When the spirit world is described as being a world of thought, where thought is the great creative power, and where thought is concrete and perceivable by all men, the conclusion is very often erroneously drawn that the spirit world is an unsubstantial place, and that we, its inhabitants, are vague shadowy people, lacking any real substance, and answering for all purposes to that very earthly designation of ‘ghosts’! Pursuing this mistaken deduction, the life of the spirit world people must inevitably be somewhat dreamlike and illusive.
The incarnate think along these lines because to them thought is something that can be practiced unseen and heard. On earth thought is secret to the thinker until such time as he wishes to give verbal or other expression to his thoughts. It is customary to say on earth: our thoughts are our own; we can think what we like; thoughts can never harm anyone, and so on. So that when we of the spirit world assert that our world is a world of thought, the incarnate immediately revert to their own thoughts and their unsubstantial nature, and thereupon place the spirit world in the same category of tenuous things.
Generally speaking, upon earth thought must have some form of concrete expression for it to be effective. The architect must first think of his cathedral, then commit his thoughts to paper in regular order and with exactitude before the builder can make any commencement upon the outward and visible expression of his original thoughts. And so it is with a multitude of other things, from the simplest article to the most complicated instrument or ornate building. On earth thought must have a medium of some sort before it can find the slightest trace of outward expression. For this reason, among others, the incarnate are prone to regard the earth as being the one certain and substantial world in which it is possible to exist. The spirit world becomes the very opposite.
The incarnate do not realize the force and power of thought or else they would never think along such lines as I have indicated. Every thought that passes with force and purpose through the mind of an earth dweller is projected from his mind as a thought-form. To speak unscientifically, it is registered, at least for a time, upon the surrounding ether. It depends, of course, upon the thought itself, and of what it consists. If it is merely one of those passing thoughts that all folk upon earth have in their minds at various moments during the day, then such thoughts will be registered in the manner I have just indicated. If the thought is directed towards some friend who is now resident in the spirit world, that thought, if it is properly directed with purpose and intent, will inevitably reach that friend. It will reach him or her just as it is sent, no more and no less good or bad or indifferent.
Thought may be invisible to the majority of earth dwellers but it is very much visible to spirit folk. People who are still on earth, and whose psychic powers have been developed, are often capable of seeing these thought-forms. That ability raises problems which sometimes lead to mistakes and misunderstandings.
Thought is upon a different plane, a higher plane of existence from that organ of the earthly body, the brain, through which thought functions on earth. Thought is upon the same plane of existence as the mind, and the mind belongs truly to the spirit world. And by higher plane I do not mean a higher spiritual plane, but one that cannot be observed by the ordinary physical organs of perception. In the spirit world thought has direct and instantaneous action upon whatsoever it is directed, whether it be upon a human being or upon what on earth is called ‘an inanimate object’. I cannot use the latter term appropriately in connection with spirit world objects, because all objects, all things, have life, certain and unmistakable. There is no such state as that of being lifeless in the spirit world. It is not until you come into the spirit world that you really know just what thought can do. And I do assure you, my good friend, that some of us are positively horrified when we find out for the first time!
In the spirit world thoughts do not become visible immediately upon their passing through a person’s mind. They are not flying about in a loose fashion. The idle thoughts of which I spoke travel no further than your immediate earthly surroundings. Thoughts directed to some friend in the spirit world will reach that friend, and they cannot be classed as loose thoughts.
Imagine to yourself the state of confusion, of congestion almost, and of embarrassment if all our thoughts in the spirit world were visible. But because they are not immediately visible, that is not to say that they are not potent, for assuredly they are very potent. No, they are not visible as you regard it, but they will unfailingly reach their destination wherever it may be. If directed towards some friend upon earth, in many cases it is problematical whether the friend will perceive them: or, perceiving them, whether he will know whence they have come. But if our thoughts be directed towards some friend in the spirit world, there will be no such doubt or uncertainty.
How do we receive thoughts in the spirit world? One of the first and most interesting experiments that Ruth and I carried out under the friendly eye of Edwin [on the other side] during our early explorations of these realms, was that of hearing Edwin speak to us from a distance. Without recounting the full circumstances, it is sufficient to say that although Edwin was in sight of us both, yet he was too far away for us to hear his voice even if he had used it above his normal tones. But we both distinctly heard his voice sounding close to our ears. At first, of course, we could not believe our ears, and we were rather inclined to regard the whole thing as some trick or other that Edwin was performing for amusement and general merriment. But he repeated his message to us, it was merely bidding us to rejoin him, and it was so unmistakable that we forthwith did as directed. As a prelude to hearing Edwin’s voice, we had both perceived a bright flash to appear before the eyes. It was in no sense blinding or startling; indeed, the flash was too beautiful for that.
And that, I think, describes briefly but precisely what happens to all of us when a thought is passed between one and another of us. The thought is invisible in transit, it arrives at its destination instantaneously, when it manifests itself before us as a pleasant but compelling flash of clear light, and we can then hear the voice of our communicator speaking close to the ear, as it seems. I say as it seems, because here I am not attempting to give a scientific explanation of how it happens, but confining myself solely to what does happen. The voice always sounds to me to be close to the ear, and most people here say that the same thing occurs in their own case. It may be some sort of inner perception of the voice, though to me it always sounds far too like the owner’s actual voice for that. My own view is that the sound of the voice actually travels through the air, and that we receive it upon the natural apparatus of our minds.
I confess that I have not looked into the matter in that deep manner that some people, perhaps, will think that I ought to have done, if only for the purpose of supplying them with a long and deep, accurate and scientific explanation of the whole process. But I am persuaded that the majority of my good friends will much rather have this frankly and obviously unscientific description of what takes place here during every second of time, just as a matter of course, than that I should lead them into some deep morass of scientific discussion from which we should all have some difficulty in extricating ourselves! I do not profess to a knowledge of science, and I always feel that while we are peering deeply into causes and detailed explanations we are missing all the beauties of the very thing we are examining.
There is so much here that we take for granted, that is to say, we take things as they present themselves, without demanding learned explications of them. And it is the same with you who are still upon earth. Suppose, for example, I were to ask you (supposing, also, that I did not already know) how you managed to move yourself upon your two legs in the common feat of walking. I think it would much more suit your taste for you to tell me briefly just what you did with your legs and how tired they can become after prolonged activity, than to treat me to an erudite essay upon the various muscles of the leg, their names, their shape and size, their exact mode of action, their particular function, and so on. In the meantime, while the legs were being thus dilated upon, the friend, whom the two legs were supporting, was passing through some charming country, a description of which would be so much more entertaining!
And so it is with a great many other matters here, here in my world and in your world too. While science has its important place in both our worlds, yet we do not ponder every minute of our lives upon the inner working of the numberless functions of men and things that constitute life in either world. Science must have its proper position, but life would be rather dull and dreary, and certainly rather complicated, if we paused to inquire into the various modes of operation of so many common actions. We must just take things as they are. That is your general attitude upon earth; that is our general attitude here in the spirit world.
My chief purpose is to give you as many details as possible or practicable of our life in spirit lands. To state a fact as plainly as possible, to provide explanations only where necessary to an intelligent understanding of my account, and to leave it to others to probe more deeply into causes, must be my aim.
When thought is directed to us from the earth it takes the same form of a flash before the eyes. There is no difference whatever in the actual process. It matters not whence the thought has been directed, whether from your world of the earth or as an intercommunication in the spirit world. The process is universal, and there are no variations in it.
When I spoke to you, a moment ago, of the thought forms you create in the ether immediately surrounding you on earth by your having idle thoughts in your mind, that must not be taken as also applying to us in the spirit world. If it did the spirit world would be a strange place, and the people in it would appear stranger still, for they would continually seem to be enveloped either in a kind of haze of thought, forms or something even more substantial.
The case is different with people on earth. That part of the spirit world which is immediately interpenetrating your world that is to say, the invisible world in the immediate vicinity of the particular spot, for example, where you are reading these words, this spot is not part of the realms of light. It is dark. It may have its minute patches of light in certain well-defined places, but the greater part of it is dark. Thought, of the kind that contains no evil within it, will be bright, and therefore it will show up in the surrounding gloom, just as the light of a tiny flame will illumine the gloom of a chamber from which all other light is excluded. Even a limited diffusion of light will be the case. But take the tiny flame into the bright light of the sun and the diffusion seems to end, the feeble light having become absorbed by the greater light of the sun. The flame will still be visible, but its light will be strictly limited to its source.
This somewhat elementary analogy will serve, I hope, to illustrate the difference between thought in the invisible regions closely adjacent to your world, and thought as it is in these bright realms where I live. Even this simple analogy must be qualified by saying that however wandering may be our thoughts they are not visible like the flame of light in the sunshine. Things are far better ordered than that in the spirit world! We do have mental privacy here. Without it social intercourse would be trying, to say the least. We are living in a land of truth, that is certain; but we do not carry things to such an extreme that we must voice the truth openly upon all occasions. As with you, so with us; there are moments and occasions when silence is golden!
But it is essential that one should learn to think properly as an inhabitant of the spirit world. One of the first things one has to do here, as a new arrival, is to think properly. It is not a difficult achievement, and not nearly so formidable a task as it may sound. It concerns one’s thought about people rather than thoughts of a general nature upon things. When thought is concerned with a person, the thought, if it has sufficient force behind it, will travel to that person. If it happens to be of a pleasant or complimentary description, or of a jovial and genial nature, then the percipient will be happy to receive it. But all thoughts are not of this innocuous sort, and our mental secrets may have passed out of our minds only to have found their destination in the very last place we wanted them to be, namely, in the mind of the person of whom we were so freely thinking.
The thought, however, must have a sufficient measure of directive power behind it to send it upon its journey, and this factor is the saving of many of us, because so many thoughts are mere birds of passage in our minds, and while they are there they have little really deep concentration upon the individual concerned. But the very prospect of what can happen is enough to make us keep a strict watch upon our minds, and in a brief period it becomes as second nature to us.
There are many things that we have to unlearn and relearn when we first come to dwell in spirit lands, but our minds, being then free of a heavy physical brain, are at liberty to exercise their powers to the full. We are enabled, therefore, to acquire rapidly the methods of living under different conditions of existence. Our memories behave as memories should; that is to say, they are not erratic in their retentive performance, but can be relied upon to act perfectly. You can see how invaluable such an attribute will be when it becomes necessary to learn afresh how to do things according to spirit laws. It is in this rapid way that so many common actions quickly become as second nature.
Although, in the spirit world, thought has such dire action and is generally so powerful, that does not mean the thought makes physical effort practically unnecessary, even undesirable. There are a great many things for our hands to do in the spirit world, and I would add that our feet also are constantly in use! We like to walk, just as we used to upon earth. What could be more natural? We are human beings after all, though some folk would deny us this characteristic. We are human, and we behave in a manner that is human. Our feet were given to us to use, and we walk upon them.
Because we can create so much with our minds, because we can fabricate things by the close application of thought then, it might be imagined, there is precious little left for our hands to do, except to make up our full complement of limbs and so obviate our presenting ourselves as something of monstrosities. The truth is that we use our hands in a thousand different actions during what you would call a day’s work, or during a day in our life.
Think for a moment. Recall the scores of instances in which one may use the hands. For example, in our spirit homes we pick up a book, we open or close a door, we shake hands with some friend who calls; we arrange some flowers upon the table; we paint a picture, or play upon a musical instrument; or we may operate scientific apparatus of some sort. Such instances could be multiplied a thousand fold, and would become too tedious for words in their enumeration. We like to employ our hands in conjunction with our minds as well as exercising our minds alone, just as do you on earth. People take a natural delight in fashioning objects by hand and so allowing the mind to work through their hands. There are plenty of things that could be created in these realms purely by thought and without the least interposition of the hands, but we like to go the long way round sometimes and find some employment for our hands, and we relish the enjoyment that comes from it.
But occasions do arise when we act quickly, in fact, instantaneously. We wish to go to a particular place in the realms which is, say, hundreds of miles distant, as distances are reckoned on earth. We could walk the entire distance without a trace of fatigue, but in such cases we prefer a speedier form of transportation. We therefore abandon the slow walking method of locomotion, and we bring our minds to bear upon the matter. By direct action of the mind we find ourselves instantaneously in the very place in which we wished to be.
As to how we think ourselves in a certain place, here again I would not offer you a scientific explanation for reasons which I have given you, so I will confine myself to this: in the spirit world our bodies are under complete control by our minds. The former do just that which the latter wishes or commands. A wish becomes a command in this case. Now with you, your mind may wish to be in a certain place, and no matter how hard you may wish it, you are entirely at the mercy of your physical body. You may even sit in your chair and imagine yourself, in every detail of circumstances, in the precise place. You can ‘see’ yourself there, but the physical body must go too if you desire to be there physically. And that may raise all sorts of problems which will come readily enough to your mind, opportunity, for example; or the requisite time and means for getting to the desired destination. These are all considerations affecting the physical body, because you must take that with you, for in the physical body is the brain, and it is through the brain that the mind works. This is the natural and normal order of things on earth.
In the spirit world it is very different. We have no heavy physical body. The body which we possess is in every respect equal to our minds. Our minds have no heavy vehicle by or through which they have to function. Thinking is at once translated into action, but without the inter-medium of a physical brain such as you know it. The brain which is resident within our heads is not as your physical brain; our bodies are not as your physical bodies. With us our whole being, our limbs, our muscles and so forth, are completely subservient to the mind in so far as their acting according to our will is concerned. For the rest, our bodies are subservient to the natural laws of the spirit world.
We also perform certain actions subconsciously in exactly the same way as do you. For example, we breathe in precisely the same way as you breathe. Our hearts beat in a fashion exactly similar to yours, and they are subject to the same subconscious maintenance in their beating. But we have that which you do not have, namely, complete and absolute mastery of the muscles of our limbs. When we come to learn some new art or endeavor to become proficient in some task that requires the mastery by the brain over the muscles, then you can see just how perfect is the attunement of our minds with our muscles. It is not really a mastery of the one over the other, although I have expressed it in that way. To be more accurate, it is an absolute attunement, the one with the other.
Now with you on earth, the effort of walking makes imperative the use of various muscles. First, you have a heavy body to move along the ground on which you are standing, and you have certain laws of gravity which are pulling you towards that ground. The gravity is so adjusted that your feet will fall to the ground easily without requiring any effort to push them down. The matter is nicely balanced. When your legs are tired after prolonged use they will fall the more readily to the ground than when you are fresh. Who upon earth has not experienced at some time or another that great heaviness of the limbs consequent upon fatigue? It is one of our constant joys that we never suffer from such disabilities. There is a law of gravity here in the spirit world, but we are not subservient to it. All else is, but we human beings are not so.
Or to put it another way, our minds can and do at all times rise above it. That again is second nature to us. If we should tumble down, we cannot hurt ourselves because our spirit bodies are impervious to all injury in whatever shape or form.
Incidentally, we do not often fall because we have not the heavy and rather clumsy bodies that are essential upon earth. It is mostly newly-arrived folk who do the tumbling! When we have become fully acquainted with the power and force of our minds we never do such awkward things!
I am afraid this must seem rather a long way towards answering the question as to how we move ourselves instantaneously from one place to another, but you know how simple questions demand the consideration of other factors not unconnected with the original question in order to make the answer to the latter intelligible! Hence, therefore, my seeming deviation and protractedness.
The laws of gravity will keep all the ‘inanimate objects’ of the spirit world in the place where they properly belong; the buildings, the rivers, the sea, and the rest. It will keep us there, too, but only in the qualified sense that I have just mentioned to you. Remember that on earth your mind is limited in certain directions by the abilities, or disabilities of the physical body. If, say, you wish to write something down, your hand and your arm must be in a fit condition to do so. The same rule applies to the rest of your body. To walk, your legs and feet, and indeed, many other parts of the body, must be in a moderately sound state to do so. The speed at which your limbs can move is not limited by the wishes of the mind, but by the ability of the limbs to move. The performer upon a musical instrument knows how true this is from the unremitting practice which he has perforce to do before his hands can move at the speed which the music makes necessary.
In the spirit world our bodies are always in a state of absolute perfection of condition. The muscles and the various parts of our bodies will respond as instantly and as rapidly as we wish the moment we set the thought in motion. We set the thought in motion, the thought sets the limbs and its parts in motion. There is no lagging, no perceptible fraction of a moment between our thought and its action. It will recall to your mind the familiar phrase: to think is to act. That is literally what takes place in the spirit world.
Excerpt from Here And Hereafter