PRACTICAL OCCULTISM

A survey of the whole field

of mediumship

Through the trance mediumship of

J. J. MORSE
[1848-1919]

First Edition

1888
 CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface to First Edition 7
Lecture I. The trance as the doorway to the occult. Its
magnetic, natural, and spiritual forms of induction 15
Lecture II. Mediumship: its physical, mental, and spiritual
conditions 33
Lecture III. Mediumship (continued): its foundation,
development, dangers, and advantages 48
Lecture IV. Magic, sorcery, and witchcraft 65
Lecture V. The natural, spiritual, and celestial planes of
the second state. 80
Lecture VI. The soul world; its hells, heavens, and
evolutions. 93
Lecture VII. Life, development, and death in spiritland 108
Answers to questions 123
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

T HE educational and reformatory movement called Modern

Spiritualism, has, in its inherent many-sidedness, developed variant
phases of expression and action. Coming in contact with individuals
of almost every conceivable character, it has been variously
interpreted and directed; and candour compels the assertion, that
not at all times has the interpretation and direction given it been of
the wisest and best. In some instances its facts and truths—fraught
with such momentous consequence to humanity for good or ill,
according to the manner of their use by those to whom they
come—have been perverted to unwise or harmful ends and uses,
sometimes in ignorance, and at other times through misapplication
for selfish or evil purposes.

One of the more conspicuous of these perversions—especially

during the last decade—has been the growing tendency, on the part
of a portion of the adherents of the Spiritual Philosophy, to
introduce into that philosophy sundry elements pertaining to the
mysticisms of ancient and modern times. Certain of the
inspirational speakers, and others among the public workers for
Spiritualism, together with many of its followers in the private
walks of life, have been misled, to a greater or less degree, by the
current idealisms, transcendentalisms, and fanciful conceits, born of
crude speculations and nurtured by spurious philosophies and
pseudoscience. Sound philosophy and genuine science, while in
accord with the demonstrated truths of Modern Spiritualism, have
neither lot nor part in any of the mutually-antagonistic and ever-
conflicting forms of mysticism with which the world has been and
still is cursed.

A rational, natural, healthy, progressive, scientific Spiritualism,

7
at one with the spirit of the age, and with the trend of the most
advanced modern thought, must be wholly free from the degrading
and soul-stultifying theses and dogmas of the mysticisms of the
day; and until everything of the latter character be eliminated from
the spiritual movement, it can never hope to obtain the respect and
confidence of the intelligent, thoughtful men and women of our
planet to which it will be justly entitled when its complete
dissociation from such encumbrances becomes an accomplished
fact.

Under the general head of speculative occultism may be classed all

the mysticisms of the present age; and, in contradistinction thereto,
the term "Practical Occultism" has been aptly chosen for a volume
of inspirational lectures delivered by Mr. J. J. Morse, dealing with
subjects of "great pith and moment" in a sound, clear, and
eminently sensible manner. For nearly twenty years, Mr. Morse
has been a leading trance exponent of a common-sense, scientific,
non-mystical Spiritualism-free at all times from the extravagances
and perversions, the metaphysical idealisms, and the rhapsodical
moonshine with which in some quarters the Spiritual Philosophy
has been heavily burdened.

Having had the pleasure of being present at the original delivery of

the discourses composing this volume, I am enabled to
understandingly and conscientiously commend them to the
attention and study of all those interested in the topics treated.
And who should not be? As the title of the work indicates, it will
be found truly practical; being rich in instruction upon matters of
deep import to all humanity. Its teachings concerning the trance and
mediumship are pregnant with valuable instruction and judicious
counsel. The true character of magic, sorcery and witchcraft in the
light of an enlightened Spiritual Philosophy, devoid of present-day
mysticisms, whether theosophic, occult or what not, is succinctly
and graphically presented. The last three lessons will probably be
found among the most interesting of the series, furnishing as they
do a variety of information upon the

8
states and conditions of the spirit-world—information much of it, I
think, not generally known to the Spiritual public in my judgment,
the lessons in this book, as a whole, are sound in doctrine; they are
edifying and profitable in instruction; they are elevating and
spiritualizing in tendency; and they are worthy of the careful,
thoughtful study of all.

WILLIAM EMMETTE COLEMAN.

9
 FIRST LECTURE

THE TRANCE AS THE DOORWAY TO THE OCCULT.

ITS MAGNETIC, NATURAL, AND SPIRITUAL FORMS OF
INDUCTION

OUR topic is "The Trance as the Doorway to the Occult," dealing

with it in its natural, magnetic, and spiritual methods of induction,
and endeavouring, as a consequence, to show you what a wondrous
and marvellous doorway into the unseen there is treasured within
the life possibilities of all humanity; for we hold it as one of the
cardinal principles of being, that the constitution of humanity at
large is practically a unit in its character, that there is no possibility
pertaining to any one of the children of earth that is not also latent
in all other of earth's children.

The variations of development, the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies

of individual character, and the opportunities of exercise, alone
constitute the differentiating conditions which give to one a seeming
excess of development, and to another no apparent manifestation at
all. But, by and by, in the progress of humanity, when the laws of
being are more correctly and truly understood, it will be found how
each and all of you, within the measure of your capacities, in
accordance with your possibilities, and in relation to your
requirements, will be able to develop all the possibilities that are
latent in humanity, collectively as well as individually. Then,
mystery, and all the results of ignorance and superstition shall be
banished from the pathway, and the unseen and spiritual life of
man, with all its qualities and attributes, shall stand revealed as
plainly and as clearly to the understanding as do your surroundings
in the external universe to-day.

15
THE TRANCE AS A DOORWAY

The trance condition is the warrant of death and the prophecy of

futurity. It is, in its revelation of the higher capacities of human
nature, the measure and certain indication, the hand-post, as it
were, upon the highway of eternal life, pointing to the mountains of
wisdom, that he, perhaps, still enshrouded by the mists of
ignorance, and thereby concealed from the understanding of
humanity to-day. We are aware that this is a great and somewhat
startling claim, but yet we think the matters we are about to
present will more than justify it; for you will bear in mind that if
death be an impassable gulf over which the spirit can never return
to mortality, there can be no sort of evidence presented in this
world that can tell you what is upon the other side of that gulf.

But if there can be a miniature representation of, or a

correspondence to, that phenomenon which is called death, then
there is a vindication of death, an interpretation of its issues, and
explanation of its consequences; and if that miniature
representation can be experienced by the individual and he return to
human life and consciousness again, two ends are gained; first, the
realisation of an existence of himself apart from his external and
material body with its out-ward consciousness; secondly, his
ability to triumph over the limitations of his material environments,
and then return to all its possessions in their fullness and entirety.

Thus you see that virtually the trance, which is this miniature
representation of death, gives you the key by which you may
transcend the environments of mortality and ascend into the
domain of spirituality. It is, indeed, the doorway to the occult, to
that which is hidden from the ordinary investigation and outward
consciousness; a passage-way from the realm of action upon the
external side of life to the realm of action upon the internal side of
life; but in every case its opening depends upon your own organic
constitutions, your mental, nervous, and

16
spiritual possibilities and environments—the means upon which
you will be dependent to open this portal for yourselves.

ALL LIFE IS DUAL

All life, intelligence, and conscious action, so far as man is

concerned is, as you know, a duality; it has its outward expression
upon the plane of physical existence, as well as it has its interior or
spiritual expressions of which you alone are conscious. All that
your fellows outside of yourself can know of you is that amount of
your spiritual self which expresses itself in your actions and your
speech; but even these are cumbered, covered up, obscured, and
diverted, by the external causes impinging upon your actions and
life from day to day.

Therefore it is possible that one may grasp your hand, gaze into
your eyes and hear your voice day after day for years, and be no
nearer knowing you than had you never met. But could you find a
way by which you could enter into each other's essential nature, by
which you could spiritually come en rapport, then, perchance, it
might be discovered that you were altogether a different kind of
person beneath the outward seeming—that you had altogether a
different identity; that there was a better part of you—a more
wonderful part, a part removed from the external life, a spiritual
part that was struggling and striving, imperfectly, alas! in many
cases, to make itself known through the outward manifestations of
sense and thought and action.

Some there are (more perhaps than might be expected) whose inner
natures flash and glow through the outward forms of life and
conduct; and these royal souls are among the leaders, heroes, and
the nobler sorts of men; and when you clasp their hand you feel the
power of this inward something magnetically beating upon your
own pulses, echoing in the chambers of your mind, and flashing
before the windows of your own souls. But, alas! these better sorts
of people are, in the main, few and far between to-day, for this
reason: the outward cares of life often blunt and

17
dull the finer sensibilities of human nature, so that but little of this
better part of man can find expression in the daily life of humanity
at large.

THE "ALTER EGO"

But there is this doorway to your better selves. Not only is it true
that you are sometimes as sealed books to your fellows, but you
are also sealed books, to a large extent, to yourselves. Let us
illustrate the point. You are engaged in a harsh round of toil; duty
presses heavy upon you and weighs your spirit down, and you
have no time or leisure for reflection or meditation; every moment
of your day is occupied, and at night when you seek your couch for
rest, brain and body are alike too tired to think or meditate, and you
welcome as the best relief, the oblivion sleep can give. But, by and
by, there comes a time when your affairs change and you can rest,
and then you begin to think; reflection asserts her power,
meditation becomes frequent, loving influences brood upon your
soul; and straightway you begin to realise there are faculties,
powers, and possibilities in your nature that you have scarcely ever
dreamed of before.

Instinctively there is home into your consciousness the recognition

of a better part, and you wonder how it is that this spiritual part
has been voiceless for all the preceding years. Sometimes this voice
is called forth by what is called religious conviction; sometimes it
arises simply out of enthusiasm for a noble purpose, or an interest
in some great cause may kindle it into action. With nearly all
mankind there is some time in their lives when this part asserts
itself Let us urge you by every power of persuasion not to hide
this better part, but to obey its impulses, to cultivate its powers,
and seek henceforth to rule your lives intelligently in harmony
therewith.

What is meant by the statement that the trance is the doorway to

the occult? it is really the method by which you are enabled to
solve the problem of death without dying, to come

18
face to face with the realities of the immortal life without actually
becoming an entity living therein. Is this true? Our answer is yes;
for experience abundantly substantiates it.

PHASES OF INDUCTION

The method of induction by which the trance can be established

relates to the possibilities of persons inducing that state in
themselves by themselves; to the possibility of that state being
induced by another person upon them; and lastly, to the possibility
of that state being induced by persons not living in the world
wherein the entranced person lives. These give us, as you will see,
the natural, magnetic, and spiritual forms of induction. The last
form might be disputed by those who are unacquainted with
spiritual, psychological, or occult matters; because, they will ask,
how can it be possible that a being living in another grade of life
altogether invisible and unseen to us can induce a psychological
condition upon a person living in this world; there is no
relationship, and therefore there can be no influence exerted. This
argument is fallacious; it discloses ignorance rather than knowledge;
for if, as we shall presently see, there is this other part of man just
referred to, this spiritual side of his nature, then such spiritual side
must of necessity be related to, and will present a plane or point of
contact for, the unseen inhabitants of the inner life, when they
desire to produce the outward physiological effect denominated the
trance.

What are the first conditions to create that receptive and responsive
condition in the human structure by which the trance in any form is
rendered possible? In the first place, let us turn our glance to the
physical conditions.

A CLEAN BODY NECESSARY

The trance depends much more upon this than is usually supposed.
It is generally thought that you must be willing to be entranced and
desire it, but this is not all the question. It depends

19
also to a large extent upon the physical conditions; and if those
conditions are in a state of irritation, that irritation win certainly
react upon the mental condition, and the passivity requested will be
to that extent destroyed. Therefore, the first condition we would
insist upon is the nearest possible approach to physical
healthfulness. We know it is commonly urged that the trance is an
abnormal condition, and that therefore the subject should be more
or less in an abnormal condition of health; it is pointed out that
numbers of the magnetic and spiritual subjects are persons whose
health would not be considered good, and from that has arisen the
argument that all subjects must necessarily be persons of abnormal
health.

This, as a general proposition, however, is radically wrong; that it

is so in many cases to-day we are prepared to admit; but, we
repeat, it is radically wrong. The highest requirements of the human
organism can only be attained when that organism is in its highest
condition of health, and when harmoniously operating in every
department. The highest condition of health does not mean a gross
physical man where all the mental and spiritual growth is sacrificed
to a splendid animal body. A perfect condition of physical health is
cleanliness and harmoniousness in every department. Therefore, the
stomach, the liver, the various departments of the internal viscera,
the circulation of the blood, the blood itself, the heart and lungs,
and all the vital organism should be in that perfectly clean and
healthy state wherein the individual realises the fullest and
completest benefits from being alive. When this is established the
first step has been taken.

We need not remind you that all that would befoul and clog the
system must be avoided; that you must pay the closest attention to
personal sanitation and to everything that pertains to the well-being
of the human organisation. If you wish to pass through the
doorway of the trance into the domain of the occult, you must be
prepared to make some sacrifices in order to gain the privileges you
desire. But, remember, that, after all, these sacrifices

20
are most of conventional forms; you must be prepared to sacrifice
many of the enjoyments and privileges that conventional
civilisation accords to you, and we frankly tell you that a great
many of these privileges are a bane to you, rather than a blessing.

Then the next question is the mental state; for physical health,
harmony, and cleanliness are but stepping-stones to mental
cleanliness and harmony. Without this condition of the mentality,
the desired end will, generally, be more or less defeated.

A DISCIPLINED MIND IS ESSENTIAL

Sometimes it is necessary to temporarily surrender even the senses,

also your likes and dislikes, to school yourself for the time to
submission. The apprentice has to submit to the guidance of a
master hand, that he may be taught to accomplish the results that
the training of the master will enable him to reach. So you, as
apprentices in the occult, must temporarily be learners, must be
pupils, must subject yourselves to the greater will and experience.
Therefore the mind must be calm, harmonious and submissive; and
when the positive part of the mind and the will are thus in a
passive condition, the spiritual forces will be conditioned in like
manner; and you will find that all the vital forces, instead of
vibrating with the intense activities that characterise their
movement when the individual is acting for himself, or when all the
forces of the body are in full sway, will be reduced to the lowest
rate of vibratory movement. In some places the vibratory
movement can scarcely be detected, being as the imperceptible
movement of still waters in a pool. Then we find the pulsing of the
superior forces in the brain becomes calm, the beautiful light
suffusing this organ loses the intensity of its brilliancy and activity,
and settling as a golden glory it seems as if waiting for something to
occur; then this light appears like the sweet summer haze settling
over the field before the evening breeze begins to stir.

21
THE PROCESS OF TIM TRANCE

But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a movement

beginning to express itself; and that movement commences directly
the first attempt is made to induce the trance by the aid of human
magnetism when the operator concentrates his mind upon the
subject, and either by his gaze or the passage of his hands
discharges from him that vital fluid which we may call psychic
force.* That fluid impinges upon the psychic sphere surrounding
the subject and produces a commotion therein, which motion is
taken up by the muscular and nervous forces, and is by them
carried to the stomach, the lungs, and the superior organ, the brain.
The reaction from the stomach and the lungs produces a singular
disturbance in the lower brain or cerebellum, and the disturbance of
this lower brain exerts a sort of excitation which, in its operation,
affects the upper or superior portions of the brain, and seems
temporarily to excite it and the forces therein.

This commotion, besides being an excitation proceeding from the

lower to the upper brain, creates also a further reaction upon the
entire viscera of the subject; for the excitement of the brain is
communicated to the internal organs through the various ganglia and
the great sympathetic nerve. Frequently this reaction produces a
feeling of nausea of the stomach, followed by a species of spasm or
convulsion that runs through the entire nervous system. Hence you
may observe the subject gasp and yawn, the face becomes flushed,
tears flow from the eyes, the breathing becomes heavy, and there
will be indications of sickness and spasms, excitement and
hysteria—all because of this reactive influence of the lower brain
operating upon the sympathetic nerve and ganglia, and through
those descending into the internal organs producing reactions there.

You will have observed that some magnetizers find it best to

* Formerly called human or animal magnetism.

22
direct the psychic force to the pit of the stomach, while others find
it best to direct it to the heart and lungs, others to look into the eye,
others to merely operate upon the frontal brain at first, others
between the shoulders and upon the nape of the neck, where they
place the fingers to discharge the psychic fluid into the system. No
operator will confine himself to any one particular method, and it
may be that the necessities of certain subjects will demand that the
operator shall proceed in none of the ways we have just referred to.
But in any case the result obtained is the same, and is precisely
identical whatever method is pursued to induce it. That result is the
withdrawal of the action of the muscular and nervous forces from
their external centres of operation and sensation, and the
concentration of them upon the brain itself for the purpose of
effecting an awakening of the interior powers.

THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE

The trance, of course, presupposes (by an artificial compelling shall

we call it) a cessation of external sensation and a withdrawal of all
the ordinary methods of expression, and an opening of the interior
perception belonging to the spiritual nature.

When all these results have been carried forward to a certain degree,
the subject will be induced into the magnetic state, or mesmeric
trance, which represents approximately that condition the human
structure will be in when it is finally dead. Then a further process is
required. To put a body to sleep, to lock up its senses in the
embrace of an artificial death, to seal up the ears and mouth and
eyes, is, after all, but a poor process, without the ultimate result of
awakening the consciousness upon the inner plane. But when such
awakening is accomplished, then the individual becomes
clairvoyant. The spiritual counterparts of the physical senses are
then awakened, so that the spiritual eye will see spiritual things,
the spiritual ear will receive the vibrations of the spiritual
atmosphere, the spiritual brain will respond to the

23
thoughts of the spiritual realm, and the individual being thus
partially enfranchised, partially inducted through the doorway into
the occult realms—into the realms concealed from the outer
senses—will see and hear and know and have a rational
understanding of the conditions belonging to that which is called the
occult realm of life.

Can the knowledge of these things be transmitted to the outer

consciousness, and be retained and remembered by the individual,
when the magnetic process is reversed and the locked forces of the
body are again sent upon their usual mission? Yes, by the will of
the operator the experiences of the sleeping subject (to use the
familiar phrase) can be directed to the channels of the mind, to the
chambers of the memory, through which, and in which, these
interior experiences can be stored; so that, when the individual is
brought back again to the normal state, slowly, as the mind clears,
and he is able again to handle the machinery of his outer
Consciousness, he can bring to memory the facts and experiences of
his interior state, and tell you what he saw, what he did, and where
he went.

But you will ask here—though scarcely necessary—how are we to

know that, when the individual is thus inducted magnetically into
the trance state, he really has seen and heard and known things that
do not belong to this outward state of ours? When he tells you, as
he can and does many times, of those whom the world hath lost
sight of for years, who perhaps, have been mourned as gone
forever, when he brings you some fact that upon further inquiry
clearly proves he has seen the world wherein departed humanity
exists, the testimony must be accepted just the same as the
testimony of the traveller who visits a distant country and returns
to tell you of its people and its nature.

THE MAGNETIC METHOD IS A TEMPORARY MEASURE

The constant induction of the magnetic trance is an experience not

to be sought. Any method or power that always demands

24
your reliance upon it is a dangerous method, an injurious power. It
teaches you the lesson of dependence rather than independence; it
teaches you to be always leaning upon somebody stronger than
yourself, rather than impressing upon you the duty of developing
your own strength so that you may walk alone. But, as a means of
opening the door, as a means of carrying you forward to the occult,
and bringing you face to face with the facts and purposes belonging
to it, the magnetic induction of the trance is primarily and
preëminently a necessity in the great majority of cases.

Now when the psychologist grows just a trifle wiser and learns a
little more—not so very much—he will be able to take another step
forward, and be able to exalt his subjects to a greater degree of value
to the world. When he has induced them into the magnetic state he
will then teach them how to understand that state while they are in
it, so that they, themselves, may induce it, by first showing how
they may release themselves from it. He will be able to say, "I have
opened the door for you, I have explained the nature of the lock
upon it to you, and if you follow my instructions you will be able
to open and close this door whenever you desire. The key is yours;
you can use it, and the bolts of the lock will ever respond to it."

SELF-HELP AND A WARNING

If another can induce the trance for you, why should you not be
able to enter that state yourself unaided? What another can do for
you, you can do for yourself. It is only the knowing of the how
that stands in the way. How, then, can you do this? Concentration
of mind requires meditation, and a determined effort upon your
part to withdraw yourself from external attractions, influences, and
sensations—these are the necessary stages towards the self-
induction of the trance; and when by due attention to other
circumstances and surroundings you can seclude yourselves and
concentrate your minds upon the determination to with

25
draw from the external life, from the external senses of the body,
from the external desires and activities of daily life, and retire
within yourself, you will then find yourself seeking in the right
direction for what you wish to accomplish.

How often do you do this partially when meditating, or while

indulging in pleasant reveries? There you sit lost to the outer life
and senses, within yourself and forgetful of all around you, even
sometimes forgetting you are living in this world. If you add to this
an intelligent desire and an earnest purpose, then you will seal your
outward senses completely and pass into the realm of the
impalpable and occult, and gain the knowledge by your own efforts
of that which hitherto you were dependent upon another to obtain.

Some will ask, "Is it safe? Is it dangerous? Would I ever wake up

again?" When you have been trained in the first manner referred to
and made spiritually conscious of your powers in this direction,
when in the magnetic trance you have been made acquainted with
the machinery you have to use, there is no danger, but every safety.
And when you are thus informed and thus able to induce this
superior condition for yourselves, you will not only have the realm
of the occult open to you in its purely spiritual interpretation, but
you will have the occult in its material aspect also; for you will
come in contact with the finer physical forces of life, and be able to
visit remote localities in mind and spirit, be able to travel the broad
world over, and gain an immense amount of knowledge in regard to
the occult side of terrestrial existence. The psychological
phenomena will in their effects and character be somewhat similar
in this degree to what they were in the first.

But we warn you here, as we warned you in regard to the preceding

points, that there is a danger to be considered. If a continual
dependence upon another's will and help are calculated to debilitate
the body, so also is it true that the continued exercise of the
subjective powers of your nature will likely be injurious

26
and debilitate the outward powers of your nature. In other words,
it is improper and unwise—most improper and most unwise—to
sacrifice any department of your nature for the welfare and especial
development of some other department. Therefore, beyond
satisfying yourselves of the reality of your spiritual natures,
gaining the practical demonstrations we have referred to, or utilizing
this wonderful power for special and particular necessities, we
counsel you not to abstract yourselves from the external life and its
duties too frequently, not to neglect the requirements of the outer
world, but at all times and under all circumstances remember that
your first duty is to that plane of being upon which you at present
reside.

THE SPIRITUAL METHOD

Then we come to the spiritual form of the induction of the trance.

We have told you, by reason of the fact that man was a spiritual
being, because he has these spiritual powers, he is of necessity
related to the spiritual world and its inhabitants, and therefore there
was a point of contact between the two conditions; now we have to
deal with the point of contact referred to. The spirit people are like
yourselves; they have a rational existence, they possess like
powers, they are surrounded with spiritual and psychic auras or
magnetic spheres, as are yourselves. Each one and every one of you
is surrounded by a magnetic, psychic, or spiritual atmosphere; and
the character, colour and vibrations of that sphere are all visible to
the observing spirit, who can see therein your own spiritual
character and enfoldment. These are wonderful and important
truths; and when you are inclined to deride your fellows, let the
counter-reflection come to you that there are eyes looking down
upon you that can read your very soul and know of a truth what
your natures and dispositions really are.

The spiritual method of inducing the trance is this; and perhaps to

make it clear, we will give you an illustration within our

27
own personal knowledge. Granting that we have all the conditions
previously referred to in relation to health, harmony, and
cleanliness of body, we have still to add another ingredient, which
is cleanliness of mind. It is a most pernicious doctrine, that the
mental and moral character of a spiritual subject has nothing at all
to do with the phenomena presented through that subject. The very
reverse is the case; for, when you enter into the higher
consideration of psychical phenomena, everything depends upon
the mental, moral, and spiritual cleanliness of the individual subject.
Bear that truth reverently in your minds; for the counter-theory is
degrading and debasing—a most dangerous and damaging doctrine,
which hinders all psychical progress and spiritual development.

The spirit mesmerists, being in the subjective world, have to

commence their operations from the subjective plane and work
outwards, as already stated. Hence then, we have to operate upon
the counterparts of the physical body as presented in the spiritual
body; and to reach these we commence operation upon the outer
magnetic sphere but direct its effects to the spiritual or under side
of the human being. Now this may be accomplished
physiologically, by directing the mind or thoughts of the controlling
power towards the affections; for it is by working through the
affectional sphere we are able to come in contact with the physical
condition of the affectional propensities. The connecting point, so
to speak, between the animal and the higher side of human nature is
the affections, and through the affections the outer physical
organisation is reached; and then the control being thus established
in the lower or basilar brain, the effect can be continued into the
superior and frontal brains.

Then if the manipulation is purely and solely for a mechanical

result, instead of turning the forces into the superior or intellectual
brain, the flow of force is continued into the nervous department,
and from the nervous outward into the muscular department; and
thus, by having the sympathetic nervous system under

28
control and influence we are gradually able to withdraw the outer
forces and focus them inwardly, as in the case of the human
mesmerist; and thus little by little we are able to suspend the active
operations of external sensation and consciousness and induce the
condition of sleep that you know as the spiritual or magnetic
trance.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND SPIRIT

ACTION
The work begins internally in this case, progresses externally and
then reacts and turns inward again. Thus you will observe the
induction of the trance upon the human subject, by the inhabitants
of the spiritual world, is a somewhat more complicated process
than the process when accomplished by human agency. We have to
work from within outwardly, and then from the outward to the
within.

The condition being thus induced, the direction of action entirely

depends upon the results that are desired; but those results are
limited by the possibilities of the organism that we have in control.
When it is a case of personation it is a sympathetic, nervous and
mechanical control, which being associated with a suitable and
plastic organisation, enables the operating spirit to correctly
duplicate himself in features, in tone of voice, in character of
speech, and in modes of action through the organism he is
controlling.

The trance as induced by natural, magnetic, and spiritual agencies

having now been stated to you, let us point one or two conclusions,
that will, we trust, show you its utility. The spiritually-induced
trance is the highest form of entrancement outside of the natural or
self-induced trance that you can have. It is possible, of course, as
you know, by the use of various narcotics, to induce the condition
of trance, and by such abnormal means produce similar results to
those already detailed. But here we wish again to caution you in the
most impressive manner that we can, that all such agencies are
radically bad and injurious; they

29
are destructive of the tissues of the body, and they deteriorate the
organism as a whole; they lower the moral and mental character and
strength of the individual; and if you once become a prey to their
use, and a subject of their influence, it will need, in a great majority
of cases, a larger amount of will-power than the individual is
generally capable of to break the chain you have thus placed around
your neck; indeed you will have absolutely conjured up and
imposed upon yourself a devil that will claim you as a victim, in all
probability so long as you remain upon the mortal plane.

The spiritually-induced trance brings you individually into the

closest relationships to spiritual personality and consciousness
upon the inner plane of life, the individual then becoming, to a very
large extent, one with the spiritual peoples of the spirit world.
When mediumship is better understood, and the character of the
trance more clearly comprehended, the individual who is controlled
(as the saying is) will be able to return to external life benefited and
refreshed, and freighted with a vast variety of experience and
information—which information and experience, in a majority of
cases, he now possesses; but not being trained in the character of
the trance, not having psychical education, he is unable to transmit
it to the external side of memory, and so bring it into his active
consciousness when he returns to the ordinary state.

One other suggestion, which will be more clearly illustrated in a

further lecture; in regard to the induction of the trance by the
artificial methods used by the magicians and sorcerers of ancient
and modern times, we only wish to suggest that there is a general
psychical condition established by conforming to the requirements
of the gatherings where such phenomena occur, whereby a mental
atmosphere is created, and a psychical condition established,
sufficiently powerful in their effects upon sensitive natures to
induce the trance in their cases as the results of the conditions thus
created.

30
TRANCE CONDITIONS TEMPORARILY RELEASE THE
SPIRIT

Here, then, we have established the fact that the trance can be
induced by three different methods: by another for you, by
yourself for yourself, by spirits from the spiritual world. We have
found that the induction of this trance in either case brings you into
relationship with the spirit world, with the spirit people and with
the spiritual powers of yourselves. We have found that this
corresponds to death, for death will do no more for you than the
trance, save only in this one respect: death results in your absolute
departure from material ties, while the trance but temporarily
releases you from the conditions of material existence, and enables
you to return to outward life again.

The trance may inform you, as a consequence of your experience

while therein, that there is another realm of being, that there is
another self within you, that there are other people beyond you—
those other people being those who one time lived amongst you,
and who have passed through the valleys of the shadows of death
into the Morning Land beyond. These evidences, these proofs,
indeed, make the trance an artificial and partial death; enabling you
consciously and understandingly to enter into the spiritual world,
and, as already stated, enabling you also on the physical side of life
to come into contact with the occult powers and forces of nature.
You are thus brought in contact with the subjective side of material
existence as well as with the spiritual side of life which lies beyond
the boundaries of the mortal state.

Thus have we clearly shown you that the trance is the doorway of
the occult—to that occult which ordinary experience and education
declare is entirely concealed, or even denies the existence of. The
possibilities we have referred to, as the doorway through which
you may pass to the occult, bear no relation either in strength or
beauty to that deeper and sublimer doorway, death itself. That
gateway is gemmed with radiant beauties,

31
twined with divinest flowers, shines with purest lustre; and when
the faltering footsteps approach it, as the outward senses vanish
from you, and the outward form, like a discarded mantle, falls upon
the floor of mortal life, and you at last free and unencumbered enter
in and pass that portal, you then behold its glories fully disclosed
to you.

And in that spiritual awaking you shall realize all the bright
pleasures and sweet experiences of your mortal life, when,
perchance, sleeping the sleep of nature, or in that other sleep of the
magnetic state, or of the spiritually-induced trance, you have had
views of the fairer country and mingled with its happy people, all
these shall come back to you in vivid reality. As you enter into that
sublime and beautiful occult world: all shall then be made plain and
clear; but even here, by the trance this can be done for you to-day.
We repeat that the trance, either in its magnetic, natural, or
spiritually-induced form, is God's evidence, and nature's indication
of the utility of death and the reality of immortal life.

32
 SECOND LECTURE

MEDIUMSHIP: ITS PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL

CONDITIONS

IN this lecture we take up the consideration of a most important

subject, that of mediumship. To enable us to do the matter as much
justice as possible, we have decided to divide the subject into two
sections, dealing with mediumship in this lecture in regard to its
physiological, mental, and spiritual conditions in the individual;
while in the next lecture we shall deal with its development and
dangers, and some other matters of importance, by which we hope
to put you in possession of a tolerably clear, but necessarily
condensed, statement of the laws and philosophy of mediumship.

There are many people who consider that mediumship is the

greatest possible blessing that can come to them, while others
would not have it under any circumstances, considering it to be
dangerous and inimical alike to health and morals. We are by no
means satisfied that mediumship is either an undisguised blessing or
an unlimited curse, for there are so many things to be considered in
regard to it that any harsh or absolute judgment of this kind would
be most improper. When asked to consider whether mediumship is
a thing to be sought for, and an experience that is calculated to
benefit all individuals, our judgment is clear and decided—it is not a
thing to be sought for, and it cannot always be considered a blessing
to the person who experiences it.

BE NATURAL

It must always be borne in mind that those characteristics of your

life's expression that are spontaneously made manifest are the best
for you in their expressions and in their results, while those
expressions that have to be forced into activity, and require

33
constant nursing and care to maintain in operation, entail such
drains upon body, mind and spirit, that they are very questionable
benefits to you in the end. When mediumship comes or expresses
itself spontaneously, manifesting itself by reason of its own
inherent power, then there can be no question, that, rightly used
and with proper and rational limits, the exercise of mediumship can
be made a means of great blessing to the individual; not only to the
individual, but to the community as well.

Mediumship, must be accepted, then, as an illustration of latent

possibilities within the character of the medium and as another
avenue towards the occult side of life. But the persistent effort to
cultivate mediumship, or to force it into activity, should be always
discouraged and discountenanced. There are so many other things,
so far as the practical necessities of human life are concerned, that
press thick and fast upon you on every side for attention and
doing, that, in our judgment, in the present condition of human
development and human society, it is better to attend to the
pressing needs of this world's life, education, and development,
than to squander the precious powers and energies in order to
develop a flower that, perchance, may bloom a little season, and
then wither and die, leaving scarcely a memory of its hue and
fragrance behind it.

MEDIUMSHIP AND HEALTH

The first thought we have to consider in relation to mediumship is

its physiological conditions. These are of two kinds the strictly
nervous, and the strictly psychical. In the first instance we consider
the highest degree of physical health perfectly compatible with the
very best manifestation of mediumship; and where mediumship
results in personal deterioration or in the destruction of physical
health, then it is most unwise and extremely pernicious to continue
to utilize such part of your nature, because it emphatically means
that such part is being exercised at the expense of other powers.

34
Therefore, the first caution we would suggest is, that whenever and
wherever the exercise or development of mediumship results in
continued ill health, it is wisest and safest to abandon its exercise,
because it is maintained at the expense and injury of your physical
well-being. Our ground is strong and sure here. Physical health is
one of the greatest blessings that infinite Intelligence has rendered
possible for finite humanity; it is far too precious a thing to be cast
lightly aside or trampled beneath your feet. But distinctly
understand what we mean by physical health. It is this: that
personal condition wherein all the functions of the body are in their
natural, normal, harmonious operation; wherein you are "sound in
wind and limb," to use a homely expression. If the mediumship
continually lessens the functional activities of your nature, then
emphatically an injury is being done to you.

At first, almost invariably, incipient mediumship, or mediumship in

its early stages, will result in severe physiological derangement,
nervous prostration, and many altogether strange experiences in
body and mind, which frequently cause the frightened beholders to
believe that the individual is surely going out of his mind. Nothing
of the sort. If judicious care be exercised in these earlier stages, the
resulting disturbances may be successfully overcome, reduced to
order; and harmony being re-established, such extreme disturbances
will be very unlikely to recur again. The causes of these
physiological disturbances are various.

MEDIUMSHIP STIMULATES THE BODY

All people are born with certain tendencies, and with certain weak
spots in their physiological natures, and whatever psychical power
descends upon them will most certainly search out that weak spot
first; because there will be the line of least resistance, and that being
the case the first disturbance will be manifested in that direction. Is
the heart weak in its action? Is there weakness in the circulatory
system? Then the result of the influx of psychic

35
power will be to affect the actions of the heart and circulatory
system.

While, as concerning the brain, it may be that some particular part

of the cerebral structure may be stimulated into abnormal activity,
and people may suppose (when they know no better) that
mediumship has unhinged the person's mind and affected his brain;
whereas the real fact is, that the possibilities of the affection existed
prior to the development of the mediumship, and the development
of the mediumship has only brought to the surface the latent
possibilities.

Here is a most important lesson. If the influx of psychological

power and the development of what is called mediumship results in
making plain the weak spots of the physiology, then the
information thus presented should be utilized so that you be taught
to direct your mind to the building up, strengthening, and rounding
out of these weaker parts, that they may come into the fine of
general health with the remainder of the system.

There is another side to this physiological aspect of mediumship. It

occasionally acts in such a manner that it becomes a stimulant to
every organ and function of the system, and the individual becomes
excited, nervous, and irritable, so that people say the development
of mediumship "is just burning that man right up"; this is true, for
the functions of his bodily existence are all so accelerated, that,
though he eats and drinks as usual, he appears to get no benefit
therefrom, the fact being that he is really wasting away, because the
great stimulus that has fallen upon him is exhausting his vitality
quicker than it can be recuperated.

Here, then, must be laid down the law. The greater the acceleration
of physiological function, as the result of psychical influences upon
the human body, the more need of caution and restraint in every
department of physiological life. Thus the lesson is clearly borne
home upon you, that under no circumstances can you afford to
allow the functions of the body to be

36
your master; and if you feel the physical nature is gaining the
mastery over you, then plant your foot firmly and say, "I will be
the master of myself "

IT HELPS TO SELF-MASTERY
Viewed from the physiological standpoint the results of the
development of mediumship are of two characters. If on the one
hand it is judiciously prosecuted and applied, it results in the
improvement of the entire physiology, in the building up,
ultimately, of its weak parts, strengthening and sustaining them,
and imparting a degree of excellence of operation and a healthy
character to the entire body that the individual had perhaps,
previously been a stranger to. Much depends upon the means that
are used in order to produce these results; indeed so many things
are involved in it, that it requires the greatest care in the
development of the medium to lead up to the results just
mentioned.

On the other hand, if the vital powers are depleted, the great organs
of the body deprived of their necessary vital power, their magnetic
and spiritual influences drained out and exhausted, and they become
torpid and congested, so that they do not adequately fulfil their
functions, then the truth is presented that mediumship does
develop a class of poor, hollow-voiced, and pale-faced creatures
that the world calls mediums—people, in fact, who never ought to
have had anything at all to do with mediumship.

But there is no real reason why such results should be presented.

The only reason for such results is ignorance and the injudicious
use of these powers. How to utilize this mediumship properly
does not come before us in this lecture; we are only dealing at this
point with the physiological peculiarities that are associated with
mediumship in regard to health and the general character of the
functional operations of the system. We must now, then, take
another step, and consider it from the interior point of view; for
what we have already dealt with are purely matters that lie in the
external.

37
When we go beneath the outward operations of the system we
come in contact with, respectively, the muscular and nervous forces
of the physiology. These muscular and nervous forces fulfil
important functions, as of course you know, in regard to the bodily
or animal existence; and the development of mediumship will
disturb them by stimulating and exciting them, because the
unfoldment of mediumship in every case presupposes and implies
the absorption of a foreign spiritual and magnetic element, a
quickening force. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost descending upon
you is not quite so fictitious as some hardheaded people would
have you believe nowadays.

There is a spiritual force directed by the attendant spirits that is

brought to bear upon the developing medium, that, as it were,
insinuates itself into the muscular and nervous forces of the subject,
and necessarily stimulates and sometimes irritates these two
departments; and by that stimulation and irritation leads to a
cerebral excitement which may rest within the brain simply in the
external sphere, or may proceed into the interior spiritual nature,
and there produce other results upon the higher planes of
mediumship. Now, this agitation of muscular and nervous force will
be attended by more conspicuous development of the mentality of
the individual than has been induced hitherto. Therefore, working
up towards the sphere of the mind and the will, all kinds of ideas,
all kinds of thoughts and speculations, may pass before the inner
eye of the mind.

PHYSICAL REACTION TO SPIRIT POWER

Here we are trying to draw the line between the physiological and
the mental department of the subject. Before we enter into that
mental department, let us consider the physiological in another
direction. The physiological development of mediumship may
result in the development of mediumship which is solely related to
external phenomena—to those phenomena which transpire outside
of the personality of the medium, but

38
yet are dependent upon the presence of the medium; in a sentence,
physical mediumship. Then we have, first, visible phenomena,
associated with mental and muscular susceptibility; which give you
those effects which are related to the personality of the medium
and depend upon the functions of the medium, since they take
place within the personal sphere of the medium.

Here we have impersonation, those manifestations of individual

possession, as they are called, whereby you are able more or less
distinctly to individualise the communicating intelligence. Now this
phase of mediumship is the most valuable phase of mediumship
you can cultivate, and for these reasons, briefly: You may have the
most remarkable phenomena produced by the spiritual world for
your edification and instruction, and as Spiritualists you may be
benefited and blessed as a consequence, but the spiritual world
owes a duty to the sceptical world as well as to the Spiritualistic
world.

Spiritualists have crossed the threshold and come into the Temple,
and are enjoying all the benefits and blessings therein to be found,
but the inquirer is without the sacred precinct; he would like to
enter, yet he fears he may find no means to enable him to do so.
But when by the aid of the personating medium he is enabled to see
his beloved friends, and they make themselves actual and visible in
the personality of the medium, plain to his consciousness and
understanding, and tell him specifically points and facts of their
identity and experience that were utterly beyond the power of any
other intelligence to tell, then he has something borne in upon him
through the senses of sight, of hearing and understanding, that
appeals to him without any of the appearance of jugglery and
conjuring that other forms and manifestations from the spiritual
world naturally suggest to the prejudiced and hostile inquirer.

Therefore, we repeat, that the personating medium is one of the

most valuable mediums you can present to inquirers. We know that
in making this statement we are open to considerable

39
criticism; but we still adhere to it, and reiterate that the phase of
mediumship we have referred to appeals in the deepest and the
clearest manner to the inquirer, of any phase of mediumship that
can be mentioned.

We assert that here we have the most useful form of physiological

mediumship, and when the individual is thus controlled the purely
muscular and mental nervous forces are being used by the operating
spirits; and if those forces are judiciously used and proper attention
is paid to them, and the necessary period for recuperation that
should always follow every exercise of mediumistic gifts or powers
is allowed, the individual will not then experience any very serious
disadvantage from the prosecution of his mediumship. But if
mediumship is pursued day after day without any attention or
consideration being bestowed upon the bodily system, and without
any attention to the laws of psychical recuperation, then mental
disaster and physical distress and inharmony will result in every
case on the outward plane.

FACTORS IN MENTAL MEDIUMSHIP

We now take a step from the physiological side to the more interior
department of the mental state. The mental character of
mediumship is not sufficiently understood by Spiritualists at large.
A great many things are expected of the mental department of
mediumship that are practically impossible in the great majority of
cases, while a great many things that appear to belong to
mediumship in the mental departments are attributed to spirits
which do not really belong to them. In the first place there are three
factors concerned in this kind of mediumship: the spirit controlling,
the mental atmosphere and characteristics of the medium
controlled, and the mental atmosphere of the people constituting
the company surrounding the medium when he is controlled.

These are three very important points; and much of the confusion,
doubt, and difficulty that has beset the pathway of

40
mediumship in its mental development should have been cleared
UP and relieved by an understanding of two of the factors—the
mental atmosphere of the medium and that of the sitters. We are
leaving of course, now all consideration of what are called test
controls, for they really come practically within the lines of the
consideration we have formerly mentioned. We shall have to deal
hereafter with the mental characteristics in the operation of spirits
from the spiritual world and its effect upon the subject, and the
reactionary results of that effect as affecting the medium and the
control.

INNATE AND LATENT FACILITY

Experimental observation shows us that there is proceeding from

every individual a certain mental atmosphere, and that this mental
atmosphere contains or comprises within itself, is made up, in fact,
of the mental and intellectual life of the individuals tinged, coloured,
and characterized by all the thoughts, education, experiences,
reflections, and mental observations of the individual; it contains
within itself, too, all the potencies that were born with the
individual, and these have to be seriously reckoned with by the
spirit world. For instance, a certain manner of living inclines an
individual to certain forms of thought, when by natural inheritance
and disposition he is inclined to thought in another direction; but
the overwhelming influence of temporary circumstances binds
down the latent thought, crushes it, in fact, and prevents its
expression.

When a spirit encounters a mind thus situated, it is more than likely

that the spirit thought, descending upon the mentality of the
medium, piercing and penetrating the conventional acquisitions, will
go right down to the bottom, so to speak, and touch the inherited
tendencies, and quicken them into life and stimulate them into
action; and so control the operation of that mentality, that,
seemingly, a new mental character will be developed as a
consequence of the unfoldment of mediumship upon the

41
mental side. Then, if you are unacquainted with the process we
have just referred to and the circumstances belonging to it, you will
say the medium has imbibed the mind of the spirit and become like
the forces controlling him; whereas the real fact is that the spiritual
influx has quickened the latent possibilities of the medium's
mentality and brought it into active operation.

THE GROUND MUST BE CLEARED BEFORE PLANTING

Now this may be advantageous or disadvantageous. Generally

speaking, it is disadvantageous, for this reason: nearly all the
inherited experiences that you receive by birth are upon certain
general lines, general fines of ignorance concerning spiritual matters;
then, if the spirit world, by the aid of the mental side of
mediumship, endeavours to give correct interpretations to the
mortal world, it is absolutely necessary that all the old and
erroneous opinions inherited by the medium shall be driven out, so
that the mind may be clear. A practical illustration will make this
matter more intelligible to you. When our medium was first
developed, he was precisely in the conditions we have just referred
to; the circumstances of conventional life had forced his mind in a
certain direction, but inherently the character of his mind was quite
different. It had inherited a somewhat religious inclination and
direction, and somewhat of spiritual feeling or character, mainly of
what might be called the ordinary orthodox conventional Christian
form.

But when the spiritual influx affected his mental sphere, it had to
penetrate the two conditions—the conventional opinions in which
he had been trained, and then reach down to the inherited tendency
that was underneath. His whole character had an orthodox tinge or
hue; and he would tell you that when he first realized mediumship
it was to him something of an orthodox religious character, as he
understood it, and he felt that at last he was going to become a good
Christian. But having stimulated these latent errors of the mind into
action, we, by judicious processes,

42
gradually ejected them, and at last cleared the mind of the residuum
we found at the bottom of it; and then, having cleared the
mentality, we were free to train his mind in the direction of the
larger and wider ideas that we have endeavoured to express to
humanity for so many years past.

NATURAL APTITUDE REGULATES RESULTS

When the mental sphere has been purified, much will depend upon
the character of the mind, as to what use can be made of it. In some
cases it becomes clairvoyant perception, in other cases it becomes
inspirational; then there is an intuitive comprehension of spiritual
principles, which, descending into the mind, stimulates it to
activity, and enables it to intelligently express in glowing and
beautiful phraseology the principles of the universe, of life and
being; in other cases, there being organic and physiological
susceptibility to entrancement, the individual becomes a "trance"
medium through whom individual spirits may express themselves,
or through whom certain particular spirits, or a particular spirit,
may continue to manifest for a length of years for the purpose of
exalted training and teaching humanity at large.

Thus you see there is the same breaking-up process, the same
stimulating and purifying processes taking place in the mental
sphere when the mediumistic development reaches this department,
as have taken place in the physiological department; and the result
in both cases, where the mediumship is judiciously developed and
carefully prosecuted, is the establishment of mental harmony,
order, peace, and stability, as well as physical healthfulness; and
these ought to be the results of every proper and orderly
development of mediumship.

One stage further remains for our consideration, which is the

spiritual side of the question. Here we have to consider two
important things. First, the effect of the mediumship upon the
spiritual body, and secondly, its effect upon the spirit itself, the

43
essential me. The effect of the spiritual side of mediumship must be
a continuation of its development from the mental sphere on to the
spiritual brain, from the external side to the internal side. If the
spiritual consciousness is to be reached, it can only be through the
spiritual organism, just as the mental consciousness was reached
through the physical organism.

THE SPIRIT BODY IS THE INTERMEDIATE

Then we have to bear in mind that this spiritual organisation is a

fact in existence now, and is being elaborated by the human body
while it is living here in this world, that it is the intermediate
condition between the outer body which is related to the external
world, and the innermost of you—your essential nature—which is
related to the inner world of everlasting being; it is, as it were, the
body of the soul, even as the physical body is the outer envelope
of your present being. This inner body duplicates the outer one)
and the effects that are possible with the outer body upon the
external plane are possible with the inner body upon the inner
plane; and when you can stimulate these latent subjective
possibilities into operation, you are getting on to that road which
takes you out of mediumship and brings you into the department
where the individual exercise of your own powers becomes a
possibility to you; for we may now tell you, that the true
cultivation of mediumship is a stepping-stone to the exercise of your
own spiritual powers.

Where it goes on always being mediumship, where the individual is

always the subject of a dominant and controlling power, the day of
tutelage is indefinitely prolonged, and no real advantage to the
individual accrues. But when you can go progressively forward and
reach that spiritual consciousness of the existence of the powers
belonging to your own spirit, and can learn how to utilize them and
project them through their counterparts in the material body, then
you open the door of the occult

44
for yourself and are able to perform these marvels; and being able to
intromit yourself into the spiritual state, you can express through
the outer life what you gather therein.

MEDIUMSHIP A STAGE TOWARDS SPIRITUAL

COMPANIONSHIP

Mediumship, then, is a tutelage that leads you forward from the

recognition of the fact that there are possibilities in you that others
can utilize, to the understanding of the greater fact that you can
utilize these possibilities for yourself. Mediumship, if you will
foster and nourish it and follow it intelligently, will at last place the
key in your hands; and the benign and beneficent intelligences of
the spiritual world will say to you, "My brother (or my sister),
open thou the gate for thyself; we will be there to help and to aid
you, now that you have reached that point where you are capable
of walking alone; you have taken the first two steps in due and
proper form; we have led you forward, we have opened the veils
one and two for you, and now here stands the third already parted;
take thou the step with earnest heart and hand, and steady foot; we
will help you and lead you, but now your day of tutelage is almost
done, and you can stand crowned with the glory and consciousness
of individual culture, and the mysteries, as they are called of the
subjective realm are open to You.

"Ah!" some will say, "that is all very well; but we see mediums
utterly oblivious to all this, who have no other thought of the value
of mediumship than the material wealth they can accumulate by its
exercise, and who degrade the higher faculties you are referring to
by stultifying them to all unworthy purposes, by pandering to
ignorance, and generally doing their very best to degrade the very
exalted functions they fulfil." Ignorance is the mother of many
abominations, and ignorance is responsible here; for true knowledge
never vitiates the divine realities of its possibilities nor disgraces
the functions with which it is bound up by development and
education.

45
THE WONDERFUL FIELD OPENED UP

Briefly, then, very briefly and all imperfectly, we are fain to

confess, we have passed in review before you the physiological,
mental and spiritual developments pertaining to the unfoldment of
mediumship; and we have reached the last great conclusion, that
mediumship leads on to a recognition of the "adeptship," so to
speak, a personal, practical knowledge of how to utilize your
interior latent spiritual powers; and when you have attained this
plane of spiritual development you are in harmony with wise and
thoughtful intelligences and may be by them inspired, and by that
inspiration your mind will be illuminated and your soul expanded,
and you can stand up firmly, conscious in the reality and presence
of the angels; for their thoughts will infilter into yours, your being
will thrill with spiritual forces, and you will be rounded, developed,
and strengthened in character and nature, and you can become a
healer, a helper, a teacher of the world, aided by the powers of the
immortal life that shall work within you, and in all such exercise
find perfect health of body, perfect soundness of mind, perfect
purity of moral nature, perfect cleanliness of soul. These are the
sure and certain results that shall crown your efforts, as you march
up through the pathways of mediumship into the better and more
delightful ways of true, spiritual growth and unfoldment.

Here, then, let us pause. Remember all we have said; take its
cautionary parts dearly to your judgment and understanding; and
remember in every case that success entails effort, for something
will always have to be given or done if something is desired in
return. There is no royal road. The greatest warning we can give
you is, that in no case should this mediumistic development unduly
be sought; but wherever it spontaneously and naturally presents
itself, then carefully pursue it, and apply the experiences and
knowledge thus obtained to assist you in making greater
advancement and further advantage as you proceed upon the

46
road of personal unfoldment. As we have often said before, it is
better to perform the humblest and most menial tasks of life
successfully and be a benefit to the world than waste your time in
unwise endeavours to develop occult possibilities in your natures,
when your present mortal conditions allow you scarcely any
possibility of either success or usefulness therein.

47
 THIRD LECTURE

MEDIUMSHIP (continued): ITS FOUNDATION,

DEVELOPMENT, DANGERS AND ADVANTAGES

T HE foundation of mediumship lies deeper than mere physiological

sensitiveness or adaptation. It is not altogether a question of the
external physiological life of man, but it relates to certain essential
principles in the nature of man. If you clearly understand that
through the agency of mediumship you are able to come en rapport
not only with the spiritual world, but with the intelligences who
people that world, there will of course then be presented to you the
suggestion of subtle and subjective qualities and relationships in the
nature of man which relate him to the world that lies beyond.

The existence of mediumship is not only the proof, or the means

whereby the proof of the existence of spirits and their return is
presented to humanity, but it argues the existence of a realm of
subjective possibilities in man's nature, the investigation of which
causes you to realize the fact that you are actually now expressing
subjective spiritual powers, that, in a sentence, the operations of
mediumship are the indication of the existence of superior powers
latent in humanity whilst living in this world.

The foundation of mediumship therefore, really rests upon the

existence of the immortal spirit itself; and its developments are the
manifestations of spiritual powers and faculties resident in your
natures now, which, through exceptional circumstances, are made
manifest and visible to your sight and understanding.

MAN IS A SPIRIT

Therefore, mediumship opens up a very wide series of

considerations

48
The existence of subjective powers within yourselves; the existence
of a subjective source within yourselves from whence those powers
are derived, or in which they inhere; the existence of a still more
subjective universe to which that subjective or inner source is
necessarily related; and as that source is the superior centre within
yourselves, that universe to which it is related must necessarily be
a superior universe in itself, and as you have a relationship to it by
the very fact of its existence, mediumship may be said to be rooted
in the very constitution of the universe itself, is part and parcel of
the orderly possibilities of existence, has nothing miraculous,
nothing special about it, but is a legitimate and sequential
unfoldment of the innate possibilities of the universe and man. This
is the very highest presentation of the foundation of mediumship.
Let us forsake it for a few moments and direct our attention to its
foundations in the external, life.

Of necessity we must look to the physiological system of man for

the matters we are in search of We must look also in the mental
departments for the means by which sympathetic brainwaves are
set in motion, and their results transmitted in the various forms of
intellectual or subjective mediumship; we must look for the still
more recondite expressions of mediumship; in the superior faculties
of the mind which are related to the spiritual nature itself, and in
those departments of inspiration, of clear seeing, spiritual
perception and discerning, and those clairaudient faculties, whereby
you are brought into telephonic communication with and catch the
vibrating thoughts and emanations of the immortal world, we must
look in these higher branches for some of the foundations for the
working of mediumship upon the subjective plane. But we must
remember that mediumship is not confined to those phenomena
which take place within and are actually expressed by the
personality of the medium. We must remember that there is a
sphere of operation in mediumistic development and phenomena
that is beyond, so

49
to speak, the individuality and personality of the medium, to a very
large extent. There are, in a word, the external physical phenomena,
and we must look for the foundation of those phenomena, as well
as for those of a more recondite nature.

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE PHASES

For the sake of convenience, we may divide mediumship into two

classes. On one hand, the subjective mental phenomena; on the
other hand, the objective or physical mediumship. Mediumship is,
of course, involved in both cases, but it is scarcely correct to speak
of it as mediumship generically in both relations; for on the external
plane we have the simple fact that owing to the existence of a
certain subtle force—or emanation—which surrounds the subject,
certain physical, audible signs and tokens and sounds can be
produced, certain physical tangible phenomena be performed, these
being the objective form of results. Then, on the other hand the
individual, physically, mentally and spiritually, being actually
directed by a controlling intelligence for the definite expression of
all the intellectual qualities and personal attributes that make up
individuality in its detailed form of expression, gives voice and
manifestation to the personality of the mind controlling him, giving
here the mental form of mediumship, in which case you have
mediumship pure and simple. The individual becomes the vehicle or
the medium for the actual transmission of the intelligence and will
and understanding of a personality beyond himself

In the former case it is the material emitted from the individual that
forms the means of connection between the material and spiritual
states, and upon which the spiritual operators are dependent for
the performance of the various matters they may have before them.
Of course, it is mediumship in this case, because the individual is
the medium from which is derived this fluid necessary for the
production of the phenomena. We think you will agree with us that
a more definite and correct interpretation

50
of the word mediumship would be to associate it with that phase
where the individual becomes the agency for the actual transmission
of another's intelligence and understanding through his ordinary
personality.

MEDIUMSHIP IS A NATURAL FACULTY

The foundation of the external form of mediumship must be sought

in the realm of nature, just the same as the foundation of the
internal or subjective form of mediumship is to be found within the
personality and spiritual possibilities of the individual. We have no
sort of sympathy with that doctrine that makes mediumship a gift
from God to man, in the sense of its being considered a special gift
from God to man. God never gives special gifts to anyone; He has
no favourites. Why should He have? There is no necessity for Him
to give one a rose and another a thorn. He is the universal, All-
loving and All-just, and, by the universal principles of His being,
He regulates and orders existence in every department in divine
equality; and latently every individual possesses precisely the same
qualities. True, it appears that the exercise or development of
mediumship to-day is special and particular, but it is the special
and particular manifestation of a universal possibility which will
ultimately be realised by all mankind.

We want it distinctly understood that all the stories that you have
read of mediumship being "a special gift from God", and of "the
angels" coming down and giving you this "gift" or giving you the
other "gift", or that you must be "the seventh son of a seventh
son", or "the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and all such
kind of nonsense, are wrong and absolutely absurd; there is no sort
of truth in it at all; no mortal or spirit can put into a human being
what is not there now. What can be done is this: The secret spring
may be touched so that that which has not been hitherto known to
exist may be developed and brought into exercise. But this is a very
different thing from

51
giving you a "gift" or putting something into your nature that did
not previously exist therein.

THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS ONE

Here we have two distinct grounds for the foundation of

mediumship: the spiritual nature and relationship of man on the one
side, subjectively; the possibilities of the universe upon the other
side, objectively. How can you realise this last proposition? You
can only realise it by a course of speculation which, after all, is not
so very speculative, since it is in strict harmony with ascertained
fact. The man of science will tell you there is an intimate
relationship chemically and atomically, between every department
of the universe; that the flash of a gun will produce an indefinitely
extended and continuing effect through the realms of existence, even
as the dropping of a pebble into the quiet bosom of a lake will
cause a ripple that will finally extend from shore to shore.

You cannot do one single thing in this room that shall affect the
atmosphere without creating conditions that will react upon every
human being here assembled, and the vibrations of the atmosphere
from the voice of the instrument we are now using not only
produce an effect upon your consciousness, but produce effects
upon your nervous system through contact with the brain, and
through the brain upon the entire physical organisation; thus
proving that there is a material correlative for every sound you
receive, the results of which are distributed through the entire
physical system of each and every one.

These are facts, and very important facts, that are passed by
without serious notice being given to them, and sometimes are
ignored through actual ignorance. You will here see the truth of
what we are going to place before you; for if every atom of matter
is capable of affecting its neighbour, there will be an increasing
effect expanding through all the departments possible to be affected
under the particular circumstances. Therefore,

52
throughout the entirety of being there is a sympathetic relationship
between points of force, or atoms, as they are commonly spoken
of, which once set in motion here or there, a series of effects
governed by their laws and relationships will be produced—
whether it be from the waving of the hand, the flash of a gun, the
shouting of a voice, the falling of a body, or any other phenomenon
that may occur.

This point is clear, then; and instead of the physical universe being
a series of conditions jumbled together without any inherent and
subtle relationship uniting them, the very converse of the
proposition stands true: that every condition of existence bears an
intimate relationship to all other conditions; and the key note, so to
speak, between them, in their mutual vibrations, repulsions, and
attractions that run throughout the various modes of existence.

THE TWO WORLDS ARE INTERRELATED

AND PSYCHIC FACULTY IS THE LINK OF UNION

Here, then, is the external form of mediumship. We must encounter

this law, or else the argument falls to the ground. If any allege that
special mediumship is being advanced beyond the laws of nature,
then we frankly tell you we know nothing of such mediumship; we
know nothing of any possibilities that are beyond the possibilities
latent within the universe wherein they occur. The phenomena of
external mediumship presents to you certain tangible facts. How
are they produced if the two worlds, as they are called, the natural
and spiritual, are distinct conditions with no continuous degrees
between them?

There must be a point of contact, some neutral point in the scale

relating the spiritual to the material; and in that neutral point, where
the material and spiritual blend, will be found the condition that
enables the beings of that other world to hold communication with
this world. So on the neutral line must be sought a point where this
can be accomplished. The organic

53
structure of man is immediately associated with the nervous forces,
and the spiritual beings can use this refined force—which, being
related through the human organism to the chemical forces of the
universe, will form a point of contact for the spirits with man's
physical conditions; the point of contact being in the superior
physiological forces; and so gradually descending to the muscular
forces, wherein the spiritual world finds the means of producing the
external phenomena, the nature and character of which you are
more or less familiar with.

The foundation of mediumship, then, is in Being, in the principles

of existence, in harmony with the innate possibilities of human
nature, is a natural faculty and possibility of the individual, and a
universal law in harmony with the principles of God. Here, then,
superstition and all kinds of ignorance concerning mediumship
vanish, for we find it rooted in Nature, in Man, and in God; and
with such a triune foundation there is no need of seeking another,
for no better foundation need be sought.

DEVELOPMENT—ITS SERIOUSNESS

How shall mediumship be developed? Here again is a fruitful

theme, for a superstitious crop of errors is presented to the inquirer
in this connection. We should not do justice, if we dealt with this
topic in pleasant and soothing words. You must remember that you
are mortal beings as well as spiritual beings; you must remember
you are related to a world of sense, matter, and time, as well as to
their immortal counterparts; and bearing this in mind you should
deduce from it the lesson that there are duties due to this world
now, as well as duties due to the world towards which you are
going. That condition to which you belong, for the time being, has
the primary claim upon you; that condition of existence towards
which you are going has, therefore, a secondary claim upon you.
Give, then, to this world while you are in it, that due regard and
proper consideration its primary claims upon you demand. In so
doing you will find

54
ample leisure, if you will, to consider those secondary relationships
in regard to the world towards which you are tending.

We want you to understand that the development of mediumship is

a matter of very serious consideration. We have been consulted
over and over again in very many places as to the propriety of
developing mediumship; and we have had to tell many that, as the
indications of the possible development of their mediumship were
exceedingly small, they had better devote all their spare time to
washing dishes and cleaning windows, for then they would be doing
something serviceable with the powers they possess. You can
waste your time, you can sit in circles, absorb all kinds of
psychological influences, exhaust your own, and in many cases
become so filled up with contending influences that you are in a
state of psychological fewer all the time, or so exhaust yourself that
you will become as limp and useless as a rag. This is not the way to
use the opportunities you have; and you should avoid the
injudicious, promiscuous and insane methods of development of
many who are extremely anxious to develop you as mediums, and
who often bring discredit upon the subject of mediumship, and do
no one the slightest practical good, not even themselves.

DO NOT NEGLECT LIFE'S DUTIES

It may be thought we are speaking against our own cause; it may

occur to you that the greater number of mediums, the greater the
army that is dispensing truth throughout the world. Let us caution
you that the development of mediumship ought not to be the
highest aim of individual existence. There are duties to be done here;
soil to be cultivated, men to be clothed, honourable service to be
given to humanity at large; some fair and just return for all the
privileges and advantages conferred upon you, which tend to make
the world happier and wiser, to build up the constitution of human
society wisely and truly, so that at last the divine temple of a
happy, virtuous and noble humanity shall

55
disclose its glorified proportions to the world at large; these things
leading to such results being wisely and honestly performed by you
will infinitely bless and better the world, and give you a nobler
purpose in life than will the development of mediumship, which in
many cases has no other benefit or result than the gratifying of
vanity or a craving after notoriety.

Mediumship, when it comes spontaneously, is the type of

mediumship which is likely to be the most satisfactory; and when
it comes spontaneously and manifests itself unsought and uncalled
for, you can generally depend upon it that the unseen directors can
give you that needful instruction you require during its
development. Let us suppose an ideal case. In the first instance, the
development of mediumship for purely physical or external
phenomena does not make any real demand upon the intelligence or
morality of the individual.

Here is a point that a great deal of sophistry has been expressed

upon. This very argument, perfectly true in itself, has been the peg
upon which has been hung the most wretched garments that
Spiritualism, has had in its wardrobe. Let it be clearly stated that
though the external physical phenomena of mediumship make no
real demand upon the morality or intelligence of the individual, yet
the demand is just as true in that case—of that individual as in
every other. When any condition of life or service is construed with
an absolution of moral responsibility or intellectual development,
then that service is an injury to the world and a curse to the
individual.

THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF MEDIUMS

We place it clearly and plainly before you, that personal moral

responsibility must enter into the development of all forms of
mediumship. What, then, shall we say in regard to the physical
health of the individual? These phenomena of the external forms of
mediumship depend upon the muscular, nervous, and physiological
forces, and therefore everything that tends to maintain

56
the physical health of the individual is absolutely necessary. Let us
give you an illustration: You are, of course, more or less familiar
with what is generally describable as athletics, and are aware of the
fact that the athlete has to go through a very severe course of
physical training before he is considered fit to race, wrestle, run or
jump. You know how carefully he is trained, how his exercises are
attended to, his diet looked after, and how he is bathed and rubbed,
taken as much care of as though he was to be sold for £100 per
pound actual weight. The very best possible care is taken of him,
because it is found by experience absolutely needful to get this man
into such splendid physical condition that he can accomplish his
task to the best advantage.

If this be the case with the athlete, how much more necessary that
this should be done for those who have to stand virtually as
gateways between the two worlds! If it is so absolutely necessary
that man shall be physically clean, strong, sound, and muscular that
he may be a successful athlete, how much more we ask, is it
necessary that the same good training, the same care of health of
body, the same development of nervous force, the same
development of the entire physical man, should be demanded and
insisted upon in the development of mediumship on the external
plane. Take the argument and consider it for yourselves. It needs no
enforcement from us. We repeat, that the development of physical
mediumship should be always associated with the greatest possible
attention to the health of the individual concerned, as well as the
strictest attention to the cultivation of the moral and intellectual
natures.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE MEDIUMSHIP

When we take the subjective side of the question, we are told the
case is very difficult; we must not allow the personality of the
medium to interfere; the individual must be negative, he must be
subjective, must be entirely put upon one side. The penalty of

57
mediumship is very great according to this; the individual is not
worth much as a medium unless he is mentally and personally very
crushed down to almost perfect nonentity. Is not this asking a great
price? Is it not inflicting a very severe penalty? You pride yourself
upon your individuality, your strength of mind, and intellect, and
will you be willing to have all this crushed out of sight?

"Well, no, I do not think I would," you say. How many people
have said, "If I was not made unconscious I would like to be a
medium, but I could never submit to have my consciousness
extinguished and my individuality put upon one side." There is the
instinctive protest of the soul itself against subjection and
domination, and it is a voice you should heed at all times. "But
when mediums are positive they cannot be controlled, they are
opposing the spiritual world." How is that? "Well, they are too
positive." Can you not draw the line between excitement of mind
and strength of mind? There is a very important distinction
between the two conditions. You may be mentally all points and
needles, like the quills of a hedgehog, which would aptly represent
your mental excitement; but such excitement has nothing to do with
your sympathy of mind, nor the strength of your mind.

If it is possible for intelligent spirits to control weak minds, surely

it should be equally possible for intelligent spirits to come into
sympathy with strong minds. Therefore we draw the line here.
There is on the one hand a mesmeric sensitiveness—called
mediumship—where susceptibility, sympathy, and negativeness
are absolutely necessary; but on the other hand there is that other
kind of mediumship where strength of mind, cultivation of mind,
aspiration of mind, are equally necessary. In the one case you have
the presentation of the individuality, sentiment, thought, and
character of particular and individual spirits embodied and
disbodied; on the other hand, you have the subjective trance, the
subjective inspiration, and subjective aspiration of

58
your own immortal soul, and the inspirations of the personalities of
the spirit world working through the entranced brain and body,
which gives what is known as inspirational speaking, trance
speaking, and such kind of matters as are related to these particular
departments of mediumship.

THROUGH THE LESSER TO THE GREATER

Now, though it is apparently true that under what we have

considered the mesmeric department of the subject there should be
negativeness of mind, we want you to understand what is meant by
being negatively-minded. We do not mean that the mind should be
so weakened that the personality becomes destroyed. Between the
sympathetic attitude and the "nothingness" attitude of mind, if we
may so describe it, there is an important distinction; for the best of
mediums for the spirit-world are those who are mentally
sympathetic, and not those who allow themselves to become
mental nonentities.

The spirit world can do as it likes so to speak, with one of these

nonentities, can twist up his brains and do extraordinary things
with him; but at what cost?—the cost of the intellectual strength
and mental life of the individual so performed upon! For our own
part we look upon such mediumship, in the great majority of cases,
as destructive of all self-control and individuality in the persons
concerned. The development of mediumship, then, should be the
development of the body, mind and soul of the individual, with due
and proper attention to every law of health, to every law of mental
culture, and every law of spiritual unfoldment; and a medium so
developed is strengthened in every department of his being, and
benefited instead of injured by his mediumship.

WISE DISCRIMINATION NECESSARY

What are the dangers? The dangers are greater, perhaps, than

59
you may think. It is very pleasant indeed to be the servant of the
angels, to have wise and mighty souls come from their high estate
to inspire, control and direct you; very sweet, very beautiful,
indeed, is all this. But if you are not careful, rigidly discriminative
and exclusive, you may run the danger of encountering wolves in
sheep's clothing; for it is unwise to assume that every spirit in the
spirit-world is as good as yourself "Oh! but that would cause us to
become suspicious, and if we become suspicious, we shall become
harsh, uncharitable, and unjust." Indeed! Do you let every one into
your house who may choose to knock at your door? Do you sit
every person who comes into your house down to your table? Do
you go out into the street and shake hands in friendliness with
every passer-by? "Oh, certainly not! We have to recognise the
necessity of exercising reserve and discretion in these matters."

Then, if you recognise the necessity of a reasonable discretion in

your associations with spirits while they have bodies, why not
apply the same discrimination to them when they are out of their
bodies! It is not the bodies that you are careful about, it is the
people who live in the bodies. The same people live after they have
gone out of their physical bodies, for the immortal soul is in the
same condition immediately after it passes out into the spiritual
world as it was while in this world. When you have tested and tried
a person and found him true and honourable, you are willing to
shake hands and say, "Welcome, good friend, we are glad to see
you"; but to indiscriminately open your doors may be to let in all
kinds of undesirable people, as many Spiritualists forming
promiscuous circles have found to their bitter cost in days gone by.
Unless you test and prove the spirits when they come to you, you
are liable to be overrun by the dwellers upon the threshold, who
may work upon your sympathies, who may have an exceedingly
good time, so far as they are concerned, but unfortunately at your
expense.

The dangers, then, if you are lacking in discrimination, if you

60
surrender your reason and judgment to the spirits simply because
they are spirits, the danger is that you may be deluded, that
disaster will overtake you, that sorrow and regret will associate
themselves with you; and in many cases we have found that the
results of ignorance or want of care in these directions have been,
that the investigator has grown disgusted by these experiences,
dismissing the whole question.

DANGERS WHICH WISDOM WILL AVOID

There are personal dangers; dangers in regard to the health, dangers

in regard to the mind, dangers in regard to the nervous condition.
The inordinate practice of mediumship is just as injurious to bodily
health as the inordinate practice of any other phase of human
activity, you must remember that in the matter of mediumship the
strain is on the most refined forces of the human nature, and these
refined forces being the most powerful forces, presuppose by their
exhaustion a great drain upon all the powers of the system.

The exercise of mediumship, then, indiscriminately and persistently

pursued, will lay up stores of bodily and mental trouble that will
come to you by and by in a physical eclipse, involving muscular
and nervous paralysis, in the drying up, so to speak, of the vital
juices of your being, which will cause you to grow prematurely old,
and utterly destroy health of body and vigour of mind. These
dangers may be obviated, in regard to health, if mediumship be
exercised and restrained within certain limits or bounds. The other
dangers have been stated in the possibility of your being imposed
upon by spiritual vagrants, dwellers upon the threshold, who may
come just for the purpose of amusing themselves and bewildering
you.

One further word of caution. It is a little personal, we admit, but its

value we think sufficiently plain to excuse its introduction. Under
all circumstances receive with the utmost reserve and caution long-
winded "communications" from notable characters,

61
who claim to be "Napoleon Bonapartes," "Lord Bacons,"
"Socrates," or other great personages: for in the majority of cases
you can value the communication precisely in reverse of the name
attached to it. Humanity is so fond of receiving a great name's seal
upon some particular communication, that these dwellers upon the
threshold, knowing how anxious you are to communicate with a
"Raphael" a "Buddha," or a "Jesus," will try to personate them just
to see what you have to say; but when you listen to them, and use
your judgment, you will in such cases certainly think these great (?)
ones have run to seed in the spirit world, because of the rubbish
they strive to force upon you. We would again earnestly impress it
upon your mind that the value of the communication in nine cases
out of ten is exactly the converse of the importance of the name
attached.

What are the blessings of mediumship? The advantages of

mediumship when rightly and orderly developed are great indeed.
When the laws of mediumship are more thoroughly understood and
obeyed, it will surely result in the evolution of the highest possible
harmony of all the forces within the physical environment itself. In
other words, it will be found that the highest conditions of
mediumship are perfectly compatible with the highest conditions of
physical health; it will be discovered that the inspirations from the
spirit-world are in harmony with the highest unfoldment of the
intellectual powers and nature of man, and your strength and
character of mind, instead of repelling the operations and
inspirations of the spirit-world, will really attract them and draw
them to you; and when you make the best use of them, when their
fertilising influence falls upon you and enters the calm recesses of
your mind, the spirit develops and aspires to reach still higher and
purer things.

It shall invest you with such personal greatness and goodness that
you shall stand up among your fellows clothed with power from on
high; and the wise and good, seeing you have diligently used and
cultivated your noblest powers here, that you might

62
grow in mind and soul, will feel that they can help you by their
counsel and guidance from time to time.

It is indeed a blessing to know that your dead are living; a sweet

and glorious consolation to have them come back to you, counsel
with you, advise you, and help you in your onward pathway as
you journey through the mortal sphere. It is well to have this
assurance and this guidance, and if you make a wise use of this
knowledge, comport yourself in harmony with their desires, you
may walk and live in the daily consciousness of angel ministry.
These advantages of mediumship extend into the realms of nature,
and give you a suggestion of the possibilities upon the
psychological plane (the almost infinite possibilities, we might call
them) of the immortal nature of man while in the garments of flesh,
and how the relationships between the natural and spiritual worlds
bring the whole universe into harmony with yourself, and yourself
into harmony therewith.

A WELL-BALANCED SPIRITUAL LIFE RESULTS

The advantages of mediumship shall hereafter be health of body,

development of mind, unfoldment of soul, sweet communion with
the angels of the life beyond, a realization of your spiritual
possibilities while embodied here on earth, an understanding in part
of the wondrous phenomena in the external universe around you;
the advantages of mediumship, in a word, will result in the
realization of the fact that the universe and man are in perfect
harmony, unity and relationship.

Here, then, on broad and general principles in harmony with law,

without special and particular argument which is unnecessary to
the case, we have presented in these two discourses the subject of
mediumship in what we consider to be its laws and principles, its
higher import, its deeper relationship; and we give it to you in the
strongest terms and in the most earnest manner we can present it,
that the development of mediumship should be accepted as a sacred
trust: for it is an unfoldment that lifts

63
you up to the highest and noblest powers of your being, brings you
into relationship with the solemn possibilities of life, links you to
the immortal world beyond.

And as you rightly use it and reverently pursue it, and labour for
its highest and best advantage, it will assure you not only the
comfort arising from the presence and guidance of wise and loving
angels, but by it you will gain a knowledge of the laws and
principles by which they can come to you, by it you will inform
yourselves of your spiritual possibilities here and now: but, better
than all, it will enable you to crown your days with health of body,
soundness of mind, and purity of soul, without which the grandest
mortal achievements fall into sorrow and darkness, but when
accompanied with these three divinely glorious possessions, life
becomes a long summer dream of use and beauty to your fellows
and yourselves.

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 FOURTH LECTURE

MAGIC, SORCERY AND WITCHCRAFT

T HE present lecture is to deal with three very important, and to a

very large extent, much misunderstood subjects; namely, magic,
sorcery and witchcraft. We shall endeavour to Place these three
topics in their proper position, so far as we understand them;
rescue them, where needs be, from misapprehension; and clear
away some proportion, at least, of the rubbish that has been
associated with them.

To the average understanding there is something terrible in the

associations that are connected with the terms, magic, witchcraft, or
sorcery, and the uninstructed or uninformed shrink from all those
who are supposed to be possessed of powers in any of these
directions. This shrinking is the outcome, in nearly all cases, of
ignorance, ignorance of the powers and forces that are utilised by
those who are what might be called adepts in any of these
departments; for generally people are ignorant of the fact that all
that can be done by the witch, the magician, or the sorcerer are
possibilities to everyone else, to the unfortunate so-called victim as
well as to the so-called more fortunate master.

The history of the world reveals the fact that the further we go
back into the past, encountering the increasing ignorance of
humanity in our backward progress, the more of superstition do we
find; and as we recede from the positive knowledge and practical
evidences possessed by man to-day in regard to the laws and
principles of nature, the more and more does the world of life and
action become peopled with subjective individualities; and, instead
of the ordinary laws of nature, and the principles of being—as the
man of science finds them to-day—we find

65
genii, and devils, and strange, mysterious dwellers in the earth, in
the clouds, in the winds, and in the spaces of the upper air. The
further back we investigate these matters the grosser and grosser
become these peculiarities, until they reach the age of barbarism;
when they become so crude and devilish, as to fill our souls with
loathing, as well as with wonder concerning how it was possible for
men to accept such interpretations of the phenomena of nature.

Yet you have only to remember that ignorance is the fruitful mother
of error, and that unintelligent minds are the resting-places of all the
bats and owls of superstition, to be at once placed in possession of
the fact that the further you recede from the orderly facts of nature
and retire into the chambers of speculation, the more certain is it
you will lose law and order, and enter into that domain where
fancy, superstition, and speculation run riot and hold high court,
and seem to present a veritable witches' Sabbath of riotous fancies.

We do not wish you to understand us as arguing for a moment that

the phenomena associated with magic, witchcraft or sorcery, are
untrue, that is to say, that such things do not exist and such
phenomena do not occur. This is not the impression we wish to
convey to you; the impression we wish to place upon your mind,
is that the aforesaid phenomena do exist and do occur, but that the
cause of them and the interpretation of them, and the means by
which they can be obtained, are not of the character hitherto
associated with them.

MAGIC-BLACK, WHITE AND RED

Magic may be accepted as the supposed practice of the higher

forces of the magician's power; sorcery may be accepted as the
lower manifestation of the like power; while witchcraft gives us the
disorderly manifestation of sporadic spiritual phenomena
transpiring among certain portions of the human family, who are
to-day known as mediums, but whose powers are now under

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the more or less orderly control of spirits. Bearing distinctly in
mind the superstition associated with what is now known as
Spiritualism, in the earlier days of civilisation, you will be the
better prepared to accept what we are now about to present for
consideration.

Magic has been divided into three forms, black, white and red,
while some writers have added to it also the consideration of grey
magic. But this distinction by colour only refers to the degree of
moral quantity (or the lack of it) that may be involved in the
operations concerned. The magician is supposed to be an
individual, who, by certain training or hereditary descent, possesses
a peculiar power and develops certain possibilities far beyond
those possessed or developed by the majority of his fellows. Not
only is he supposed to possess this power in himself, but this
power is supposed to give him the ability to control certain orders
of invisible beings; or, in other cases, to bring himself into harmony
with certain orders of invisible beings; or, under certain other
conditions, to entreat the assistance and bring down the presence of
still more superior powers than either of those just referred to;
while the lowest forms of magical exercise are supposed to embrace
a control of the demons, sprites and spirits of this world—the
lower classes of alleged subjective materio-spiritual entities.

BEINGS ON MANY PLANES OF DEVELOPMENT

Now here we have in the matter of magic three separate planes of

operation. In the first place it might be inferred that the operations
would all pertain to this world's life, its selfish desires, its
individual peculiarities and necessities, and most likely would
belong to those matters which are dark, degrading, and possibly
undesirable. Here then, we shall likely find all the superstitious
forms of invoking and evoking, by weird and strange processes,
these alleged spirits of earth, air, fire, water, etc.

Startling stories are told you of occult gatherings where, under

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mysterious oaths in magical circles, with peculiar odours, with
strange and curious symbols, with many peculiar personal
preparations, you are introduced to that magic chamber where these
mysterious entities are, and by such processes they are brought to
you and made your servants. But fearful oaths of silence are
imposed upon you and you are forbidden for your life to step
outside of the charmed circle wherein you have been placed for
safety. We have very little hesitation in saying that while the
phenomena are perfectly true, the interpretation of them is
decidedly erroneous, and that this phase of magic is strictly
possible of interpretation in accordance with the ordinary laws of
life, both in nature and yourself.

When we step out of this lower circle of operation into the

intermediate, where the magician is more on a level with the
spiritual intelligences he invokes, then we leave the lower orders of
alleged quasi-spiritual entities outside, we come out of the spirits of
the earth, the water, and air, witches, and what not, and come into
the class of spiritual intelligences who are really disembodied
intelligences, the people who have lived in this world, or alleged
intelligences who have never lived in this world, but who in either
case are intelligent, rational personalities. They may be appealed to
for comfort and for aid, but are supposed to be more or less in
harmony with, and under the influence of, those magicians who call
them. In the higher planes there is so much that you are already
acquainted with in spiritual communications that but very little
explanation is necessary from us on that point. You appeal to the
highest spiritual intelligences, you ask them to come to you, you
desire their presence, and you invoke their aid and counsel; and you
do this as Spiritualists, to-day, as it has been done in the world for
thousands of years past.

A SANE AND NATURAL PROCESS

Now, to show you how clearly all this may be properly interpreted
and a true fight cast upon it, let us call your attention to

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sundry facts that you, as Spiritualists, are practically familiar with.
In the formation of your spiritual circles you have all the elements
that the magician has in the formation of his mystic circle; but you
do not bum incense, you do not mix magical compounds and set fire
to them, you do not draw a circle upon the ground and mark signs
therein, you do not feel that you are going to draw up bell to
minister to your evil needs or make sprites, gnomes, or fairies obey
you, or go out of the earthly life yourself, or call down the great
ones of the world beyond and command them to be your ministers;
but, instead, you feel you are forming a circle for the purpose of the
evolution of spiritual phenomena. You are virtually and practically
embodying and obeying all that magicians have been able to do in
the past; and the real result of circle-holding, when scientifically
attended to, is a reduction of the magic of antiquity to the orderly
and lawful expression of spiritual phenomena in modern times,
neither more nor less.

Then you will ask us why are these incantations necessary? Why
these mystic surroundings? Why this gloom? and why this
wonderful personal preparation? They are all indicative of certain
essential laws and principles that, when better observed in the fight
of an intelligent understanding of to-day, will always assure your
spiritual circle a far greater measure of success than would be the
case by ignoring them. There can be no harm, and possibly much
good, in the preparation for attending such circles by bodily purity,
both in the outer person and inward character, in the cultivation of
meditation, spiritual aspiration, and of the finer and better graces of
nature. There can be no harm in being purer outwardly, inwardly,
physically, mentally, and spiritually; no harm in your assembling in
a room especially charged with the vitalic forces of those who are
to constitute the "magic," or spirit circle; no harm to prepare and
form the conditions by which you can supply force and power
which the intelligences on the other side can use; no harm in
opening these circles in

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unity of mind and harmony of purpose, which enables the invisible
intelligences to enter into your presence; no harm in aspiring for the
highest and the best to hold communication with you; no harm in
having pleasant and comfortable surroundings, and due
consideration to the solemnity of the deep relationship between the
two worlds, of which you distinctly partake.

There can be nothing objectionable, we repeat, in all this; because

much good may come from it. In obeying these requirements
faithfully, then, you will in these modern times be in harmony with
the character of your present civilisation, and in accordance with
the exigencies of your own necessities, you will reproduce the
essential and really valuable part of magical services and
incantations; but you will not have the spirits of the earth, the air,
the water, or the fire, or any such entities, though you may draw
down by these preparations and processes wise and intelligent
spirits who have once lived in human life, who shall counsel with
you, and perhaps under certain conditions be able to attract to you
certain cunning workers in psychological forces, who can do strange
things, create lights which float around you, etherealize forms and
figures which float before you, make strange sounds, move bodies,
entrance the members of the circle, and do a hundred and one things
you have heard of in magical circles in olden times.

MAGICIANS IMPOSE ON IGNORANCE

Here you will see you are dealing with the outer fringe of so-called
magic. There is, it is asserted, beyond this, a section deeper and
greater, wherein the individual magician can command the service of
the invisible forces; nay, some even go a stage further and say that
the subtle forces of nature are and can be brought under the control
of the will of man, and that there are people in the world to-day
who can play with the forces of being so that they can send this
thing and that thing upon you or

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to you, and in a hundred ways manifest their superiority to the
laws of nature! We deny the postulate entirely.

Our observation is extended, our experience has been widespread,

for we have had an opportunity of investigating the so-called magic
of the Oriental life, to which we belong; and we unhesitatingly
affirm to you that when you divest magic of all its superfluous
elements and bring it down to its basic facts and laws, you will find
that all these enlarged statements are either thoughtless or wilful
exaggeration. If you investigate you will find that the alleged
performers of occult things avoid giving any public statement, that
they shelter themselves behind vows of secrecy, and refer only to
the results of the powers which they say they possess; and if you
bear this clearly in mind, then half the glory and three-fourths of
the mystery associated with magic in the past will flee away
forever.

You may refer to the so-called occult and mystic orders of the East,
of India, Persia and Egypt, and other lands, and in every case when
you refer to the magi of the past you will always find them as we
have just stated, when not teachers pure and simple; you will find
that the adept has been trained in a certain course of practical
philosophy in regard to man's mental, psychological and spiritual
powers, and that this knowledge is "expressed in symbols and
veiled in allegory;" but when you penetrate the symbol and
interpret the allegory, you will have the same kind of knowledge
that you, as Spiritualists, may be familiar with today, the same
kinds of facts that Spiritualists may be familiar with in this age. But
to those who are not within the secret orders, who are not adepts,
and who are kept in the dark, these matters are exaggerated in
importance and character. Examine the matter closely and you will
find that it all comes down to the laws of nature and the powers of
man, coupled with man's insatiable desire to gain knowledge, and
the contempt which learning and experience too frequently feel for
ignorance and lack of progress.

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MAN'S INNATE POWERS AND NATURE'S POTENCIES

"But stories have been told us," you Will Say, "of most marvellous
things. We have heard of the magicians of India, and others, who
have done strange things. Now are not these magicians?" Yes, and
no. There is in man a power to use all beneath him or upon a level
with him to the extent of his ability, but the extent of his ability is
the governing proposition; he cannot go beyond that. The power of
the will, governed by the enlightened soul and intelligence, can
accomplish in many cases that which seems most remarkable to
those who have not been so trained. The ordinary conjurer can do
things with his hands that seem to surprise you beyond all
expression, and you think he must be really endowed with magical
powers; but he tells you that he simply does all these things by the
quickness of the hand, and so defies the seeing of the eye; and
likewise you will find that some of these "occult" stories have their
foundation in the deftness of the hands rather than the exhibition of
magical powers.

SORCERY, SUGGESTION OR HYPNOTISM

When we have to deal with the effects magic is said to produce

upon other people, we have to consider the sorcerer. Let us turn
our attention to the operations of the sorcerer for the "evoking" of
spirits, "the casting of spells," "the giving of life and the bestowing
of health"; the individual who claims to do this and that for you,
who has a monopoly of influence, who can give you half the world
if necessary, or aid you to accomplish some great purpose. Do you
believe such things? Do you believe that one individual, made like
yourselves, organised and constituted like yourselves, having
powers that you possess, has been permitted by the Almighty
intelligence to exercise such powers while here in this world, and
arbitrarily interfere with all the laws and purposes of nature and
God?

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If so, you believe things that are supremely silly, altogether beneath
contempt, when viewed in the light of experience and the known
laws and principles of the universe. The effects produced by the
sorcerer, in three-fourths of cases, depend upon the fact of the
victim's knowing that the power of the sorcerer is being exercised
against him. If you take that simple element out of the proposition,
the power of the sorcerer, is reduced in the same proportion.

When the power of the sorcerer effects a result without the victim
knowing what is being directed against him, you can then put it
down that a mesmeric or psychical power is being directed by the
sorcerer towards the person. Take out these two elements, and
sorcery becomes impossible. But, of course you are far too
intelligent to believe in such a thing as evoking his Satanic Majesty,
you have discarded all such opinion; and if you once empty the
Christian hells, you might as well empty all hells beside, and just as
well discard all the other devils, for they are of the same general
family.

Here, then, we stand. All this question of "sorcery," supposed to

be associated with the lower races of mankind, is but a blind and
indefinite searching after the spiritual powers which you all
possess, is one of the expressions of spiritual growth, just as the
exercise of magic is one of the expressions of psychological growth,
of the power to use the psychological elements of your nature;
they are indications of what man is going to do and become by and
by, indications all upon the lowest plane of individual
development, and when bereft of the superstitions that surround
them, they are resolved into the simple facts of nature that in your
larger experience you are familiar with to-day.

WITCHCRAFT—THE ACTION OF MIND ON MIND

We now come to the question of witchcraft. You have been

bewitched by a laughing eye, a merry voice, a twist of the hair, a
turn of the face, a charming manner—oh! by these you have

73
been bewitched beyond all power to resist; a spell has been cast
over you which you have felt for years afterwards, and you have
thanked God for such bedevilment, for it brought you all the
happiness you had in life!

Here you have the secret of witchcraft, the influence of one

individual upon another. It may be laudable and good, or disgraceful
and injurious; it may kindle into action the higher and better parts,
or arouse all the lower and baser elements of you—may make you
akin to the very angels themselves, or forge chains which shall bind
you down to the lowest elements of sensuous life.

Work out the problem on that line. All the witchery and bewitching
resolves itself into psychological influences; the hypnotist makes
his subject believe that a cold coin is red hot, that a gentleman's
walking-stick is the embodiment of the evil one, and by a thousand
different things bewitches the intelligence and faculties and
judgment of his subject, who, for the time being, is under a spell
that compels him to do whatsoever the controlling mind desires or
demands him to do; but the time was when these things were not
understood, when those who were capable of exercising an
influence upon other people were called "witches", were looked
upon as devilish, and, mayhap, have paid for it by being roasted
alive, as a burnt offering to heaven, as, indeed many were so
treated. So, then, when we take witchcraft in this light, think of
how many thousands of your fellow-creatures in this world had
suffered pains and penalties because they possessed powers which
God himself gave them; for the exercise of attributes with which
you are familiar to-day, and which pass unchallenged in the
community at large.

ALL HUMAN POWERS ARE NATURAL

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft, then, in this light, bring themselves

in line and harmony with the laws of nature and the possibilities of
man; they are "uncanny" subjects only when you

74
fail to understand what they involve; they are dreadful and horrible
things to deal with when you are led into them blindfolded, and
introduced to them in the dark; but when they come out to you in
the bright light of day, when old associations fall from them, they
stand out as prophecies of the powers that you are today
personally acquainted with.

We take magic, then, in another form just for the moment, involving
in this one term now the entire series of definitions that we have
been dealing with; we will take it under the word occultism, and
here we find the exoteric and esoteric side of the question. You are
asked to believe there is a secret side to knowledge that is only for
those who are fitted to receive it; that there must be a special order,
a special class of people to receive the secret wisdom of God, and
that only these favoured persons are entitled to receive His divine
knowledge; that outwardly it must be presented in symbols and
allegories, and the common multitude who are not prepared to
receive these things must be content to receive what the adepts and
magi see fit to dispense to them.

Three-fourths of this talk about modern Theosophy, and the

presentation of it in this land, is only pandering to the most vicious
element of the intelligence of the nineteenth century. Theosophy
may tell you that there are only a special few who may pass the
mystic portals, or lift the sacred veils and pass beneath them so
that they stand before the inner shrines; while all you who are of
the common clay outside must be content to hear but the echo of
the music within, or receive it in symbol and allegory, from those
who have passed into adeptship beyond, as they may choose to
give it to you. Tear down such trashy doctrines, dispel all such
murky clouds. Be not deceived by such specious statements; they
are the towers that selfishness and superstition erect to make
something that may belong to all seem special and peculiar, and
pertaining to a class alone. God's eternal universe knows no
common people and no great people.

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In the essential soul of man are the everlasting principles of God,
and those who are willing and those who are able, no matter what
their creed, their race or colour, have an inalienable right to the
pursuit of truth, as well as the pursuit of happiness.

SNOBBERY BORN OF CONCEIT

Therefore we say that all these pretentious claims about occultism,

Theosophy, or the mystical developments of supernatural power
are the claims of the ignorant, the deluded, or the charlatan. People
are deluded and deceived by such pretensions, they not knowing all
the points we have presented for consideration. Our purpose in
these remarks is to inform them and bring them face to face with
the fact, that whenever truth is divided in two, and half of it
belongs to the "initiates," and the other half to those of the outer
world, then we say that danger and difficulty he in the pathway of
the investigator; and one of the greatest dangers is a specious self-
righteousness which causes its subjects to say, "Stand aside; I am
holier than thou." This is what you wish to avoid; there must be
none of the "I am holier than thou" in the pursuit and application of
truth for the advancement of yourselves and the well-being of your
fellows.

Shall we, then, people the mystic temples of the past with the
living thoughts of the present? Shall we take to them our circles and
our shrines? Shall we again illumine their sacred altars? Shall we fill
their chambers with odours and perfumes? Must we as initiates be
put through trying ordeals, invoke the powers of the lower, middle,
and upper realms of nature ere we can enjoy the blessings of our
Spiritualism? These are questions Spiritualists might well ask of the
supporters of magic in their midst to-day.

And shall we, with the light and guidance of modern psychology,
indulge in the wild orgies of sorcery or witchcraft? Or shall we turn
aside from the old practices, remove the curtains, turn up the lights,
put away the paraphernalia, and come down

76
to the plain, simple truth, that the phenomenal aspects of modern
Spiritualism reproduce all the essential principles of the magic,
witchcraft and sorcery of the past? The same powers are involved,
the same forces are used, the same conditions are required, the same
intelligences are operating; and the more you investigate the realms
of nature by the light of science and experience, the less and less
room you will find for the devils and genii of antiquity.

Magic, witchcraft and sorcery, when thus analysed and interpreted,

bring you at last only face to face with possibilities in nature, in
harmony with her laws, in accordance with the possibilities of
yourself, and in strict accordance with the abilities of operating
spirits, who return into the mortal sphere and produce all the
marvels that are alleged to have been performed in former times.

PRETENCE HAS THRIVED ON IGNORANCE

It may be said in presenting this modern and practical

interpretation of the three themes we have joined together, that we
have ignored the existence of the great brotherhoods of the past.
Nothing of the kind. We do not, since we are perfectly aware of
their existence; but all they can present, all that they can do, is
simply done in accordance with the laws of nature; and no man in
any case can transcend the laws of nature, but in every case, no
matter how startling the statement may be, the result has been
accomplished in harmony with the laws of nature and the
possibilities of man.

Therefore, shall you waste the precious moments of mortal life in

digging up the past when its facts are now living in your midst?
Why turn to the years agone, why unearth the mysteries of
psychological phenomena in bygone ages, when greater wisdom is
manifested and greater things are actually transpiring in your midst
to-day, and that, too, in the light of scientific fact and experience,
and in accordance with the highest methods of

77
investigation? We will take the spiritual phenomena of the last
forty years in connection with Modern Spiritualism, and boldly
challenge the magical records of antiquity to produce anything
equally satisfactory to the intelligence of to-day.

Clearly, then, the past may be left alone; let the dead past bury its
dead, and let the living present be concerned in developing the life
that is, in an understanding of the latent powers of mind and body,
brain and soul. By a proper understanding of the laws and
principles connecting the two worlds in harmony and unity, far
greater marvels are revealed to you. You learn that a spirit can lift a
solid article and transport it from one end of the room to the other;
carry a message from one locality to another, carry your goodwill
or evil will to some person you love or dislike; that it can produce a
bodily form, as well as reveal the mysteries of passing from the
mortal existence. All these things are possible and do occur, and
they occur because of the laws of nature. All that has been done by
man in the past, and all that has been gained, you can do and you
can gain; because every human being the wide world over is built
upon the same lines of general organisation, principle, and purpose.

A CLEAN LIFE AND UNDERSTANDING MIND ARE THE

KEYS TO POWER

We leave the topic to your consideration, and urge you to accept

this in conclusion; that the cultivation of the highest spirituality,
the development of the noblest morality, the building up and
strengthening of your will to its strongest point, living a cleanly and
virtuous life, are the surest safeguards against the attacks of all
kinds of sorcery and magic, of all sorts of witchcraft; that the facts
of knowledge intelligently directed shall in deed make you a
magician through the forces of your nature for the accomplishment
of many strange things; that even as the chemist manipulating his
compounds produces miracles, and seems to be a very magician
juggling with fluids and materials, so you, like the chemist, using
laws and principles and proper

78
agents, can be a marvellous magician in the psychological
departments, also, while you are living here on earth.

Live, then, so your knowledge can be usefully applied for the

benefit of your fellows and the cultivation of your own natures,
and banish superstition and ignorance from the world for ever; for
knowledge is the glorious sunlight shining into and dispelling the
darkness and the bats and owls so long residing there hie them
away to more congenial quarters where the sunlight does not shine
so strong. May those bats and owls the world has called magic,
witchcraft and sorcery flee away to more appropriate abodes of
shadow in other less-illumined parts of the world than that in
which you reside; and in place of "witchcraft, sorcery and magic,"
put the understanding of the psychological possibilities of man and
being, which, when applied to the needs of life, bless humanity,
enlarge the field of human vision and knowledge, lift man up into
communion and action with the higher orders of spiritual
intelligence, who are always willing to help you forward and
onward in your progress through mortality to the brighter realms
that he beyond.

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 FIFTH LECTURE

THE NATURAL, SPIRITUAL AND CELESTIAL PLANES OF

THE SECOND STATE

T HE present topic of consideration is "The Natural, Spiritual and

Celestial Planes of the Second State." At times it is supposed that
the second state of life is so strangely different, so altogether
miraculous in its character by comparison with the life you are now
pursuing, that it would seem, if such opinion be accepted as
correct, that it would be impossible to give any rational and
intelligible conception of its nature.

Naturally, the logical mind would argue, if there is this great

difference between the two states, and if the fact of communion
between them be true, then those who come to you from the other
state can only make themselves understood to your judgment
through the agency of symbols and such approximate statements as
would best meet the necessities and difficulties that lie in the way.

Therefore in such case all statements concerning the spiritual life

would have to be accepted as approximate statements, and not
statements of literal and actual fact stated in specific terms, and the
results would be that the whole of the literature of Spiritualism
dealing with the after-life would be an approximate and not an exact
literature; for there could be no exact philosophy of the subject, and
you would have to wake up, perchance, into conscious life in the
world beyond, with the painful fact dawning upon you that you
absolutely were not benefited in any particular by all the supposed
information that had been transmitted to you during your residence
upon earth.

If the spiritual world could only give you an approximate

understanding of the conditions of the future life, it would not

80
render you any very substantial service; you would still be
enshrouded in doubts and difficulties, and the real character of that
future state would be just as much a sealed book to you after you
had received communications from these people as it was prior to
your so doing. Clearly, then, if this is the case, the value of the
communications will be seriously impaired in proportion as this
fact is known.

On the other hand, suppose it to be that you can get not only an
approximate but a tolerably exact statement of the facts of that
future life, couched in such manner and method as shall make it
easily understood and accepted by your intelligence and judgment,
then the communications you receive from that future world, Will
help to clear away the mists, as well as dispel the superstitious
opinions that have surrounded that future life for so many
generations past. In this case communications will be advantageous
and beneficial to you, instructive and illustrative of the real facts
and the actual circumstances that there prevail; and coming to you
in such a character, they will store your mind, unfold your
judgment, and add to your knowledge of the life beyond, while they
will largely rob death of those terrors, that ignorance and doubt
have hitherto associated with it.

Shall we take the hypothetical ground or the ground of exactitude?

is it impossible to translate the life beyond into the understanding
of rational humanity? Must the information be conveyed in the
form of symbols and approximations? Our choice is very simple;
we aim, as best we can, to be something of the rough and hardy
pioneer, who, working through the tangled undergrowth of the
forest, strives to carve a way for those who come after, that there
may be something of a road and more of daylight upon the path
than there was before; and if we can do this in such practical
manner as shall make the road we mark out clearly understood by
you, then we must come to something of exactitude, and symbols
and approximations may be put upon one side as not suited to the
task we have in hand.

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THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS GRADED

We have divided our subject into three separate sections—the

natural, spiritual and celestial planes of the second state; and the
inference arising from this division is, naturally, that man passes
through certain conditions thus named, and in himself exhibits a
natural and spiritual and celestial character as he proceeds.

But at the outset we may be encountered with a criticism and told

that to argue that a person passes through a natural condition in the
spiritual life is to argue something that does not seem upon the
surface to be supported by the facts. We would like to ask one
question: How many of the teeming multitudes of spirits are really
spiritually unfolded while living in this world? If they are not
spiritually unfolded while they are living in this world, how can it
be reasonably supposed, save only by the operation of a miracle,
that they can become spiritually unfolded as the simple result of
having died. The idea that death will put such people into a
spiritual condition rests upon a sandy and insecure foundation. Yet,
you will tell us, they become spirits. That is true enough. There are
a great many human people who just possess mortal bodies, in
whom humanity has not yet begun to put forth its fairest flowers;
they are mortal rather than human. These people, then, will be
spirits rather than spiritual, and herein Les the essence of the
distinction; for may it not be accepted that until the divinity of
humanity has been elaborated and unfolded, the glorious
spirituality which is the perfume of humanity can scarcely be
expected.

WE BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

We invite you, first of all, to the natural plane of the spiritual life,
wherein all the latent elements pertaining to your present
development germinate, flower, bring forth their graces and glory;
and wherein all the nobler selfhood that you feel within

82
you now unfolds, matures, and beautifies. Ah! but if we have to
take such a step as that, and if all the better part of us that we
possess now is unfolded over there, how many of us shall reach the
glory in the end, and at what an expense of time, it may be, shall we
pass through the ultimates of the natural nature of us, and tread
upon the verge of the spiritual that lies beyond?

True, there is no royal road to progress in the second state any

more than there is in this; all achievement is the result of individual
effort and of personal application. If you wish to grow on the
second plane of life, then, even as you would have to labour upon
this plane mentally and morally to achieve results, so mentally and
morally must you labour on that second plane if you advance and
progress.

Now, when we look at human nature we find that there are certain
possible characteristics and elements pertaining to man's natural
nature, as it is called, but apparently are in the way—are clogs
upon the wheels of his spiritual development; and people tell you
if you wish for grace and growth, you must trample underneath all
the carnal and material elements of your nature, Very frequently we
have to raise our voice in condemnation of a doctrine so sophistical.
There is nothing base in man's nature, it is only the uses that
ignorance and undevelopment have put it to. If, then, by ignorance
you have descended to ignoble service, if by lack of knowledge you
have become chained, slaves to mastering passions, then those
passions are not to blame; but your lack of development and lack of
knowledge rise up in condemnation, and accuse you of failure to
rightly use the powers that God himself hath committed to your
keeping.

THERE IS NOTHING COMMON OR UNCLEAN

When the world grows wise enough, and clearly sees the character
of God's great government, it will universally concede the point we
are about to urge—that in man's nature, as well as

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in the universe itself, the gifts of God are good eternally. It is not in
crushing and crowding to the ground and trampling beneath your
feet the gifts of God that you are going to attain real progress, but it
is in bringing out the principles that are involved therein; in
applying them intelligently and wisely to the nobler purpose and
desires of your life, and so bringing out the latent elements of
good—the essences and all the sweetness and brightness that man's
material nature contains. This cannot be done to-day, but
instinctively the individual feels it ought to be done. This
instinctive conception has lain within the minds of men for ages
past, and the ascetics and monks and recluses of the world testify
to the fearful ends men have gone in their attempts to crucify the
flesh that the spirit might be free.

Vain efforts were these, for your nature needs its particular
development, its true unfoldment, that these latent qualities and
powers may be brought to the surface and stimulated, even as the
sunshine stimulates, and warms, and brings to the surface the blade
of grass as it grows upwards from the soil; and when you can effect
this result while you are living here, then so much higher will you
stand in the natural condition in the spiritual world when you pass
to it; but you need not think that you will pass into a realm or
sphere beyond the first division we have mentioned, for the first
stage will receive one and all, for there is not a human being living in
the world to-day who has attained such superior development and
exalted unfoldment, that he has exhausted the natural elements of
personal being pertaining to the sphere of life whereon he first
commences to be.

In the spiritual states of life you will find the counterparts of

nature, the counterparts of humanity; and these natural
counterparts of nature and man are the elements of the first degree,
so to speak, of spiritual existence. They constitute the natural claim
whereon your loves, your affections, your interests, your
professions, all that which makes you what you are to-day, come
to you, remain with you as a part and parcel of your lives, and do

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their work there in your further development, and which fit you for
the next degree that rises beyond.

THE STRENGTH OF HUMAN AFFECTION

Let us go back for one moment. The natural affections of the heart,
so called, the desires of the intellect, the aspirations of the moral
man, the emotions and premonitions of the spiritual part of you, all
these are working in your lives to-day. You win die, and when you
enter on the second plane, all these things will be with you there
working with you still; but they will bind you at the same time, for
they are links that hold you down to the world from whence you
came, and bind you to the friends you love, to the pursuits that
were dear to you, to the principles of being you were then related
to; and they will hold you just so long as you have not developed
beyond, or more properly speaking, developed up to all the
possibilities of life at present active within your being.

Therefore, your sojourn upon the natural plane—the second

state—will depend entirely upon the character of your affections,
the nature of your pursuits; and if your strong affections still bind
you to the realms of nature and the people living there, then will
you be as dwellers upon the threshold, living actually within the
confines of the material thought, even on the spiritual side—
remaining unseen, but chained to the conditions of earth, sharing
and sympathising with its people in their trials and tribulations
when they are affectionally related to you; but, growing a little
beyond this in thought and nobler in aspiration, you pass away
from the world itself, from the actual conditions of mortal being,
and enter into the real conditions of the spiritual life.

THE POTENTIAL GREATNESS OF MAN

We have so profound a faith in, and so deep a worship for, the

divinity of man, that at times we feel that if the world's humanity
were only what that humanity can become, the world

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would need no service from the spirit-world to aid it in its upward
progress. There is so much of good, so much of truth, so much of
power and beauty, enshrined within this nature of yours, that could
all these be brought into active exercise, the world's people would
become angels and gods. Therefore, when we see and know them,
and mingle with them on that brighter plane of natural existence
whereon the spirit man first stands, we feel and know how divinely
great this humanity can be. Over there, then, where love is the
ruling element, mingling in every thought and urging all your nature
forward, there, on really the lowest round of the ladder of spiritual
progress, man unfolds every latent element of the divine humanity,
and realizes fully and completely all the elements of human
greatness.

In the main, the majority of communicants, who come to hold

communications with you, come from the first plane of spiritual
existence; there they are dwellers upon the threshold; nearer this
life, really, than the other, they have scarcely passed the portals,
and are yet those upon the natural plane of spiritual existence,
whose interests, sympathies, and desires are still associated with
the mortal world. Occasionally, much more rarely than you think,
come messengers from the plane beyond, the avant couriers of a
better dispensation yet to be unfolded; and now and again their
golden words drop into the seas of mortal thought, stirring their
waters with a quicker life, illuminating them with a radiant glory
that flashes and scintillates before the wondering eyes of those keen
enough to feel the power of the deeper thought and the higher
presence.

But, no matter how long the time may be, the period surely comes
at last when the latent elements of your present careers are all
unfolded, and you have grown co-equal with the plane of principles
upon which you have hitherto reposed, and therefore need a larger
flight, must have a new condition; for now you begin to feel the
need of that deeper unfoldment that lies behind the human nature—
the cultivation of the spiritual part of you.

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PROGRESS IN SPIRIT LIFE

By effort and by sorrow, it may be by pain and misery, most

potent teachers in the main, you have become chastened and
purified; the discordant and rebellious elements have been reduced
to order and to harmony; and being thus clothed in your right mind
at last, wearing at last the wedding garments for the spiritual
feasting that lies before you, the command comes out of your own
necessities, "Come up higher." out of your own necessities, mind,
for you can make no advance in the spiritual states of being until
the absolute need of it within yourself compels the movement
onwards—you cross the boundaries of nature.

With that crossing we cannot deal now. Suffice it to say you cross
those boundaries, and find a new life surging within your nature,
new aspirations developed, new relations yearned for; and onward
you go, not forsaking or forgetting all that has gone before, but, as it
were, gathering and folding it up like a treasured garment, and
putting it away, in the recesses of your mind, for use hereafter. The
life and thought and action of you go forward now into the upper
portion of the consciousness, and is related to spiritual things more
deeply; or, in other words, you have now arrived at that plane of
evolution in your spiritual consciousness when you have a higher
plane of activities, that, by contrast, because of their refinement,
are justly describable as the spiritual plane of your being.

Now this spiritual plane is the complement of the natural plane

you existed upon before; it is the very essence of all that has gone
before. Whereas love ruled you before, now another power begins
to operate as a controlling influence upon your judgment. It is the
power of spiritual perception. The spiritual perception operates
now, and whereas before you had to reason and to argue upon all
that entered into your knowledge, now the soul sees beneath the
form, through the phenomenon, to the laws

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and the principle that are beneath it. The more remote powers, as
you consider them now, of your souls, are then brought nearer to
the surface; and all the virtues and abilities you have dreamed of as
being possible hitherto, now become practical realities in your
every-day experience.

This spiritual power working within you begins to manifest itself

externally, and you behold yourself upon this plane clothed
literally in the purity of your own progress; whereas your garments
upon the lower or natural plane of spiritual life were the reflection
of your personal thoughts and states and conditions, which now
have become the outward types and forms of your interior life, and
develop a being clothed in that which makes imposition and
imposture utterly impossible. Here on this plane of life the spirit
always is to outward form just what it is in inward nature. If this
sublime law were only realized on earth, what a transformation
would be effected in the conditions of human society, how many
people would have to change places; those who are up would have
to come down, those who are judges would become criminals, while
many a poor prisoner might play the role of judge most
righteously. Think of it! The time will come when what you really
are, out of the purity and sweetness of your progress, will become
actually manifest in the external robes that clothe you.

SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION DAWNS

This spiritual state brings you into closer sympathy with the souls
of men than you could here obtain upon the natural plane
previously referred to. Natures intersphere each other more
completely, and more dose communion exists between the
inhabitants of this plane; and their affections and their perceptions,
running into closer harmony than hitherto, prevent them making
misplaced confidences, wrong associations, and injurious
affiliations. They find, too, that the purposes of being have a
deeper significance than they ever dreamed before; and realizing

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truly and universally the presence of law and principle in the
conditions around them and within themselves, they are at last
overwhelmed with a deeper and more spiritual consciousness of the
existence and the government of God than ever was possible to
them before.

One step further is taken here; and from this plane of the spiritual
perception they arise to still more exalted development, which we
will call, for convenience sake, the celestial state. There a wondrous
development is made manifest; would that we had the power and
the skill to bring the glory and the beauty of this third state before
your understanding; the radiant divinity of it, the spirit and power,
the spirituality of it, the loveliness of it are so divinely glorious,
permeated by such loyalty of soul from those who five within it,
the omnipotence of God's great presence, that words fall all too
short of being able to give you the slightest outline of it.

EYE HATH NOT SEEN—NOR EAR HEARD

Lives there beat in glorious rhythm with the eternal music of the
infinite heart itself, and every latent possibility of the soul to this
point rises to its highest altitude, manifests its most glorious
activities and divinest powers; the noble messengers of that higher
life are indeed fitted to be as even gods to you. How can we speak
of them, how can we tell you of their glory and their beauty? There
is in their natures one great principle.

If affection and perception have ruled in the previous cases, now

comes the godlike power of meditation, or assimilation, whereby
the principles already gathered, the knowledge already possessed,
the developments already made manifest, are brought within the
very consciousness of the soul itself; and love and intellect and
meditation here crown the progress of the soul as it passed upward
in the second state. Mark well the meaning of these terms. We are
speaking only of the second state, not of other states that rise
beyond it, mark you, more glorious still,

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but that one state of spiritual being that you are at present related
to, the three divisions of which we have just enumerated.

When these three separate stages of progress have been made, they
may now be passed before you in the review that substantially
says they are the fulfilment of the natural man as you know him to-
day. They are the realities of the spiritual man as you feel him
within yourselves, they are the blossoming and unfolding of the
divine man that lies beneath all that is the very essence of your
natures.

THE EQUILIBRIUM OF HARMONIOUS LIFE

Here we have, then, observation perception, and reflection, love,
justice and wisdom manifesting themselves in their proper orders;
and as they increase in power and come into harmony each with the
other, and when love is directed by reason, and reason controlled
by wisdom, then love, justice and wisdom (Justice promoting the
action of the intellect), then, when these three are brought into
mutual harmony and unity, what a perfectly rounded life, by
comparison with the fives of men to-day, is presented for your
consideration!

When this final stage of this second state has been reached, behold a
marvellous thing occurs. The mind's action, or, more correctly
speaking, the action of the conscious soul itself produces a
wonderful result; and all that has been so far reached becomes
absorbed into the very nature of you, and becomes the foundation
element that is the basis of your progress in the next state that rises
beyond, the second state you will encounter when you pass from
this your first.
The process may be indefinitely repeated. These triune
developments, their associations in action and their final
assimilation into one compact element, will go on indefinitely; until
the soul in its attributes of justice, love, and wisdom, and all the
elements that make up man's nature, affectionally, intellectually,
and spiritually, shall grow to such gigantic proportions, and

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possess such divine abilities, that all you have ever dreamed of
concerning even Deity himself shall pale into utter insignificance by
the side of the reality you shall personally possess.

May we not, then, pause here, asking you to remember that we

have only dealt in plain and simple terms and on general principles
with some of the most important facts which will be your
experiences when you pass from this stage to the world beyond?
We here endeavour to present to you, not an approximation, but a
literal statement of the fact that the three planes of your present
natures, the natural, intellectual and spiritual, as we should,
perhaps, more correctly interpret them, are unfolded upon the first
general degree of experience after death, and that over there the
three are represented by the terms natural, spiritual and celestial.

And as you thus progress, the principles of your divine humanity,

the elements of your immortal minds, the qualities of your eternal
souls, are successively developed and unfolded as you go along the
second plane of your being, and each unfoldment lays the
possibility of the one that comes afterwards, and as it grows and
develops, it makes you nobler and more divine; until at last, having
exhausted the possibilities of the first plane of your spiritual
existence, all these beauties and glories in their triune departments
become concentrated and embodied in yourself, and behold a
diviner humanity than you ever have dreamed of yet is the glorious
and beautiful result.

PREPARE TO-DAY FOR TO-MORROW

May we meet you, then, not as dwellers upon the threshold, for
then it would pain us to know that you had not yet reached that
plane of spiritual development that fitted you to pass behind the
outer portals. But let us meet you upon the inner side of the
celestial doorway of the two worlds, and grasp your hands, and say
we are glad to see you thus unfolded and thus beautified. May this,
your plane of natural existence in the spiritual world,

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lead to that of which we have told you. Then shall we know that
you have lived this life worthily, that you have done your best to
unfold and exalt your powers and natures, and truly fitted
yourselves for that natural, spiritual state that is to be your first
experience after death. And, as you march forward, labouring
faithfully, earnestly and zealously, gathering knowledge and
increasing strength and stature, we shall know that you shall surely
go forward to that sublime and celestial condition further still. And
as you go up there, wise and loving, true and thoughtful, souls will
be with you at every point, to give you aid and help whenever you
need it.

Live then, in this world, under the solemn and serious

consciousness that you are preparing for the second plane of life;
and may your deeds and thoughts and growth be such that you
shall pass through the gateway into the natural life that lies beyond,
where, under the blessing of the wise and the good, and the
providence of the Eternal Power, you shall learn the mighty lessons
of nature as you can never learn them while you are here; for then
you shall be able to see beneath the form, beneath the phenomenon,
and learn the law and discover the principle of the life and world in
which you live.

If you will so five then you will earn for yourself free admission
beyond the threshold, and hear the glad welcome of the glorious
hosts beyond as they speed to meet you and warmly clasp your
hands in greeting, "Welcome! well done, thou good and faithful
worker!"

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 SIXTH LECTURE

THE SOUL WORLD: ITS HELLS, HEAVENS AND

EVOLUTIONS

ROLL aside the curtains of materiality, penetrate through the mists

and darkness of ignorance that skirt the passage-way between the
two worlds, go beyond the doubts and mutations of material
thought and enter into the radiant light of the Soul World that lies
beyond; and in that fairer country, journey with us and to some
extent inspect its hells, its heavens, and comprehend in some degree
the evolutions that are possible there to that life itself as well as to
the people who live therein.

This soul world is the home of arisen humanity, the place where
man commences his future of life and conscious existence on what
is called the spiritual side of being; where he commences to unfold
the latent capacities of his nature to a grander degree than e'er he
could while living here below, though before this can be done many
things have to be reckoned with. The evils of the past have to be
dissipated, superstitions that have accumulated about the person
have to be purged from off the nature of the individual; and to
accomplish this, something of pain and travail must necessarily be
endured by all concerned.

It is the greatest mistake to suppose that merely because you enter

into the soul world you are then prepared to receive all wisdom and
manifest all excellence. The path of the student is difficult; there is
no royal road to knowledge; and whatsoever the soul gains and
values the most is always attained with the greatest effort, and
sometimes by the deepest suffering. The fires of suffering are
among the potent elements that reveal the jewels of your character.
So in the spiritual world it may be, that, in passing through periods
of trials and purification, the soul is

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gradually moving onwards to brighter and better things, and gaining
in strength and beauty by reason of its suffering.

DEATH WORKS NO GREAT CHANGE

When at first you enter that soul life, it may seem to you that there
is very little difference between that life and the world you have
just departed from; to all appearance people will seem much the
same to you, the outward circumstances of their lives will have
strong marks of similarity, and the general conditions of the world
itself will be so similar to the general conditions of the world from
which you have departed, that you might almost think that you had
fallen asleep in one country on the earth, and had awakened in
another. Yet this remarkable similarity is a wonderfully beneficent
providence upon the part of the Eternal Wisdom; for if the
translation from one world to the other involved a sudden and
complete change and alteration in conditions and relationships, why
then so sudden a change would result in such a shock to the
consciousness, that in all probability people would be seriously
affected by the suddenness of the transition and its resultant
consequences.

Divine beneficence thus works to meet the requirements alike of the

meanest and the greatest of humanity; for when the average
individual awakes and finds himself surrounded with scenes
somewhat similar to those with which he has been long acquainted
in the world he has left behind, the shock is lessened and he feels
how natural it is that he should be living in this new world, and he
says, "It seems to me I have been here before; I am familiar with the
scenes and people, and really it is a natural place for me to be"; and
there is something of truth in this supposition. In the hours of
sleep, when curtained slumber has enclosed the outward mind and
sense, the soul is sometimes awakened to the glories of the life
beyond and has then caught faint glimpses of its beauty, and
mingled perchance, with its people. Therefore, when he comes to
the soul world, indistinctly at first,

94
but gradually disclosing itself, he recognises that the familiarity of
the world about him arises from the fact that he has seen and
known it before he actually became a permanent resident therein.

THE SPIRIT WORLD IS SUITED TO OUR NEEDS

He enters, then, into a world that is in every way suited by its

nature to his needs. At first the character of the change seems but
very unimportant, and hence it is that we always say, though
sometimes our statement raises some dispute, that from the actual
fact of death, in the first instance, there is but little or no change in
the character of the individual; but after he has resided in the soul
world for some little time he realises his condition, and begins to
understand that the old standards of determining a man's position
do not apply with the same force to his new state. Then he begins
to realise that the social life—shall we call it—of the spiritual world
rests upon different foundations from those of the social life of the
world he has departed from and instinctively he begins to
understand that he will very soon drop into that place or plane or
association that his interior spiritual development entitles him to
occupy.

Then the difficulties of the life begin to assert themselves. What at

first seemed plain sailing and easy going; what at first gave him
confidence that the wicked were not punished, and made him feel
he had cause for secret congratulation; which made him say, "Ah!
you see there is no hell, no devil, no vengeful God to punish, no
burning lake of fire, there is nothing to fear, as I have been taught";
which causes him for a time to give all his remorse to the winds and
make him think he is going to have a "royal time" over again,
presently disappear, and soon some little doubt begins to obtrude
itself; a little speck floats across the clear blue of his present
pleasure, and he asks himself, "I don't know; this is curious; what
does it mean?"

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EVERY SOUL FINDS ITS TRUE LEVEL

Ultimately he realises that this is what it means: that a man is as are

his motives; that in the soul world the order of things is, that, if his
secret life be soiled and defiled and he has been living a he before
the world, then, in a very short time, the he will rise to the surface
of his spiritual personality, the deceit will become manifest in his
actual appearance, and those who were so glad to see him, and with
whom he was so glad to be, will begin to look askance at him, and
he will realise that something has gone wrong. He will then learn the
lesson, that all association in the spiritual world depends upon the
law of mutual affinity and fitness; and if he hath no affinity with
and is unfit to mingle with the better sort of those he finds around
him, even in the earliest portion of his career, then, most surely,
does the law of repulsion begin to exercise its influence, and he is
driven out, driven out from those whom he thought he could
succeed in blinding as to his real character, driven out from those
whom he thought to hoodwink with his pretended and false claims.

Repulsion begins to operate between them, and he is bound to go

one way, and that way is away from them. Then he begins to
understand, that, if there is no hell and no devil and no angry Deity
to punish him, there is something that exceeds all these three ideas,
a something that is working within, a law of repulsion—that drives
him out, and that entails all the penalties that those triune concepts
have previously been associated with; and he begins to wish
presently that a hell and a devil really did exist, for when a person
possessing an undeveloped and abnormally constituted mind and
character is driven out to his own society, he begins to realise the
fact that his own society is the very worst possible kind of society
he can be associated with, and would go anywhere, do anything,
frequently, to escape therefrom.

Then begins another phase of the problem. He is now getting into

hell! But the effects of this position vary in almost every

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case. It may result in the development of rage and hatred, of fierce
and bitter strugglings within his own breast, turmoil, passion and
spite in his mind and thought; he will become angry, vengeful,
vicious, and every stage in the descending character of these
passional developments will be clearly and indelibly marked upon
his features and in his character. One point must be here insisted
upon.

HELLISH NATURES FIND THEIR HELL

Though these characteristics be expressed in the appearance and

personality of the individual, as a rule they are not recognisable to
those who live upon the same plane of spiritual unfoldment, nor are
they recognisable to any extent by those who are upon a lower
plane of development. But they are perfectly plain and easily to be
perceived by those who are above them in spiritual development;
hence those will see all the peculiarities expressed in the outward
and personal characteristics of the individual, and will see that these
external manifestations represent the internal conditions; just as
among yourselves the expert physiognomist can read in the
lineaments and appearance of the face, to a very large extent, the
interior character of the individual, so that he makes comparisons
between such persons and certain animals that possess certain
characteristics—that this man looks like a fox and has a foxy look,
and so forth.

Now it does not follow that a person has a pig's head, though he
has a piggish face. So when you are told that certain spirits have the
appearance of foxes and other animals you may take it that such
appearances are but symbolical presentations; and the spirit who is
making the statement to the foregoing effect does so sincerely, no
doubt, through not having a clear conception of the law in the
matter just alluded to. Whereas you should understand all that is
really implied is an indication of the still-continued undevelopment
of the spirits thus described.

Now these people we are referring to descend into hell. They

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may become vengeful, moody, or active; they may brood in silence
and secrecy, or they may join others like themselves; for they carry
forward the dispositions they possessed while living in this world,
and you may find them quarrelling amongst themselves just as they
did here below.

This interpretation of their characters gives you the keynote of

their personal dispositions. In brief, we may say that all those who
are in hell are those souls that are living disorderly lives. A
disorderly life is one that is out of direct relationship with the
external laws of progress and development, for by this progress and
development you ensure true unfoldment, and its consequent of
happiness.

HELL IS A STATE, NOT A PLACE

Disorder, then, is the keynote of the hellish and of the hell world,
and this disorder brings us now to the task of locating the exact
place where it is. It is not in cavernous recesses where murky
clouds lower, and there are burning and rolling waves of fire and
flame, away from the light and the glory of the day—deep bosomed
in the very bowels of nature herself, where demons gnash their
teeth and hurl their anathemas against the goodness of God. God
never made such hells as these. He had no necessity to do so; for
the hells of the spiritual world are within the individuals who are
experiencing the results of all the conditions their actions can create.

A disorderly individual having disorder in himself (using the term in

the higher spiritual sense) has hell within him. As the old teaching
has told you very truly that the kingdom of heaven is within you,
so also may its opposite be within you; and this being true, hell
being within the disorderly life of the disorderly liver, that hell can
never be escaped from until those who dwell within the sphere of
influence themselves unlock and unbolt the bars of their disorderly
living and emerge into the heavens that he beyond. Hell, then, is
purely a personal question, and individual

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experiences will vary in their intensity and character in accordance
with the circumstances of the particular person concerned.

Thus, you will understand, that no actual theological hell can be

found in the soul world, but, instead, that each one makes his own
hell, and making it himself he cannot complain against the Almighty
Providence for giving him too much, for he creates all he
experiences; thus every cause for complaint of injustice is
destroyed. Dealing with the matter in this light, we have dealt with
it only in its personal application.

Let us direct your attention now to some of the hells that literally
exist in actual outward form in the soul world. This seeming
contradiction will explain itself in a moment or two. You look with
us, standing by our side, and with astonishment you say: "This
cannot be hell. See those towering mountains that rear their purple
domes into the azure hues beyond. See those glowing colours that
bathe the whole scene in radiant beauty. Behold those magnificent
flowers, those graceful trees, those streams like silver threads
winding among the green grasses that wave and roll on their
pleasant banks. See those charming lakes, surely these are not the
adjuncts of hell? And those noble edifices lifting their symmetrical
domes heavenward; those stately men and women, those youths
and maidens, those children, they are not devils living in hell. Why,
how can you call this hell? How can you say these are devils?
There must be something wrong here. The picture is too fair and
lovely in its character. Surely you must be wrong?"

No, we are not wrong; all this is, can be seen by you there. But
question one of these inhabitants and ask him what he sees. You
observe the fines of care upon his brow; he is sad, subdued and
sullen; there is a terrible look lurking in his eye, and latent answer
seems to be slumbering within. "Oh, this place is a horrible place,"
he answered. "See those towering walls bleak and dark as the
eternal granite. Look at these stagnant streams;

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they stink in one's nostrils; the air is full of vile odours; the very
trees are stripped and bare, there are no blossoms. Look at these
people; they are hateful and I loathe their presence. Oh, if I could
only get away from here, and be free again, how happy I should
be!"

EVERYTHING HAS BEAUTY FOR THOSE WHO MAY SEE

What is the cause of the obliquity of vision which so changes all

these transcendent glories we described a moment since? The
difference is this: You looked through eyes unclouded; you looked
through your better thought and nature; while he sees but through
his own disordered and demoralized thought and feeling. The fairest
flowers do not attract his gaze, the verdant hills and luxuriant
valleys are bare and barren, the trees are stark and naked, the
musical and crystal streams are but turbid water. When the mind is
unattuned to the beauty and glory of nature and the harmonies of
God, then all of being is bare and bleak and dreadful, and your
fellow creatures seem like foes and vile.

People in this condition are mentally and spiritually demoralized

for the time being, out of order with nature, and out of relationship
with God; or, as you would say, psychologically insane, and see
existence not as it is, but in the fight of their own perverted states.
Reflection, however, at last penetrates through the obscuring mists
of their disordered minds. Why are they here? If the spiritual life is
a natural life, if the soul world is for every one and all, why do they
come here? they ask themselves. The answer is that they are
brought there unknowing to themselves by a power superior to
their own and being there are literally held there.

How so? Some things in the spirit world are done much better than
they are done among yourselves—and this is one of them.
Sometimes the absurd idea of the liberty of the individual is carried
to too great a length among yourselves, and results most

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disastrously; for it is not right that the untrained and the ignorant
and the vicious should have the same absolute liberty and freedom
in the community in which they move as the virtuous and the good.
This is a problem we suggest to you for your own consideration.
You have to protect yourselves against them; and that protection
carried one step further might restrain within well-defined limits,
and make you realise the fact that those out of relationship with the
best conditions, and the best form of human society, should be
legitimately restrained by those wiser and better than themselves.

THE EXALTED ONES ARE THE WATCHERS OVER THE

HELLS

In this very hell we are speaking of this law holds good. The wise
and philanthropic spirits, the great and the good, through all their
tributary and subordinate agencies, exercise control. They bring in,
from time to time, men and women, youths and maidens, within
whom they see the possible development, this sprouting to life, so
to speak, of their several natures, they are brought within the magic
circle, shall we say, within the spiritual sphere belonging to this
locality, and the general influence of the protecting minds makes a
wall around this place that these feebler wills are utterly incapable
of passing through. They meet a barrier; what it is they cannot tell,
but they are conscious of a superior force, the character of which
they cannot define.

There they are kept until this sphere of influence gradually

penetrates their thoughts and infuses itself into their minds,
stimulates their moral character and quality, and develops their
latent possibilities into action. Then, as the mind becomes orderly,
as the soul comes into right relationship with the spiritual
surroundings that belong to it, in the place where they are, behold,
they begin to see the sunshine; blades of green grass begin to take
the place of barren soil they have seen so long; the very trees begin
to put forth their leaves again and the turbid waters

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seem to move with a quicker motion. Little by little the beauty of
the scene begins to unfold itself

You may take it from us, that the more of beauty you can see in
your external surroundings, the more of beauty is there developed
within yourself So as these disorderly minds become adjusted and
reduced to due relationship to the conditions with which they are
surrounded, behold their mental and moral natures begin to assert
themselves, and their intuitions and aspirations begin to make
music in their happy souls; little by little they begin to realise that
the hell in which they lived was a great sanatorium, a great health
college, where under salutary moral influences they have been
gradually brought out of the hell that the disorderly conditions of
their past life created within themselves.

ALL THE HELLS ARE TRAINING GROUNDS

Thus the hells of the soul world are educational, reformatory,

spiritually and morally hygienic, so to speak. Those only are
brought into them in whom it is seen the harmonies and germs of
goodness are beginning to sprout; and these being thus treated are
by degrees brought into active relationship with those who instruct
and surround them, their special adaptations and qualifications are
discovered, and they are in time transferred to other educational
places, where these qualities can be nourished and developed into
health and activity. Thus from the lowest hells spring forth the
angels we shall deal with next.

Before leaving the hells and their inhabitants there is another

peculiar point we would like to impress upon you which concerns
the souls living therein, for in many cases they appear to grow
worse after they have passed into the spiritual world. You must
remember that there is in every one of you a certain amount of
disorder, disease of body, obliquity of mind, and perversion of
moral consciousness, all of which are potent elements of evil and
wrong-doing. If you cannot exhaust the germs of

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these things while you are living in this world, if they are not
expelled by the superior moral faculties and intellectual and
spiritual development while here on earth, then will they cling to
your mental sphere and effect their out-working when you get into
the spiritual world.

Do not, though, for one instant construe the argument that every
man has so much wickedness, therefore he has got to be wicked to
get rid of it, and thereby excuse the wickedness of yourself or your
neighbour. Nothing of the sort is here involved. There is this
possible misdirection in you all, but its true and legitimate
expulsion is through developing more and more of the spiritual
attributes, which is your duty here. If you do not get rid of this
possible element of degradation while here, then it will have to
exhaust itself in the spiritual world; and apparently it will result in
your becoming much worse after death than before. The end comes
at last; the period of reaction asserts itself. At such times some
gentle brother, from one of the great benevolent brotherhoods who
have charge of these hells we have just mentioned, is able to take
you, unconsciously to yourself, and place you in one of the
sanatoriums we have portrayed, and in the end effect your
purification.

But come with us to fairer scenes, if possible; though surely we

may say this scene is fair enough, for wherever the doing of good to
your fellows is involved, there shall we find beauty and sweetness,
and something akin to the beneficence and love of God Himself is
there.

EVEN THE HEAVENS ARE ADJUSTED TO YOUR GROWTH.

We come, then, to what, for convenience sake, we will call the fairer
scenes of the soul world, where the souls of men are supposed to
be basking in everlasting felicity, where eternal sunshine reigns
supreme, where happiness, pleasure and JOY are perpetual. "Yes,"
you will say, "one would like to find that such things were true,
one would very much like to discover

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such things after death; if we could only enter there and enjoy all
the beatitudes of such a condition, how happy should we be for the
change!"

At first you will not find such things; the everlasting and eternal
sunshine is a dream that we do not think you will realise for ages
yet to come; the alternations of joy and sorrow, of shade and
sunshine, of hope and fear, of success and failure, are necessities to
the immortal soul for ages yet to be—and in these heavens there
will be no one uninterrupted and glowing day, no unceasing tide of
joy, no unvarying sunshine; the soul has to grow, man has to
advance step by step and gain experience; experience brings him
knowledge. But while he is gathering knowledge through experience,
failures and disasters are sure to assail his progress from time to
time.

Therefore the heavens will not be altogether devoid of their cares

and anxieties, shall we call them, not altogether devoid of their
aspects of gloom; and yet because of the germs of sweetness and
order and beauty belonging to them, it shall make these as fleeting
shadows passing across the path of human life, only as a fitful
cloud briefly shutting out the golden sunlight.

"What shall we find in those heavens?" What do we mean by

heaven? As hell is within, so also is heaven. It is no more a locality
than hell. The sense of order, peace and righteousness, consequent
upon well doing, within the breast, makes the place a heaven; and in
the societies, fraternities, families and associations of the soul
world the pure soul lives in sweetest bonds of unity. There in that
happy estate you shall find all that the souls of men desire, all their
hopes realised, all their affections ministered to, all their aspirations
unfolded to the point that they have reached.

GROWTH FROM STAGE TO STAGE

What shall be the evolutions that arise from the heavens and the
hells we have just referred to? For one might truly say that the
heavens are the evolution of the hells; indeed, when we take

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life right through, in every case do we find that each ascending stage
is an evolution from the stage that preceded it. What then is beyond
these heavens? When the minds and souls of men grow strong
enough they plume themselves for flight to higher regions, and the
conditions of disorder and inharmony disappear from the realms
belonging to their existence on the planes described; all shall then be
order, harmony, and peace, and on the particular plane of spiritual
existence we have been detailing, there shall be embodied within
yourselves all the latent possibilities that will then have become
actualities, the essential principles being thus embodied within the
consciousness of those who live upon that plane of life, behold the
old heaven shall be rolled away as a scroll, so to speak, and those
who have lived therein go to higher states still; where still nobler
elements of spiritual life shall be evolved, where what you have
reasoned upon, what you have thought upon, and experimented
upon, in preceding stages, shall then become actual and positive
knowledge that shall be as plain and clear to you as the simplest of
simple things among yourselves to-day.

Then shall the soul unfold new powers, new qualities and orders of
action, new and stronger associations shall arise, and over all shall
brood the consciousness that there is a mightier than thou, a deeper
than that which hath yet been revealed or done, a grander than even
you have yet dreamed of; and your search for the mystic words of
wisdom, your desire to find the deeper fountain yet undiscovered,
shall bubble up with renewed force and power within your souls
whenever you but do and dare for the greater truths as you did and
dared for the radiance and glory of that heaven you have now
attained. Then shall all feuds be stayed, all hatreds of the mind be
quenched, all the discords of affection be stilled, all the differences
and dissensions that ever keep the human lives and loves apart be
banished for ever; and the great family of humanity shall become
one spiritual brotherhood of happy and united souls in the more
real soul

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world that lies far, far beyond the conditions of the soul world that
we have just been dealing with. Thus, briefly, we have endeavoured
to place before you the quality and character of the hells and the
heavens, and the evolution of possible greatness and grandeur in
yourselves, in the conditions of being that will meet you after you
master the first conditions of the soul world into which you enter
immediately following your departure from physical existence.

EACH SOUL'S EXPERIENCE CORRESPONDS TO HIS

INTERNAL GROWTH

Thus discord and harmony, as you will have learned, are the
keynotes of the hells and heavens of spiritual existence; and the
lesson we wish to enforce clearly upon you is, that the Divine
Providence has not made one condition or state bleak and barren
and wretched and miserable for those who are unhappy and in
darkness and misery, and another condition of divine beauty and
glory for those who are morally and spiritually progressed; but that
the soul world, like the natural world, is a bright and beautiful
world in every department, and that you see and interpret its
character through the medium of the discord or harmony that
resides within your own breast and is manifested in your own
mind. Take this lesson to your heart, and then you will realise that
as is your own character and development, so will be your
interpretation of the condition of existence in which you happen to
be situated.

Now, let us withdraw you from this fair world to the realms of
mortal beings again, leaving its glory and its beauty as a memory
bright and pleasant to linger within your thoughts—coming down
from these brotherhoods, these families, and fraternities, from these
noble and philanthropic hearts, so that you may again be practical
dwellers in mortal life; and as the curtains roll behind you, as you
retire from the glory that lies behind them and again tread the
terrestrial fields, A remember but a thin veil hangs between
yourselves and that world from

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which in mind you have now returned. If you wish to enter into the
calmer heavens over there, see that heavenly conditions are
unfolded within your lives and breasts while here on earth.
Remember also that surely you shall find an entrance into the hells
that lie beyond, as a consequence of the discords in your natures
now.

Strive, then, to reduce all discords to harmony, purify yourselves

from all unclean thoughts, desires and deeds, lift your natures up to
the highest plane of personal application, morally and spiritually;
live so purely before the world that, like the brightest silver, if but a
breath rests upon it, it vanishes ere the stain can fairly be said to
have been seen. Keep your hearts so purged, your souls so pure
and sweet, that no stain can ever rest upon them; and when you
die, when you pass through the mystic portals into the soul world
beyond, then shall you be fitted to enter into some of its heavenly
associations by having a heavenly condition already developed
within yourselves, and that shall measurably assist you to come
under the influence of that greater and grander evolution that we
have suggested as possible for the inhabitants of the soul world
beyond.

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 SEVENTH LECTURE

LIFE, DEVELOPMENT AND DEATH IN SPIRIT-LAND

WHEN you remember that life for the inhabitants of the spirit-land
means an eternity of life, and that the argument is an unending
existence, you may naturally inquire: Is it possible that the bodies
of the people living in the immortal world shall continue to
maintain their structure and their functions for such an enormous
duration?

There is, of course, to the majority of people living on the mortal

plane, the idea of friction, waste and consequent decay, as being
facts they are familiar with in association with material bodies, and
it will be urged that if there are functions and activities associated
with the spiritual bodies there must necessarily be friction, waste
and decay in connection with those bodies; and while people may,
in a certain sense, be able to grasp the conception of the eternal
duration of those bodies, they certainly are unable, in the great
majority of cases, to dispense with the supposition of friction,
waste and decay, as previously stated.

That these are factors in all organic structures on the mortal plane is
self-evident. Have they to be considered in regard to the organic
structure of the spiritual plane? And if so, what are the means
whereby that waste is repaired, and that friction reduced to the
lowest minimum? These are deep questions, and are asked in vain
of the usual and accepted authorities upon such subjects.

Now the development of the spiritual personality in the spirit life

is also another important question; for if there be a development
there must either be an expansion of existing materials or an
aggregation thereto, for the development must either proceed

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from within or be the consequence of additions from without. It
matters little whether it be development of soul or mind or body,
the law must hold good in either case, and if one case, in all cases;
and the solution will have to be sought concerning the source of the
means of the possible development of the individual inhabitant of
the spiritual world.

GROWTH AND DEATH IN SPIRIT LIFE

We will also, as another interesting speculation, ask the question: If

the duration of the personal existence of the spiritual world is
eternal, and the development of the individual is eternal also, may
there not come a time when the personality of the individual will
have grown so enormous in proportion as to be practically
unwieldy? When we introduce the speculation, we have to deal
with the possibility of death in the spiritual world, and a wave of
fear and sadness may, as it were, roll over your spirits, a chilling
blast may seem to sweep across the eager buds of your aspiring
natures; and you may say, if we have to face the grim monster again
after passing through mortal death, then the exchange has
advantaged us but little!

Yet having realized that death in your mortal condition is only a

stepping-stone to a larger life, and having gained the confidence of
victory in one case, the assurance of victory in all cases where a like
experience is to be encountered may almost be counted upon as
certain. If existence in the higher life leads you to higher powers and
the exercise of greater ability, it follows that every seeming obstacle
in your path will grow less powerful the more exalted you become
yourselves.

Life in the spirit land means several things as associated with the
individual. It means spiritual life, mental life, personal life; for you
must bear in mind that the inhabitants of the spiritual world are just
as much beings, persons, men and women, as are yourselves; that
they are endowed with the machinery for the expression of
intelligence, just the same as humanity; that they,

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any more than yourselves, have not yet reached a plane where they
are able to express intelligence apart from organisation.

Now this is a most important fact to be considered. You must bear

in mind that in all cases the exhibition of force is dependent upon
an agency for its manifestation. It matters not what the ultimate
expression may be, the agency is the thing contended for; and as
intelligence, as a force in man's personal nature is dependent upon
an agency for its expression, you must have in spirit-land, as here,
an organisation, and this organisation is the agency for the
expression of your intelligence, and the manifestation of the
inherent powers of your immortal entity. Hence the existence of
this organisation, the reparation of its waste, the reduction of the
results of its friction to its lowest possible minimum, are questions
fairly and legitimately before us for consideration.

OTHER PLANES—OTHER METHODS

Here it follows that the spirit-body being upon a higher plane than
the mortal body, its functional operations will involve another set
of laws, and those laws will be upon the higher plane, as is the
body they are associated with; and whereas there are certain
processes that are absolutely necessary in the material life, their
counterparts may be accomplished by other methods and higher
laws than those by which they are accomplished while you are
living here on earth. The processes of physical existence may be
thus summarised:

You consume food; the heat and chemical action in the various
organs of digestion reduce the food to its component elements,
which elements are distributed to the various portions of the
system. Through the various activities there is a waste of tissue,
and this expenditure is repaired by the liberation of the essential
elements or forces of the foods or substances which, being absorbed
into the human organism, sustain and repair it. Therefore,
ultimately, it is the forces of nature that sustain the human

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organism; and the process whereby you reach these forces is the
process of destructive assimilation, as expressed in the digestion of
human food.

This is apparently a round-about process, you will say. It is

particularly fit and proper for the plane of life upon which it
operates, and it would be improper and inadequate and utterly unfit
if applied to beings living upon a higher plane than that you at
present occupy. But if the question of assimilated forces on the
lower plane has to receive attention, why should not also be
considered the assimilation of forces upon the higher plane? if the
elaboration and absorption of forces is the means whereby
reparation is accomplished here, may it not also be that upon the
higher plane a similar process is also involved? And if so, shall it
not be further accepted that the means whereby this result is
obtained upon the higher plane shall be a higher method, as
compared with the method you depend upon in this world?

If we accept the position that the organisation of the spirit body

and its processes are to a certain extent a duplicate of the material
organisation, then the question becomes a point of interest as to
what use the duplicates of the great organs of the interior of the
system subserve, what are their counterparts in the spiritual
personality, and how are their functions accomplished there. If we
take the duplication of the organism as a spiritual fact, and that it
contains within itself the spiritual counterparts of most of the
organs you are familiar with in the human physiology, then we
have to assure you that that internal organism becomes, as it were a
species of battery, a collection of cells or sacs, whereby in the
peculiar structure and formation of the spirit body the essential
forces of the spiritual realm are extracted, and are sent on their
mission for absorption into, and the consequent maintenance of,
ethereal organisations that constitute your bodies there; that instead
of the grosser fluids of the material organisation, the etherealized
electricities and magnetisms of the spiritual world are the circulating
mediums in the spirit organism.

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ALL WASTE MUST BE MADE GOOD

Now the operations of the spiritual physiology, shall we call it, to

use a term to convey the idea clearly to you, necessarily involve the
expenditure of force, just the same as the operations of your
earthly body, when, having exhausted its forces in the
accomplishment of any particular object, they have to be recruited
and restored by means of the forces elaborated and distilled by the
digestive and assimilative agencies of the system from the food
consumed; so in the spirit body, corresponding processes are
necessary to distil the elements and forces that are needed to
establish and maintain health and action in the spirit beings. Now,
this necessarily demands not only the expenditure of force, but
may possibly involve the expenditure of substance as well, and this
substance has to be again supplied; for the structure has to be
continually built up and sustained, as well as its depleted forces
restored, which, when the needful processes are duly fulfilled, is
satisfactorily accomplished and the structure sustained.

Therefore the life of the individual in the spirit-land is sustained by

these electrical and magnetic processes and distillations in a manner
somewhat analogous to, though not exactly the same as, the means
depended upon on the grosser plane. We might, in a word, sum the
argument up by saying, that the processes of material existence are
the prophecy, dim, faint, and indistinct, of the higher laws and
methods whereby life is sustained in the spirit-land.

A little experiment, which will assure you of the fact that it is

possible to sustain life by the principle of absorption, consists in
the immersion of a portion of the physical body in water; the
system will absorb the water, a certain action called endosmosis,
which the scientific mind is familiar with, will enable the structure
to absorb the water, enabling the person to thus obtain whatever
nourishment the system needs. You may try the experiment

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for yourself; if you are suffering from excessive thirst and heat,
place your hand underneath the water tap, and gradually a cool
influence will spread through the entire body as the water flows
over your hand. The coolness and absorbed moisture will gradually
spread throughout the entire system, restoring the lacking fluid that
causes you to experience the thirst.

Now this is a very simple fact but it contains a deep prophecy of

the law of absorption as one of the means of subsistence in the
spiritual life. Magnetically or psychologically the same law is
operating. You absorb one another's influences, you absorb each
other's affections and hatreds, each other's health and disease.
Constantly and continually you are subject to this law of
absorption; and when you see that this law is but the prophecy of
its operation upon a higher plane and under better circumstances,
you can understand that our argument is not strange or far-fetched.

ABSORPTION SUPERSEDES DIGESTION

Here, then, we have found something of the means of life for the
people living in the spiritual world, and we find that life is active
and operant there, as it is among yourselves, and the men and
women there have a reality pertaining to their natures that has not
often been supposed, that ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition
unfortunately have hitherto entirely denied; that the problem of
subsistence of life in the spiritual world has been altogether ignored
in the spiritual training the world has received in former times; and
that subsistence there follows at first certain general lines of
similarity with this life, but that ultimately the law of subsistence
by absorption is the rule in the higher spiritual states.

Coming to the matter of development in the spiritual world we

have to consider two questions; development as applied to the
personality of the individual, and development as applied to his
individuality and consciousness, if we may be permitted

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to use familiar terms as applied to the outer and inner nature of the
people of the spirit life.

The objective, or, more correctly, the organic, part of the spirit has
an eternal persistence of duration; if the form is eternal, and the
development of it is eternal, you might ask if the individual would
not at last grow so unwieldy in proportion as to be utterly
incapable of locomotion. This is not true. So far as we have been
able to trace the law, it is impossible for the personal development
of the individual to ever attain such enormous proportions as to
utterly deprive him of the power of using his body in any sense
whatever, the reason of which we will show you presently.

WORK IN THE SPIRIT WORLD

Now the mental and spiritual development of the individual runs on

indefinitely, but you must remember that mental growth and
spiritual growth in all cases depend upon self-effort; there is no
growth without work, that is to be distinctly home in mind. You
can starve your mind and soul just as truly as you may your body;
and if you will not pluck from the trees of truth in the vales of
wisdom, you certainly will not grow in mind, any more than you
would grow in stature if you were to refuse to eat the necessary
articles of subsistence in the material life.

In the spiritual life you must work for mental growth and spiritual
development, and unless you do so work you will not gain either.
This work must be intelligent work; for as you starve your bodies
by eating improper food, so, mentally, you may starve your mind
by improperly feeding it, and to such an extent that mental
digestion is arrested, and then the mind will be surely starved, as
would the body under similar circumstances. Your work must be
within the limitation of your present abilities; and as you consume
your ability, so to speak, in an intelligent effort, thus you build up
your mental characters and nature. Fill up and grow sturdy in your
mind, and your increase

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of strength and knowledge will enable you to deal with still greater
problems, the mastering of such will give you strength and stature
in mind as a consequence of knowledge gained.

Spiritual unfoldment is apt to be considered as the great thing all

should strive for. There is a sort of idea among many people, a
loose and indistinct idea it seems to us, that spiritual development
is the only development worth having. In the name of common
sense what do you mean by spiritual development? Do not all the
forces of mind, affection, and every intellectual quality and
character of your nature, all the forces and expressions of your
conscious life, proceed from your immortal entity?

SPIRITUALITY IS CONSISTENT WITH PRACTICAL LIFE

Some people seem to think that spirituality is a sort of golden cake

that they may take a bite out of and be benefited, the same as the
eating of manna in the olden times. Nothing of the sort. The
spirituality of the individual does not depend upon the cultivation
of one special department, but upon the entire rounding out of the
whole nature, mentally, morally and spiritually; and when this
development of character is strong, the individual, self-poised and
self-centred, can rise triumphant over the ins of time, over the evils
of the flesh, over the perplexities of daily life, ride the storms of
hatred in safety and security, and emerge at last into the clear
waters of a conscious self-poised existence, fearing no sorrow and
dreading no future; then there is a spiritual development worthy of
the name, made up of the personal, mental, moral and conscious
development of the individual who is concerned. But such lives
have neither time nor inclination to mourn, cry, or yearn for an
especial spiritual development; for they feel the spirituality of their
own souls radiating to every department of their being, and
expressed in every thought and action of their lives.

This is the spiritual development we would suggest to you as being

realised in the spirit life. Over there it is not the question

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of the development of one especial part of a person's nature to
make them prominent or noticeable, or to give them some especial
grace and quality. He is considered the most spiritual who has the
most of spirituality in the entirety of his life, character, thought and
action. Hence, then, in the spirit-land, the question of development
may be followed upon any particular plane that you please. One
person may make an especial point of development in a certain
direction, another person's inclination running into some other
channel may cause him to pursue development in some opposite
direction; yet you could not accuse either of being unspiritual, for
they are pursuing the way, that, to their necessities and
consciousness, seems the correct and proper one for them to
pursue; and for them it is, because it seems so to them. When you
can convince them that it is not the proper way and cause their
thoughts to flow into other channels, then the new way will be the
proper one for them.

Development in the spiritual world may be intellectual, moral, or

spiritual; it may be aesthetic, artistic, poetic, affectional, it may be
the hundred and one different things by which the mind and soul
and consciousness round out in so many departments, in the many
different methods of progress and unfoldment; but whatever way
the line of progress may be pursued, the development comes as the
natural consequence and result of intelligent labour wisely directed.

THE OBJECT OF DEVELOPMENT IS SERVICE

What is the consequence of this development? This development of

power supposes the development of the means for the utilization
of power. The development of faculties, and the development of
functions, must proceed side by side with development of organic
means of expression. Now, in the spirit-life, the means of
expression that are depended upon, in the earlier stages at least, are
the means which are the subjective means to you in this world; and
the subjective powers of your

116
present nature become the objective features of expression in your
early conditions in the spirit state.

The result of this is, that there is not only an acquisition of power
immediately upon entering the spiritual world but there is a further
development of that power as a consequence of life and action on
that plane; remembering now that for every being there is a
development of ability, there must be a development of means
through which that ability is acquired and expressed, that is, the
organic means by which knowledge is gained implies another set of
means whereby knowledge, after it is gained, can be put into
practical operation.

The spiritual brain, the spiritual sensibilities, the spiritual activities,

the spiritual agencies, or senses shall we call them, that you utilise
in the spiritual world for the acquisition of knowledge, have still a
subjective side, which is affected by the knowledge when gained,
and enables it to be expressed after you have mastered it and made
it part and parcel of your own experiences.

But why is it impossible that the development and life of the

individual can never become so enormous as to become unwieldy,
as we have suggested?

THE ANALOGY OF DEATH

This brings us to the question we have to deal with next, death in

the spirit-land. If there is a process of expansion in the personality,
the consciousness, and mentality of the spirit, there is a process of
precipitation and concentration also. You continually grow in
knowledge, your mind expands, and it contains so many things that
you begin to feel the necessity of setting your mental house in
order. What illustration can we give you?

Here is a merchant: business pours in upon him thick and fast, he

has a large correspondence from all quarters of the globe; there he
sits at his desk, around him are pigeon-holes

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without number, where in proper order he puts his various
correspondence, letters, and bills, and notices that come before him.
But his papers have accumulated to such an extent that he says,
"Dear me, I am getting overwhelmed with papers and documents—
what shall I do with them?" Then he thinks he will have them all
gone through; and those that are useless and out of date he will
destroy and those that are of some service he will enter on the
pages of a book conveniently arranged for that purpose.

Then the process of precipitation and concentration begins; a

portion of the papers are noted by a few lines in the book, and
either filed away or perchance destroyed. The more important are
carefully reduced to small bundles and stored away in the cellar, in
case there may be occasion to refer to them in the future. By these
methods many a pigeon-hole is cleared entirely, and the contents of
others are materially reduced; so that the merchant says at the end
of the clearing up, "Now I have got all of the important matters in
this book properly indexed, where I can make ready reference to
bygone transactions, and have plenty of room for the new
correspondence." He has concentrated and precipitated the
experiences of the past year, he has reduced them to small
dimensions; and his old correspondence not being allowed to remain
in an unwieldy condition, he now can dispose of his new
correspondence with ease, and handle it without difficulty.

DISCARDING THE OUTGROWN

In the spiritual world you will ultimately find yourself in a

condition similar to that of the merchant. Your mind will be stored
with memorandums of investigation of a thousand different things,
and you will begin to realise that you are becoming overburdened.
Then you will pass your mental treasures in review, and finding
certain things not altogether necessary for your well-being, they
may well be put away. And little by

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little you gradually go through your whole account of mental
treasures, and reduce them to the smallest possible compass; and
the mind's actions being thus reduced and concentrated, the volume
of preceding experiences that are in the memory will be reduced to
the narrowest compass, and you will be thus able to start again
with more room in the memory, more room in the drawers of your
mind, ready for larger things hereafter.

But this process cannot be fully accomplished without a certain

peculiar condition, and here we shall have to digress a moment or
two to introduce a point of spiritual philosophy that we think is
well worthy of your consideration. The threefold operations of the
mind may be described as perception, observation and reflection.
This leads to the process of assimilation as the result of the three
processes referred to; and the mind, assimilating the products
obtained by one or all of these three processes, unites in a concrete
whole the materials thus required. Now the three planes of mental
and spiritual action are love, justice and wisdom, corresponding to
the physical or natural, the mental, and spiritual natures of the
individual.

Now when you are living in this world, you are living altogether
upon the physical plane of existence; and when you die here, the
essence of all the experiences you have passed through are
concentrated in your memory at the time of your passage from one
world to the other. Also, when you pass from one plane to the
other of spiritual existence, a process somewhat similar and
analogous to that passed through upon passing from this stage to
the next beyond it has to be encountered; and the result is a
concentration of all the experiences and results upon that spiritual
plane, so that you consolidate the experiences of that plane of
being, and they become the foundation of your mental being when
you arrive on the plane above.

THROUGH SLEEP TO RENEWED LIFE?

How, then, do you die in the spiritual world? Have you to

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be sick? oh, no! You will please bear in mind that in this matter we
are speaking of your translation from one of the grand planes of
spirit life to another, not of a mere change of sphere, society, or
association, but of an absolute removal from one condition of
spiritual existence to another that lies beyond it. You are not sick,
there is no disease, no illness; but yet you are about to be translated
from one condition of life to another beyond it. Are you fitted for
it? Yes, you have been growing towards it; your spiritual
perceptions have been quickened, and you see clearly there is a
higher realm beyond you than the one you are at present residing
in, and you realise it is a state that you have to enter.

How can you gain admission? There comes a time when that plane
of spiritual life that you are now on has been exhausted, an
indefinite age may pass before such a result is attained, but come
that time surely will, and does, and then there is this process of
assimilation we have previously referred to. Thoughts, as it were,
concentrate; you feel a nameless, but sweet and beautiful rest
stealing over you; you feel that you are going to vacate the cruder
elements of the condition you are then in. A beautiful sleep will fall
upon you, and while this sleep is on you, behold these elements
will drop from you, as the dew may fall from the tree.

You awake presently, and in that waking find that you have made
the voyage from the state you were then in to the wonderful clime
you now have reached. No pain, no sorrow, scarcely a change in
form even; but certain grosser spiritual elements, that were fit and
proper to the condition before, have been left behind.

And when, with a greater activity of the powers of your immortal

nature, you stand on the higher plane, the whole of your preceding
life is there enshrined within your mental nature, spread out before
your mind's eye, whensoe'er you choose to view them; and
profiting by what you have obtained before,

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realising it is but the stepping-stone to what now lies before you,
you will then start upon the new career that there awaits you. This
may involve a separation of greater or less duration from those
whom you have been previously associated with. If you have
attained a higher plane of spiritual existence, you will have to wait
until your friends have reached the same development ere they can
stand side by side with you in the same condition of spiritual
unfoldment.

DEATH THE PATHWAY TO LARGER LIFE

Here we have, then, in brief review, passed before you the

questions of life and development and death in spirit-land. Let us
look at the matter of death, however, from another point of view,
which does not mean translation from one stage to another in the
meaning in which we have just placed it before you. There are
many who have to die from old prejudices, from old affections and
old loves; many who have to die morally and mentally ere they can
be resurrected from the crudities and imperfections, the errors and
mistakes they have accumulated while here below. This
accumulation will have to be vacated, thrown off, the old will have
to die, and the new man come to life. Many and many such a death
have we witnessed in the spiritual world; you say here it is
repentance; we see it over and over again a thousand different
times.

Die to the old and live to the new; die to the false and live to the
true; and by so "dying" and so "coming to life" you can attain a
freedom and beauty, and an impetus of development, that cannot
come to you by any other means. There are hatreds that will have
to die before love can bloom; there is ignorance that must die ere
wisdom can take its place; there is the calloused cold-heartedness
that must die ere the warm rich life of love can animate the soul
itself; there are all these influences and associations to die from ere
the jewels of character and the beauties of the inner life can fill your
mind.

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In thus placing before you life, development, and death in spirit-
land, we trust you will agree that we have given you some clear and
precise information upon the various topics considered. Our object
and desire has been to do this, so that you may learn in some degree
what are the actual facts of man's post-mortem life and character.

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ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

COMMENTS BY THE CONTROL

WE have now reached that stage in our labours with you, at which
we shall be enabled to consider any questions you may desire to
propound to us, and help to remove any difficulties or doubts that
may linger in your minds concerning any of the matters we have
touched upon during this course of lessons. Our desire is to assist
you to the very best of our ability in any direction that you may
require aid. Of course we do not claim that we have entirely
exhausted the various subjects we have dealt with; in many cases
we have only been able to be suggestive, and point rather, to the
much more that remained behind rather than ask you to accept as
complete the little that we have been able to present. You
understand us well enough by this time to know that we have no
desire to dogmatise, or to demand that you accept what we say
simply because we say it. In the agitation of thought is the
beginning of wisdom; in mutual counsel there lies safety; and in the
free, frank and honest discussion of an difficulties there lies the
only salvation from ignorance and superstition.

What is the distinction between the will of the individual and the
mind?

The will is the executive officer of the mind under the direct control
of the consciousness. The mind is largely memorative and cognitive,
is engaged in the acquisition of external facts. The inner side of the
mind is, of course, related to the consciousness; and the exhibition
of energy from the essential soul, the conscious me, as represented
in what is called the will, intelligently

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directs the mental machinery for the accomplishment of specific
ends and purposes. The distinction between the will and the mind
is so exceedingly subtle that it is very difficult to express it in
precise and definite terms, so that it may be easily apprehended.
But what we have said, we think, may help you to understand the
lines of distinction between them. The will is the executive officer
of the consciousness working through the mind.

In higher realms do not family ties become swallowed up in a great

and universal love for all?

In the more advanced realms of spiritual existence, such is the case;

and the love of the family association as a unit, the parental, selfish
enjoyment, is expanded to a larger and broader life and character.
This much should be home in mind: that love which is purely local
and domestic has within itself the germ, the essential element, of an
enduring relation; and that enduring relation blossoms, expands and
beautifies, and is not destroyed, and this is embodied and included
within the boundaries of the larger love for the human race at large.

Though the larger then contains the lesser, the lesser is not
destroyed altogether in its character by its expansion and
association with the larger. Those who are truly related spiritually,
those whose lives are entwined together by interior powers and
bonds, remain in such relationship, in such unity and such affection
indefinitely; but their ideas broaden out, their perception increases
in various directions, and their operations extend over a wider area.
So long as love is a personal, individual and local question, you
have only reaped one half of its benefits; but when it brings you
out into a wider sphere of operation, and you begin to have a love
for humanity, the individual is then elevated into a broader sphere
of life and progress.

Are there not those in celestial spheres who have no anxiety, fear, or
doubt, and who know the exact results of any work they undertake?

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On the plane of their own development it is perfectly correct to
say that they are without fear or doubt as to the result of any work
they undertake; because they have within themselves, within their
mental and personal view and understanding, the laws and
principles of the results that are to be accomplished. But when
they aim to accomplish something which is beyond them, which
leads them into unfamiliar grounds, then, like yourselves, the
element of uncertainty enters into their calculations, and they may
require assistance and advice from others.

In the accomplishment of labour upon planes of operation beneath

them, there is less hesitancy or doubt than would be supposed to
be the case upon their own especial plane of development; for
having mastered all beneath them, and having had practical
experience on those lower planes, they know exactly when to do
their work and how to do it, just as a mathematician is certain that
he can accomplish certain results in the use of figures, because he
has all its laws and principles at his fingers' ends. But when he
attempts to work in new and unfamiliar fields, then experiments
have to be made; and they are the subjects of doubt and
uncertainty, because of lack of familiarity with the means to be
employed to reach the desired end.

Thus it is there is no royal road to absolute knowledge, save that

royal road all have to tread, the road of personal effort, and
individual activity. So far as you have gone you are a master, and
you are a master indeed if you are able to comprehend that which
surrounds you in your then present condition. But when you go
beyond it you have to make effort again, individual activity is again
called for, and you have to work up to the higher grades beyond
you, even as you have had to work from the lower grade you have
emerged from and ascended out of.

How can a developed medium know whether it will be beneficial or

injurious to yield to spirit influence?

The most practical way of deciding the question is to decide by

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the results of experience. You cannot decide until results are
presented, and in this experience, great care, and thoughtfulness
should be used. A temporary inconvenience, and distress or
disturbance, should not be confounded with the possibility of
perpetual disturbance and continued distress. When mediumship
develops in the individual there is, so to speak, a sort of
interruption of the psychical and mental currents of the life, and
consequent disturbance in almost every department of the body
and mind; and at first this may be extremely painful and
exceedingly distressing.

But suppose you are training the muscles of the body in any
particular direction your muscles become very sore at first, your
body will be full of pain; and if you are weak in will and not wisely
encouraged to go forward, you may stop right there. But if you will
persevere you will soon find that the pain will disappear, and that
pleasure and benefit and a more complete use of the body will be
the result, and you will say that you never felt better in your life,
that you never felt so strong and hearty as now. So when the
medium feels a degree of distress and disturbance as the result of
his mediumship, it is well to proceed a little further upon the road
before you discontinue it.

Then after going a little further, and finding no alleviation from

distress, but rather an aggravation, finding that the character of the
communication is such as rather tends to lead you on a little further
and a little further without any appreciable result or satisfaction
being obtained, then you will be justified in calling a halt, and
demanding of the controlling influences a strict account, make them
state definitely what they are going to do. But you should be
reasonable in the matter, and not set any limit to-day that shall
harass or hamper them, and allow them plenty of time.

When they say they are reasonably sure that such and such things
will be accomplished within a certain time, go on and follow the
fine they have marked out; and if wise and intelligent

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spirits they will have given such a margin that proof can be given
within the stated time that they were accomplishing what they
promised. But after the time has elapsed and no progress is made,
and no satisfactory reason given on the part of the controls, and the
suffering and distress continue, then you would be perfectly
justified in saying, "I have gone so far, I will go no farther; the
assurances you have held out to me have not been realised, and I
decline to accompany you upon the devious pathway any longer."

You have the right to expect the same honesty and the same
straightforwardness and the same intelligent obedience to truth,
fact, and law from the inhabitants of the spirit world, that you have
from one another living here; spirits have no more right to play the
fool with you than you have with one another, and if they come
back to you from the spiritual world for the purpose of developing
your mediumship, and so undertake a task they are unable to
accomplish, the sooner they confess their inability the better. But if
in the end success crowns their efforts and yours, you will be like
the athlete, improved and strengthened in every respect. But at all
points and stages of your development, it is your bounden duty to
hold the spirits who come to you to a strict accountability for
every moment of your time and every ounce of your strength that
they occupy or consume.

When spirits enter into a covenant with mortals, will they fulfil their
obligations?

To the very best of their ability, certainly! But you must bear in
mind that spirits are neither infinite nor infallible; they sometimes
err through excess of kindness towards you, and at times their
desires outrun their discretion. But a spirit that is a thoughtful and
intelligent spirit, and who is careful when he makes a promise, like
any other rational, sensible being, makes it with the full
understanding that he will keep it to the very best of his ability.
While such a one cannot guarantee that he absolutely

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will do so and so, you have a reasonable assurance that it will be
accomplished if at all possible.

But when a spirit comes to you with a "Thus saith the Lord," why
then you may assure yourself that you have got hold of one of the
wanderers on the threshold, a person who is probably playing a
joke upon you. Place no confidence in such statements. A simple
statement with the preface that, using their best endeavours, they
hope to be successful in obtaining certain desired results is worthy
of far more attention and trust.

It is also well for you to remember that however large the promises
of the spirits may be, some duty still remains to you, that you shall
help them in the accomplishment of their undertakings. If you
stubbornly resist them and refuse their counsel and their guidance,
refuse even to consider it, you can scarcely wonder if, having
created the opposition within yourselves, no satisfactory results
should follow by and by when the occasion for success arrives.

Speaking of the employments and conditions of spirit life, are those

who are mediums here still mediums there, in the sense in which
they were mediums here?

Not in precisely the same sense, but relatively, yes! There are
spheres of spiritual intelligence removed and beyond the first
spheres in the spiritual life, even as the first conditions of that life
are removed beyond your present one; and the intelligence of the
exalted sphere floats down into the life of the sphere beneath it, and
this intelligence is expressed through sympathetic and superior
minds in the spiritual world, in the same way as intelligence from
the spirit-land is imparted to yourselves through the sympathetic
minds that have been attuned, so to speak, or whose natures have
been opened to the spiritual world while living here.

If mediums in spirit life desire to take up the labour again and carry
forward their duties in that regard, there is ample opportunity

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for them to do so. But we want you to bear in mind one very
important fact here. All the inspired people are not contained
within the ranks of modern spiritualism; you can find them the
world over; among the men of science, in the laboratory of the
chemist, in the pulpit; among the authors, the poets, the mechanics,
the inventors; among the painters and the dramatists, in the active
life of humanity itself.

There is inspiration throughout all the domain of human life; and

man having a spiritual nature, and that spiritual nature being related
to the spiritual world, there is nothing marvellous that the spiritual
side of man's nature comes occasionally into harmonious
relationship with the realms of spiritual life beyond; while it is
perfectly natural that the inspirations from that world should flow
down upon man's spirit and be felt and recognised while he fives
here. Inspiration is more common and widespread and universal
than you suppose; and the inspired speaker of modern Spiritualism
is only the typical illustration of what will be accomplished by
man's orderly development in harmony with natural principles, and
through the natural operation of the spiritual attributes of man's
nature, permitting the receiving by him of inspiration from the
spiritual world.

Are the spirits pained and grieved by the sufferings and weaknesses
of their loved ones on earth?

They would scarcely be rational beings if they were not. Death

does not destroy their humanity, does not sweep away their
sympathy, does not take from them the love they bear to those
they have left behind. At first they do not all rise up to that
intellectual or spiritual plane that enables them to see beyond the
mistakes, and that beyond all these things are smooth waters and
fair seas; they see the wrong being done, the error being indulged in,
the mistakes that are being continued, and having no wider
judgment than the area of the mistake, they suffer sorrow and pain
when those they love do wrong and suffer from their weaknesses.

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But when they unfold to see beyond the present evil, and see the
results of law and principle in operation, they learn that they are in
some way beneficial—that the soul must pass through them to
attain to higher and better things—and accept it as a part and parcel
of the purposes of the eternal in relation to the progress of
humanity.

But they feel if these things can be avoided, if man can be taught to
travel an easier road, the road to happiness through righteousness
rather than through wrongfulness, through right and justice rather
than shame and suffering and misdoing—they desire to do all in
their power to accomplish this result. But they know that no
matter how deep are the wrongs that now pertain to their loved
ones, and that though they will have to be atoned for in the future,
they are but temporary, and will surely yet give place to the law of
eternal right and justice. They learn that in the end eternity is long
enough for every tangled web of evil and wrong-doing to be
straightened out, and for all of these dark places to be made plain.

I have a letter from an old Spiritualist, and would like to have the
control answer the objections contained in one paragraph which I
will read: "Spiritualism is a truth, but its phenomena utterly fail to
make its believers better, truer and purer men and women; on the
contrary, the tendency is in the other direction. I speak from an
experience of thirty-five years in it. Not that Spiritualists are worse
than others, but the system and practice of mediumship, the
necessary surrender of one's individuality to others, "the Lord
knows who," is of itself degrading, belittling, and demoralising."
What can you say to that?

We have but very little to say, though we could say very much. A
belief in the phenomena of Spiritualism will never do any one any
real moral or spiritual good; but belief in the phenomena of
Spiritualism, as the result of intelligent and morally responsible
agents, may do a great deal of good to the individual, as a means of
determining the character of the life beyond;

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and it will, in time, become the potent element of a great moral
revolution which will induce a spiritual upheaval of human nature
that shall ultimately place mankind upon the highest plane of
individual and personal righteousness. But we have not reached the
spiritual development of this exalted position; therefore a
consideration now must be had as to another point raised by the
good friend. The effect of the surrender of the individual will to the
judgment of any spirit, "The Lord knows who," is in itself
degrading and repulsive.

We perfectly agree with our friend, and entirely endorse the

statement, and say that here is one of the barriers of personal
progress in Spiritualism among mediums and Spiritualists.
Whenever you surrender your judgment and your will to any one,
"the Lord knows who," that comes from the spiritual world, you
are doing precisely the thing you would not do to any human being
that you happened to encounter in this world; and if any "the Lord
knows who" were to happen to meet you on the street, and say,
"Come with me and take a ride across the bay, or take a ride in this
car," you would at once want to know who he was, and what he
wanted you to do this for; and until he had satisfied you as to who
he was and what his intentions were, you would be very likely to
decline to join him.

When there comes to you "the Lord knows who," and he says, "I
am a spirit; you must go to this town and preach, you must work
here, you must go to that house and say that they must accept the
angelic messenger," and you straightway go and do as you are bid,
you will realise the painful experience that a surrender of the
judgment and will to "the Lord knows who" is very degrading and
belittling. But suppose the spirit to be a person in whom you used
to have implicit confidence while living here, suppose that person
so clearly demonstrated the continuity of his own life that you
have no doubt that it is the same individual, and that person says to
you that he wants to advise you, counsel with you, and suggests
that you do this or the other

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thing, you knowing his advice and counsel were good while he lived
in this world, will be prepared and willing to give heed to him. But,
as here in this world, you will not entirely surrender your reason
and judgment to him; and if he is an honest ghost, he will ask you
to weigh his counsel by your own reason and observation.

This is very different from an entire surrender of your reason and

your judgment to somebody, "the Lord knows who". The surrender
of the judgment and reason and personal will has been the fruitful
cause of three-fourths of the misery that has been associated with
the development of mediumship; it is a doctrine that can never
result satisfactorily in the great majority of cases; here and there
exceptional and peculiar circumstances may temporarily warrant it;
but, plainly and emphatically, let us put it that when mediumship
demands the surrender of reason and intelligence, and makes a man
or woman less a man or woman for being a medium than they
would have been without being a medium, then surrender the
mediumship itself, assert your manhood and womanhood; for an
honest man and an honest woman are a great deal more useful to
this world than the most brilliant mediumship that sacrifices every
element of moral and personal character in its development and
operation.

Is there any rule for the development of clairvoyance?

A dozen different rules may be stated, and each one may utterly
fail, while the thirteenth may accomplish all that is desired. The
simplest rule we can give you is this: for one hour a day seclude
yourself from all your fellows, and first try closing the eyes and
meditating interiorly, thus shutting out all external thoughts as far
as possible; and by and by, with a little practice, you will be able to
dismiss them from you altogether. Then, when you have succeeded
in establishing that condition of internal communion and meditation
with yourself, definitely direct your mind to some especial thing.
To do this easily it is better to place a bandage

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across the eyes, a soft, silk bandage will assist you quite as well,
especially if it be black; place it directly over the eyes, and fasten it
at the base of the brain, and direct the mind to a dock or picture
that may hang in the room.

At first you may find it difficult indeed, and you may perceive no
indication of development; but after a few trials, probably five or
six, the eyes may begin to recognize streaks of fight shooting across
the sight, and there may be pains affecting the brow and perhaps
the eye itself, and the mind will seem to be centred in the eye for
the purpose of seeing. Persevere, keep the mind continually fixed
upon what you want accomplished. Do not make the thought too
intense, but make it persistent; and in a few weeks' time you will be
able to perceive, dimly at first, in miniature, the clock or article you
are trying to see, and you will presently be able to state the time it
indicates. When you are able to perceive the clock and first catch a
glimpse of it, and are perfectly sure of the fact, then remove the
bandage, and see if what you supposed to be the time is correct.
You will then be able to verify the experiment itself it may happen
that you have seen the watch inverted, and the very opposite of the
time you state will be presented. Remember that little point.

But not alone quietude of mind and internal meditation are

necessary; there are other things required as well. The first is
perfect cleanliness of the body; the second is the most perfect
cleanliness of mind; and the third, and most important of all, the
most perfect cleanliness in diet. All these are necessary to
successfully unfold the latent clairvoyance. You must refuse A
stimulants and narcotics and all flesh diet, living upon plain and
simple food, giving strict attention to bodily and mental conditions.
It may be necessary for you to be magnetized, and some genial
friend or acquaintance in whom you have confidence may be able to
materially assist you. After you have discovered that you can
develop these latent spiritual powers, then you have to determine
in what way or direction the future development

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shall be exercised; this is an important point that you need to
consider carefully, and you should pursue that course in which the
development seems to be the strongest and most natural.

Should children sit for development?

As a general thing we discountenance the development of children

as mediums. Our observation is, that mediumship should never be
developed until the physical system has nearly attained its growth.
You can then draw upon the vitality of the system without much
danger to the health of body or mind of the individual. Certainly we
should say, not before seventeen or eighteen years of age; and if the
attempt at development is put off even two years longer, the
individual would certainly profit greatly by it, and lose nothing. It
is most pernicious physiologically and spiritually to try to hasten
the development in any case in growing children; they will become
bodily and mentally demoralised, to use a common expression; and
we warn you in no case to undertake to develop your children in
such a manner until they have reached the period referred to, when
they will have a supply of reserve force, so to speak, to fall back
upon. From eighteen to forty years, in the meridian of life, is the
best period for the development of mediumship; and the best
period of all, in the majority of cases, is from twenty-five to thirty-
five years of age.

What is the indication where a person sees, after closing the eyes,
what they have been observing before the eyes were closed?

It is the perfect impression of the object upon the retina, just the
last impression, and is reproduced as a sort of subjective panorama,
a sort of camera obscura; by the closing of the eye, a photographic
image is recorded on the optic nerve.

Sometimes we say this person has a gift for this or that. Is it a gift
from the spiritual sources, or is it in the nature of the individual?

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It is in their own nature in every case. The spiritual world can give
you nothing. God has endowed you all with the same latent
abilities, the circumstances of life determine the quality and
development in every case. The spiritual world may assist you in
bringing out that which is contained in yourselves.

Spirits that have never had earthly experience of any length of time,
when they come back to identify themselves to their relatives and
friends, what is the effect upon that spirit in spirit life? Is it beneficial
or otherwise, and is it requisite that that spirit should have some
experience through a sensitive mind on the earth plane?

There are two very important questions involved in this most

exceedingly interesting subject. For instance, the spirits who enter
into the spiritual world prematurely, to use the language of earth,
enter in from one of three causes: either as a consequence of the
wilful operation of the mother, through foeticide, through some
malpractice or injury to the human system, or through certain laws
having terminated the possibility of their physical existence in this
world. In the first case it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that the
individual spirit is likely to derive large personal benefit from
contact with its mother; but here another interesting point is
involved which will have to be considered. Many a woman who has
taken this unwise course feels, when this has been accomplished,
waves of sorrow and regret sweep over her, and she would give all
the years of her life if this thing could not have been.

Now suppose a little spirit growing and developing comes back

again into the mortal sphere, and the mother is made aware of that
fact, why the floodgates of her soul would be opened, and such a
psychological disturbance would come forth as would do that child
an infinite amount of harm and mischief for the time being.
Therefore it is that wise guardians in spirit life take charge of such
waifs, and keep them in their surroundings and develop them
spiritually, and build them up in a manner that avoids the

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necessity of their being brought again in contact with the material
sphere they originally sprang from. Such are sometimes brought
into the sphere of human activity, brought to observe the condition
of material life through the influence and experience of others, and
they gain a practical knowledge of the world they have been so
unceremoniously ejected from.

But is it not absolutely necessary that they should be brought back

into this world, because the grand army of humanity passes from it
and carries a sufficiency of experience forward with them into the
spiritual world to be an abundant means of instruction; and these
who carry with them much of earth conditions are selected by wise
teachers to take these waifs in charge. When a physiological law has
been violated, as in premature birth and consequent death, then, of
necessity, the moral and spiritual conditions are very different from
the first case. In this instance, welling up with its love, the mother
sphere unfolding in the spiritual nature, there is a point of contact
with the spiritual thought that is in the spiritual world; and the two
blending in harmony and unity, the mother love flows out with
sweet affection to the babe and thrills its inmost soul to the centre,
and it is drawn to the mother by it.

Thus there are many interesting problems involved in this question,

as well as many suggestions. One conclusion we will draw from it;
there is one crime against yourself that will stand out before you in
the spiritual world as a dreadful guilt, and that crime is the
premature ejection into spiritual existence of that which should be
the pride and glory of your manhood and womanhood.

At what stage of the growth and development of the child, prior to

its birth in this world, is it immortal?

The immortality of the child is coincident with conception itself—,

therefore, at any stage of the subsequent development, if it is
interfered with, there is the fact of the attempted demolition

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of a human life. But the essential element of it, nevertheless, still
continues, will still be manifest, and grow and unfold.

CLOSING COMMENTS BY THE CONTROL

We have to thank you most heartily, friends, for the spiritual and
fraternal sympathy and support you have accorded us from night
to night, during this course of advanced class-meetings; and in
leaving you now with our present duties concluded, with great and
joyous feelings in our hearts that we have met upon the common
plane of mutual desire to gain knowledge, we invoke the blessing of
the highest and best upon each and every one of you, and trust that
the light that has been gleaming in your souls may become a strong
and growing flame of divine radiance in the future.

May your days be full of usefulness and beauty, and when the time
comes for you to march forward to that greater and better realm
beyond, may you be filled with the sublime and peaceful
consciousness that you have endeavoured to do your best at all
times; and then it shall truly be said of you, even as you will permit
us in all humbleness to say of ourselves, "We have done our best,
the wisest can do no more, nor should the poorest do less." May
the truth and justice of eternal righteousness and knowledge be with
you and keep you henceforth and for ever more.

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