birth; that it was known there that I was to come, and that even my own spirit by a sort of double consciousness was aware of it. I struggled to live; I thought I must remain, but in those intervals of sleep and partial delirium of the senses my spirit held converse with spiritual beings about me, and they told me that I was coming. I will tell you more about this double consciousness a little later on, for it is a significant feature of our wonderful existence. The period, as I say, spent in attempting to restore the body, was to me a period of spiritual training and preparation for birth, and when the hour of dissolution came, the full flood of consciousness dawned upon my spirit, as well as upon the obscured senses, that I must pass away, that the hour had come. Up to that moment I expected to recover and fill the duties appointed to me.
With great joy, with humility and gratitude, I now come to tell you what has happened to me since that time. When that which is called death came I seemed for an instant to be crowded into a narrow tunnel; from behind, the past seemed crowding upon me, and before me was the future, and I alone filled the tunnel. I thought the past and the future must meet, and must pass one another. Would I be crushed in them? There was no sensation, but it seemed a sublime consciousness that I was to be annihilated between these two forces that were pressing and crowding upon me. I never can describe it in words. It was the supreme moment of being; greater than birth, greater than death, greater than the fulfillment of manhood was this consciousness. I was to be crushed, and as one feels when standing on the verge of Niagara, that his life is valueless compared to its vastness, or as some feel at the approach of a mighty engine that they would fain lay down their lives in the presence of such power, so did I feel when from the past the thronging memories of an existence freighted sometimes with imperfection, but greatly with joy, crowded upon me, to be remembered; and when from the future the power and glory, and vastness of a dawning light seemed to break upon me.
Many times I remember that during my sickness I had seemed to rise as one beneath the ocean might rise, and see the morning breaking afar off. Then some loving and tender care of ministration, of physician, of prayer of friends, would call me back again, and I was submerged in the waves of mortal life. Now I was impelled. The past came up with a mighty rush, and, pressing me forward, I was forced into the world of spirits, and there I stood, bewildered it is true, but so utterly conscious that I would have called on my regular attendants to behold the scene that was before me. I did call, but they did not hear me. Death did not divide us, but I realised then that time and sensation did, and that they were in the ocean and I had risen above it. Then this past of which I speak came crowding upon me—all the scenes of my boyhood, my youth, my manhood, the love, the hope, the aspiration, the joy, my mother’s face, the gleaming light of every countenance; these all in retrospect came before me. But other faces came that I remembered not—that I had never seen on earth. But one face at the mouth of the tunnel, from which I seemed to emerge, shone benign and tender, fair and loving. It was the face of Abraham Lincoln. I could not mistake it. There it was in the full light of a spiritual grandeur that I cannot describe, but with every lineament perfect, with every expression natural, only a transparent glow that made me feel as though I were in the presence of an angel, though I recognized the countenance of my friend. With hands extended, with both arms extended, he received me, saying “I knew you were coming; you are welcome.”And then my father, whose presence had been denied me on earth, came and greeted me. I do not know, or I did not know then, how I knew it was my father, but from the instant that I saw his benign face I named him father, and he named me son. Other faces that seemed equally familiar, though I had no knowledge where and when I had seen them, came out to greet me. I named them variously, brother, and friend, and relative, whom I had never met in earth-life, yet I knew them.
And just here let me speak of that double consciousness to which I referred but lately. I found that I had known them. I said to my friend and guide, Mr. Lincoln: “Why is it that, never having seen or remembered my father, never having seen many of these friends in earth-life, I know who they are? He said, smilingly: “You will be surprised at many scenes that will greet you in spirit-life. We lead a double life upon the earth; one is the outward life of the senses, the other is the life of dreams. Our dreams prove, after all, to be the greatest realities, for in sleep, oftentimes, when not disturbed by material cares, the spirit meets and holds converse with departed friends. You will find many scenes familiar to you, and many thoughts that you have held in waking hours you will trace to the land of the spirit.”
Oh how wonderful it seemed! Then I thought I had just awakened from a dream, and that earthly life was a sleep, and that I was restored to my natural senses, and yet I could but remember the long, late struggle for being, how the nation by its united voice placed me in the position of being its servant, how I had accepted that high trust with becoming humility and gratitude, but fear lest I should not fill the lofty responsibility, and how, with a sudden plunge, that office was snatched from my duties of life, and I was prostrate, struggling for life in a sea of pain and uncertainty. The voice of my wife, the tender ministrations of my attendants, the sound of consulting physicians, the uncertainty, the doubt, the cheerfulness—all this came back to me, and yet I could not relieve myself from the joy of the feeling that I had awakened from a dream, and that however pleasant the dream might be, that unto which I had awakened was a greater joy. You will wonder at this, but I cannot explain to you how surpassingly great it seems to be born again; how without doubt in the Father’s love, and with the consciousness that there is in the spiritual life a power that elevates, with perfect certainty of a future state. I still had no adequate consciousness of what that state might mean on the full awakening of the spirit. I cannot convey it to you now. I can only tell you it was a noonday morning of existence, a light added to a light, a joy blossoming to a fuller joy, a cluster of stars where there had been but one before.
I passed on among other friends. There were familiar scenes around me everywhere, beautiful landscapes, bits of loveliness fashioned of my childhood’s dreams, fine stretches of country that I had seen in my earthly life and wished to perpetuate but had not the hand of an artist—all beautiful sights that I had desired to preserve in my youth and manhood, the affections of my heart, the hopes, the ambitions—the imperfections too; and the more I advanced into this beautiful land, for land it seemed to be, though transparent as the rainbow, clear as the atmosphere—the more I advanced the more did I seem inadequate to appropriate, to enjoy; the more did I feel the insignificance of my thoughts, and yet, as an eager child incapable of comprehending the vastness that is around it, I pressed forward ever to new scenes, new sights, new forms, and each form held the countenance of some one I had known and loved, and some one whom I had loved and not known, invisibly, impalpably loved. The ties of mind and spirit drew them to me; and these received me also into the kingdom. How long it lasted I do not know, but I seemed to pass on and on, meeting with minds whom I had known in public life, meeting with many whom the nation has named greatest and highest—but whom I felt I could not approach—meeting with these, all in kindness, and they received me with no surprise; they seemed to have known that I was coming; they received me gladly, but there was no display, no ostentation, no ceremony, no formal greeting; it was the same as if I had walked up to my mother’s door and seen her smile in the sunlight, waiting at eventide to receive her boy. There was no greater or loftier endeavor than this—than that they loved me and seemed to know that I was coming, and each had a kind word of welcome. I felt so at home, so humiliated, so glad, so full of pride and joy, that I was fain to go and bring my loved ones there. Then came the recollection that I was among the dead, and they were among the living. What is it to live, if it shuts out for the full period of man’s life that which I saw then? What is it to live, if it be to struggle on through forty or fifty years of manhood without knowing that there are such scenes near and around? What is it to live, if, as a brazen dome, clouded on the earth side, it shuts in the glory of the spiritual state? And yet my loved ones were among the living, and I was supposed to be among the dead. I heard the sound of bells tolling. It came to me as sounds from beneath the ocean might come—a dull thud engulfed by waves. I heard waves washing upon the shore, the waves of the nation’s sympathy. I do not mean the words of praise spoken in high places. These are common enough; they belong to man’s natural adulation of man. But I mean the words and thoughts of sympathy that you extended to those in sorrow—surging, surging, nearer and nearer, like the approach of a great solemn sea, a sobbing sea, it came up and engulfed me round about; it came and broke in spray of tears over my head; and in the midst I heard many guns, and then suddenly I was in the midst of the funeral train, I heard no sounds of martial music, I did not see the crowds that thronged the streets; I did not even see the catafalque, but I only saw the forms and heard the sobs of those who loved me. I could tell; there was no disguise. Only those who loved me were seen and known at that hour, not the masses moving carelessly, many wearing their sorrow outwardly because they must, but all giving more than in my mortal capacity I deserved; still I felt the heart-beats of those who loved me and heard their tears fall, and would have raised my voice—did raise it, but it could not be heard. Then again, I said to myself and to my friend, who did not leave me then: “Am I in the world of the living or the dead? Why do they not hear me when I speak? Why will they not answer when I console? What is it that divides us?” And again the benign countenance beamed as an angel, and he answered: “It is time and sense that divide you. Spirit lives, but the body is the veil between you and them —their mortal bodies.” Oh, how I tried to penetrate that veil! How I tried to make my voice louder than the sound of music, louder than the trumpet’s tongue, louder than all the words that were spoken, tender enough, kind enough, sympathetic enough; but who would break the silence, and tell them that I was there! There was no one; and if he had, I find he would have been thought a madman. Doubtless these words tonight, all-important as they are to my spirit panting for utterance, and striving to reach those whom I love, and who care for me, will fall as the utterance of an enthusiast, while idle words of vain pomp and show will go solemnly forth, blazoned to the nation as truth. Oh, but there may come a time, there must—when that which I know now shall be revealed to all, when you shall see and hear as I see and hear, and when with your friends who are dead close beside you, and no voice to speak, no thought to bid them welcome, you will remember what I have said, and not press them far off with greet grief, with great sorrow, or complaining.
The spirit of the nation I speak to tonight—I know that its form will be preserved. I know that no hand shall come between you and its law, its harmony, its furtherance of justice. I know that the nation will be preserved, That is nothing. It is great in the sight of man. But to know this other nation, this greater and vaster one; to know Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln,—all are here; to feel the clasp of their right hand and the fellowship of their living hearts and minds; to be ushered into the presence and companionship of their minds and feel yourself a worm—this is what I feel. Can you realize, my friends, that it is but a slight [ struggle, the stoppage of ] a single valve of the heart, and the spirit is set free into this immortal presence? Can you realize that all of your loved ones are there where I am, where I must live? And I must not know this life that has come to me, unless I can make you know it also—I mean you of the earth to whom I am dear and, near, whatever may be your names. My mother, O my mother! You, who have watched and guarded me in my tender years; you who have sustained me in youth; gently, admiringly, kindly leading and guiding; you who have filled the place of both parents with the thronging cares around you of maturer life, and blessed, the crowning years of manhood upon your children: you who have watched that growth of manhood extend to what you thought was a loftier usefulness, and been glad with every joy and sympathizing with every sorrow; you who now so lately cried out for me—and I was there, though you knew it not,—my mother, in that hour of solemn import, when a nation’s voice sustained and uplifted with glad acclaim, I turned to you for blessing, and gave you the first praise; and now, uplifted to a higher state, crowned with a loftier manhood, O mother, will you not receive me? I touch your brow, and you know it not. I place the lily of my love upon your heart; do you not feel me?
My wife, whom I heard cry even in the light of that new home, silent, with no loud voice, but with the cry of the spirit, that seemed to say: “We are separated forever until death shall take me hence,” Oh, do you not know I am with you? No day has passed, no interval of hours, that I have not been near. My home is there in the home of the earth-life. Above it must be reared my spiritual temple; around it must hover the atmosphere of my heavenly home. Do you not know that I am there? My daughter, speak to me! The light of your tearful eyes, as a flower wet with dew, shines on me in my new estate. Yours is not a crushed but only a bended spirit that will rise all the brighter for the tears; but do not feel that I am gone. My brave boys, too, I would sustain and strengthen. Pardon me if I refer to those already known to your hearts, but if I cannot breathe these words my spirit will burst its bonds somehow and come back to earth. Sustained and strengthened by my love, my heavenly home is at Mentor where the loved ones are; but it is extended as high as any spirit that knows and blesses me can dwell. All the way from that simple earthly dwelling to the spiritual vastness that now accompanies and surrounds me, is the breathing of the air of home, extended and enlarged, glorified and beautified.
Oh, nation, take off the black, and drape the walls with snowy brightness, if you would tell where I dwell; for I am not among the dead. The nation, if it chooses, shall hear from me; but those who are near and dear must hear my voice, must understand my presence, and in whatever hour and way that I can speak that word, or make it felt to those of my household, I will do so.
For your love and kindness, for the sympathy that I feel has brought me here—without which these broken utterances could not have been given—I most devotedly thank you. Volumes of the spirit remain unspoken, thousands of thoughts remain unuttered—clustering memories and prophecies, that will waken into loftier duties and higher fulfillment. Whatever sympathy and praise, whatever voice of encouragement has been given will sustain and uplift me to higher endeavors, though I know that I did not deserve it. I do not deceive myself for one moment. The circumstances, the time, the occasion, the tendency of human sympathy, is that which has upbuilded this thought within your heart. But this I do know—not great, not wise, not a statesman. not endowed with any of the great gifts that many would fain heap upon me, I was still the honest son of an honest republic, a devoted citizen of a community whose laws I prized beyond all praises, whose prosperity next to that of its spiritual growth I covet, and whose sympathy and prayers will help to bear me until I learn more fully the lessons of this higher council, where I sit and listen as the humblest among those who are wise, and great, and good, and who hold the nation’s welfare in their keeping. These praises and these tokens of sympathy, your reception of my presence here tonight, the thoughts that will follow me after this utterance, and the hope that, in some manner, these words may reach those with whom I lived on earth,—whom I also shall reach in a nearer way,—this will make more bright the glory of my spiritual birth, and bear me to greater endeavors in my heavenly home.
[The discourse was closed and the chairman made some announcements, when the medium again arose, and this was said:]
My friend and counsellor has admonished me that I had intended to utter one other thought. The newness of this method of speech may have made my utterance not so consecutive as usual. Another thought is to the nation, to the bar of justice, before which tribunal the poor maniac is now summoned. Will the nation remember SUMMUM JUS, SUMMA INJURIA, and strive in the presence of justice not to forget that mercy is her handmaiden. For my part, if the laws of the country declare that he must come into the world of spirits, I promise you, as my name on earth was James A. Garfield, that I will be the first to receive him in the spirit-world.
My Friends—Again I appear before you in this guise; again in response to your kind sympathy I speak words that if not valuable to you will certainly be so to my spirit. Imperfect as must be this form of utterance, difficult as it is to convey through another organism and brain the thought of the spirit, still, when one has no other channel of communion, and when this, by kind invitation of the spirit-band, is offered, I certainly would be more than spirit if I could refuse the word that burns for utterance. Since the last time that I addressed you here my spirit has grown more familiar with its new form of life, more accustomed to this form of communion, for many mediums have received visitations from me. Through every channel that it was possible I have given a word of greeting or utterance, that I might the more fully become possessed of the knowledge necessary to speak that which I shall learn in my spiritual home.
The first thought that came to me after death was as when one stands at the eventide upon some mountain, beholding the glory of the sunset sky, vistas of golden beauty opening before the vision, great crimson scrolls of light that one could only penetrate with the vision of Deity—all rolled in grandeur before me. The splendor was so great, the vastness so profound, that at first it seemed to dazzle the power of mind and thought; but there was quick reaction, and there then came that which corresponds to the fading away of the light. I mean by this that after the flush of the reception of friends, of the consciousness of being, possessing every faculty of mind and thought after this was fully assured to the awakened spiritual power, I felt the wave of retrospection. To one who has felt this in earth-life there comes no flattering response when the years of human life are recorded by the stern monitor, conscience.
And just here I wish to confess again that during that season of self-examination I was filled with an utmost regret that the opportunities afforded in the earthly life were not improved by me in searching for spiritual knowledge. Admonitions I had, direct messages and ministrations; healing power that I but little understood was given to restore me to health through kindly hands, and more than one message from the world of spirits, predicting that political preferment which it never entered my thought could be realized. Afterward there came also admonitions, and warnings, prophecies of the danger to human life in my own person, which I laughed at and threw aside as the idle dreamings of fanaticism. I am here to confess now to those friends, some of whom are here present, who endeavored to enlighten me concerning the power of spirits to communicate with mortals, that in that hour of retrospection I felt most keenly the lack of this knowledge, and I would have given more for the possession of the knowledge that it would have afforded me to speak with the world of spirits when on earth than all the honors that came to my earthly existence, crowned as they were with the full tide of the nation’s sympathy. And I speak thus respectfully and in full consideration of all the marks of sympathy and respect that came to me in the solemn hour of life and death. Now if I had that knowledge, the knowledge that some of my compeers had, I would give all the years of political life, all the years of training for success in earthly pursuits; for I find the lack of that knowledge is the one weakness of the spirit.
If my words shall avail to reach even a single heart that is here, whether he believes in the personality of this message or no, let him for the moment remember that the powers of the spirit are immortal; that these alone shall suffice when he casts aside his material dwelling; and though the spirit is builded of the fulfillments of duty, and though its strength is fashioned in doing that which for the moment and hour seems the highest and best, do not be self deceived as to what is highest and best. Remember that the spiritual part of man is the greater part; that its existence is eternal; that its blemishes you feel on entering the spiritual state, and that its strength constitutes the power of the spiritual world; and though feeling that, considering the weakness of human nature and the proneness to err, I had never wantonly injured a fellow-being, I felt the lack of the knowledge that I might have possessed, of the opportunities slighted, and of the overvaluing of those duties that after all might have been better performed had the spirit been fully aware of its immortal inheritance. This word in passing.
When this after-glow of the spiritual came again—the after-glow of sympathy from the world below—I then felt the vastness of the spiritual kingdom around and above. It was night, as far as the earth was concerned. That which was glorious and beautiful in the earthly life was dimmed by the change of death; only the light of love remained, and that was made more beautiful, and rested as a star along the horizon of mortal existence which was fading from my spiritual vision. Then came on the full depths of the vision of the night. It was no longer darkness, but sphere on sphere and star and world and system of splendor, one succeeding another; and in the midst of this a yearning arose in my mind, felt often when upon earth, to behold the founders of the nation, the republic, which, though it seemed smaller every instant compared to the vaster realm that I had entered, still had been the hope, the guiding light of earthly ambition and love, and I firmly believed (as I now believe) was the hope and guiding light of the nations toward liberty.
I was led into the council of the nation, and there were those who have ever governed wisely or unwisely according to their knowledge and condition. In the midst were three. I was pointed to these as having most to do in the formation of that wonderful declaration that fashioned the avenue for the liberty of our people, for the foundation of the government of our fathers—the elder Adams, Thomas Jefferson; but chiefly, and crowned with greater light and radiant with a more ancient splendor I saw the face and form of Thomas Paine, who wrote with hand of fire the wonderful declaration declaring the freedom of the people of the earth, the inheritance of human liberty. And as I gazed upon his countenance the long night that had separated him from the love of this people came up before me, and I said: “Who will roll the shadow away from the face of that spirit, who, loving man, therefore loved God?” And I know the shadow is being rolled away, and the people will remember in the midst of their liberties the bright thought, the wonderful genius, the surpassing splendor of this great mind.
I was not satisfied with this, but I was taken on. My guide, whom I mentioned previously [Lincoln], was still beside me; he bore me through council after council of those eminent in history, the wonderful geniuses of freedom in past time. Through France and England, raising up before me the councilors who had given just laws, the rulers who had been kind and humane, and those in humbler life who had served freedom all unacknowledged; to Rome, where now the shriveled empire sits half breathing and groping in darkness; to Rome, where but lately the dark night of the Romish church reigned with uninterrupted power and sway; to Rome, where from over the whole earth the signs of despotism were signally and distinctly revealed, and where one ban still sits brooding like a nightmare—the power of the Romish church today extending its influence over all the nations of Christendom—and I was told by those sitting in council that this would present the next great danger to the Republic. I did not think so when on earth; I do not know it now; but those wiser than I state this will be the struggle—religious liberty or religious slavery under the ban of a power that will call to its aid the benighted portion of every nation in Christendom. I could not but see that which was revealed, and I reveal it as it was given to me. I saw beyond this record, beyond the blood-stained fields of Christendom, beyond the terrors that have been graven upon the history of two thousand years by religious warfare, beyond the strivings of sectional policy, and the differences that have been introduced in local governments; I saw ancient Rome rise before the vision in splendor, and from it the patriot souls that went out when the great Romish nation was founded—the empire—that which constituted the glory of the world. And those who were numbered among these saviors were not the Caesars, were not the royal rulers, but those who spoke the words of truth and freedom, framing laws in secret chambers that were to give Rome the government of the world.
I saw Greece and the statesmen that gave to her the highest eminence among the nations of the earth—Solon, Lycurgus—grand, great constellations of greatness. And, still more ancient, I passed to the old cities of Egypt, where, rising before me, as reproduced in the spiritual state, were the wonderful cities that have perished from the face of the earth; and there in the midst I saw the one from whom were first designed all the liberties that have been the heritage of the nations of the earth since then—one grander, more sublime, more majestic in form than any whom your vision can picture or whom the eye of man can behold—yet reigning not by the right of king, nor of power or individual inheritance, but by the splendor of his surpassing greatness, whose influence is felt upon the nations of the earth, but who is unknown even by name; a ruler appointed for the political prosperity of nations in whom government is wisdom and justice is love; who I was told is the arbiter of the destinies of earth, and who with millions of spirits rules and governs the destinies of nations of men—statesmen who rise to do his bidding—and by scintillations from his sphere breathes words of eloquence and of patriotism among the nations of the earth. And far away, stretching in long corridors of light, or grouped around in constellations of beauty, were mighty minds, ancient in splendor and in thought, bearing the majesty of perennial youth, the glory of their own achievements, each crowned with the excellence of their own lives. In dim distances I saw outlines of other kingdoms, and far away a still brighter light that pointed to more ancient splendor, whose countenance, even, I could not see, whose groupings were like groups of stars devoid of form; but I was told these also were spheres of souls. And even beyond these were still brighter lines, and more glowing countenances, that I was told were angels that kept watch over the whole earth, and bearing the standards of whatever truth shall come to man.
Can you not conceive how small in the midst of these glories my feeble thoughts became? Can you not conceive how insignificant an atom might feel in comprehending the universe around? Without that comprehension and with only a feeble glimpse, how small seemed the spirit that I possessed! And yet, among them I was recognized, and smilingly he who was my brother and friend stood beside me there, and said we are told that such will be our inheritance if we also fulfill, according to the measure of our capacity, the duties of each passing moment.
I am told that every secret can be revealed; that the earth contains no storied treasures that the mind of man may not inherit by communion with the world of souls; that when cities are disentombed the minds of the past are drawn to you; and even now the ancient Babylonian kings are thronging to that mysterious place whence the records of their doings are now being revealed, and the world will know more because of these external excavations. I am told that there is no subtle art, no profound science, no wonder of ancient Egypt that may not dawn upon the earthly mind through these same communings. I am told that schools for these communings are already established, and that these instruments—similar to the one I now employ to communicate with you—are to be made available for the transmission of all the knowledge that man has sought mainly in schools of human lore. I did not believe it when in the human form; I could not realize these methods, and I do not now say that this method is to supplant the normal and natural exertion of the human intellect—but; I do say that it is to crown that natural and normal exertion with higher fulfillment; that it is to add to the knowledge you already possess the knowledge of the spiritual kingdom, and that where man gropes but blindly now in the pursuit of knowledge, I see that he will be able to be certain; for the vision of the spirit, extending in wider range and limited only by the power of knowledge, must be more capable of giving to the human thought that which the mind and soul of man craves and longs to know.
With all earthly knowledge there is limit; with all history there is a time when we pause, and human thought can explore no further; with the vision of man and the material sense and the inventions of science and the discoveries, still there is much that is lacking, and we feel forever cramped and dwarfed, while in the material senses, with the limited nature of that which we strive to learn. Knowledge is power; but it is not knowledge simply of intellect, or art, or science. I know that knowledge is goodness, is truth, is purity, is love, and we begin our spiritual knowledge in the alphabet of the goodness of the little child. If this means anything to your comprehension, why not begin here? And to the lispings that will come from the spiritual kingdom, to the thoughts that will force themselves daily upon your consciousness, to that which in the hurry and bustle and confusion and turmoil of earthly life there seems to be no time to attend to, give time, give attention, give thought, and you will be rewarded by the knowledge that I have named.
Now I perceive how many thoughts and gifts of the human mind are awakened and quickened; how inspirations come upon our daily pathway here like flashes of light from the spiritual realm; how even in the daily darkness and perplexity of human affairs the spiritual light probes and cuts the Gordian knot of some problem, leaving the mind free to its fulfillment; how invention is stimulated and prompted from the side of life that is nearer to the sources of things, and how science with her manifold discoveries is capable of solving only what inspiration shall give. I now discover that which was certainly closed to my external vision and comprehension—that true inspiration does not consist simply in any formal word, or creed, or prayer, but in the voice of the spirit that ministers continually in the message that comes to every heart whenever that message is needed, and in the guidance that every life may feel if every life will but listen to the promptings of intuition. The voice of the spirit, I am told, is named intuition on the earth. Geniuses have recognized this voice, have listened to it continually, and by the ever open gateway of inspiration have drawn from sources of knowledge and fountains of wealth, and made the world glad. Oh! that all could be but geniuses! But all are; in embryo there sleeps within every human heart that which shall one day be quickened into a song; in silence there slumbers within every mind that which one day shall be awakened into brilliancy and power. And so there is slumbering within every thought this night, the immortal triumph that you cannot but feel when the darkness of time shall roll away and the immortal light shall fully and assuredly dawn.
I may be asked: “What are you to do? What will be your occupation? Are you busy with affairs as you were upon earth? What is the pursuit of the spirit? Is it anything that can be named practical?”
And here is precisely the difficulty. Between the natural and the spiritual state there is a change. It may be compared to the chemical, change that passes in the flower when it is transformed from a seed that slumbers in the darkness to a beautiful rose that greets the light. The quality, the essence is there in the germ, but there is no more comparison between rose and germ than between atom and sunlight, yet both are qualities and expressions of the same thing.
The spiritual state I find real. I find it surpassingly real; more real than earthly life; less doubtful in the possession of powers and attributes. Sensation often deceives; physical things often betray; change and time and sense steal away the certainties of the mind; but I find the spiritual realm is real to the degree that nothing in the spirit ever changes in the way of perishing, but unfolds, and that which the earthly man is, as a germ, becomes as a flower, as a tree, as a star in the spiritual realm. This is why, when speaking of spiritual pursuits, you will not, perhaps, realize what I mean; but do listen to what I say, and afterward the meaning may dawn upon you, as it has dawned upon me in the full realization. Pursuits cannot be material in the spiritual life. I mean that we cannot feed, clothe, build, sustain with reference to material sensation; but in proportion as we cannot do this—because it is not required—so are we required to do more because it is necessary. By doing more, I mean that we can exercise our faculties; that the mind is more called upon; there is greater tax upon the qualities of the spirit, and that which is within us must serve for our entire possessions. Therefore we are obliged to labor continually for greater possessions. I found no inheritance waiting for me in the spirit-life beyond what I had earned, and if taken by surprise and with grateful joy at some unexpected possession, I was told that it was mine by the rightful inheritance of creation; that I did the deed or lived the thought that enabled me to possess this. Weak as I found in many places my nature, feeble as are some of my possessions of the spiritual kingdom, it is strength to know that no change can take from one that which is a possession of the spirit, and friendships, affections, good deeds, thoughts for humanity, desire to benefit one’s kind, and the fulfillment of every duty as it seems at every hour become the possessions forever of the spirit in spiritual life. These are my treasures, and builded up from these the labor of the coming eternity will fashion that which I shall possess hereafter.
As to my pursuits, whatever I am best qualified to do that I must perform. If it be to speak an hour of that which I learn in the kingdom of the spirit, or to endeavor to influence my fellow men in the performance of their duties, or, deeper still, to penetrate this outward veil of inertia that lies between the mind of man and the world of spirit, I shall certainly attempt to do this, and shall succeed in exact proportion to the spiritual capacity that I find I possess; and as growth is accelerated by the exercise of these capacities, so every faculty becomes quickened by the imparting of knowledge, or joy, or sympathy, or affection to others.
There is knowledge that I covet. I will seek it, but not in selfish ways; for I find that that which we gain by self-seeking we lose on entering the world of spirits, where self must be forgotten in the greatness of the life around us, and where ministration, even in the feeblest capacity, constitutes the strength of the spirit. Without building, or weaving, or gathering treasures, without probing for mines, or the discovering of material wealth, I find every moment occupied, every second of time full, and the capacity only struggling to gain that which is offered for the grasp of the spirit. Oh! to quicken these immortal powers, to strengthen this spirit, to be enabled to know all that lies within the grasp of the truly awakened soul—this I covet; and this night, if you follow me with your thoughts as you have followed previously with your sympathy and affection; if you clasp with me the hands that are extended, seemingly in the dark; if you perceive with me the glories of this realm, and endeavor to triumph with me over the failings of the human life, you too will be rewarded by glimpses of this heavenly state; and those worlds and kingdoms that I have pictured, and those splendors that I have painted, and the Ancient Thought that reigns supremely in the heavens above you, driving away all the narrow limits and all the narrow confines of human creeds, revealing the one glory of the perfect religion, the one truth of the perfect government, the one thought of the immortal soul of man, will strengthen you in the performance of your daily duties, and you will perceive, as I have perceived, the golden pathway, spiral, and extending forever, that leads from the lowermost state of earth to the highest angel in the far-off heavens; and you will then not wonder that I long to burst the bond of silence that lies too often between your world and that in which I now dwell, and to say: “Immortal souls still living upon the earth, quenchless spirits still inhabiting the bond of clay, if you would have that which counts for more than gold or jewels, or precious things of earth, listen to the voice of the soul, and let its words comfort, its thoughts sustain, its pinions bear you heavenward The earth, I am sure, will then become the dwelling-place of happy spirits, like those mysterious yet palpable realms wherein I have just entered, and where I stand as a little child, waiting for the guiding hand to lead me on.”
Friends from the boundary of two worlds, I greet you tonight. At any period during the last twenty years I would have considered it the proudest day of my life to stand before the audience here and discourse concerning the spiritual world. Today, through a borrowed form and in an unwonted manner, I come with the greetings of both worlds. I owe it to you to explain in a few words the manner of my utterance tonight. When the organist sits down to an instrument to play, he is accustomed to study it somewhat; the stops, the pauses, the various methods of construction in the instrument may not be familiar to him, and he has to limit his power to the capacity of the instrument. In somewhat of that position do I stand before you. The instrument that I employ, fortunately, has been tuned to the utterances of spirits. What I lose in vigor I may gain in gracefulness of style and spirituality. Bear with me if you cannot recognize me in this form, but be sure the thoughts are mine; and through the kindly aid of those guides that have instructed and reared her up for these utterances, I am enabled to give you a history of the greatest triumph of my life—the triumph over death.
Some of you are familiar with the history of my experience in Spiritualism, and somewhat with the history of my life. I recognize but few faces here that I have ever seen before. There are some, and one venerable in the cause of Spiritualism whom I recognize: I greet you. My earthly body is laid aside; but my spirit, with renewed activity, and with every faculty as full and complete as when I dwelt among you, is here tonight. I am filled only with the fire and fervor of my new-found existence. I may say that I passed through the change called death without one pang of suffering. My body, it is true, was enfeebled. It is true that I had been suffering for some years from debility, and lack of strength; but it is also true that, by a series of instructions, and by constant intercourse with familiar friends in spirit-life, I had learned that death was not to be feared. In the final moments of my life, and during the few weeks that preceded the departure from earthly existence, I was ever conscious of the ministering attendance of one kindly spirit—the one who had been the companion of my early life—the one whose death had caused me to long to know into what region the spirit of the departed might go, and the one who, during all the years of my pursuit of knowledge, has been my constant and attendant guide. She welcomed me; she soothed my last moments; she showed me the way to spiritual existence. Through her kindly aid I banished every thought of fear or death, and hailed exultantly the hour that would reunite us in spirit.
I say I passed away without pain; I was not even conscious of suffering; but my body sank into a sweet repose, over which my spirit, already freed, stood and looked upon it as you would stand and look upon a worn-out garment. I was not conscious of the loss of one instant of time; my mind did not slumber. I was not aware even for one brief interval of the loss of control of any faculty. I knew I was about to die. I knew also every instant of time that my spirit was gradually losing control of the physical body. I re-entered the tenement at intervals to look around, as you might a house you were about to leave, to see how the loved ones were getting on that were watching beside me,—to see if they were afraid of the new life upon which I was entering,—to see if they would bear it as well as they should from the long years of instruction we had had together. There was prayer, and fortitude, and loving-kindness; there was also, it is true, a lingering, lurking reluctance to give up the physical form of the spirit about to depart—that one earnest longing to cling to the vital form of the dearly-loved friend. I admonished my children not to mourn; I admonished them of the change we know must come; and I admonished them, in the name of the bright truth that had been revealed to us, that we must know that death had lost its terror.
I say that I knew not only no interval of sleep or of lack of consciousness, but I sprang into my new-found existence, as one would leap forth from the bonds that had enchained them for years. I had felt fettered and shackled in the latter years of my life by physical suffering. I had felt bound and tethered somewhat by the chains of flesh that grew too weary to be borne. I sprang delighted as one would leap into a golden sea, as one might plunge into the atmosphere after having been immured in prison. I felt my youth, strength, vigor—everything return that had been mine. I felt individually more than this: that notwithstanding all my experiences in spiritual life, notwithstanding the visions, communions, and visitations between myself and departed souls, that I had never truly known the nature of spiritual existence until the final tie was broken that linked me to earth. To my utter amazement I beheld my form renewed utterly as the form of youth and strength. I beheld the friends—all friends whom I had known and been accustomed to converse with as friends—each one youthful, each one wise with their added experience of spiritual life. For the first time I felt the conscious power of spiritual utterance—not as a voice, not as a sound, not as a word, but as soul-communion. Every thought was made palpable and every expression made clear to those that were around me. We discoursed upon the body I had laid aside, as you would discourse upon any external thing. I was pointed to and referred to as being a spirit now in full and entire possession of spiritual faculties, whereas before I had been somewhat blinded by the lingering consciousness of the senses that were left behind me in my physical body. The first thought was: Can I speak with my daughters? I could not; that is, there could be no audible sound, but I could palpably and perceptibly impress their minds, and my youngest daughter was aware of my presence even though she knew the body had perished, and understood that the life-spark had faded.
The next spiritual sense that came to me, or spiritual consciousness, was that of motion. In my visions, some of you will recollect, I had seen myself conveyed from one place in spiritual life to another, by what seemed to be horses, or the usual means of locomotion. I now felt the new-found power, or spiritual sense, of volition. My companion said to me, “We will now visit our spiritual home.” I looked around for some means of conveyance, when, to my astonishment, as soon as the desire seized my mind, I found myself rising, first slowly, but, as my will increased, more rapidly, and finally with such rapidity, that had there been intervening objects I must not have seen them. The flight seemed instantaneous. We seemed to cross a vast interval of space. Sometimes I thought worlds must be moving past us; sometimes I thought I could hear the distinct sound of the planets in their spheres; sometimes I thought I could hear the sounds of distant music. But presently we stood within a luminous vestibule, where an atmosphere of light and shade inter-blended seemed to prevail. This vestibule, I was told, marked the entrance between the spiritual and material atmosphere, and that I was now about to enter the real land of the spirit. I had been there before in my visions; but I perceived whereas I had seen before spiritually with the aid of others, I now saw with my own spiritual faculties; and the lens was quite different from the lens that I had borrowed for my previous visitation. Now I discovered new beauties each step or each point we reached. I discovered that my spiritual vision was not only quickened to the objects around, but actually saw the soul of those objects; that each form, although seemingly as tangible as these walls, was really transparent; and that a vital current pervaded every object I beheld.
I then made inquiry into the nature of these structures. This form of vestibule into which I entered was more like a massive gateway or temple than anything I can picture. It combined graceful forms with various shades and degrees of colors, so distinctly blended and harmoniously in accord, that I could but believe it to be a living and vital form. My companion, perceiving my desire, said, “It is quite true that this substance differs from anything on earth; for while it seems to be made of pieces of marble and precious stones, it is none other than the vitalized thought, the living atmosphere of the realm into which you are entered; and each soul that passes here leaves something or contributes something to the beauty of this entrance.” I could then perceive around myself an atmosphere snowy and blue, like the halo of the saint. This blue atmosphere took shape and form about me, and instantly there arose an archway, through which I passed. I looked behind, and that archway was left to betoken that another soul had entered this land. Meanwhile, all these arches, and the forms that adorned them, and all the images seemed to grow pictured vocal, and a distinct harmony of welcome greeted my spirit. It was unlike any music I had ever heard; it was like sound of accord; it was more like the blended harmony of perfect thought, that one can listen to in spirit, but can never hear with earthly sense.
We passed on, I and my one companion only; for all other spirits that I had seen were now invisible. We passed on. Meanwhile there opened to my view a vast and wonderful land. On either side majestic mountains; streams wound their way among the valleys, and beautiful cascades were dancing down the mountain sides. I remembered this as the entrance to our abode in spirit. We passed swiftly, silently, and without any external means of locomotion directly between two ranges of mountains until we entered an open plain. Here was the selected spot of our spiritual home. As we entered the narrow passage, not wider than the entrance to a single room, I noticed many peculiar devices and figures peering dimly from what seemed to be solid rocks. I saw that these devices had familiar forms and faces, and that they looked like words and thoughts and things that are palpable to the mind. I could see every one of the thoughts and every one of the deeds of my life. Some of them were shady; some, however, were fraught with more pleasing forms; some were what I fain would have forgotten—features of harshness and discord; and some were attuned to scorn and anger; but I perceived as I advanced that the more kindly faces and figures preponderated, and that as I really entered the open space, after I had become a living spirit, there were no forms but those of love and sympathy, and no sounds but those of delight.
Here I seemed to be plunged into a stream whose every drop or every globule was as palpable, as distinct as the separate pearls upon a maiden’s necklace. Each of these globules seemed to hold some loving thought or some palpable essence; and as I was plunged into this stream my form was stung with every individual drop as though each would take away some possible stain of earthliness. The longer I remained in this stream the easier it became to sustain it. First it seemed to burn and sting like fire, then grew more and more delightful until I perceived that every globule was talking to me and representing some truth to my mind. At last, when I came out on the other side, I was received with smile from my companion, who said: “This removes from you the last stains of your earthly body, but not the last effects of all your earthly faults.” I could perceive that I was conscious of some difference between her and me; that I had not fully and entirely entered her estate; but since bathing in that beautiful stream I could perceive that I had more knowledge and more wisdom, and that my imperfections gradually left me. She then led the way to a bower that on either side was adorned with flowers having no name on earth. They are not such shapes and forms as you are accustomed to see, but their very odors make music on the ear, and their very form and color represent some thought, or prayer, or aspiration. She led the way still more near into the entrance of our abode. I could see its shape and form, and I could picture to you its walls and its entrance; but I will not detain you with it other than to say, that in every image I saw in its formation, I could recognize the attributes of her with whom I was. I could see it had been adorned with the wonted thoughts that had been hers here and in spirit-life. Every prayer and deed and aspiration of goodness, every kindly charity, had taken shape and form in this abode. I could see also my own thoughts interwoven there; the thoughts of goodness, of prayer, and aspiration I had formed, and the deeds I had forgotten long ago, loomed up before me there, not in shape of pillar and statue and seeming, but alive and beautiful. I could even see the thoughts and prayers and aspirations of my life all ranged in a line before me, but not my imperfections, and said at once: “How is this? that in our abode I behold my thoughts of good, but not my imperfections.” Instantly the thought of her replied: “There can be no imperfection in the abode of our spirits. You see them at the entrance; you see them along your way; but only that which is perfect can take ultimate shape and form in the living abode of the perfected spirit.”
Then I saw how imperfect I was; and the sense of my unworthiness so overcame me that I would have shrunk away from those delightful regions; but she bade me not to tremble nor to fear, since every thought and stain of earthliness by my own efforts would have to be overcome—“Not yet,” she said, “are you fully prepared to abide here constantly; but this is your home, and by effort, by prayer, by daily and hourly knowledge, you will find that you will at last be able to sit here in this home of the spirit free and glad and conscious.”
Then for the first time I felt weary. The splendor of the new abode, the delight of the spirit, the consciousness of being free from pain, all overpowered me, and I could not at once comprehend that I was really a spirit and should no more return to my body. She led me to an alcove separated from the rest of the abode by what seemed to be a trellis-work of vines and flowers. Into this I followed, and there I rested I know not how long; but it seemed when I awoke as though all my spiritual faculties had been renewed, and that the first pleasing glory of the spirit that had overcome me now made me stronger, and I said to her who was ever by me: “Now I am ready; show me more of this beautiful life.”
Instantly, not as at first slowly, and with seeming reluctance, but instantly our pathway opened and I saw before me, at a distance it is true, but still plainly and distinctly before me, a concourse of spirits. Approaching were those with whom I was most intimate and familiar upon earth. One of the very first spirits who greeted me from that assemblage, and who came forth as though with haste and speed to make known his coming, was my friend Horace Greeley, late editor of the New York Tribune, and sometime an investigator of Spiritualism, but never an avowed Spiritualist. He said, “I hasten to greet you and undo the injustice of years.” I said, “Why? “Because,” he said, “I undervalued the testimony you gave upon the subject of this new life, which I find to be more than realized. I am at peace now in having made this confession.” I had always told him that he little knew of the reality of spiritual life, and when we all sat in the circles of investigation together, he turned his attention to the pursuit of political and other reforms, while I sat for spiritual knowledge. I was glad of this confession; it seemed to soothe and strengthen me. I then met Professor Mapes, my old and valued friend and coadjutor in spiritual investigation. “Ah!” he said to me, “I had no idea of the powers of the spirit separate from matter when upon earth; but I now see that all your visions were more than true.” Then I need not enumerate to you all that came one after another in this shining world to greet me and make me welcome. It was as though these were assembled in concourse to greet the welcomed spirit; but it was not for that purpose they had met. They were assembled there as is their wont, to discourse and inquire into matters pertaining to spiritual existence. They seemed arranged in groups; and each group had a central mind. In the centre of one I saw Franklin, who seemed to be pointing out to his hearers, or to those who were attendant upon him, some elemental experiment that he desired them to follow, in reference to the present manifestations upon earth. He is a leading mind, and great in all questions of science. The science of electrical manifestations has, ever since his introduction into spiritual life, been the particular subject of his investigations that and other allied forces. And I may tell you that his discoveries are known as physical manifestations; that from his study and the pursuit of his favorite themes, he alone, with the aid of those who are in the same sphere, is working out the problem of physical vibrations, physical movements, physical sounds, physical apparitions through mediums upon earth; that he is the centre of that especial group of spirits, who receive from him instructions, and they in turn impart their instructions to other spirits; and these are dispersed at the present time over the face of the earth, making these demonstrations and revealing to mortals the truth of the power of spirit over matter.
It is not necessary, nor have I time, to dwell upon the particular points and phases in these manifestations, which connect and link them with his peculiar mind. But you will all recognize this one fact, that the physical manifestations occur in waves; that they begin at a certain point, and then pass over the earth like waves of the sea, until at last the most distant nations of the earth receive something of these powers. The present wave just passing over England—that of the visible form and apparition—has occurred in America, where the first apparitions took place. It has reached you; it will reach distant countries; and finally will be followed by another wave which has not yet commenced. So this becomes not only a system of ethics, but a grand scheme of scientific discovery; which means that the spiritual world are far more intent, I am sorry to say, than scientific minds mostly are upon earth, in the pursuit and discovery of these new powers.
I saw another centre and another teacher, whose strength and power seemed to be devoted to the form of mental and inspirational manifestations. He, too, was learned; he, too, had science and power; I refer to Mesmer, whose discovery of the principles of mesmerism constitutes an epoch in the history of science. He, too, is now adding to the science of spiritual control. He also has his pupils and adjutors; and these move upon the earth in harmony with one another, inspiring mediums, aiding in their development, and assisting groups of spirits who throng around them, that they may send a message to their friends. I saw gathered around these, far and wide, each attracted to their centre, those numberless thousands of spirits who, like children, were studying the alphabet of this new-found discovery, that they might visit your firesides and, either by the raps, or by inspiration, or by some method unknown to you, reveal to you their presence: your friends, the friends of thousands and hundreds of thousands upon earth, who volunteer to join these societies of instruction in the spiritual life, as you would join classes for instruction in telegraphy, or any system of communication whereby you might reach your friends: gathered around and waiting for the very power that is now moving the earth, and revealing the presence of spirits among mortals.
Another and a higher group were intently discoursing upon the history of nations, and among these minds I could distinctly discover the faces and forms of departed statesmen. One especial group had its centre in Washington; others in Napoleon and Cæsar, who, having outgrown their thirst for blood, are now anxious only for the welfare and prosperity of nations. I can see them, with their shining faces and radiant brows, instructing vast concourses of spirits, who, in their turn, are waiting to move upon the legislative bodies of nations, even as the great impulse of liberty moved upon the Congress of the United States. There I can see the lamented Lincoln, whose spirit had risen because of his love of liberty; and among the shining and radiant throng were still greater measures of human improvement. I see there the late and lamented Charles Sumner, risen to his new estate, and there, as here, debating the liberty and freedom of the slave.
I saw many other names I could not now reveal to you, but whose faces were familiar, and whose consciousness and thought I could but perceive were far beyond my newly-found faculties. But I am told that as I grow more and more familiar with these scenes, as I indeed become known among those that sit at the feet of the embodied wisdom of ages, that I too shall carry on a work that I was too feeble to more than commence while here—feeble, because of the feeble organization and the limited faculties of human sense, but earnest as you all know. I now feel that my work is just about to commence; I now feel that this is indeed my work, and that all my efforts and thoughts in gaining knowledge shall be to impart that knowledge to those in the bondage of darkness.
I say that with all this shining concourse of spirits before me, I could but feel how wonderful and perfect and divine is that great gift of intelligence given to every soul, that outlasts and outlives the corroding influences of time, and takes its place in their own spirit-sphere when time and flesh decays. I could but feel, “O if the eyes of mortals whom I have just left if they could but see as I see, if they could know what I now know! What greater blessings could befall mankind than that this everlasting fear of death this terror that broods like a nightmare over the ages shall be removed, and they stand face to face with life and immortality!”
But all is not a pathway of roses here. Again I felt my imperfections, and in the presence of that thought I felt troubled and enfeebled in spirit; with all their welcomings I could but feel, “What a babe am I!” In the midst of this knowledge and this accumulated wisdom of ages, I stood abashed as a child, and felt my own spirit’s nakedness. Then there came out to me from some place I had not before discovered forms that knelt down before me, and each one cast a flower at my feet, saying: “You first told me of spiritual life; you were the first from whom I received knowledge on earth of spiritual existence.” With their flowers, there came, too, incense, like songs of praise and prayer; and I felt stronger, and my spirit seemed to absorb into itself these offerings, until my form grew strong, and I was glad because I had helped these. And I felt myself clothed with their offerings of love; and they said to me: “You have done this to us; you revealed before we passed from earth our future estate, and we bring you our offerings now.” Then I seemed to grow brighter; my raiment was more like the raiment of those upon whom I had been gazing; and with each new offering there came a new feeling of strength and gratitude; and at last I floated away and took my place in the midst of familiar faces, who said: “Now you have become as one of us.”
Ever since I have been here—and it seems ages, although a short time in the calendar of earth, little more than one month—I have at certain appointed times taken my accustomed bath in the river that flows beside our home; and with each new bath I feel some new spiritual impulse and power revealed to me. I feel some weakness and some trace of earthliness depart; so that now I stand by myself, free, I trust, from those stains that will cling to the spirit even though it strive for years: the stains of accustomed thought and unguarded feelings. Yet even still do I feel that long years must elapse before I shall gain the heights of many souls that I see. I feel that long efforts of self-conquest must be mine before I reach the bright inheritance of some whose spirits are almost too dazzling to touch.
And sometimes, with my loved companion by my side, we two alone sit in the sequestered silence of our spiritual abode and commune with loftier souls, with one whose living truth and whose perfect love mankind are familiar. Too little do they follow in his footsteps, too little does his guiding hand uplift and sustain. Far above all this throng of assembled spirits, of councillors great and wise and good, I can see a shining light, a glory more radiant than aught that earth could picture or words portray, and a love, a surpassing kindness, and radiant form, whose words I now give to you: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; ” and this word vibrates down through the hosts of angels and spirits and mortals until it reaches even your hearts, and casts out fear and hatred and malice and all strivings, and makes you one from this instant with the spirit of God.
I do not know how long it was, but it seems as though my body had been dying for years; and the last period of earthly sickness seemed at the time like an age of suffering and imprisonment. Human life brought me little pleasure and a great deal of work, and but for that light that came from the unseen yet palpable realm of inspiration, there would have been no consolation, no comfort. Many friends there were who were kind, but even those could not assuage the sorrows of a disappointed life and the sufferings of a body under the chafing influence of a restless and turbulent spirit.
Trained in childhood to the exercise of intellectual powers that were not usually ascribed to women, and given but little opportunity in the world of affairs to exercise those powers; always finding opposition in the outward world to anything that a woman might undertake to do, it was not until Spiritualism came into the life of the one now addressing you from the spirit side of life, that there was any hope. Spiritualism brought the hope and knowledge of immortality, and brought with it work to do in that direction. It is not my province to tell you of that work; you have kindly followed and borne with it and assisted it in many ways. Here in the Capital of the nation it was my privilege many times to stand and speak for that truth that was within me; perhaps not to the acceptance of all, perhaps not in accordance with all my listeners, and I know many times at variance even from those who accepted the common truth among Spiritualists of a future life and immortality. But differences of opinions and differences in the ways of presenting the truth must be permitted, or there is no progress; and but for these differences we never could arrive at the truth, and then there would be stagnation.
The bodily prison continued to be more and more oppressive with the waning of each human faculty, with the waning of that strength which one had learned to boast of, and especially with the waning of that power to think which had been my chief reliance. To know that the brain itself, the physical structure of the brain, could fail to perform its function, that the body could cease to do the will of the spirit possessing it, was a terrible affliction. But so it was, dear friends, and for many weeks that lengthened into years, this physical decline was a great oppression. It was not borne patiently, it was not submitted to gracefully; there was absolute and constant rebellion. I did pray, not to God, for I did not know about him, but to my angel and spirit friends to set me free. But I have ascertained, as my reason taught me before, that spirits are not permitted to set any one free until the expiration of the mortal period. The very discipline of those last months has been something of a blessing, since if the lesson of patience could have been learned, that would have been added strength.
Death the Dawn of Freedom
Instead of death adding to those disabilities, instead of making the powers more feeble, instead of making the prison-house more palpable, it was the first dawning of being set free. I cannot declare to you in fitting language what it was, when in the midst of kind and ministering friends I became aware that the final change had really set in. It was an entire reversal of all human thought concerning death. Instead of being fettered, instead of the faculties being more and more benumbed and dimmed, there was a startling consciousness of a re-awakening. It seemed, although it was not true, that every nerve and fiber was being filled with new life; it seemed, but it was not so, that the brain and all the cerebral structure were being restored; and the thought flashed through my mind at that time, “I am going to get well and be able to take up my work again on the platform for truth and spiritual advancement.” Instead, however, of its being the body that was being resuscitated, it was the spirit gradually being set free from the thralldom of the body, from even the consciousness of being fettered by the body. As one after another of these fetters were broken by the absolute failure of every physical faculty it seemed already as though the mind had been restored to its accustomed strength. Memory came swiftly back, and all the thronging incidents of life seemed to make haste with one another to restore themselves to consciousness. While the attributes and faculties of the mind were let loose, apparently, to do all that they ever could do and much more, it was also palpable that the physical senses did not seem to fade; eyes that could see, ears that could hear, and it seemed, although very likely the voice expressed no word to the surrounding friends in human life, as though I was shouting to them, telling them of the new life and strength that had come to me.
Friends in Spirit-Life
In the midst of this great ecstasy of being set free, I was suddenly aware of being in the midst of a much larger company than those who surrounded me in human life; my faithful attendants were there, but there were more; at last I recognized friends who had passed on many years ago, those in spirit-life who had been my earthly friends and the companions of my childhood, the parents and dear ones of the household, and evidently those who had been with me as spiritual guardians and assistants watching over my life and enabling me to do the little I had done in earth life to forward their work. It was a goodly company.
I did not expect, and therefore I was not disappointed, as many Spiritualists are to be ushered into the presence of God, nor into the presence of Jesus, but I did expect to, and I did, find my spirit friends ready to receive me, knowing that the time had seemed an age in which I was coming to them, and telling me that they had been helping me and, although unconsciously to myself, I did know it was better—remember this—it was better to bear the pain and suffering and deprivation incident to failing health than to hasten by one pulse-beat the departure from mortal life; better to bear on to the very end. Why? Because the spirit thereby is set free according to the law and nature of its own body; and, without being a fatalist, according to the individual purpose and destiny of life I could not have gone sooner. By a strange and sudden transformation of feeling—showing that suffering, as well as happiness is in the spirit and not in the body—I was told that I had been in spirit life but one hour, though it seemed to me as though I had already been there an age, and the suffering I had passed through in earth-life seemed but as a moment. At the present time, but for that memory which can recall, and the coming in contact with, mortal life which reminds me of it, I would not know that I had suffered any physical pain; so soon do we forget it; as little children in the presence of a loving mother forget that hurt which the mother kisses away, so in the companionship of these loved ones, who have made me feel that the spirit life is the home that is mine, that I am entitled to it, that no one could have taken it away from me, and that it is my inheritance from eternity. So soon do we feel at home in this companionship that the suffering is forgotten.
Do we forget, therefore, those who are left on earth to struggle and to suffer in their turn? By no means. The first thought is to tell them how glad we are to find ourselves free from all bodily limitations; you will remember that evening when through this same instrument I am now addressing you through, I spoke to you in this room. It was a short time after my release from the body, but the pent-up joy and the delight of my new existence was so great that I burst through the barriers and spoke to you then. Now the joy is less turbulent, it is calmed down by that retrospect which must come to each spirit, of his own or her own life.
Our Spiritual Existence
Ah, that retrospect! We build our spiritual existence, not externally, but from within. I wish I could tell you how imperfect I found myself. I wish I could tell you how there were many faults and shortcomings that came to my consciousness that I fain would have screened from my own gaze, as well as the gaze of my kind spirit friends; but I had no need to do this, since they must have been fully aware of them, but they made me no sign nor token that they thought there was any imperfection; they manifested no criticism; they did not say; “Had you done thus or so, you would have been better off.” I knew it; I knew it well enough without their saying so. You cannot set your face squarely and fairly before your own life, before your spiritual countenance, without knowing what your imperfections are. There is no need for an avenging angel to tell you; there is no need of anyone to sit in judgment upon you to declare it. I found it within; and I assure you that if I had ever given a harsh word, an unkind thought or undue severity in my criticism, it was, before me. I had no stumbling blocks to encounter but those which I had placed there. There was a certain kind of delight in knowing that every obstacle I met in spirit life was of my own creation; no one else had piled up any difficulties for me, and no one else will have to overcome them. I am going to do it. You are going to do it with your obstacles; you may know beforehand how to avoid some difficulties. But I am not quite sure that the difficulties are not needed in order to be overcome; I suspect that they are. It seems to me that when a man climbs up a rocky pathway he is a great deal stronger than he is if he only has walked along a smooth and level flower-strewn path all his life. I would like to have boys brought up in the rough-and-tumble conflict of daily life, rather than have them always sheltered and shielded so that the first breath of wind will blow away their moral courage. I am thinking that people are too much pampered physically, mentally and spiritually. I like comfort; I liked it when here, although I did not have a superabundance of it. I like to be intellectually satisfied, but I had rather be intellectually disturbed if I am wrong.
There is great consolation in knowing that spirits live. But there is a great truth in knowing that spirits, neither on earth, nor in spirit life, have a flowery time always. Spirit existence in both states is not set, as yet, to the highest and sweetest music; you do not pass out floating along on banks of flowers with angel attendants and harps, and those that bear you into the presence of imparadised fields of flowers and wonderfully beautiful scenes, but you awaken to the consciousness of yourself. You are aware of this great spiritual existence that suddenly impinges upon you; it makes you almost afraid to be let out into illimitable space. One who has been long in a dark dungeon cannot bear all the light at once; one who has been imprisoned cannot be set free without some tonic or strengthening influence; so a spirit thrust out into eternity finds nothing but vastness. The encompassing power of spirit friends is there, it is true, but there is a time, almost immediately following the release from the physical body, when one is brought alone face to face, thought to thought and spirit to spirit, with one’s own consciousness; eternity seems so vast, we seem so little, one is almost tempted to try to go back again, to be limited, even to be fettered, even to be in pain instead of being set free in this vast realm, for which even the best fitted is but illy prepared. You think you know, Spiritualists, about spirit-life: you think you know about your spirit friends; you have pictured, with a certain sort of attractiveness the kind of habitation that will meet you in spirit existence. I tell you, here and now, that you know nothing about it.
The Spirit World
Everything that spirits tell you is true; but more is true, and so much more that it seems that the little that you can understand is but a drop of water compared to Niagara. Supposing someone should bring you a goblet of water and say, that is like Niagara? So it is in substance; but what vastness of torrent, of great and wonderful and absolute possession of the mighty waterfall. So it is with the spirit message: “The spirit world is like this,” and “It is like this,” and “It is like this,” all of which is true, but it is like nothing which you can know, perceive or understand until you are set free from human consciousness and live in the vast consciousness of the spirit without the body.
How I do wish I had not tried to measure the universe with my human vision; how I do wish I had known that the body is not the standard of everything! I knew it, but I could not realize it. I have seen people who laughed about love, young people, and they thought they understood it; they knew they would never fall in love; so foolish a thing as caring for anybody, they could never love, that could never be their experience. But when it comes, when once the divine passion seizes them, when afterward they are aware of meeting a life that has proved unworthy, but that held their destiny in its keeping—you know what it is; they never could have believed it, but they were carried away, borne out of themselves; the great problem of life had been unveiled and revealed to them. High or low, rich or poor, young or old, it is the same experience when the experience comes.
Infinitely greater is the experience of death, is the unsealing of the vision, the setting free of the spirit. So real am I in this new state that I never was real before. So do I find myself as I never had found myself before. The hands, the feet, the body of me that had walked the earth seem no more to me now than the garment that I wore twenty years ago. I have forgotten how it was made. I do not know the color of it and I never gave it a thought when it was cast aside. Is the body then so much less? Aye! it is so much less that, although while we possess it we value it because it is our only instrument of expression, when we are set free from it, its adornments, its healthfulness, its strength, its weakness, its physical mortality, we wonder at the thing of dust that enchained us, we do not love it any more. I did not care what became of mine, for I knew it before I got through with it, it seemed a drag upon me then; afterward the sooner it went back to dust the better.
I know what has made people cling to their bodies so, especially in Christian lands—I mean their dead bodies and the dead bodies of their friends. Because they were told in the Evangelical Christian worship of the past, that the bodies would rise from their graves. They will, but they will rise in some form of verdure, or in the wheat fields, or in the orchards, like that apple tree in Boston, in an old churchyard, whose roots went down into the grave of one of the Winthrops, for nourishment for its branches and fruit. Of all the boys in Boston who ate the apples of that tree, whose body would it be on that day of resurrection?
But people have learned to love their bodies as immortal things. I love every atom of the earth. I love every molecule of matter, I love every leaf and tree and flower, and every form of life, and I love the substance which entered into the physical existence of that form that was mine, but I do not care for my body. Whatever nature wants to do with it or can she is welcome to it. Whatever uses it will serve in the alchemy of any future generations of life, I am willing. But this that is me, that is I, that constitutes this that cannot die; this that perpetually lives, that haunts me with its imperfections, satisfies me a little with the good that is manifested, this is what is to be considered. Human happiness, human misery and human indifference make up life; not one of these belong to the body at all. Happiness is real or fictitious according to that upon which it is based; misery is real or fictitious from the same cause; indifference is simply inactivity. Now separate yourselves from your bodies and you find that the happiness or pleasure, which is based upon material enjoyment, only last while the sensations last, only lasts for a certain period of time, until the senses should again wish to be satisfied. If it is a desire that belongs to the appetite, then a certain limit will end that. Hunger is for sustaining the body; physical appetite should be responded to to the degree of sustaining the body; all beyond that is an excess. The same is true with any other physical requirement. There are also intellectual pleasures that are carried to excess. The inordinate intellectualist worships at that shrine just the same as the physical worshiper at the shrine of the senses.
Spiritual Dyspeptics
I have known people who gourmandize in literature, whose minds were spoiled for any adequate thinking, who did not have a thought of their own, they simply crammed themselves with books. I have known spiritual dyspeptics in and out of the church, in Spiritualism and out of it. I think there are a great many Spiritualists who are dyspeptics; they have morbid appetites for certain things; spiritual growth is measurably stultified by this. The normal food of the spirit is that which expands, enlarges and strengthens the spiritual nature; is that which goes out to others in deeds and words. Although I did not pray, it goes out in prayers accompanied by works. What I mean is this, that you cannot pander to a selfish spiritual desire without its being as sinful, in degree, as a selfish physical desire. I mean if a man pursues his happiness only, he is just as selfish if he pursues it to the spirit-world as if he pursues it through the senses.
True Spirituality Unselfish
That which seeks for the kingdom of heaven for one’s self alone has been condemned by reformers and Spiritualists as very selfish. We have condemned, and justly, the evangelical idea of seeking individual salvation, especially at the expense of our fellow beings, and at the sacrifice of an innocent victim. So it is selfish to seek for the highest place in spirit existence to the neglect of any human duty, to the neglect of real aspirations, and to think that communing with spirits alone is spirituality. It is not. You may have all the communications from the spirit world that you can possibly receive; they are intended to strengthen, they are intended to help you, they are intended to tide you over some difficulty and give you moral courage to meet some difficulty. But friends, you are not expected to feed upon this continually; you are to grow, to go forth to strengthen and help others.
I have seen these spirits brooding over, and helping, and striving to strengthen mortals who, alas, were not aware of it. I have seen many seeking for messages that could not come because they were sought too selfishly. I have seen those patriot fathers watching over this country, watching over the congress that has degraded the statesmanship of past days, looking as though they would wish to penetrate the shadows of infamy that have settled upon the legislation of this land and those who have succeeded George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, and who have stultified the spirit of liberty by bowing at the shrine of Mammon, selling themselves more a thousand times than the story of Judas tells you that he sold his Master for. I have seen these patriots striving to penetrate that selfishness, and then I have seen them turn away with countenances saddened saying, “Not yet can the pall be lifted.”
There is no greater truth that can be given to any world than that the wrongs permitted or perpetrated by an individual or nation bring their own return, their own reward. The nation reaps the results of its injustice in permitting slavery, This nation certainly reaped in the blood of its brightest sons that sin. Whatever is permitted when it can be prevented is a wrong as great as an act of aggression. The nation will suffer for permitting a wrong to any people that it could ward off, and there are those in the councils above who know it.
Spirit Experience
I am here tonight to tell you of my feeble experience, the experience of the spirit of one human being set free from earthly suffering. I wish I could tell you that the nation is to be set free as happily from the clouds that hang over it. I wish I could tell you of those who have come up from the deep waters where treachery plunged them. I wish I could tell you of those received in spirit-life from the battlefields where war has been waged against freedom. I wish I could tell you of the lifeboats and spiritual presences that have been sent to those who, bewildered, have suddenly gone out into spirit life. I wish I could tell you of the bands of attendant and ministering spirits that throng the places of suffering and human sorrow to set spirits free and strengthen them in their freedom. I wish I could tell you of those who are pressing and crowding, around the council chambers of your nation urging legislators to deeds and words of humanity. I wish I could tell you of the great presence and power that is around and above you, not to live your lives, but to strengthen you in each noble and exalted endeavor, to make you know that one thought, one deed for humanity is worth more than a million lifetimes of self-seeking. We all learn it; we all come to understand it. Why will you not heed it here? What is this blind self that is forever a barrier between humanity and the highest good? There is need of an eternity to wipe out the errors and imperfections of time; and we have it. There is need of all this spiritual strength and retrospect that is upon my spirit; I am under rigid self-examination, I know wherein I failed, I am deeply conscious of it. I want to tell you now that you may turn an introspective glance within your own spirits and find out your weaknesses. I falter where I should walk; I walk where I should fly. I should have such pinions that nothing could debar me from the fulfillment of every wish and purpose, but I am limited by my own shortcomings and my own lack of knowledge. I might have seen more; it was often shown me, but I could not see it. I am not blaming you for anything that you cannot understand; I am only aware that between myself, which was within, and the outer self, which was intellect, or body, or something, there was a barrier —there is a barrier in every human life, I assure you. When the change called death comes, that barrier is removed and you do stand face to face with yourself; your spirit life and its capabilities for the time being must be measured by that. But there is no cutting off of the growth, there is no preventing further knowledge.
The World of Reality
You ask me if I am in a realm of things? Someone in this room wants to know what my surroundings are? You ask me if it is as real as the physical realm? It is far more real than this place, which you are in; it is far more real than this earth which you cling to; that we all clung to as though it were our only habitation, but it is not real, like this physical substance; it is the profound, perfect, conscious reality of thought, of soul, of all that was me; I am and have what I have done and thought. You meet your friends in spirit life; you meet your thoughts, your deeds, your hopes, your aspirations, your failures, your successes; you meet that which is so much more enduring that no midnight flame can destroy it, as it does these buildings, or might; that no storm can separate or disintegrate it, no decay can rest upon it and gradually undermine it; that even if the world and sun were to be blotted out, you know that it will endure forever, that it must live on forever, that it must continue to think, strive and act forever; and if it could not conquer that which has been done or may be done, that which has been unattained, how terrible would eternity be. Come with me now in thought into this realm that is peopled by all that is real in human life, peopled by those you love, without which life would have been void; peopled by your own thoughts and feelings, without which there would have been no life; peopled by all the attributes impersonated and identified in soul, without which there would be no eternity; come into this real life; make the body the servant of the soul, and the earth the field for your triumphs, and above all make humanity higher than your love of self, or your love of gold, or your love of earth, for humanity will meet you face to face in this real, immortal world, this eternal kingdom.
Undoubtedly I was dead! There it was, that other me, that body which I supposed, constituted and contained all the vital force, all the activity of mind, heart and brain, which I supposed when it died would be the last of me.
I remember a sense of suffocation and I thought I called but for help; but the next thing I knew I was watching the thing lying there that looked precisely like myself, There it was, the exact personal image, only the eyes were closed, the lips were motionless, the face was colorless, the hands refused to move and the whole thing was as useless a lump of dust as you could imagine. I said while looking at it:
“You poor thing, is that you? Lately you were active, you were buoyant, you were full of life and animation, your hands could move, your feet could walk, you could obey the bidding of the mind that was within you; what are you doing now, lying there motionless and aimless? Getup, I say and do my work, for I am not through.”
It neither moved nor was obedient to my wish, nor could I circumvent, or surround, or pervade it with the thought that was criticizing it so. Then I felt rather compassionate and I said: “You are helpless after all with your organic structure, you can do nothing. There you are with closed eyes, inanimate lips, cheeks that refuse to glow, hands that will not move, feet that will not walk. What are you doing this for? I am talking to you like something else. Who are you? Who am I?
“If that be myself, why am I pitying it, talking to it so? Why is it separate from me? Why am I standing here, erect, full of youth, animation, hope and strength, determined to work and you will not do my work for me?
“It is many years we have traveled together, you and I, and is it for that we now must part? Are you something separate from me? If you are not arise and go forth as before for there is much work for me to do.
“What is this that seems to have parted us? It was not of your seeking nor of mine. What has parted us? Why am I separate from you, and why are you there?” And there still was no answer.
I saw people moving all about the form,” examining the pulse, and the heart beats, and applying various instruments to see if there were any manifestations of life there. They said “He is dead.”
I knew they said it. I felt them say it. I do not know whether I heard it or not, but I knew they said it. Now, who was I that was hearing this? What business had I to hear if I were dead? What business had I to see if I were dead? Were they going to bury me alive?
A horrid feeling came over me. Perhaps my body was in a trance—not dead —only in a state of coma. But I did not feel as though I was in a trance. There was the body, here was I.
I assure you, friends, that the one great revealment of that moment was as if the heavens had opened and another absolutely unexpected world had been revealed.
But at that moment I saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing excepting that there was the thing I called myself, and here I was going on thinking, criticizing and wondering why they made all this display and all this fuss over that body, while I was here, talking with them, or to them, for they did not answer. I said to the physician, “I am not dead.” He paid no attention whatever. I said to my friend on the other side, “Why, here I am.” He made no response. I even whispered to some who were nearer and dearer, “I am here, I am all right.” They paid no attention, but went on mourning as if I was really dead.
Then I became somewhat indignant that they should pay so much attention to that body, and pay no attention whatever to me, and then I began to realize that I was separate from it. Was not my thought of some consequence? Was not my real self something? Must I appeal to them in vain, I who had never spoken that they did not heed me?
They made no response. Dead to all intent and purpose as far as they were concerned! Not by my own hand I assure you, nor by my own wish, although it was what is called an accident or casualty.
How was I to settle with myself? Just before, it seemed it had not been many hours, I had distinctly declared that I knew of no possible existence separate from that body.
I had dreams—every man has dreams! I had ideals—all men have ideals; but I had early in life separated myself from the stereotyped “kingdom of heaven” that had been taught me in childhood. I had also separated myself from all thought of the theological heaven and of existence beyond death, and had devoted myself, as I believed, to the welfare of my fellow-beings. I believed there was nothing beyond earth-life to attend to. I thought, now I know it was an inward conviction, that whatever was to be afterward we could attend to then.
Now I was experiencing that condition that I had named “afterward.” Could I attend to it? I did not feel quite ready. I had left unfinished many purposes of human life. I had accomplished some things; but I had suddenly been plunged into relationship with that body and with all other human beings that I knew nothing about. What should I do? How should I carry out my purposes and wishes for humanity? What could I do since I had no form, since I evidently had no mechanism to work with?
Perhaps, after all, this thought of being, that I still existed, was only an effervescence which would soon pass away; perhaps it was only a kind of mental vapor like that which arises from the bodies of substance under peculiar conditions. So I waited to see the gradual diminution of my consciousness. I waited to see if it would not stop thinking; if I would not stop knowing what others were doing; if I would not stop being aware of existence. But nothing of the kind came.
After a sufficient lapse of—I do not know whether it is time or perception that I am talking about—but after there had been a sufficient interval, or something, I began, to see people; not people in the human form, but people I had known in childhood, people who were near and dear, some of the dearest and the best. “Oh,” I said, “I know what it is now. I am in delirium. Something has happened to me. I have a fever and I fancy I am out of my body, and seeing my friends of the past. Of course when the fever goes, or whatever it is, I shall be all well again and go on with my usual pursuits.”
But they smiled upon me and said: You are not only not in a fever, but you have awakened from a fever, from the fever of earthly life, from its fitful striving, from much that is good and much that is unworthy, from all things whatsoever that pertain to earthly existence and earthly expression as you knew it, you are released, you are set free; you are one of us!”
I turned and saw one who had somewhat that was familiar. Then I saw it was one whom I had known and trusted as a wise and worthy exemplar, a sage in lines of thought with which I was familiar. I said: “I am dreaming that this is you, for you died long ago.” “Aye! I died to earth as you are now dead to earth, and if you would enter into the knowledge of the things that pertain to this life, you must for once and all separate your thoughts from that body which lies there, and live in the real energy of your being.”
“What do you mean by the real energy of my being?”
“We mean your spirit which is now set free.”
“How do I know it is spirit? How do I know that it is set free?”
“Then,” said my kind friend, “examine yourself. Lo! you seem to have hands, and feet, and body, and brain, and you can move at will.”
“I know,” I said, “I cannot move at will if I have hands, feet, body and brains, yet you seem to have those and you can move at will.”
“Think where you would wish to be.”
I thought of one who at that moment was mourning, and who was distant from the place where my body lay. As quick as the thought, my friends, I was there.
Bowed with grief and weeping bitterly, because that friend thought I had taken my own life in my own hands, I found her. She bent over some written memorials. I was aware of her thought and strove to comfort her. Although she could not hear, and I could not hear that I made any vibrations, I perceived that my thought and sympathy affected her; that she seemed to feel as she did when I spoke encouraging words to her upon earth.
She said: “How strange! It is as though he were here, and yet he is dead.”
Then I pressed another thought, following the first in quick succession. Though dead I still live and am here. “Is it possible,” she said, “that I am losing my mind? That this insane idea of one who has passed on, living and returning is taking possession of me?”
I repeated it again as intently as before. Then it seemed that I stood before her; in what guise I know not, but she recognized me. Then, so great was the shock, that for the interval we were parted and she saw me no more.
My teacher said: “What do you think now?”
I thought it was wonderful. Every instant new wonders came. These people were revealed to me by their states of mind. I saw, or thought I saw, resemblances to their former selves, but more beautiful and perfect, or in some instances more shadowed and deformed.
I said, in thought, what is the meaning of these who seem shadowed and deformed more than they did in the human state? I was told that that was the true revealment of their mental, moral and spiritual condition.
Involuntarily I shrunk back. I said: “How do I look?” A consciousness of my own imperfections swept through my mind. Thoughts of deeds performed and left undone pervaded me like piercing swords. I said how small and insignificant I seem, even to myself!
“Nay, friend,” my mentor replied, “we are not here to sit in judgment on one another. We see only that which was best. You must take care of the rest.”
Then I said: “Do I live after death, and still there is no place of punishment like that of which I was taught in childhood?”
My mentor said: “Look within.”
I saw there all the records of the things that were left undone, and the things that were done. I saw there a consciousness of my short-comings and I so longed to do the things that I had not done while the opportunity to do them in earth life was past. Would I ever be able to do those things?
Again the answer came: “When there is great desire to do that which is best there is always a way. The spirit knows no denial.”
Then I said: “Do you mean to tell me that, deprived of the physical body and material surroundings I can do anything for those whom I may have neglected, or whom I may have wronged unwittingly?”
“You can do all that you wish; but you must do it in the way of the spirit.” “What do you mean by the way of the spirit?”
“The way that you comforted your friend just now; the way that thinks and makes others good; the way that acts upon human minds and makes them do your bidding. Your body will no longer be seen. You will no longer talk and walk with mortals as before, but the impelling mind when set free is a thousandfold stronger than when tethered by the dust”
“The impelling mind when set free!” I thought those words and sentences would burn themselves into my consciousness, and for the first time I became aware of my freedom.
Friends, I had battled all my life against the slavery of conviction. I had battled all my life against the slavery of authority; all my life against man-made creeds and some man-made laws; all my life I had with pen and tongue endeavored to advocate the freedom of the human conscience and the liberty of the human mind. But now I was told that the mind when set free could act upon hundreds and thousands. I had been limited to one form of the dust. I had animated that form as best I could, but my words could only reach a few. The production of my pen through the press could only be read by a few, but here I was told that the “mind when set free” could act upon thousands. Upon whom could I act?
Oh, freedom! For the first time the consciousness came to me that I had been fettered. I, who sought to free others had been enslaved. I who had pitied the people for the bondage of opinion had been in the bondage of opinion myself. I was enslaved by my unbelief. I was enslaved by my lack of perception. I had made a barrier between myself and the realm of knowledge. At last I found that there was another reality, that the thing that I had called a reality was buried, was gone, was set aside, was no more, and all there was of me was the memory in the hearts and lives of those who valued me, and the bitterness in the hearts and lives of those who hated me for my opinions’ sake. Now I, that ego was set free.
Can I move upon minds to make them know that in that one thing I was wrong? Can I tell them, I said, that the great bondage of the mind that wishes to be free, is the bondage of the limitation of setting the environment of the senses as the boundary of Human existence?
I might have known better! Setting aside the doubtful authority of the Bible for human existence, I studied the poets, philosophers and ideal lives of earth; they all taught me that this is what comes after death. They have breathed upon me in my study and many a time, until on the wings of imagination I have mounted unto the realm of thought and have been set free.
Oh, what a wonder freedom is! We prate about it in our prison-houses of clay, dear friends, and ask others to follow us to our particular heights where we inhabit new prison walls. For on one hill is the prison house of theology and on the other is (what I now realize was) the prison house of materialism.
To say that “we do not know,’’ and say it with the willingness to know, is one thing. To say “we do not know,” and say it with the spirit of “neither does any one else,” is quite another. I realized that I had said it with that spirit; that there was not in all the earth any human being who knew about the life beyond. So I realized in this new-found freedom that I had been enslaved by that opinion; that it was a kind of creed that we Secularists had fashioned; not knowing about it ourselves we were quite determined that we, not only could not know, but no one else could know, and we followed it.
When it came to my consciousness that the body that had manifested my love, my hate, my intelligence or my lack of it, all there was of me, could do nothing whatever but go back to dust, what other real life could come to me, dear friends, except the life that was then and there in the spirit state?
You talk about real things and the rose fades before your very eyes; you talk about the realities of matter and they are transmuted and transformed even while you speak, and then you fall back on the immutable principles of truth, justice and freedom, and think you have something that endures.
I tell you, friends, the human mind is greater than truth, and justice, and freedom or it could not think of them. I can think of truth, justice and freedom, and think that they endure, but what estimate do I put upon the human mind?
Here I am convicted, and that in the presence of these living witnesses, of the bigotry and bondage which even refused to think logically on a subject where my opinion had already been made up.
Set free! Ah, if you knew the meaning of freedom from every limitation; from eyes that can only see a few vibrations of light; from ears that can only hear, and that very indistinctly, a few vibrations of sound; from the limitations of the senses that feed and sustain the body, but have little to do with sustaining the mind; from the limitations of the brain that will not work when it is weary or over-wrought, and the limitations of the physical body that at last dies.
I would not have treated my friend as that body treated me. As I survived the change and the body, did not I account myself greater than the body; something more was I? That body doubtless disintegrates and passes back into the things of which it was made, to serve some purpose in nature; maybe, like the body of one of our progenitors, it will serve to nourish an apple tree on the fruitage of which small boys will feed. But of this that can think and live, and be in the presence of these minds, revered and blest, it finds comfort and satisfaction in freedom.
I have waited a sufficient length of time to become somewhat familiar with the spirit state, and to know the meaning of this word, freedom; to know that this consciousness is not an evanescent thing that will pass away after a while; it is no delirium. That which I thought delirium after the change of death grows stronger and stronger with each passing season, and all who are dead and were dear to me are restored in this state, as all who are alive on earth and dear to me are dear now, but they know me not; they have forgotten my body; it is of the dust, but they have not forgotten the memory of me, and through some wonderful intuition which I find in many of their minds I have been able to reach them, to make them understand that this is the real self, to make them know the great purposes of life that they have in view are mine also.
But my friends, I am here to testify that the great difficulty in the way of liberty, is the bigotry of those who talk about freedom; that the great difficulty in the way of separating man’s theology from his past bigotry is the opposing bigotry of materialism. I am here to testify that sweeping into this 19th century was a subject that I am ashamed of never having investigated and understood before I left my body. This manifestation which we relegated to the domain of “superstition” or to some “unknown natural laws,” is the natural manifestation of spirit to matter, of the spirit realm to the realm visible when human beings will not perceive that realm without it. I am here to testify to the reality of inspiration, of the messages of testimony from the spirit state, and to testify that the greatest barrier in the liberalizing of the human race is because this is not recognized in the great work for freedom; that where I have been teaching one kind of bondage is no better than another, but is simply the reaction from the other; and the bondage to the senses and to the realities of mere secular life is as great a bondage as that which the orthodox evangelical religionists give to their church authorities. The authority of the senses, even when dominated by reason, cannot be fully trusted until the reason is enlightened in all possible ways.
My reason was not guided upon a subject about which I knew nothing. Neither is yours. When you know about a thing and have perception of it then you can use your reason as to what you will do with it.
I had shut the door of my mind, not willfully, but because I thought there was nothing to know upon the subject of a future life. Yet once or twice when the Spiritualists were kind; when we spoke and wrote together on subjects pertaining to human well-being, they spoke to me about this realm, and I thought; these people talk as though they know what they are saying. Some had offered to take me where I would meet and know those on this side of existence, who having felt as I felt in human life, became aware of this intercommunion of this spirit state before they left the human form. No, I had to wait until this great change came to me, and I have to come here and acknowledge in all this that I was wrong. But I was right in one thing:
Down deep in my spirit—I can call it spirit now since that is all there is of me—down deep in my spirit I did believe that if there was a future life, it would be a life as natural to the spirit as the earth life to the body; that we would spring to it as buoyantly and gladly as the bird springs into the air that is its native element; that we would find it congenial and not be afraid; that our associations and companionship in spirit life would be according to our needs and not according to any restricted dogma or creed, I have found it so.
More fair than all the fair ideal pavilions of earth and sky is that realm which stretches out to aspiring minds. More beautiful the companionship because no shadows come between us here; we understand one another. It is because of the lack of understanding one another that these great shadows crowd in between us in human states. My friends, if we are not fraternal one with the other the earthly shadow is deep.
Greater than all dreams of human happiness, than all dreams for the welfare of mankind is the thought of impelling others in the direction of freedom; freedom from the bigotry of outward human arrogances, freedom from the bigotry of material bondage. Friends, let our reason be set free. Let it include all the knowledge of the earth and sky. Then with those who at this day and hour are visiting upon the world the great blessing of this message, with whom I have sometimes stood side by side in this battle for truth, we, too, can clasp hands in liberalizing the liberal forces of the world, and set free the laws of intelligence and the spirits of men from the bondage of death!
All that was of me in the earthly state, from which I have just arisen, lies behind me; all that is has not been sufficiently in consecutive consciousness for me to declare, while all that is to be lies before me still unexplored, and the great realm of immortal life is still a mystery. But when suddenly that shock came which cut off as in a single instant, with a blade of lightning, my physical form, my spiritual and mental being was not even for one moment lost, not for one instant was there cessation of consciousness in the brain, not for one instant was there any lack of throbbing, pulsing life. It is true that before and beneath me I saw the mortal body, all that was known of me in human life was lying there, and to my great surprise I, conscious, thinking, living, wondering Robert Ingersoll stood outside of my body. There it was just the same as when I occupied it, excepting that it was prostrate and lifeless. In an instant I had been transferred into another body. There was the body that I knew to be mine, though not the “glass of fashion and mold of form.” there was the brain which I had supposed was the seat of all intelligence that I possessed, now powerless within that cranium, not a cell of which could give forth a thought; there were those lips with which I had been accustomed to respond to words of affection; now when those words called my name I could not answer with those lips: there were the eyes with which I had gazed upon the mysterious, boundless, wonderful universe of life utterly and absolutely without sight, and there was the heart pulseless and still.
“Oh!” I said, “is that you, that thing that lies there helpless and without possibility of speech or heart-throb, or language, or affection; is that the boasted thing that you called yourself lying there now so prone, so powerless? Have we parted company then? Am I alive and conscious to go on without you? Why, you were my hands, and you were my feet, and you, tethered and encased in that clay, were my heart, and I thought you were my intelligence and my life. Poor body, what shall I do with you now? I cannot again reanimate those nerves, I cannot again cause that heart to pulsate, I cannot again think with that brain, I cannot again move that body to do my bidding. It is dead.”
But who am I then? What form is this that I possess? What is the semblance of this form? What is this that is thinking now? It is not the form that is cold and lifeless there, and what these heart throbs which go out with such ineffable and wonderful compassion? Oh, I am not dead.
There were the beloved, into whose presence I will not introduce you tonight, excepting to say, that they thought me dead. I myself had taught them that it would be so. Save for that ineffable hope, that divine and wonderful prompting in every heart that seems to yearn toward a higher and diviner life, did I know it? Now by all the powers of earth and air and sky I did not know it.
Mr. Chairman and friends, I have heard it said in this convention and in many, councils of Spiritualists while I was still on earth, that had I been true to my convictions I would have avowed a knowledge of spirit life and spirit communion. I did not know of it. I knew what Spiritualists think, I knew what they believe, I knew that there were many of them honest and true to their convictions. I spoke upon their platforms and in their camp-meetings, because we were engaged in a common cause, viz.: That of breaking down the errors and bigotry of a blind theology, but I did not know concerning the future life. However I will say now, as some of you may have heard me say in human speech in my own particular person, that I never stood before the lifeless form of a friend, never bent above that image of clay from which the breath had taken flight that all the yearning of my nature did not go out in one great hope for immortality. I never stood beside the casket containing a loved one that I did not remember that the great beneficent life of nature holds all life in her keeping, and I believed that somewhere and sometime those beautiful thoughts and images would be conserved, but I had no knowledge of the life beyond death. I had no evidence that appealed to me as many of you have. There were my affections, my intuitions if you please, that led me through the divine gifts of the imagination and poetry to dream of a future life. There was the intellect, however, and it was trained in such a school of logic and evidence that nothing could have.
That is why I am here: that is why the first moment it is possible, I come to declare that I was mistaken. I was not mistaken, or I have not found that I was mistaken in my estimate of what was not true, because I have found that the future life was not guarded by wardens upon either side who were waiting to conduct me either to hades or heaven, I have not found a yawning abyss opening to receive and devour me with its everlasting flame in the midst of torturing devils; I have not found a far-off heaven with walls and gates of precious stones, with an alabaster throne upon which a personal God is set, whose angels forever sing his praise and play upon harps of gold; I have not found any condemnation from any angel or spirit with whom I have come in contact since the cessation of my mortal breath, but I have found, oh! joy ineffable, such a light as comes to the mariner when out upon the storm-tossed sea he has battled with the elements and has almost been engulfed by the waves and no star shining above to guide him, when the polar light refuses to shed its radiance across his pathway and then in the gray dawn of the morning, over the mysterious, beckoning, storm-tossed waves a ray of light is seen, at first through the long, gray, trailing mist of gloom, then one by one piercing shafts of light rise toward the zenith and at last the world is thrilled and the waters are pervaded with a sense of the approaching day; and then from the great throbbing bosom of the sea, from the storm-crested waves, from the billows which seemed to blend the earth and sky at last the chariot of the day is seen, and Phoebus, the mighty god of light, rises in triumph above the waves, and the world rejoices that it is day. Suddenly in the midst of the great, solemn silence of death, in the midst of the whirling thoughts that went surging through the brain into a shadowy something unknown, in the midst of the pulsing tides of affection that sought to reach the loved ones who were left behind, in the midst of this which shut off the mortal breath came the surpassing glory of spirit life. This sun of splendor rose suddenly, clear and cloudless, there was nothing that could mar its beauty or its perfection and sweet strains of music, like those that Apollo might have given on his harp of light among the stars, floated toward my consciousness and seemed to upbear me from the mortal thought.
Wonderful thoughts came pulsing like argosies of light freighted with dreams of prophecy and hopes of immortality, and these bore the images of loved ones whom I had known in childhood, those who had gone into the white silence of death and from whom I had heard no more. They came toward me, not as strangers, but as those who were aware of my coming and hastened to welcome me.
We did not pass through space, we traveled to no distant land, we did not enter any sphere that I am aware of, but right there in the ineffable and wonderful awakening of all our attributes and powers. Instead of fading when the senses faded, it seemed to me that every pulse was quickened, every nerve was performing it thousandfold more duty. I could hear the voices of the loved ones saying softly and with hushed and tremulous voices, “Is he really dead?” I could also hear their hearts beat and feel the throbbings of their minds as, with great intensity of love; they asked the man of medicine if he could cure me.
Ah! but I could hear more plainly that music of the bending spheres, that sound of beloved ones calling and winning me unto this wonderful realm, and those whom I had loved in restored youth and wonderful delight, welcoming me unto the land or realm of spirit.
Was it a dream, could this be another phantasy of the brain? Was it possible that my indisposition has taken on such shape and form? Was I really not out of my body, but imagining all this? Sometimes it would flash upon me; this is not music I hear, these are not my friends who have died that I see before me, but only the memory of them, my brain is diseased and I will be restored, and I will be again among the members of my household and my friends on earth as before. But as soon as this thought would come to me there would be the body lying there prepared or being prepared for sepulcher; and there those spirits pointing me to that form and saying, “No, you will no longer rehabilitate yourself with that form, you will no longer pervade that brain; you are alive in the realm of spirit.” Then oh! such vast areas as seemed to sweep before my vision, the sun-kissed rainbow that crowned the universe seemed throbbing and pulsing with light, and thoughts greater than I had dared to think in that house of clay came through my teeming brain as I realized that I was no longer an inhabitant of the dust, but an immortal human spirit.
Have you ever been in the confines of a closed room, or possibly in the mines in the depths of the earth scarcely able to breathe from an atmosphere so close and damp? Have you ever been shut up in a noisome place where many persons were congregated and not able to breathe, the air so vitiated? Have you ever felt tethered and fettered by your environment of dust? If you have, you know what it is when you set your feet upon the broad, green earth and can breathe the air of heaven and see the mountains beyond and all the bright verdure and know that you are free. Not one thousandth part of this freedom did I ever feel before! not one millionth part of this great joy. I seemed to be let loose from the fetters of the dust; I seemed to let something fall that was a clod, and I entered the realm that was my native element. Have you ever let a bird free from the cage where it was reluctant to sing its song, and then heard it warble in its native air? Have you set free a spirit that was in sorrow or in bondage in the earth life, weighted down with human cares and, perhaps, with poverty and want? Then you know something of the great tide of freedom that swept in and through my consciousness.
It seemed to me that the chain of thought was limitless; it seemed to me that retrospect and prophecy were one; it seemed to me that all the things that I saw or did were before my consciousness, and each unworthy, act burned into my spirit with a bitter pang, and much that I had done was brought to my consciousness with added joy, for there were those who seemed to think I had done them good. Whomsoever I had helped in any way came toward me with added love, and upon whomsoever there had been bestowed a benefaction, even with my feeble earth hands and brain, that benefaction seemed doubled a thousand fold.
Do not deceive yourselves, friends. I did not think that I was perfect, and my human imperfections came out to meet me in the most distinct and glaring manner; everything that had bordered upon unworthiness, everything that bordered upon selfishness, everything in human life whatsoever that I had thought or done came before me as a part and portion of my spiritual inheritance, came before me like children saying, “l am yours, you have thought me, you have acted me,” and if it is not worthy it proves a shadow and a barrier to my further joy in this realm of the spirit.
I have not fully confronted that retrospect yet, dear friends, and the time is still coming when we must, meet that introspection, which I understand must come to every spirit, I must meet the deeds, the thoughts and words of my mortal existence. But, friends, I am not afraid to meet them, they are mine and I am responsible for them; I am willing to suffer for them if need be. I shall require to have this introspection before I can take up this vast thread of life, which opens up before me, and intelligently bear it forward to its fruition. I shall require to understand who I am in this realm which is freer and greater than human life. I shall require to comprehend more and more of the great relations of life to life and mind to mind.
But friends, it is not appalling, I find nothing before me that is discouraging; one of the least of those souls that are set free, of these spirits that surge and throng around me in the kingdom of immortal life, I still put my feet firmly upon the foundations of spirit life and I am not afraid. There is nothing in this spirit life that can appall or make afraid; you enter upon your own inheritance, and, I am happy to say, that of all the things I may have committed that were wrong, of all the thoughts that may have been unworthy. I have tried to think and act with integrity and justice to my fellow-man.
So I find myself here upon the threshold of immortal life, not with any great spiritual possessions, for I did not have them with much understanding of the life that opens up before me, for I did not have it. But I find that the dreams that I dreamed, even from early youth and manhood, and the great tides of hope that have uplifted me even in the hour of contact with mortal death are realities, and this the fulfillment of that hope in the reunion of beloved friends, and the fulfillment of that aspiration and dream in the great world or realm upon which I have entered.
I cannot tell you; as other spirits can, of added experiences in the spirit state, they must come to me. I must wait until the last sorrow has been hushed, until the tears over the casket are dried, which as yet are not fully parted from me. I must wait until I can take up the great inheritance of spirit life worthily and understand its true value and meaning.
But friends, I realize at this moment, in this the first hours of my spiritual existence, that I am not separated from the great bond of sympathy, am not separated from my kind because I am dead, and I hasten to remove any barrier that a word or thought of mine may have placed upon the mind of any of you concerning that future life. If there is one let it be removed from this hour.
I hasten to tell you that, unbelief, although sincere and honest, is not the correct attitude for an intelligent mind which may not have knowledge, for, without knowledge, what right have we to disbelieve? Doubt is the great agitator of thought and the commencement of wisdom, and the doubts of the past have enabled man to explore the avenues of human science and knowledge to the fulfillment of the laws of an all bountiful nature. But to say that there should be active disbelief in a thing which one knows nothing of is now revealed to me as being unworthy an intelligent mind. I here retract or retrace any word or footstep that I may have taken in the realm of mind against the knowledge of a future life.
I take back no word that I ever spoke concerning the degrading nature of theological fear. I take back no word that I ever spoke against that fear that, enthralls mankind and refuses to let him go free in the realm of thought and active human life. But the difference between the theological heaven and hades and this realm into which I have now entered is the difference between darkness and light, between death and life, between annihilation and existence forever. I still say, as I often said when in human life, that between the hades of orthodox theology and the limited heaven into which only a privileged few could enter, give me hades, for my friends would be there. But we are not there, we are neither in hades or the burning pit, nor are we in the heaven that would dwarf our hearts’ sensibilities by a selfish immortality based upon the foundation of perishing souls. We are in the midst of the universe of boundless life, we are in the midst of all the souls in the universe which are related to us. We clasp hands with infinite and eternal possibilities, we approach the great mountains of life, which are spiritual thoughts and there sun-kissed and sun-crowned with the immortal splendor of truth stretching far away before my vision and ever and anon turning earthward for the consolation of those that are in human life, stretching far away are those wonderful legions of spiritual consciousness, I see them rank and file in serried columns of invincible thought advance, not like armies of might upon an unsuspecting world, but with messages of peace and joy, and love divine.
I hail you, brother chairman, and friends, for the light that is being shed upon human pathways concerning this spiritual realm. I wish it could be broadened and deepened and opened into every human consciousness. In my feeble way at this time and at this hour I promise you that I will enjoy no heaven; that I will depart to no far-off realm; that I will not separate myself from human existence until I too, have made people aware that death is not death, but eternal life.
But for the time come with me unto this all-bountiful, affluent, universal life and light where your hopes are enshrined and those who have left your mortal sight, and whom you think as I have thought were dead, come into the gardens of this paradise that opens before my vision and that has restored to my arms those whom I thought dead and gave to my consciousness the ministration of my loved ones. Come to me you, who as orphans have wandered up and down the earth seeking somewhat that would assuage the pain of your human grief when the mother’s eyes were closed in the slumber of death and the father’s hand was cold and lifeless, come to where you can know they are restored; that life is life forevermore; that the mother’s love poured out upon the heart of the weeping child binds up the wounds of the aching heart.
Come with me, weary man of the world, plodding day by day in the pursuit of worldly wealth, let me show you how your energies may be quickened, how your mind may be uplifted from the dreary treadmill of seeking for your daily bread; let the consciousness of this life, which I find has been closed to the world, uplift and strengthen your hearts that you may follow your daily vocations with stronger hands and more willing hearts, and know that life immortal is not far away.
Come with me, my intellectual friend, you who have endeavored to cope with the problems of material life, let me show you where behind this thin film of the senses, behind this glamour of the intellect that binds you to day as it blinded me through my life, is the great spiritual solution of all problems.
Come to those who lead men’s souls unto a knowledge of a higher life, and if you dare to know the great problems of immortality, come and prove, not through the change called death, not through that great master stroke which has come to me, but by your firesides, through the instrumentality of little children, where the voice of your loved ones may be heard, make a shrine and altar there, and let that shrine and altar be the place of communion. Meanwhile I must not longer hold the instrument, which I have never before used. I might jar upon those sensitive, tender chords. But let me invite you in the name of Death, that beautiful, white, tender Mother who closes the eyes of the sorrowing and the lips of those who mourn, who uplifts the voices and hearts of those who are discouraged; oh! beautiful, white Mother Death, I have come into thy presence, I have felt thy divine uplifting breath, I have seen the whiteness of thy form, the glory of thy countenance, the wonder of thine image, I have entered into thine embrace, thou primal mother, I have seen that thou art all-beautiful.
Oh! thou beautiful angel, misnamed Death; thou art the mother of life; thou art the inheritance of all souls; thou art the baptism, the supreme, eternal comfort; thou art the enfolding glory when on earth; thou art named Death, men behold not thy rare countenance, see not thine image of loveliness, but thou art all of the stars and worlds of the universe of life; beautiful angel of life, I am thine forever.
When the change came that set my soul free from the thralldom of earth, I had no knowledge of that which was to come, I say, I had no knowledge. Within every human mind there is born the impulse of hope; in every human mind the aspirations to futurity. I had received no evidence, even in your sylvan retreat here, of that which would convince me beyond all doubt of a future individual existence.
You will bear me testimony, Mr. Chairman and friends, that I never doubted your honesty. I believed that you thought that you had evidence. But a mind used to much careful analysis; a mind conscious of the fallibility of the human senses and human judgment, could but think that much of that which was supposed to be evidence of a future life was in reality but the happy conception of faith. But I am here to confess my mistakes as a spirit who is now aware of living, who is not willing to be considered dead, who does not wish to be mentioned in the past tense, and who, with your permission, will describe to you where he is.
I am a conscious, living intelligence, a thinking, active being, no longer bound by the narrow limitations of time and sense, and only tethered by my own lack of knowledge.
None of my theological friends have ventured to send me to the theological heaven, and I am not in the theological heaven. No angels, as far as I know, of the theological kind, received me when I passed from earth; no one ushered me into a kingdom of transcendent beauty and greatness which was separated from all the rest of the realms of space; no walls rose up; no gates opened to receive me guarded by the ancient benefactor of those who are saved; Saint Peter has not welcomed me, that I am aware of. If he did, he stood among those multitudes of spirits that I have seen, and he wears no label, and he has not refused to admit me into the place over which he has (it is said) guardianship. No harp has been presented and no crown. I saw no walls that shut out the majority of the human race; no alabaster throne, on which a fearful, judging God is enthroned, have I seen. I have passed through no vast spaces. I have not entered into the theological heaven that shuts you out and the majority of my friends. I have not smiled down from parapets and towers made of precious stones, nor from those streets of gold, nor from the midst of those fountains flowing with milk and honey, upon souls in torment and torture. I have not been glad that I was one of the saints to be saved and that most of my friends were to be lost. No such heaven has received me.
Notwithstanding a few of the utterances of my theological friends, that have been wafted to my consciousness in spirit life, I have seen no hell. No yawning abyss opens to receive my spirit; no flames of torture dart up from an abyss still more terrible to engulf and enfold me. No personal Satan, whether described in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” or in the figurative language of the Bible, has come to mock and torment me, nor one among the general throng of spirits to remind me of my sorrow, my condition, and ready to torment me further on. I entered no shadowy, cloudy region of flame and torture. I did not see demons lurking everywhere for those who are disenthralled, for earth to swallow them up in the shadows of eternal torment.
Ah, my friends! I have passed the boundary of death, and I have tested all that death can do. I was not afraid, because the mind becomes prepared by inward retrospection for the change that must inevitably come. I did not have much hope, but I was most intensely anxious until the last moment of my mortal life to study the change that was coming to me. I felt that it was coming, though I did not tell my family and friends. So when it finally came I wished to watch every emotion, every pulsation, every throbbing thought before the mind sunk away into that forgetfulness, which I thought might be the Lethean stream from which I would never awaken.
To my great surprise, with the shock that carried me off I felt the gateways of my being unloosen, and I felt as I have sometimes felt when watching the dawn, when Aurora, with her attendant beams, glides up the heavens and one by one unbars the gateways of the dawn for Phoebus, the god of day. You have seen with what splendor these gateways swing open and the rays of light, first reluctantly, then more consciously and more aware, rush in through all the avenues of existence. You have seen the leaves tremble, you have seen the lake grow silvery gray, and golden, and crimson beneath the flush of dawn, and you have almost heard the sliding of the bars of light that swing the gates open to receive the day god. I felt innumerable beings, throngs of messengers, sliding back the bolts and bars of my material consciousness, and opening up avenues of which I was unaware. Almost instantly it seemed to me millions of fairy singers touched my recollections and my consciousness in ways that had been well nigh forgotten; great and wonderful depths and promontories of thoughts and feelings came throbbing through my brain and heart like the tides that “well up when the ocean yields up its mighty treasures. I felt myself growing more and more conscious, more and more aware; more and more there were all the recollections and memories that had long perished: the imaginations of early youth and later manhood. Those wonderful imaginings with which our lives are crowded, and that make up in reality the immortal things that we are.
Oh, you remember I believed in imagination! I thought it lent wings and power to every human faculty. I believed that it should be cultivated in the minds of children until poetry and philosophy should go hand in hand. But I never dreamed that that wonderful gift of Imagination lies close to Intuition; that it really opens the gateways of immortality to your poets, seers and philosophers.
I can understand now how the immortal Shakespeare learned the wisdom of life and his hints of that which is to come. I can understand now how the poets of antiquity reveled in this knowledge of the higher life, through that heaven-born gift of imagination. Then and there, in that supreme moment of the mighty change, I was glad that my imagination had not been sealed. Glad, Mr. Chairman, that in the midst of the treadmill of time, of the dull realities of human existence, of human law and lawmaking that there was a realm in my nature that had drawn close to the immortal realm and through which I had passed with fairies and blessed beings, creatures of those thoughts that are set free from the trammels of time and of the senses.
Now when the great hand of this added life, with all its messengers, had set free the thoughts that were teeming and pulsing in my brain, when every attribute seemed to kindle a resplendent glow, when near and far trooping messengers came born of the higher life, I found that I had fashioned them, and instead of being creatures of the imagination, poetic images that I had conjured up in my flights of fancy, they were living realities; they were born of the affections of the past, they were those affections that had been folded away in the chambers of the spirit, whose memories, laden with lavender and with sweetest gifts, had been placed among the things that were. All these came, as if summoned by the mighty presence of this wonderful change, to bid me welcome to myself; welcome to every avenue of my being, that until then had been closed and fettered; welcome to the great storehouse of thought and aspiration, that had sometimes been neglected; welcome to the hopes and prophecies that—some of them—had been abortive on the earth, or fallen, like the blossoms, or like seeds, on unfruitful soil.
Oh! I could stand at this hour for many days of mortal time and tell you of the infinite rapture of death; of that which you and I and all human beings have dreaded and feared the most of all things. I could stand here for hours, and days, and weeks, and declare to you that, not human birth, when the babe gazes for the first time into the mother’s eyes when she bends with all absorbing and grateful love above that little form, when the babe realizes for the first time the infinity of the love that is in the mother’s eyes, not that compares with the great rapture of death; not human love when the heart hath found its chosen mate and life opens with all its beauty like a newborn bower of paradise; not human love when two lives are linked together in perfect happiness and labor and suffer together, can compare with the great rapture of being caught into the arms of this eternal mother Death. Oh! I have stood (as you all have stood) when in human life over the remains of the dearest and the best; I have seen their silent lips close in the last sleep, their faces and forms chiseled and white, as if by some enchanted sculptor, and I have yearned; as you have yearned, and I have asked; as you have asked, and I have thought; as you have thought, and I have sobbed; as you have sobbed over the great relentlessness of this seeming foe of human life; but I have lately stood in spirit where my own loved ones were weeping, where the silence, and the gloom, and the stillness shut out all possible communion, where they could not follow, where they did not understand, where the dear hearts were clutched in the awful agony of this separation, and yet in the midst of that I have never experienced so great a rapture as that which came to me because of death, the surpassing freedom of the consciousness that thought is eternal; that not one of these fairy children of the brain would be lost; that not one of these hopes and imaginings for human life would be destroyed; that not one of all those whom I had loved was missing in this goodly company that gathered to receive me.
Was I dreaming? Was it a delirium that would soon pass? Was this a great ecstasy that preceded the final dissolution and end? Nay. For there was my body clothed for sepulture, for such disposition as had been my wish and theirs who loved me. It was there. But oh! what was that compared to this? The eyes could not see; the lips could not speak; the hands could not move in response to all the endearing words that were uttered. But I was there; and after the great first flash of the awakening, after the great first consciousness of being free, of this which had come to me, of a new birth, and a new awareness of what that birth meant, there came a change: Then I, too, was immersed for a time in grief. A sudden change came over me, a sudden recollection that they did not know me, a sudden consciousness that those whom I had loved could not see me, nor hear me, nor speak to me, nor be aware of my existence. I moved among them a being unknown. The awful barrier of the great human grief, the one inevitable sequence of human blindness to spiritual presences, had separated me from them and them from me. For the instant I would have gone back into that habitation of clay; for the instant I would have taken up the breath and burden of human life again. Oh! there have been those who have come back from the borderland of the spirit realm and told the story of their experiences to their friends, and physicians, and men of science, and men of learning have heard them. Then I said: “Oh! it is but the imaginings of a poor, weak and sickly brain.” I uttered that sentence, and bestowed it upon others, as others have bestowed it upon you.
At this hour I take upon myself all the blame that I deserve for laughing at such as had knowledge of the future life; for disputing the evidence that came to minds as capable of judging as myself; for helping to seal the doorways between human consciousness and that which shall come after death. I take back the boasted sentence of my proud agnostic mind, “One world at a time is enough for me.”
I ask you to forgive me; for there is nothing that can come into human life, there is no knowledge of love, of poesy or science, nothing that can uplift and strengthen the infirm, the week, the downtrodden, and those who are prone to error, like the consciousness of this continued life. I may repeat that sentence by and by: “one world at a time is enough for me,” but it must mean all the world, not a part of it; the entirety of existence, not its mere primary department; it must be all of that which is within, around, beneath and above as well as that which is in the conscious human sentient being and frame that you now possess. I would give all the possibilities of many, many years and ages of my spirit’s existence if I could unsay any words that have influenced any in human life to disbelieve in the evidence of the future existence.
Take my message for what it is worth, for it comes from the great heart-throbs of that recollection that finds itself in possession of its life, of its weaknesses, of whatever strength it had, of all its faculties, of its great possibilities. So if at this hour I could wipe away the doubts and substitute the distinct inquiry that leads to knowledge, I would do it. I would not substitute faith, blind faith, any more than when I stood here four years ago; I would not substitute credulity, blind credulity, any more than I would then. But I would, substitute that attitude of mind that is willing to receive evidence.
I was offered evidence while here. I would not take it. I was met with a fraternal spirit that proposed to lead me to a line of investigation that would give me evidence. I did not accept it. Let no one say that I stultified my convictions; for I did not. But I was afraid to have convictions. If I had convictions, would I not be obliged to speak them? If they came to me as they have come to you, and you, and you, where would be the citadel of that boasted reason and intelligence which I had set up to distinguish between dark, false superstition, and the reasoning faculties of the human mind? But, oh! without knowing it I did shut out the evidence, I did close my mind to the receiving of testimony. I wished to stand free and untrammeled before the gateways of human life that I might help to destroy error and superstition. I saw those masterminds who had aided in destroying superstition, and I did wish to continue the onslaught against the theological errors which I believed held the world enthralled.
But oh! I saw not that which had opened to you, that vast plain of thought into which I did not enter. With all the possibilities of this grand truth, the light, the knowledge of life that has come to you (much that you accept or that is offered to you is not true). But rather than that your knowledge should be destroyed, I would leave it that the healthful growth may take the place of that which is unhealthful. I will not tear away the sacred vine and the precious fruitage of immortal life, if I must do so in order to take away the tares. You are intelligent, you understand, you know that there is the shadow as well as the light in all human life. But preserve this truth as Christians would the Bible; hold high, as they would, the sacred truth of Olivet, for such it is evermore; accept the allegorical language of that which comes to you as manifesting the knowledge of spirit existence.
Now where am I? In a realm so vast that I have seen, as yet, no boundary lines; a realm that stretches far and far away in all directions, peopled with lives, some of whom I have known on earth, some of whom I have known in dreams and visions, some of whom are the heroes of my imaginings, some of whom have been my familiar companions in the, works of poets, authors and dreamers of mankind. Where am I? No limited space enchains me, no walls encompass me around about, no dim labyrinths of terror mock me, no limit appears before my vision. I feed upon the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. But they are not gods of the heathen, or of Christian theologies; they are the dear ones of my household, the loved companions of my thoughts; those who, like me, have passed from the trammels of time and sense; and, like unto me, are seeking to tell you and teach you of their existence.
Have I visited other worlds? I know not. For the present I am here; I bask in the sunshine of that light that comes from within and above. I see around me on earth and in spirit thousands of spiritual beings who, like myself, are seeking to solve the problems of life. I offer you my congratulations that here is an open gateway, where there are no powers of fear, superstition and prejudice to separate you from that realm unseen. See to it that there are no barriers erected; see to it that this investigation is pursued in a clear and honorable manner; see to it that the pathway which the investigator would travel is made clear and plain; and, above all things, friends, at this hour, in this moment of my great secondary joy, when the first sadness and sorrow for the separation because of those I loved has been passed, let me enjoin upon you not to build these walls of sorrow between you and your loved ones. Think of it! Out in the world they say, “he has gone from human speech.” Often prompted by human errors of speech, you say, “he was with us four years ago.” How many days, and hours, and moments, through how many messages and impressions he has been with you since, you take little note of. Alas! too often the dear ones fold the memory away, as carefully and sacredly as a lock of hair, or a keepsake, a sacred treasure trove at the altar of love, and say, “how good he was.” There is no “was.” It is: life is eternal, it is now, it is endless, it is indestructible, it is continuing to unfold, it will be the bearing of the message unto all eternity. I that spoke to you then, I that am speaking to you now, I that will speak many more times through as many human lives as I can inspire, and approach as many brains as are amenable to my influence. I will speak and think thoughts as the product of this realm of intelligence forever.
What is the motive power I employ? I have no need for the torturous steam engine, or for the swift lightning stroke to bear my message. Thought itself is my message-bearer. I have built my mansions or palaces of thought. I have made them of such of my deeds as were worthy to be preserved in the kingdom of life. I make no boast of this. They are mine. If they are shadowed I am permitted to wipe out the shadow. If I have unfittingly pained any one I can remedy that by aiding that one. If I have done injustice to my fellow man through ignorance, I can gain knowledge and aid him.
In the great interests of human life I take part still; but it is the interest that leads thought-ward and soul-ward, not mammon-ward, not even nation-ward. I have no nation, I am a spirit, I live with all souls that are like unto me, I am fraternal with them. The boundaries or limits of human habitations, human races and human conditions affect me not, excepting as my loved ones are there. I believe in Humanity, in the great dominant, living, absorbing purpose of human life. I believe in the spirit of humanity. I have done with earth and earthly measures and devices. I know nothing about finance or war. I see nothing but shadow in the direction where the war clouds tend. I plead with you for the higher and nobler condition, I plead with you for the light that comes from poetry and philosophy and the living message of absolute life. Teach the people how to live, teach them the great knowledge of life.
May I bear my torch as one of the humble instruments in this great truth; as one who has seen no God face to face, no Satan starting out from any terrible region of bondage; but has seen the godlike human souls and those who have passed onward and upward into higher and more divine beatitudes. These I have seen and I must follow, and you must follow.
Oh, the great, surging, incoming tide of Life! It bears you upon mighty billows; it woos and beckons you by its crested arms and shining waves; it is the one eternal light and truth that must sanctify human love, must upbuild human aspiration, that must crown human hopes, that must set mankind free from the thralldom of error, and from the thralldom of the dust!
Knowledge and truth are offered to me. I stretch out my mental pinions for flights. If I falter it is from lack of knowledge. I stretch out my heart to include the world; if I falter it is from lack of loving kindness.
Oh, ye friends! unto whom this knowledge is given at this hour, I pray you turn with me to these immortal heights of light and promise, and thought. No heaven of glory, no fair region of pictured saints, no delightful paradise appealing to the senses can compare with this realm of supernal and perfect thought and truth. We are borne on its mighty pinions; we are not afraid of its great intuition; we are plumed for the flight into its eternal azure spaces of thought and truth. Every word that drops from the messengers of spirit life healing the brokenhearted, giving balm to the afflicted mind and breathing unto the mother and father, the husband and child the knowledge of this life, is a word that is sanctified and sacred from the altar of heaven.
Talk about sacred altars; there are none, excepting the altars of love; human love which uplifts humanity from the dull bondage of the senses and makes human lives worthy to be lived. Divine love, which cometh from the human soul when crowned with immortality, and bathed in the living splendor of that morning which shall never be shadowed, which shall never go down to the evening tide of sorrow, but shall forever and forever bear you on and on until the gateways of eternity open more and more refulgently, and then on and on and on forevermore!
Dear friends, many known in the mortal form and many unfamiliar to me when I was here: The first thought is one of hesitation, that through the lips you have been accustomed to watch and the voice you have been accustomed to hear, I should give a message to you; not of my own voice but of one that is loaned to me for the occasion, through those guides that we have mutually received lessons from.
The first thought after the change was: Then I saw through a glass darkly, now it is face to face. Which transposition of the text is permissible, I trust, from the present standpoint, but the greater thought is:
“How wonderful is Death;
Death and his brother Sleep;
One pale as yonder beauteous moon,
The other radiant as the morn
When throned on ocean wave
It blushes o’er the world.”
“How wonderful is Death!
The awakener of the soul.”
The awakening that comes to all surely cannot be unusual. Yet every babe that comes to the household is the most wonderful thing in the world. So every experience, I believe, of the change called death, the birth into the higher life is the most wonderful experience, because it comes to the individual, to the person.
For many, many years death had ceased to possess any terror or shadow to me. Those who knew me on earth will bear testimony to this. There was no fear of death and no reluctance when the time came to pass through it. It was ever an interesting study to me, and often when earnestly caring for those who were passing on, and sometimes caring more tenderly for those who remained, I watched with the eye of a student to see whether there was any indication that the spirit, in passing through this change, could be aware of its various stages, of the various processes of what is called death.
I was interested in this from a scientific standpoint, as well as later from a psychic standpoint. It seems to me that human lives are so helpless about this thing that is called death, they seem to be so stranded and at sea when it comes. I often longed to give my own knowledge to the people watching around the bedside of the dying one, so they might at least turn their thoughts toward the spirit state into which their friend was entering. You know how hopeless it is when people are bowed down with grief, when they feel their personal loss; it is so difficult to turn their thoughts to something they cannot see. There is so much resisting of the tide on the material side of life that the people on earth do not see that which comes with the great flood-tide of spirit life. Therefore I resolved that when the time came for me to go, I would, if possible, watch and take note of every step of this change.
With the usual egotism and conceit of one who has studied anatomy and physiology and who knows the body well, I thought I could tell of all stages of its change by watching the progress of its dissolution. I had watched my own case for a number of years. I was not over anxious; I cared much for my body, but I said from time to time, when the final change came I would be prepared. Prepared by the Soul Teachings not to fear death. It seemed to me that this would be the chance for me to study the change from the spirit standpoint. So I thought I would know when the spirit left the body.
So when the days and weeks and months went by and I saw the failing of the physical body, I prayed to be taken. Afterward I said to myself: “Now these are the times, these, last days and hours, in which I can take up this theme of pursuing the processes of the intelligence separating from the body.”
Of course there were the usual things; there was the tender tie that clung yet to the bodily form; there were those left on earth. But even this did not deter me, because I knew the change was approaching. When at last it became evident that I must leave my body, for I had watched the pulsations, I knew how many there were and how many there ought to be, I knew when the ebbing of the tide of life was there. I always dreaded the effect of narcotics, but when the attending physician wished to administer it I consented, but I thought it would interfere with my observations of the physical dissolution. At last when it was thought necessary it was administered; but instead of dulling my observations, it seemed rather to quicken the mental perceptions, though it deadened the bodily pain, consequently the suffering. The principal thing that seemed to interfere most with my study toward the closing was the anxiety of friends, who were beginning to gather around the bed. While I was absorbed in the changes that were coming to me, they would want to know if I knew them; and just as I was in abstract thought over something puzzling passing through my mind they would suddenly ask, “Do you suffer any pain? is there anything you want, anything we can do for you?”
I would recommend to all who have friends passing on not to ask “Do you know me;” “Are you in pain;” “Do you suffer any?” or any of those trivial questions. If you knew the great urgency of that which is coming to them, of that which they are passing through, the great urgency of that which is dawning upon them, you would not think of those things; you would not have them turn back, a smile is like loving words, a pressure of the hand oftentimes suffices to make you know that the loved one is aware, but it cannot be stopped. It is like trying to interrupt the tide that is coming in by wishing it to go out, or to go out by wishing it to come in. Do not try to interrupt the life tides; you cannot at such a time.
As I felt my pulse gradually receding I felt, also, my consciousness gradually increasing. I knew more than ever the people all around me; I was conscious of their thoughts; I wished they would not speak, I did not want to listen. I was there, that is I could see easily enough. But I suddenly became aware psychically of perceiving what they were thinking about. Instead of a great loss of consciousness, even under the influence of the medicine given, I was still perfectly conscious through the physical organism, more conscious than before. But that which puzzled me was, however, that as I grew conscious mentally of their thoughts I seemed to forget about the body, and I wondered if I would forget to know actually when the body died. Of course, for all human science, it seemed to me that would baffle my purpose. I grew more and more conscious of the pervading thoughts of my friends and those who were nearest and close to my bed, until I grew perfectly aware of what they were thinking.
Then that which seemed of more urgency: I grew aware of a great luminous presence that at first seemed like an atmosphere; still I was clinging to the body and counting the pulse beats of the receding tide of life of the body, There! at last a great burst of light came upon me, and I saw the countenances familiar to me, long passed away, those that I had known here, and those I knew although I had not known here, and I forgot all about the essential part of watching the body. Forgot it utterly! I was so alive, so intent upon watching these friends around me, that until it was said by one in attendance, “He has gone,” I did not know that I was “gone.” I knew nothing about what death had been to the body or what had transpired as the means by which I had left it. I seemed to grow into this luminous, super-conscious state. Instead of losing, it seemed increase into the quickening in thought, in perception. But the magic of it all was, that the bodily breath went away without my knowing it. I had no struggle; I did not realize that there was any struggle. There simply was enlargement—if I may use that term—enlargement of my being, the gradual unfoldment into another atmosphere: As if this room were suddenly to expand and grow light and very populous and the people who are here were to grow more luminous to your understanding. That was the way it seemed. There was no wrench, no mental or spiritual strain. It did not seem any effort. I only knew when they said, “He has gone,” I could gaze. I do not think I gazed with the physical eyes, but I gazed through the sympathy of those around. I saw my body there; saw what seemed to be myself, and not myself, lying there. I think it did not look to be alive, but I, I was more alive than ever I was in the body. The first conscious thought, the first thrill, was that of Freedom.
It had been quite a long siege with my physical infirmities and the body had begun to drag; I was always aware of it in the months that the disease was encroaching, and the freedom from this was something surpassing. Although every kindness, every sympathy had been given me, everything had been done to assuage the bodily condition; but if you had been tethered and swathed in every limb, fettered in every movement and then let free you could begin to realize the consciousness of the spirit at that moment of being free. The wings of birds have given to one the thought of freedom. “I feel as light as air,” you frequently say with reference to the feeling of buoyancy that you have in perfect health. But these are clods compared to that sense of freedom from the limitations of the body. The thinking was clearer and more rapid. The perception of such things as I was ready to perceive seemed instantaneous; and the recognition of friends was not quite the most overpowering thing that came to me, it was a part of this change and freedom, and there was great joy in experiencing it. But the most perfect expression is that thought of Freedom, and the something, that I can carry to your minds by no other word than illumination. The illumination of the spirit to perceive friends, people and spiritual things. This seemed to come almost instantaneously. It has come with greater power since.
But the first knowledge of it was illumination. The one who had been by my side during all those years of earthly life in the human state seemed to be that illumination. I owe it to her here to say: That I perceived that my spiritual illumination had largely been through her when I was on earth. Through her without my knowing it. I thought I knew a great deal about spiritual things. But knowing it with the mind and perceiving it with the spirit must be different; I know what the mind missed I perceived in the spirit largely through her. And if you will accept this and not consider it too personal, I will say, that my illumination at that moment of entering into this consciousness of spirit life was through her who remained on earth. A great light surrounded her, like that which illumed the saints in pictures, and which I perceived came from within and from above, from those who taught, guided and guarded us.
In this twofold light, of those who surrounded me in spirit life and her light upon earth, I perceived this Great Luminous Presence. Now let me state, illumination is not a vision of the eye, it is the perception of the spirit. It, of course, comes primarily from the soul, as you all understand who are aware of the Soul-Teachings, but it is not perceived until it reaches the spirit and mind. The consciousness of this Freedom and illumination was such that if there had been a great voice, as large as the world, I would have liked to have shouted it! Shouted it! to you who are my friends, to many who were my friends and to those who are strangers.
I never recovered from the thought of proselyting. The one, who was luminous always, by my side always said: “But all are not ready for these things; you must not talk this to every one.” But I thought if they were not ready they would not be harmed by it. Among those to whom I had talked were the few people who gathered around there where I lived. These also were luminous; they entering into the knowledge of this passing on as if it were a part of that which they had been prepared to accept. They tried to make it manifest, even through their sympathy, that this knowledge was not lost upon them.
Now the psychic fact is: That when first entering spirit life we are less in sympathy oftentimes with the spirits who have passed on before us and beyond than with those who love us and were much with us on earth. My psychic sympathy returned to those left on earth. How would they feel? What would they think? I saw they were wonderfully prepared for this change, and for any change that might come to their households. Missing the bodily presence, they still understood that which had been entered into.
Now so natural did this seem, this process of dying, as it is called, the awakening, the being born, that although I could not succeed in studying it, although the body was sloughed off like something that was an excrescence and I slipped away from it without a struggle, or knowledge of it—so natural does this seem, I said: “If I could tell these friends and other friends how it seemed to me, they will not only not dread the change when it comes to them, but they will not dread it for their friends, and they will know that there is no suffering in the change. If I told them in my own simple way, that this is release not only from pain, but from the limitations of the body; that one enters into greater perception, according to one’s state, than they had in the body. The things the people long to think, long to do, would like to be aware of, they can be aware of. But they will think differently by the time the change comes to them.”
In a simple way I want to tell you this; I want to do it, for after all if you are not ready for this thought it will not reach you, but I want to add my voice to the thought; that death is as natural to those who die as being born is to those who are born. You do not usually pity the babe that enters into earthly life,—though you might many times—you rejoice at the coming, you are glad, there is a great light in the habitation frequently (sometimes there is a great shadow where there is poverty, want and pain). But in this added birth, this spiritual birth, there is a great light. I know many are born into spirit life who are shadowed in the earthly life, but they do not thereby enter into deeper shadow. There is no human life that, according to the degree of its human existence, is not freer in taking this next step, called death.
Then what one is in spirit life must, of course, depend upon what one is when here; no more nor no less am I then in spirit than when with you. That which is essentially me now is no more than that which constituted me then, which perhaps you did not always see, which did not always manifest itself through the form; perhaps the body was too over busy, or the brain was too over busy for it to always manifest itself. But I find many theories have vanished like the breath of that body. I do not know where they have gone. Sometimes when we die, I am told by those who are wiser, we die to our false notions as well as to our bogles, that the things that seem to us so real, so manifest, so palpable in human life are not so at all. I was quite well prepared to know this because I had been taught it, yet it is quite different to realize it.
But a very strange thing is, it is not difficult to understand, perhaps, that you will be free and feel free when separated from the body, with its limitations, its pains, its sufferings, its inability to hear far or see far, or walk far, all these limitations you are glad to be free from, but, dear friends, the most marvelous part is, that a great deal of our thinking is done for our bodies; a great deal of our work is for our bodies, and then to have that all cut off, to leave one free from the anxiety thinking what one will do for the body, is the greater part of the freedom. At first one might be almost lost; might feel as though he was out upon the sea without chart or compass. But I find if you trust yourself to the billows you are liable to get along better than if you tried to resist them. When one finds one has no physical body there is no use of thinking what one will do to care for it; to eat, to drink, to wear or to be well or be warm, and of course having little time to attend to one’s own body when in health and being oppressed by the knowledge that one must attend to it when not well, it is a great relief to lay it aside with its thought of work for mortal, physical, existence and be perfectly, free to think about themes and subjects that do not relate to daily bread.
Not that we are separated from our kind. I feel more sympathy with those who need daily bread on earth, if possible, than when here; more sympathy for those who do not know the way to get their daily bread; more interest in devising ways and means to help them. For such as are in the body who are all the time under the strain and stress of trying to keep up, I feel greater sympathy for these. But to have the knowledge that I do not have to provide for the body, that I do not have to carry it with me, that my thoughts are free and fetterless, that I am attracted to the ones that are attracted to me, that these great subjects, which to the human mind are subjective themes, are the main basis and purpose in life, is something worth considering.
Our friends, the Christian Scientists, have tried to teach a great many people to be in this state while yet in the body. But they find that they cannot ignore the physical side of existence. You may ignore much that depresses and obstructs the thought because of the suffering, but of course the habitation must be cared for, the instrument must be kept in order, kept in tune, often by physical methods, (I freely admit) often by spiritual ways it has to be kept in tune. But when you have no body, when you have no thought of the realm that includes caring for the body it is a great stride. So I am not surprised to find that many spirits who have no thoughts on other things are obliged to live in such psychological sympathy with earthly existence after the body is dead, to keep up the semblance of physical existence and the semblance that is surrounding it; for they would be lost without it. Because when you consider the average human life and the many hours that are devoted to caring for the body, you may well wonder what you will all do when you are dead and have no bodies to think about. But through the Heavenly Love the divine order of things is such, that for every new condition there is new adaptation, and every one who dies or passes through this change is, through some process, adapted to the change, whether that person be what is called high or low, whether the intellect is great or small, there is adaptation to the state that is entered into.
New themes come to one in the spirit state just as readily as new scenes come to one when traveling on the earth. When you are traveling you do not want to take your own local geography with you or your own habitation with you, you want to study the new scenes that you are entering upon. So in this new state of existence the mind and spirit become readily adapted to these new conditions of knowing things without asking about them; to have an answer to your questions before you have time to think about them; to be in a realm where people know what you are thinking about, where language is not needed to express or to veil your thoughts. This lack of ability to express one’s self in human language becomes less painful. Spirits, who by the law of adaptation are your teachers know what you are thinking about.
It is a great relief not to have to ask questions. Sometimes we used to make mistakes when asking questions of the Guides here, being puzzled for words. Now even before the thought is fashioned, the very wish to know brings the answer. It is the great fulfillment of answer to prayer. For even if we do not know we are praying, when we wish to know anything if the answer comes, that is answer to prayer.
This great knowledge through perception, of knowing things without seeing them, or hearing them; without being blinded by the sight or made deaf by the hearing. You know very often people hear things that give them an entirely wrong idea. Very often people say things that do not convey the correct statement to the mind. Now to know things without seeing wrong or hearing incorrectly is, to me, a wonderful thing. To know what my friends are thinking; to have been attracted by one and another since this release; to have been as near to them as to my own human habitation is a great and surprising part. Someone thinks of me in Chicago; I am here; someone thinks of me elsewhere; I am with that one. I perceive them, I am in sympathy with them straightway. This is why spirits, not being limited by time and space, there is more of their presence possible than when they were in the human state; though even when on earth you think intently of them and they will be psychologically present. But this presence that is born of the great attraction of friendship, of the ability of people to be with their friends, is that which the spirit becomes aware of. Earthly friends not seen for years are at once made palpable, their state, their condition, their regret, their sorrow, their wish to know about one. All that relates to the individual that has passed on becomes more plain and clear than it was before. Sometimes, if friends do not understand each other there is better understanding.
You know death is a great clarifier, it sets your friends who pass on in a new light when you are still on earth, you think of them differently. That is as it should be, if you think of them with the spirit instead of with the human sense and human selfishness. Death is the great reconciler; you always feel reconciled to people—nearly always—when they are dead. That goes to their spirits, the knowledge of that reconcilement enters into their state. Those near in friendship, those who are near to you on earth, whom you wish to see, but cannot on account of bodily distance, are the ones of whom you are aware, the ones you have visited many times. I have visited those I have not seen in human life for many years. I thought of them and instantly had conversation with them. It is like sitting at a telephone, or it is more like wireless telegraphy, it brings you to the one you are thinking about, that is the only one that can answer what you are thinking about.
This solves the question about “unscrupulous” spirits impersonating your friends. In this wireless telegraphy only those can commune who are in sympathy in spirit. I am the only one that can answer your thought concerning me. No other spirit is attuned to that thought, no other spirit can answer. No other spirit perceives it. Therefore I say, that much of this thought concerning the personating of your friends is a mistake. It is an earthly mistake just as messages that get perverted. The mistakes are shadows from the earthly side. Something is wrong with the machine; something is out of order with the “vibrations” as you call them. This response can only be from the one that your thought is intended for. There are fewer mistakes in the spirit realm than in earth states, because the bodily senses do not interfere. I cannot speak or think in accord with a spirit with whom there, is no sympathy—either by fellowship, by seeking for knowledge of by imparting it is one near me. I am in sympathy with all that need me, i. e., if they are in need of something I can give, I can answer impersonally, but I cannot respond for that which I cannot give, I cannot answer for that which is not intended to reach me.
Therefore, many spirits different states pass to and fro without recognizing each other. Many might be, to use a human phrase, in this room without knowing each other’s presence at all. This is why a clairvoyant may describe one spirit and not know of another that is for someone else; all is according to adaptation. This is why there are so many difficult problems in what is called ordinary Spiritualism. But the answer to all these questions comes later. That which has come to me, is this great Freedom, this great illumination. It has not receded, because the light of it and the source of it does not recede.
While there is not adequate knowledge to explain fully the state and condition in which one finds one has entered, there is still adequate knowledge to explain what his living thoughts, his living consciousness, his living awareness is, and that it is the carrying out more fully perhaps of the individual or personal bodily existence.
I am not disturbing myself now about other propositions. Of course the theological proposition long since ceased to worry me. The perception of the soul is taken as the means of solving the different questions and problems to be solved. But that which does interest me is that this change, that which pertains to it may be understood by all.
Dear friends, in the thought of the mechanical, dynamical physiological aspect of death, there is naught to fear. In the greater aspect that you have who know of the light of Spiritualism, who have been led into communion with your departed friends, who understand that they exist; especially the light you have in the Soul Teachings you understand about Death. It is the great benefaction of human existence. I have entered into that benefaction with all humility, with all appreciation of the blessings that the earthly life afforded, with all knowledge of what was the import of that life. But for the rapture of that one moment of exaltation, when aware of being yet free from the physical body, and yet of being more near to the loved upon earth, I would have passed years of physical suffering and torture and would have accounted it no hardship or privation.