ward life forms the centre of his present
existence, its continuation will form the cen-
tre of his future existence.
Indeed, the effects which a person pro-
duces in a form visible and perceptible to
the living, are not the only emanation from
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him. However minute and gentle a vibra-
tion connected with some conscious move-
ment within our mind may be — and all
our mental acts are connected with, and ac-
companied by, such vibrations of oiu* brain
— it cannot vanish without producing con-
tinued processes of a similar nature, within
ourselves, and, finally, around ourselves,
though we are not able to trace them into
the outer world. .As little as the lute can
keep its music to itself, so little can our
brain. The music of sounds or of thoughts
originates in the lute or in the brain, but
does not stay there : it spreads beyond them.
What a wonderfully complicated play of
vibrations of a higher order, origfinating in
our brain, may be going on along with the
coarser and lower play that strikes our eyes
and ears, something like the most delicate
ripple on the big waves of a lake, or the
finely traced ornaments on the surface of
a carpet, which receives its whole value and
higher meaning from them. The man of
science knows and studies the play of waves
of a lower order only, little caring for
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those of a higher order. He does not per-
ceive them, but knowing the principle, he
ought not to neglect the inferences that may
be derived from it.^
Therefore, the effects produced by human
spirits are not limited to their continued in-
fluence upon us by means of their percepti-
ble outer life in the present stage: along
with this outer part there is in our nature
another imperceptible inner part, even the
essential part of the human being. Sup-
pose a man to have lived and died in some
desert island without any direct influence
on other people's lives : he must continue in
his individuality, in expectance of future
* Whether we attribute the action of the nerves to
chemical or electrical processes, we either ascribe
them to the vibrations of ultimate particles, or at
least assume them to be evoked by or connected with
them, though the imponderable substance may herein
be of greater moment than the ponderable. Now vi-
brations can only seem to die out, in so far as they
spread indefinitely in all directions; or, if dying out
for a time, transformed into energy or tension, they
are able to begin afresh, in some form or other, in
accordance with the law of the conservation of en-
ergy.
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development, having been unable to develop
himself in this life through intercourse with
his fdlow-men. In the same way a child,
which has been alive only for a moment, can
never die again. The shortest moment of
conscious life produces a circle of influences
around it, just as the bHefest tone that
seems gone in a second, produces a similar
circle^ which carries the tone into endless
space, far beyond the persons standing by
to listen ; for no action, or effect, is utterly
destroyed, it goes on producing new effects
of its kind for ever. . Thus the mind of a
child will develop itself from that one con-
scious moment, as well as the mind of that
isolated man, but in a different way from
what it would have done when beginning
from a more developed state.
It is only in death that a man becomes
fully conscious of all the influence he exer-
cised on other men's minds; in the same
way will he acquire only in death full pos-
session and use of what he has fashioned
within himself. What mental treasures he
gathered in all his life, what fills his mem-
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ory, what pervades his feelings, what his
mind and fancy created, will remain his
property for ever. The connection and in-
terdependence of all these mental stores re-
mains dark to us in this life. Thoughts
will occasionally pass through this treasure-
house, lighting up with their rays the little
comer that lies on their way, and leaving
the rest in obscurity. Our mind never real-
izes its inward fulness all at once. Detached
ideas only, happening to find a new idea to
associate with, will emerge from the dark
for a moment, to sink back into the dark the
next moment. Thus man is a stranger to
his own mind, in which he gropes in the
dark, trusting to his syllogisms to guide
him, and often forgetting the best of his
treasures, which happen to lie out of his
way concealed by the darkness which covers
the regions of the human spirit. In the
moment of death, however, when eternal
night sinks down on his bodily eyes, a new
day will break upon his spirit; the centre
of the inner man will kindle into a sun,
which sheds its radiance over all his spir-
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itual stores, and at the same time penetrates
into and looks through them as an inward
eye of unearthly keenness. All that he had
forgotten here, he will find again there; he
only forgot it because it went to the here-
after before him, where he finds it all
gathered up for him, in a new and univer-
sal light, which saves him the trouble of
collecting what he wants to associate, and
dividing what he wants to separate. At a
glance he will be able to survey all that is
in him, his various ideas in their relations
of agreement a<nd contradiction, of connec-
tion and separation — not confined to one
particular direction of his thoughts, but look-
ing into every direction at once. There are
instances of persons approaching such a
state of inward illumination, even in this
life, in cases of approaching death, as by
drowning, or in somnambulism, or narco-
sis, and such like.
As high as the flight and sight of a bird
mount above the lowly path of the blind
crawling caterpillar, that knows of nothing
but what it touches in its slow movements,
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SO far will that higher state of knowledge
surpass our present state. So that in death
not only our body, but our senses, our in-
tellect, the whole constitution of our mind,
must be cast off, as forms too narrow for
our life hereafter, as useless members for a
new order of things, where ever)rthing that
we could approach and investigate but slow-
ly and imperfectly with such earthly organs,
will be immediately within ourselves, for us
to look through, to know, and to enjoy.
Every man's own self, however, in the mid-
dle of that dissolution of temporary forms,
will remain unimpaired in its whole extent
and development, and there will be for him
a new and higher life instead of the inferior
kind of activity which has been extinguished.
The turmoil of thoughts is hushed; they
need no longer come and go, and move
about, to become conscious of their relation
to each other. The present intercourse of
thoughts, will give way to a higher inter-
course, between spirits and spirits. And as
the intercourse of human thoughts takes
place in a human spirit, so the intercourse
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and communion of spirits will take place in
that higher spirit whose all-connecting cen-
tre we call God. For them no language is
required to understand, no eye to see and
recognize each other. Just as one thought
of ours understands and influences another
without the mediation of mouth, ear, or
hand; as thoughts meet and part without
an outward link or separation; so secret,
close, and immediate will the communion of
spirits be. There is nothing those spirits
will be able to conceal from each other;
every sinful thought that lurked here in
some dark comer of the mind, everything a
man would like to cover up from his fellow-
men with a thousand hands, will lie clear
and open to every spirit. Only those spirits,
therefore, that were all pure and true in this
life, will be able to meet other spirits un-
ashamed hereafter; and those that were set
aside and misjudged here will be under-
stood and appreciated hereafter. Again,
every spirit will with a self-penetrating eye
perceive all his own defects, all he left un-
finished, imperfect, and discordant within
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himself here, and perceiving these defects
will feel them with the same keenness of
sensation with which we feel our bodily de-
fects. And as in the human mind one
thought may help to free the other from
all that is deficient in it, and as they asso-
ciate into higher thoughts, supplying in this
wise what is imperfect in each of them:
just so the communion of spirits will serve
them as a means of progress towards per-
fection.
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CHAPTER VIII.
MAN'S relations with nature, in this
life, are of a material as well as of
a spiritual kind. Heat, air, water,
earth enter into and issue from him in every
direction, forming and changing his body.
Around him, they move side by side, within
him they meet and combine, and in their
combination make up a frame, which shuts
off his bodily sensations and whatever there
is still deeper than these within him, from
immediate contact with the outer world.
Thus he looks and feels into the outer world
through the windows of his senses, and
draws fragmentary knowledge out of it as
in little buckets.
After his death, however, when his bodily
frame sinks into decay, the spirit, fettered
and encumbered no longer, will roam
throughout nature in unbound liberty.
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Then he will feel the waves of light and
sound not only as they strike his eyes and
ears, but as they glide along in the oceans
of air and of ether; he will feel not only
the breathing of the wind and the heaving
of the sea against his body bathing in them,
but float along through air and sea himself;
he will no longer walk among verdant trees
• and fragrant meadows, but consciously per-
vade the fields, and forests, and men as they
walk about them.
Thus, what he loses in passing to a high-
er stage of life are nothing but organs the
imperfect aid of which he can gladly dis-
pense with in a state of existence where he
shall feel, and perfectly and actually take
in, everything that, on a lower stage, lay
outside his own self and could not be ap-
proached but by such slow mediation. Why
should we take our eyes and ears with us
into the life to come, to draw in light and
sound from living nature's well, when the
waves of that future life shall move in har-
mony and union with the very waves of
light and sound? Nay more: The human
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eye, though kindred to the sun, is but a tiny
thing, perceiving of the glory of the skies
but little sparkling dots, Man's longing to
know more of the heavens is not gratified
in this life. Though he invent telescopes
to enlarge the power and capacity of his
eyes, it is in vain — the stars are only so
many dots for him. So he hopes to attain
in the life to come what his present life
cannot afford him, he trusts to have his
longings satisfied when he shall go to heav-
en, and to see, henceforth, distinctly every-
thing that was hidden from his earthly sight.
And he is right in hoping so, though he
shall not receive wings to go to heaven and
fly from star to star with, or from the
heavens visible above us to higher heavens
yet unseen; there are no such wings in the
nature of things. Nor is he to see the heav-
ens in being carried from one star to another
in a succession of new births; there is no
stork to carry babies from star to star. Nor
will his eye receive more visual power to
penetrate into the farthest distances of
heaven, by being turned into the largest
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kind of telescope; the principle of our earth-
ly vision would prove insufficient there.
When, as a conscious part of the great celes-
tial body that carries and holds him — the
Earth — he consciously partakes in the in-
tercourse, through light, between this and
other heavenly beings : then shall he see his
longing gratified.
What, a new kind of sight? Well, it
would not be fit for men below, just as our
present sight would not suffice for the heav-
ens above.* Through heavenly space the
Earth floats along, an enormous eye, im-
mersed in an ocean of the light which pro-
ceeds from numberless stars, and wheeling
round and round to receive, on all sides,
the impact of its waves, which cross and
cross again, a million of times, without
ever disturbing each other. It is with that
eye man shall one day learn to see, meeting
with the spreading waves of his future life
the outward waves of the surrounding ether,
* Lest this assumption, apparently involving serious
difficulties, might be considered thoughtless, I shall
more fully explain the meaning of it in an appendix.
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and undisturbed by the encountering waves,
penetrating, with its most subtle vibrations,
into the depths of heaven.
Learn to see, indeed I A great many
things man will have to learn after his
death. For you must not expect that you
shall take in, on your very entrance into it,
the whole splendor of heaven, which is in
store for the life to come. Even here a
child must learn to see and hear; what it
sees and hears in the beginning are sights
and sounds meaningless for it, dazzling,
stunning, confusing. The same will be the
case, in the life to come, with what is of-
fered to the new senses of the new child.
Only what man takes away with him of this
life, the remembrance of all he has done,
thought, and been here, he will see clearly
and distinctly within him, as soon as he
enters that new life: though this will pri-
marily leave him very much the same man
he has been. And you may be sure that
the foolish, the idle, the wicked shall profit
by the glory of the hereafter only so far as
they are made to see the discord of their
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lives, and are compelled, in the end, to give
up their old evil ways. Even for his pres-
ent life man has received an eye to see all
the marvels of heaven and earth, an ear to
drink in the sounds of music and of human
speech, an understanding to gn"asp the mean-
ing of all these things — yet, what is the
use of eye, ear, or mind to the foolish,
the idle, the wicked?
The best and highest things of the life to
come, as well as of the present life, are only
for the best and highest men, who alone
understand, appreciate, and help to pro-
duce, them. Thus only the higher class of
spirits will be enabled to understand, and
take an active part in, the conscious inter-
course of the celestial being that carries
them with other beings of the "company
of heaven."
Whether, after seons of years, this earth
of ours, revolving round the sun in closer
and closer orbits, shall return to the womb
whence it issued, for a new, solar life to
begin for all earthly creatures — who
knows? And would it behoove us to know,
at present?
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CHAPTER IX.
THE spirits of the third stage will dwell
in the regions of this Earth, whereof
mankind itself forms a part, as in a
common body, and air the processes in na-
ture will be to them the same as the pro-
cesses in our bodies are to us at present.
Their body will enclose the bodies of the
second stage of life as a common mother,
just as the bodies of the second stage en-
close those of the first. But a spirit of the
third stage has for his own share the com-
mon body which he contributed to form and
develop during his earthly life. Whatever
in this world has become, through the ex-
istence of a certain human being, different
from what it would have been without him,
helps to constitute his new existence, grown
out of the common root of all existence,
and made up, partly of solid institutions
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and works, partly of moving and spreading
effects, similarly to the way our present body
is made up of solid material, and of change-
able material kept together by the solid.
Now, as the spheres of existence wherein
the lives of higher spirits move must neces-
sarily intersect, the question arises how is it
possible for such numberless spheres to cross
and recross each other without disturbing
and confusing each other. But you may as
well ask how it is possible for numberless
water waves to cross in the same lake, for
numberless air waves to cross in the same
atmosphere, for numberless waves of light
to cross in the same ether, for numberless
waves of memory to cross in the same brain,
for numberless spheres of human lives —
the germs and substructions of their after-
lives — to cross in this world without dis-
turbing and confusing each other. On the
contrary, they only produce a movement
and life, of a higher order, of those waves,
those memories, those lives of the second,
and also of the third stage.
But what is there that keeps those cross-
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ing spheres of consciousness asunder? Noth-
ing is there to keep them asunder in any
particular points of coincidence, for they
all have their points in common, though
they belong to each of them in a different
manner : this is what separates them and dis-
tinguishes them as individuals. Or would
you ask what there is to distinguish or sep-
arate the intersecting wave circles? You
are able to distinguish them outwardly,
though they are all alike; and it must be
much easier for spheres of consciousness to
distinguish each other and themselves in-
wardly.
When you get a letter from India or Aus-
tralia having its pages crossed with writing
in different directions, how do you manage
to distinguish the two sets of lines? Sim-
ply by the inner connection of each set.
Now, the world may be compared to such a
sheet crossed with divers sets of writing, in
ever so many directions, every set reading
itself as it stands by itself, and reading as
well the other sets by which it is crossed.
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But that letter is only a very inadequate
S5rmbol of the world.
How, then, can consciousness remain one,
when spread over such an extended space?
Is there not the law about " the Threshold
of Consciousness"?* You may as well
ask how can it remain one in the more lim-
ited space of your body, of which that more
extended space is only a continuation. Your
body, your brain, are they mere points ? Or
is there one particular point in them, the
seat of the soul? There is no such point.
The nature of your soul at present is to
* This empirical law of the reciprocity of body and
mind states, that consciousness is extinguished
whenever the bodily activity on which it depetids,
sinks below a certain degree of strength, called the
Threshold. The more extended this activity, the
more it will be weakened, and the more easily it will
sink below the threshold. There is such a thresh-
old for our consciousness as a whole — the limit be-
tween sleeping and waking — and a particular one for
every particular sphere of the mind. Hence, in the
waking state, the one or the other idea will rise up
or sink in our mind, according as the particular ac-
tivity on which it depends rises above, or sinks below,
its respective threshold.
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maintain the connection between all the parts
of your small body; hereafter it will be, to
maintain the more extensive connection of
all the parts of your larger body. The
spirit of God maintains the connection of the
whole Universe, and would you look for
God in a point? And one day you shall
more fully partake of His ubiquity.
Or, if you are afraid that the waves of
your future life may be too extended to rise
to the threshold which they reach and over-
step in this life, you ought to consider that,
far from spreading into an empty world
where they would indeed sink into an abyss,
they spread into a world, which, as the
eternal foundation of the spirit of God, will
be a foundation of yours as well : for it is
only as supported by and enclosed in the
divine life that any creature can live.
The little wren, carried on the eagle's
'back, can easily soar above the mountain
tops, which she could never do for herself;
she can even fly a little higher, above the
eaglei's back where she rested. But both
eagle and wren remain in the care of God.
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Another question arises — how, after
death, we shall be able to exist without our
brain, that wonderful structure which at
present supports all our mental activity, de-
veloping itself in the same measure as that
activity grows and develops itself — was it
given to us for no purpose? It would be
the same question, how the plant can exist
without the seed out of which it bursts forth
into life, and grows into light: the seed,
another such wonderful structure, develop-
ing itself more and more through its own
vitality; was that seed made for no pur-
pose?
Now you ask, is there, in all the world
around us, another structure as wonderful
as the human brain, that might take its
place in after-life, or is there any structure
even superior to it : for the life to come will
no doubt be superior to the present life.
But is not your body, as a whole, a larger
and grander structure than your eye, your
ear, your brain, or any of its parts? And
again the world of which mankind, with
their commonwealths, their sciences, arts,
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and commerce form (Mily a part, is in the
same degree, nay in an unspeakably higher
degree, superior to your little brain, which
is only a part or particle of that part. To
gain a higher view of the subject, you must
not take the earth for a mere ball of land
and water and air; the earth is indeed a
larger and higher individual creature than
yourself, a heavenly being, with a more
wonderful living and moving on its surface
than you carry about in your own little
brain, contributing thereby your own small
share to the earth life. It is vain for you
to dream of a life to come, if you fail to
recognize the life around you.
What does the anatomist see in a man's
brain? It is to him a labyrinth of whitish
filaments, the meaning of which he cannot
read. And what does the brain see in it-
self? A world of light, and sound, and
thoughts, associations, fancies, emotions of
love and hatred. This will help you to
realize the difference between that which
you see of the world, looking at it from the
outside, and that which the world sees with-
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in itself. Then you will no longer expect
that in the world as a whole the inside and
the outside ought to resemble one another
more than in the case of yourself, as a part
of the world. And only because you are a
part of the world you are enabled to see
within yourself a part of that which the
world sees in itself.
Finally, you may ask what it is that in
after-life, and not till then, wakens our
larger body, so to speak. For that body
exists at present, growing and spreading
into the outer world as a continuation of our
present narrow body. Well, it wakens from
the very fact that this narrow body falls
asleep, or rather decays. It is only an in-
stance of the universal rule, which prevails
throughout this present life, whence we con-
clude that it will continue hereafter. In
your sceptic way, you insist on drawing all
your conclusions from this life; so you ought
to draw this one also.
Conscious energy is in fact never pro-
duced afresh, nor can it be absolutely de-
stroyed. Similar to the body with which
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it is connected, it may change its place,
form, and activity, in time and space.
When it sinks to-day in one place, it will
rise in another place to-morrow. That your
eye may be awake, may see consciously,
your ear must go to sleep for a while ; that
your mental activity may be roused, your
senses must sleep for a while; a feeling of
pain in some minute part of your body may
for a time extinguish all your conscious-
ness. When directed to a large range of
subjects at once, the light of attention will
necessarily shine but feebly on the details;
when it is concentrated on one point, all