Journeys into Hells — Robert Bayer (Editor)— (2017) by Robert Bayer

Journeys into Hells Robert Bayer (Editor) (2017)

Table of Contents What The World of Spirits Is —

Emanuel Swedenborg [4]

Hellish Love vs. Heavenly Love — Emanuel Swedenborg [8] The Vision — Hudson Tuttle [13] Hades — Hudson Tuttle [18] Evil and Sin Beyond the Grave — Andrew Jackson Davis [41] The Low Heavens or Spheres — Eugene Crowell [46] Eternal Salvation — William Stainton Moses [70] Temptation — A. Farnese [72] Through the Wall of Fire — A. Farnese [78] Evil Lives on Earth and then the Same in Hell — A. Farnese [84] Like to Like — J. M. Peebles [95] We Make Our Own Heaven and Our Own Hell — Hudson Tuttle [96] The Hollow Sphere — Elsa Barker [97] Wanderings in Hell — JSM Smart [103] Hell Is Not Forever — William Walker Atkinson [112] The Antechamber of Hell — JSM Smart [115] Sexual Indulgence — J. Hewat McKenzie [122] Transmuting Sinfulness — Tudor Pole [124] In Hell: The City Of Hate — JSM Smart [129] Learning to Escape Hell — JSM Smart [135] Purified by Suffering — G. Vale Owen [141] 2

Inspiration from the Innermost — Mary Bruce Wallace [142] Questions and Answers — Frank L. Hammer [146] The Dark Realms — Anthony Borgia [148] Purgatory: The Desire World — Max Heindel [167] The Sacred Life Immortal — Robert Bayer [176] Streams of Light — Robert Bayer [178] Where does Evil Come from? — Walter and Betty Shepherd [181] The Vortices of Darkness and Light — Robert Bayer [183] A Family of the Heavens —

Robert Bayer [185]

What The World of Spirits Is Heaven and Hell Emanuel Swedenborg (1758)

421. The world of spirits is neither heaven nor hell; rather it is a place, or state, midway between the two. It is where a person first arrives after death, being, after some time has passed, either raised into heaven or cast into hell from it, depending on his life in the world.

422. The world of spirits is both a place midway between heaven and hell and a person’s “midway” state after death. I have been able to see that it is a midway place from the fact that the hells are beneath it and the heavens above; and to see that it is a midway state from the fact that as long as a person is there, he is not yet in either heaven or hell.

Heaven’s state in a person is the bonding of what is good and what is true within him; and hell’s state, the bonding of what is evil and what is false within him. When what is good is bonded to what is true in a person who is a spirit, he enters heaven, because, as we have said, that bonding is heaven within him. But when what is evil is bonded to what is false within him he enters hell, because that bonding is hell within him. 4

This bonding occurs in the world of spirits, because then a person is in a midway state. It does not matter whether you say the bonding of discernment and intention, or the bonding of what is true and what is good.

423. We need first to talk about the bonding of discernment and intention and its resemblance to the bonding of what is good and what is true, since this bonding takes place in the world of spirits.

Man has both discernment and intention. His discernment receives things true, and is formed out of them. His intention receives things good, and is formed out of them. As a result, a person calls “true” whatever he discerns and consequently thinks; and he calls “good” whatever he intends and consequently thinks.

Man has an ability to think from his discernment, and thereby to grasping what is true and also what is good; yet he does not think this from intention unless he intends and does it. When he intends it, and does it intentionally, then it exists in his discernment and his intention alike—it therefore exists in the person. For discernment alone does not constitute a person, nor does intention alone; rather it is discernment and intention together. So whatever exists in both these abilities exists in the person and has become part of him, but 5

anything that exists only in the discernment is with the person but not within him. It is only an element of his memory, a matter of information within his memory which he can think about when he is not “in himself” but “outside himself,” with other people. So too, he can talk about it and reason about it, and put on affections and manners in keeping with it.

424. Man’s ability to think from his discernment without thinking from his intention at the same time is furnished him so that he can be formed anew. For a person is formed anew by means of things true, which belong to his discernment as we have said. Actually, man is born into involvement in all kinds of evil, as far as his intention is concerned. This means that on his own he does not intend what is good to anyone but himself. And anyone who intends what is good only to himself is pleased by the evils that befall others, especially when they are to his own advantage.

In fact, he wants to funnel everyone else’s good things to himself, whether these be matters of prestige or of profit; and he is inwardly happy to the extent that he can accomplish this.

For the correction and re-forming of this kind of intention, man has been given the capacity to discern things that are true, and thereby to tame the affections for what is evil that gush from his intention. This 6

is the source of manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to think true things from his discernment, and to speak and do them. All the same, he cannot think them from his intention until his quality is such that he intends and does them on his ownâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is, from his heart. When this is a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quality, then the things he thinks from his discernment are part of his faith, and the things he thinks from his intention are part of his love. Consequently, faith and love are then bonded together for him, like discernment and intention.

Hellish Love vs. Heavenly Love Emanuel Swedenborg Divine Love and Wisdom (1763)

Immediately after death we come into a world of spirits that is halfway between heaven and hell. There we work through our stretches of time, or our states, and are prepared either for heaven or for hell, depending on the way we have lived. As long as we stay in this world, we are called “spirits.” Anyone who has been brought up from this world into heaven is called an angel, and anyone who has been cast into hell is called a satan or a devil. As long as we are in the world of spirits, people who are being readied for heaven are called angelic spirits, and people who are being readied for hell are called hellish spirits. All the while, angelic spirits are united to heaven and hellish spirits to hell.

All the spirits who are in the world of spirits are together with us because we are similarly between heaven and hell as to the deeper levels of our minds. Through these spirits we are in touch with either heaven or hell, depending on the way we are living.

It should be clear that “the world of spirits” is not the same thing as “the spiritual world.” The world of spirits is the one I have just been 8

talking about, while the spiritual world includes that world, heaven, and hell.

Something also needs to be said about loves, since we are talking about how angels and spirits turn toward their loves because of their loves.

Heaven as a whole is laid out in communities depending on all the differences in loves. So is hell, and so is the world of spirits. Heaven, though, is laid out in communities according to differences in heavenly loves, while hell is laid out in communities according to differences in hellish loves, and the world of spirits is laid out in communities according to differences in both heavenly and hellish loves.

There are two loves that are at the head of all the rest, and two loves that lie behind all the rest. The head of all heavenly loves, the love basic to them all, is love for the Lord. The head of all hellish loves, or the love that underlies them all, is a love of controlling prompted by self-love.

These two loves are absolute opposites.

Since these two lovesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;love for the Lord and love of controlling 9

prompted by self-love—are absolute opposites, and since everyone who is caught up in love for the Lord turns toward the Lord as the sun, as explained in the preceding section, it stands to reason that everyone who is caught up in a love of controlling prompted by selflove turns away from the Lord. The reason people turn in opposite directions is that those who are caught up in love for the Lord love being led by the Lord more than anything else, and want the Lord alone to be in control. In contrast, if people are caught up in a love of controlling prompted by self-love, there is nothing they love more than leading themselves. They want to be the only ones who are in control.

The reason we refer to “a love of controlling prompted by self-love” is that there is a love of controlling out of a love of service. Since this love acts in unison with love for our neighbor, it is a spiritual love. In fact, it cannot truly be called a love of being in control: it should be called a love of service.

The reason spirits of all kinds turn toward their ruling loves is that for all of us, love is life (as explained in §§1–3 of part 1), and life turns its vessels, called members, organs, and viscera—the whole person, therefore— toward the particular community that is engaged in a similar love, the community where our own love is.

Since a love of controlling prompted by self-love is the absolute opposite of love for the Lord, spirits caught up in this love of controlling turn away from the Lord. So their eyes are looking toward that worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s west; and since their bodies are turned around, the east is behind them, the north is on their right, and the south is on their left. The east is behind them because they harbor a hatred of the Lord; the north is on their right because they love illusions and the consequent distortions; and the south is on their left because they have no use for the light of wisdom.

They can turn this way and that, but still everything they see around themselves looks like their love.

They all are oriented toward outward nature and their senses. They are the kind of people who think they are the only ones who are really alive and who see others as unreal. They think they themselves are wiser than anyone else, even though they are insane.

In the spiritual world, you can see roads laid out like roads in our physical world. Some of them lead to heaven and some to hell. The roads that lead to hell are not visible to people who are going to heaven, and the roads that lead to heaven are not visible to people who are going to hell. There are more such roads than you can count, roads leading to each heavenly community and to each hellish 11

community. Each individual spirit sets out on the road that leads to the community of his or her own love and does not even see the roads that lead in other directions. As a result, when spirits turn toward their ruling love, they also travel.

The Vision Hudson Tuttle Life in Two Spheres (1855)

Glorious and grand the prospect breaks around me as though a magician's wand had dispelled the deep darkness which before encompassed my senses. My spirit revels with the infinite hosts of heaven. In a sphere of ugliness, I see beings in a most degraded state of filth and corruption. I cannot picture its miseries, for I never before saw such misery. I stand on an elevation in the centre of a boundless plain, covered with human beings freed from earthly life, but not from its cares, strifes, miseries, and woes. They are divided into groups. There a band of robbers; here of murderers, or sensualists. All the passions, desires, propensities, appetites are represented by groups, their various colors and disgusting forms.

Avaunt, bloated sensualist and gourmand! Stand not so near, you suffocate me with your loathsome breath. Your presence fills me with disgust. I cannot gaze on the bloodshot eyes and ulcerouslyinflamed face without a shudder.

"Here are beings clothed in rags, hanging in tattered shreds around their forms. All, all as black as night! My pity is moved at the 13

spectacle, and keeps me gazing at the scene, fascinated with its changing hues. There is no rest, no quiet, no tranquility of thought, or peace of mind here. All is animal excitement and its attendant suffering. They wander about without purpose or design. Their errors keep them from the light; so they cannot progress, nor raise themselves above the level of the surface of the earth. They group about in a loathsome atmosphere, from which it is almost impossible to rise. No, not impossible, for those superior to themselves descend into this lower abode as missionaries, to teach them the ways of goodness and truth. These messengers, endowed with exalted philanthropy, make the great self-sacrifice with hearts overflowing for their erring brothers. They teach them, the path of righteousness. I can behold many descend, and their shining robes become more brilliant by the contrast with those benighted minds. They are â&#x20AC;&#x153;kingsâ&#x20AC;? of reform. The haggard features around them become more ghastly in expression, and some approach them, scorning and cursing them in rage, as the Jews of old did Jesus the Nazarene. They cannot enter the sphere which surrounds, like an impenetrable wall, these shining ones, or approach them unless bidden. They are chained, and stand listening to the words of the angels, who paint the errors of each in turn, holding the mirror to each one's heart. By turns they are enraged and chagrined. Now the angel finishes, and, unloosed by the last sentence, that dark audience move away, shouting and cursing in their bitterness. Ah! a few have stayed. There they stand, 14

weeping in agony; their hearts have been touched; they see their errors, and wish for the truth. They have resolved to reform, and do not wish to remain with this dark group. They now are going away with the messengers. How bright they appear! To gaze on them fills me with pleasure.

"I have arisen to a higher planeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the sphere of the good and just. Such an exaltation fills me now that I find words inadequate to express it. Here is an Eden of delight, with gorgeous groves and fragrant flowers, beautiful trees and crystal streams. The colors are resplendently clear and vivid, the light is soft and brilliant, partaking of the ethereality I everywhere observe.

Throughout the groves bright beings appear, engaged in their various pursuits, meditating or conversing, all joyous and happy. I wish to remain here forever, and mingle with these intelligences; the atmosphere exalts my soulâ&#x20AC;Ś. But I must come back to earth; how I dislike these words! Earth looks dark, dreary and desolate."

The Sage then controlled the sensitive and wrote:â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

"I came here this evening to instruct you. I have given you this vision that you might become impressed with the opposite conditions of spirit-life. 15

In the first part you recognize what will be your position if you indulge the baser faculties at the expense of the moral. If you are miserly— grind down the poor—speculate in blood and tears—are revengeful and cruel; if you make gourmands and drunkards of yourselves, you must expect to find a home in this dark sphere until your grossness and crudities have passed away. If you would become angels of light, and dwell in the bright abode last described, you must be good, truthful, philanthropic—not from a regard to your own happiness merely, but because it is right to be so.

"This is the hell so vividly impressed on the minds of the ancient seers and clairvoyants, which they supposed to be a lake of fire. You also here find heaven-happiness. The mind carries with it the capabilities of heaven or hell, and you need not look beyond the grave for these; you are all the time surrounded by them. No one should desire to leave the earth-life until its tasks are done. "The most distant day will find none too well prepared. You should make the present as happy as the future. It were better to give all your attention to the perfection of mortal life, than to neglect its opportunities in expectation of greater enjoyments, in the future. Mau's birthright is to enjoy and garner the benefits of life, and he should fulfill the destiny which is his heritage. Be pure and unselfish

in all things that you may enter this life prepared to participate in its joys."

Hades Hudson Tuttle Life in Two Spheres (1855)

As they passed from the scene described in the last chapter, the Sage seemed wrapped in deep meditation. At length he gave utterance to his feelings.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Here I behold minds equal in natural strength to my own, yet debased lower than the brute. This is the punishment for the many misdeeds of the body. Here you behold the reactive energy of those laws. They must work out their own redemption. Though not plunged into a fiery gulf of sulphur, smoke, and wrath, their punishment is a thousand-fold more severe. If they feel this not now, the thousand cycles of the future will reveal their trespasses in all their deformities. The knowledge of what they have lost will force itself upon their minds.â&#x20AC;? As the Sage paused, Leon raised his eyes from pondering his words, and beheld a majestic yet mournful prospect. They were standing on a lofty eminence overlooking an arid plane, interspersed with hills, valleys, and ravines, and oasis-like green spots would now and then break out like islands in the Sahara. The plane appeared boundless, and on every side it lost itself in the thick clouds of vapor hanging over it. On every side appeared the scenes beheld by 18

ancient clairvoyants, seers, and visionaries, and by their excited imagination wrought into a fiery hell of Jehovah's wrath. Oh, the loneliness of the prospect! The dim view of millions of human beings, all once of earth, wandering over the and waste, with hearts as stinted and souls as contracted as the stunted mimosa and dwarf acacia which grow in clumps here and there on the desert.

“Here have I often contemplated the scenes of spirit misery and woe,” said the Philosopher; “woe beyond all possible conception— beyond all expression; for, while pursuing the ruinous course of error, they one and all think they are enjoying the fullest measure of happiness. Their minds, are hermetically sealed to the light. They can never progress until their mental vision is unshrouded from the thick veil of their present ignorance.”

“This seems,” responded Leon, “like a realization of earth. To appearances this is an earthly prospect, and the spirits I behold yonder are as busily engaged as man with all his cares. Have I not viewed this prospect before?”

“True, it is an earthly scene. This is earth. The lowest circle or plane of our existence is not removed above man's plane. Thus, a good opportunity is given the undeveloped to learn the laws which govern earth; and you well know that they must learn these before 19

advancing.”

“Then these shaded spirits who flit about and till the ground, and appear so busily employed, are yet in the flesh, though they scarcely differ from the others?”

“Yes, those are the inhabitants of earth toiling for food and raiment, which is right, and ten thousand useless luxuries which are hurtful. Here we find all classes and varieties of minds—the bigot, the hypocrite, the trader, the trafficker who used fraudulent and unlawful means, deception, and scant measure—the narrow-minded, the selfish, and the sensual—all are here.”

“For a long time I have watched them intently, but owing to the diversity of occupations I cannot satisfy my curiosity.”

“They are variously employed. Yonder is a group who believe life created for to-day; that to 'drink and be merry' is the ultimate of existence.

They have in consequence permitted their minds to run to ruin, and have prostrated all their energies in the cultivation of a lisping speech, and what they style grace of manners. Now they join in the dance—well enough in itself, it is true, when performed for exercise, 20

but when made a chief employment of life, extremely bad in its effects. Hundreds of years since I passed this way on a mission similar to my present, and then I beheld this same circle employed just as you now see them. I say the same; it appears as if some are not here now who were here then, and that the number is augmented. Perhaps some have seen their folly in a new light, and arisen above the pursuit of mere animal gratification. Yonder is a group of sensualists, thinking, talking, and acting as on earth— sacrificing their energies on the altar of sensual desire. Think you on this spectacle! Let we drop the veil of modesty, remembering that these have their likeness on earth. Leon, do you recollect Marvin, the merchant prince, the speculating capitalist, the bigoted religionist? “I have cause to remember him. Many a time have we argued until he became angry, and condemned me to the infernal gulf of misery as an outcast and infidel.”

“He has departed from his palace home. Can you see that dark spirit yonder? How wildly he gazes around him! He is bewildered and lost!”

While he was speaking, Marvin, attracted by the superior light issuing from the eminence, hastened up, wildly gazing around at every step. The moment he came within speaking distance, he recognised Leon, and exclaimed:— “Leon of the hamlet! and your wife!—you here? What keeps you in this dismal place? What are you doing here? Where am I?”

“We came here to observe the lights and shadows of spirit-life. You are in the place where I once told you, you would go, for which you scorned me.”

“I remember, and believe none the more or less now. I am not dead yet”

“No, but you are dead to the world.”

“Say not so; I am only dreaming a fearful dream.”

“If You should behold your body conveyed to the tomb, your dreams would begin to put on form and substance.”

“I should believe them reality,” exclaimed he, still gazing with an insane stare, and startling at every sound.

“Follow, then,” said Leon, who well knew the position of the stately hall that reared itself near by his humble cottage.

The group proceeded to the former home of Marvin, and entered its marble walls, furnished with the sumptuousness of untold wealth, proclaiming Marvin a prince in dollars and pride. In a mahogany coffin, on a marble table, rested the earthly remains of the great leader in commerce and religion, bloated with the ravages of disease. His spirit drew near, folded its arms, and with a fixed gaze stood over the corpse. Not a limb moved nor a muscle vibrated, except a slight quiver would now and then run over the face. The view of his mortal form held him fascinated. Never will the earnest look be fixed upon his former self be forgotten. The bearers entered, and placed the coffin in the hearse, which began its measured movement towards the family tomb.

Then, with a loud scream of agony, he appeared to wake to consciousness, threw himself on the coffin, hugging the corpse with all his energy—crying with might and main he was to be buried alive—he lived—he was to be murdered! He had seen too much beyond death already. He only slept.

After lamenting in this manner for a while, he became aware that the spirits with him heard his voice through the vibrations of ether. His 23

friends, whom he wished to hear, could not hear in the least. He then strove to move the corpse—to move the arm to make them know that he yet lived.

All was vain! He had lost control over his own form, and knew not how to move matter. Frantic with fear and anxiety, be clung to the wreck of his mortality, and refused the request of the Philosopher to rise. When the coffin was placed away side by side with the previous generation, and with a lingering look the bearers were about to depart, he became alarmed for fear of being shut up, and followed them out into the free air, declaring all the time he was in a trance! or it was an awful dream! “Nay,” said the Philosopher; “your body is dead; you live, and are a spirit in the Spirit-world.”

“In heaven?” exclaimed he in extreme surprise.—”I in heaven?”

“No, not heaven to you, but is to us.”

“Why, this is no heaven, this is earth! Where is heaven?—I can't see it!”

“What kind of place do you expect to find heaven asked the Sage, with something of pity.

What kind of a place? I believe it is as the Bible describes. It says heaven is paved with bright gold, and walled about with precious stones, so that no sinner can get in through the narrow way which I have travelled, with now and then a slight transgression, which the Lord has forgiven me. Now you are sinners, for you are waylaying me, and declaring me dead while I live. Am I in all the heaven I shall ever find? If I am in heaven, where is God, to whom I have prayed three times each day all my life?”

“He is here.”

“Where?” he exclaimed in terror.

“Here, around and within us.”

“No; I see him not: and thus you have proved that I am not in heaven.

God is in heaven; the Bible says so. If he were here, I could see him far plainer than I now see you. He sits on an ivory throne, with sceptre in his hand, dealing out laws and punishments to the nations. All around are elders and angels with golden harps, singing his praise. Where is all this? I hear nothing. Do you suppose such a concourse could escape my sight? No, I could see it across the universe.” 25

“You hear them!—no, you never will.”

“Oh, sinners, evil angels sent to tempt me from the path of right! Oh, that I could awake! Where is heaven? Don't stand pointing to your mind; I want to behold the real heaven, with its glittering pavement!”

“Many of earth's sons would rather see the 'glittering pavement' than heaven itself, but none will ever be gratified,” calmly replied the Sage.

“Is there not such a place?” and again the storm of passion arose within.

“No local heaven. Heaven is a condition, not a locality.”

“Do you deny the Bible?” .

“No.”

“That says heaven is located.”

“Not if rightly understood.”

“Yes it does, plainly. I have crucified my flesh, suffered everything, carried my grievous cross—all for nothing! Nay, nay, I'll find the place yet”

“Not yet.”

“Never?”

“Never!”

“Are my sufferings of no avail?”

“None whatever, unless to depress you. The path of happiness passes not through suffering. Suffering is the consequence of infringed law; happiness, of obeyed law. To be happy is to enjoy all the pure pleasures of earth. You have always labored under a great mistake.”

“But my prayers?”

“Prayer without action is worthless.”

“Did not Christ die for me?”

“No.”

“Why was he sacrificed then? He died because the Jews were angry at his reformation, and treated him just as all reformers have been— since time began—burned, crucified, murdered by the mob at the instigation of the priesthood.”

“Can he not forgive sins?”

“No; every man has his own accounts to answer for. If he is debtor he is necessarily punished.”

“Atonement false?”

“Yes, Christ suffers not for your sins. He is not a scapegoat on whom you are to lay your burdens.”

“Heretic! heretic! No wonder you have not seen heaven. I'll argue no more with you, but retire to my house, and show you I live there yet.” .

night and day to accumulate, that in my old age I might enjoy it. They are quarrelling like wolves over a carcass.

When they opened my safe, and I saw how determined they were to waste all my savings, I shouted right in their ears, and though: they must have heard, they gave not the least attention. I am dead, and why does not the good angel come to conduct me away? I'll go and search for heaven myself.”

“How large do you think it to be?”

“Why, it is limited somewhere.”

“A limited spot is uncertain to find in infinite universe. This globe is large—larger than you imagine heaven, yet one unacquainted with its orbit might search a million of ages and not find it.”

“Is Now, truly, did you never learn of its locality?” asked he, in a supplicating tone.

“Yes, everywhere where there is a happy mind—where there is a mind capable of enjoyment, for heaven is happiness.”

“Where, then, is the other place—the awful inconceivable hell, with 29

the old master of iniquity? If that is everywhere too, I shall be haunted by evil spirits all my days.”

“It is everywhere where there is an unhappy mind; and as for the devil, he cannot trouble you, for he exists only in the over-heated imagination of those trained in prejudice.”

“You are all fully punished for your sinful thoughts while on earth.

What an awful place!”

“True,” said the Sage, “this is just as bad a place as can be found. It is just as you make it—heaven or hell; and as for evil spirits, if you are good they cannot approach you, being repelled; and if bad, you will seek their company. To convince yourself that heaven is not a locality, you had better search until satisfied. It will then be a greater reality to you.”

“That is what I mean to do, and am in no doubt that I shall be successful.”

“Go! Meanwhile we will take our departure, with the humble wish that you will return to nature, and be guided by the light within you.”

“He has departed from his palace home. Can you see that dark spirit yonder? How wildly he gazes around him! He is bewildered and lost!”

“It is the one of whom you speak. There is the churchman, the creedfettered man—a strict observer of bigotry. How often have I heard him repeat, 'that one could tell Sunday from a week-day by its appearance!' How often has he cursed me from his Bible, and said I was elected for hell, and he for heaven! Why cometh he hither?” While he was speaking, Marvin, attracted by the superior light issuing from the eminence, hastened up, wildly gazing around at every step. The moment he came within speaking distance, he recognised Leon, and exclaimed:— “Leon of the hamlet! and your wife!—you here? What keeps you in this dismal place? What are you doing here? Where am I?”

“We came here to observe the lights and shadows of spirit-life. You are in the place where I once told you, you would go, for which you scorned me.”

“I remember, and believe none the more or less now. I am not dead yet”

“No, but you are dead to the world.”

“Say not so; I am only dreaming a fearful dream.”

“If You should behold your body conveyed to the tomb, your dreams would begin to put on form and substance.”

“I should believe them reality,” exclaimed he, still gazing with an insane stare, and startling at every sound.

“Follow, then,” said Leon, who well knew the position of the stately hall that reared itself near by his humble cottage.

After lamenting in this manner for a while, he became aware that the spirits with him heard his voice through the vibrations of ether. His friends, whom he wished to hear, could not hear in the least. He then strove to move the corpse—to move the arm to make them know that he yet lived.

“In heaven?” exclaimed he in extreme surprise.—”I in heaven?”

“No, not heaven to you, but is to us.”

“Why, this is no heaven, this is earth! Where is heaven?—I can't see it!”

“What kind of place do you expect to find heaven asked the Sage, with something of pity.

“He is here.”

“Where?” he exclaimed in terror.

“Here, around and within us.”

“No; I see him not: and thus you have proved that I am not in heaven. 34

“You hear them!—no, you never will.”

“Many of earth's sons would rather see the 'glittering pavement' than heaven itself, but none will ever be gratified,” calmly replied the Sage.

“Is there not such a place?” and again the storm of passion arose within.

“No local heaven. Heaven is a condition, not a locality.”

“Do you deny the Bible?” .

“No.”

“That says heaven is located.”

“Not if rightly understood.”

“Yes it does, plainly. I have crucified my flesh, suffered everything, carried my grievous cross—all for nothing! Nay, nay, I'll find the place yet”

“Not yet.”

“Never?”

“Never!”

“Are my sufferings of no avail?”

mistake.”

“But my prayers?”

“Prayer without action is worthless.”

“Did not Christ die for me?”

“No.”

“Can he not forgive sins?”

“No; every man has his own accounts to answer for. If he is debtor he is necessarily punished.”

“Atonement false?”

“Yes, Christ suffers not for your sins. He is not a scapegoat on whom you are to lay your burdens.” 37

“Heretic! heretic! No wonder you have not seen heaven. I'll argue no more with you, but retire to my house, and show you I live there yet.”

In a few moments Marvin rushed from his once lively halls with a frantic gesture, exclaiming:— “Oh! they have buried me, and believe me dead, and have already divided my property, which I have strove night and day to accumulate, that in my old age I might enjoy it. They are quarrelling like wolves over a carcass.

“How large do you think it to be?”

“Why, it is limited somewhere.”

“Is Now, truly, did you never learn of its locality?” asked he, in a supplicating tone.

“Yes, everywhere where there is a happy mind—where there is a mind capable of enjoyment, for heaven is happiness.”

“Where, then, is the other place—the awful inconceivable hell, with the old master of iniquity? If that is everywhere too, I shall be haunted by evil spirits all my days.”

“It is everywhere where there is an unhappy mind; and as for the devil, he cannot trouble you, for he exists only in the over-heated imagination of those trained in prejudice.”

“You are all fully punished for your sinful thoughts while on earth.

What an awful place!”

“That is what I mean to do, and am in no doubt that I shall be successful.”

“Go! Meanwhile we will take our departure, with the humble wish that you will return to nature, and be guided by the light within you.”

Evil and Sin Beyond the Grave Answers to Ever-Recurring Questions From The People Andrew Jackson Davis (1868)

CXXV. — Question: “You say that you do want your readers to infer that departed men and women do not carry beyond the tomb the desires for stimulants that they may have had in the earth-life. Will you please tell us what become of those desires? Give the philosophy of the operation in as few words as you please, but clearly.”

Answer: The philosophy of human life and death is very simple, and “he who runs” may read it, if he hath only eyes to see and a heart to understand.

We do not teach that men disgorge their incongruities and moral imperfections when they “shuffle off the mortal coil;” we do not affirm that death transforms all men, nor any man, “in the twinkling of an eye,” into a pure and harmonious angel of light; we do not say that there will be no necessity for intellectual labor and moral struggling to attain higher conditions after death; we do not inculcate that all are equally beautiful, and happy, and progressed, in the Summer-Land; but this — the effects and consequences of an evil earth-life do 41

continue, in more or less active force, beyond the grave.

This affirmation does not include the doctrine that the desires and passions continue in full blast after death, which is the apparent experience and the recently canonized dogma of some unscientific believers in Spiritualism. It is possible that the “distinction “here made, between the consequences of evil and the desires and lustings for “more,” may seem to be “without a difference.” Therefore, let us explain:

Suppose a man at forty-five to be, constitutionally, as old and decrepit as most men are at seventy-five. His premature old age may be the consequence of dissipation, or disease, or accident. Tomorrow he dies. He arises to his appropriate neighborhood in the Summer-Land, with the traces and effects of that early decay distinctly stamped upon the particles of his new body, and not less within his mental structure; although it is indeed true that the externals of his form are beautifully rounded out, and every organic part is completed, just as Nature had designed them to become previous to his death. Whether this man was the cause or the victim of his present personal imperfections, or not, the fact that he yet retains the effects of his earth-life, both physical and spiritual, cannot be hidden from the observation of those with whom is attractively appointed to consociate. 42

Now it is philosophically absurd to affirm that this imperfect man carried with him over the grave the cause which occasioned his incompleteness and misfortunes. He is, by the simple chemistry of death, emancipated from the region of the dissipation, or disease, or accident, one or all of which caused the effects which he still preserves distinctly in his book of life.

Or take the habitual drunkard and libertine. Now, it cannot cannot be shown that a man’s innermost — the divine SPIRIT — was ever moved toward intemperance and sexual intercourse. In truth, the SPIRIT is always the accusing and condemning “Voice” — the angel of light within, who would lead the man out of his darkness and disgrace — the interior source of “ideas,” of hope, of conscience, of justice, of truth, of immortality. Whence, then, his desire for intoxication and abandonment? We answer: From that middle nature — the battle-field of all discord and passion — the “soul,” which is between the outmost body and the inmost spirit. In common with the animals, each man has a “soul” — a playground of, as yet, unorganized elements and imponderable principles. From that source, and from no other, spring forth all the desires and passions which disgrace humanity and turn our beautify earth into “the lowest hell.”

Now, What is death? Is it nothing more than the passage of an individual from one world to another? Does a man drop his body just as he “shuffles off” his overcoat, without the least alteration in the condition and operations of his feelings and appetites? Is it possible for a very great change (as death is) to occur without working some radical improvement? Even mildew works refinement among old leaves in the forest. No stone is dissolved by water and mosses without becoming finer. Everything dies upward, so to speak — is better for the apotheosis — and is man an exception to the universal law? No! is our answer, upspringing from Nature’s every source of truth and reason. DEATH, to a human being, is a radical change. The elements of the “soul,” which, in all earth-life, were chaotic and discordant, are organized and harmonized into body for the SPIRIT. The electrical connections, so long subsisting between the physical body and the mental structure, are permanently dissolved. And with this very radical revolution comes a new set of relations and sympathies between the body-soul and the inward Spirit. The soul, before the master, now becomes a servant. The Spirit is enthroned as chief Ruler, and the work of progress and regeneration is inaugurated on a higher plane.

Thus the drunkard or libertine appears immediately after death. With death went his desire for rum and sensual excitements; but the consequences of his earth-life are visible on the particles of his new 44

body, and in the feebleness and darkness of his moral faculties. The desires for the earthly pleasures have been chemically dissolved and removed; but the chemistry of death does not, cannot, overcome and banish the evil effects which the gratification of those desires has stamped upon the individual. Even the habitual tobacco-chewer and swine-eater, although his appetite for both expires with his earth-life, is so much the worse off in spirit-life for indulging the bad habits and diets. We have not, in this reply, attempted any very nice analysis of the chemical phenomena of death. The world is filled with conflicting sentiments on this subject, but we have full faith that the progress of Science in this direction, will remove all religious vagaries. Harmonial Philosophy opens the laws and conditions of life in all gradations of existence, and “the ways of wisdom are not more pleasant “than are its teachings to those who comprehend. What are called “facts” in Spiritualism require something more than the mere oral or written assertion of a medium, who, perchance, is either “psychologized” by the opinions of the investigator, or else by the force of his own foregone conclusions. It is well known that a Methodist medium will deliver Methodist communications, and the same is true with mediums of every other shade of faith; therefore it becomes necessary, in pursuing this most glorious subject, that we start with at least a fair share of what the world calls “Common Sense,” and with only one motive in the heart — “What is truth?” 45

The Low Heavens or Spheres Eugene Crowell The Spirit World (1879)

"Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it.

If any man's work abide which he hath built, thereupon he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire."â&#x20AC;&#x201D;I Cor. iii. 13 to 15.

"God speaks through anguish in the hidden soul, God speaks through sorrow in the human breast."

The spirit-world literally envelops us, and the surface of our earth, for all practical purposes is one of the spheres, and the lowest of them, for multitudes of degraded disembodied spirits are bound to it by their gross natures, and here continue to exist for various periods of time, and it may properly be termed the earth-sphere, while the spiritual zone or sphere removed from and nearest the earth is termed by spirits the first sphere, or heaven, and in the treatment of the subject they will be thus designated.

But the first sphere, though the lowest in the order of arrangement, is not the lowest in the order of progression, for this sphere in the American heavens is chiefly appropriated to Indian spirits, and really is a heaven, while the second sphere is the next lowest to the earthsphere in the order of progression. Spirits term all these spheres, heavens, the first being according to their nomenclature the "Indian heaven" and the second the "heaven for low white people, or wicked heaven," but feeling a degree of repugnance to terming the second sphere a heaven I have throughout this work designated both the first and second heavens as spheres, and all above these as heavens.

From the above it will be perceived that the first sphere is practically ignored in its relationship to the white race, and the next step from the earth-sphere, in the order of progression, is to the second sphere, and I would suggest that the reader impress this arrangement on his mind before proceeding further.

One of the lessons that is most difficult for novices in Spiritualism to glearn, and bear in mind, is the fact that spirits are but human beings, neither specially created angels, nor demons, fallible, sometimes weak and ignorant, and while some are on intellectual and moral planes above us, quite as often they are found to be on planes below us. There are no (lemons, or devils, as these terms are popularly understood. There are spirits of all grades of depravity and 47

wickedness, and some of these may justly be regarded as demoniacal in their natures, but they are nevertheless human spirits, and sooner or later will enter the paths of progression, and ultimately become purified and exalted angels. God's mercy embraces all His creatures. There is not a fiend-like spirit in the lowest spheres, or hells, nor an angel in the spiritual realms, as far as my instructors have knowledge, that has not originated, either on our earth or some other celestial globe.

The tendencies that lead to sin and crime are but manifestations of minds diseased, and the latter are frequently associated with diseased bodies; as these suffer from functional derangement so the former do from derangement of the moral and spiritual functions, and the only remedy is appropriate moral treatment under favorable conditions. Sin and punishment are sowing and reaping cause and effect, and the law of compensation requires of every man in the life to come full atonement for unrepented wrongs and none can progress, nor find rest, until the penalty has been paid, either by rectifying the wrong, or making atonement by sincere repentance and good works. But strictly speaking there is no arbitrary punishment hereafter, there is only necessary discipline. Evil in its nature is transitory, the good only endures forever. Good is the substance of which evil is only the shadow. Some people when they enter spirit life find themselves

surrounded with desolation; they are in affinity only with such surroundings, as the camel is with the surroundings of the desert.

Condition accurately follows character. "When at one time Wesley was preaching he was addressed by a drunken man in the audience, who said: "I don't believe in heaven, Mr. Wesley." The reply of the latter was, "In your circumstances I don't see how you could."

It is sometimes said, even by spirits, that heaven and hell are not localized. In one sense this is correct, for while earth-bound spirits find their hell on earth, and others find the second sphere in A less degree hell, neither this earth nor the second sphere, is in the same sense, hell to good spirits who may visit the one or the other. But it is equally true that this earth and the second sphere are localities, and all spirits who are restricted to these localities are unhappy, and it may be said that they are in hell, and in these two places all unhappy spirits are to be found. Therefore as to depraved spirits hell is literally localized, and while the sphere of earth is hell to the lowest and most degraded spirits the influences which pervade it, when these are permitted to prevail over a man's moral nature, reduce him to the level of earthbound, disembodied spirits, and he is in hell, as they are, and not only are many mortals subject in greater or less degrees to these influences, but many spirits who have advanced to the third heaven and who in this life were untruthful, or immoral, when they revisit the 49

earth and resume their former earthly conditions are as untruthful, or perhaps immoral, as when in the flesh, and this, notwithstanding when they are in their homes in the third heaven they are free from all such failings. Good spirits, as a rule, are unable to long remain either on earth or in the second sphere without inconvenience, they cannot successfully resist beyond a certain point the depressing adverse influences of either place, while on the contrary were the lowest spirit, with all his imperfections, introduced to the realms of bliss he would only find his misery increased, and would avail himself of the first opportunity to return to his own place, where his surroundings would be in harmony with his own feelings, and condition. Heaven to him would be a worse hell than the lowest spiritual sphere. Heaven and hell therefore are localities as well as conditions.

There are spirits who in this life were so debased, so gross, so steeped in depravity, that they remain in their degraded condition and continue to inhabit the lowest spheres for long periods of time, for ages, and in some rare instances even for centuries. They have no desire for improvement, and progression, and until they experience this desire their advancement is impossible, but in time, remote though it may be, this is awakened within them.

The spirits of misers, sometimes, are bound to their hoarded earthly treasures, and they are released from their bondage only when their 50

wealth has become distributed among or squandered by their heirs, and it frequently happens that when they are brought to realize their abject condition they labor more strenuously to scatter their wealth than they did to amass it, and not unfrequently with success.

There are certain spirits, who, although they left their earthly bodies years since, are persuaded that they still inhabit them. They really are living on the earth, and the difference in their habits, mode of life, and surroundings, is not sufficient to convince them that they are no longer mortal. These earth-bound spirits are generally on low intellectual and moral planes, and placed as they are they are unable to reason clearly on their situation, and perhaps a score or more of years may elapse before they can be brought to comprehend their changed condition, and advance, even to the second sphere.

Many earth-bound spirits use their limbs only in locomotion, not possessing the power to pass more speedily and easily from point to point, and others, who really possess the power, are unconscious of it, and do not attempt to exercise it. Of course all these in time attain to that state in which this power is freely and fully exercised.

The victim of the murderer, when on a low plane, as well as the murderer himself, is sometimes irresistibly attracted to the scene of the crime, or perhaps to the spot where his body is deposited, his last 51

terrible experiences having psychologically bound him to that locality. "My bones must be removed from their resting place or my soul must suffer continual torture," were the words of the spirit of a murdered woman, of this low condition. In time such unfortunate creatures escape from their thralldom and ascend to the second sphere.

Earth-bound spirits infest our public conveyances, steamboats, etc., they frequent the lowest quarters of our cities, and low dance houses, liquor saloons, brothels, gambling saloons, etc., are crowded with them. They subsist mostly on the emanations from earthly food. Restaurants and kitchens, especially when unclean, are resorted to by them when hungry, they also frequent hotels, and private houses, where rich and luxurious repasts are habitually served, and inhale the odors and impalpable elements arising from these. Some attach themselves to gluttonous persons, who are mediumistic, and are able to abstract the more sublimated and vitalizing elements of the food from their victims as fast as it is swallowed, and thus a morbid appetite is created which impels the person to continued and extraordinary efforts to satisfy it. He really is eating for two persons, one of whom is invisible. Such spirits are veritable vampires. Liquor saloons are crowded with this class of spirits, and not a person who possesses medial power in any degree, and most persons possess it in some degree, there moistens his lips with wine or liquor, who is not at once obsessed by miserable, degraded spirits, and by them urgedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;often 52

irresistiblyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to further indulgence, until, as it frequently happens, the victim becomes prostrated by the demon of drunkenness, with perhaps the obsessing

Spirit lying equally unconscious and helpless at his side. These remarks, slightly modified, are also applicable to gambling saloons, and brothels. Could the frequenters of these abodes of sin and evil have their spiritual eyes opened, as were the eyes of the servant of Elisha, they would rush with horror from such scenes, and in their subsequent sleep they would be tortured by dreams only less horrible than the reality which had been presented to their spiritual sight.

And not only are these earth-bound spirits attracted by the odors and emanations from our food, which nourish their grosser natures, but another reason why they frequent the scenes of their earthly life is the necessity, probably not recognized by themselves, of obtaining that spiritual or vital nourishment which they are deficient in, and which they find in the atmosphere of mortals. This craving of their natures brings them into rapport with mortals on their own moral and spiritual planes, and their evil influence is felt, and frequently becomes manifest, in these classes of persons, and many times they are attracted and attach themselves to persons on higher planes, who, though not actually given to evil practices, yet are not earnestly opposed to them, and who under the temptations of such low spirits soon fall into them, 53

and are reduced to the level of their tempters. The fall of such persons would frequently be prevented, were they to know and realize that they also have good spirit friends around them who would effectually assist them if they would only welcome them, and by their prayers and desires strengthen their hands so that they could put to flight these dark and degraded spirits.

In those cases, also, which so perplex and astonish society, where men and women of education and refinement become infatuated with and marry ignorant and coarse persons, far beneath themselves socially, intellectually, and perhaps morally, the explanation of the enigma frequently is to be found in the fact that they are possessed of medial power, and are surrounded by material influences, living in a spiritually stagnant, perhaps corrupt atmosphere, and are obsessed by degraded spirits, whose gross impulses urge them to efforts to promote a union, at which if left free to think and act the natural instincts of the unfortunate individuals would revolt.

Spirits of depraved natures who have entered the spirit-world with vengeance in their hearts, sometimes through the possession of strong mesmeric power, and favored by opportunity, are able to wreak it on the objects of their hatred in this life. They influence their victims to the commission of evil deeds, to the pursuit of evil courses, and to the neglect of necessary duties, and frequently excite feelings of animosity 54

in the minds of persons possessing latent medial power, and of evil tendencies, against the objects of their dislike, and influence them to injure them morally, socially, or pecuniarily

Our prisons and insane asylums are infested With the spirits of criminals, and insane persons, who in this life were on low moral planes, and the inmates of these institutions are often injuriously influenced by them. For this reason insane persons should not be herded in asylums, but should be kept apart from each other, and surrounded by people of sound minds, and exemplary morals, so that the atmosphere in which they exist should be favorable to their recovery and not retard it, as under the present asylum system.

Quarrels are of frequent occurrence among spirits in the earth and second spheres, and sometimes they resort to force, and inflict suffering on each other, they being nearly as sensible to pain from violence as we are, but no violence beyond that of a blow can be inflicted by one spirit on another, provided the latter is disposed to escape, for before the blow can be repeated he can by his volition place himself beyond the reach of the former, and he can as easily escape from the combined attacks of a dozen, for ill-disposed spirits have not the power to restrain the liberty of others. At the worst spirits have no power to permanently injure one another.

Mortals can frequently render important service to unhappy, ignorant spirits. In their miserable state they can be more favorably influenced by mortals, on planes higher than their own, than by higher spirits, and they frequently seek consolation and instruction through us. At many circles for spirit manifestation the principal object of the directing intelligences is to benefit poor, benighted, unhappy spirits, the good of mortals, though constantly kept in view, being secondary. It is thus at the Banner of Light circles in Boston, and the members of other circles should not object to their time being occupied for this purpose, for frequently some of the best fruits which are gathered at circles are the knowledge gained, and the deep and abiding impressions made on the minds of the members by witnessing the contrition, and listening to the humble confessions, and subsequent expressions of thankfulness and joy, on the part of unfortunate and unhappy spirits, who through the means thus furnished are enabled to take the first step in the path of progression. It should never be forgotten that spirits in the flesh can frequently at the cost of little time and effort, be instrumental in conferring inestimable benefits on unhappy fellow-beings who have crossed, what to them has been, the dark river, and who from the other side now earnestly implore the counsel and encouragement which they derided, or disregarded, in this life.

Ignorant, degraded, earth-bound spirits, who in this life were blind, deaf, lame, or otherwise physically imperfect, are sometimes afflicted 56

in like manner, for a time, in the next life, but when they leave the earth-sphere they become freed from their infirmities. Even consumptives of this class sometimes are there afflicted with a cough, such as they suffered from in earth-life.

Earth-bound spirits are not prohibited from visiting the second sphere. It is their affinity with earthly things that holds them to earth. Some of them, of the better class, do occasionally visit that sphere, while others are restrained from doing so by lack of knowledge, or inclination, or from fear that they may be lost on the way.

Great numbers of spirits inhabiting the second sphere are but slightly removed, in point of character and condition, from those in the earthsphere. These spend much of their time on earth, but there are also those who rarely, and some who never return to earth. Some of the latter are afraid to take the necessary and first step of launching out in space; others discredit the possibility of returning, and others, still, are not in any degree attracted here; for feeling remorse for their past conduct and striving to progress they have no desire to return to the scenes of their sin and folly. The most depraved and violent spirits in the second sphere are separated from the others, and held under surveillance. They literally are imprisoned, and deprived of the liberty which other spirits, less guilty, to a certain extent enjoy.

Spirits in the low spheres are governed by the psychological power of certain spirits in the heavens above them, who are appointed to perform this duty. Spirits in these spheres require a restraining and corrective authority to be exercised over them, as do the lowest classes of society with us. But there, they are governed with wisdom, justice, and kindness, and solely with the view of elevating them to higher moral and intellectual planes, and so perfect are the means employed that this object is sooner or later invariably attained. The keenest suffering that spirits in Vie second sphere experience is imposed by higher spirits with the view of exciting remorse and inducing repentance for their earthly misdeeds. Their distress is wholly mental, and is the result of the exercise of psychological power by these higher spirits, most commonly their former guardians, who by this means impress their minds with the most vivid recollections of their sins and crimes, and they cannot escape from the contemplation of these until they are brought to view them in their true character, as odious, and abhorrent, and have atoned for them by humble and sincere repentance. All spirits in the low spheres have these mentors, or guides, who are unseen by them, and whose duty it is to thus impress their minds, and my instructors have no knowledge of any other spirits who possess the power of rendering themselves invisible to others, and these spirits can exercise this power only in relation to their charges.

Thus the guilty spirit's accusing angel is memory, the memory of earthly misdeeds, but where by remorse and repentance the stains of guilt have been washed away, the remembrance of former sins becomes so obscure that an effort of the mind is required to recall them, and it rarely happens that any inclination is experienced to do this, and in time the memory of them becomes entirely obliterated. The minds of spirits receive and reflect the rays of spiritual light as variously in character and degree as material objects do those of the sun, and in gross natures the deep dark soil must be pierced and broken up by the barrow of remorse, and repentance, before the soul can blossom with reformation, and bear good fruit.

Missionaries also are sent to labor for the reformation of spirits in the, second and earth spheres, some of them being those who have suffered injustice at their bands in this life, and to whom is assigned the highest and noblest duty that angels can perform, that of striving to elevate those who have wronged them.

Progression is the grand law of the spirit-world, and although some spirits may not take the first step in the path of progression for a long time, even for ages, yet there can be no change for the worse. Retrogression is there unknown. The sufferings of the less guilty, and these are in the majority are rather negative than positive, and these generally advance to the third heaven within a few years, some even 59

sooner. Many perpetrators of violent and bloody deeds are not there held to strict accountability and severely punished, on account of their failing to realize the enormity of their offenses at the time of their commission, they then being virtually insane. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln, was insane, and obsessed by depraved and violent secession spirits, and remained but a brief time in the second sphere. So Mr. Owen, who has frequently met him, as well as Mr. Lincoln, in spirit life, assures me. He is still known by the name he bore in earth life, and little or no stigma is attached to it in the estimation of advanced spirits, they having a clear understanding of the fact that he was not morally accountable for the offense. Spirits in the second sphere, who here have led infamous lives, when they arise from that sphere and enter the third heaven, have permission to change their names, and many avail themselves of it, but the change is not compulsory. All who have no reason to blush for their names continue to be known by them in all the heavens that we know anything of.

The immediate future of the drunkard in the next life is, to a great extent, dependent on his moral condition in this, irrespective of the sin of intemperance. Though all drunkards are for a time in that life unhappy all do not fare alike, for while one, who during his whole life here has been depraved and whom habits of drunkenness has only further degraded, may find his abode for many years in the earthly sphere, another, with superior instincts, with a moral record good excepting 60

only as intemperance may have clouded it, may after a brief stay in the second sphere, through the cleansing influence of remorse and repentance, and the aid of kind angel ministration, become purged of the, impurities the curse has entailed and be permitted to enter the third heaven. This may all take place before the former has experienced the slightest regret for his mis-spent life, or the slightest desire for improvement. The penalty, greater or less, though aggravated by intemperance, is inflicted mainly on account of moral transgression in other respects. The same principle, or rule, determines the grade of punishment, varied by the circumstances of each case, awarded to suicides and ordinary criminals, and even to murderers.

Where death is yet distant there is no sin which cannot be expiated in this life by earnest and sincere repentance, full and ample reparation for wrong committed, where this is possible, the performance of good works, and permanent reformation of character. The dark record of misdeeds, thus atoned for in this life, is obliterated by the recording angel. Many a darkened soul through these means, with angelic assistance, has become qualified, while yet in the flesh, for an elevated position in the next world, and repentance and reformation commenced even in view of the approach of death, if earnest and sincere, will materially assist the spirit's progress in the next life.

Good spirits, from their more elevated positions, do not view our misdeeds altogether as they are viewed by the world. They perceive in a clearer light, not only the actuating causes, but the more remote pre-natal conditions and influences that originally determined our tendencies

and

inclinations;

they

perceive

the

unfavorable

circumstances and temptations that surround us, and the weakness of our natures, and in a pitying and compassionate spirit allow for our follies, and to a certain extent even for our vices, and while recording in their memory our good intentions, and deeds, they constantly strive to forget the wrongs we have committed. While sometimes they are compelled to mourn over our misdeeds they rejoice and are made happy by our good actions. They view all our acts with sympathetic eyes, in the light of charity and love.

Those of my readers who are Spiritualists, perhaps have found comparatively little thus far in these pages to which they cannot yield, at least, a qualified assent, but in the description which follows of the character of the second sphere, and the heavens above it, they will have both their faith and patience severely taxed. With this hint of the trials in store for my readers I will proceed.

In the second sphere of the American heavens, or the Wicked heaven, as it is termed by the higher spirits, amid the gloom and desolation which prevail, are to be found cities, constituted of compact blocks of dwellings, 62

separated by streets running at right angles; in these respects resembling our own cities. The dwellings present a dingy, forlorn appearance, and suggest ideas of uncleanness, and discomfort, and there are certain quarters of some of these cities in which the dwellings resemble our tenement houses, and swarm with spirits, as ignorant and degraded as the majority of the same classes are here. The streets present a rough, neglected, and repulsive appearance, and the atmosphere is depressing and cheerless. There are a number of these cities in the second sphere, and they are situated in the midst of dreary, barren plains, the desolation of Which is but slightly relieved by a meagre, stinted vegetation. The inhabitants of these cities are clothed in garments which correspond to their degraded moral, and intellectual conditions, and their unhappy countenances reflect the passions, vices, and ignorance of their natures. In the lowest quarters of these cities, where are congregated the lowest and most degraded of the population, as above mentioned, many of the dwellings swarm with tenants, individuals and families living promiscuously in confusion, discord, and wretchedness, and many of them in the practice of the lowest vices, and grossest sensuality, while the air is polluted with profane and indecent language.

The food in the second sphere, as in all the heavens above it, is fruit, but it is of inferior quality, and restricted to a few simple varieties, and with

water is apportioned to each, family and person in quantities sufficient to merely satisfy the cravings of hunger, not to fully gratify their desires. There are other quarters of these cities which are superior to these, the streets being cleaner, and in better condition, while the dwellings present a neater appearance, both externally and internally, and their tenants are not compelled to herd together like cattle, as they do in the lowest quarters, and they present a better appearance every way, being better clothed, better fed, more decent, more intelligent, and less immoral. Here also are to be found flowers, of a few varieties, which the inhabitants cultivate; but there are no gardens. The majority of these people have been removed from the lowest quarters, having earned this favor by an amendment of their conduct and disposition. They have taken the first step in progression.

There are missionaries, as before stated, among these people, sent from the third and fourth heavens, who labor With them and strive to excite desires within them for something better, and higher, and Who do all they can to instruct and elevate them, and bring them out of the darkness and ignorance which enshroud their minds, for the great majority of them are extremely ignorant, and the greatest obstacle to their progress and elevation is the lack of capacity to realize the depths of their degradation, and it is to this point that the labors of the missionaries are principally directed, and While the majority of them are, for the time being, insensible to their appeals, and teachings, and 64

treat them with scorn and derision, on the other hand the labors of the missionaries are constantly rewarded with success in bringing others into the light, so that they are able to view themselves truly, or at least partially as they are, and as soon as their repentance has worked reformation in any considerable degree their teachers report their improvement to the proper authorities, and permission is accorded them to remove, first to better quarters of the, cities, and then, if their improvement continues, in due time they are permitted to advance to the third heaven.

All the cities in the second sphere are enclosed by walls which, strange to say, to all spirits are impassable, and there are gates, constantly guarded by spirits who are somewhat more advanced and intelligent than the inhabitants, upon whom are imposed the duties of wardens, in expiation of former sins. But the inhabitants, with some exceptions, are permitted to freely pass in and out of these gates, and make excursions into the surrounding country, but they find little enjoyment in these visits as all without is a barren wilderness. The most of them also are at liberty to visit the earth whenever they choose, and many avail themselves of the permission, while perhaps the majority do not. Their course to earth is by an avenue, or passage way, through the first or Indian sphere, but they perceive nothing of this sphere while passing through it, their view being limited by the walls which bound this passage way on each side. 65

The country immediately surrounding all these cities in the second sphere is a wilderness of barren plains, with here and there scrubby trees and stinted, unsightly shrubbery not a stream of water, though perhaps here and there a stagnant pool, not an animal of any species, it is indeed the picture of desolation, a poverty stricken region in the tritest sense of the words. A few scattered buts are to be seen, some of them only partially elevated above the surface of the ground, the occupants of which vegetate, as they formerly did on earth, and who continue this miserable existence until, through the efforts of kind and self-sacrificing missionary spirits, aspirations for Something higher and better are implanted in their minds.

As to the broad country more remote front the cities, this is of the same general character, and multitudes of poor unhappy spirits, in tattered, wretched garments, are, scattered over it, some living in huts, like those just mentioned, others in the cliffs and ledges of rocks, and others still in cavities in the earth. Multitudes of other discontented, restless beings, without definite motive or object, constantly wander over these desolate regions, approaching and ascending in succession every elevated spot, with vague hopes that from its summit some object or scene of a more cheerful character may meet their gaze, and each time only to meet with sorrowful disappointment. On every hand are the same sterility and desolation, while sombre, leaden clouds 66

overspread these dismal regions and effectually exclude every direct ray of the glorious orb which, instinctively, they know is shedding its mellow light on happier beings in the heavens above them.

My instructors have discovered six divisions of the second sphere; the first being the abode of the ignorant and degraded; the second, of those who are intelligent and cultivated, but whose natures are to a considerable extent depraved; the third, of those who possessing intelligence and refinement, and being more inclined to do right than wrong, have yet from weakness of character, and force of circumstances, been led into sin and crime; the fourth, a division appropriated to the spirits of ignorant and degraded American Negroes; the fifth, the abode of ignorant and bigoted Roman Catholics, and the sixth, the place set apart for bigoted and intolerant Protestants, and my, instructors have reasons for believing that there are still other divisions which they have not yet discovered. These, collectively, constitute the "hells" of Swedenborg.

The first of the above mentioned divisions, being the abode of ignorant and degraded spirits, we have already described, the second, the abode of intellectual and cultivated but more or less depraved spirits, differs from the former in respect to the dwellings and streets in the cities being superior to those in the best quarters of the cities Of that division, while the adjacent country is of the same 67

desolate character, and in all other respects the resemblance is complete. Here also missionaries from higher heavens are to be found Striving to impress the minds of these morally darkened souls with a sense of their errors, and deficiencies, and to cause them to realize that their dearest friends in the heavens above are anxiously, yet hopefully, awaiting them, so that repentance and reformation may follow. But their friends, unless it be for special reasons, are not permitted to visit them, this also being true of all other spirits in the second sphere.

Mr. Owen visited this division, as he had previously visited the first, and was exceedingly interested in what he observed, and also in what he learned from his guide. All the spirits he there met were intelligent, and all evinced cultivation and refinement in greater or less degrees. Among them were lawyers, physicians, clergymen, merchants, etc., and accomplished and refined ladies. Though they were all at liberty to re visit the earth he was told by all he conversed with, about twenty, that they had little or no desire to do so, and rarely or never availed themselves of the privilege.

The general character of the third division of the second sphere is similar to that of the second, and of the fourth I have learned nothing but the fact of its existence, and its appropriation to degraded American Negroes. The fifth and sixth divisions we will now proceed to describe. 68

Were one world in the universe a hell, Were one soul in the universe a fiend, Damned hopelessly to everlasting pain, 'Twould be the torturing atom that inflames The vision.

Every world and every sphere Would weep in woful sympathy with woe. The consciousness of all created life Would yearn and grieve and anguish. God Himself, Who, in the universal consciousness Dwells throned and radiant, would receive no joy, But only grief, from His fair universe. "â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Harris.

Eternal Salvation William Stainton Moses The Higher Aspects of Spiritualism (1880)

The idea of a good God sacrificing his sinless son as a propitiation for man is repudiated as monstrous. Equally strong is the rejection of the notion of a store of merit laid up by the death of this incarnate God on which the vilest reprobate may draw at his death, and gain access to the society of God and the perfected. In place of this it is said that man can have no saviour outside of himself; that no second person can relieve him from the consequences of the conscious transgression of known laws; that no transference of merit can wipe out in a moment a state which is the result of a lifetime's work, nor counter-balance that which is indelible, save by slow process of obliteration, even as it was built up; that man stands alone in his responsibility for his deeds, and must work out his own salvation and atone for his own sin. At the same time, much is made of helps and aids to man's efforts in the power of prayer, in the work of ministering spirits; and sins of various kinds, which are the result of bodily organisation or of unavoidable surroundings, are leniently dealt with. The material resurrection and the material heaven and hell go too. The resurrection of the body, long since given up by scientific men, is superseded by the resurrection of the spirit body, the real individual, 70

from the dead matter with which it has been temporarily clothed, not in a far off future, but at the moment of dissolution. This body goes to the place for which it has fitted itself. It does not remain dormant, save in exceptional cases of premature withdrawal from earth, but has absolute continuity of existence in a state very like the earth it has just quitted. Its heaven is a state of development, and consciousness of duty done, knowledge gained, and progress made. Its hell is the remorse of cleared perceptions, of knowledge of opportunities wasted and graces lost, the awful, terrible state wherein the spirit is led to see itself, its foul sins, its sensual lusts and disfigurements, as the Pure and Holy see them; the lonely sense of wasted life; the sight of loved ones soaring away and leaving it alone with the depraved; the feeling that the great work has yet to be done; the burning flame which shall eat out the past, and leave a future of renewed helpful effort to be begun anew. Material fire and brimstone are gone, but does no hell remain? The harps and the thrones and the hymns are gone, but is there no heaven in the consciousness of progress, knowledge, love, in the society of those who have gemmed with their deeds the history of earth; in the sense of gradual but real perfecting which the blessed spirits feel?

Temptation A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands By Franchezzo, Transcribed by A. Farnese (1896)

I was again called upon to go to earth upon a mission of help, and to leave for a time my wanderings in the spirit spheres; and now it was that the greatest and most terrible temptation of my life came to me. In the course of my work I was brought across one still in the earth body, whose influence over my earthly life had done more than aught else to wreck and spoil it, and though I also had not been blameless—far indeed from it—yet I could not but feel an intense bitterness and thirst for revenge whenever I thought of this person and all the wrongs that I had suffered—wrongs brooded over till at times I felt as if my feelings must have vent in some wild burst of passionate resentment.

In my wanderings upon the earth plane I had learned many ways in which a spirit can still work mischief to those he hates who are yet in the flesh. Far more power is ours than you would dream of, but I feel it is wiser to let the veil rest still upon the possibilities the world holds even after death for the revengeful spirit. I could detail many terrible cases I know of as having actually taken place—mysterious murders and strange crimes committed, none knew why or how, by those on 72

earth whose brains were so disordered that they were not themselves responsible for their actions, and were but the tools of a possessing spirit. These and many kindred things are known to us in the spirit spheres where circumstances often wear a very different aspect from the one shown to you. The old beliefs in demoniacal possession were not so visionary after all, only these demons or devils had themselves been once the denizens of earth.

It so happened to me then, that when I came once more, after long years of absence, across this person whom I so hated, all my old feelings of suffering and anger revived, but with tenfold more force than is possible in earth life, for a spirit has far, far greater capabilities of suffering or enjoyments, of pleasure or pain, love or hate, than one whose senses are still veiled and deadened by the earthly envelope, and thus all the senses of a disembodied spirit are tenfold more acute.

Thus when I once more found myself beside this person, the desire for my long-suspended revenge woke again, and with the desire a most devilish plan for its accomplishment suggested itself to me. For my desire of vengeance drew up to me from their haunts in the lowest hell, spirits of so black a hue, so awful a type, that never before had I seen such beings or dreamed that out of some nightmare fable they could exist. These beings cannot live upon the 73

earth plane nor even in the lower spheres surrounding it, unless there be congenial mortals or some strong magnetic attraction to hold them there for a time, and though they often rise in response to an intensely evil desire upon the part of either a mortal or spirit on the earth plane, yet they cannot remain long, and the moment the attracting force becomes weakened, like a rope that breaks, they lose their hold and sink down again to their own dark abodes. At times of great popular indignation and anger, as in some great revolt of an oppressed people in whom all sense but that of suffering and anger has been crushed out, the bitter wrath and thirst for revenge felt by the oppressed will draw around them such a cloud of these dark beings, that horrors similar to those witnessed in the great French Revolution and kindred revolts of down-trodden people, will take place, and the maddened populace are for a time completely under the control of those spirits who are truly as devils.

In my case these horrible beings crowded round me with delight, whispered in my ears and pointed out a way of revenge so simple, so easy, and yet so horrible, so appalling in its wickedness, that I shall not venture to write it down lest the idea of it might be given to some other desperate one, and like seed falling into a fruitful soil bring forth its baleful blossoms.

At any other time I should have shrunk back in horror from these beings and their foul suggestions. Now in my mad passion I welcomed them and was about to invoke their aid to help me to accomplish my vengeance, when like the tones of a silver bell there fell upon my ears the voice of my beloved, to whose pleadings I was never deaf and whose tones could move me as none else could The voice summoned me to come to her by all that we both held sacred, by all the vows we had made and all the hopes we had cherished, and though I could not so instantly abandon my revenge, yet I was drawn as by a rope to the one I loved from the one I hated.

And the whole wild crew of black devils came with me, clinging to me and trying to hold me back, yet with an ever feebler hold as the voice of love and purity and truth penetrated more and more deeply to my heart.

And then I saw my beloved standing in her room, her arms stretched out to draw me to her, and two strong bright spirit guardians by her side, while around her was drawn a circle of flaming silver light as though a wall of lightning encircled her; yet at her call I passed through it and stood at her side.

The dark crowd sought to follow, but were kept back by the flaming ring. One of the boldest made a rush at me as I passed through, and 75

tried to catch hold, but his hand and arm were caught by the flame of light and shriveled up as though thrust into a furnace. With a yell of pain and rage he drew back amidst a wild howl of derisive laughter from the rest.

With all the power of her love my darling pleaded with me that I should give up this terrible idea, and promise her nevermore to yield to so base a thought. She asked me if I loved my revenge so much better than I loved her, that to gratify it I would raise up between us the insurmountable barrier of my meditated crime? Was her love indeed so little to me after all?

At first I would not, could not yield, but at last she began to weep, and then my heart melted as though her tears had been warm drops of her heart's blood falling on it to thaw its ice, and in bitter anguish of soul that I should have caused her to shed tears I knelt at her feet and prayed to be forgiven my wicked thoughtâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;prayed that I might still be left with her love to cheer me, still with her for my one thought, one hope, my all. And as I prayed the circle of dark spirits, who had been fighting to get in and beckoning to me and trying to draw me out, broke like a cloud of black mist when the wind scatters it, and they sank away down to their own abode again, while I sank exhausted at my darling's feet.

At times after this I saw the dark spirits draw near to me, though never again could they come close, for I had an armor in my darling's love and my promise to her which was proof against all their attacks.

Through the Wall of Fire A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands By Franchezzo, Transcribed by A. Farnese (1896)

The companion who was assigned to me in this expedition was a spirit who had been in this sphere before, and who was, therefore, well fitted to act as my guide on entering this Land of Horrors. After a short time we were to separate, he told me, and each to follow his own pathâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but at any time either of us could, if needful, summon the other to his aid in case of extremity.

As we drew near the great bank of smoke and flame I remarked to my companion upon the strangely material appearance they presented. I was accustomed in the spirit world to the realism and solidity of all our surroundings which mortals are apt to imagine must be of some ethereal and intangible nature, since they are not visible to ordinary eyesight,â&#x20AC;&#x201D;still these thick clouds of smoke, these leaping tongues of flame, were contrary to what I had pictured Hell as being like. I had seen dark and dreary countries and unhappy spirits in my wanderings, but I had seen no flames, no fire of any sort, and I had totally disbelieved in material flames in a palpable form, and had deemed the fires of Hell to be merely a figure of speech to express a mental state. Many have taught that it is so, and that the torments of 78

Hell are mental and subjective, not objective at all. I said something of this to my companion, and he replied:

"Both ideas are in a sense right. These flames and this smoke are created by the spiritual emanations of the unhappy beings who dwell within that fiery wall, and material as they seem to your eyes, opened to the sight of spiritual things, they would be invisible to a mortal's sight, could one still in the body of flesh by any miracle visit this spot. They have, in fact, no earthly material in them, yet they are none the less material in the sense that all things earthly or spiritual are clothed in matter of some kind. The number and variety of degrees of solidity in matter are infinite, as without a certain covering of etherealized matter even spiritual buildings and spiritual bodies would be invisible to you, and these flames being the coarse emanations of these degraded spirits, possess for your eyes an appearance even more dense and solid than for the inhabitants themselves."

My companion's spirit name was "Faithful Friend," a name given him in memory of his devotion to a friend who abused his friendship and finally betrayed him, and whom he had even then forgiven and helped in the hour when shame and humiliation overtook the betrayer, and when reproach and contempt or even revenge might have seemed amply justifiable to many minds. This truly noble spirit 79

had been a man of by no means perfectly noble character in his earthly life, and had therefore passed at death into the lower spheres near the earth plane, but he had risen rapidly, and at the time I met him he was one of the Brotherhood in the second sphere, to which I had so recently been admitted, and had been once before through the Kingdoms of Hell.

We now drew near what appeared like the crater of a vast volcanoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; ten thousand Vesuviuses in one! Above us the sky was black as night, and but for the lurid glare of the flames we should have been in total darkness. Now that we have reached the mass of fire I saw that it was like a fiery wall surrounding the country, through which all who sought to enter or leave it must pass.

"See now, Franchezzo," said Faithful Friend, "we are about to pass through this wall of fire, but do not let that alarm you, for so long as your courage and your will do not fail, and you exert all your willpower to repel these fiery particles, they cannot come in actual contact with your body. Like the waters of the Red Sea they will fall apart on either side and we shall pass through unscathed.

"Were any one of weak will and timid soul to attempt this they would fail, and be driven back by the force of these flames which are propelled outwards by a current of strong will-force set in motion by 80

the fierce and powerful beings who reign here, and who thus, as they imagine, protect themselves from intrusions from the higher spheres. To us, however, with our more spiritualized bodies, these flames and the walls and rocks you will find in this land, are no more impenetrable than is the solid material of earthly doors and walls, and as we can pass at will through them, so can we pass through these, which are none the less sufficiently solid to imprison the spirits who dwell in this country. The more ethereal a spirit is the less can it be bound by matter, and at the same time the less direct power can it have in the moving of matter, without the aid of the physical material supplied by the aura of certain mediums. Here, as on earth, we would, in order to move material substances, require to use the aura of some of the mediumistic spirits of this sphere. At the same time we shall find that our higher spiritual powers have become muffled, so to say, because in order to enter this sphere and make ourselves visible to its inhabitants, we have had to clothe ourselves in its conditions, and thus we are more liable to be affected by its temptations. Our lower natures will be appealed to in every form, and we shall have to direct our efforts to prevent them from again dominating us.

My friend now took my hand firmly in his and we "willed" ourselves to pass through the wall of fire. I confess that a momentary sense of fear passed over me as we began to enter it, but I felt we were "in for 81

it," so exerting all my powers and concentrating my thoughts I soon found that we were floating throughâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the flames forming a fiery arch below and above us through which as through a tunnel we passed. Thinking of it now I should say it must have been about a quarter to half a mile thick, judging as one would by earthly measurements, but at the time I did not take sufficient note to be very exact, all my energies being directed to the repelling of the fiery particles from myself.

As we emerged we found ourselves in a land of night. It might have seemed like the bottomless pit of desolation had we not stood upon solid enough ground, while above us was this canopy of black smoke. How far this country extended it was impossible to form any idea, since the heavy atmosphere like a black fog shut in our vision on every side. I was told that it extended through the whole of this vast and dreadful sphere. In some parts there were great tumbled jagged mountains of black rocks, in others long and dreary wastes of desert plains, while yet others were mighty swamps of black oozing mud, full of the most noisome crawling creatures, slimy monsters, and huge bats. Again there were dense black forests of gigantic, repulsive-looking trees, almost human in their power and tenacity, encircling and imprisoning those who ventured amongst them. Ere I left this awful land I had seen these and other dreadful regions, but

truly neither I nor anyone else could ever really describe them in all their loathsomeness and foulness.

As we stood looking at this country my sight, gradually becoming used to the darkness, enabled me to perceive the surrounding objects dimly, and I saw that before us there was a highway marked by the passage of many spirit feet across the black plain on which we stood. A plain covered with dust and ashes, as though all the blighted hopes, the dead ashes of misused earthly lives had been scattered there.

Evil Lives on Earth and then the Same in Hell A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands By Franchezzo, Transcribed by A. Farnese (1896)

Away before me stretched a narrow path, and curious to see where it would lead I followed it, sure that it would somehow lead me to those whom I could help. After following it for a short time I came to the foot of a range of black mountains, and before me was the entrance to a huge cavern. Horrible reptiles were hanging on to the walls and crawling at my feet. Great funguses and monstrous air plants of an oozy slimy kind hung in festoons like ragged shrouds from the roof, and a dark pool of stagnant water almost covered the floor. I thought of turning away from this spot, but a voice seemed to bid me go on, so I entered, and skirting round the edge of the dark pool found myself at the entrance to a small dark passage in the rocks. Down this I went, and turning a corner saw before me a red light as from a fire, while dark forms like goblins passed and repassed between it and myself. Another moment and I stood at the end of the passage. Before me was a gigantic dungeon-like vault, its uneven rocky roof half revealed and half hidden by the masses of lurid smoke and flames which arose from an enormous fire blazing in the middle of the cavern, while round it were dancing such a troop of demons as might well typify the Devils of Hell. With shrieks and yells of laughter 84

they were prodding at the fire with long black spears and dancing and flinging themselves about in the wildest fashion, while in a corner were huddled together a dozen or so of miserable dark spirits towards whom they made frantic rushes from time to time as if about to seize and hurl them into the fire, always retreating again with yells and howls of rage.

I soon perceived that I was invisible to these beings, so taking courage from that fact, I drew nearer. To my horror I discovered that the fire was composed of the bodies of living men and women who writhed and twisted in the flames, and were tossed about by the spears of those awful demons. I was so appalled by this discovery that I cried out to know if this was a real scene or only some horrible illusion of this dreadful place, and the same deep mysterious voice that had often spoken to me in my wanderings answered me now. "Son! they are living souls who in their earthly lives doomed hundreds of their fellow men to die this dreadful death, and knew no pity, no remorse, in doing so. Their own cruelties have kindled these fierce flames of passion and hate in the breast of their many victims, and in the spirit world these fiery germs have grown till they are now a fierce flame to consume the oppressors. These fires are fed solely by the fierce cruelties of those they now consume; there is not here one pang of anguish which has not been suffered a hundred fold more in the persons of these spirits' many helpless victims. From this 85

fire these spirits will come forth touched by a pity, born of their own sufferings, for those they wronged in the past, and then will be extended to them the hand of help and the means of progression through deeds of mercy as many and as great as have been their merciless deeds in the past. Do not shudder nor marvel that such retribution as this is allowed to be. The souls of these spirits were so hard, so cruel, that only sufferings felt by themselves could make them pity others. Even since they left the earth life they have only been intent upon making others more helpless suffer, till the bitter hatred they have aroused has become at last a torrent which has engulfed themselves. Furthermore, know that these flames are not truly material, although to your eyes and to theirs they appear so, for in the spirit world that which is mental is likewise objective, and fierce hatred or burning passion does indeed seem a living fire. You shall now follow one of these spirits and see for yourself that what seems to you cruel justice is yet mercy in disguise. Behold these passions are burning themselves out and the souls are about to pass into the darkness of the plain beyond."

As the voice ceased the flames died down and all was darkness save for a faint bluish light like phosphorus that filled the cavern, and by it I saw the forms of the spirits rise from the ashes of the fire and pass out of the cavern. As I followed them one became separated from the others and passing on before me went into the streets of a city that 86

was near. It seemed to me like one of the old Spanish cities of the West Indies or South America. There were Indians passing along its streets and mingling with Spaniards and men of several other nations.

Following the spirit through several streets we came to a large building which seemed to be a monastery of the order of Jesuitsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; who had helped to colonize the country and force upon the unhappy natives the Roman Catholic religion, in the days when religious persecution was thought by most creeds to be a proof of religious zeal; and then, while I stood watching this spirit, I saw pass before me a panorama of his life.

I saw him first chief of his order, sitting as a judge before whom were brought many poor Indians and heretics, and I saw him condemning them by hundreds to torture and flames because they would not become converts to his teachings. I saw him oppressing all who were not powerful enough to resist him, and extorting jewels and gold in enormous quantities as tribute to him and to his order; and if any sought to resist him and his demands he had them arrested and almost without even the pretense of a trial thrown into dungeons and tortured and burned. I read in his heart a perfect thirst for wealth and power and an actual love for beholding the sufferings of his victims, and I knew (reading as I seemed to do his innermost soul) that his 87

religion was but a cloak, a convenient name, under which to extort the gold he loved and gratify his love of power.

Again I saw the great square or market place of this city with hundreds of great fires blazing all round it till it was like a furnace, and a whole helpless crowd of timid gentle natives were bound hand and foot and thrown into the flames, and their cries of agony went up to Heaven as this cruel man and his vile accomplices chanted their false prayers and held aloft the sacred cross which was desecrated by their unholy hands, their horrible lives of cruelty and vice, and their greed for gold. I saw that this horror was perpetrated in the name of the Church of Christâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;of him whose teachings were of love and charity, who came to teach that God was perfect Love. And I saw this man who called himself Christ's minister, and yet had no thought of pity for one of these unhappy victims; he thought alone of how the spectacle would strike terror to the hearts of other Indian tribes, and make them bring him more gold to satisfy his greedy lust. Then I beheld this man returned to his own land of Spain and revelling in his ill-gotten wealth, a powerful wealthy prince of the church, venerated by the poor ignorant populace as a holy man who had gone forth into that Western World beyond the seas to plant the banner of his church and preach the blessed gospel of love and peace, while, instead, his path had been marked in fire and blood, and then my sympathy for him was gone. Then I saw this man upon his deathbed, 88

and I saw monks and priests chanting mass for his soul that it might go to Heaven, and instead I saw it drawn down and down to Hell by the chains woven in his wicked life. I saw the great hordes of his former victims awaiting him there, drawn down in their turn by their thirst for revenge, their hunger for power to avenge their sufferings and the sufferings of those most dear to them.

I saw this man in Hell surrounded by those he had wronged, and haunted by the empty wraiths of such as were too good and pure to come to this place of horror or to wish for vengeance on their murderer, just as I had seen in the Frozen Land with the man in the icy cage; and in Hell the only thought of that spirit was rage because his power on earth was no moreâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his only idea how he might join with others in Hell as cruel as himself and thus still oppress and torture. If he could have doomed his victims to death a second time he would have done it. In his heart there was neither pity nor remorse, only anger that he was so powerless. Had he possessed one feeling of sorrow or one thought of kindness for another, it would have helped him and created a wall between himself and these vengeful spirits, and his sufferings, though they might be great, would not have at last assumed the physical aspect in which I had beheld them. As it was, his passion of cruelty was so great it fed and fanned into fresh life the spiritual flames which theirs created, till at last when I saw him first they were dying out exhausted by their own 89

violence. Those demons I had beheld were the last and most fierce of his victims in whom the desire for revenge was even then not fully satisfied, while those I had beheld crouching in the corner were some who, no longer desirous of tormenting him themselves, had yet been unable to withdraw themselves from beholding his sufferings and those of his accomplices.

And now I beheld that spirit with the newly awakened thought of repentance, returning to the city to warn others of his Jesuit fraternity, and to try to turn them from the path of his own errors. He did not yet realize the length of time that had elapsed since he had left the earth life, nor that this city was the spiritual counterpart of the one he had lived in on earth. In time, I was told, he would be sent back to earth to work as a spirit in helping to teach mortals the pity and mercy he had not shown in his own life, but first he would have to work here in this dark place, striving to release the souls of those whom his crimes had dragged down with him. Thus I left this man at the door of that building which was the counterpart of his earthly house, and passed on by myself through the city.

Like the Roman city this one was disfigured and its beauties blotted out by the crimes of which it had been the silent witness; and to me the air seemed full of dark phantom forms wailing and weeping and dragging after them their heavy chains. The whole place seemed 90

built upon living graves and shrouded in a dark red mist of blood and tears. It was like one vast prison house whose walls were built of deeds of violence and robbery and oppression.

And as I wandered on I had a waking dream, and saw the city as it had been on earth ere the white man had set his foot upon its soil. I saw a peaceful primitive people living upon fruits and grains and leading their simple lives in an innocence akin to that of childhood, worshiping the Great Supreme under a name of their own, yet none the less worshiping him in spirit and in truthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;their simple faith and their patient virtues the outcome of the inspiration given them from that Great Spirit who is universal and belongs to no creeds, no churches. Then I saw white men come thirsting for gold and greedy to grasp the goods of others, and these simple people welcomed them like brothers, and in their innocence showed them the treasures they had gathered from the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;gold and silver and jewels. Then I saw the treachery which marked the path of the white man; how they plundered and killed the simple natives; how they tortured and made slaves of them, forcing them to labor in the mines till they died by thousands; how all faith, all promises, were broken by the white man till the peaceful happy country was filled with tears and blood.

Then I beheld afar, away in Spain, a few good, true, kindly men whose souls were pure and who believed that they alone had the 91

true faith by which only man can be saved and live eternally, who thought that God had given this light to but one small spot of his earth, and had left all the rest in darkness and errorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;had left countless thousands to perish because this light had been denied to them but given exclusively to that one small spot of earth, that small section of his people.

I thought that these good and pure men were so sorry for those who, they thought, were in the darkness and error of a false religion, that they set forth and crossed that unknown ocean to that strange faraway land to carry with them their system of religion, and to give it to those poor simple people whose lives had been so good and gentle and spiritual under their own faith, their own beliefs.

I saw these good but ignorant priests land on this strange shore and beheld them working everywhere amongst the natives, spreading their own belief and crushing out and destroying all traces of a primitive faith as worthy of respect as their own. These priests were kind good men who sought to alleviate the physical lot of the poor oppressed natives even while they labored for their spiritual welfare also, and on every side there sprang up missions, churches and schools.

Then I beheld great numbers of men, priests as well as many others, come over from Spain, eager, not for the good of the church nor to spread the truths of their religion, but only greedy for the gold of this new land, and for all that could minister to their own gratification; men whose lives had disgraced them in their own country till they were obliged to fly to this strange one to escape the consequences of their misdeeds. I saw these men arrive in hordes and mingle with those whose motives were pure and good, till they had outnumbered them, and then thrust the good aside everywhere, and made of themselves tyrannical masters over the unhappy natives, in the name of the Holy Church of Christ.

And then I saw the Inquisition brought to the unhappy land and established as the last link in the chain of slavery and oppression thus riveted round this unhappy people, till it swept almost all of them from the face of the earth; and everywhere I beheld the wild thirst, the greed for gold that consumed as with a fire of hell all who sought that land. Blind were most of them to all its beauties but its gold, deaf to all thought but how they might enrich themselves with it; and in the madness of that time and that awful craving for wealth was this city of Hell, this spiritual counterpart of the earthly city built, stone upon stone, particle by particle, forming between itself and the city of earth chains of attraction which should draw down one by one each of its wicked inhabitants, for truly the earthly lives are building for each 93

man and woman their spiritual habitations. Thus all these monks and priests, all these fine ladies, all these soldiers and merchants, yea, and even these unhappy natives had been drawn down to Hell by the deeds of their earthly lives, by the passions and hatreds, the greed of gold, the bitter sense of wrongs unrequited and the thirst for revenge which those deeds had created.

Like to Like J. M. Peebles Seers of The Ages (1904)

The comparative darkness attending certain spirits for a long period in the land of souls, is only the reflex action of their own spiritual states. They generate the mist that dims their vision. Life is one lengthened chain. Voluntary acts are the links. As to-day is related to to-morrow, and as the conduct of youth affects manhood; so this life's thoughts, purposes, deeds, determine the immediate condition and position of those entering the immortal world. No death-miracle transforms sordid, scheming, wicked men in the " twinkling of an eye " to angels. True growth is a stranger to abrupt leaps. All progress is gradual. The malicious and depraved of this, carrying their hells with them, enter the hells or lower spheres of the spirit-life. They are in prisons of moral darkness. They lived base, and selfish lives. Their affections centered upon earth and earthly things, and by an inexorable law of their being they are mentally and psychologically imprisoned for a time near the surface of this planet. As fish to water, bird to air, so the earthly-minded to the grosser strata and aural circles belting the earth, till through aspiration, unfoldment, and refinement, they become prepared to traverse the starry spaces of the higher heavens. 95

We Make Our Own Heaven and Our Own Hell Hudson Tuttle Arcana of Nature (1909)

And walk an angel or a devil therein, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not in free realms of spiritlife, but now and here on earth.

Such I consider to be the religious aspect of Spiritualism. It is the combined moral excellence of the world. It is the essence of Christianity; but, while the latter involves itself in creeds and churches, the former acknowledges no other creed than the laws written in the natural world, no other interpreter than reason, no church but mankind.

While the churches descant on the efficacy of prayer, Spiritualism teaches that one good deed is worth all the formal prayers since Adam's time.

He believes in prayer, but in that prayer by which the workman molds iron into an engine, and wood into steamships, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the prayer of the hand as well as of the heart.

The Hollow Sphere Elsa Barker Letters From A Living Dead Man (1914)

Some time ago I started to write to you about certain visits which I had made to the infernal regions; but I was called away, and the letter was not finished. To-night I will take up the story again.

You must know that there are many hells, and they are mostly of our own making. That is one of those platitudes which are based upon fact.

Desiring one day to see the particular kind of hell to which a drunkard would be likely to go, I sought that part of the hollow sphere around the world which corresponds to one of those countries where drunkenness is most common. Souls, when they come out, usually remain in the neighbourhood where they have lived, unless there is some strong reason to the contrary.

I had no difficulty in finding a

hell full of drunkards. What do you fancy they were doing? Repenting their sins? Not at all. They were hovering around those places on earth where the fumes of alcohol, and the heavier fumes of those who over-indulge in alcohol, made sickening the atmosphere. It is no wonder that sensitive people dislike the neighbourhood of drinking 97

saloons. You would draw back with disgust and refuse to write for me should I tell you all that I saw. One or two instances will suffice.

I placed myself in a sympathetic and neutral state, so that I could see into both worlds. A young man with restless eyes and a troubled face entered one of those “gin palaces” in which gilding and highly polished imitation mahogany tend to impress the miserable wayfarer with the idea that he is enjoying the luxury of the “kingdoms of this world.” The young man’s clothes were threadbare, and his shoes had seen much wear. A stubble of beard was on his chin, for the price of a shave is the price of a drink, and a man takes that which he desires most—when he can get it.

He was leaning on the bar, drinking a

glass of some soul-destroying compound. And close to him, taller than he and bending over him, with its repulsive, bloated, ghastly face pressed close to his, as if to smell his whiskey-tainted breath, was one of the most horrible astral beings which I have seen in this world since I came out. The hands of the creature (and I use that word to suggest its vitality)—the hands of the creature were clutching the young man’s form, one long and naked arm was around his shoulders, the other around his hips. It was literally sucking the liquor-soaked life of its victim, absorbing him, using him, in the successful attempt to enjoy vicariously the passion which death had intensified.

But was that a creature in hell? you ask. Yes, for I could look into its mind and see its sufferings. For ever (the words “forever” may be used of that which seems endless) this entity was doomed to crave and crave and never to be satisfied.

There was in it just enough left of the mind which had made it man— just enough to catch a fitful glimpse now and then of the horror of its own state. It had no desire to escape, but the very consciousness of the impossibility of escape was an added torment. And dread was in the eyes of the thing—dread of the future into which it could not look, but which it felt waiting to drag it into that state of even greater suffering than its present, when the astral particles of its form, unable longer to hold together because of the absence of the unifying soul, would begin to rend and tear what was left of the mind and astral nerves—rending and tearing asunder, in terror and pain, that shape whose end was at hand.

For only the soul endures, and that which the soul deserts must perish and disintegrate.

And the young man who leaned on the bar in that gilded palace of gin was filled with a nameless horror and sought to leave the place; but the arms of the thing that was now his master clutched him tighter 99

and tighter, the sodden, vaporous cheek was pressed closer to his, the desire of the vampire creature aroused an answering desire in its victim, and the young man demanded another glass.

Verily, earth and hell are neighbouring states, and the frontier has never been charted.

I have seen hells of lust and hells of hatred; hells of untruthfulness, where every object which the wretched dweller tried to grasp turned into something else which was a denial of the thing desired, where truth was mocked eternally and nothing was real, but everythingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; changing and uncertain as untruthfulnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;became its own antithesis.

I have seen the anguished faces of those not yet

resigned to lies, have seen their frantic efforts to clutch reality, which melted in their grasp. For the habit of untruthfulness, when carried into this world of shifting shapes, surrounds the untruthful person with ever-changing images which mock him and elude.

Would he see the faces of his loved ones? The promise is given, and as the faces appear they turn into grinning furies. Would he grasp in memory the prizes of ambition? They are shown to be but disgrace in another form, and pride becomes weak shame. Would he clasp the hand of friendship? The hand is extendedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but in its clutch is a knife which pierces the vitals of the liar without destroying him, and the 100

futile attempt begins again, over and over, until the uneasy conscience is exhausted.

Beware of deathbed repentance and its after-harvest of morbid memories. It is better to go into eternity with one’s karmic burdens bravely carried upon the back, rather than to slink through the back door of hell in the stockinged-feet of a sorry cowardice.

If you have sinned, accept the fact with courage and resolve to sin no more; but he who dwells upon his sins in his last hour will live them over and over again in the state beyond the tomb.

Every act is

followed by its inevitable reaction; every cause is accompanied by its own effect, which nothing—save the powerful dynamics of Will itself—can modify; and when Will modifies the effect of an antecedent cause, it is always by setting up a counteracting and more powerful cause than the first—a cause so strong that the other is irresistibly carried along with it, as a great flood can sweep a trickling stream of water from an open hose-pipe, carrying the hosepipe cause and its trickling effect along with the rushing torrent of its own flood.

If you recognise the fact that you have sinned, set up good actions more powerful than your sins, and reap the reward for those.

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There is much more to be said about hells, but this is enough for tonight. At another time I may return to the subject.

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Wanderings in Hell JSM Smart A Subaltern in Spirit Land (1916)

WHEN I came to the house where I had last seen H.J.L. and R.L.W., I found R.L.W. there but not H.J.L., and asked him where the latter was.

R.L.W. “He is trying to get into touch with the Officer, but has not, as yet found him. He left just after you did, and has not yet returned. I’ve been fearfully lonely without him, and hope he will soon return.”

J.W. “I hope he will. You might go on with your narrative, and perhaps he’ll come. He has never yet failed to turn up for the interview with me on Monday.”

So R.L.W. began:

“After H.J.L. arrived, and you had gone, he started, ‘Now, Rex, you are on the astral plane. You are still partly material, though, as it were, refined matter the same as gas is compared to solid matter. The astral plane impinges on the earth plane, and partakes of its nature far more than the plane of the spirits in which I properly dwell. 103

“The astral plane corresponds fairly well to the idea of purgation, but the spirit plane contains what you know as Hell, and also part of the lower Heavens, but not the real high Heavens.

“In the astral plane you will find that you are still subject to earth influences. It is usual to speak as if earth influences are all to the bad, but this is not so. Here you can redeem past failings by doing good on the earth plane, and cleanse your spirit of earthly lusts and faults, but also, of course, you can hanker after forbidden earthly pleasures and, in a dim mockery of a way, can enjoy them, but to your bane. Here you can commit further sins, and finally cause your soul to drop down into that part of the spirit plane which is properly called Hell, and from thence it is far harder to climb than from this plane to the happy planes above.

“‘I said properly called Hell for there are parts of this astral plane which, to the superficial observer, appear very much like Hell. Still, this will hardly surprise you, seeing even on earth itself are to be found very close imitations of Hell. It is natural that where evil people congregate, there a condition will be found which approximates to Hell.

“The thing you have to do is to shun such districts carefully and 104

especially avoid people of an obviously evil nature. Those who suggest obsession and so forth are to be avoided at all costs. You know what obsession is, I perceive?”

“I replied, ‘Yes, Jack explained that to me once rather fully:

“H.J.L. continued, ‘Unfortunately your guide seems to have drifted rather far from you, but, doubtless, we shall rectify that in time.

“‘The first thing to do is to give you a chance of settling down among the new surroundings, and above all, to get your thoughts off the battlefield and such-like scenes.

“‘So now, I’m going to isolate you from all this. Indeed from the present world itself.’

“Then we rose and started on a long and seemingly endless journey, amid a thick fog, and over shadowed by tumult and fear. Every now and then I caught a fleeting glimpse of the landscape, which steadily grew wilder and stranger. I passed over what appeared to be great ice-fields and then through primeval forests, across tropic swamps, and on and on till life failed, till even the strange monsters of prehistoric times ceased, and a great Silence settled on all. (But you know this part quite well.) 105

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Slowly this silence ate into my brain. At times it was almost painful, and acted like a cauteriser, burning away the hideous tangle of shattered nerves.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;After a while this stage passed, and it began to act like a soothing balm. Gradually my whole being seemed to expand and drink it in, and my surroundings grew clearer and plainer. I realised that I was seated in the midst of a stony waste, where perpetual silence reigned.

Here it was very much like the Land of Unrest, only that the spirits who dwelt here were worse and more degraded looking. There was no attempt made at cultivation, and the sky overhead was almost dark like night, the light being only such as enabled them to see each other and the objects near them. Whereas in the Land of Unrest there were but wranglings and discontent and jealousy, here there were fierce fights and bitter quarrels. Here were gamblers and drunkards. Betting men, card sharpers, commercial swindlers, profligates, and thieves of every kind, from the thief of the slums to his well-educated counterpart in the higher circles of earth life. All whose instincts were roguish or dissipated, all who were selfish and degraded in their tastes were here, as well as many who would have been in a higher condition of spiritual life had not constant 106

association on earth with this class of men deteriorated and degraded them to the level of their companions, so that at death they had gravitated to this dark sphere, drawn down by ties of association. It was to this last class that I was sent, for amongst them there was hope that all sense of goodness and right was not quenched, and that the voice of one crying to them in the wilderness of their despair might be heard and lead them back to a better land.

The wretched houses or dwellings of this dark Land of Misery were many of them large spacious places, but all stamped with the same appalling look of uncleanness, foulness and decay. They resembled large houses to be seen in some of our slums, once handsome mansions and fine palaces, the abodes of luxury, which have become the haunts of the lowest denizens of vice and crime. Here and there would be great lonely tracts of country with a few scattered wretched houses, mere hovels, and in other places the buildings and the people were huddled together in great gloomy degraded-looking copies of your large cities of earth. Everywhere squalor and dirt and wretchedness reigned; nowhere was there one single bright or beautiful or gracious thing for the eye to rest upon in all this scene of desolation, made thus by the spiritual emanations from the dark beings who dwelt there.

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Amongst these wretched inhabitants I wandered with my little star of pure light, so small that it was but a bright spark flickering about in the darkness as I moved, yet around me it shed a soft pale light as from a star of hope that shone for those not too blinded by their own selfish evil passions to behold it. Here and there I would come upon some crouched in a doorway or against a wall, or in some miserable room, who would arouse themselves sufficiently to look at me with my light and listen to the words I spoke to them, and would begin to seek for the better way, the returning path to those upper spheres from which they had fallen by their sins. Some I would be able to induce to join me in my work of helping others, but as a rule they could only think of their own miseries, and long for something higher than their present surroundings, and even this, small as it seems, was one step, and the next one of thinking how to help others forward as well would soon follow.

One day in my wanderings through this country I came to the outskirts of a large city in the middle of a wide desolate plain. The soil was black and arid, more like those great cinder heaps that are seen near your iron works than anything I can liken it to. I was amongst a few dilapidated, tumble-down little cottages that formed a sort of fringe between the unhappy city and the desolate plain, when my ears caught the sound of quarreling and shouting coming from one of them, and curiosity made me draw near to see what the dispute 108

might be about and if even here there might not be someone whom I could help.

It was more like a barn than a house. A great rough table ran the length of the room, and round it upon coarse little wooden stools were seated about a dozen or so of men. Such men! It is almost an insult to manhood to give them the name. They were more like orangutans, with the varieties of pigs and wolves and birds of prey expressed in their coarse bloated distorted features. Such faces, such misshapen bodies, such distorted limbs, I can in no way describe them! They were clothed in various grotesque and ragged semblances of their former earthly finery, some in the fashion of centuries ago, others in more modern garb, yet all alike ragged, dirty, and unkempt, the hair disheveled, the eyes wild and staring and glowing now with the fierce light of passion, now with the sullen fire of despair and vindictive malice. To me, then, it seemed that I had reached the lowest pit of hell, but since then I have seen a region lower stillâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;far blacker, far more horrible, inhabited by beings so much fiercer, so much lower, that beside them these were tame and human. Later on I shall describe more fully these lowest beings, when I come to that part of my wanderings which took me into their kingdoms in the lowest hell, but the spirits whom I now saw fighting in this cottage were quarreling over a bag of coins which lay on the table. It had been found by one of them and then given to be 109

gambled for by the whole party. The dispute seemed to be because each wanted to take possession of it himself without regard to the rights of anyone else at all. It was simply a question of the strongest, and already they were menacing each other in a violent fashion. The finder of the money, or rather the spiritual counterpart of our earthly money, was a young man, under thirty I should say, who still possessed the remains of good looks, and but for the marks that dissipation had planted on his face would have seemed unfit for his present surroundings and degraded associates. He was arguing that the money was his, and though he had given it to be played for fairly he objected to be robbed of it by anyone. I felt I had no business there, and amidst a wild chorus of indignant cries and protestations that they "supposed they were as well able to say what was honest as he was," I turned and left them. I had proceeded but a short way, and was almost opposite another deserted little hovel when the whole wild crew came struggling and fighting out of the cottage, wrestling with each other to get near the young man with the bag of money whom the foremost of them were beating and kicking and trying to deprive of it. This one of them succeeded in doing, whereupon they all set upon him, while the young man broke away from them and began running towards me. In a moment there was a wild yell set up to catch him and beat him for an imposter and a cheat, since the bag was empty of gold and had only stones in it, the

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money, like the fairy gold in the stories, having turned, not into withered leaves, but into hard stones.

Almost before I realized it the wretched young man was clutching hold of me and crying out to me to save him from those devils; and the whole lot were coming down upon us in hot pursuit of their victim. Quick as thought I sprang into the empty hovel which gave us the only hope of asylum, dragging the unfortunate young man with me, and slamming the door I planted my back against it to keep our pursuers out. My Goodness! How they did yell and stamp and storm and try to batter in that door; and how I did brace myself up and exert all the force of mind and body to keep them out! I did not know it then, but I know now that unseen powers helped me and held fast that door till, baffled and angry that they could not move it, they went off at last to seek for some fresh quarrel or excitement elsewhere.

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Hell Is Not Forever William Walker Atkinson The Astral World (1916)

In passing rapidly through these regions, you will find that each has its own particular environment in exact accordance with the beliefs of the persons inhabiting it. Some have the appearance of a plain, oldfashioned meeting house, on an immense scale; while others resemble a gigantic cathedral, filled with gorgeous decorations and paraphernalia, and echoing with the sound of glorious litanies and other ritualistic forms of worship. Each has its officiating priests or preachers, according to its regulations. You see at a glance that the environment, scenery, buildings, decorations, etc., are built up from the astral substance by the imaginative power of the minds of those congregating at each point. All the stage-setting and properties are found fully in evidence (I say this in all seriousness, and with no attempt to be frivolous or flippant) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; you may even see the golden crowns, harps, and stiff haloes, in some cases, and hear the sound of "the eternal chant of praise."

I regret to be compelled to call your attention to the regions of some lower forms of religion, in which there is a background picture of a 112

burning hell, at which the devotees gaze with satisfaction, feeling the joy of heaven intensified by the sight of the suffering souls in hell. It is a satisfaction to tell you that the suffering souls, and their hell, are but fictitious things created by the imagination from the astral substance â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a mere stage setting as it were. Dante's Inferno has its adequate counterparts on the Astral Plane.

I ask you, particularly to gaze upon this most horrible scene before us. A large severely furnished edifice is shown, with seated congregation wearing stern, hard, cruel faces. They gaze toward the top of a smoking bottomless pit, from which rises a sort of great, endless chain, each link having a huge sharp hook upon which is impaled a doomed soul. This soul is supposed to rise to the top of the pit once in a thousand years, and as each appears it is heard to cry in mournful accents: "How long â&#x20AC;&#x201D; how long?" To this agonized question, a deep stern voice is heard replying: "Forever! Forever!" I am glad to tell you that this congregation is dwindling, many evolving to higher conceptions, and practically no new recruits arriving from the earth-plane to fill the depleting ranks. In time, this congregation will disappear entirely, and the ghastly stage scenery and properties will gradually dissolve into astral dust and fade from sight forever.

All forms of religion, high and low, oriental and occidental, ancient and modern, are represented on this plane. Each has its own 113

particular abode. It would delight the heart of a student of comparative religion to visit these scenes. There are some beautiful and inspiring scenes and regions on this plane, filled with advanced souls and beautiful characters. But, alas, there are some repulsive ones also. It is marvellous, in viewing these scenes, to realize how many forms human religion and theology has taken in its evolution. Every form of deity has its region, with its worshippers. It is interesting to visit the scenes once filled with the worshippers of the most ancient religions. Many have only a handful of worshippers remaining on this plane; while in some cases, the worshippers have entirely disappeared, and the astral scenery of the region, its temples and shrines, are crumbling away and disappearing just as have the old temples disappeared on the material plane.

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The Antechamber of Hell JSM Smart A Subaltern in Spirit Land (1916)

July 31st, 1916.

AGAIN, as before, I was aware of the hideous conflict of the good and the evil powers. I determined to try and note some of these strange beings, so unlike anything I had ever even dreamed of. I saw a good number of bloated, shapeless monstrosities, with slanting eyes and masses of feelers, more animal than human in shape, such creatures as the foul animal that had barred my path the first time.

There was a creature that looked like a serpent, save that its head was almost human but viler than the most depraved human could be. Another type was of the nature of an enormous bat, but the head was different. These creatures mostly had huge goggling eyes and beaklike mouths. There was quite a number of huge dragons, not unlike the fabled monsters of legend, together with strange creatures like griffins, huge spider-like monstrosities, and curious masses of fungous growth, which moved and floated amid the red waves. The only thing they bad in common was their eyes, which were either large, goggling, and globular in shape, or else narrow and slanting. 115

All were yellow or red, and absolutely malevolent in expression.

Here and there I saw creatures which looked like men, and yet were not, and also strange composite creatures, half-human, half-animal.

One of these man-like monsters, huge, in stature, and apparently a leader, barred my path. Enormous he was, and his shape, though blurred and indistinct, took the form of a naked man, with huge, distorted, and misshapen limbs. His face was black, save for the eyes; no nose and mouth at all, just two long, narrow, slit-like eyes, set at a curious angle, the top reaching towards the ears, the bottom almost joining just below where the mouth should have been.

Yet the thing could speak, or, rather, deliver its thoughts, for it cried out, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have heard of your coming and going thus unmolested through our ranks, but this time they shall end. Stay!â&#x20AC;? And I stayed. Cold dread seized hold of me. My heart seemed to stand still, but, of course, I had no such organ, yet such is the force of habit that I experienced just this feeling. I cried on my guide for help as the evil monster rushed on me; and my angelic guide came.

But though the other creatures fell away before the rays of blinding light which poured from him, yet the leader moved not. Instead, he seemed to pour forth in answer from his whole body clouds of dull 116

brown smoke.

A kind of darkness which beat up against the light

and held it there, while from under the shadow of the darkness his followers gathered and shrieked defiance at my guide.

Fiercer and fiercer grew the light, and denser grew the. mass of brown-black smoke.

Then I perceived that we were moving. I sensed it, as it were, for I could see nothing but a ring of darkness around the spot of intense light in which I stood, and which burnt me fiercely. On we moved, and suddenly the wall of darkness shivered, and I perceived why. We had reached the spot where the powers of light came up against the powers of darkness, and their light had joined hands with that of my guardian spirit.

Then it faded away, and on I went through similar scenes to those described before till I came to H.J.L. and R.L.W. in their house. Here I told them of my adventures on the way, and inquired: “Do you think that this power of my guide’s to make me unaware of what is happening would be effective if I were dead, or do all who die have to pass through that field of struggling spirits?”

R.L.W. “Well, if it helps to elucidate that point, I’ve never passed through it, but I’ve seen quite a number of elementals on different 117

occasions.”

H.J.L. “Let us ask my guide.”

Slowly the great white figure appeared, and, as its whiteness grew in intensity, R.L.W. covered his eyes with his hand, and then sank to the ground. The sight of the majestic figure almost blinded me, but I was just able to bear it. Then the bell-like voice pealed out:

Those who deserve to be hurled into such surroundings will see them, and, since they must be very evil to go there, their guides will long since have fled from them, therefore no help will reach them. This is the antechamber of Hell. Though it is on the astral plane, seldom, if ever, does a man escape therefrom. Thence the road lies, through the valleys of Hell, and so to the hill which leads to redemption.

It is well that you should see these places, for they are springs from which flow so much that is evil both on earth and on this plane. As much as you can bear is revealed to you, and no more.

“The ordinary mortal passes through the earth plane even as your brother did, and there sees the newly slain still fighting as on earth, but the region where the evil powers well up is the antechamber of 118

Hell, and only after a time does the hardened sinner sink there.

“Just as those who grow better weary of the strife between man and man and wander away into the regions where you now are, so those who grow more and more evil sink away from the conflict with men into the conflict of the powers of evil, where these destroy their astral bodies and hurl them into that part of the spirit plane which you call Hell.”

The voice ceased and he vanished, and after a while Rex recovered. Then I spoke to H.J.L.

“What of those who wander away from the fight, yet after a while fall into the sin of obsession and so sink to Hell?”

H.J.L. “There are many roads to Hell, just as there are many roads to the realms above. The regions of hate are the planes where the conflict between the powers is raging. Most of the sins of obsession fall under other headings, and so to Hell, when the sinner has destroyed his astral body, but it would

be quite possible to work

back to that very strata via the road of obsession. There are many such cases where an astral obsesses a man to murder or worse. That astral will pass through the same red sea to Hell.

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“Remember however, conditions are abnormal just now. Hate has seldom been so powerful or so active. Hence, though the Officer passed into Hell via that gateway, it left very little impression on his mind.

“But again we must separate after a few words of general conversation with Rex.”

I told H.J.L. about Aunt. He expressed his concern and added, “I wonder where she will go? To the Realm of Belief without Acts, I expect. Probably she will join company with H—.

“I must try and help her on her way, but I don’t suppose she’ll remain any time on the astral plane, and I can’t go to the plane above my own. I’m rather afraid, however, she’ll vegetate in the division of Faith without Acts. That is the great difficulty there. The besetting sin of our sphere is Ignorance; of the one above. Self-complacency. We do not suffer from self-complacency, so, once we are sufficiently developed to pass on, we go through the plane above fairly quickly. Belief, with acts, needs a lot of self-sacrifice.

Yes, I’m rather afraid she’ll stagnate for a time, partly because she’ll be quite content to remain there.

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“Well, you really must· be off!”

So I went, and as before, lost consciousness.

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Sexual Indulgence J. Hewat McKenzie Spirit Intercourse (1917)

Another gorge inspected was devoted to beings whose lives had been given over to excessive animal lusts. The picture here described is of such a bestial character that those of a supersensitive nature may prefer to leave the next few pages unread. The author, however, believes the subject too important to be omitted, and therefore supplies a few details of what life in spirit spheres offers to those whose lives on earth were wholly centred on the things of the flesh. Reformatories for the correction of sexual vice are very plentiful on the lowest sphere, for such actions lead the human family into the most degraded depths of the spiritual world. Within the shadows of a wide and deep gorge lay a large lake, from the black water of which emanated a heavy, steam-like moisture, with a stench similar to that which proceeds from a cesspool. Its size was about a mile square, and dotted over its surface were to be seen a number of human heads in pairs. On the banks stood a man and a woman as if about to enter the water together, but the woman seemed loth to do so, owing to the disagreeable odor which arose from its surface as it was disturbed. Both seemed of middle age; the man's face was sullen and brutish, but the woman was horrible and ghastly in 122

appearance. Her jaw had dropped on one side, so that her chin rested upon her chest, and the mouth stood wide open. The eyes were lustreless, like those of a dead fish. The face was the face of dead flesh, and the hair fell over it in loose and careless wisps. The woman stood irresolute, as if wishing to turn away, but the man ultimately prevailed upon her, and together they entered the pool. Several of the older residents, standing some little distance off upon the bank, jeered, and one, pointing his hand towards them, said, with a scornful laugh, "Ha ! These poor simpletons imagine they can play the old game of earth here. They will soon realize that such hunger goes unsatisfied in this dead world". At the edge of the pool lay a woman with her head upon the bank, sick and groaning and asking to die, for the vapors in which she lay seemed as if they would choke her. No one offered her help, for all were too self-centered to give her a thought, and anyone whose compassion could be aroused at such a sight would have been too good for such a place. Compassion does sometimes arise, but it is a sign of reformation, and when it appears, that one is ready for a higher state.

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Transmuting Sinfulness Tudor Pole Private Dowding (1919)

I have looked into hell! I may have to return to that region. I shall be given my choice. Grant that I may be strong enough to offer myself freely. Hell is a thought region. Evil dwells there and works out its purposes. The forces used to hold mankind down in the darkness of ignorance are generated in hell! It is not a place; it is a condition. The human race has created the condition. It has taken millions of years to reach its present state. I dare not tell you what I saw there. My brother needed help. A soldier, who had committed very evil deeds, had been killed. I will draw a veil over them. He was a degenerate, a murderer, a sensualist. He died cursing God and man. An awful death. This man was drawn towards hell by the law of attraction. My brother had been told off to rescue him. He took me with him. At first I refused to go. Then I went.

An angel of light came to protect us, otherwise we should have been lost in the blackness of the pit. This sounds sensational, even grotesque. It is the truth. The power of evil! Have you any idea of its mighty strength, its lure? Can that power be an illusion too? The angel said so. The angel said the power of hell was now at its 124

supreme height. It drew its power from man! As man rose toward spiritual life, the powers of darkness would subside and finally become extinguished. 'Extinguished' is my word. The angel said 'transmuted.'

That conception is quite beyond me. We descended gloomy avenues. The darkness , grew. There was a strange allurement about the atmosphere. Even the angel's light grew dim. I thought we were lost. At moments I hoped we were lost, so strong is the attraction. I cannot understand it. Something sensual within me leaped and burned. I thought I had emptied myself of self before undertaking this great adventure. Had I done so, I should have been safe. As it was, I should have been lost but for the angel's and my brother's help. I felt the giant lusts of the human race. They thrilled through me. I could not keep them out. We descended deeper. I say 'descended.' If hell is not a place, how can one â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;descend?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I asked my brother. He said we were not moving in the physical sense. Our progress depended on certain thought processes evoked by the Will.

It is all very strange to me. I now remember that the Messenger told me I was not to dwell on what I saw and felt in this dark region. Therefore I will hurry on and not dwell upon details. As a matter of fact, I never reached the point where the rescue was attempted. The angel and my brother went on alone. I waited for their return in what 125

seemed to be a deep dark forest. There was no life, no light there. One felt stagnation everywhere.

The angel said that was the most insidious kind of hell, stagnation, because no one recognised it as such. Contrary to belief, hell itself, or rather that part of it visited by my brother and the angel, is brilliantly lighted. The light is coarse, artificial. It keeps out the light of God. In this awful glare the angel's light nearly lost its radiance.

All this my brother told me afterwards. Those who die filled with thoughts of selfishness and sensuality are attracted down the grey avenues toward this hell of the senses. The darkness of the deep forests appalls, the loneliness is intense. At last, light is seen ahead. It is not the light of heaven, it is the lure of hell. These poor souls hasten onwards, though not toward destruction; there is no such thing. They hasten down into conditions that are the counterpart of their own interior condition. The Law is at work. This hell is a hell of the illusions and is itself an illusion. I find this hard to credit. Those who enter it are led to believe that the only realities are the sense passions and the beliefs of the human â&#x20AC;&#x153;I.â&#x20AC;? This hell consists in believing the unreal to be real. It consists in the lure of the senses without the possibility of gratifying them. I was told a great deal more about this awful region, but I must not pass it on. The angel said that the 'condition' would ultimately dissolve into nothingness. Hell or 126

apparently that part of it we are speaking about, depends for its existence on human thoughts and feelings. The race will never rise to greatness until the passions are controlled. This refers to nations and to individuals. On earth I was never interested in such matters. I did not realise the existence of the sexual canker at the heart of human life.

What a terrible thing this is! Do not wait until you come over here. Set to work at once. There is no time to lose. Gain control of self. Then retain control by emptying yourself of self. All the thoughts of lust and passion, greed, hatred, envy, and, above all, selfishness, passing through the minds of men and women, generate the 'condition' called hell. Purgatory and hell are different states. We all must needs pass through a purging, purifying process after leaving earth life. I am still in purgatory. Someday I shall rise above it. The majority who come over here rise above or rather THROUGH purgatory into higher conditions. A minority refuse to relinquish their thoughts and beliefs in the pleasures of sin and the reality of the sense life. They sink by the weight of their own thoughts. No outside power can attract a man against his will. A man sinks or rises through the action of a spiritual law of gravity. He is never safe until he has emptied himself completely. You see how I emphasize this fact.

Some of these thoughts came to me whilst I waited in that gloomy 127

forest.

Then the angel and my brother returned. They had found him for whom they sought. He would not come away. They had to leave him there. Fear held him. He said his existence was awful, but he was afraid to move lest worse conditions should befall him.

Fear chained him. No outside power can unchain that man. Release will come from within someday. Sadly we returned to our own places. I began to realise what power King Fear holds over nearly all of us. The angel said that Fear would be destroyed when Love came into her own. He said the time was coming. . . . I have much to think about. I am going into the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hall of Silence.â&#x20AC;? If I can return again, I will. Good-bye.

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In Hell: The City Of Hate

JSM Ward Gone West (1920)

March 28th, 1913, 9:30. The Officer. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I left off last time, I had told you that I had at length sunk into Hell itself. This was different in many ways from the earth plane. I seemed to be falling through space, black, dark, and horrible. At length I reached what appeared to be firm ground, for I discovered a kind of path, and scrambling on to this made my way along it as best I could. Every now and then I slipped off into the horrible filth. All was utter darkness, and the marvel was that I got along at all. I felt drawn in a certain direction by some strange attraction, and ultimately found myself on a desolate, stony plane which appeared to be covered with ashes. Still drawn on through the darkness, I stumbled and struggled on, longing for some human society, be it never so degraded. Then gradually I began to get a sort of half sight, and by means of it was able dimly to perceive that I was drawing near to some huge mass, which in time grew into the walls and battlements of a great city. Soon I stood before it and saw that it stretched right away as far as I could perceive, though this was not far. There was a gateway, and towards it I turned my steps. No 129

sooner had I come in front of it and noticed that it was built in the manner of a great Roman gateway than what seemed to be doors opened and I passed in: I had hardly done so, when a fiendish yell rang out, and two hideous beings, who apparently acted the part of wardens of the gate, sprang at me.

“Then I knew that all spirits I should meet here would be enemies, and I turned savagely upon them — prepared to battle for life, I was almost going to say, but of course that sounds absurd. Fight, however, I would, and even as I made up my will to do it, the wretched creatures turned and fled. Thus I learnt my first lesson about Hell. There is no law here. The strongest oppresses the weakest, and strength lies in the will and in the intellect.

“I pursued my way unmolested for a time, and found that I could now distinguish the various buildings as through a dense fog. Gradually the idea grew upon me that I recognized this city — it was ancient Rome ! Yes, but far more than that, for to k had been added all the buildings which had been built there since the days of the Caesars; and in time I learnt the truth. This was the spirit city of Rome, and many other cities, built of the buildings in which had been committed all the deeds of cruelty and hate. All the evil emanations which had been thrown off by its former inhabitants had gone to build up this Imperial City of Hell. Its better emanations had gone elsewhere, to 130

the realms above; and this is the fate of every city or building on earth. Its evil side is dragged down to Hell, just as its pore form goes to the realms of half belief or of full belief.

“Here I found was not only Rome, but Venice and Milan, and a thousand other cities in which hate and cruelty had reigned. This vast city is not the only city in Hell. There are countless others. To each of these cities of Hate the damned are drawn, according as the natural laws of attraction act, some to one, some to another. Besides cities of hate, there are many others, such as the cities of lust: Paris and London may be found there. London, or parts of it, may be found in many of these ‘cities’ each part differing; for London at different times has had many different forms.

“Through the dirty, foul, and yet splendid streets I wended my way. Often I met men and women, many of them clad apparently in the kind of clothes they wore on earth. But these robes were foul and torn. Some of them rushed at me to attack me, but each one I was able to repel by means of my will power. Then an idea came to me. Why should I not attack one of them, make him my slave, and compel him to tell me about this new city in which I had to dwell?

“Acting on this, I sprang at a man, who turned with a shriek and fled. But I willed that he should come to me, and slowly he crawled back, 131

struggling all the while. When I had him, I made him grovel in anguish, just to show him I was master, then bade him rise and show me the sights of the place. Whining, he did so, and led me to various buildings.

“‘Would you like to see a gladiatorial show?’ he inquired.

“‘Yes!,’ I cried.

“Soon we were in what seemed like the Coliseum, and I saw that the place was full. Seizing a man, I hurled him out; there was a foullooking woman seated next, and I threw her out also. We two then sat down.

“The show had just begun, and I saw that opposite us was a great royal box.

“‘Yonder is the Emperor!’ whispered my slave in an awestruck voice.

“‘Which?’ I inquired.

“‘I don’t know, but he is the Emperor, and he rules this part of the city.’

132

“‘Are there several Emperors here’ I inquired.

“‘Yes, many, and kings and generals too.’

“‘Don’t they quarrel?’

“‘Quarrel! Where have you come from, stranger? We all quarrel here. This is the City of Hate and Cruelty. We are constantly fighting against each other, district against district, Emperor against Emperor.’

“‘We have just conquered a district near here, and therefore the Emperor is celebrating his victory by making the prisoners fight with the gladiators. Here they come’

“Then began the most ghastly show I have ever witnessed; all the horrors of an ancient gladiatorial show without one redeeming feature were enacted before our eyes. There was no noble martyrdom to relieve the beastliness of the whole show. It was not merely men against men, but men against women, and even against children. Tortures of every description were inflicted, and the wretched victims shrieked and screamed. It was just as if the scene was on earth, save that no death came to release the victims. On and on it went. Now, as I write it and you read it, the effect is to 133

produce a sense of pity and nausea. But at that time the effect was the reverse. It pandered to my worst side and roused a fierce lust of cruelty and hate; and so it did in others’

“This was the object of the Emperor. Now farewell. I will write more another day. — THE OFFICER.”

134

Learning to Escape Hell JSM Ward Gone West (1920)

“SLOWLY I began to long for some purpose in life. I seemed to be ever drifting about with no object in view. I don’t know how long it was as you reckon time before this idea really took definite shape; to me it seemed after ages of suffering.

“At once there came an answer from my guide, who seemed at the same time to draw much nearer to me.

“‘Why not strive to approach nearer to God, to become more spiritual, and, in time, to leave the astral for the spiritual plane.’

“‘I’d gladly do so if l could!’ I replied. ‘How can I?’

“‘By striving to help someone else. That is the amplest method for you!’

“‘How can I help anyone here? …’ I began.

“‘That is for you to discover!’ he answered sharply. 135

“This gave me at any rate an object in life, and I began to think how I could help someone. I am still fearfully ignorant as to the power possessed by spirits, and at that time I knew far less.

“My thought naturally drifted to M., and I soon concentrated my attention on trying to help her, and I was fearfully pleased at this success, as I knew she would now have a good time on the whole.

“I then noticed that my guardian angel had drawn quite dose to me, and the evil spirit had drifted farther away.

“‘You have made a good beginning, but of course this piece of work was easy, for you cared for this woman. Now you must help someone who is nothing to you.’

“This was not so interesting nor so easy. It took me a long time to decide who I would try to help. At last the chance came, and with it the inspiration how to act.

“I was in Southampton — I often go there even still — when I saw a young fellow making up accounts in a large shop. Something drew me towards him, and I at once perceived that he was contemplating falsifying the accounts and pocketing the difference. 136

“Then the inspiration came. I exerted all my will, desiring that he should both see and hear me. “Suddenly the young man started up and dropped his pen, which made a blot on the page. I knew he saw me, and raised my arm in a menacing attitude.

“After a moment’s pause I spoke, or, rather, willed that he should hear these words:

“‘Young man, stop before it is too late, I have come back from the grave to warn you. That way leads to disgrace and prison. Be warned in time.’

“He shrieked, and fled cowering into a comer of the place, and began to blabber out that he’d never do it, he promised.

“Seeing my object was attained, and feeling the strain on my will was too great, I willed that I should become invisible, and of course vanished front his sight. “I saw him stagger to the book and place it quietly on his desk. As he did so he murmured, ‘My God, my God! It was sent as a warning. What a fool I should have been!’

“I left him, feeling convinced that I had been successful.

137

“I soon perceived my guide, now close beside me.

“‘Well done,’ he said, ‘your second task is accomplished. There still remains one more. You must now help someone you had cause to hate.’

“I at once thought of D., who had tried to drag me down after death, but my guide said, ‘No, you cannot help her. You must try and help someone still alive.’

“After a lot of thought I remembered a fellow who had swindled me rather badly some time before I died. The details don’t matter. I must admit I didn’t much relish the job; still, I determined to do the best I could.

“I found that one of his partners was intending to cut with a large sum of money, and the result for him would be financial ruin.’

“How to help him was the difficulty. I tried to inspire him to look into certain matters which would have aroused his suspicions, but it was no go; he was so materialistic that I could not make the slightest impression.

“Then I tried to appear to him as a ghost, as in the former case, but it 138

didn’t come off this time. He was far too materialistic to be affected.

“Then I tried his wife, but with the same result.

“At length I hit on the only way. His partner drank. I found him sitting in his office sleeping off the effects of too much whiskey at lunch. My former enemy was seated in his office hard at work. They each had a separate office.

“I obtained control of the drunken man for a short time in a similar manner to the way in which I am able to write through you when in trance. Of course, as this was my first experience, and, further, he was not in trance but only sleeping in drink, my control was not very good. However, I made him write this:

“‘Dear, — This morning I determined to cut to South America with £5,000 in cash, which I drew at midday from our joint account. It practically emptied that account. At the last moment my better self prevailed. I therefore write this to you. I trust that you will not consider it necessary to prosecute, but of course I understand that we shall have to dissolve partnership. — Yours, etc.’

“Then I walked the man into his partner’s office, made him hand him the letter, and then took him back safely to his chair and left him 139

there still asleep. He was not left asleep long though, for my former enemy rushed into the office and woke him up.

“I need not tell you all that passed; sufficient it is to say that the partner had to hand back the cash he had drawn out and dissolve partnership. My former foe did not prosecute, and the business was settled quietly and without anyone getting to know the ins and outs of the case.

“‘You have at length won — your release,’ cried my guide, and as he spoke I saw the evil spirit who had haunted me for so long being rapidly whirled away by some unknown force.

“I will describe how I emerged on to the spirit plane at another time.” He ceased, and H. J. L. took me out of the room. “You must return now,” he said; “you have been here quite long enough.” Next moment I was whirling through space — then oblivion. — J. W.

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Purified by Suffering G. Vale Owen Life Beyond The Veil: Book 2: The Highlands of Heaven (1921)

All this sorrow is of necessity, and is ordered by those laws which govern the sowing, and the reaping of that which is sown. Even here, in my own place, where many things both wonderful and lovely we have learned, yet not yet have we attained to plumb and sound this mystery to its lowest depth. We do understand, as we were unable when in the earth life, that it is of love that these things are ordained. I say we are able to understand where formerly we were able but to say we trusted and believed. Yet little more of this awful mystery do we know; and are content to wait until it is made more plain to us. For we know enough to be able to believe that all is wise and good; as those in those dark hells will know one day. And this is our comfort that they will and must be drawn onward and upward into this great and beautiful universe of light, and that then they will confess, not only that what is, is just, but that it is of love and wisdom too, and be content.

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Inspiration from the Innermost The Coming Light Mary Bruce Wallace (1924)

In order to apprehend the significance of the outer world, it is essential to realise that every outer phase of existence revolves upon an inner phase. The entire material universe, to the minutest atom, is ensouled. The degrees of vibration vary from the very slow movements to the movements past your comprehension, beyond the mind of man to measure. In the mineral, you have the lowest degree of vibration. In the Saint, or great Prophet, Seer, Master, you have the highest. Even in the latter, the vibrations are immeasurably lower than our vibrations in these inner realms. The encasing of matter must needs slow down the intensity of these soul vibrations; else would the casing be burst immediately, and the soul freed therefrom. Even the Lord Jesus could not have manifested his most intense vibrations of the spiritual plane through his earthly body and have kept this intact. You can understand, therefore, that your world is to us a very slow medium, where its effect is extraordinarily slow compared with the rapid growth and outer manifestation wrought upon our inner planes. The evolution of man on earth is not a speedy process. It cannot be effected from without. Though a battalion of angels may endeavour to rescue a soul from hell while it is in the 142

flesh, or beyond it, naught can avail until the soul itself breathes forth an upward desire or aspiration. For this opening, we wait patiently for years, sometimes centuries, sometimes aeons. Time exists not for us in your sense of the word. Those who live intensely, live rapidly and feel that they have lived long. For those who are in a state of coma, as in the case with many hell-bound souls, a hundred years is as a night (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;night,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; rather than day, pictures their state).

In moving across these vast stretches of time, and also in traversing the universe in equally measureless distances of space, as you term in, we are endowed with a grandeur of vision and conception impossible to realise or attain whilst still in the flesh, one that is not given to those who are still evolving on the lower planes of the spirit world. It is only when we have arrived at masterhood that we are enabled to grasp the true significance of evolution and of immortality. To do so is to view the whole of life from a standpoint as different from that of the ordinary earth-dweller as the standpoint of him who views from the mountain peak is different from that of the man in a hovel of the plain. Even this comparison does not adequately express our vision or our extended range of power.

It is well for those souls who can do so to give a little time daily to meditation on this theme of the vast vistas ahead, in order to enlarge their perception and imagination; for, even while in the flesh, you 143

may greatly expand both your soul consciousness, and, as a result thereof, your range of activities on the outer plane. Everything is gained and used in this way; naught can avail you in exercising your facultiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;apart from inspiration. Such activity is as if you severed a tree from its roots and then expected it to bear fruit. The earth is filled with dead branches and withered boughs, cumbering the ground. They are an obstacle to all progress and inspiration. Listen to your greatest prophets throughout the ages. Do they not all voice the same thought? Why do you not then heed their words, and follow in their footsteps? I speak this not to you in particular, but to the generation to which you belong, which we observe toiling and struggling feverishly for spoils that are of no value. A little time spent in work of the right description avails more than a lifetime of ordinary activities, and serves the soul better as a steppingstone of preparation for the life here. Do not allow yourselves, therefore, to become entangled in any outer works that are not of this inspired nature. Whatever you undertake, make sure that the inspiration for it is derived from the Higher Sources, received in the silence, acted upon with faithfulness in submission to the highest instincts of your being, for lo, the inspiration floweth through oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own inner self from the Higher Spheres, and is but stimulated by wisdom from oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fellows. Always in the depth of the soul is the fount of inspiration, or rather, the well which hath its source in Eternity, from which will flow the living water sufficient for all need in any plane of being. A 144

fellowman can do little more than reveal this inner source of power and illumination. The soul itself must ascend to the highest peak of its own being, and at the immortal spring fill its own goblet. Beautiful are the vistas then opening before the soul; wide and heavenly is the new range of its activities. Circumstances no longer enthrall. Such a soul has the freedom of the universe. The brow is crowned with light. Angels are its comforters. Darkness no longer blinds the eyes. Golden keys are in its hands. The gates of the future are unlocked. Death is conquered. The immortals are its comrades. Rise towards your destiny.

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Questions and Answers Frank L. Hammer Life and its Mysteries (1945)

Heaven and hell are not localities so much as states of consciousness; current realities as well as future conditions. Remorse, regret and persecuting memories are the essence of hell; peace, serenity and love are the characteristics of heaven. Hell is the reflex of men's vices, crimes and sins; heaven is the effect of living in harmony with the laws of God. Every soul creates its own heaven or hell, here or hereafter; death changes only the situation, not the condition of the soul. "There is no rest for the wicked," is an actual truth. Repentance does not remit consequences, nor does death obliterate memory which is forever present torturing him with the past. God made this earth a heaven, but man is doing his best to make it a hell.

Thoughts are the essence of heaven and hell. People say there is no hell, yet have one in their hearts and carry one around in their minds. For heaven and hell are not localities, but states of consciousness. "And what matter where I be, if I be still the same?" Persecuting memories, or a condemning conscience, put a man in hades whether he lives upon this earth or elsewhere. Peace of mind and serenity of 146

spirit are bliss. And the heaven we will find on passing over is one we have prepared by our thinking and by the service rendered to our fellow men.

147

The Dark Realms Anthony Borgia Life in The World Unseen (1956) At close view it became clear that these dwellings were nothing more than mere hovels. They were distressing to gaze upon, but it was infinitely more distressing to contemplate that these were the fruits of men’s lives upon earth. We did not enter any of the shacks—it was repulsive enough outside, and we could have served no useful purpose at present by going in. Edwin therefore gave us a few details instead.

Some of the inhabitants, he said, had lived here, or hereabouts, year after year—as time is reckoned upon earth. They themselves had no sense of time, and their existence had been one interminable continuity of darkness through no one’s fault but their own. Many had been the good souls who had penetrated into these Stygian realms to try to affect a rescue out of the darkness. Some had been successful; others had not. Success depends not so much upon the rescuer as upon the rescued. If the latter shows no glimmer of light in his mind, no desire to take a step forward on the spiritual road, then nothing, literally nothing, can be done. The urge must come from within the fallen soul himself. And how low some of them had fallen! 148

Never must it be supposed that those who, in the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s judgment, had failed spiritually, are fallen low. Many such have not failed at all, but are, in point of fact, worthy souls whose fine reward awaits them here. But on the other hand, there are those whose earthly lives have been spiritually hideous though outwardly sublime; whose religious profession designated by a Roman collar, has been taken for granted as being synonymous with spirituality of soul. Such people have been mocking God throughout their sanctimonious lives on earth where they lived with an empty show of holiness and goodness. Here they stand revealed for what they are. But the God they have mocked for so long does not punish. They punish themselves.

The people living within these hovels that we were passing were not necessarily those who upon earth had committed some crime in the eyes of the earth people. There were many people who, without doing any harm, had never, never done any good to a single mortal upon earth. People who had lived entirely unto themselves, without a thought for others. Such souls constantly harped upon the theme that they had done no harm to anyone. But they had harmed themselves. As the higher spheres had created all the beauties of those realms, so had the denizen of those lower spheres built up the appalling conditions of their spirit life. There was no light in the lowest realms; no warmth, no vegetation, no beauty. But there is hopeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;hope that every soul there will progress. It is in power of each soul to do so, 149

and nothing stands in his way but himself. It may take him countless thousands of years to raise himself one inch spiritually, but it is an inch in the right direction.

The thought inevitably came into my mind of the doctrine eternal damnation, so beloved by orthodox religion, and of the everlasting fires of so-called hell. If this place we were now could be called hell— and no doubt it would be by theologians—then there was certainly no evidence of fire or heat of any kind On the contrary, there was nothing but a cold, dank atmosphere. Spirituality means warmth in the spirit world; lack of spirituality means coldness. The whole fantastic doctrine of hell-fire—a fire which burns but never consumes—is one of the most outrageous stupid and ignorant doctrines that has ever been invented equally stupid and ignorant churchmen. Who actually invented it no one knows, but it is still rigorously upheld as a doctrine by the church. Even the smallest acquaintance with spirit life instant reveals the utter impossibility of it, because it is against the very laws of spirit existence. This concerns its literal side. What the shocking blasphemy that it involves?

When Edwin, Ruth, and I were on earth we were asked to believe that God, the Father of the Universe, punishes, actual punishes people by condemning them to burn in the flames of hell for all eternity. Could there ever be any grosser travesty of the God that 150

orthodoxy professes to worship? The churches—of whatever denomination—have built up a monstrous conception of the Eternal Father of Heaven. They have made of Him, on the one hand, a mountain of corruption by shallow lip service by spending large sums of money to erect churches and chapels to His ‘glory’, by pretending a grovelling contrition for having offended Him, by professing to fear Him—fear Him Who is all love! And on the other hand, we have the picture of a God, Who, without the slightest compunction, casts poor human soul into an eternity of the worst of all sufferings—burning by fires that are unquenchable.

We are taught glibly to beg for God’s mercy. The church God is a Being of extraordinary moods. He must be continual placated. It is by no means certain that, having begged for mercy, we shall get it. He must be feared—because He can bring down His vengeance upon us at any moment; we do not know when He will strike. He is vengeful and unforgiving. He has commanded such trivialities as are embodied in church doctrines and dogmas that at once expose not a great mind, but a small one. He has made the doorway to ‘salvation’ so narrow that few, very few souls will ever be able to pass through it. He has built up on the earth-plane a vast organization known as ‘the Church’, which shall be the sole depository of spiritual truth— an organization that knows practically nothing of the state of life in the world of spirit, yet dares to lay down the law to incarnate souls, and 151

dares to say what is in the mind of the Great Father of the Universe, and dares to discredit His Name by assigning to Him attributes that He could not possibly possess. What do such silly, petty minds know of the Great and Almighty Father of Love? Mark that!â&#x20AC;&#x201D;of Love. Then think again of all the horrors I have enumerated. And think once more. Contemplate this: a heaven of all that is beautiful, a heaven of more beauty than the mind of man incarnate can comprehend; a heaven, of which one tiny fragment I have tried to describe to you, where all is peace and goodwill and love among fellow mortals. All these things are built up by the inhabitants of these realms, and are upheld by the Father of Heaven in His love for all mankind.

What of the lower realmsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the dark places we are now visiting? It is the very fact that we are visiting them that has led me to speak in this fashion, because standing in this darkness I am fully conscious of one great reality of eternal life, and that is that the high spheres of heaven are within the reach of every mortal soul that is, or is yet to be, born upon earth. The potentialities of progression are unlimited, and they are the right of every soul. God condemns no one. Man condemns himself, but he does not condemn himself eternally; it rests with himself as to when he shall move forward spiritually. Every spirit hates the lower realms for the unhappiness that is there, and for no other reason. And for that reason great organizations exist to help every single soul who is living in them to rise out of them into the 152

light. And that work will continue through countless ages until every soul is brought out from these hideous places, and at last all is as the Father of the Universe intended it to be.

This, I am afraid, has been a long digression, so let us return to our travels. You will recall my mention of the many heavenly perfumes and scents that come from the flowers and that float upon the air. Here in these dark places the very opposite was the case. Our nostrils were at first assailed by the most foul odours; odours that reminded us of the corruption of flesh in the earth world. They were nauseating, and I feared that it would prove more than Ruth—and indeed I, myself—could stand, but Edwin told us to treat them in the same way as we had mastered the coldness of the temperature—by simply closing our minds them—and that we should be quite unaware of their existence. We hastened to do so, and we were perfectly successful. It is not only ‘sanctity’ that has its odour!

In our travels through our own realm we can enjoy all the countless delights and beauties of it, together with the happy converse of its inhabitants. Here in these dark lands all is bleak and desolate. The very low degree of light itself casts a blight upon the whole region. Occasionally we were able to catch a glimpse of the faces of some unfortunates as we passed along. Some were unmistakably evil, showing the life of vice they had led upon the earth; some revealed 153

the miser, the avaricious, the ‘brute beast’. There were people here from almost every walk of earthly life, from the present earthly time to far back in the centuries. And here was a connecting link with names that could be read in those truthful histories of nations in the library we visited in our own realm. Both Edwin and his friend told us that we should be appalled at the catalogue of names, well known in history, of people who were living deep down in these noxious regions, men who had perpetrated vile and wicked deeds in the name of holy religion, or for the furtherance of their own despicable, material ends. Many of these wretches were unapproachable, and they would remain so—perhaps for numberless more centuries, until, of their own wish and endeavour, they moved however feebly in the direction of the light of spiritual progression.

We could see, as we walked along, whole bands of seemingly demented souls passing on their way upon some prospective evil intent—if they could find their way to it. Their bodies presented the outward

appearance

the

most

hideous

and

repulsive

malformations and distortions, the absolute reflection of their evil minds. Many of them seemed old in years, but I was told that although such souls had been there perhaps for many centuries it was not the passage of time that had so dealt with their faces, but their wicked minds.

154

In the higher spheres the beauty of mind rejuvenates the features, sweeps away the signs of earthly cares and troubles and sorrows, and presents to the eye that state of physical development which is at that period of our earthly lives which we used to call ‘the prime of life’.

The multitudinous sounds that we heard were in keeping with the awful surroundings, from mad raucous laughter to the shriek of some soul in torment—torment inflicted by others as bad as himself. Once or twice we were spoken to by some courageous souls who were down there upon their task of helping these afflicted mortals. They were glad to see us and to talk to us. In the darkness we could see them and they could see us, but we were all of us invisible to the rest, since we were provided with the same protection for the dark lands. In our case Edwin was taking care of us collectively as new-corners, but those whose work lies in rescue had each his own means of protection.

If any priest—or theologian—could have but one glimpse of the things that Edwin, Ruth, and I saw here, he would never say again, as long as he lived, that God, the Father of Love, could ever condemn any mortal to such horrors. The same priest, seeing these places, would not himself condemn anyone to them. Is he more kind and merciful than the Father of Love Himself? No! It is man alone 155

who qualifies himself for the state of his existence after he passes into spirit.

The more we saw of the dark lands the more I realized how fantastic is the teaching of the orthodox church to which I belonged when on earth, that the place which is referred to as eternal hell is ruled over by a Prince of Darkness, whose sole aim is to get every soul into his clutches, and from whom there is no escape once a soul has entered his kingdom. Is there such an entity as the Prince of Darkness? There might conceivably be one soul infinitely worse than all the others, perhaps it will be said, and such as he could be considered as the very King of Evil. Edwin told us that there was no evidence whatever of such a personage. There were those from the upper spheres who had traversed every inch of the lower realms, and they had discovered no such being. There were also those whose knowledge was prodigious, and who positively affirmed that the existence of such a person had no foundation in fact. Doubtless there are many who, collectively, are a great deal more evil than their fellows in darkness. The idea that a King of Evil exists, whose direct function is to oppose the King of Heaven, is stupid; it is primitive and even barbaric. The Devil as a solitary individual does not exist, but an evil soul might be called a devil, and in that case there are many devils. It is this fraternity, according to the teachings of one orthodox church, that constitutes the sole element of spirit return. We can 156

afford to laugh at the absurdities of such teachings. It is no novelty for some wondrous and illustrious spirit to be called a devil! We still retain our sense of humour, and it causes us very great amusement, sometimes, to hear some stupid priest, spiritually blind, professing to know about things of the spirit of which, in reality, he is totally and completely ignorant. The spirit people have broad backs, and they can support the weight of such fallacious rubbish without experiencing anything but pity for such poor souls.

It is not my intention to go into further details of these dark spheres. At least, not at present. The Churchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s method of frightening people is not the method of the spirit world. Rather would we dwell upon the beauties of the spirit world, and try to show something of the glories that await every soul when his earthly life is ended. It remains with every single soul individually whether this beautiful land shall be his lot sooner, or whether it shall be later.

We held a short consultation together, and decided that we should now like to return to our own realm. And so we made a way our back to the land of mist, passed quickly through, and once again we were in our own heavenly country with the warm, balmy air enveloping us. Our new friend of the dark realms then left us after we had expressed our thanks for his kindly services. I then bethought me that it was high time I went to have a peep at my house, and so I asked Ruth 157

and Edwin to join me, as I had no wish to be alone or separated from their pleasant company Ruth had not yet seen my home, but she had often wondered so she said—what it would be like. And I thought that a little of the fruit from the garden would be most acceptable after our visit—short though it was—to the lower realms.

Everything in the house was in perfect order—as I left it to go upon our travels—as though there were someone permanently looking after it. Ruth expressed her complete approval of all she saw, and congratulated me upon my choice of a home.

In reply to my query as to the invisible agency that was responsible for the good order of the house during my absence Edwin answered me by himself asking the question: what is there to disturb the order of the house? There can be no dust, because there is no decay of any sort whatsoever. There can be no dirt, because here in spirit there is nothing to cause it. The household duties that are so very familiar and so very irksome on the earth plane, are here nonexistent. The necessity for providing the body with food was abandoned when we abandoned our physical body. The adornments of the home, such as the hangings and upholstery do not ever need renewal, because they do not perish .They endure until we wish to dispense with them for something else. And so what remains that might require attention? We have then, but to walk out of our houses, 158

leaving all doors and windows open—our houses have no locks upon them! And we can return when we wish—to find that everything is as we left it. We might find some difference, some improvement. We might discover, for instance, that some friend had called while we were away, and had left some gift for us, some beautiful flowers, perhaps, or some other token of kindness. Otherwise we shall find that our house bids us welcome itself, and renews our feeling of ‘being at home’.

Ruth had wandered all over the house by herself, we have no stupid formalities here, and I had asked her to make the whole house her own whenever she wished, and to do whatever she liked. The antique style of the architecture appealed to her artistic nature, and she revelled in the old wooden panelling and carvings—the latter being my own embellishments—of the past ages. She eventually came to my small library, and was interested to see my own works among the others upon the shelves. One book, in particular, she was attracted to, and was actually perusing it when I entered. The title alone revealed much to her, she said, and then I could feel her sweet sympathy pouring out upon me, as she knew what was my great ambition, and she offered me all the help which she could give me in the future towards the realization of this ambition.

As soon as she had completed her inspection of the house, we 159

foregathered in the sitting-room, and Ruth asked Edwin a question which I had been meaning to ask him myself for some time: Was there a sea somewhere? If there were lakes and streams, then, perhaps there was an ocean? Edwin’s answer filled her with joy: Of course, there was a seaside—and a very beautiful one, too! Ruth insisted upon being conducted there at once, and, under Edwin’s guidance, we set forth.

We were soon walking along a beautiful stretch of open country with the grass like a green velvet carpet beneath our feet. There were no trees, but there were many fine clumps of healthy-looking shrubs, and, of course, plenty of flowers growing everywhere. At length we arrived at some rising ground, and we felt that the sea must be beyond it. A short walk brought us to the edge of the grassland, and then the most glorious panorama of ocean spread out before us.

The view was simply magnificent. Never had I expected to behold such sea. Its colouring was the most perfect reflection of the blue of the sky above, but in addition it reflected a myriad rainbow tints in every little wavelet. The surface of the water was calm, but this calmness by no means implies that the water was lifeless. There is no such thing as lifeless or stagnant water here. From where we were, I could see islands of some considerable size in the distance, island’s that looked most attractive and must certainly be visited! 160

Beneath us was a fine stretch of beach upon which we could see people seated at the water’s edge, but there was no suggestion of over-crowding! And floating upon this superb sea, some close at hand—others standing a little way out, were the most beautiful boats—though I think I am not doing them full justice by calling them mere boats. Ships would be more apposite. I wondered who could own these fine vessels, and Edwin told us that we could own one ourselves if we so wished. Many of the owners lived upon them, having no other home but their boat. It made no difference. There they could live always, for here it is perpetual summer.

A short walk down a pleasant winding path brought us to a sandy seashore. Edwin informed us that it was a tireless ocean, and that at no place was it very deep by comparison with terrestrial seas. Storm and wind being impossible here, the water was always smooth, and in common with all water in these realms, it was of a pleasantly warm temperature that could occasion no feelings of cold—or even chilliness—to bathers. It was, of course, perfectly buoyant, possessed no single harmful element or characteristic, but it was, on the contrary, life-sustaining. To bathe in its waters was to experience a perfect manifestation of spiritual force. The sand upon which we were walking had none of the unpleasant features associated with the seashore of the earth plane. It was never tiring to walk on. Although it had every appearance of sand as we had always known 161

it, yet to the tread it was firm in consistency although soft to the touch of the hand.

In fact, this peculiar quality rendered it more like well-kept lawn to walk on, so closely did the grains hold together. We took some handfuls of the sand, and allowed it to run through our fingers, and great was our surprise to find that it lacked every trace of grittiness, but seemed to the touch more akin to some smooth soft powder. Yet examined closely, it was undeniably solid. It was one of the strangest phenomena we had met so far. Edwin said that that was because we had, in this particular instance, carried out a more minute examination of what we were beholding than we had done hitherto in other things. He added that if I chose to make a close scrutiny of all that we saw, whether it the ground we walked on, the substance of which our house were made, or the thousand and one other objects that go make up the world of spirit, we should be living in a state continual surprise, and there would be revealed to us some small idea—but only a very small idea—of the magnitude of the Great Mind—the Greatest Mind in the Universe—that upholds this and every other world. Indeed, the great scientists of the earth-plane find, when they come to live in the spirit world, that they have a completely new world upon which to commence a fresh course of investigations. They begin de novo as it were, but with all their great earthly experience behind them. And what joy it brings them, in company 162

with their scientific colleagues, to probe the mysteries of the spirit world, to collect their data, to compare their new knowledge with the old, to record for the benefit of others the results of their investigations and discoveries. And all through they have the unlimited resources of the spirit world upon which to draw. And joy is in their hearts.

Our little experiment with the sand led us to place our hands in the sea. Ruth fully expected it to taste of salt, but it did not, much to her surprise. As far as I could observe, it had no taste at all! It was sea more by virtue of its great area and the characteristics of the adjacent land than anything else. In all other respects it resembled the water of the brooks and lakes. In general appearance the whole effect was totally unlike the earthly ocean, due, among other things, to the fact that there was no sun to give its light from one quarter only and to cause that change of aspect when the direction of the sunlight changes. The overspreading of light from the great central source of light in the spirit world, constant and unmoving, gives us perpetual day, but it must never be assumed that this constancy and immobility of light means a monotonous and unchanging landâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or seascape. There are changes going on the whole time; changes of colour such as man never dreamt ofâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;until he comes to the spirit world. The eyes of the spirit person can see so many beautiful things in the world of spirit that the eyes of incarnate man cannot seeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;unless he be gifted 163

with the psychic eye.

We wanted very much to visit one of the islands that we could see in the distance, but Ruth felt that it would be a nice experience to travel over the sea in one of the fine vessels that were close to the shore. But the difficulty arose—that is, it seemed as though it might arise! — as to the boat. If, as I understood, these were ‘privately’ owned, we should first have to become acquainted with one of the owners. Edwin, however, could see how Ruth was so longing to go upon the water that he soon explained the exact position—to her unbounded joy.

It seemed that one of these elegant boats belonged to a friend of his, but had it been otherwise we should have found that we would be welcome to go aboard any one of them, introducing ourselves—if we wished to observe that formality, though it was unnecessary—to whomsoever we found on board. Had we not already received, wherever we went, that friendly reception and assurance that we were welcome? Then why should there be any departure, in the case of the boats of the sea, from the fundamental rule of hospitality that operates in the spirit world? Edwin drew our attention to a very beautiful yacht that was riding ‘at anchor’ close to the shore. From where we were she had all the appearance of having had much attention devoted to her—our opinion was afterwards confirmed. She 164

was built on the most graceful lines, and the grand upward sweep of her bows held the promise of power and speed. She looked much the same as an earthly yacht, that is, externally.

Edwin sent a message across to the owner, and in reply received an instantaneous invitation to us all. We therefore wasted no time, and we found ourselves upon the deck of this most handsome vessel, being greeted with great good cheer by our host, who immediately took us off to present us to his wife. She was very charming, and it was obvious to see that the two made a perfect couple. Our host could see that Ruth and I were both very keen to see over the boat, and knowing from Edwin that we had not been long in spirit, he was so much the more pleased to do so.

Our first observations at close band showed us that many devices and fittings that are essential to earthly ships were here absent. That indispensable adjunct, an anchor, for instance. There being no winds, tides, or currents in spirit waters, an anchor becomes superfluous, though we were told that some boat-owners have them merely as an ornament and because they did not feel their vessels would be complete without them. There was unlimited space on deck, with a copious provision of very comfortable-looking chairs. Below deck were well-appointed saloons and lounges. Ruth, I could see, was disappointed because she could see no evidence whatever 165

of any motive power to drive the vessel, and she naturally concluded that the yacht was incapable of independent movement. I shared her disappointment, but Edwin had a merry twinkle in his eye which ought to have told me that things are not always what they seem to be in the spirit world. Our host had received our thoughts, and he immediately took us up into the wheelhouse. What was our astonishment when we saw that we were slowly and gently moving away from the shore! The others laughed merrily at our bewilderment, and we ran to the side to watch our progress through the water. There was no mistake about it, we were really on the move, and gathering speed as we went. We returned at once to the wheelhouse, and demanded an instant explanation of this apparent wizardry.

166

Purgatory: The Desire World Max Heindel The Passing â&#x20AC;&#x201D; And Life Afterward (1971)

If the dying man could leave all his desires behind, the desire

body

would very quickly fall away from him, leaving him free to proceed into the heaven world, but that is not generally the case. Most people, especially if they die in the prime of life, have many ties and much interest in life on Earth. They have not altered their desires because they have lost their physical bodies. In fact, often their desires are augmented by

a very intense

longing to return. This

acts in such a manner as to bind them to the Desire

World in a very

unpleasant way, although unfortunately, they do not realize

it. On

the other hand, old and decrepit persons and those who are weakened by

long illness and are tired of life, pass on very quickly.

The matter may be illustrated by the ease with which the seed falls out of

the ripe fruit, no particle of the flesh clinging to it, while in the

unripe

fruit the seed clings to the flesh with the greatest tenacity.

Thus it is

especially hard for people to die who are taken out of their

bodies by

"accident" while at the height of their physical health and

strength, engaged

in numerous ways in the activities of physical

life; held by the ties of wife,

family, relatives, friends, pursuits of 167

business and pleasure. As long as the man entertains the desires connected with Earth life he must stay in his desire body, and as the progress of the individual requires

that he pass on to higher

regions, the existence in the Desire World must

necessarily

become purgative, tending to purify him form his binding desires. How this is done is best seen by taking some radical instances. The miser who loved his gold in Earth life loves it just as dearly after death; but in the first place he cannot acquire anymore, because he has no longer a dense body wherewith to grasp it and worst of all, he cannot even keep what he hoarded during life. He will, perhaps, go and sit by his safe and

watch the cherished gold or bonds; but the

heirs appear and with, it may be, a

stining jeer as the "stingy old

fool" (whom they do not see, but who both sees

and hears them),

will open his safe, and though he may throw himself over his

gold to

protect it, they will put their hands through him, neither knowing nor caring that he is there, and will then proceed to spend his hoard, while he suffers in sorrow and impotent rage.

He will suffer keenly, his sufferings all the more terrible on account of being entirely mental, because the dense body dulls even suffering to some extent. In the Desire World, however, these sufferings have full sway and the man suffers until he learns that gold may be a curse. Thus he gradually

becomes contented with his lot and at last

is freed from his desire body and

is ready to go on.

168

It possible, of course, to avoid this problem in the after-life by disposing of material possessions while yet incarnate on Earth. If we use

judgment, when we see that we have lived our lives to the end

of usefulness,

we may say: Here are things that I have no more use

for, and I know I am

getting towards the end; where can I do the

most good with them, who will

enjoy them most, or whom can I help

to establish in business so he can do

something for himself?

The same thing is true with regard to the affections; we should hold ourselves in check so that we do not love anybody with an inordinate love-- such love as that which makes idols of others and puts them before everything

else. If we thus get ourselves free from all earthly

ties so we are ready to

go, then we cannot be kept earthbound.

The drunkard is another case in point. He is just as fond of intoxicants

after death as before. It is not the dense body that

craves drink. The dense

body is made sick by alcohol and would

rather be without it. It vainly

protests in different ways, but the

desire body of the drunkard craves the

drink and forces the dense

body to take it, that the desire body may have the

sensation of

pleasure resulting from the increased vibration. That desire remains after the death of the dense body, but the drunkard has in his desire

body neither mouth to drink nor stomach to contain 169

physical liquor. He may and

does get into saloons, where he

interpolates his body into the bodies of the

drinkers to get a little of

their vibrations by induction, but that is too

weak to give him much

satisfaction. He may and also does sometimes get inside

a whiskey

cask, but that is of no avail either, for there are in the cask no

such

fumes as are generated in the digestive organs of a tippler. It has no effect upon him and he is like a man in an open boat on the ocean, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink;" consequently, he suffers

intensely. In time, however, he learns the uselessness of

longing for drink,

which he cannot obtain. As with so many of our

desires in the Earth life, all

desires in the Desire World die for want

of opportunity to gratify them. When

the drunkard has been purged,

he is ready, so far as this habit is concerned,

to leave this state of

"Purgatory" and ascend into the heaven world.

Thus we see that it is not an avenging Deity that makes Purgatory of Hell

for us, but our own individual evil habits and acts. According to

the

intensity of our desires will be the time and suffering entailed in

their

expurgation. In the cases mentioned it would have been no

suffering to the

drunkard to lose his wordly possessions. If he had

any, he did not cling to

them. Neither would it have caused the

miser any pain to have been deprived of

intoxicants. It is safe to

say that he would not have cared if there were not

a drop of liquor

in the world. But he did care about his gold, and the

drunkard cared

170

about his drink, so the unerring law gave to each that which

was

needed to purge him of his unhallowed desires and evil habits.

This is the law that is symbolized in the scythe of the reaper, Death; the

law that says "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also

reap." It is the

Law of Cause and Effect, which rules all things in the

three worlds, in every

realm of Nature--physical, moral, and mental.

Everywhere it works inexorably,

adjusting all things, restoring the

equilibrium wherever even the slightest

action has brought about a

disturbance, as all action must. The result may be

manifest

immediately or it may be delayed for years or for lives, but sometime, somewhere, just and equal retribution will be made. The student should particularly note that its work is absolutely impersonal. There is in the universe neither reward nor punishment. All is the result of invariable

law. This is the Law of Consequence.

In the Desire World it operates in purging man of the baser desires and

the correction of the weakness and vices whihc hinder his

progress, by making

him suffer in the manner best adapted to that

purpose. If he has made others

suffer, or has dealt unjustly with

them, he will be made to suffer in that

identical way. Be it noted,

however, that if a person has been subject to

vices, or repented

and, as far as possible, made right the wrong done, such repentance, reform, ands restitution, have purged him of those 171

special vices

and evil acts. The equilibrium has been restored and

the lesson learned during that embodiment, and therefore will not be a cause of suffering after death.

A word must be said here about the suicide, who tries to get away from life only to find that he is as much alive as ever. His is the most pitiable plight. He is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps, disgraced by his act, and worst of all, he has an unspeakable feeling of being "hollowed out." The part in the ovoid aura where the dense body used to be is empty, and although the desire body has taken the form of the discarded dense body, it feels like

an empty shell,

because the creative archetype of the body in the Region of Concrete Thought persists as an empty mold, so to speak, as long as the dense

body should properly have lived. The archetype â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the

"model" of each Ego's dense body, around which the body takes shape--is made of mind-stuff and set

to vibrating for a previously

determined period of time. When a person meets a natural death, even in the prime of life, the activity of the archetype ceases, and the desire body adjusts itself so as to occupy the whole of the

form. In

the case of the suicide, however, that awful feeling of "emptiness" remains until the time comes when, in the natural course of events, his death

would have occurred. The impression of this particularly

unpleasant experience remains with the Ego, and is instrumental in

172

preventing him from falling prey to the temptation of suicide in future lives.

In the Desire World life is lived about three times as rapidly as in the Physical World. A man who has lived to be fifty years of age in the Physical

World would live through the same life events in the

Desire World in about

sixteen years. This is, of course, only a

general gauge. There are persons who

remain in the Desire World

much longer than their term of physical life.

Others again, who have

led lives with few gross desires, pass through in a

much shorter

period, but the measure given above is very nearly correct for

the

average man of the present day.

It will be remembered that as the man leaves the dense body at death, his

past life passes before him in pictures; but at that time he

has no feeling

concerning them.

During his life in the Desire World also these life pictures roll backward, as before; but now the man has all the feeling it is possible for

him to have as, one by one, the scenes pass before

him. Every incident in his past life is now lived over again. When he comes to a point where he has

injured someone, he himself feels

the pain as the injured person felt it. He

lives through all the sorrow

and suffering he has caused to others and learns 173

just how painful is

the hurt and how hard to bear is the sorrow he has caused.

addition there is the fact already mentioned before that the suffering is

much keener because he has no dense body to dull the pain.

Perhaps that is why

the speed of life there is tripled--that the

suffering may lose in duration

what it gains in sharpness. Nature's

measures are wonderfully just and true.

Nature, which is God in manifestation, always aims at the conservation of

energy, attaining the greatest results with the least

expenditure of force and

the least waste of energy. If we study the

effect of change in the Physical

World, we shall learn something of

its consequence in the realm above us. A

person who is here

suffering acutely for a short time usually feels pain very

intensely;

whereas those who suffer for years in succession, though the pain which is inflicted upon them may be as severe, do not seem to feel the

suffering in the same measure. They have, as it were, grown

used thereto, and

their frame has in a certain sense become

emaciated and adjusted to pain;

hence suffering is not felt as

keenly as by the person in the first case. It is similar in the purgatorial existence. When a person has been very

hard and harsh in life, when he has thought nothing of the

feelings of others,

when he has inflicted severe pain here, there,

and everywhere on whatever

occasion offered, we shall find that

his suffering in Purgatory will be very severe, intensified of course by 174

the fact that the purgatorial experience is

shorter than the life lived

upon Earth; but the pain is intensified in proportion. Now, therefore, it is evident that if his experience were continuous, if the pain engendered by one act were followed immediately by the next, much of the effect of the suffering would be lost upon the Spirit because it would not feel its full intensity. Therefore, the experiences, as it were, come to him in waves so that there is a period of respite after each period of suffering in order that the full intensity of the next may be felt.

The motive in this is for a greater good, for Nature, or God, never seeks

to revenge or avenge any wrong, but only to teach those

who permit themselves

to do wrong not to repeat the act by giving

the wrong doer exactly pain for

pain. The tendency in a future life is

to cause him to respect the feelings of others and so be merciful to all the world. Thus the very highest intensity in pain is necessary for the conservation of energy, and to make him good and pure sooner than would be the case if the pain were continuous and the correspondingly lessened.

175

suffering

The Sacred Life Immortal Robert Bayer Visions of the New Age (2009)

There is a clock image before me.

It is bejeweled in green and

purple crystals. Its hands point a few minutes from midnight.

I pass

through the clock. I see mothers, a dozen or so different ones holding their newborn babies in love, smiling and very happy. A complete shifting of the vision onto a new scene: a surgery room, and screams of fear and pain, and an angelic baby rises upward to be swaddled in a spirit blanket by angels who rise above with it.

I look to the grisly

settling of the operating table, mother, doctor and table and cutting instruments covered in blood. A lifeless child’s body is thrown away into a plastic bag.

I see a corridor of such scenes, extending like

into infinity when you look into 2 mirrors facing one another. Ghastly butchery after ghastly butchery. Very difficult to keep seeing. Below, and unseen to the doctors, a black network of tentacles, monstrous, control the thoughts and movements of the “doctors.” The “mother” is in a state of shock and the tentacles grip her too, in a kind of dark cocoon. I follow the trail of tentacles to a subterranean chasm of caverns. everywhere.

The lightning and mood is horrific. Blood flows

A demonic entity, goat-shaped and black winged,

fiery, red coal eyes, wielding knives in both hands, “sacrifices” the 176

childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s astral forms on the burning altar before him.

I can watch

no more. I rise up from this hell, to the earth, to the heavens â&#x20AC;Ś I see pure child after pure child growing up in the heavens, wise and good parents and teachers working with them, loving them, teaching them the truths of the universe they know.

Many colors of spiritual

blessings enfold them. A great gathering of these new angels is growing, very serene and very filled with the purpose of returning to earth to enlighten and strengthen all there in a new sacredness of life. Mothers and fathers of the world are coming under their beautiful mantel of love.

My guide speaks:

The Unseen is where the Truth of all things lie.

Nothing is hidden,

whether the light of love or darkness of selfishness, all is revealed in the spirit which is the true reality.

For decades, a holocaust of

infants has terrorized the world and burdened the heavens. The time for the repudiation of this great crime has come.

No more will the

murder of the innocent be allowed to continue, blackening the earth in great sin.

A new conscious that all life is sacred and created with

divine purpose, by the All Highest Creator, shall dawn and illuminate the mortal mothers and fathers that their highest purpose is to be in love and to love their children forevermore.

Our love for you all, our

mortal children, is eternal and so let us extend this love to all people, for all are our brothers and sisters, all Children of the Great Spirit, The Sacred Life Eternal. 177

Streams of Light Robert Bayer Visions of the New Age (2009)

As in a past vision, I am walking onto a narrow white bridge that crosses an abyss that falls into a group of hells.

I do not feel fear

but only wonder as great plumes of flames of flame, some red hot, some black as coal, surge upward from the depths to the surface of mortals on earth.

The blasts next dissolve the bridge, but I do not

sink, for I am grasping my medallion with 2 hands. I notice now that there is band of green between the gold and silver phases. Through my hands, I can feel great vibrations of spiritual power contained within the symbol, and from somewhere else above.

I am

distressed about the flames of fire and darkness, for I see them entangling leaders and cities on the earth.

Many plots of

selfishness, deception, and hatred are being carried out among the multitudes.

In desperation I hold the medallion to my forehead, and

it merges into me, and instantly I rise upward past the streams from hells rising.

I reach the surface of the world, and there is chaos and

conflict in progress, not over the whole world, but in certain areas only.

There, people are running hither and thither, in fear, trying to

escape from explosions and each other.

I find myself rising again,

and there is a central star of great crystal and iridescent light, filling 178

most of my view, for it is vast.

Linking Lines of Light stream forth

from it unto millions of angels and mortals now in the skies, and then we all descend to the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface.

There is a great flash or

rather, a great Wave of Light that washes over all, and then peace and harmony win out.

Streams of dark spirits are being pulled

upward into the heavens, and with each passing second, a lighter and brighter and purer atmosphere is realized.

Into the depths of

the hadan earth, the greater angels pass further on, for the rescue and rehabilitation of those denizens below. clean up and reorganization has begun.

Here on earth, the

People have seen first

hand the darkness and pain of selfishness and hate, and now turn themselves whole-heartedly towards showing loving care towards one another.

An angel speaks:

Though all the world seems to be crumbling and falling into ruin, Fear Not!

The resources of the Universe Unending are at our disposal in

helping you all, and in truth, there for you all to make all things into a New Order of Harmony, Justice, and Love. just this.

You will assuredly do

For The Creator forgets not a single child of His, of Hers,

for all our loved in the All Highest.

The world is unfolding as it

should and you are all taking a significant part in its redemption. The Garden Earth is coming into full reality. All our blessings.

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Where Does Evil Come from? Walter and Betty Shepherd Conversations with Walter (2010)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are people who have lived on earth, and have there chosen to take evil as their god. They do this for many reasons. Some think that as Evil seems dominant in the world, it is safer to worship it. Some are lacking in proper self-confidence, and think that being devil-worshippers will make them seem more important.

After the death of the material body, they discover that the Prince of Darkness, whom they worshipped, does not exist. Evil is not a positive entity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it is negative, and lives through the energy of love. This knowledge causes great suffering to those people who had been its subjects, and their condition is then that of hell. (Hell has no absolute meaning for those people who have loved good, however much they may suffer.) Some evil people go on trying to serve evil, all the same, and they become one kind of evil spirit. There are very few of them, but they can cause great trouble.

So what is evil, you will ask. Evil is an idea in the collective mind of mankind (and to some extent of animals, but they do not have the 180

choice of thought that human beings have); the idea that if you do not fight for existence against other people you will go under in the struggle for life, and no one will help you. Also, that if you have to do things, in order to survive, which you do not really approve in your heart, that is just the way the world is and you must go along with it or go under. Human beings have come to believe that it is not within their power to be good. They forget that they are the children of good and not of evil. This idea is so strong that it has even entered the Collective Unconscious Mind of the human race.â&#x20AC;?

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The Vortices of Darkness and Light Robert Bayer Visions of the New Age (2011)

Three great plateaus in vision appeared, cross-sections of our world: hadan, the lower spiritual planes; corpor, our mortal earth: and Es, the heavens above our world.

Upon the lands of earth were

directed from opposite directions, vortices of light from above, from Es, and from hadan, vortices of darkness. And they spun in opposite directions of flowing energy, one constricting and pulling downward, while the other was liberating and uplifting.

An angelic guide then

said: <See now the four dark corners of the world.>

And I beheld

war and murder and abortion, violence and hate and bloodshed by one and by many.

And whether these mortals had just died or were

still physically alive, still their soul was pulled ever downward into hells of hate. There below I saw the debauchery of gore and madness in anger, and a place of great horror. Again I went to the world of the living and saw crimes of passion and rape and pornography, and again another vortex of darkness pulling their souls downward into hells of lust. Again all was madness and obsession, each one there living for self alone and seeking only the basest gratifications through both spirits below and mortals above. A third time I went to the lands of the living and this time there was 182

anger once more but also lies and deceits and cunning meant to betray and discourage. Words and thoughts of individuals that rose ever again in treachery and unending arguments that were bitingly bitter in criticisms, all most unhappy and the tears multiplied in deepening sadness and confusion. So here also were there dark vortices for each group in verbal combat, and with each sinning, their souls were being dragged to hells of satan, where each sought to control and dominate one another, and to belittle and mock in criticisms that cursed their very being.

A fourth time I went to earth

and there I saw dens of delirium, parties and hideaways where each person was imbibing drugs and alcohol that deadened feelings, and clouded the spirit and mind until those poisons inspired them to illusions, great misunderstandings, and a coma-like state. These too were pulled down into hells of addictions, where all reality became the unreal, where each sought to forget by an immersion in chemicals that were anti-life, and above all, like the other hells, they sought to experience the fullest high by possessing mortals for a time or for a lifetime, and

partake in these illicit pleasures again

and again and again, without remorse it seemed, in degrading mortals as well.

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A Family of the Heavens Robert Bayer Visions of the New Age (2013)

Upon the lower astral planes, there is a chasm that serves as one of the avenues to the hells far below. A number of years ago, I walked across this gorge of hell upon a White Bridge. And I was doing so now though not with any great relish.

At this time I became very

focused and clear in mind, careful to not allow the slightest trace of fear or doubt enter my mind, no matter what I might encounter. For it is natural to assume that in these sundry, dark places of spirit, any weakness or negativity would only attract far worse.

And so I walked upon the White Bridge spanning these depths. Fire and Back plumes cascaded upward, fashioned by the hate and fear of the denizens below. This time the bridge descended gracefully downward with me athwart it. I heard my unseen guardians caution me to stay upon the bridge at all times.

As I descended, the

delirium of screams rose in volume and intensity of emotion. Shadows of many shapes, faces of many kinds of anguish passed by but did not touch me nor did they seem aware of me. So I managed to stay outwardly calm, because there was no alternative.

At last

we reached the bottom of the pit, and at first I could see nothing. I 184

wondered why I was even here. I became aware of the great vastness of the black plateau, whose ravines and caverns stretched for what seemed thousands of miles. Being alone, what purpose could I possibly serve by being here? My guides said quietly but reassuringly to watch and wait. And so I did and my spiritual eyes became gradually used to the dim light and I found I could see a bit ahead.

I heard next some pitiful weeping, and so walked a few

steps forward and found that there was a young girl, perhaps ten years old, who was on her hands and knees crying most bitterly. She was so forlorn and in pain that my heart immediately went out to her and as it did, I found that I instantly knew by reading her spiritual vibrations, just what was the cause of her predicament.

Her parents

had never wanted a child and had resented everything extra parenting required, and especially being of meager resources, resented and over time, developed a hatred for this pleasant girl, who in their twisted view, was causing them so much extra work and financial costs. They constantly scolded and punished her, often quite sadistically.

And so her heart and spirit were at last broken

and one day she cast herself into a stone quarry and so ended her life. Being a suicide she had just arrived here and was hardly less anguished now than before the suicide.

As I have stated before, my heart instantly went out to her and I made an inner pledge to the Creator of Universe at that moment, that 185

this girl, I and my soul-mate would take on and love as our own daughter from this point in eternity onward, no matter what. For love begets love, of that I was certain.

Also, having no children on earth

of our own, it seemed even more fitting to do just this.

She rose up

almost immediately as the force of my parental love flowed to blend with her and greeted me quite hopefully. I felt something cosmic click in our destinies, and there was in that hell an exchange of smiles and greetings as cheerfully done as in a neighborhood park.

Her name

was Sally.

Just then, a great Star Sphere of Light next appeared with my Eternal Soul-Mate, Joyce, within it, and quite an entrance of brilliance and angelic beauty she was. Both Sally and I were amazed but delighted and in seeing her welcoming smile, and the opening of her beckoning arms, we entered her craft.

All three of us then

embraced warmly and with deeply gladdening hearts. We were together, a family! At long last!

In hell now yet in the heavens so

happy, we knew now, for all time.

THE END

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