SOUL -RE TURN FRED MAX ml HI I INI If Class B. Book._ [ Copyright N° COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT Soul-Science Series — I SOUL-RETURN WRITTEN BY KRED MAX BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A. E. H. BACON & COMPANY 8 BEACON STREET I9O4 Copyright, iqoj, By E. H. Bacon & Co., Boston, Mass. J- k I M Preface AN has begun to investigate the Unknown, being urged to do so by new Forces that stamp his future after the curtain is down, the Play -out and the actors gone home. He asks, Where is this Home ? Shall I be lost there in endless sleep-and-nothing, or be active again by word and deed ? These questions, and many others, are answered in this book, and the new Forces presented and ex- plained. They acquaint the reader with his occupa- tion when the Play is out ; with his future state in general, and with his Self. FRED MAX. Boston, Mass., U. S. A., September i, 1903. Table of Contents PAGE Preface 2 Introductory Remarks 9 I. The Soul 19 II. The Soul Continued 31 III. Soul-Return 53 IV. Psychic Fraud 109 V. Physical Souls 122 VI. Human Character 131 VII. Instruction and Currents ..... 144 VIII. Imagination 180 IX. The Divine Spheres 188 X. Other Worlds 197 XL Harmonies I. 204 XII. Conclusion 214 XIII. Questions and Answers 222 Index 269 I ntroductory Remarks THIS is a Primer of Soul-Science, not a Man- ual. It demonstrates that after death the soul continues living ; that it may return ; and that man is a soul. No task can be more difficult. It touches facts and phenomena heretofore considered inaccessible ; it in- vites the scorn of the skeptic, the hatred of the materialist, the irony of the crowd. This Primer contains the kind of knowledge every one should possess and digest ; and the day of its publication has come. The decay of all self-imposed authority ; the growing interest of the public in soul matters, and the triumphs of science such as the telegraph and tel- ephone render the task promising and opportune. It centres in the instruction imparted by a few wise souls from the so-called* " Other Side," which is the only side competent and able to reveal the truth re- garding the soul. The believer in a Hereafter and the investigator that wishes to "have things explained" are interested in this book. He that thinks earth-life is the begin- ning and end of everything is not. Nor is he who celebrates the idea that the Unknown exists separate 9 io Soul-Return and apart from the Known ; or he that places the Unknown on the other side of an impassable chasm. Such ideas are wrong, as the facts of the Known are in constant touch with the facts of the Unknown, and no line runs or can be drawn between the two do- mains of nature. To illustrate : A stone falls when left unsupported ; the materialized form of a return- ing soul vanishes when left unsupported. In the case of the stone the support would be a concrete object ; in that of the materialized human form, a certain class of supporting currents. The descent of the stone is called a physical fact ; that of the form a psychic fact ; but this difference in name does not render the one better than the other. Nobody can point out where the physical ends and where the psychic begins. The propagation of a thought-wave; or the transmission of a telegram over a wire, has been classified among the psychic facts ; but each be- longs to both the psychic and the physical ; the ques- tion is purely one of degree. Even the fall of a stone becomes a psychic event when we consider it the result of a peculiar condition of the ether sur- rounding the stone. A similar cause underlies the descent of the materialized form ; which illustrates that the Known and the Unknown are linked to one - another, .All facts, of whatever class or kind they may be, are connected together more or less directly. When investigated methodically, and stripped of all speculation, traditions and brain-phantasms, the Unknown transcends the uncertainty of guesswork, Introductory Remarks n and appears real. But in the present crude, unsatis- factory condition of soul-science much must be am- plified by the instruction of those that know. Now those that know are not the learned brains of earth, whose tools are insufficient for the acquisition of such knowledge ; but beings that occupy higher planes of life. Their instruction is contained in this volume. It should not be called dogmatic or a dogma. It constitutes as direct and plain. a fact of nature as is the song of a bird. No other means for unfolding the vast Unknown exists at present, that would con- vince man not that he has but that he is a soul. The temporary return of a soul into the material plane of life is a process of nature now no longer un- known or problematical. It is doubted only by the ignorant, and by those that feel more comfortable in the thought that soul-return is an impossibility. Cer- tain professionals, conscious of their inability to prove it a myth, have declared that to believe in the return of departed souls is wicked ; and that its investigators are insane. Such notions will not deter the seeker after truth. He knows that abuse is lavished upon all who maintain anything happening to be contrary to public opinion ; and that a generation may believe impossible or improbable the thing the next gener- ation worships as a fact. If a person inhabiting a planet from which stars were never seen should an- nounce that the denizens of another planet called the Earth can behold stars that are fifty thousand million miles and more distant from them, the statement 12 Soul-Return would be ridiculed by the scientists on that globe ; the pious would ostracize the informant ; the police take his photograph. All this because he advances views unexpected, novel and contrary to common ex- perience. A generation ago the emission of music from a rotating indented disk tickled by a nail, or the possibility of persons conversing with each other over a distance of a thousand miles would have been laughed at and decried as an insane dream. To-day either is an admitted fact. Now, if the human soul exists, it belongs to nature, and nothing is more nat- ural than for it to obey certain laws and processes, as every entity is compelled to obey certain laws and processes. Soul-return is, even as a presumption, more natural than the assumption that the soul should perish with the body, especially since in nature noth- ing perishes. And if it does not perish, what is to hinder it from returning ? And why should the im- partial investigation of these problems be wicked, its records dreamy, its votaries crazy ? One of the things inherent in every soul is the power of condensing, that is, the power of con- densing the substance composing the soul, viz., its ether. The term condensing or condensation stands here for the lack of a more appropriate one. It is a species of condensation different from that which operates on matter such as, e. g., steam or carbonic-acid gas when these are condensed into the liquid state by the application of cold or pressure or Introductory Remarks 13 both combined. Disembodied souls condense ether by means of certain classes of currents which are not yet verified by science. These currents the soul con- trols as soon as practicable after its flesh-and-bone body is laid away. All psychic facts and phenomena ; all manifestations of, or communications from, the so- called Unknown, or the " Other Side," are based upon the condensing power of the soul. The power of condensing ether is not confined to the disembodied ; it is exercised also by mortals. To illustrate : Currents or rays of light from external objects strike the retina and form a picture upon it which is ether condensed. Vision is based upon soul- power, viz., the power of condensing ether currents upon the retina. A common proof of soul-return is furnished by clairvoyant persons. They are specially endowed by nature, able to see ether entities under certain con- ditions prevailing at the time. In order that a clairvoyant may see a soul, the soul must first con- dense sufficiently to form an impression or picture upon the retina of his soul-eye. A less common proof is furnished by Etherealiza- tion, which consists in a departed soul's appearing partly condensed or materialized, i. e., in a visible, transparent, ethereal form. A no longer rare proof of soul-return is afforded by the phenomenon of Materialization. A material- ized soul resides in a temporary, opaque, artificial 14 Soul-Return human body, which for the sake of brevity is often called a Form. It lasts only a brief time ; it utters human speech ; it moves about ; it can depress a scale, and its weight may be ascertained. These three degrees of soul condensation, or soul-re- turn, do not occur as phantasms, dreams or delusions, but as facts. They are facts. To denounce either of them as fraud or the work of Satan is neither prudent nor wise, for thousands of critical investigators are convinced of their genuine, objective, real existence. Some persons call soul-return wonderful. This prompts the skeptic to belittle its study. In nature everything is wonderful, in a sense ; but soul-return is not more wonderful than many other phenomena of nature, such as, e. g., the ordinary phenomena of vision. A person, for example, sees a violet ribbon. Its rays, i. e., ether currents, consist of waves, each of which, according to the measurements of science, is about one seventy-thousandth of an inch long; and seven hundred and sixty-three trillions of them enter the observer's eye during a second of time ! If an object issues rays whose waves are of a different size than the preceding, the color of the object is different. Waves one thirty-thousandth of an inch long, for example, produce the color of red ; that is, the object they ema- nate from is seen as being red. Phenomena of vision are certainly no less wonderful than returning souls. Investigation and experimentation concerning the human soul must overcome manifold difficulties not Introductory Remarks 15 existing in the analysis of concrete matter, such as cumulative conditions and necessities that are not needed in the laboratory. The production of a single form in the aura of a materialized medium, for example, requires as many as a dozen more or less perfect conditions, whereas physical or chemical experi- ments or phenomena require but a few conditions. Besides, the conditions underlying soul-phenomena vary constantly in quantity. For example, in all climes at all times under all circumstances and condi- tions an unsupported stone falls ; but the actions of a soul may change from minute to minute. The reason is, a soul is not a stone. A piece of lead always melts when exposed to strong heat, while the action of a cat on a fence or a squirrel in a tree cannot be foretold, cats and squirrels not being pieces of lead. Moreover, the investigator must be in a receptive con- dition of mind ; that is, his brain-currents must be subdued, or confined within a limited degree of energy, else they will polarize and in polarizing ob- struct the soul-currents. For in nature the coarser — in the present illustration the brain-currents — often obstructs and neutralizes the more refined. Other existing requirements will be obtained in time ; at present they lend an air of reasonable- ness to the assertion of the beer-and-alcohol crowd, that of the disembodied soul nothing can be known, and that at all events soul-science has no raison d'etre. Most Primers are accused of being unsystematic. 1 6 Soul-Return The charge is well grounded, for a Primer cannot have, nor is intended to have, a system. System is none of its requirements. A Primer with a system ceases to be a Primer. This volume is unlike, has a right to be unlike, other Primers, for it is written by a few disembodied souls through a mortal hand. It presents essential facts and phenomena of the human soul, a systematic treatise of which would fill a hun- dred volumes. Peace, happiness and prosperity await the nation that shall root its laws, institutions and government in the wisdom and superior intelligence of departed souls. Misery and danger remain with the nations which insist that of the soul nothing is, nothing can be, known. Shall the day soon dawn when man will turn inwardly, learn to concentrate in the silence of the soul, cease to view life through distorting prisms of mist and doubt, and develop his soul-powers to keep pace with the daily increasing brain-powers ? Unless these questions be decided in the affirmative, the new conditions of the world will destroy the edi- fice of the State, for the hand on the world's dial points to the hour when the masses that are taught that they have souls, but are not taught that they are souls, will attack the fabrics of government. They are taught obedience to brain-law, but left in ignor- ance of soul-law, of the purpose of their mundane abode, the continuance of their life after death, and the possibility of returning if they wish to re-turn. Introductory Remarks 17 All of which, in view of the intense development of the brain and the material world, is more important than anything else at the present time. If the masses possessed such knowledge and experience, the attack- ing party as well as the besieged and intrenched would grow peaceful, happy and contented. The condition of affairs in China illustrates the fate awaiting a nation whose soul-currents are not sus- tained by its brain-currents. A similar but worse fate awaits the nations whose advancing brain-currents are unsustained by developed soul-currents. The Soul 14 There are more things in heav'n and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy ! ' Shakespeare. — Ha??ilet, Act 7, sc. 5. DROPS of water descending upon a rock in continuous succession and with continuous force finally pierce the rock, and when freez- ing within its pores burst the rock into frag- ments. During the time the drops are descending the consequences are not considered. But after the ada- mantine core is bursted, people begin to think, and enquire about the cause. In the stone or rain there is no soul, yet the stone is rent ; the rain is sent elsewhere to work in other parts of the world ; the stone desintegrates, and its particles fertilize the soil in the low lands whither it was driven by its friend, the water. The slow action of the rain grinding the rock ; the slow action of the water producing the fertilizing sand ; the slow action of the soil producing food ; the slow action of the food in being converted into ether and in feeding the soul — all these gradual, never-failing, thorough and serious steps of nature reach from a cloud-fed lonely mountain-rock to the imperious ruler of a country, some mighty satrap, war-lord and Demi-God worshipped 19 20 Soul-Return by his tools. Yet without that union of fluid and pulverized earth their majestic brains were a myth ; their momentous thoughts idle dreams. Drops of water eating into a stone feed man's brain, his unfold- ing heart, and his immortal soul. The reader asks, Are the Authors of this book materialists that they pin raw matter to refined souls ? As well may the pious enquire, Is God a materialist because He made matter ? The student of soul- science will ask, What kind of material is the soul made of ? Mortals hearing about the soul only through the literary traditions and hearsay of Pales- tine believe it is a creature composed of sheer noth- ing'; the bare mention of the soul's being something is in their eyes a crime. We assert that any person who assumes that the soul is composed of nothing is a denier of soul, and no better than the worshipper of an after-death Nirvana, or the blind man that looks upon vision as a nuisance. What, then, is the soul ? We answer : The soul is an ether entity. When it lives in the incarnated state it contains the material body. The outer por- tion of the soul envelops the body, and is called the aura. Every human being, every animal, every plant is a soul ; every soul has an aura. And every important organ of the body has an aura, which to distinguish it from the general aura surrounding the entire body, may be called an organ-aura. Its ether is peculiarly sensitive. Any violent agitation in it causes pain. The Soul 21 All bodily pain is due to a disturbance in the action and motions of the particles of an organ-aura. The more sensitive an aura, the more readily may it be disturbed. A finger-nail has no aura, hence it may be cut without pain. An ether entity composed of, or containing, various ether organs, all in compact nearness although, in a sense, independent of one another, the whole envel- oped by an aura, the human aura, such a complex yet unified ether organism is the human soul. The most conspicuous organ-aura is the brain-aura. It crowns the head after the manner of the tonguey flames of a torch. It contains myriads of ether cur- rents resembling fine lines or threads, each about two feet long. The external end of each such thread floats in the air ; the other end is rooted in the gray matter of the brain, and the point at which it is rooted we call a brain-trace. Brain-aura currents easily become dormant and are easily revived again. If, for example, a person walking on the street notices a beautiful mastiff, the animal forms a trace upon his brain which soon becomes dormant. If later on he perceives a similar dog, currents from this animal pass to that brain-trace, agitate it, vivify the respective brain-aura current and cause this current to vibrate again. In other words, the current of the recent canine joins the earlier canine impression, because the current and the impression are harmonious to each other. This revives the old current, prompting the 22 Soul-Return person to exclaim : " There goes a dog like the one I saw the other day!" Brain-traces attract currents from external objects, provided theae currents are like or similar to the things in the brain-traces. At the instant of attraction the brain-traces are revived. The process resembles the action of the steel point pressing against a revolving graphophone record ; that is, against tiny indentations or traces, which re- produces the old impression, the old song, the old tune. The depth of an ordinary human aura is about six inches, reckoned from the surface of the body out- ward. It increases as the soul unfolds. The aura of a well-developed mediumistic person may attain a depth of three hundred feet. The aura possesses peculiar motions, among them a vibratory movement of a lateral direction ; and a throbbing, palpitating movement of an up-and-down direction. A good clairvoyant may see these motions. They resemble, respectively, the swells of the ocean and the pulsa- tions of the hairspring of a watch. We mean no offence to the fair reader by the statement that the human body is a coarse, material- ized portion of the human soul. Taken together with the soul's coarsest non-materialized ether parts, the body may be said to constitute the physical por- tion of the soul. A human soul composed of coarse ether, or one The Soul 23 that contains dark ether in spots or patches, is imper- fect, undeveloped, crude. Such a soul needs a grad- ual process of development or unfoldment, in order to improve, develop and clear its ether. The scale or distance between a soul that is crude and a soul that is well developed embraces thousand of degrees, grades and shades of partly developed conditions and qual- ities of souls, i. e., of soul-ether. Nature's remedy for all such imperfect conditions, that is, the method she employs for developing, unfolding and improving the soul, is Incarnation. Which means, that nature do- nates to the soul a body of flesh and bones in which it must dwell ; and a tenancy at the earth's surface in an electric field of action, where it should remain as long as possible. After the death of the body the soul passes back into the aura of the earth. The aura of the earth begins at the surface and extends about seventy-five thousand miles into space. The body of flesh and bones resembles a shell actuated and manipulated by currents, which for the present we call electric, although they are totally different from the electric currents in practical use and known to science. The soul, on the other hand, is actuated by an entirely different class of currents, which, al- though they are totally unlike the magnetic currents known to science, we call magnetic. The body, then, may be said to be electric ; the soul, magnetic. The term " Organic Life " refers to the life of a soul in a form, i. e., in a material, physical body. 24 Soul-Return The aura is part of the soul, and develops with it. The development of the one involves and carries with it the development of the other. And the mosses, fungi, ferns, lichens, weeds, flowers, trees, in other words, the entire vegetable kingdom, and the animal kingdom and the races of man are souls residing in material or physical forms for the purpose of unfold- ment and development. The following are the main functions of the* human aura : i. The human aura indicates the grade or quality of its own ether and that of the soul of which it forms part. The ether of the aura and that of the soul to which the aura belongs are always of the same grade, or quality. The aura therefore expresses the degree of maturity, the quality of the soul. A reasonable familiarity with human auras would enable a mortal to gain a knowledge of himself and his fellow beings ; and to judge his fellow beings from the indications which their auras furnish. It would prevent him from judging them from their ex- terior appearance or their pretensions. In a wide and comprehensive sense it may be said truly : A man is his aura. The human soul, then, begins incarnated life in a body, or form. At the close of life's season it beholds " A pale horse, and his name that sits on it is Death," The Soul 25 whereupon it leaves the form and enters the earth's aura, or ether zones. As it enters, it is not greeted and received by a gateman or janitor with ornamented keys, but is assigned its place by the inexorable forces of nature which, regardless of earth's oratory, station or wealth, solely ascertain its condition through the condition of the aura. With the rigidity with which a stone is compelled to sink in water they compel a coarse soul to stay below, that is, near the earth's surface ; with the precision with which hydro- gen gas rises in the air they permit the developed soul to occupy at once a higher place in the spheres of the earth's aura. As a man here below is known usually by his face, so a departed soul in the Beyond is judged and known by its aura. 2. The human aura indicates the motions of the soul and the condition of the soul-organs ; it acts as the individual's agent and interpreter in all communi- cations between him and the " other side." If a per- son suffers, e. g., from a defect in his heart, the de- fect appears in the heart-aura and the general aura long before it is diagnosed by the physician. An apple hangs on a tree. It becomes detached and falls to the ground. Some one picks it up and eats it. Desire, action, movement, result, appear in this person's aura. His desire for the apple is ex- pressed by a peculiar motion in his aura-ether. His subsequent actions his aura expresses by vibrations or 26 Soul-Return waves caused by the currents of certain ether organs which help to set his body in motion. In a similar way his movements are impressed upon his aura. Whatever transpires in the interior of the soul is transmitted to, and indicated by, the aura. Soul-love, that is, the pure, true love of an incar- nated human soul for an incarnated soul of the op- posite sex, appears in the aura of the loving mortal. If his aura is mediumistic or very sensitive it tends to move toward the aura of the beloved when near the beloved, as if wishing to be very close to it. This may be distinctly perceived, in some instances even distinctly seen, by a harmonious disembodied soul. The will of the soul emanates from the soul-body ; that is, from the ensemble of the ether organs and non-materialized portions of the soul. (See page 48.) 3. The human aura indicates the progress of the soul made in all its preceding incarnations. The human aura is the index of the soul, that is, of its quality or grade. The reader's present form is a flesh-and-bone body which he inhabits now for the first time. When he lived on terra firma in previous incarnations, he pos- sessed in each incarnation a different body. For the sake of argument, let his present earth-life be his forty-first incarnation ; or, what is the same, let us suppose that his soul ere entering his present form inhabited forty forms successively. Then his present The Soul 27 soul-condition is the result, the exponent of the soul's entire previous earth experience; and his aura indi- cates the degree of maturity of his soul-ether, regard- less of mundane border-flowers such as station, luck, fame or gold. The examination of a person's aura re- veals the secret of his ego ; interprets his existence ; discloses the condition of his soul. The question " Who am I ? " is answered correctly : " I am my aura!" An answer such as " I am Richard Roe" would be superficial, for in man's earth-life and in the soul's unending course names are mere trifles. During forty incarnations a soul bears forty different names, none of which has any value after the death of the form. In a psychic sense there is nothing in a name. 4. The human aura indicates the usefulness of its ether for the manifestations of soul-facts. The main requisite for the manifestations of soul- facts is a mediumistic aura, i. e., an aura endowed with one or more peculiar properties. Its ether par- ticles are peculiarly constituted. (See page 44.) Manifestations of departed souls occur only in medi- umistic auras. 5 . The human aura indicates the desires and long- ings of the soul. Auras have different colors and tints. The darker the tint of an aura the worse is the quality of its ether. The lowest class of souls, the so-called earth- bound, are entirely black. After transition they 28 Soul-Return cannot rise beyond about a hundred feet above the ground, which to a soul is a terrible calamity. They are incarnated in small numbers only, about one per cent of the population of the globe. Whether they live incarnated or in the free state, i. e., as disem- bodied souls, they possess enormous power for evil. Notable instances of souls at this day still earth-bound are Philip II of Spain, Napoleon I, the Duke of Alba, and Nero. The other extremes of soul-quality are the devel- oped souls. They are of a white color with a bluish tint. They form about ten per cent of the earth's, in- carnated population. The remaining ninety per cent range from the dark, the spotted, the coarse and the black of the earth-bound, in all possible shades and varieties, to the class of developed souls. Among these the variety and grades of unfoldment are be- yond the possibility of enumeration. Souls of meagre unfoldment, immature develop- ment and insufficient earth experience in previous in- carnations are often called physical. Their previous earth-lives were too short ; several, perhaps many, of them ended prematurely, which destroyed the greatest opportunity for soul-unfoldment : a long life in the form. Suppose that a person, A, in every one of his forty incarnations died during infancy, and that to-day he lives in his forty-first incarnation. He may truly be said to have had less opportunity for soul-development The Soul 29 than another soul that in every one of its forty incarnations was so fortunate as to attain old age. Unless prevented by education, instruction, fear, or the meritorious and powerful example of worthy mor- tals near him, A is a criminal. The developed soul is modest, accessible to the needy ; anxious to help others ; nearly exempt from physical elements of soul. Its imperfections cause an easily reparable unevenness of ether tissues, which scarcely blurs the aura. Owing to the difference of the condition of their souls children of the same parents may be heteroge- neous, which, as has been stated, is owing to the difference in longevity in their former incarnated lives. It must be borne in mind that parents do not select the souls of their children ; they merely supply the souls with flesh-and-bone garments. Highly advanced disembodied souls tell us that they believe the human soul came originally to this globe in a crude condition for the purpose of under- going a process of repairs or unfoldment and develop- ment. Whether for this purpose our globe is a good place or a poor one depends upon the instruction the soul receives through the brain, i. e., the brain-aura; upon the comprehension man acquires of the elemen- tary laws of physical science, and his opportunities for receiving the instruction of departed souls that are acquainted with his needs and wants. Nature's general 30 Soul-Return plan for developing and unfolding the soul is : Life in a material form at the surface of the earth ; and thereafter the more definite and specific but slower disembodied life in the earth's aura. When Jesus said His kingdom was not of this earth, he was right. No soul is of this earth. The soul is a stranger here below, sent here for instruction and education. At the completion of its mundane tour, after outgrowing earth-life and sphere-life, and all earth-conditions, it will exchange this globe for one more spiritual. And still later, in ages of time hence, the soul passes to star Alcyone. During the immense journey, from the advent of the soul on our planet to its arrival on that distant star it preserves its aura, its identity, its individuality. Drops of water falling upon a rock continuously invade the interior of the rock, and when the water freezes within, the rock bursts. These illustrations of the effect of natural forces find their likes in nature's psychic domain, where the continuing silent action of currents animating the human aura end in bursting asunder its flinty elements, which purifies the soul and enables it to benefit the human race. II The Soul Continued IMMEDIATELY upon the death of its form the soul passes to the stratum of ether in which it is in equilibrium with surrounding forces or currents. If it is undeveloped, earthy, crude, or worse, earth- bound, it finds its equilibrium in the dense and, to a de- parted soul, filthy atmosphere close to the earth's sur- face. If it is a better soul, it finds its equilibrium at once in a more elevated portion of the atmosphere. It may return earthward at will ; but it cannot rise except through a gradual progression. No exception is or can be made ; no soul can omit or leap over a single inch of ether higher than its own level ; no grace or pardon avails ; the laws of nature permit none. The government of this globe, of the entire solar system, is one of laws. The gradual progression implies a thorough practice in the work of resisting certain forces that tend to render the soul coarse, and to neutralize or even oppose its progression. The ef- forts and labors of a departed soul during its life in the first seven spheres of the earth's aura, called the earth-spheres, are devoted to its own interests. Every 3i 32 Soul-Return soul soon after leaving the form discovers that it must stand upon its own merits. The main labors of the individual on terra firma and in the spheres consist in overcoming resistances, in fighting adverse currents, vicious influences, and forces that tend to jerk the soul in contrary direc- tions. In the never-ceasing struggle a mortal's great- est assistance is early familiarization with the manip- ulation of psychic currents, which is obtainable only by intercourse with his friends on high. Nature incarnates the soul at a prenatal day. In other words, at a certain stage of development an earth-sphere soul is condensed into the size of about a walnut, and properly inserted where it becomes the tenant of the infant several months before birth. Soul and body amalgamate into one individual, the Ego. Were the soul blown into the infant after birth, how could the young form be maintained before the act of blowing, or between the act and the birth, since body-life is impossible without a vivifying soul within ? We are going to explain why the soul remains in the body during earth-life. In other words, we are about to answer the question, What prevents the soul from leaving a healthy person at any moment ? The as- tonishing fact that so attenuated an entity as the soul may stay in a dense, earthy body for scores of years merits an explanation. We undertake the explana- tion, stripping it of technicalities as far as the intri- cate subject permits. The Soul Continued 33 Soul and body are held together by the mutual at- traction between currents of the body and currents of the soul. The organs of the body are in constant interaction with one another. Every 7 one of them is in reality an ether organ partly materialized, and enveloped by an aura. The physical heart, for example, is a partly materialized portion of the real heart, the ether heart ; and the ether heart is enveloped in an ether aura which is the outer portion of the physical as well as the ether heart. The body-organs generate currents which for the purpose of illustration may be denoted by a. The organs of the soul also act upon one another con- stantly, which interaction produces magnetic currents. Thus, the ether heart generates magnetic currents, which attract and are attracted by the electric currents of the physical heart. This mutual attraction binds the ether heart to its physical portion, the physical heart. For like reasons, every other ether organ remains united with its respective physical or body-organ. The remaining portion of the body generates cur- rents which may be denoted by b. They attract and are attracted by other currents of a higher order which are generated by certain ether parts in the cen- tral portion of the soul. These parts, together with the ether organs, form the soul-body. Quantity a-\-i stands for certain currents of the body and its organs, which attract and hold in place currents d of the soul-body. 34 Soul-Return Currents a -f- b are often called electric for want of a proper name. They should not be confounded with the electric currents known to physical science. The currents under d represent soul-currents, and, as said before, they are of a much higher order than the others. They may be called magnetic until a more appropriate name can be substituted. They are not identical with, nor related to, the magnetic currents known to physical science. There remains the aura of the soul. Owing to its ascensional power it has a tendency to leave the body, and in leaving it the soul-body would go with the aura, as the two belong together. But this tendency is counteracted by the attraction of the form as an entirety, independent of the work done mentioned before. For example, when a person walks in the open air he performs internal work. His body re- ceives electric force from the ground. With this force, and with the aid of certain inductive processes that cannot be explained here, currents of another kind, c, are produced, which attract and bind the aura, that is, certain magnetic currents, e, of the aura, to the soul-body. To recapitulate : i. The electric, a, of the body-organs attracts the magnetic of the ether organs. 2. The remainder of the electric currents b of the body attracts the magnetic currents of the remainder of the soul-body. The Soul Continued 35 3. Quantity a -f- b and the magnetic currents d of the soul-body and ether organs attract one another. 4. Quantity c, the ether currents of the body as a unit, attracts the aura by means of magnetic aura currents e. The electric, then, is represented by a -f- b -j- c ; let it be designated by n. And the magnetic of the soul is represented by d -\- e, which may be desig- nated by 0. Now, as long as n remains substantially equal to so long will human life be maintained; that is, so long will the soul remain in the body. This is the normal condition of human life as it should prevail everywhere upon the globe. If from disease, accident or acts of violence n grows smaller than o, then the soul is not sufficiently attracted by and to the body and must leave it, which causes transition, the event known as death. If n is greatly in excess of 0, life is too crude, too earthy. Let such excess be denoted by g. Then g represents the crude-physical force which controls the manifold operations and transactions of mundane life. With its habitual precision Science will one day un- fold the delicate and intricate tissue of currents that quicken the soul during its enforced incarnated life, and delineate the process by which the soul maintains itself in the electric, i. e., in the form. All men are condemned to die. Compared with the soul's immortal state earth-life is only an incident. Death is as natural as earth-life. It restores the soul 36 Soul-Return to its natural state, which is that of a free ether entity. As we have seen, the proximate cause of death is the cessation of one or more soul-retaining currents. A person's sudden or entirely unexpected transi- tion is a terrible calamity to the soul. Souls that ex- perienced it describe their feeling at the fatal moment as the feeling experienced by a person in the act of drowning. Fright, anguish, surprise, helplessness, torment the poor soul until some harmonious departed soul brings aid and comfort. Even a slight knowl- edge of soul facts and psychic phenomena, acquired during earth-life, will help the unfortunate being. Equally unfortunate is he whom a protracted illness prevented from exercising earth-life's activities. He arrives in the Beyond devoid of a period of natural progress, and is greatly benefited by a speedy reunion with some friend or loved one still living in the form. A pitiable lot is that of departed children's souls. On arriving in the Beyond they are as helpless as they were on the day they first beheld "the light of the world." They grow up slowly to the same state of maturity that they should have attained in the form. When fully grown they are again what they were before their interrupted incarnation. In other words, they lose time ; for in the spheres the process of growth is much slower than in the form. After death — what ? A man breathed vigorous life yesterday ; to-day only a cold shell, a pallid form The Soul Continued 37 seems left of him. What became of him ? Departed as well as departing souls, by a convenient use of their condensing powers, may manifest to a clairvoy- ant. Clairvoyants that have witnessed a soul's de- parture from its form state that such a soul is first seen to lie upon the dying body face to face, then slowly to move a short distance from the body and disappear. During this movement its eyes are closed, its cheeks as white as snow. Many such occurrences have been witnessed ; but they are not recorded be- cause the human soul is not the thing publicists care to discuss except perhaps in mockery. A soul just liberated from its prison of flesh and bones neither exults over its freedom, expansion and powers, nor exhibits the vigor of chemical elements in the statu nascendi. A newly departed soul is tired, and begins its magnetic sleep, the profoundest sleep of all, at a place not far from the corpse. This sleep commences with the departure of the soul from the body, and in the case of highly developed souls lasts about twenty-four hours ; in other classes of souls it lasts much longer, as long as thirty years ; in dark cases even longer. The length of magnetic sleep after transition is inversely as the development of the soul. That is, the greater the development, the shorter the magnetic sleep. Coarse souls, even after awaking, may remain unconscious of their act- ual condition for a long time, during which they are not aware even that they are "dead." 38 Soul-Return As an illustration let the reader imagine that he is clairaudient and near a poorly developed mother that is just awaking from her magnetic sleep, but still un- conscious of the fact that she has lost her body. She attempts to sit up. She exclaims, " Where am I ? " She asks, "Where are you?" referring to her hus- band. She resembles a patient awaking from a cura- tive sleep, asking, " Where am I ? Why do you stare at me ? . . . I am not sick ... I feel quite well . . . let me rise!'' She calls her children. The ether bonds between mother and child are more enduring than the man of bronze on horseback in the market- place. The seasons come and go ; souls fritter away their lives and eternity for the rainbow-toys of fame, and nations perish ; but parental ties ever connect the earth with the ethereal zones ... a mother with the currents that once encompassed her infant's cradle. She calls her children again ... no answer. She calls louder ; no answer. She thinks it strange ; she- lis- tens ; a sweet voice is heard ... a soul disembodied like herself approaches ... it is her mother of her incarnation preceding. ..." Dear one, when you lived on earth before, I was your mother. You are now a spirit ; your form is laid away ... in the ground below.' ' The poor woman hears the whispered words ; she learns her condition and for the first time the true meaning of death. But the visiting angel is well de- veloped ; she must leave, although the undeveloped The Soul Continued 39 daughter implores her to stay. As always, the laws of nature prevail. Besides, there is a lack of har- mony. . . . " I will send you help ... do not weep. I must leave you now ! " She is gone. Some one among the souls harmoni- ous to an imperfectly unfolded being will aid. Thanks to faulty earth-teachings on the subject of the soul the spheres are full of such souls. The agonizing woman endeavors to move ; but she is uninstructed and therefore unable to move ; she does not know her condensing powers. Souls move and prehend by means of currents which must be studied and prac- tised ere a soul can move ; for departed souls have neither arms nor legs. They need them as little as steamships need oars. The mother is in great misery, knowing neither how nor whither to proceed. She is as lonely as a pauper ; as helpless as when she came first into the flesh she just left. She is blind, for earth-sphere souls do not possess vision unless they sojourn in the aura of a harmonious instrument. She is waiting, restless, in despair. Her mind dwells on the comfort in her home below . . . her children . . . how she used to help them . . . her husband . . . her friends. She asks, " Does he know how unhappy I am ? A living corpse in this wide and chilly space. ... Is it all a dream ? Am I in the universe ? " Then she re- membered she once heard about the soul ... its return . . . and such things. She thinks of her 4-0 Soul-Return jokes about spooks, her insinuations . . . her smiles. She exclaims, "Oh, if I had my body again . . . for a day . . . for an hour ... I could say something to them . . . tell them how I suffer and what I know ! ',' In a few hundred years she will inhabit a mortal shell again and thereafter return to the " other side" in a better state, as a developed soul. Now let the reader meet a newly departed woman of a more elevated quality of ether, a well-developed soul, familiar with the ordinary range of soul-phe- nomena, including soul-return. She awakens in the Beyond, at once knowing her position and condition. She recognizes the voices of kind-hearted souls that were attracted to her long before her transition ; she hears them whisper, " Welcome to your new home ! " When a person arrives in the Beyond it makes such a difference how he is received ! The kind-hearted souls knew her ; they had been at her earth-home long before her demise. They teach her enough about condensation to enable her to move to a beauti- ful home which they and other loved ones selected and prepared for her. The walls of a spirit-home are of condensed ether, surrounded by ether flowers of sweet fragrance. She is installed. Strangers greet her ; they long to speak to her, to teach and assist her. In a short time she returns to her earth-home. It is seance-day. Her husband is in the little room where they met their invisible friends when she was still The Soul Continued 41 with him in the form. He is waiting for her; a me- dium is present, through whom she may deliver a message. The room is and will remain a soul-home, dedicated to the use of the departed ; the things in it will remain as she left them. Her chair is reserved for her. She now occupies it as a spirit. The seance is like the one held in the same room shortly before she passed away. Although her soul- ether is a qual- ity superior to her husband's, he feels her presence. Years spent in investigating soul-facts have rendered him sensitive to ether impressions. She sends a message through the medium, in which she describes her transition, her situation, her recep- tion in the Beyond ; her journey, her new home, and the meeting with her friends. Should the reader consider the foregoing an ideal condition of things in the sense of its being untrue or overdrawn, he is wrong. The condition is real. To our positive knowledge it exists wherever man has learned the truth of facts and the facts of truth. After acclimatization on the other side departed souls occupy themselves with their progression so in- tensely that even longings after their loved ones that are left below succumb to the all-absorbing " What shall I do ? What am I fit for ? How rapidly can I rise ? When shall I reach the divine sphere ? " We have heard conversations like the following, carried on between two unequally developed souls : 42 Soul-Return u You know the reason why a person is incarnated ? " "Yes; to advance more rapidly." " You are now without a form in which to ad- vance. . . ." "Yes. . . ." " Do you know why earth-life helps the progression of the soul ? " "No. . . ." " The form is electric ; the soul is magnetic. A soul fresh from the pandemonium of earth needs a quick-refining process. This requires the physical, the electric of earth. The incarnated soul resembles a magnetic core in an electric shell, the human body. Both are interwoven, in which state the soul progresses more rapidly than in the free state. . . ." " What am I to do ? " st Return into the electric as soon as you can. En- ter a human aura. It stands next in usefulness to a human form such as you have lost. There you will mingle again with the electric of a mortal . . . you will live again in a human aura, although not your own. It is like living in a rented house. Your life will not be as complete as it was during your incarna- tion, but it will be a more expeditious process for souls of your quality of ether than the life in the spheres over here. You require the aura of a harmonious mortal, for it is a feeble substitute for the life in a body of your own. . . .'■ The Soul Continued 43 Nature's rule is : Human soul, while Thou art on earth Thou shalt live and labor in a human aura ! As incarnation promotes soul-development, so the labor of a departed soul, when it returns into an electric field, promotes soul-development. The labor of a departed soul in a mortal aura resembles the soul's previous life in a form. Its great benefit to the departed explains the anxiety of disembodied souls to return and discover some aura suitable to their progression ; adapted to their ether condition ; harmonious to their currents. The reader under- stands now why departed souls chase after the mortal of the congenial aura, and why they desire to reside in it. They wish to continue the process of unfold- ment which was interrupted by the death of their form. They resemble tramps in search of work. They are in a strange world of currents free from the material, i. e., the electric of the form and, except in rare cases, unprotected by parental care. They are aware of the difference between their present loneli- ness and the tender care they received when they were still infants. Once the harmonious aura found and seized upon, the elated soul labors incessantly for recognition, to notify the mortal aura-owner that a disembodied soul has arrived in his aura and there begun the much- coveted toil. This toil may consist of raps, levitation, writing, materialization or impressions ; anything that fits the character of the aura and prevailing conditions. 44 Soul-Return Nature's law is not "Thou shalt develop what Thou hast, but " Thou shalt develop what Thou art . . . quid ipse sis ! " The plains, valleys, mountains, rivers, oceans ; the vegetable and animal kingdoms ; the ter- restrial aura; the earth's endless array of facts, all serve the unfoldment, development and free and am- ple use of the soul. The mediumistic aura is suited to the earth-labors of departed souls. Its ether is highly sensitive, which adapts it to the heterogeneous currents of other auras without being deranged thereby, and renders it ca- pable of condensing electric currents without endanger- ing its structure, vibrations and quality. Aura-quality and aura-power are innate properties of the indi- vidual. About three persons among ten are born mediumistic. Man's ignorance in soul-matters prevents many me- diumistic persons from developing their aura and its psychic gifts ; it prompts not a few to conceal their powers ; it causes others to remain unconscious of them. But all such enslaved beings possess remark- able sensitiveness, of which even a " splendid educa- tion " cannot rob them. In former centuries severe punishment was visited on strongly mediumistic per- sons. They were treated as witches, dissenters, her- etics, sorcerers or obsessed beings ; they were tor- tured, strangled, burnt at the stake. Those whose auras permitted the access of crude-physical souls, and who when under their control uttered the words The Soul Continued 45 of such souls, were charged with being possessed by the devil, and were treated with additional cruelty. Under existing conditions of earth-life nine incar- nated souls among ten are undeveloped at the present time — a ratio altogether too large, owing to the fre- quency of slaughter, poverty, famine, disease, war and other curses, which compel a multitude of mortals to leave their body ahead of schedule time. This neces- sitates a greater frequency of reincarnation, and causes the rate of undeveloped mortals to be so uncommonly high. In the present conditions of earth-life, there- fore, and in the absence of a Science of the Soul many communications from the Beyond come from unde- veloped or crude-physical souls who are powerful, physically speaking, and who enjoy any kind of mis- chief or fun in a mediumistic aura. They press for recognition with great emphasis ; and their superior physical power enables them to force themselves into such auras, compelling the disembodied friends and loved ones of a mortal to stand aside. (See page 84.) Crude-physical souls swarm round every medium in crowds, anxious to work in his aura. The chief pur- pose of developing a medium is to prevent this ; in other words, to protect both the instrument and the public against their nefarious work. The old enemy of mankind, the destroyer of virtue and the progenitor of vice ; the imposter of old and 46 Soul-Return betrayer of all times ; the Satan pictured by creeds and sects ; the tempter of the pure ; the seducer of the innocent ; the slayer of men and traducer of their fame ; the thief, and the robber of man's peace and good will ; the incarnate spirit of negation and oppres- sion ; -the mildew encroaching upon mundane happi- ness and bliss ; the ever triumphant enemy of truth and health, is neither a snake nor a fallen prince ; it is the crude-physical property or element of the em- bodied and disembodied souls that live on terra firma and in the spheres above. The power of the crude-physical prevails in all mundane or terrestrial affairs ; it dominates the majority of mankind. It is an important ingredient of the psychic portion of this globe. Our globe was formed for the purpose of giving the crude-physical souls an opportunity of losing, or freeing themselves from, their crude-physical properties which obstruct the progression of such souls. All the souls now in- habiting the earth and its spheres were once entirely crude-physical ; none of them can leave this planet ere the last trace of the crude-physical in their ether is extinguished. The reality of life is operated by the soul in its free, i. e., disembodied state. The soul's life in the form, living at the surface of the earth, that is, at the base of the ether spheres of this globe, is a masquerade, a dream, an unreality. All incarnated life is unreal The Soul Continued 47 because it is based upon unreal, i. e., condensed ether; that is, upon ether condensed into solid, liquid and gase- ous bodies. This species of condensation is made use of by nature solely for the purpose of calling into exist- ence, and maintaining the life of, souls in the incar- nated state at the surface of such condensed worlds or globes as our earth. The kinds of condensation to which free ether may be subjected are beyond numerical expression. The kinds of condensation that may be undergone by ether entities such as the human soul are legion. The two great properties of ether are Condensibility, i. e., the capacity of condensation in manifold ways ; and Per- fect Elasticity, which includes the perfect freedom of locomotion without friction or loss of time. The structure of the ether entity known as the human soul is complicated. It consists of as many ether organs as there are separate and distinct organs of the human body. The soul's envelope, the aura, has a life of its own, carried on by means of a vast number of magnetic currents, each of which is a thing sin generis. The soul also contains non-materialized ether organs situate within the human body, consist- ing of seven distinct organs, which are the centre of the soul. They constitute the individual, the Self, the being that acts, wills and suffers. They are not materialized ; materialization would spoil them. They are invisible even to a clairvoyant, because they never 48 Soul-Return condense. The quality of their ether is identical with that of the aura, as has been stated. A coarse aura means a coarse soul-body, i. e., a coarse crude Self. The seven organs are grouped in a cluster whose shape is oblong ; it corresponds to the human trunk. Each of the organs has a system of pulsation of its own, but no two pulsations of the seven organs coin- cide. They have other motions besides. The cen- tral one of the seven is the most important organ for us to consider, as it forms the central part of the human individual. It is a sphere of the size of a billiard ball, surrounded by an exceedingly delicate and sensitive film acting as its aura. This sphere has a variety of motions, including a throbbing or pulsat- ing movement. None of these motions or movements originate on terra firma. It is neither extinguished nor affected by the soul's ante vitam condensation, but comes with the soul and remains uncondensed throughout earth-life. In other words, the soul, at its incarnation, lies within this ethereal, spherical body or soul-centre. This soul-centre is in vibrating con- nection with the Beyond. Its pulsations are those of certain currents prevailing in the upper spheres of the earth's aura, which are not indigenous to these spheres, but reach beyond them, far into the unknown and at present unknowable depths of the Universe. Thus does the human soul form part of the Infin- ite, and connect with the fathomless sea of currents The Soul Continued 49 whose home is everywhere, whose confines are nowhere. The cluster of seven organs is directly connected with the brain-aura ; hence the actions of this ether organ react upon the cluster ; and the action of the cluster connects with the brain-aura. To illustrate : A calls on B for a loan of money. B listens to the request. Its sound waves impinge upon his ear. Their ether particles impinge upon the brain-aura. The brain-aura impresses them upon the brain, and simultaneously an impression is made upon the cluster. Suppose that B's soul is highly developed ; it will im- mediately consent, unless the brain-aura has weighty arguments against granting the request. The con- senting current reaches the brain-aura. If this organ is in harmony with the soul that is of gentle tissue, although perhaps not overpoweringly developed, and if, as has been stated, no particular grounds combat the loan, the brain-aura will vibrate in unison, and the currents produced will set the tongue in motion, announcing compliance with the request. But if the brain is unusually strong, out of proportion to the cluster, then its vibrations may overrule the soul and dictate to the tongue a different course, i. e., a refusal. Suppose now that B's soul is coarse, dark, undevel- oped. It will then be miserly, and the currents it sends to the brain-aura will be of a like tenor. The 50 Soul-Return brain-aura, unless its combination tends in the oppo- site direction and is strong enough to overpower the cluster, will vibrate in harmony with these currents, which after transmission to the tongue means a re- fusal. The will of the soul is executed by the several ether organs mentioned on page 47, including the brain- aura. Its main factors are 1. The quality of the ether composing the soul. 2. The magnetic forces or currents active in the soul and permeating it. 3. The brain-aura. 4. The quality of ether from the spheres, drawn or attracted by the brain-aura, indirectly affecting and often determining soul-action. 5. External currents agitating the soul-body. In the expression of the will of the soul, the part played by the brain is an indirect one. The soul acts directly upon the brain-aura, not upon the brain. And vice versa, the brain-aura acts directly upon the soul, not upon the brain. Earth-life revolves round the material Ego ; sphere- life round the disembodied Ego. As has been stated, life here below and that in the Beyond serve but one purpose, viz., the unfoldment and development of the soul. Nothing in the whole range of perplexities, obstacles and difficulties is so difficult to bring about The Soul Continued 51 as a change in the quality of the ether in the human soul ; for nothing is more averse to a change or altera- tion than ether, this wonderful, subtle world-material. Even its condensation or materialization is compar- atively easier to accomplish, for it involves merely a change of state. The difference between pig iron and its original free ether is not as great nor as important as that between two souls of different grades or quali- ties. To make a dark soul into a white soul implies tremendous labor, immense outlays of force, the over- coming of enormous difficulties and, in addition, ages of time. The means employed to accomplish the change consist in incarnation and its resulting earth- experience, and in the alternating life in the spheres of the earth's aura until further incarnation becomes unnecessary. The soul, then, receives its last finish- ing touches during its uninterrupted life in the spheres. The knowledge of incarnation is not new ; nor is it properly understood. The sufferings of a sensitive incarnated soul are sometimes unendurable, owing to the general ignorance concerning such sensitiveness. Such a soul feels uncomfortable in its form. This book acquaints such refined souls with the cause of their present unhappiness. Its instruction is a com- fort to them, because they know that immediately after the demise of their body they pass to a stratum of ether more homogeneous to their own ether, where the individual, the soul, will be happier. Every individ- ual has a brain and a heart, but is a soul ; and after 52 Soul-Return demise of the form will pass to that place in the earth's ether spheres where it is in proper equilibrium with its surroundings and with all impinging forces. In the tumult and bustle of daily life man overlooks the fact that he is pulled hither and thither like a stage-rat, in zigzag paths, by strings from behind or above the stage, and made to move about in zigzag paths by other artificial means. He overlooks it be- cause he is ignorant, and he is ignorant because, like a bachelor in luck, he chuckles over newly discovered joys. The pulling hither and thither and all other movements come from the soul ; but he thinks they are spontaneous with the Ego. He should be taught early that the soul is the kernel ; the rest of the Ego the envelope. Ill Soul-Return " For of the soul the body form doth take." Spenser. — Hymn in Honor of Beauty. AS long as the soul remains in the incarnated state the functions of the body, including those of the heart and brain, are in full activity. After leaving the body the soul still lives ; it has moved into a new domicile, which in reality is its old domicile and more adapted to its new conditions. The body decomposes in the grave ; its admirers mourn ; its relatives wear crape ; the public in general has already forgotten it. The admirers, relatives and the public in general never knew the demised Ego's soul ; they knew only the body. The grave is silent ; the heirs pursue their former ways as if death had broken nothing ; the world continues its business. In all this, where is the soul ? Does it visit the home it left, the brains it kindled, the hearts it broke ? The answer is : It needs a little time to learn how to return and tell its tale ; how to manifest again in mortal garb or otherwise. Just as soon as an opportunity arises the soul will preach in accents loud and strong, that a mortal is a soul, and has as its 53 54 Soul-Return accessories a brain and a heart ; which is the reverse of what the world is in the habit of thinking, viz., that a mortal is all brain and heart, and has a soul. Can souls return? New investigations, probed records, satisfactory evidence, even the old texts, answer : Souls do return. When disembodied souls visit terra firma they do so to perform labor of some kind in a human aura. The kind of labor depends mainly upon the quality and the condition of the aura in which they are to work. They cannot manifest or perform labor unless they are in the aura of a mortal that is mediumistic. If such an aura is of a peculiar tenacity, permitting them, while in the aura, to focus their strength unin- terruptedly ; and if the aura permits the infusion of additional currents of a certain kind, it enables them to produce phenomena of levitation : Objects such as a table, a chair, or a stove actually rise in the air. Levitation succeeds best with objects of plain sur- faces, these being adapted to the application of the additional currents just mentioned. The souls en- gaged in producing this phenomenon — as a rule there are several who join their forces — belong to the physical kind. They possess a supply of those cur- rents, and mingle a portion of them with a like quan- tity of the same kind ox current found in the aura of the medium. The mixture enables them to condense a sufficient quantity of ether immediately above the Soul-Return 55 object, e. g., a table. This condensation produces a vacuum. Round this vacuum they establish an ether wall to prevent the surrounding ether from rushing in and destroying the vacuum. The wall consists of condensed ether, the degree of condensation being slight, not one-hundredth as strong as that required to produce the vacuum. Next, they condense a little ether into what, w r ere it a visible body, mortals would call a stout rod. With this rod they lift the object, by pushing from below. Like most ether phenomena produced by soul-force, levitation depends upon a suf- ficiently electric mediumistic aura ; proper conditions in the room, the electric, magnetic and hygrometric states of the atmosphere, and the condition of the medium and the persons present in the room. When departed souls lift a table weighing ten pounds one foot high against gravity, the work done, or energy expended, equals ten foot-pounds. Strange as it may seem, the work renders these souls stronger instead of weaker. More strange than such a phenomenon is the fact that people think it is strange. Two mortals lifting a ten-pound table between them would riot even make a news item. The table rises, i. e., is lifted, in either case substantially by the same process. The soul, whether embodied or disembodied, condenses by an act of its will enough ether to produce currents along certain channels. In the case of the embodied soul the channels are nerves conveying the currents to 56 Soul-Return certain muscles forcing these to contract, whereby- certain levers, i. e., bones, are made to lift the object. In the case of the disembodied soul the channels are lines of direction, and the currents cause condensation through which the will of the soul is executed. In both cases the object is lifted by the application of the same force, the same cause : the condensation of ether. The force called gravity or gravitation is not the cause but the effect of certain ether forces. An apple falls from a tree because a column of ether presses upon it in a downward direction. The reason why a table in the aura of a suitable medium may rise is : A column of condensed ether presses upon it in an upward direction. In the case of the apple the pressure is exerted by a differentiated force, greater in the downward direction ; in the case of the table the pressure is caused by a differentiated force greater in an upward direction. A rap is a manifestation resembling levitation. Under favorable circumstances it sounds like the con- cussion between two solids such as a knuckle and a table. A rap is produced as follows : The aura of the medium, or a portion of it, is concentrated into a small space such as the size of a fist, and condensed into a mass or lump resembling the solid state. With the aid of certain currents the lump so obtained is made to strike some resisting object such as a table or a wall. Soul-Return 57 When a mortal strikes a table with his fist the process is similar. Currents are sent to his hand making it into a fist, which after passing along the usual channel produce the motion and the blow. Mortals operate with soul-currents and with solid bodies such as flesh and bones; whereas the disem- bodied soul operates with soul-currents and condensed ether. And as all substances are condensed ether, such operations, whether performed by embodied or disembodied souls, are virtually alike. Whether to- day the reader lift a table as a mortal or to-morrow as a spirit it changes neither the phenomenon nor its cause. Nature's methods and operations are ever the same ; she changes only the form they present to mortal senses. Another soul-phenomenon, Slate-writing, has stirred the world's enquiring mood. Take a few pieces of paper; write a question or message on each ; address it to a departed soul ; fold the papers each into a conveniently small size, and put them into your pocket. Purchase two framed school-slates ; clean, and take them to a good instru- ment of the writing phase, i. e., a writing medium. In his presence keep the slates within your reach and control. Presently writing will be heard between the slates, and when it has ceased the slates are found to contain written messages. These may be direct and lucid answers to those questions ; or vague and 58 Soul-Return commonplace, suggestive of Hotspur's words to M01 timer, « He's as tedious as is a tired horse." This depends upon the quality of the medium's aura; his development ; the condition of the sitter and other conditions and prevailing circumstances. If the medi- um's aura is very strong, the slates may contain por- traits or pictures in chalk, slate-pencil or oil. As in such cases tricks or conspiracy can form no part of the usual attack or contesting argument waged by the undeveloped or skeptic, the reader nat- urally asks : How are such phenomena produced ? We answer : By a process not unlike the one mortals employ who use pen, pencil or brush when they write, draw or paint. Slate-writing is a result of the proper manipulation of particular currents. Controls condense ether into a short tool that resembles a material rod, or brush, and operate with it in the dark space contained be- tween the two slates. The tool is not infrequently rendered visible by the aid of materialization. Sometimes the answer to a question is found written in a material that was not placed between the two slates, as, e. g., colored chalk. In such a case one of the controls gathered this material in the gaseous state, perhaps as sunbeam dust, and inserted and used it. Not infrequently an answer is found upon the slates written in gold, which metal was taken from a gold watch or coin in the possession of the sitter or medium. The watch or coin, if Soul-Return 59 -weighed accurately before and after the writing, will be found to have lost in weight by whatever quantity the invisible draughtsman used for the manifestation. As a rule, slate-messages are written by a soul con- trolling the sensitive fibres of the medium. Similarly, mundane telegrams are delivered in the handwriting of the operator at the receiving station. This phase of mediumship, to distinguish it from that of Automatic Writing, is called Independent Writing, because it does not depend upon the me- dium's hand. Another remarkable phase of soul-labor in a medi- umistic aura is that of Automatic Writing. The pages of this volume, as also his other books, are written by the writer automatically. He uses a lead-pencil which is in his right hand, and is conducted by two departed souls that alternate with each other in this work. They are the Authors of this book. During their last earth-life they were literati. For more than a hundred years they have inhabited the Beyond. To a departed soul the pleasure of writing with a human hand again is as great as it is rare. When writing these lines our instrument knew as little of what followed in the text as we, the two souls just mentioned, know of the Polar Star. Continuous and systematic writing such as the present, carried on through the agency of a mortal 6o Soul-Return hand, is confined to the souls inhabiting the divine or perfected spheres. It is a species of work of so high an order as to exceed the powers of earth-sphere souls. Whatever such forces write automatically em- bodies the truth, provided the writer is a well-devel- oped soul, which is fortunately true of our friend. Lower-sphere souls often attempt to write through human hands ; but at best they succeed but poorly. The meagre quantity, the silliness, the lack of style and the common theme of their productions betray the source. Some day volumes will issue on this phase of medi- umship without exhausting its bare outlines. To be well utilized and continuously applied it requires a well-developed mediumistic aura, and an exceedingly fine, homogeneous aura-tissue, such as is seldom found in a mortal. Even the greatest medium that lived within the memory of the oldest souls in our zones, which memory parallels Abraham's sporting days, was without this phase. It is equally fortunate that our friend enjoys the daily companionship and communications of his spirit- wife, who is also a well-developed soul. She attests the communications he receives from the Beyond; she verifies the genuineness of his automatic writings at every sitting at which they occur. He has had incontrovertible tests of her steady attendance upon him in countless instances, at his home and elsewhere ; the tests comprising family matters, Soul-Return 61 occurrences during their married life, and many other items unknown to third parties. We also state that he is unacquainted with Psychology and the litera- ture on soul-facts ; nor does he know from one day to the next what we are going to write through him. Our visits for the purpose of writing in his aura occur almost daily, at such hours as he and we are at leisure. After arriving in his aura we impress him to seize a pencil and to lay paper before him. Then we gather up his entire aura, which has a radius of about two hundred and fifty feet, and concentrate it upon the paper. The paper thereby becomes a power-field. His whole aura is now concentrated upon the paper in front of him. Then we condense certain portions of it more strongly than others, and proceed just as mortals do when they write. We manage his hand as if it were our own. But a person looking on would believe from appearances that our friend had no one with him, and that he was writing alone. Scientific facts and literary items occurring in the text we find in the library of our friend. And now a few words of a personal character : " We, the Authors of this book, were Englishmen during our last incarnated life. We have not for- gotten the language we spoke and wrote in those days. It stands us in good stead now. We might write in any other language through this instrument, with occasional assistance in the case of out-of-the-way 62 Soul-Return tongues. But were we to use a language unknown to him much force would be lost in arranging words and sentences, and in a language like the Chinese also in making the letters of the alphabet, which would involve a waste of time, a loss of force, which in our regions, where force is a precious article, would be a serious matter. Whatever fun mortals get in their earth-days is paid for in money. For the fun we get we must pay in force. Mortals are ever anxious to lay up money ; we are ever anxious to save force. Mortals think they are nobodies without money ; we know we can do nothing without force. In our corner of the universe, which is totally unlike the Poets' Corner, force is in great demand and at all times eagerly sought. Nature seems to possess but a limited quantity of it. Sometimes we undergo a scramble to get enough of it to enable us to come here and do something we can enjoy. "If the reader were clairvoyant, and on a visit in our friend's room, he would think it was a kind of a show. Our friend is the only mortal there. Next comes his oil-lamp. Then come we two ; and last, the big audience of a thousand or so of disembodied squatters, all of whom are ' sensing,' or, to use a slang expres- sion quite in vogue in our < lifetime,' ' nosing ' ; that is, trying to get a peep at what is going on. Some of them succeed ; but the majority prefer to go where they can hear, select their bed-fellow from the pit and escort him home for the night. Soul-Return 63 "The reader has been led to believe that the 1 other side' is idyllic, angelic, and full of the Lord. When he comes over to us, as some day he must, his disappointment will be great. More than once will he exclaim : ' Give me back my body ! I will stand on the housetops and proclaim what I know . . . only for an hour give me back my body ! ' But even this one hour will be denied him. Nature is inexorable. u Our advice is : Take the best, the grandest, noblest care of your body. You will not get another one precisely like it . . . never ! Who knows what sort of a thing your next body will be in a couple of hundred years ? Keep what you have as long as you can, and disregard aunts and soothsayers. When these come over to us, they do not know enough to stand up straight against a fence. They make us great trouble. Caesar and the Ides of March are nothing compared to them. " Perhaps you would like to hear a little more on this subject from us; but the forces are weakening, which means that our funds are gone. Credit is nihil over here. This is a spot-cash country. If you enter it without good deeds and kind thoughts for even your most ignorant enemy you must long go hungry. Nature will not feed you until your aura is cleansed, and an aura is not cleansed in a day. I could go on until to-morrow, but our friend's lamp burns low, and he is sleepy. My name you need not know. My companion left me a few minutes ago ; I 64 Soul-Return shall join him presently. Repay us for our labors by sending us kind thoughts ; mine you have already." We spoke of new conditions. Change of volume or form is a peculiar property of all ether bodies, and of unlimited occurrence. A departed soul is able to condense into a human form, of any size ; or into any other assumed form, such as a large ball or solid post. The capacity for condensing ether extends from the heavenly body that traverses space at the rate of a thousand miles a minute or more, at one end of the scale, to the microscopic infusoria. A marble statue is ether condensed ; its prototype, the living human body, is also ether condensed ; but the difference be- tween the two is : The statue is of common ether ; its prototype is of a much higher grade of ether, rather of a great number of different degrees and kinds of refined ether. These different grades of ether that make up the human body are coarse when compared with the high and sensitive quality of ether that com- poses the human soul. Were the ether of the human soul of a less exalted grade and quality, it could not produce nor be the means of producing the powers of the soul. For example, if the soul-eye were of an inferior grade of ether it could not produce vision ; it could not, e. g., see the grass as being green. For color is the result of vision operated by the soul. Nor could the eye perceive size ; that is, be capable of distinguishing the volumetric proportions of natural Soul-Return 65 objects such as, e. g., the height of a tree. Color, size, distance, proportion, all sensory impressions and individual conceptions, result from the currents of highly refined soul-ether. The ether of the brain-aura is superior in quality to that of any other body-organ ; hence, the work it accomplishes is also more refined, subtle and com- plex. Soul-labor, from the tiniest detail to the most comprehensive operation, is performed by means of condensation. It may truly be said that the work of man on terra firma as well as his labors as a free soul in the spheres consists entirely in learning myriads of millions of different kinds, degrees and subtleties of ether condensation. The reader perhaps interrupts by asking : Why is it so ? To which neither Abraham, Solon, Zoroaster, Jesus nor any other advanced soul knows the answer. One of the greatest universal powers of the em- bodied as well as the disembodied soul is the power of materializing free ether, and of dematerializing it again. The sense of this statement is not disturbed by substituting the word « condensing " for materi- alizing. When a person is sitting for his photograph and a suitable medium stands close to the photographer's camera, the negative obtained may contain, beside the portrait of the sitter, the likeness of one or more departed souls. They may or may not be related to 66 Soul-Return the sitter. A soul desiring to appear on the picture must condense sufficiently to be taken by the lens ; and it must know how to maintain itself in the focus. The outfit of clothes, which is also the product of condensed ether, usually resembles the apparel worn by the soul at some period of its earth-life. The photographer's lens is more sensitive than the human retina ; it transmits the rays of a slightly condensed soul although this soul is invisible to the ordinary eye. A most comprehensive illustration and meaning of soul-return is the materialization of entire human forms, i. e., men, women and children that walk, speak and act like human beings. Such materializa- tion is most important evidence of soul-return and soul-power. Indeed, the investigator who meets from thirty to fifty different human forms at a seance, nearly all of whom are recognized, has good reason for asking : 'i Who are the forms that come into the circle and talk?'' With equal propriety he might ask : " Who am I ? " for he is what every materialized form is, viz., a materialized soul. Materialization is a grand aid to a departed soul, because it helps the progression of the soul in the spheres. It helps the materializing soul far more than it helps the mortal friend whom the anxious soul is visiting. It depends largely upon the battery in the seance-room ; that is, upon the condition of the Soul-Return 67 human elements that produce the fluid necessary to condense the gaseous materials from which the forms are built up. An ordinary battery for technical uses is a series of cells metallically connected with one another that generate a continuous current. Now, different purposes demand different kinds of batteries. One of the batteries in daily use contains carbon and zinc, immersed in a suitable liquid. These substances are purified articles, as the ordinary carbon and zinc of commerce would yield a poor current on account of their impurities. Now, at a materializing seance every sitter acts like an electric element, or cell ; the entire audience, or circle, acts as a battery immersed in the aura of the instrument, the aura taking the place of the liquid mentioned before. But the sitters are human beings, which means that they are not puri- fied ; comparatively speaking, they are more impure than the carbon and zinc of commerce ; and as bat- tery-material for materialization comparatively much more harmful. Their chief impurities are pork, beans, cabbage, tobacco, rum, revenge, hatred, greed, which make poor currents for materialization, poor currents for everything else. A circle of experienced u chem- ically pure " harmonious sitters, immersed in the aura of a good materializing medium, would produce as- tounding phenomena. In all materializing seances the forces should be closely economized; and as light-rays weaken the currents which produce the condensation of ether, a 68 Soul-Return dark space, the so-called cabinet, is necessary, in order to retain and focus the forces. A large, opaque cur- tain hung across the corner of a room usually meets the requirement. Let us suppose that the reader is seated among the audience of a materializing circle, and that the curtain of the cabinet is parted by a manifesting soul claim- ing to be his demised father. The form presses his hand; the words come, "My son . . . my son!" after which the form dematerializes, and vanishes. A soul's first attempt at materialization taxes its strength to the utmost. If during its brief appear- ance the reader stands close by and criticises the man's nose and neck-tie, he polarizes his soul-forces and thereby weakens the form that draws on him for support. Any doubts regarding the identity of the form should bide their time ; at the next meeting the soul will be stronger ; and thereafter, at every sub- sequent reunion, it will increase in strength, and its appearance will be more natural. A woman buried her beloved daughter Anna. She wept when her Anna was laid away ; she kissed her pale lips and gazed at the dear face as she believed for the last time. A year later she accepts reluc- tantly an invitation to a materializing seance. She is called to the curtain ; unwillingly she leaves her seat. She meets a white-clad trembling girl ; the funeral tears are forgotten. The girl whispers " Anna." It Soul-Return 69 is her Anna, craving her mother's love, deeming it a privilege to don mortal attire. But the forces are not strong, owing to poor conditions, especially to her mother's having a recent undigested newspaper item on fraudulent manifestations in her head. It is sur- prising but true : The mother is more anxious to dis- cover fraud at the seance than to find her daughter. She stares at the girl, and with a chilly gaze exclaims : " No, you are not my Anna. My Anna had a larger nose, and a different face altogether . . . you are a fake! " Then she groans contempt, and in resuming her seat she says she feels ashamed to be in " such a place." In silence Anna dematerializes. She sighs and shivers as the last vestige of her condensed ether passes into its original state. The shivering of a dis- embodied soul is serious. It means pain of the soul- body ; not inward cold, but inward fire, the fire of cruel, inordinate pain. " Control," says the trem- bling girl, after her material garments have dissolved and she is herself again, " are all mothers skeptic when their daughters come to see them for the first time with heart-burning love ? " "Nearly all, dear one," is the answer; "the body once laid away, their love is a straw-fire ; the ashes soon scatter." Anna's mother knew the human soul only from hearsay, even the hearsay being dim. Her Anna's nose and cheek-bones were built on the specifications 70 Soul-Return of mother's face, and lay in the ground. Anna, when manifesting, was inexperienced ; unsupported by her mother, and hindered by the hurry and bustle of the cabinet-work ; which accounts for the hasty sketch of her former nose and the absence of a true copy thereof. The face she showed her mother was never- theless true, for it was her soul-face. One's mortal face is never the soul's true face, and therefore not the true face of the individual, for incarnation's pre- natal, parental decorative patterns change the soul- face. The reader's soul-face, could he behold himself disembodied, might prove to his great surprise a total variance from his last photograph. Anna possessed a mortal face in every one of her previous earth-lives. Supposing that she experienced forty earth-lives, then she had forty mortal faces, no two of which were alike. Her last mortal face was the only one her mother knew. We stated that there is nothing in a name ; the reader now hears that there is nothing in a mortal face. In his effusion on Labial Expressions Schopenhauer, in his " Parergaand Paralipomena," II, p. 509, illumines his subject with currents of too short a range to attain soul-truths. But where a manifesting soul is given time and favorable opportunities or conditions, its materialized face may be remarkably true to life. At a course of materializing seances we saw the writer frequently sit near an elderly lady who was familiar with soul-facts. Soul-Return 71 Later she fell ill ; ceased to attend the circle, and passed away, all of which happened within three weeks. Shortly after the funeral he met her again in the seance-room where as a mortal she had spoken to him last. Now she was a soul returning to earth for a visit. Her features were pale but natural and " life- like," owing to prevailing good conditions, to her pre- vious knowledge of soul-matters, and her long investi- gation of psychic phenomena. In her case transition was little more than a change of place. Recently the writer conversed with a mediumistic friend on the street. Three days later they met again, in a seance-room; this time the friend was a materialized soul, having died suddenly since that conversation. At another time the writer attended the funeral of a relative twenty-four years old. A week later, at a seance in another town, he saw her again. She was fully materialized ; she mentioned her untimely transi- tion, her little children that were left behind, and other matters. Her face had a silvery hue; her features corresponded with those on her photograph in the writer's possession. In her case a fortnight com- prised three phases : Life in the body ; transition ; soul-return. Nature requires about twenty years to produce an adult human body capable of living, say, to the age of sixty ; and about five minutes to produce a body capable 72 Soul-Return of existing about fifteen minutes. Now, twenty is to sixty as five is to fifteen. The natural as well as the artificial human form results from ingredients, auras, material compounds and psychic forces. If the materializing medium is in a deep trance during the manifestations a rude or sudden awaking may imperil his reason, his health, even his life. The psychic power of most materializing mediums is of the physical order, and their controls are mostly physical souls. If their aura is crude, it may render the medium crude, which, however, need not harm the manifestations. But psychic influence is power- ful. An earth-bound soul, for example, that has been in its miserable condition for a thousand years or more, still possesses all the notions, tastes, views, cruel traits and abominable practices of the days of his last incarnation, and if he can, will impress them upon any mediumistic mortal whose soul is harmoni- ous to, and of nearly the same composition as, the earth-bound soul. Like and like attract each other. This tends to render the mortal a criminal, and to make him commit the deeds which the harmonious earth-bound fiend committed in his last incarnated life. The deeds of the mortal will naturally be suited to or fashioned according to modern doctrines or brain-aura habits. Crude-physical souls impress a crude medium to hold seances as frequently as twice a day, which is an enormous drain on the human constitution; and to replace his sinking powers by Soul-Return 73 fraudulent means. The most common fraud of ignorant materializing mediums consists in introducing into the cabinet mortals hired to represent departed souls. The mortals alternate with the genuine manifestations. If during a seance the forces of a medium weaken, most souls in the cabinet refrain from materializing. In order to save what little force is left, a soul, which we will call A, may take control of the medium and then manifest to the sitters. A is now in possession of the entranced medium, and states to the audience that he is A. That is, A has no form of its own, but uses the body of the medium. This species of mis- representation is called Transfiguration. When sav- ing the medium's strength, it is perfectly acceptable to experienced seance-goers, as the presence of their loved one's soul is more important to them than their loved one's artificial body. But skeptics and begin- ners worship the artificial body, and are enraged at what they consider a fraud. But transfiguration becomes substitution when A is crude-physical, and, while controlling the medium, presents the medium not as the materialized soul of A, but as the materialized soul of some other particu- lar departed. In such a case both the soul and the body are false ; the operation is a spirit-fraud. A materializing medium, to maintain his forces against the deteriorating influence of depraved souls, should hold only one or at most two sittings per week, and refuse admittance to all sensationally inclined 74 Soul-Return visitors. Materialization is a complicated process of nature, too lofty for ruffians. And instead of receiv- ing financial compensation from the audience, the medium should receive pay from an Association for the Protection and Support of Psychic Instruments. Materialization requires the services of departed souls that are fond of the labor it entails. They sub- divide into small bands. As a rule, two or more con- trols take charge of the personnel and dispense the explanations and answers to the audience. A few spirit-chemists collect materials in the gaseous state, from which they prepare the different wearing-apparel. These materials are preserved from one seance to the next. Most materialized female souls are robed in white, squaws excepted, who prefer colored garments. Departed wives, mothers or daughters often beg the controls to make them some particular piece of finery as a test for some loved one. Male souls select some article or special apparel to awaken recollections of social fellowship in the mortal they expect to meet. The same "lump of dough " may do duty for an entire season, mould the body of a former emperor, or that of a millionaire or beggar; which recalls Omar Khay- yam's verse : " A potter near his modest cot Was shaping many an urn and pot ; He took the clay for the earthen things From beggars' feet and heads of kings." Soul-Return 75 Another band of souls collect, preserve and prepare the ingredients necessary for the condensation, or "manufacture," of the forms. The materials for them are collected at various times and sundry places ; they are made into a nameless mass of a consistency between the gaseous and the ether state, in which condition they are taken to the seance room for pres- ervation. During the seance the mass is converted into flesh and bones, sinews, nails, hair, i. e., into forms. The conversion is accomplished by the aid of the condensing powers of the materializing souls. The process is as natural as the making of silk by the little silkworm. The body of a mortal infant is formed before birth with the aid of the powers of the infant soul. In some respects its production is not unlike that of a form in a medium's cabinet. But the infant body is constantly nourished, while the materialized form pro- duced within the medium's aura receives no nourish- ment and is constantly exposed to flesh-dissolving currents, which begin the disintegrating work in the cabinet from the moment the artificial form is com- pleted. Besides, the infant before leaving its " cab- inet " is not struck by light-rays ; while the material- ized form is weakened by faint light -rays even ere it issues from the cabinet. A very important point is the question of time. At a seance the forces of a good materializing medium last about one hundred and fifty minutes. The controls 76 Soul-Return desire that every sitter shall receive at least one ethereal visitor, which in a circle of twenty persons would allow each sitter seven and a half minutes of time ; that is, if one form should need seven and a half minutes to make up, the person it is intended for would get none other. But a sitter may be called upon by as many as seven or eight forms at one seance, which proves close economy of time in the manufacture, growth and outfit of the forms and the multifarious steps and details connected with the work. While one form is before "the footlights/' others are preparing. Where materials abound amid favorable conditions, several forms may be "out" simultane- ously. To our knowledge seven materialized forms were once on the floor of a seance-room together. When the stock of materials is low, the clothing is poor ; the forms must borrow each other's wardrobe. Every cabinet "in action" is crowded with ethereal spectators and hangers-on. A control having charge of the personnel cannot make up the "dough " for the forms save after a spe- cial, long-continued practice. Nor could a member of the band of spirit-chemists perform other duties in a materializing cabinet without learning a " new trade." Nature practises a division of labor. As a rule, the supply of light at a materializing seance is regulated by a little curtain in front of a lamp stationed opposite the cabinet. From the curtain Soul-Return 77 a string passes to the interior of the cabinet, and is pulled by a control to increase or decrease the sup- ply of light. A soul manifesting for the first time suffers greatly from the effect of light-rays, as they tend to consume or dissolve the currents that con- serve and maintain the materialized form. To save its strength the controls darken the room by lowering the curtain. A more experienced soul can sustain more light ; that is, can resist or neutralize light-rays, and in such a case the controls admit more light by raising the curtain. Under great outlay of force a form may be maintained and supported in bright light ; occasionally this feat is attempted where the manifesting soul can stand such light ; the effect is extraordinary. To walk the streets in daylight a soul would require a quantity of force beyond the capacity of any now living medium. With progress in soul- science, however, and a combination of several strong materializing mediums such a feat is among the possi- bilities. The light-difficulty exists in nature not in- frequently, as in the case of substances that decom- pose when exposed to white light ; and in that of most seeds, which develop only in the darkness of the soil. Frequent materialization strengthens disembodied souls. But in order to give good tests the conditions in the room must be good. A strong soul will give good tests unasked. 78 Soul-Return Materialization is a species of temporary incarna- tion, or the voluntary leap of an uncondensed soul into a gaseous mass, a proof that natural forces exist which as yet are unfathomed by science. It breeds men and women weak and strong, depending on momentary currents Whereas incarnation for life is the enforced amalgamation of a condensed soul with a foetus. It breeds infants weak and strong. At the end of a seance the mould is broken cold ; at the end of an incarnated life the mould is broken warm. Souls of long practice in materializing may act many a part on the floor of a seance-room. They can be weighed ; they can give counsel and advice ; laugh over a joke ; denounce a newspaper ; use the tele- phone ; tease young lovers ; welcome their successor in the marriage tie ; dictate their last will and testa- ment ; give their deposition ; sit for their photograph ; give the masonic grip ; talk philosophy and health ; play whist or chess ; take an oath ; accept summons from court ; sing a song ; and stroll with you through an adjoining garden. They may dematerialize an eye, and bid you insert your finger " in those holes where eyes did once inhabit." Younger materialized souls may entertain like " The noisy geese that gabble o'er the pool, Or playful children just let loose from school." But materialized souls never engage in eating, drink- ing, shaving, smoking, cheating, stabbing, shooting, sword-dancing, marrying, flogging or dying. Soul-Return 79 Materialization proves the continuation of life after death. Until soul-conditions upon this planet shall improve, it will not be a vehicle of intelligence or seership. In the course of his investigations the student may- witness strange phenomena. Experienced souls ut- terly taciturn at a seance may appear very loquacious at the next, and deliver speeches on general subjects such as Free Will, Immortality of the Soul, Universal Peace or Ancient Prophecies. Less experienced souls may speak on topics formerly unknown to them ; at another time they may appear " buttoned up," mono- syllabic ; those loudest before, now reserved and reti- cent. These phenomena depend upon the condition of the resultant current of the human battery in the seance-room, which acts upon the vocal organs of a materialized soul. Its quantity is variable, depending largely on conditions. When it is large, the forms have a violent tendency toward conversation or speech-making. Materializing souls carry neither brain nor nerves ; their eloquence and themes of speech depend upon electric conditions, current-qual- ity and induced currents ; whereas mortal eloquence and themes of speech depend on electric currents, brain-traces, brain-aura currents, and currents from the ether spheres. Mortals with an excess of result- ant currents are born talkers, in exceedingly rare cases orators. Talkers, speakers and orators are 8o Soul-Return animated by excessive quantities of the electric and brain-aura currents of strong electric and feeble mag- netic tension. Nearly all of them, therefore, are self- ish or earthy, advancing their ego regardless of their soul, their friends, their country. They frequently use the name of the Deity for their arguments and climaxes. Body-organs such as the human hand or tongue may be materialized separately, or condensed suffi- ciently to be felt or heard, although neither is materi- alized so as to be seen. Such invisible condensed ether tongues speak in a stentorian voice. We mentioned the peculiar sub-phase of etherializa- tion, i. e., the appearance of a soul in a white, trans- parent form speaking and acting as if it were entirely materialized. The limitation of this volume forbids a sketch of other interesting details and varieties of forms, lights or garments, which form a fertile field for future in- vestigations. Materializing seances depend upon the quality and personal equation of the instrument as well as upon the other items set forth. His electric currents are drawn upon for the following needs of materializing souls : i. The production of garments. 2. The production of flesh and bones, i. e., of forms. Soul-Return 81 3. The conversational attributes. 4. The brain-aura functions. 5. The emotional functions and desires. 6. Involuntary or reflex movements and actions. 7. Vision through the temporary physical eye. At the close of the seance these items disappear ; the actions of electric currents subside, and the func- tions of the medium return to their normal state. Contrary to the pedagogical maxim "From the Known to the Unknown," soul-investigation should start at the Unknown, viz., the soul in its disembodied state. It should then pass to the Known, the mortal Ego on life's material plane. Philosophical and meta- physical speculations are ill-fated, because they com- mence at the end instead of the beginning. Their authors are in the dark regarding the human soul. In their lectures and writings they omit the main part. To decipher and explain the character, quality and prospects of the material world, man should inter- rogate its psychic part, which unfolds and presents a thousand times as much truth as the analysis of mor- tal clay and its varied worldly activities, for the tools and instruments employed in such analysis are unclean ; they are tainted with the very imperfections that are to be investigated. Besides, mortals accept mere sensory impressions frequently as realities. Mortals practise the condensation of ether uncon- sciously ; mundane life is based largely upon it. 82 Soul-Return Disembodied souls practise it consciously ; divine souls alone can condense souls for incarnation. Psychic phenomena will be investigated in the near future according to scientific methods, in institutions of learning unhampered by ancient Jewish thought. The motions, temperature and breathing of an en- tranced materializing medium, for example, will be recorded by delicate electric contrivances. The sitters, including the investigator and his staff, will be as nearly "chemically pure" as on this mundane plane human beings can be obtained or trained chemically pure. A materializing soul, when it steps to the front of the cabinet, will depress the platform of a self- recording scale and make a record in a book kept for the purpose, after the manner of travellers that enter their names on a hotel-register. Should the properties of the medium preclude writing, the soul may breathe its name into a specially constructed telephone, the message to be recorded by an assistant at the other end of the wire. Suitable contrivances will apply to other phases of mediumship. The greatest difficulty will be experienced on the mundane stage in obtaining a proper battery, i. e., a number of attuned sitters. A single mortal of the earth-bound class destroys the resultant current of a circle. Once a mortal battery of developed and dieting sit- ters obtained, it may thereafter be used as a means of testing mortals as to who is and who is not a soul of Soul-Return 83 the earth-bound class. This will be done simply by in- serting the person to be tested in the battery. If his soul belongs to the earth-bound class of souls, the cur- rent will at once decrease in intensity. This may be detected in various ways ; among others by a needle free to turn on a central pivot. Such tests will serve to determine not alone who is earth-bound, but also the standard of any incarnated soul. The deflection of the needle will tell the quality or standard of the soul under examination. Thus will, in days to come, Science, i. e., systematized truth, separate the spotted and the dark from the white and the pure, according to the actual status or condition of the soul-aura ; and sit in judgment over the soul of man, free from fiction or imaginary criteria. At another place is emphasized the importance of recognizing the crude-physical, which unfortunately is incarnated in so many mortals. It has been thought that the minority of developed souls can be protected from the evil inflicted by the overwhelming majority of crude-physical souls upon this globe by the passage of laws and their faithful execution. The trouble with this mode of human defence against the never-ceasing horrors of the crude-physical lies in the fact that it is not the developed portion of incar- nated souls but the crude-physical majority that makes the laws and executes them ; so that the very reverse of what should be done obtains at present on the material plane of this globe, viz., the oppressive rule 84 Soul-Return of the dark, crude-physical element of the psychic domain of nature. The result of its rule is appar- ent, and manifests itself in the miserable condition of nine-tenths of the human race. An early and speedy detection, therefore, of the incarnated crude- physical tends to ameliorate the conditions of earth- life. Soul-return includes the importance and greatly utilized phase of the Trance. When a trance-medium is in one of the many states between unconsciousness and full consciousness he delivers messages and nv formation from disembodied souls. By complete un- consciousness is meant that the medium's soul is re- moved from the body, and its place taken by the main control. A control is a disembodied soul that has tem- porarily given up its progression in the spheres for the constant attendance near, and sovereignty d^er, an in- strument. The ties between a mediumistic mortal and his main control consist chiefly of harmonious currents. Attempts at explaining trance-phenomena are mere guesses, after the fashion of authors that attempt to explain female beauty. Not infrequently some domineering crude soul overpowers the medium's control, dislodges the me- dium's soul, and for a brief time manages his vocal chords, which is one of the many tyrannical acts of the strong and powerful crude-physical currents of Soul-Return 85 nature's psychic realms. Where, for example, a vis- itor desires to hear news from his deceased sister, and the entranced medium is heard to say, " Dear one, I am your sister Mary ... I am so happy you came," such a style of address in nine cases out of ten indicates fraud perpetrated by a crude, deceiving soul. Of a number of individuals standing in line, if each throws a stone with all his might, the distance passed over by each stone is proportionate to the projecting force, i. e., the force of the individual. If disembodied individuals besiege a trance-instrument each throwing currents at him with its maximum force, the power of every such current is proportion^ ate to the force of each soul. As crude-physical souls are strong, and crowd themselves forward at the expense of their less physical fellow souls, the currents impressing and tending to crush an unpro- tected, that is, undeveloped, medium are generally of the crude-physical kind ; in common parlance, of the evil. Only thoroughly developed mediums can neutralize or throw off this class of currents. (See Chapter III, page .) A soul that controls an instrument and gives its name as that of an archangel, saint or Deity is a lying abnormity. Nevertheless it may give correct tests. Souls that discourse unrequested on general topics without a preliminary special test are of the talkative order and should be suppressed. A 86 Soul-Return controlling soul friendly to the sitter's departed loved one always gives a special test before it speaks. The following is the introductory part of a genuine mes- sage of a departed soul, given through a trance-me- dium. Its facts were fully recognized : " My dear, I am your wife. Do you remember, one day at our house on John Street, in the room ad- joining the parlor, you whipped our little dog ? He then ran away. On the following day we rode about in a buggy to find him ; and we searched for him a long time, but he was lost. Later you bought a sim- ilar dog, a terrier. A man brought him to our house. The dog growled at me when I first touched him. You paid five dollars for this dog. ..." An inexperienced intruding disembodied soul tak- ing possession of a medium might harm the me- dium. Few souls can safely manage an instrument with whose peculiarities they are not familiar. As the engineer of a locomotive prefers the exclusive use of his engine, so a control that has familiarized himself with the mechanism of his instrument, — an instrument subject to more changes and vari- ations than a locomotive, and destructible in the brief time of a minute, — anxiously avoids interfer- ence from strangers. In most cases therefore the messages are delivered by the control, not by the communicating soul. To receive communications from a trance-medium, a sitter should be alone in the medium's aura. Two or more simultaneous sitters, Soul-Return 87 unless their souls be highly unfolded, enable invis- ible souls to injure the aura of sitters and instrument, and to vitiate results. If a test be indefinite the sitter should demand an- other ; it will be given him at once or at the next meeting. Tests are exhaustive ; sufficient force for two tests at one sitting is not always at hand. Every mortal should meet a trance-medium or an impressional medium at least once a week for coun- sel and advice. Such regularity prepares his aura for future currents, which will benefit him when counsel is specially needed and desired To illustrate : An estimable lady was asked in marriage. Naturally, she wished to know. Had she been in circuit with her ethereal friends, a brief sitting with a suitable instru- ment possessing her currents could have enlightened her. She accepted the offer. Later, things came to light that made her condition very unhappy. They were known in the Beyond prior to her fatal step, and could have been disclosed had she been instructed in soul-truths. — A man is about to select a partner in his business, for which he needs correct information and sound advice, which he will obtain if he has con- nection with friendly powers above. If he remains in trolley-contact with the currents that move his car, they will protect him against imperfect condi- tions of life, important oversights and unlucky con- clusions in matters of finance or personal affairs. But the intercourse with the spirit-world must not 88 Soul-Return be carried on at haphazard ; nor should the results of the first or even the second sitting turn the scale, because these preliminary meetings hardly more than build the road on which the sitter's friends can reach him. The prevailing lack of soul-knowledge prevents the individual from appreciating psychic laws and higher currents. His insulated journey along worldly routes, often as in a dream, always devoid of wave- communications with the Beyond, has landed him in his present hapless condition. From time to time the daily press reports unusual statements of some person claiming to be a special envoy of Providence and uttering absurd or lofty things, according to temporary impressions. Such persons are physical mediums, often of a prophetic drift, as illustrated by the Prophets of the Old Testament. Nearly all such persons are ignorant, undeveloped, earthy, and a prey to the psychic forces they attract. Some are guilty of perpetrating fraud ; others, of violating established rules and regulations. They commit these acts under the influence of the same crude forces that cause the frauds and crimes of the rest of the incarnated population of the globe. They cannot conceal their acts and utter- ances, because being mediums they cannot repress impressions ; whereas the other mortals can and do conceal their fraud and crimes; for being less medi- umistic, the cunning of their brain devises means Soul-Return 89 and ways of eluding the daily press and the laws of the land. In both cases the underlying cause is the same, viz., the influence of the crude-physical. And the effect is the same : Crime, violation of rules, and misery. Another phase of soul-return, or soul-labor, for all soul-return is identical with soul-labor, is Inspiration. A departed soul of high rank, well versed in poetry, philosophy, literature or other human lore may cause a highly mediumistic mortal to speak or write verbatim what such a soul wishes to say or write. Mortal auras admitting the inspirations of highly developed souls in direct and immediate manner, and expressing their language without in the least altering it, are rare. Two notable inspirational instruments were the Naz- arene as a speaker, and Shakespeare as a writer. The Lord's Prayer, for example, was given Jesus by inspira- tion. So negative and pure a medium was he that he could emit it verbatim. Nor did he know how he came to get it. Neither was Shakespeare aware that most characters in his plays were the inspiration of departed souls that caused him to write what these souls wished the characters to say. He wrote the inspired words as they came, without altering, modify- ing or changing them. Such perfect mediumistic auras, to which the auras of Mozart and Raphael may be added, permit the in- spirations of more than one divine soul. The words 90 Soul-Return of the Nazarene, the plays of the Briton, the paintings of Raphael, and the compositions of Mozart are respective products of a number of divine souls. Most compositions of Beethoven and poems of Byron are inspirations of a smaller number of divine souls of a less exalted rank. The mortal " Creator " of im- mortal things who is inspired only by one high force is among the sidera minora in the constellation of the gifted. Next in importance is the phase of Impression. It permits brain-impressions to be transferred, altered, or modified by brain-traces and brain-aura currents. A small portion of Shakespeare's writings consist of brain-impressions, that is, impressions made upon his brain by disembodied souls of high rank or development, which were worked oyer in his brain. To illustrate : The argument " Mercy is heavenly, a blessing to the recipient as well as the spender, grand in beggar or king," was not an inspiration, but an impression that filtered through the poet's brain. In the brain it affiliated with the brain-traces and brain-aura currents. First, certain currents im- pressed themselves upon the poet's gifted brain. Under the laws of attraction they blended with cur- rents of the brain-aura containing similes and com- parisons, which the poet had collected by the aid of his extensive reading and learning, all of which evolved the well-known Soul-Return 91 " The quality of mercy is not strained ; It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath ; it is twice bless'd. It blesseth him that giveth and him that taketh. Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown." Other writers were impressed with this theme at various times, but only the brain-quality, brain-traces and brain-aura currents of a Shakespeare could cast it in such a beautiful mould. Longfellow's " Evangeline " and Tennyson's "In Memoriam " are works of Impression, not Inspiration. The famous soliloquy in Hamlet, and Beethoven's Andante of the Fifth Symphony are combinations of Impression and Inspiration. Impression is original soul-thought modified by the human brain ; while Inspiration is original soul-thought independent of the brain. An impressional phase of a lower degree may be set forth by examples. A man before venturing a speculation consults an instrument that has no knowledge of his plans, yet tells him the facts bearing upon them, their future aspects, and the intentions of other persons regarding them. The expose is correct ; the prophecy becomes true. The reader asks : How did the medium learn the facts ? How did he make the prediction ? The answer is : The facts were impressed upon him by the sitter's 92 Soul-Return invisible companion ; the prediction resulted from the laws of currents. Every mortal is accompanied on his terrestrial journey by one or more invisible friends that witness nearly all his acts and thoughts. In the case just mentioned they impressed the medium with the facts, also with the prediction, that is, with the current of facts about to happen. How do these currents arise ? How do the controls obtain them ? If a person has a seance with an instrument that possesses his cur- rents, that is, some ether remnants left over from former sittings — which are in the shape of currents attaching to the aura of the medium and held there by means of attraction similar to the currents of elec- tricity held fast on either side of the glass of a Ley- den jar — and he is to die in a month, the medium may address him thus : " I see something dark in your aura. Your vital forces are decreasing in a fixed ratio. They will be extinct on about the . . day of .... of this year." Which means that the per- son's body will die on that day. The decreasing ratio is obtained from the declining vitality, possibly also from other conditions of the sitter's currents, all of which is learned by the control. Most verified predictions of seers result from a combination of attenuate currents detected only by mediums possessing the rare gift of impressionability for these rarest or faintest of currents. The combi- nation of currents that make up a prediction is one of Soul-Return 93 the myriads of mysterious ether products of the free- ether world, unintelligible to the mortal reader by reason of his lack of proper tools to understand them with. In the case of a seer's realized prediction of an im- pending conflagration at a certain place, the combina- tion of currents that impressed the seer when he made the prediction consisted of ether currents ema- nating from the cause of the fire. Whether the cause of the fire lay in the brain-aura of a person in- tending to commit arson; or in a "live wire" close to combustible matter ; or in a defective flue ; or in the carelessness of a match-thrower, each cause, i. e., the brain-aura, the live wire, the flue, has its own cur- rents ; so has the aura of every substance connected with that cause. The ordinary mortal is blind to cur- rents or any of their combinations, but the seer is not; he can be impressed by the faintest of currents. Now, how does such a combination arise ? Suppose that the conflagration was predicted to originate in the petroleum-soaked floor of a certain designated room. What was it that produced a combination of currents causing the prediction ? The answer is : Owing to the perfect elasticity of ether its currents pass from their starting point to all parts of the earth's surface. So did the currents of the floor, the petroleum, the building, the incendiary, and the sitter. By a peculiar condition of harmony which is called Induction, these currents formed a combination that 94 Soul-Return impinged upon the aura of the sitter ; the medium's controls translated the meaning of the combination- currents, and impressed the result upon the medium's brain, whence it was converted into speech. The building might have been twenty thousand miles dis- tant from sitter and instrument ; this would neither affect nor prevent the prophecy. On account of the inconceivable faintness of ether currents that emanate from the auras of objects, their impression upon mediumistic auras is at best but faint ; and auras are rare which cognize them correctly. Nor are such mediums well developed as a rule. This accounts for the present imperfection of seership-phases. An important species of Impression is the Psycho- metric Phase. It underlies the sensing or receiving of currents transmitted to the instrument by sub- stances or objects. If, for example, a person returns from a journey, and some article such as a sleeve- button he wore be submitted to a medium gifted with this phase, the medium can reveal acts and events that transpired near the person. From what has pre- ceded the reader will be able to explain this phase. Another of the many existing impressional phases of soul-return or soul-labor is operated by means of a small tumbler containing water, or by means of a peculiar crystal. If either object be held by a sitter in the aura of a suitable instrument, the instrument Soul-Return 95 will focus his soul-vision upon it and see, clairvoyantly, condensed pictures of acts, things, events or persons directly or indirectly connected with the sitter. The pictures are made by the medium's controls, who for such work must be strongly physical without being crude. In addition to pictures the instrument may read conversations held in the past ; inscriptions on tombs or other objects at distant points as if they were written in the air. This phase is related to that of seership. Another phase of soul-return is that of General Impressions. They are sensated by a mediumistic mortal, and acted upon by him for good or evil. To illustrate : A man has been pondering over his financial troubles, and at last exclaims : « I have found a solu- tion . . . the end of my difficulties ! I am going to sell my home and move to X. . . ." His family in vain endeavor to dispel the " sacredness " of his im- pression ; he persists. A year later a collapse occurs, and he ends his mortal life by his own hand. It was a case of impression for evil by low souls. Owing to his ignorance in soul-matters, and the absence of weekly meetings with his ethereal friends, he, like mil- lions of his undeveloped mediumistic fellow beings, was unable to distinguish bad from good impressions. To a low soul, especially one of the earth-bound class, the destruction of human life is a source of in- tense joy, a sumrnum, boninn. Such a soul, aided by 96 Soul-Return others, may spend years in pursuing a mortal of im- pressionable harmonious aura, which it will constantly impress. The victim finally destroys himself, and if he can, also others. A woman kills her children and then herself; a man shoots his wife and then him- self; obeying an " inner voice " a boy kills his bene- factor ; an orator incites a crowd to deeds of violence or revenge ; the ruler of a nation urges the conquest of an inferior foe. The man, the woman, the boy, the orator, the ruler, are the tools of earth-bound spirit-curs that impress harmonious incarnated earth- bound souls, whispering "Do it ... do it!" until the foul deeds are done. The voice of the incarnated soul often is called Con- science. It is always veiled or clouded, and frequently subject to the influence of crude currents of low souls that impress and perchance control the soul. The murderer's conscience whispers to him, " Commit the murder! " The thief's conscience urges him to steal. When the evil influences are gone, he may admit the deed, conscience-stricken; that is, new and better forces have taken hold of him. Just as in a seance- room materialized souls are influenced by surrounding currents, so are embodied souls influenced by currents of disembodied souls who labor or reside in their auras. Conscience may be the exponent of a bad soul or a good soul. To guard against impressions from unknown disem- bodied sources all sensitive or impressionable mortals Soul-Return 97 should imitate the suspicion and delay which people use against the insinuations of incarnated strangers. Another phase of soul-return may be called the Locating Phase. When in good psychic condition some mediumistic persons can locate mines, water, gas, or other hidden substances in the ground. This phase depends upon the peculiar capacity of " sens- ing " the rare and attenuated currents that pass from the substances, i. e., their auras, through the inter- vening soil into the air, where they strike, or are in- tercepted by, the suitable mediumistic aura through which the information is received. The disembodied soul laboring in that aura cognizes those currents and impresses its knowledge of them upon the medium's brain. Locating mediums discover substances that are under ground usually in the night-time. Large and valuable mines have been located through this phase of mediumship. A phase abounding in information and peculiarities is that of so-called Physical Manifestations. They comprise many kinds of noisy demonstrations as well as silent manifestations such as the passage of solids through solid bodies without displacement of particles of the body entered or pierced. To illustrate : A handkerchief passes' through a thin board. It occurs as follows : The particles of the handkerchief are de- materialized, in which state they pass through the 98 Soul-Return board. At the instant they emerge on the other side of the board they are condensed back again ; that is, rematerialized. The operation is carried on by a dis- embodied soul, and consumes no time, sensibly speak- ing. A multitude of phases of soul-return exist which rank between one and another of the phases here mentioned. All of them occur in a mediumistic aura, and are the work of departed souls. The compensation which disembodied souls receive for their labors in mediumistic auras is accelerated progression. The compensation received by the mor- tal instrument for lending his aura to the work ; for the depletion of his psychic and bodily strength ; his careful diet ; his persecutions at the hands of ignorant mortals, and the rapid decrease of his physical vigor, is usually a monetary reward, always small. The disembodied learn facts of nature they should have learned while yet living in the form ; the incar- nated learn facts of nature which they ought to have acquired in their younger days. Both learn from the only good, sincere and honest teacher of souls : Nature. The ratio of ten per cent of well-developed souls holds good also of the disembodied souls in the seven earth-spheres. In a physical sense the ninety per cent of undeveloped souls are stronger than the ten Soul-Return 99 per cent. Their crude and crudest portion are ever present where they are not wanted, inserting them- selves between sitter and instrument, trying to spoil whatever they can spoil ; controlling instruments for the purpose of issuing false statements, fraudulent communications and lying messages. Their previous earth-lives failed to cure their deceit, insincerity and mendacious habits. While such souls may not all be bad, yet they are frauds imposing their presence and offering their insipid wares for the sake of performing labor in mediumistic auras and, as stated, for the pur- pose of harming others ; the performance of labor in mediumistic auras being the great desideratum of all earth-sphere souls. Most of them practised fraud in their incarnated life by cheating in selling goods ; deceiving in professional treatments ; telling false- hoods in their conversations, and blowing hot or cold to suit the crowd. Their funeral did not destroy their vices. The loss of their body does not involve the loss of their tricks. A profound liar buried is a profound liar still, and will remain such for ages. He will be even a more profound liar after transition, more effusive and dangerous, by reason of being less fettered. An eagle spreads his wings more broadly after he has escaped from the mena- gerie cage. In view of these dangers, the question has arisen, Is it not best to avoid all connection and intercourse with the Beyond ? We answer : No ! Man meets ILofC. ioo Soul-Return the same dangers after his transition. It is his duty to conquer the crude-physical while he lives in the form ; it is his duty not to shirk it. The coward here below will be a coward above, and there suffer from having been a coward before. In matters pertaining to the Unknown the truth is always preferable to hearsay and tradition. Even a medium's untruthful or nonsensical communications are true in this, that they are communications from departed souls. The student should seek the cause of such perversities rather than abandon his investigations. Through a well-developed trance-instrument the oldest souls may communicate, if there is sufficient power. But not in a crowd, because in a crowd the forces are mixed, and all resultant or cumulative cur- rents physical and of vicious effect. Ancient souls like Zoroaster, Solon or Abraham can address only one mortal at a time ; under the best conditions perhaps a very few persons of harmo- nious currents. The pleasure and influence of direct communications from such lofty sources is indescriba- ble. When the Disciples were told that Jesus would be present where two or more of them should be to- gether they correctly understood not Tom, Dick and Harry, but two or more mediumistic persons as all Disciples were. Zoroaster requires more force in order to manifest than Marcus Aurelius ; either of them needs less force than the Nazarene, because the Soul-Return 101 Nazarene's soul-body is more attenuate. His visits on terra firma are rare ; he knows that they require from sitter and instrument a tremendous sacrifice of force and currents. Every mortal soul should remember, that in passing along the public walks of cities he moves in a throng of hurrying departed souls, many of which annoy mediumistic passers-by and escort mortals whose company they particularly enjoy. On the highways of New York, London, Paris or Berlin the stream of invisible beings is larger than that of the visible ones ; a good clairvoyant often finds it difficult to dis- tinguish between the incarnated and the disembodied that pass by him. If a mediumistic person attempts to answer the numerous calls or questions which the invisibles in the street by word of mouth, impression or other agencies address to him, he is a donkey in soul-matters, for his responses attract their worst ele ments so surely and securely as to affect his mental sanity. The intercourse with the Beyond belongs to one's home. Not a few cases of mistaken zeal and false development have ended in suicide or insanity, owing to the dense ignorance in soul-matters so fre- quently displayed. Because of such calamities to reject a knowledge of the soul and of life's primeval purpose would resemble the abolishment of windows in buildings to guard the inmates from falling upon the street. io2 Soul-Return The frequent occurrence of table-tippings and raps may serve as an illustration of mortal foolishness. A sitter asks a queston ; the table tips an answer. This answer is seldom correct. The forces producing such manifestations are of the coarsest physical kind ; the answering souls of this class delight in misinform- ing, misdirecting and defrauding the sitter. No reli- ance should be placed in the intellectuality of these and similar classes of physical phenomena. A well-developed incarnated soul is constantly an- noyed and resisted in its mundane operations by a majority of the raw ninety per cent. And a well-de- veloped disembodied soul is constantly annoyed and resisted in its ethereal progression by the raw ninety per cent of earth-sphere souls. On either side of the clouds the duel between brute force and the peaceable ten per cent is waged with intense vigor. In this respect as in many others there is small dif- ference between the two worlds. In the ether zones, away from the dross of earth and its illusions, that unceasing struggle is more conspicuous. Its full com- prehension by the reader would compel him to apply the method and practice of chemical analysis, viz., su- perior, well-constructed instruments, and chemically pure reagents. In soul-science the former are ob- tained by proper development ; the latter by a judi- cious conduct of life, including proper diet, on the part of the impurities, i. e., the sitters. Soul-Return 103 Dogberry said, to read and write comes by nature. He knows now that there is one thing that cometh not by nature, but requires intense and profound study and research, viz., a knowledge of ether currents. We often speak of war, slaughter and bloodshed. They lead to the question, " What is the great impor- tance of blood?" Goethe, the great impressionist and lover of love, barely touches an explanation in the line, u Blood is quite a peculiar kind of juice" {Bint ist ein ganz besonderer Soft). His aura was one of magnificent force, but of inferior quality, which ac- counts for his wonderful imagery and impressions, and the singular absence of all inspiration. Blood is the staff of life. Its fumes feed the human aura. They produce aura-ether, and they replace waste aura-ether. If a man's diet is coarse, his blood is coarse ; and coarse blood engenders coarse thoughts. For example, if a man eats onions, his blood and aura become filled with onion fumes — a coarse dish for the human aura. So fares he that eats coarse fruit ; the flesh of warm-blooded animals ; heavy vegetables such as beans, cabbage, beets or corn. Heavy diet produces pernicious domestic poli^ cies, needless civil wars, needless foreign wars. The United States of America, the grandest attempt at a government by and for the people, was convulsed by a long civil war because of centuries of pork and beans. 104 Soul-Return Ingredients such as alcohol, nicotine and gossip mingle with the air a person breathes. They make poor ether, on which his aura will be fed. Poor ether makes a poor man, a poor aura, a poor epitaph. If the blood of a freshly slain animal be placed in basins close to a person's home, he inhales its fumes, which will mingle with his heart's blood. Then will his heart feed his aura with animal blood, which begets a poor quality of ether. The same fatality is bred by bloody speech. Its currents flow to one's aura and deposit their poison there. While we are writing in our friend's room, the fol- lowing lines are given us by way of impression, com- ing from a soul that left the mortal plane of life nearly two thousand years ago and now lives in the highest divine sphere : " Dear Mortals : Alcohol, nicotine, gossip and in- flammatory speech spoil the soft, velvety, silken tis- sue of the soul by filling it with thistles and offal. Thistles are for donkeys ; offal for heedless mortals. Terra firma has no establishment for cleansing human auras ; and to cleanse them in the Beyond is expen- sive. True, there are in every city, town and village of this globe pretentious dyeing and cleaning establish^ ments, but to dye a soul does it no good ; and to clean it there helps it very little, because they do not clean, it right. " To manufacture good blood, the pure article, is of Soul-Return 105 the greatest importance ; for a good aura, a good soul, cannot be thought of without good blood. The soul is what a mortal is, what he lives for, and what he takes with him when he mounts the train for the other side. It is his only baggage. He may have labored fifty years in accumulating gold ; the baggage-master will not put it aboard. He will admit your dog, your cat, your prospects, but not the sweat of your brow, the prize of fifty years of restless work : your gold. It must stay behind. But your best and only friend, your aura, is with you and will be with you when you awake in the Beyond. Goethe was right ; blood is an exceed- ingly peculiar juice. " Keep your health by confining your blood in its channels. Do not permit raw souls to talk it out of you ; and be fair with your fellow passengers ; allow them to keep theirs. Let peace reign in your blood, in your tongue, in your heart, in your soul. The years speed on, but your blood pursues an even course ; so does eternity. After you cross the line and rub your spirit-eyes, and are through taking in the garret, the gardens and the other good things which you there get for nothing, you exclaim : ' I wonder why my friends still in the flesh cannot see me now just as I am, and sell my picture just as I am. What a world of pleasure it would be to them ! ' " You are mistaken. Your picture would not sell. Eternity is slow; and human ways are slow. Ere your picture finds buyers you must sow, and see io6 Soul-Return things grow so as to get a fair price for it. What is a fair price ? The answer is : Good will ; kind thoughts ; patience and perseverance in hoeing round the growing plants ; and less reliance on the sun, the moon and the rain. In other words : Labors of your own; soul-industry a few minutes every day or at least every week ; and now and then listening to the rainfall as it occurs when the heavens ordain. Then will you get a picture of your soul as it appears when the Play is out, the audience gone home. It will pay any one to prepare himself for the picture, not for the illustration or the vanity of the thing, but for the high step he must take to get it." It is a comfort to know that when the Play is out and the actor has left the stage he is still somewhere ; he does not lie buried, but is still living and conscious, minus his old garment, his flesh-and-bone body ; and that the difference between the actor on the stage and off the stage is not more than that flesh-and-bone garment about which terra firma makes so much noise and confusion. For thousands of years certain professionals have taken pains to make man believe that he is a totally different being when he takes a bath from what he is with his clothes on. But souls visiting their mortal friends declare, that they are about the same they were when they still wore their earthy garment. Shall they be believed ? Why not, provided they are what they say they are, viz., the Soul-Return 107 departed, disembodied souls of the respective egos that inhabited terra firma before they departed ? To become convinced of their identity requires time and patience. A mortal devoid of these requirements is devoid of the meaning of earth-life and its seriousness. But he that has become convinced of their identity need not hesitate to trust them, provided caution and prudence escort him in his dealings with them. In- tercourse with the departed differs but little from that with the living. The reader now knows that when the Play is out, it is not out at all, but is repeated at intervals. In these intervals the actors are at their homes, their spirit-homes in the spheres, and live there and attend to their progression. When the time comes for them to play again they are reincarnated, that is, dressed up again, whereupon they act again on life's stage. Their roles are hardly ever the same they were before. Does the reader find this strange ? If he does, his only comfort lies in the fact that others, too, have found it strange ; nor is incarnation the only strange item in nature's household. Let him beware of artificial notions concerning in- carnation, which from time to time emanate from the human brain. The human brain draws not from divine or perfected souls who know. Incarnation is not a matter of belief ; it is one of fact, of nature's facts. io8 Soul-Return Soul-return has a twofold effect. It reassures the human race that visible death means invisible life; and that the returning friends are its natural teach- ers and guides. It teaches mankind the temporari- ness of everything pertaining to incarnated life. It explains the noise and tumult of the material world ; it interprets the silence of the grave, the doom of the Physical, and the ultimate triumph of the Invisible. IV Psychic Fraud " Oh that deceit should steal such gentle shape And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice." Shakespeare. — Richard III, Act ii, sc. 2. IN one stage or another mundane affairs and mental operations in the course of practical exe- cution, including medicine, jurisprudence, com- merce, agriculture, pedagogical and ecclesiastical lore, are mixed with or corrupted by fraud. The extent of human fraud is difficult to determine. How- ever large it may appear, the fraud practised by dis- embodied souls, often called Psychic Fraud, is greater than mortal fraud, far greater even than people imag- ine. The capacity for fraud on the part of disem- bodied souls of the crude-physical class, and the quantity of fraud they are capable of committing and do commit daily, eclipse the criminal annals of their mortal associates and victims. Fine opportunities for fraud are offered by the trance-phase. A fraudulent message delights crude- physical souls, they being the natural lovers of deceit and crime. They share the oft-mentioned desire, common to all departed souls : Labor in a mediumistic aura; but they are not conversant with the mode of 109 no Soul-Return conveying truthful messages. As on the boards that mean the world an Opera-Bouffe is more easily per- formed than a Heroic Opera, so on life's stage a fraudulent communication is easier to convey than a truthful one. Suppose that a mortal named Smith craves for information regarding his departed sister. If he be mediumistic, he may wait for her impression or other manifestation at his home. If he is not mediumistic, he must visit a harmonious medium. For the sake of illustration, let us presume that he has found one; that he is now in the medium's aura for the first time ; and his sister also is present. In all likelihood she cannot communicate with her brother on account of the presence of, and interference by, some crude-physi- cal disembodied soul anxious to perform labor either in the aura of the brother or in that of the medium, and unwilling to withdraw in favor of Smith. The crude-physical soul overpowers the medium's control, dislodges the medium's soul, and takes its place. It then gives Smith false impressions, wrong information, silly answers. This class of souls disregard honor and veracity ; they are mindful only of their own progres- sion, in the furtherance of which they commit the fraud. If the usurping soul is conversant with the visitor's affairs, as is often the case, the fraud in- volves danger, for where a particular portion, i. e., the first part of a message, is true, a visitor unacquainted with soul-facts and phenomena believes that the whole Psychic Fraud 1 1 1 message is true, which may cause him great harm. Men and women are easy prey to the crude-physical, because they disregard the elements of soul-science. In other words, Smith, unless he be acquainted with soul-facts, is not aware that a strange soul gives him a false message in the name of his sister. He might avoid the fraud by insisting on a preliminary test. This would unveil the deceit, and in all likelihood terminate the sitting. A crude-physical deceiving soul operates with cur- rents that are taken, borrowed or stolen from some disembodied or incarnated soul or souls. The exer- cise of sovereignty over a foreign organism, such as Smith, needs, in addition to physical currents, a better class of currents than crude-physical souls possess. The usurping soul takes them from some other mortal, or from some disembodied soul. In the event that Smith should call again on the medium, and become a regular visitor in the medium's aura, and if his aura is developed, then that desired class of currents is taken from him. In such a case the usurping soul and Smith's soul form what is called a "battery." Other physical souls may be added to this battery. If the battery is a physical one, that is, composed of physical souls only, the force obtained from it may be powerful and capable of inflicting great harm. Another illustration of psychic fraud is the well- known fact that soon after the transition of some illus- trious person a message pretending to come from him ii2 Soul-Return is heralded through some medium. Such a medium is of the crude-physical order ; that is, controlled or read- ily overpowered by souls of that class. Aside from the fact that among illustrious persons of exalted position or rank but a very few are or ever were well-developed souls, able to awaken promptly after transition and to report promptly, it is unlikely that the notable " dead " so soon after demise would have become familiar with a harmonious instrument so as to enable him to give a message. Most such immediate messages come from some crude-physical disembodied soul bent on employment, or eager to cheat. The reader under- stands that such criminal souls do not operate the auras of well-developed instruments ; they enjoy the ever open door of poorly developed, ignorant instru- ments. Another species of fraudulent misrepresentation which spirit-frauds practise through poorly developed mediums consists in the control's assuming the name of some deceased statesman, artist or otherwise cele- brated person. This is done to gain importance. Crude, ignorant mediums take pride in possessing a famous control ; and many a deluded sitter is touched and elated when familiarly addressed by an archangel, emperor, king or president ; by Mozart, Shakespeare or some other distinguished dead. A prudent, well- developed medium will require satisfactory tests or sufficient proof ere permitting the use of its aura by strangers. Mediums ought to imitate the action of Psychic Fraud 113 bank clerks requiring identification when a stranger presents paper for payment. If a well-developed incarnated soul be of solitary habits of life, he is, psychically speaking, unprotected. If he can be acquainted with soul-facts he will seek to become a member of a battery of equally well-devel- oped souls in the Beyond or here below. Regarding the selection of them he will seek the advice of his invisible friends. The mortal members of a psychic battery need not be, and in most cases are not, aware of their membership or even the existence of the battery ; for, as a rule, disembodied souls keep such things to themselves. The members may reside far apart from one another, even on different continents. Ether currents operate regardless of distance. Once a mortal battery formed, its members cannot be un- linked except by the application of superior physical soul-force. The myriads of millions and millions of myriads of ether currents close to the earth's surface form millions of batteries unperceived, unknown, un- guessed by the crowd. Yet are they as real and potent a tissue as is a netting of iron wire round a banker's vault. The space surrounding terra firma is composed of ether in a state of constant vibration ; each system of ether currents is an intelligence of its own, and at- tracts like or similar harmonious systems. The myri- ads of coarse, cheating ether currents possess greater ii4 Soul-Return physical power than the good or the less coarse cur- rents. This globe is enveloped by an ensemble of heterogeneous kinds of ether, each kind possessing its own system of currents. In the midst of the indiscriminate mixture of known and unknown en- tangled currents of different properties and velocities, immersed in their chaos, surrounded and impinged by all, yet instructed regarding but few of them, a stranger among strangers, is man — a sentient being among myriads of millions of sentient waves, con- stantly floating between the physical and the divine. Immersed in this heterogeneous entangled chaos of currents he struggles against physical odds ; against the tempests of the sea and the air ; the hurricanes of passions and the lust of crime. In the midst of this chaotic condition he finds and loves his companion, his treasures, his sorrows and grief. In the midst of his cares, his love and his crimes, he reflects in his children the fondness for life, the struggle for virtue, the aim to excel And later, still in the midst of his laurels and trophies, he lays away his form, and crosses the line unaided and alone except for his friends on high, whom among his tears and feasts he forgot to invite. A man cheats his fellow-men because some crude- physical element in his aura attracts crude-physical currents. This attraction depends upon the composi- tion of the body, the nature of the body-organs, the Psychic Fraud 115 peculiar composition or condition of the brain-aura, and the condition of the general aura. But there are exceptions. Owing to their brain-aura some mortals cheat although they are well-developed souls ; and, vice versa, a few poorly developed or spotted souls may practise virtue owing to the aura of their brain or heart or both combined. Criminal fraud, theft, embezzlement, forgery, false promises and other de- linquencies owe their underlying intention or scienter to crude-physical currents. Whoever is partially sus- ceptible to them is of criminal intent, unless for the time being education, instruction or other ennobling agencies prevent. Fraud, then, may be intentional or not. The deceiv- ing human instrument may adopt it unconsciously, as if it constituted a part of his nature. His physical cur- rents may invite fraud ; his lack of soul-knowledge fos- ter it ; his greed for money perpetuate it. A review of the affairs of the world past and present discloses the fact that fraud is a part of man's terrestrial out- fit. The different kinds of psychic fraud that may pre- vail where a mortal seeks information from a departed soul are reducible to three classes, viz. : 1. The mortal obtains nothing whatever, although he and the departed friend are close to each other. This phenomenon results from insulation. Some interfering physical soul insulates the mortal, wishing n6 Soul-Return to profit by his presence in a mediumistic aura to find work, no matter for how short a time, and to spoil the message, information or phenomenon. To spoil these, many a way is open ; the easiest is the insulation of the mortal. It prevents communication between the mortal and the departed. 2. The mortal obtains a mixed communication of correct and false material. The correct data come from good sources, i. e., some developed soul; the false ones, from bad sources, i. e., from a soul unde- veloped or worse than undeveloped. Correct data may compose the first part of a message ; false ones the last part ; that is, the developed soul, after begin- ning to communicate, is interrupted and displaced by an undeveloped soul ; this soul immediately continues the message without any break, so that part of the message is correct, and the remaining portion — usually the last one — is false. Yet is the message a continuous whole. 3. The mortal obtains an entirely false communica- tion, ostensibly from his departed loved one, in reality from a crude-physical soul that has displaced or neu- tralized the physically inferior soul. This frequent species of fraud is the source of much trouble and dis- gust. It is a victory of the strong over the weak; the fraud practised by the majority of mankind in the parlor, the office, the counting-room, the store, the political arena and other mundane fields of operation transferred to invisible fields. The same souls that Psychic Fraud 117 deceive the anxious investigator practised the art of committing fraud long before they passed away. Their fraud in "after life" is but a continuation of their previous deceiving habits. We may call it the fraud of mankind, for it rules the globe. It includes illusions of the brain and mistakes of the heart. Body, brain, heart, the sum and substance of the human shell, represent the coarse or lower qualities of ether, the heaven of the crude, the hell of the developed. They produce the larger portion of the daily conversation and transactions upon the globe. By virtue of the principle of the attraction of Like and Like the human body is less harmonious to the developed soul than it is to the crude soul. Honesty, uprightness and sin- cerity are virtues of the developed soul ; dishonesty, pretended honesty and affected uprightness are vices of the shell and of crude souls. From time to time communications are given and writings published coming from crude-physical souls of the Beyond. They are conveyed through crude- physical controls. These controls, together with the souls with whom they associate, which are raw individ- uals of the same class, and from whom they obtain the knowledge concerning the higher and highest spheres, are densely ignorant of matters transcending their own low plane of ethereal life. Their ignorance keeps pace with their audacity and love of deceit. From their scanty stock of facts and phenomena they evolve n8 Soul-Return statements, theories and articles of faith regarding higher spheres, even the divine abodes, to neither of which they have access. They are guilty of invent- ing what they assert to be facts, and of misrepresent- ing what they claim to know. If the medium through whom this species of psychic fraud is manifested is an instrument of extraordinary power, born into favor- able conditions and specially fitting mundane oppor- tunities, and if he is supplied with a fine brain, he may found a religious system. He need not be wise like Zoroaster, nor intellectual like Confucius ; but he must be a powerful physical instrument, of the kind that rarely appear on earth. Mahomet was such a one. One of the greatest mediums and best-developed souls of all times, a soul which while still in the flesh was nearly fit to inhabit the divine mansions, was the Nazarene. His aura was free from everything crude or physical. It is a peculiarity of the crude-physical, that its souls disembodied or embodied, seek to enforce their brain- aura phantasms upon others ; that is, to rule mortals or the departed by false assertions, rude threats, and severe laws. The public abhors psychic fraud, forgetting that no science has escaped struggles against fraud, error and the physical resistance of dark forces. Much of the fraud prevailing in mundane affairs is overlooked, Psychic Fraud 119 because fraud is considered natural, well understood, sympathetic, thoroughly human. The world should not grow excited over the fraud of departed souls, for until yesterday, when the departed were still here below, the public smiled away their fraud or covered it up. Until yesterday their movements, sustenance and development drew upon a flesh-and-bone body ; to-day they draw upon the mediumistic aura of a flesh-and-bone body not their own. Their physical fraud of yesterday was natural ; their psychic fraud of to-day is natural. At all events the interests of humanity are served better by a study of the (< other side " with all its fraud and falsehoods than by stoutly denying facts, soul-existence and soul-return. The fraud which sometimes intermingles with the truths of soul-science will be reduced greatly and de- prived of its obnoxiousness, whenever its true nature shall be fully understood. The intercourse with the departed will then be carried on as smoothly as to-day a plow furrows the field or a ship sails the ocean. The intercourse will be carried on under two funda- mental laws of soul-science, viz., the conditions of the moment, and the comprehension of the proper currents. They are the unseen, powerful motors of terrestrial life. The knowledge of conditions and currents enables man to be strong; the want of it compels him to be weak. The country whose condi- tions and currents are disregarded or unknown is weak, and its future uncertain. The country whose 1 20 Soul-Return conditions are at all times well known, whose currents are at all times thoroughly understood, is strong. Human life should be directed toward perfected con- ditions and a sameness of currents. They make the ego feel at home with himself, and impregnate his terrestrial existence with the delightful consciousness of individuality. Man's individuality is the power through which he can resist ferocious currents that tend to destroy him. The male population of the globe shows a greater propensity to commit fraud than the female portion. This is owing to the peculiar intensity of the induc- tive forces of the currents of the male element. The meaning of the term "Wickedness " depends upon many elements of quality, quantity, intensity, and other properties of aura-currents and soul-currents ; to a great extent also upon the dominating or control- ling influence of the invisible tenant or tenants of the human aura. Psychic fraud consists of low, physical currents that affect mundane affairs, mundane souls and mun- dane conditions. To fear psychic fraud is to fear one's shadow ; to court it is to court one's body ; to overcome it is to triumph over the shameful compan- ion of the human soul. As the realms of invisible currents exceed in size the empires of visible worlds, so psychic fraud ex- ceeds the fraud committed by mortals. The one is as positive as the other. The invisible fraud clogs the Psychic Fraud 121 suitable auras of mortals ; the visible fraud irritates and delays the suitable auras of developed souls. Ultimately all fraud must cease, and the well-devel- oped soul must triumph, may the cost be a million years. The opportunities for fraud are always present; the counter-efforts of the well-developed are never wanting. What is wanting is the instruction which the human brain should receive, in the truth of life psychic and physical, in order that the ego may justly appreciate the value of a gain of time in his develop- ment. V Physical Souls " The wickedness of a few is the calamity of all ! " — Syrus. THE term " Physical " as applied to the soul is difficult to define. It may mean material, earthy, worldly, coarse, bad, crude, wretched, infamous, or something worse ; or the char- acteristics of robust, hearty, strong, vigorous, ener- getic, referring to souls that are neither bad nor well developed, but possess something which, if properly wielded, is very useful to human beings. All bad souls are physical, but not all physical souls are bad. Many a seer-medium needs an enor- mous quantity of force that shall be sufficiently strong to overcome the physical resistance of physi- cal souls ; that is, of souls which without being crude or coarse possess a great quantity of physical strength or " fighting power/' The majority of such souls lived in their last incarnation in forms belonging to the race of Indians, Negroes, Hindoos, and others, that spent their days in the open air, whereby their souls acquired the resisting force so valuable to most me- diums. To illustrate : Our friend, the writer of this volume, could not obey us, nor could we use his 122 Physical Souls 123 hand for writing, if we were not aided and assisted by a few Indian souls. In his arrogance the white man thinks these children of nature are easy sport for him and his gun. When he reaches our side he will find the tables turned. There the white man's soul is easy sport for them. The accursed ruler of hor- rible soul, who slaughters the children of nature because they wish to live unmolested, free and inde- pendent, after his transition begs on his knees of the very souls whose premature transition he caused, to lend him a friendly hand in getting him out of the swamps. To such horrible souls the delicate, sensi- tive ethereal tissue of a sweet, refined soul is as in- comprehensible as is the Fifth Symphony to an African savage. Nine among ten mediumistic mortals should discard the impressions they receive during their absence from their homes and they should reject those they receive at home that lack proper identification, as well as those they receive at home in the presence of other persons. For the impressions so received are inter- fered with by coarse, physical souls that are strongest out-of-doors, and where there are two or more mor- tals assembled together, and in crowded halls. The friendly, good physical souls that gladly attach them- selves to a mortal to help him are strongest at his home, in his private room, which we call his soul-home. A mortal, be he the finest medium in the world, can- not always distinguish between good and bad physical 124 Soul-Return influences, and should confine all receivable tests, messages and impressions to his soul-home, where his forces prevail. Whatever comes from his gift in public may be correct, but it weakens not alone his aura but also his invisible friends who mean well ; it strengthens the evil burden which nature imposes upon mediumistic mortals and unfortunately upon nearly all other human beings. The hut of the poor, the palace of the rich, the spirit-home of the departed, each is a soul-home where the ego's currents should reign supreme, where his departed friends and loved ones feel safe, free from interference. The human soul during its terrestrial journey needs the protection of a home, not the fictitious home of a club or hotel, but the true home of the ego's soul. To help man on his terrestrial journey requires more than the escort of developed souls. They resemble well-disposed friends who wish to erect a building for a charitable purpose but lack the necessary funds. In a physical sense they are too weak. If the reader's daily invisible escort were so saintly a soul as the Nazarene, yet without the aid of some physical souls the reader would fare worse than with- out His escort, because such a highly attenuated soul as He draws too heavily upon a mortal aura and takes away its strength. Genuine, i. e., true prayer, many years of practice in it under exclusion of light; and a high degree of harmony between Jesus and the mortal might attract Him to him ; but even in such Physical Souls 125 an event from twenty to thirty highly developed phys- ical souls, notably of the race of the American Indians, must accompany Him, else little good and much harm would be accomplished, especially if the praying mortal were sick, in which case the Nazarene's visit without adequate protection by Indian forces might cause speedy death. Jesus is aware of His peculiarly rarefied soul-body and the enormous sacrifice of force His visits on terra firma require, and descends but rarely. We saw Him in our friend's room during the past year. When He dictated His life to him, which was before that time, His physical escort had been carefully collected. It consisted of several hundred Indians, some Negroes and Chinese, all of whom will- ingly suffered a depletion of their forces for the pur- pose of serving a lofty object. Notwithstanding this great help, the instrument was at times so worn out after writing that he could not maintain himself on his feet for a time. For manifestations in the aura of a medium the aid and assistance of well-disposed physical souls is indis- pensable. The rule is " Soul-labor in an electric aura requires the aid of the Physical." If the friends and controls of a mediumistic mortal are crude, they are physical in a bad and sad sense, tending to produce evil ; that is, to continue their ante-mortem habits. No evil is so great and far-reaching as that caused by crude-physical souls. On the throne, in the pul- pit, in the forum, in the sick-room, in the home, in 126 Soul-Return professional transactions, in commerce and trade they disturb and molest, defraud and debauch whatever is pure. The destroyer of lives, the tyrant at home, the wrecker of nation s, the expanding demagogue, the friend of the whipping-post, the lying villain, the black sheep of a family, each is a crude-physical soul swayed by like souls that yesterday lived in the form. When the reader knows or hears of a person that caused the ruin of a family ; that wrecked the confidence of the public ; betrayed devoted friends, or disgraced an official position, he may be certain the person is a soul of the extreme crude-physical or earth-bound class. The main trade of a mortal is, first, to earn a living ; second, to get " ahead"; third, to prevent others from doing those two things. The prevention is carried^on in numberless ways, all of which are more or less idiotic, the most idiotic being that by which mortals are sent to early graves. The reason of this ought to be plain as daylight even to Chinese or German Boxers. Cutting off heads prematurely does not cut off the heads of the souls, but throws the souls into a state of unconsciousness, in which they remain for some time. Such a sudden death deprives them of their opportunity to finish their soul development in the electric of the body, that is, on terra firma; prevents them from earning earth-experience, and clogs the lower earth-spheres with ill-used, dissatis- fied, immature souls, whose trend is bad on account Physical Souls 127 of the ill use to which they were put while living in the body. Their frightful condition, together with their growing consciousness of the harm inflicted upon them by their execution or their slaughter in war, makes even the better class of them sordid, ill- disposed, sour, hard to teach. And the accumulation of such souls in the lower earth-spheres increases the already burdensome tasks and labors of the higher and highest mansions. We might cite fifty further reasons and still leave the subject unexhausted. It has always been difficult to control the crude- physical. One of its most conspicuous, far-reaching and despotic forms is that of a combination of per- sons claiming to know the unseen universe and many of its distinguished souls and divine souls, although they have no communication with any disembodied soul. ' Their pretence springs from the literature of ancient bards. The crude-physical never contrived anything more complete and unique in the way of combination and organization. As a result, to take only a small portion of human history, during the past fifteen hundred years over a hundred million mortal lives were cut short in their development here below; the well-being of all the lower earth-spheres was tampered with ; inexpressible woe filled the higher zones ; many exalted souls in the divine mansions were crucified over again by the horrible influence of the resulting ether formations and 128 Soul-Return torments because of the oceans of blood spilt in their name. The fatal effect of those crude-physical organizations consists in this, that they train and de- velop certain brain-aura currents in extraordinary proportions, which have produced the constant reign of terror alluded to. The blood spilt within that period of time by all the savages on terra firma is a small quantity when compared with the gigantic slaughter directly and indirectly due to the crude- physical solidified into a brain-aura demon. We have often criticised man's idea that might is right. In an impartial state of society the crude- physical concept of might would be unknown, except when referring to nature's physical forces such as storms, floods or the electric fluid. While human body-organs, including the brain, should have power, they need not possess might. The false standard of earth-life forced upon mankind by the crude-physical and its organizations causes the oppressive men-debas- ing and women-debauching poverty that prevails upon this globe. The crude-physical and its organizations interest themselves more in the preservation and ac- cumulation of wealth than in the welfare of impov- erished humanity. A knowledge of soul-return and life's true purpose will lessen human greed, because such knowledge shows the folly of greed, and will lessen the dangerous inequality of the present dis- tribution of property ; or, what is the same, it will Physical Souls 129 diminish a large number of crimes. We think that robbery committed by or with the brain, a species of robbery so greatly admired by our crude-physical- made laws, is no better than the kind of robbery committed by the force of some other body-organ, such as the arm or hand. No dynamo, no locomotive is as powerful as human thought, for human thought is a combination of brain-aura and sphere-ether. Fast revolving wires that engender electricity, and superheated steam that pulls railway trains, what are they when compared with primeval ether forces of nature ? But no human aggregation of thought is as powerful as soul-currents that blend into a focus. What are brain-aura com- binations when compared to a soul that loves ? What can the united brain-aura waves of the globe avail against a single soul-truth ? What can the crude- physical accomplish against the combined resistance of developed souls ? This combined resistance ought to centre in soul-development, and should be followed by the united efforts of developed souls. Then will the crude-physical crumble, and the world take a long breath. Man's path thereafter will be free and un- trammelled, permitting the human soul to develop and unfold. The fraud in all mundane affairs and mental operations will surprise no one, harm no one, and teach the incarnated how to avoid, disregard and overcome it. 130 Soul-Return The term Physical comprises everything in terris et in ccelis that is not well developed. It is to the well-developed what a wax angel is to a real angel, or what a scolding female is to a sweet-tempered, warm- hearted woman. VI Human Character " He that has light within his own dear breast May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day ; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Himself is his own dungeon." Milton. — Comus, line 381. A MAN has two sons, John and Fred, and a daughter, Mary. John has smooth manners, inventive powers, great skill in managing worldly affairs, and a bright intellect. Busi- ness men associated with financial institutions he is connected with consider him trustworthy ; his friends admire his private life, and love him for his manliness, honesty and honor. He donates liberally to the poor, especially the poor connected with his church. This man, so highly esteemed and honored by his fellow-men and admired by his wife and children, is a dark, earth-bound soul. Should he grow very old, he would improve, which, after his transition, would aid him in his struggle to rise. But for the next three hundred years or more he cannot ascend to a higher sphere. Three hundred long and terrible years he ; the present boast of a commonwealth, must spend close to the surface of the earth, cursed by his like, 131 132 Soul-Return ostracized from the society of the better souls, avoided even by inferior souls that are still of a better class than he. Is it his fault ? No ; it is the fault of cir- cumstances, facts and conditions. The cause of his misfortune — a most terrible calamity, to a soul the most terrible of all calamities — may bear any con- venient name ; the proximate cause is the defective condition of his soul. It results from premature deaths in previous incarnations and the consequent lack of opportunities for developing the soul in the electric field of the human body. In many previous incarnations longevity, the basis of all soul-develop- ment, was denied him. Premature deaths, whether owing to disease, starvation, overwork, acts of impru- dence, executions, slaughter or war, are enemies to longevity ; they harm the soul. Every system of currents is a force, every force has laws of its own ; every such law is imperious, and must be obeyed. Unlike human precepts, i. e., the creatures of human brain-aura currents that flicker and flop until they join helter skelter into a resultant called thought, law, doctrine, idea or what not, nature's laws suffer no exceptions ; they are fixed by harmoni- ous, inductive, unyielding processes. Mortal law at times undertakes to oppose nature ; it is speedily com- pelled to yield. Earth-bound souls conceal their soul-condition. John conceals his soul-condition. Perhaps his wife might have knowledge of it. She is aware that Human Character 133 savage ideas often agitate his mind ; that tales of murder and destruction fascinate him. He loves war; he thinks it is a grand and necessary thing. As a military commander he would expose his men recklessly. He covets power. He is exacting by nature ; severe in punishing errors ; ever anxious to deal out punishments. He is subservient to technical or external signs of right or wrong. He may forgive, but he never forgets. Although charitable in many ways he entertains an inwardly hostile feeling against the recipients of his gifts. As a member of a park commission he forbids placing seats in certain por- tions of a park because he does not wish people to take a rest. He is verbose, fond of issuing lengthy orders, rules, regulations, plans and modes of action. At his demise the clergy, the press, his friends and associates eulogize him, and the city flag flies at half- mast. A hundred years later the same clergy, press, friends and associates avoid him more intensely than they now avoid touching a venomous snake. Could his fellow-citizens have discovered his soul- condition during his earth-days ? Yes. A sensitive, or a well-developed mediumistic mortal could have re- ceived correct impressions regarding the actual condi- tion of John's soul. And the peculiar porcelain gloss and varnish of his eye indicate to any one trained in soul-facts, that he has the eye of an earth-bound soul. (Page 172.) 134 Soul-Return As a rule, earth-bound souls are criminals. Owing to a good, harmonious system of circulation, however, or superior instruction, excellent home-influence, and above all, a well-balanced brain, an earth-bound soul such as John may avoid the gallows or the peniten- tiary. But the loftiest conception in a soul, viz., true love, was to him, as it is to all souls of his class, a mystery. In matters of the brain, heart and finances his earth-life was harmless ; but in matters of the soul it was a curse to those that were better souls than he and shared his roof. They were harmed by his immediate presence. Their soul-progression in the Beyond is delayed because their souls were con- taminated by the coarse, crude ether of an earth- bound soul. They would not have immersed their bodies in his bath-water, but in their ignorance their souls freely immersed in his vile and horrible aura. Fred instinctively holds his inharmonious brother at a distance. In his presence he is reserved, nervous, impatient, uncomfortable, anxious to leave, afraid to argue, exposed to frequent criticism concerning trivial matters, and conscious of their concealed malice. Criticising others is always more attractive than ap- plying criticism to one's self. The act of adverse and frequent comment of your fellow-men marks the crude- physical soul. Every discord in conversation, sentiment or trans- action affects Fred ; he hears it in silence. He being Human Character 135 slow of speech many believe him cold. He does not mingle with crowds ; he forgives and forgets affronts easily, and is ever ready to favor or help others. He is modest but determined ; courageous in argument, yet averse to physical superiority ; he is hostile to war and bloodshed. He avoids thinking and speak- ing ill of his fellow-men ; he abstains from criticising friends and acquaintances. In his relations to the other sex he is frugal of adulation, lavish of courtesy, yet sincere. He marries not wealth, but pure, true, sacred love. His vocation is that of a teacher in a private school. He holds a membership in a club for the amelioration of the social and political condition of the masses. He is averse to the accumulation and hoarding of money for money's sake. His greatest fault is an over-fondness of sexual imagery, which robs him of valuable time spent in conjecturing un- attainable Oriental pleasures, whose realization would confront him with the police. The public considers him an always outspoken, well-bred man of many odd views, but in most things below his brother John. His superior soul-qualities are like unlisted securities : Not quoted in the market ; little known ; valuable only to the holder and the few that know him well. His demise escapes the notice of thousands, including the clergy and the press A hundred years later he inhabits the divine zones of this globe, — a perfected soul. Of his powers and splendor the press, the pulpit, the successors to his 136 Soul-Return friends and acquaintances and his earth-bound brother have as little conception as mules have of immortality. Mary is a devoted church-goer. Her character differs from that of either brother. Her first thought in the morning, her last one at night, are hints toward obeying ecclesiastical rules. In her eyes John is a Christian, Fred a heathen. A woman's transgression, may it be ever so trifling, she considers a crime. She wishes everybody to be like herself in thought, habits and the observance of church-rites. She fancies that her style, her ways, her formalities please the Deity. She spends alms, not from the heaven-born delight of making others happy, but from a frigid sense of duty. In managing her household, strictness is the order of the day ; her servants are made to feel their humble position. She is no society-woman, but likes to pre- sent a faultless appearance at parties, concerts and other public affairs. She detests the theatre. She is connected with the management of a hospital, and proposes a rule, that none but Christian women shall be admitted as charity-patients. She avoids the so- ciety of men ; and rejects a marriage-offer on the ground, as she .says, that all men are bad. She strives for saintly honors, to which she considers sex- ual purity and celibacy a stepping-stone. At her demise the press, the clergy and the public assert that she was too good, too holy for this valley of tears. Human Character 137 A hundred years later the press, the clergy and the public of her earth-days are aware that she has not progressed beyond the second sphere of the earth's aura, and is still without a "mansion in the sky"; and that several incarnations will be required to lift her into the abodes of well-developed souls. These three children are beings of widely different soul-conditions, which causes their characters to be widely different. Speaking of human character as being good or bad conveys no particular meaning. Mortals are not entitled to those epithets. Every mortal is as good or as bad as the condition, progress or advancement of his soul permits. John is incapa- ble of performing a heroic act such as foregoing revenge ; while Fred, if opportunity presented itself, would excel in acts of generosity and grandeur. The sister has only a mathematical conception of right and wrong. John's great defect is a defect of soul ; the sister's is one of mind. He and his sister are good-hearted but crude of soul. Fred's heart and mind are narrow, but these shortcomings are over- come by his well-developed soul. A person's character depends upon the condition of his soul ; the composition of his brain ; the struct- ure and electric status of his heart. Either of these constituents may be distinctly traced. The trinity of soul, brain and heart makes up the child, the woman, the man. 138 Soul-Return The psychic side of human character is subject to the direct influence and control of disembodied souls. Souls being more powerful than unindividualized mat- ter and sphere-ether, their influence on, and control over, man exceed that of matter and free ether. Soul-influence and soul-control are continuous. In the present low stage of soul-knowledge they cannot be regulated, resisted or in any manner improved without a thorough analysis and study of soul-facts and soul-phenomena. A person, then, may be one of the following six egos : 1. A good soul, i. e., a developed soul, with a poor heart and a poor brain. 2. A good soul with a good heart and a poor brain. 3. A good soul with a good heart and a good brain. 4. A physical, i. e., undeveloped soul, with a poor heart and a poor brain. 5. A physical soul with a good heart and a poor brain. 6. A physical soul with a good heart and a good brain. The innumerable shades, degrees and combinations of soul, heart and brain constitute the character of existing human beings. In so far as the heart and the brain are parts of the human body, character is affected by prenatal conditions and the status of the Human Character 139 parents. In other words, human character partakes of the body and the soul. Character belongs to a person's past. A person without a past or a history has no definitely known character ; he has habits only. The main constituent of character is the soul. No man's character is a safeguard to the world unless he belongs to the class of well-developed souls. And as only about ten per cent of mortals constitute that class, one need not wonder at the miscarriage of justice, honor, virtue and love. Education, instruction, parental example, contemporaneous associations affect and often sway the brain, through it the heart, and through the brain and heart the soul. Hence soul-development, the purpose of earth-life, is carried on partly in an indirect manner through the agency of brain and heart, whose interaction produces what may be called the physical or material side of human character. The so-called civilized peoples worship as part of human character certain denials of sex-passion. But sex-passion and its gratification contrary to the laws framed by the u majority," form no part of human character. Nine hundred ninety-nine masculines in a thousand disregard those laws without thereby en- dangering their character. The excessive gratification of sex-passion — the strongest and least controllable of human forces — is a triumph of the crude-physical over the best and 140 Soul-Return holiest of currents. Chastity, abstinence and similar virtues are, each by itself, no direct or particular help to soul-development, although any of them may become such help by reason of the good influence they exert on civilization. Many a vile, earth-bound incarnated soul is painfully strict concerning sex- matters, in the severest terms condemning the slight- est transgression. This penchant toward condemna- tions occurs mostly in female earth-bound souls. It seems that by an intense rigidity in pitncto puncti they wish to make amends for the horrible condition of their soul. After their demise their hobby will be found to have been of small aid to their debased self. Mortals exceedingly sensitive in matters of sex gen- erally nurse far greater ills, soul-evils of the worst kind, such as malice, envy, hatred and revenge. To these, not to matters of the flesh, ought they to direct their best attention. In the earth-life of a human being sex-passion is only an incident ; and in a thor- ough analysis of human character as well as in the unending life of the soul it has no place. The fact that character has a complexion in the masculine portion of humanity different from that in the female portion is proof of its dependence on the body, certainly to a great extent. Many arts and activities ill become a woman ; feminine grace and traits ill suit a man. Nature has ordained it so. Melt- ing the feminine into the masculine, if successful, Human Character 141 ends in the decay and ultimate death of the race. Man's brain shall battle with classes and species of currents totally unsuited to the female brain. Other classes and species of ether are exclusively appropri- ate to woman. If in this order of things she sees disgrace, let her remember that nature sees but one kind of disgrace or degradation, viz., soul-neglect ; that is, failure to perfect the soul. The Romans set a greater value upon the brain than upon the heart ; the Greeks, a greater value upon the heart than upon the brain. Both succumbed from a lack of soul-knowl- edge and the consequent ascendency of evil souls. From the same cause the same fate awaits now other nations. Human character owes its complexity to the fact that man is connected with terra ftrma, the aura of the earth, and the souls populating this aura. His heart and circulation are intimately connected with terra firma ; his brain is intimately connected with the earth's aura ; his soul, with the inhabitants of the earth's aura. It is a complex system, of which he is the exponent and final expression. His faults, peculi- arities and virtues correspond to the faults, peculiarities and virtues found in the aura and the souls of our planet. A well-developed, refined mortal may cause surprise by his queer actions and dishonest propen- sities. The queer actions result from queer currents of the earth's aura which he draws to himself; 142 Soul-Return the propensities, from dishonest currents of his heart. Another person may excel through his won- derful intellect, yet be the execration of the world on account of his cruelty or dishonorable deeds. His in- tellect results from currents of the earth's aura which his brain attracts ; his cruelty, from the influence of disembodied crude-physical souls ; the dishonorable deeds from the dishonorable currents of his blood. Still another person may exhibit the highest sense of honor and stupidity of intellect, with an ambition to slay mankind. His sense of honor is derived from his blood ; his stupidity, from the trivial currents his brain draws from the earth's aura; the love of bloodshed, from the companionship of vile souls. As a rule, then, a man's reputation for being hon- orable, high-minded and moral ; a woman's, for being modest, cultured and virtuous, may not ex- clude the fact that either of them is a vile, wretched soul. The soul is the senior partner of brain and heart. The brain is the floor-walker of the concern called the ego. The heart is the office in the interior, whence pulsates the life of the whole. The soul is isolated from the details and material operations of the business ; yet, although apparently dormant, it is cognizant of what is going on ; it listens to the voices near by, and impresses its volition upon the two part- ners and the mechanism of the body. Soul-science teaches the heads of families that the Human Character 143 characters of children differ of necessity, as differ the souls of the children, their brains and their hearts ; and that the difference in the soul-development of one's children manifests itself in the difference of their characters. VI Instruction and Currents " A boy is better unborn than untaught." — Gascoigne. IN a psychic sense Instruction means the increase in the number of a person's brain-traces, to- gether with an increase in the mutual relations of his brain-aura currents. When a child learns the letter of the alphabet it makes traces in his gray brain-matter. When it forms letters into words, the child causes brain-traces to assume certain relations to one another. A thinker takes words instead of letters, the words being also brain-traces, and ar- ranges them into sentences. The sentences are em- ployed in causing brain-aura currents to enter into mutual relations. In accumulating sentences, as, for example, in composing an essay, an author employs both brain-traces and brain-aura currents. He does not confine these currents to enter into new rela- tions with one another, but causes brain-aura currents already polarized into certain relations to enter into new relations without thereby destroying the old ones. The brain-aura is to the brain what the trees of a forest are to their native soil. Tree tops and brain^ aura currents are agitated constantly by a murmuring 144 Instruction and Currents 145 world. The tops sway back and forth, nodding, sing- ing and sighing, and finally coming to rest. The cur- rents attract or repel each other, shaking up the whole entanglement of currents, firing their electric sparks at the universe and blank cartridges at its laws ; so that often the soul has a hard time in controlling them, i. e., human thought. Brain-traces occupy no space, while brain-aura cur- rents do occupy space. On the psychic side of life space is not a necessary constituent of anything. The instruction awaiting the reader at his arrival in the Beyond will be mostly in the nature of brain-aura cur- rents. Disembodied souls have no brain-traces, be- cause they have no brain. Their brain is buried or cremated ; and to gather new brain-traces they have no occasion, as their impressions are fixed in ways requiring no brain. Suppose that a disembodied soul is in the aura of a harmonious instrument and beholds a beautiful mastiff ; what occurs ? The answer is, a picture of the dog is produced in the spirit-eye, on the retina of the soul, and thence, without the interme- diate agency of a brain, conveyed to the proper brain- aura current. This enables the disembodied soul to retain a memory of the dog. Spirit-transactions and operations require less time and less discourse than mundane affairs. When a departed soul manifests without previous experience in any kind of soul-labor, it must make great efforts to manage its own self and keep in loco, 146 Soul-Return It puts forth all its energy to identify itself ; to com- municate ; to help. It cares not for moral advice, questions or suggestions. The reader hardly realizes how ridiculous to departed souls are many of the questions which a mortal asks them, questions includ- ing details of past housekeeping or business matters; for the manifesting soul has no corresponding brain- traces. If it has any recollection of such things it runs in the line of incidents and causal connection with the items. The mortal questioner resembles a school-boy quizzing his professor as to the number of buttons on his — the professor's — coat. Should the learned gentleman make wrong answer, the youngster would scoff, and extol his knowledge over that of the master. What the communicating soul is desirous of saying to, and impressing upon, his loved one are words of cheer, advice and information ; what the loved one wishes to obtain from the soul is the re- membrance of table-spoons and names. And in the eyes of many a mortal: a failure of answering those tedious enquiries stamps the poor returning soul a fraud. A learned mortal is less learned after his demise. Some of his learning and acquisitions lie in the ground or are burnt up. His brain-aura is with him. What does it contain ? To describe the contents of a brain-aura is as difficult as describing the vegetation of a tropical forest of the extent of the surface of the Instruction and Currents 147 moon. But an outline of an outline may be given. A brain-aura contains, among other things, the cur- rents of the brain-traces formed by transcendental currents ; that is, by currents of things living in the spheres. Mathematics of any kind and description do not exist there ; so that if the learned mortal in his earth life was a mathematician, his science has left him and he fares in the Beyond as if he had never studied the science of space and numbers. Nor do Geography, History and Theology live in the spheres. They are purely brain-matter. Great and small his- torians, after waking up in the Beyond, must devote their time to learning a new trade. Metaphysics and Philosophy have no space allotted to them in the great exhibition of human woes and beatitude of the Un- known. Nature will not recognize them. Medicine, Physical and Chemical Science as well as Languages are good in all the spheres, more especially in the higher and the highest ; for these sciences deal in actual currents, i. e., in facts. They are realities of far-reaching importance, for they benefit departed souls. Science implies the investigation and manipu- lation of ether currents. Its pursuit occupies the de- parted soul until it leaves this globe. The languages are convenient modes of communication. Natural History, Jurisprudence, Logic and sophistry of all kinds play no part in the Beyond. The mortal mathematician, historian, theologian, jurist and philosopher draw upon the ether spheres 148 Soul-Return for their mental operations. But what they get in return is closely interwoven with their reading, con- clusions and speculations. These furnish the material with which they build and decorate their brains. The scientist and linguist have the advantage of get- ting currents that need not, and most of them do not, root in their brain, but are independent, and in the place of mere building material convey facts. To illustrate : A historian draws a lesson from the am- bitious schemes of Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and Napoleon I, viz., that conquerors ruin their con- quests and harm their own people. This is con- structed from the currents of his brain-aura aided by currents from the ether spheres. But the statement as such does not exist in the ether spheres. A chemist has analyzed a substance, and wishes to com- pare its properties with similar properties of another substance, among them its solubility in alcohol. His experiments and operations with the substance attract the same substance in the form of currents which join the similar currents in his brain-aura, and build up his results regarding the solubility and other properties. A physicist investigates X-rays, and wonders why a certain substance is impervious to them. If his brain is of the right quality he will draw the ether currents of that substance from the spheres, which after min- gling with the X-rays will satisfy his experiment. A linguist traces the transformations and modulations of a Sanskrit root which occur in other tongues. The Instruction and Currents 149 meaning of the different equivalents of the original root he draws from the spheres in which they exist. A theo- logian wishes to prove that the Asiatic systems of religion are the only practical ones for modern na- tions. The thesis is drawn within his brain-system, without aid from the Beyond except the currents necessary for the inductive processes of his brain-aura; that is, the technical manipulation of his idea. The reader may make light of the instruction that will benefit him in his hereafter, as well as that which should be given him while he is yet in school on this side of the clouds. One thing, however, he must hear : Whoever is mediumistic must learn to develop, for his own safety. And he who is not, should at least receive instruction in the art and practice of genuine prayer. A person fitting himself to be an instrument for the use and in the employ of ethereal forces must develop his aura ; that is, prepare it for the calling. He must cleanse his aura daily, and keep it clean. The fabric of an aura is thousands of times lighter than the finest gauze. Whether his aura shall keep fresh and. new, unspotted and free from coarseness, depends greatly upon his daily food. He must abstain from a number of articles, which are mentioned in " Questions and Answers." The brain-aura should also be under restriction ; but the entire law-making power of the universe cannot control a brain-aura. 150 Soul-Return Its currents sprout fresh combinations, i. e., thoughts or ideas, every minute of the day. To a departed soul a mortal's daily life appears a round of sorrows. From the time of his breakfast to the hour when the conglomerate of flesh and bones seeks his uneasy couch, his brain-aura is in dire agita- tion. What does it mean ? The answer is : Un- healthy conditions. Daily his brain becomes more dependent upon the ether spheres for thoughts ; daily the struggle with his superior resisting forces that issue from the dark grows more serious, cruel and exacting. Many a sweet-souled woman consumes her hours in weeping. Her instruction has ended in tears. She, a sensitive, developed soul, is wedded to a spotted undeveloped soul that should have courted and won a fair one of his own crude-physical class, instead of win- ning a soul of a greatly superior rank. Had she been instructed in the elements of soul-science, five minutes of daily soul-prayer continued a few years, long before she took the fatal step, would have saved those tears and constituted her a happy woman or left her a happy girl. To departed souls marriage is an act for the promotion of spiritual happiness and prosperity. Whatever aids these all-important items aids soul- development ; and whatever aids soul-development helps the disembodied portion of mundane souls. Marriages that fail to produce happiness and material prosperity are failures and should be annulled. Instruction and Currents 151 Material prosperity is as important as any other kind of prosperity. Instead of being confined to a minority on terra firma it should be common to all. By material prosperity is not meant a degree of wealth measured by money-units, but in consideration of an agreed number of daily hours of work the enjoyment of a decent home, sufficient food and the necessities of life for the family. The undue accumulation of wealth among a limited number of mortals seems stupid, because it harms the development of their souls. Communion with the good class of departed souls will rectify this. Their labors inure to the benefit of the individual, not to that of any organ- ized society or clique. The irresistible proof that present conditions harm the masses and the favored few alike will bring about a more equal distribution of property, and prevent confiscation and bloody decrees. The instruction of the young in the precepts and duties of life requires no particular soul-effort ; the teachers of the branches ordinarily taught in schools are suitable persons to impart it. The operation or reaction of these teachings on the children's minds will be the work of the better class of departed souls per- formed through proper instruments. They can give better explanations than any hired man ; and what they teach and recommend has tremendous force with the young. 152 Soul-Return The impression made by a noble departed soul upon a child of impressionable age is deep and lasting ; it is eternal. He will remember the impressions and manifestations even after his form is no more. Nor will the instruction of youth suffer by reason of the absence of fiction. It will be less picturesque ; less imaginative ; less fantastic ; but it will be the truth, and like all truth it will be simple, straight, tangible, progressive, natural. It will not be divided truth, but a natural unit, an instruction not for one day in a week, but for all days and every day alike. One truth alone shall be before the young, and from it they shall draw all thought, discussions and transactions. It is an eternal truth, viz., " Whatever wrong thou doest here below will clog thy journey on the other side!" When people speak of nature's healing a wound ; stopping the flow of blood from any part of the body ; loosening a passage ; solidifying a cartilage ; joining two fractured surfaces ; degrading a race of human beings ; establishing a particular species of vice in a people ; ingrafting peculiar doctrines in the brain-aura of a nation — they speak of facts that are accom- plished by special and particular currents. As stated before, the forces of nature maintain a strict division of labor. Every class of labor, duty or occupation, from that which attends the growth of a plant-cell to that which throws the affairs of a nation into a tangle, is operated by special currents. Plants and animals exhibit this system of special currents to perfection ; Instruction and Currents 153 whereas man shows neglect and contempt for it when he undertakes to go outside of his own yard to casti- gate his neighbors for believing things which he does not believe; outside of his State to meddle with adja- cent peoples ; and beyond the seas to worry, rob and kill distant freeholders. In nature every species of currents shall mind, does mind, and ever will mind its own business, so as not to create new business for the species. In failing to accept this principle, man fol- lows the lead of stray, homeless, accidental, irregular, ephemeral currents that creep into so-called lofty brains, alias pest-boils, and thence are promulgated with drum and cannon. The end is the end of all things unnatural : Decay of the better class of cur- rents, preceded by a cessation of healing processes and the beginning of mortification, the forerunners of dissolution and decomposition. Stray currents are of the crude-physical, and disintegrate the better class of currents, usually without difficulty and with the greatest success. It is strange that birds sing and that dogs, instead of singing, bark. Yet dogs are affected by the music of string-instruments ; whereas the less susceptible canary listens to the divine strains of a symphony in sober silence, perhaps preferring its own cantatas. The only person that will explain this puzzle to his own satisfaction is the expert in the Zoology of the Mind. But after he passes away, he follows the poli- 154 Soul-Return tician's habit and " takes it all back.' ' Examples of apparent puzzles like the foregoing are very numerous in nature, and should be brought to the attention of the young, in order to show them nature's fondness for individualism. Since the soul-progress of every individual depends upon the soul-progress of each, and since the progress of a soul is impeded by its avarice and greed, every mortal should understand that his happiness in the realms above will be incomplete so long as the happi- ness of his fellow beings is incomplete. His stay in the body is brief. When the burden of his form is no more, he takes up new quarters next door, a few feet away. For a long time his new home will be near his old home, and he should not think it worth while to make his future life, his new home, a heavy load to him by continuing his present inclination to amass and accumulate. It is a problem of the new century to show and explain to the world the phenomena of the unfold- ment of the soul. Nothing more important exists. One end of the cycle will describe and exhibit the black-souled fiends of bygone times, still existing in one among a hundred incarnated souls, prominent specime-ns of such black-souled fiends standing on marble pedestals in statuary halls and gilded palaces, their marble eyes portraying their marble heart that Instruction and Currents 155 once beat for the destruction of their fellow-men and the misfortunes of those that paid for the statues. The other end of the panorama will show the new era of currents incarnated into steam, electricity and magnetic conquests, with a less number of the earth- bound, and a greater number of peaceful, merry, debt- less and harmless mortals, breathing because they like to breathe; working because they like to work; help- ing one another because they like to help. The new century will undertake this tremendous struggle against the dark crude-physical organizations. Then shall it be written in the year 2000 : " Accomplished is what no one believed could be accomplished : The union of mortals upon this globe into a family that know their souls and the aim of their souls. No more shall war and slaughter disgrace the human aura ; no longer shall injustice warp the course of mortal life. The reign of the truth of facts has come. Man opens his arms to all who need and seek his help, his sweat, his care." Then the days of mortals will flow in golden threads, not in blind and silly courtesy to the Unknown, but in the light of the sun, that gives them life-sustaining currents. Our planet is the home of about ten thousand mil- lion souls, of whom about fifteen hundred millions live in the incarnated state at the surface of the earth ; and about eight thousand five hundred mil- lions in the disembodied state, in the earth's spheres. 156 Soul-Return These spheres, layers or zones of ether are ten in number, and they constitute the aura of the earth. They increase in rarity as the distance from the earth's surface increases. The three most remote spheres or zones, the eighth, ninth and tenth, contain the perfected or divine souls. The oldest of these reside in the last or tenth sphere. The drama of The Progression of the Soul is played in two acts ; the scene of the first act is laid at the surface ; that of the second in the spheres. The actors in the first act live in clay-houses ; those of the second act do not live in clay-houses. All incarnated and disembodied souls must unfold and develop. This activity requires hard labor. If a soul be nearly or quite developed when it leaves its form, or while residing in the seventh sphere, it is not reincarnated, and in due course of its progression enters the divine spheres. The least time required from its last mortal day to its first day in the lowest divine, i. e., the eighth sphere, is about thirty years. This holds good only of well-developed souls. The transition of Abraham Lincoln, a President of the United States of America, occurred in 1865. He entered the eighth sphere in about the year 1894. A large number of souls need several hundred years of sphere-life to fit them for that sphere ; and some cases necessitate a much longer time. Soul-progress in the spheres is slow. In addition to human, animal and vegetable souls, the earth's aura contains an infinite variety of ether Instruction and Currents 157 currents. Now the task of the human soul, after its separation from the body, is to learn and practise the manipulation of these currents, and to learn and practise the manipulation of the currents of disem- bodied souls. The entire task of the human soul, then, while it sojourns upon this planet, consists in acquiring the knowledge and practice of the currents of the earth's aura and its souls. It is an enormous study, a stupendous, inconceivably difficult task. It includes the study, investigation and practical manip- ulation of millions of different currents, their combina- tions and products. Any portion of this gigantic labor executed by a soul while it lives in the form at the earth's surface is so much work performed toward the fulfilment of the herculean mission. Unfortunately for the human soul crude-physical forces resist it constantly during its terrestrial course. On terra firma these forces inflict their deadly poison as incarnated systematic organizations ; in the spheres the disembodied soul is harassed by the same class of forces, which are intensely active there. The diffi- culties these forces throw in the way of all progress- ing souls are not readily understood at present. Samples are given in another volume written through the hand of this instrument. Among the tortures resorted to by the earth-bound in the disembodied state is Obsession. Among the tortures inflicted on terra firma by the incarnated earth-bound are, as stated, disease, war, poverty, bloodshed, avarice, greed 158 Soul-Return and other similar curses. The baneful influence of earth-bound souls would be weakened and ultimately destroyed, if every attempt of such a soul, or crude- physical souls in general, to land in a human aura for the purpose of impressing or influencing it could be guarded against, detected and defeated. This may be accomplished by him who is in touch with the better class of departed souls, because these, by timely warnings and other signals, protect him against crude-physical souls and their horrible work. There is no other remedy at the disposal of mankind against this terrible scourge. But the communication between the better class of departed souls and mortals is beset with obstacles, some of which are : 1. Human brain-aura phantasms, crystallized into laws and prejudice opposing the return and commu- nications of good souls. 2. The fact that human society opposes the ces- sation of the evil on terra firma by banishing the better and the very best classes of disembodied souls from palace, hut and home. 3. Thousands of years of false guidance, under which the incarnated world has been led into the swamps and fever-regions of donkey-views and igno- rance regarding the facts and phenomena of the soul. The question is, How may a mortal repel and expel a crude -physical soul that happens to be in his aura; Instruction and Currents 159 and how may he draw good forces instead of bad ones ? In other words, how may he be and remain in touch with the better class of departed souls ? The answer is : By prayer. Not the ordinary brain-and-lip prayer dependent on audible speech, which is electric and therefore unsuitable to the magnetic, the force of the soul ; but prayer of the soul. This kind of prayer draws soul-currents from the divine spheres ; constitutes a defence against the evil attempted and so often accomplished by crude- physical souls, and protects the praying mortal against their attacks. It consists in the concentration of the currents of one's soul-body, which concentration is a most difficult task, demanding years of practice, and differing from the so-called inward devotion which is always of the brain, never of the soul. Lessing's statement " A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer "is a mistake ; for genuine prayer, the most perfect inward devotion, is foreign to brain and thought. The concentration of the soul- body of the praying mortal must be strong enough to set vibrating the ether between the mortal and at least the ninth sphere. Nor is this sufficient ; it must set the ether vibrating with such force as to strongly affect the ether at least in the eighth, the nearest divine sphere, which is about twenty-five thousand miles distant from the surface of the earth. There are no other means of establishing an avenue on which the divine forces can penetrate to the 160 Soul-Return praying individual. Ordinary prayer is powerless, as it seldom travels more than half a mile, and there- fore fails utterly to reach the lowest divine sphere. Besides, ordinary prayer comes, as has been stated, from the brain, not from the soul. The longer the practice of a mortal in the art of genuine praying, the farther his currents will extend into the spheres, and the more exalted a class of soul- currents will he draw. Years of practice will enable a developed incarnated soul to draw currents from the tenth sphere. In concentrating, the praying mortal should slacken his thoughts ; if possible, cause them to cease alto- gether, and throw his soul, his inwardness, as it were, out of the body. It is difficult to direct the reader precisely. He must feel as if his brain, his heart, his entire body had left him. The result is the separa- tion of the suppliant's aura-currents from the tissues of the body. Success will be his only informant as to whether his prayer is of the soul. But he need not waste his time endeavoring to practise genuine prayer unless he refine his currents by reforming his diet. Genuine prayer being a soul-act, it cannot be prac- tised or performed in a crowd; nor where two or more are associated together, unless they are strictly harmonious and have practised prayer among them- selves for a long time. It is an individual act, which to be effective needs seclusion. A person might Instruction and Currents 161 engage in soul-prayer in the woods, but the advent of a bird or a cat in his aura would vitiate it. The rea- son of this is, that the low currents of the animal soul dissolve or neutralize the finer currents of the human soul. The best place for practising soul-prayer is a small secluded space in one's soul-home, mentioned on page 123, where one's magnetism prevails over that of any other mortal ; where one's invisible friends can labor undisturbed, unimpressed by currents from other mortals and invisible hosts. The necessity of separating one's soul-currents from the body-currents is evident ; for as long as both sets of currents are entangled with each other the soul-currents cannot ascend into the spheres. The most important instruction any one can impart to the young is to teach them the art and practice of genuine prayer. Man washes his face and calls himself clean. He mutters a prayer and thinks he is good enough. He avoids the unclean bath-water of a stranger, yet he immerses freely in the polluting ether of strangers and crowds. After a day's labor he arrives at home bearing a heavy load, a host of physical souls nestling in his aura ; he resembles a peddler carrying goods on his back. He does not drive the crude souls away because he does not know how to proceed ; he was taught to cleanse his body but he was not taught to cleanse his soul. His soul, his immortal self, is 1 62 Soul-Return steeped in material currents ; he is not even aware of their presence. What is more natural than that if a person is mediumistic or even a fully developed medium, he should sometimes get at his home wrong communica- tions from the " other side " ? And that even his soul- home at times should be invaded and filled with wrong currents ! Only a non-praying instrument of early training and enormous power could prevent it, for in his case his controls would possess enough force to repulse the constant onslaught of hostile currents. The Nazarene, when he prayed, sent his soul- currents straight to the ancient souls in the tenth sphere. He could have changed the face of the globe had he explained, in writing, the manner and mode of his praying ; how humanity should pray ; how prayer currents are propagated ; whither they should pass ; and how far they must travel to benefit the praying mortal. Genuine prayer repels crude souls, and expels them from one's aura, because crude souls cannot maintain themselves in the focussed magnetic currents of a concentrated soul. It will not obliterate the ills of mankind at once upon its universal introduction; nor will it immediately convert this globe into a paradise ; but we know that it strengthens the soul ; that it elevates it, and tends to guard the praying mortal against disease, poverty and crime. But divine souls Instruction and Currents 163 cannot control physical objects such as rain and sun- shine ; the world's gold-market ; a human stomach, or the errors of a confused mortal brain. Nor can they direct the electric ways of erring children until these are of an age to comprehend. To pray or urge others to pray for such things betrays ignorance of the human soul. All earth-sphere souls, save the lowest, engage in daily prayer which they direct to divine souls, asking them for strength, i. e., currents to invigorate them in their work. The souls of the lower divine mansions pray to their superiors in the higher and highest spheres for aid and assistance in their labors, i. e., for specific currents ; for visits from these exalted souls, and for other spiritual help. And the oldest divine souls pray for currents such as they need, addressing souls on planets Jupiter and Saturn, many of whom formerly resided upon this globe. To an ordinary observer a mortal engaged in genu- ine prayer is a very simple affair. He is seated, and his eyes are closed. His countenance is a blank ; his hands are uncrossed, in any convenient position ; his feet, also uncrossed, rest flat upon the floor. But a disembodied observing soul " senses " an agitated aura, bristling with excited aura-currents that shake up the ether all round ; a set of currents shoot forth toward the upper ether zones. Presently the aura-currents join in the movement. As shot is fired from a gun, 164 Soul-Return the currents now fly forth. How far do they go ? We answer : As far as the mortal is able to send them. Can low, crude, incarnated souls pray in that manner? We never have seen them do it. Long continued efforts, several years of daily practice might enable them to succeed, and save them hundreds of years of tedious labor hereafter. We have watched our writer's genuine praying. In less than a minute of time his waves reach the highest sphere, the tenth, and acquaint one of his guides there with the fact, that he needs counter- currents from divine zones to dissolve the currents of some earth-bound fiend that holds him fast and pre- vents him from writing or performing other soul-labor. In a few minutes dissolving currents reach him ; the invisible monster flees in disgust, for no earth-bound soul can withstand genuine prayer currents and divine counter-currents. A divine soul, by making an analysis of the current sent by a praying mortal, soon learns the wishes of the mortal or a disembodied soul. Every genuine prayer current, whether issuing from an incarnated or a disembodied soul, tells its own tale. The curvature, length, amplitude and velocity of its ether waves speak a universal language, perfectly comprehensible in the highest realms. Human lan- guage becomes intelligible through a similar process. Thus the phrase " I am cold " is an aggregate of waves and currents, a number of signs standing for certain agreed sounds. They are conveyed to the ear ? and Instruction and Currents 165 thence to the brain ; whereupon the soul, with the aid of ether waves, comprehends them. When the majority of voters in a commonwealth shall be conversant with the elements of soul-sci- ence and shall practise genuine prayer, then, not until then, will mankind begin to lose its greed, hatred and revenge, and its mania for shedding blood. Whoever belittles the vaunted power of invisible currents, or qxalts the reality of worldly objects such as an iron column, a block of granite or the puff of steam that moves a train of cars, should remember that we receive light rays from distant stars, one of which, Sirius, is fifty-one thousand million miles dis- tant from our globe, and that its light requires twenty-one years to reach the earth. That is, if to- day this star were to cease shining, the reader would continue seeing it for twenty-one years. If that iron column, block of granite or puff of steam were to traverse space with such rapidity, either of those sub- stantial materials, before going very far, would assume the state of something rarer than a gas, and in all likelihood, during the passage, diffuse, and never reach the earth. Whereas the ether currents from Sirius or even from remoter stars strike a mirror at the earth's surface as undisturbed, as placidly and serenely as the light rays of an ordinary lamp strike a mirror near the lamp. The voyage of fifty-one 1 66 Soul-Return thousand million miles does not weaken those rays. The power and endurance of ether currents exceeds that of iron, granite or any other substance. Ether currents, not the external visible objects, are the world's realities. When the greater portion of a people fail to unfold the soul so that in six or more incarnations its soul- progress is nearly nil> its soul-currents weaken. By a series of slow and gradual but unfailing processes the soul-currents withdraw from that people and its terri- tory. Their withdrawal entails civil wars, foreign wars and a slow decay. This is followed by the ces- sation of the existence of the people as a nation. As an illustration of such decay may be mentioned the Italian portion of the Roman Empire. It devoted its currents mainly to the brain, whereby it excelled in matters of the brain ; and to the heart, whereby it excelled in worship and adulation ; it neglected and disregarded the currents of the soul, whereby its psychic force is now diminished, and its future ill- assured. Wealth, riches, foreign possessions and colonies do not bar the operation of natural law. The human soul needs a fresh, bright, clear electric aura, not an aura fed by the corpses of slain warriors or the damp air of meeting-houses. It needs an aura fed by open air currents and the sun. The soul develops more rapidly in a tiller of the soil than in a book-worm. A rural home furnishes better facilities Instruction and Currents 167 for the soul than the refined and spicy air of a boudoir. Nor does nature care for the extreme development of the brain. The brain should un- fold sufficiently to guide the soul in its stormy passage on terra firma. Brain and heart are mere adjuncts to the soul. The aim, the purpose of life is the development, cleansing and unfoldment of the soul. New forces, i. e., new currents, have appeared on the reader's plane of life. Others are coming. He should meet them, and appropriate their most useful part, for which he needs instruction from his departed ancestors who studied them since leaving the reader's plane. They have a knowledge of what he needs; they possess enough experience to be able to teach him. Sobriety, kindness, endurance and peace preached by human tongue, and the same whispered into mortal ear by friendly souls from the other world, are not the same. The denizen of earth forgets the utterance of even the most fiery of human tongues ; but when he meets his departed loved ones, or his parents of a former incar- nation ; when they with their tremendous ether power appeal to him, he listens, he remembers, he obeys. This is not preaching the worship of ances- tors in the sense of maintaining their tombs, kneeling to their statues and adoring their images. Not the bones but the souls of one's ancestors in the divine zones should be worshipped, because being ancestral 1 68 Soul-Return souls their currents run close to their praying de- scendant. To abandon ancient notions and early instilled con- ceptions requires courage which is a rare species of currents, engendered not by the soul or the heart, but by the mind. It is a mental uplifting. It needs no threats, no speech, no dagger. But its thought- principle must grow into conviction, and ultimately into action. The more expanded one's mental orbit, the deeper one's convictions and foundation for courage. Yet many a ripe scholar with occasional dreams of courage has failed to mature them into action. The masses of a people are conservative in all matters concerning the higher currents. They exchange willingly the locomotive for the air-ship, and are ever eager to cut off the heads of dissenters ; but they are hardly ready to recognize truths that transcend early instilled concepts. Courage is required to investigate new forces, new truths, new facts, new phenomena. The world's laughter follows failure; its admiration rewards suc- cess. True explorers care for neither; they pursue their line of investigation, and welcome new knowl- edge. There are those that consider it wrong to com- municate with the departed. May we ask, how wrong is it to investigate enough of the higher or additional forces of nature in order to help mortals to Instruction and Currents 169 a knowledge of them, or at least to a knowledge of one or more classes of ether currents that mean so much to him ; that heal him ; guard him ; protect him ; and warn him of the presence of swamps and poisonous vines that grow close to his rosebuds, his children ; that teach him to prune the twigs that waste his sap ; and show him the pictures of his future home ? How wrong is it for a man to hear from forces of nature hitherto unexplored ; of the reason why he is born into this plane of life, and why he should pace its floor as long as there is a chance of breathing ? How wrong is it to dwell on the psychic phenomena of nature, which, whether we will or not, we have to master some time, some place hereafter ? How wrong is it to comprehend the higher waves that encircle the individual while he lives here below, since he cannot escape their in- fluence nor avoid their contact ? We hear it said, that these things are beset with difficulties. What is there in the universe that is not beset with difficulties ? We hear the remark, that these things bristle with fraud. What is there upon this material plane that in one place or another of its mundane existence is devoid of fraud ? Why not throw out these cautions ere a man assumes the responsibility of moulding new forms for the habitation of harmless souls ? Why not pause there and then, and emit such remarks ? Why not fear that the lives of one's children may be beset with difficulties and 170 Soul-Return endangered by fraud ? Why not therefore conclude, that non-existence of successors to the difficulties and the fraud is preferable ? When you look at a horse, a cow, or a dog, behold an animal soul compelled to live in a form in order to progress. Their calm gaze ; their innocent eye ; their electric ways bespeak the plain, untrammelled course of earth-nature, exemplified by their very existence in a material body. Pity them rather than abuse them, for like yourself they came unasked into earthly sufferings and woe. When you see a child, behold its innocent eye, and say to yourself : " Poor soul, had you known the difficulties and the fraud accompanying your journey through life, you would not have consented to your incarnation. I will teach you to investigate nature : to learn at school and later on to overcome those obstacles. No one shall molest you in your pursuit ; no one shall dictate any harmful course." When your patience or good nature is sorely tried by coarse souls in human garb, pity them; they know little ; they have been ill-served, scantily clad, badly taught. Resolve to " sense" the obstacles that cause their present unfortunate condition. When departed souls manifest to you, tell you falsehoods, rail at you, and bid you kneel to nonsense, do not accuse the instrument or nature, nor dispute the truth. Pity such souls. Say to yourself : " These poor creatures return to us and repay us for Instruction and Currents 171 the wrongs inflicted upon them. We failed to en- lighten them, to improve and develop them ; we are now punished for our neglect, for they return to us to lie, rob and steal; that is, they use their oppor- tunity to do unto us what formerly we did unto them when they dwelt among us in the form. Their short- comings hurt them more where they are now, than their present fraud hurts us." Soul-facts need time to be seen ; patience to be heard; perseverance to be known. If at first sight a person calls them bubbles, illusions and phantasms, and the materialized two-hundred fifty pound soul that with one finger lifts him six feet high, a mere brain- illusion, he must be strangely constituted, for the brain-illusion might press his throat with sufficient force to end him. If the brain-illusion, however, were to bring him the much-desired ducats, we believe he would hail it as a beautiful reality, and recognize it in due form, even to the extent of invit- ing it to return, with more of the gold. Those who believe that soul-writ consists of fan- tastic soap-bubbles should continue investigating, and see it produced in open daylight, with the answers responsive to his written questions which are known only to him. If after that he still claims that the answers were written by mortal hand, he is either a joker or a person insincere with himself. Insincerity, a disease prevailing to an alarming extent, is the 172 Soul- Return product of ages of ignorance and false ideals concern- ing the soul. It prevents mortals from detecting the cause of their greatest affliction : The nearness or presence of crude-physical incarnated souls. The misery they cause would diminish, if man possessed the means of determining whether or not a mortal near him is an unreliable, crude and undeveloped soul ; not alone on account of the crude mortal, but much more on account of the danger from the crude mortal's unseen fiendish associates that are his like or worse. Ages of brain-aura doctrines, idolatry and false pretences have delayed psychic progress ; the ten per cent of the advanced souls, and a large portion of the less advanced, at this late day still lack the means of detecting the cause of their greatest affliction just mentioned. In a general way such a mortal may be detected by his eye, which lacks inward glow or warmth, and looks as if made of porcelain, china, or glazed earth- ware. Its centre or colored portion seems stamped into the white of the eye with a sharp-edged die. His lips are usually of the bloodless kind, of easy quiver and rapid motion during his utterance of speech, which always abounds. Women of crude, undeveloped soul have, in addi- tion, an inwardly directed stare in their eye ; a fond- ness of answering special questions in an indirect way, and of citing proverbs, mottoes, epigrams or literary phrases. During ordinary conversation they speak in Instruction and Currents 173 a high pitch of voice, which they make part of their argument. Earth-bound incarnated souls, the demons of earth, generally have a piercing, wedge-shaped, vertical cen- tral face-line, noticeable in some of the worst types such as Napoleon I, and Philip II of Spain. But the surest means of identification is a clean impression, such as comes to most persons instructed in the elements of soul-science familiar with soul-facts and soul-prayer, or a silent tip with the finger given by a control to his mediumistic protege when the earth- bound monster is near. No one should immerse his soul in its corrupting ether. Unfortunately, such a vile soul may wear the livery of a beautiful woman or a handsome man. Many a poisonous flower is more lovely than a harmless one. Many a blue eye sung of in rhyme and prose is discovered after transition to have been the ornament of a vile, dark soul, shunned and despised by the very ones whose worship of her knew no bounds before death acquainted them with the truth. One of the grossest errors prevailing on terra firma is the belief that man must sink his individuality in the collected auras of a crowd or multitude. This would be unnatural. Nature cares more for the indi- vidual to whom she has * given so much, than for crowds, classes, or associations to whom she has given nothing. Unfortunately the individual suffers for the 174 Soul-Return crimes committed by the crowd. He derives no comfort from giving up individual self, individual existence ; his sacrifice is followed by suffering. The greatest suffering he experiences in the Beyond, where he must bear it without the slightest aid from crowds, associations or classes. The psychic portion of a mortal's life on this mun- dane plane is one side of an equation. It contains all the facts of his soul-development. Knowing that soul- development excludes all kinds of crimes, wrongs and evil, and that it is for every mortal a fixed quantity expressed by his aura. The other side of the equation, which may be denoted by n, indicates the condition of the same soul at the time it is ripe for an exchange of globe ; that is, for transit to planet Jupiter or Saturn, on its last day in the highest divine sphere. In other words, n stands for the final result of the soul's labor on terra firma and in the earth's spheres; that is, the soul's final Power which it has on that day. The equation will not balance until all the soul- labors of terra firma and the spheres are added to the first member of the equation, which member, then, represents those labors. Let a denote the quantity of soul-development which the soul undergoes during its different incarna- tions ; and x the soul's labors in the spheres, which it must perform to finish its earth-task before it can leave this planet. Hence a -{- x = n represents the Instruction and Currents 175 life-equation of a human being. Between now and the last day of his life in the tenth sphere every mortal must work out quantity x, regardless of the length of time this may require. The less of a he produces now, while living on terra firma, the more of x will he be compelled to perform hereafter ; that is, the harder will be the task of his future life, for sphere-life is slower than mundane life. His gain, therefore, lies in increasing a while yet living in the form. The question is often heard, Why is it that blood must not be shed ? Blood possesses important psychic elements, which consist of currents that run with the blood as integral parts of it. They assist in the pro- duction of the electric and feeble magnetic currents of the body, some of which maintain the soul in the form. If a person is killed, these currents leave at once ; but their departure does not destroy them ; they continue to exist. They join their like in the lower portion of the earth's aura, where they con- stitute a dangerous mixture or combination, dangerous because earth-bound and other degraded 'classes of souls seize it eagerly and derive undue strength from it. For by a psychic law, whatever is done for the purpose of setting certain human currents free reacts upon certain other human currents and sets them free. This law, like every ether law, is without exception. It entails grave consequences. When these currents 176 Soul-Return saturate a low soul, they strengthen it in a physical sense, and enable it to compel mortals of a similar aura to commit bloody deeds. We are reminded of the old saying, that war brutalizes a people. Where blood is shed on a large scale, as when Charlemagne, an earth-bound soul, to force the Saxons into the Christian fold, invited forty-five hundred of their warriors to a love-feast, and after their arrival and removal of their arms to enjoy the banquet, slaughtered them, the psychic forces liberated are too ponderous for immediate consumption by low souls. They remain a collected mass for evil, and for further destruction of human life. Later, in the course of fifteen hundred years, about a hundred million human lives were sacrificed for a similar purpose. This pur- pose, i. e., the brain-aura currents of a certain trend, mingled with the tremendous quantity of psychic force set free, and the combination became a powerful engine for evil. By the operation of psychic laws, like begets like ; accumulated blood begets more bloodshed. Naturally, therefore, the last two centu- ries were replete with wars, revolutions and slaughter. They came upon the world through dark and spotted souls that preached and practised the lust of blood. In modern times it has come to pass that a trifling brain-aura excitement in a legislative crowd, where the crude-physical always prevails, suffices to produce what the combination of blood-ether and brain-aura currents always produces : Bloodshed and war. Instruction and Currents 177 Where a person sheds the blood of another, the ether vapors of the blood so shed adhere to the aura of the slayer. They follow him, i. e,, his aura, his soul, into the Beyond ; the aura is freighted with the load. He must work it off in the Beyond through labors of kindness and charity, and must submit to works of necessity. Should he find employment in the aura of a mortal inclined to commit suicide or murder, and succeed in causing this mortal to abandon his intention or inclination, this would disengage his crimson load, for in such a case a crime is prevented by the efforts of him that committed a like crime. The foregoing law applies to all kinds of wrongs, crimes, felonies and participation in wrong doing ; all acts of selfishness, miserly habits and evil thoughts. " What wrong Thou has committed upon the earth Thou must undo in the Spheres ! " is a law of nature. About three-fourths of the population of terra firma are burdened with evil acts, disorderly traits and slaughter that existed in their previous incarnation. The burden would be easier to bear were they prop- erly instructed in, and conversant with, the facts and phenomena of the human soul. Even the mere fact of soul-return, if properly understood and wit- nessed, improves the ethical condition of a human being. The reader will now be able to fathom the crime of denying to millions of truth-seeking individ- uals the right and privilege of examining the phe- nomena of the psychic portion of nature ; also the 178 Soul-Return fate of a ruler that causes the violent death of thou- sands of human beings to gratify the lust of earth- bound fiends that feed upon him and impress him. What compensation is a brief splendor in a palace, when compared to a thousand years' abode in the black sewers and swamps of the earth, which is the lot of the dark, heavy ether composing such a soul ! The new forces referred to are ether currents that have operated in the ether spheres from time imme- morial. Under a law similar to that of the diffusion of gases in nature's physical domain they are gradu- ally working earthward. Their advanced guard has landed on terra firma, seeking admission to the homes of mortals, in order to render them more spiritual, less worldly ; more mirthful, less sad ; more happy, less angry ; more forgiving, less revengeful ; more generous, less miserly. Every person ought to solve the problem, " Shall these currents be received and welcomed ? Shall I admit them to my heart ? Shall I receive his message, listen to his advice ? Shall I see her again whom I have loved ? " He who believes that beyond the journey on earth-life's sinuous stream there is nothing, should read these pages once more. If he be convinced that beyond the mouth of the stream there is the ocean of eternity, and that the saintly souls of his spirit-parents float above it and beckon him, let him speed his course and set his sail to meet them half-way. Instruction and Currents 179 It is not known why the improvement or develop- ment of the soul should be the purpose of earth-life ; but it is certain, that the difference between the per- fected aura of a divine soul of this globe and the aura of an incarnated soul is the difference between the sun at noon radiating in azure skies and the glow- worm shining in a bog ; the difference between the powers of Hercules and the strampling of an infant ; the difference between the wisdom of a soul that has been disembodied for five thousand years and that of a sparrow just out of the egg ! When once such a soul shall place its materialized hand upon the reader long enough for him to feel it, its effect will last him the rest of his days on earth. Such is divinity ; such is the human soul, and the future of man ! Mind being made up of the brain and brain-aura, just as the soul is made up of the soul-body and its aura, it stands to reason that instruction in the currents which the brain may draw from above, and in the currents which the brain-aura digests and works over, is of as great importance as daily food. VII Imagination " Imagination, this lordly power, enemy of reason, which takes delight in controlling and commanding; in order that it may show what power it possesses over all things, has established in man a second nature." — Pascal. — Pensees, Art. Ill, 3. A person that has been called to the telephone is greatly annoyed when his ear receives stray, disturbing noises instead of an expected mes- sage. The same person when he muses over a subject is not at all annoyed at stray, disturbing im- pressions, or, as he loves to call them, thoughts, that ply their trade in his brain and prevent his reaching a definitive conclusion regarding the subject of his medi- tation. He thinks these impressions or thoughts are things of no reality ; whereas they are as real and ma- terial as a blizzard, a scolding wife or a drunken man. They owe their existence to causes quite similar to the origin of the hideous stray telephone noises, viz., the induction of currents ; in the case of the telephone, electric currents ; in the other case, brain-aura currents. Thoughts apparently buoyant, but lacking material substrata, are comprised under the head of imagi- nation. They are true and substantial ; but they 180 Imagination 181 transcend the rule of mortals : Products of the human brain shall stand with both feet on solid ground. Goethe was right when he said, " It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error spring from the same source." Imagination has always been permitted to play an important part in the world. A woman illustrates this when she is in love. Her imagination and her love are two facts ; and so are she and the man. Should he fail to reciprocate her imagination, and bestow his soul-love upon some one else, her lot is sad ; which, as she will own, is also a fact. When Charlemagne and Napoleon I wasted the blood of thousands of warriors and peaceable men to carry out their dreams of a universal empire, each was under the baneful influence of a species of imagina- tion, which in like manner works with similar fatality on modern rulers that are eager to win the curse of posterity. All ether currents denote facts ; or, what is the same, every ether current is a fact ; but nearly every fact is composed of more than one current. In other words, nearly every fact is a composite fact. It is easier for a man to climb over a fence than over his brain or brain-aura, or even a single ether current, i. e., a single fact. He can get neither beyond nor above his imagination. Fence-climbing in her case being difficult per se> a woman gets 1 82 Soul-Return bravely on the top of her brain by turning a somer^ sault, that is, putting her heart on top of it. Man never does that. She is right. The heart is more important than the brain. It hugs the centre of the soul, the centre of the ego. It is one's next of kin ; it gives due warning when the brain is mischief-bent. The brain acts as a guide, explaining remarkable sights, historic views, pictures, ruins and mummies. Of all the organs of the body the brain is the dullest, the laziest and the meanest, although it pretends to be ever active and fine. Its apparent work is no work at all ; it is simply imagination. The best part of a disembodied soul is its lack of brain. In lieu of brain it possesses a brain-aura. The currents of the brain-aura are exact and valuable. A mortal brain is an adjunct to the body, used for drawing currents from the spheres. But nature is aware of the difficulty caused by the tremendous difference between the drawer, the material stuff in the cranium, and the immensely superior, delicate and attenuate ether currents from the serene and refined ether strata of the earth's aura. It would be wonder- ful if coarse brains at the earth's surface could attract anything from above but coarse currents. Imagination is remarkably good for fancy cos- tumes with which poets invest mundane matters for the entertainment of mortals. But no man should judge his fellow-men by their dress, or the poet by his poetry. A mortal's imagination may create Imagination 183 wonderful compositions, yet his heart, his aura, or his soul may be black. This truth conflicts with the everyday notion that brain rules the world. But brain governs the world much as dressmaker's fash- ions ; yet the dressmaker does not rule. The accidental haphazard operations and trans- actions of the mortal crowd on this globe result from imagination ; but the fate and harmony of the mortal, his soul-life and his future state are indepen- dent of it. They are the work of other classes of forces which in no wise court the brain. Brain is as necessary to man as are his clothes in winter; but not more so. Clothes are inferior to the man under them. The arts grow from imagination ; the sciences are based upon it; daily life sleeps and rises with it. The divine creations of Raphael ; the heavenly com- positions of Mozart ; the elysian character of Shake- speare, what are they but crystallized visions ? The physical sciences, including chemistry, cannot expand nor enter into computations without assumptions that are manufactured by imagination. The speculative systems of all names and descriptions, from a treatise on Theology to the plainest vade-mecum on Punctu- ation, owe their dialectic processes and connective tissues to imagination. All imagination consists of ether currents in a state of wilful, haphazard combination. The disembodied 184 Soul-Return world, being brainless, possessing only a brain-aura, has less imagination than the mortal world. This circumstance makes the spirit-world more practical, more systematic, more successful. By a pecu- liar process of attraction the earthy properties of the brain are communicated to a large portion of the mortal brain-aura, which is greatly vitiated by this mesalliance. When we maintain that imagination is based upon currents we do not claim that, in all its forms, it expresses pure truth according to mortal standards; for such pure truth is a myth unless it can be meas- ured and weighed. We mean this : Currents being facts, and imagination being based upon them, imagination represents such facts as are truths of a certain kind. Thus, where a European in his imagination believes he is emperor of China, he is such in the sense that a number of peculiar currents have raised him to the imperial rank ; but it does not follow that he is such dignitary according to customary physical facts. Imagination is a helpmate to science. Its under- lying currents wait on physical currents of a scientific trend to suggest many a new grouping, experiment or unusual phenomenon. In nature there is no falsehood. Man sees the sun when it stands in the horizon larger than the same sun standing in the ze- nith. This is as much a fact as the fact that the size of the sun is each time the same. The true size of Imagination 185 an object is one thing ; the angle at which the eye meas- ures the size is quite another. An axiom in mathe- matics says that the whole is larger than any of its parts. Now the truth of this axiom depends upon the meaning of the term "larger." The volume and contents of the trunk of a green tree may be larger than those of the whole tree after it is dead, i. e., sapless and dry. In Geometry the sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to two right angles. This is a proposition as unprovable as the fact that red is red. Yet the sum of the interior angles of a triangle curved and rolled together is less than two right angles. Most axioms are true only as long as imagination, i. e., certain species of currents, does not interfere. The disembodied soul being devoid of brain, it has no imagination, and therefore can impress mortals only by means of its brain-aura. The mortal may be so constituted that through his brain he can modify these impressions, and then be of use to his fellow- men as an artist or otherwise specially gifted person, as explained in Chapter II of this volume. In the ordinary mortal imagination produces many queer acts, futile movements and expensive dreams. The art and practice of regulating imagination or stray thoughts is unknown ; it will not be discovered while the human form remains constituted as it is at present. Stray thoughts are ever on hand, and, as 1 86 Soul-Return the case may be, spoil or beautify whatever they are drawn to. The reader's brain-aura, after his brain is laid away, will keep a single thought prominent, and allow none other to interfere or take possession of him, viz. : a How best can I develop into a divine soul ? " A mortal can scarcely picture to himself the advantage accruing to a departed soul from the lack of brain and imagination. Their existence in the Be- yond would add to the horrors there prevailing, which are already past endurance. A ton of imagination in a mortal brain would not suffice to conceive the iniquities practised there by the earth-bound and the undeveloped. The children of earth get a feeble idea of it through the public press in the form of premeditated, that is, inspired crime. Also through the fraud practised in seances so frequently com- plained of. But the fraud thereby rendered intelligi- ble to mortals is but a small portion of the fraud, nefariousness and wickedness occurring at every moment on the " Other Side " of life. The crude-physical seeks to rule all classes of souls through currents of the baser sort, which give rise to imaginary facts of the baser sort rooting in its coarse brain. Its ways of ruling comprise the imposition of penal laws, rules and regulations ; the enforcement of obnoxious traditions ; the bewilderment of developing soul-scientists ; the disruption of ties of friendship ; the litigious tendencies of quarrelsome mortals ; the Imagination 187 fanning of the instincts of revenge ; and the support of the traitors to the cause of personal independence. The fraud-hunters in psychic phenomena and mani- festations are their special favorites, for they aid the disembodied fraud-producers in delaying the dawn of a better mortal life. What we have said here applies to the milder forms of the rule of the crude-physical. By processes among which the process of Induction is paramount, stray currents enter the brain-aura. At times they are attracted to and combine with brain- traces. At all times they are real, although by mor- tals classified under the head of Imagination. VIII The Divine Spheres " The world knows nothing of its noblest souls." — Anonymous. WHEN in its progression through the earth-spheres a soul has developed sufficiently, it enters the divine spheres. What is meant by " divine" is hard to say. Perhaps it means " completed," in the sense that the soul has completed all the labors of terra firma and the earth-spheres incumbent upon it to perform. With ancient souls in the highest mansion, divinity means the soul's final separation from earth- matters and earth-conditions, which implies an immen- sity inexplicable in prose and rhyme. The ether of the divine zones is rarer than that of the seventh sphere ; that is, rare enough to float or support a highly attenuated soul. They are but sparingly inhabited, because, unfortunately, only a limited number of souls are fit to enter them. The greater portion of departed souls, on leaving their flesh and-bone body, are insufficiently prepared, be- cause on terra firma their life was too brainy, too electric ; and they were too busy ornamenting home, body and pocket-book. Incarnation upon this globe 188 The Divine Spheres 189 does not benefit the soul as much as nature believed and intended, owing to the immense influence of the crude-physical elements and their mundane organiza- tions. The divine spheres contain thousands of vacant homes, while the populations of the lower spheres is too great. When one of the authors of this volume was about to enter the eighth sphere his heart throbbed as it throbbed on his wedding day many years before. The fact that he got a ring and gave a ring on that day ; that love filled his heart, and that when he came to die love was his last breath, came to his spirit- mind. His heart now expanded with love, not the love of earth, but the love of a prince of the ether realms. As soon as he entered he enjoyed full vision, and saw the ethereal beauty of his new abode. Kindred souls welcomed him, and escorted him to a temple that was to be his home. During his last earth-life he earned hardly enough to keep from starving ; now he was one of the exalted of earth, whose labors are important and far-reaching. The reader may ask, Where was his loved one ? His son ? His daughter ? The answer is : They were where nature had placed them, where they belonged, each in the mansion he was entitled to. In a great and wide sense every mortal should feel that the world is hardly large enough to contain hirn. He is now living at the surface of the earth carrying earth-conditions, counting money, sandbagging his 190 Soul-Return competitor, and cutting hated throats ; all of which is foreign to the mind, the heart and the body of the soul that enters the divine mansions. Otherwise the soul would not be ripe for them, and could not enter them. A divine soul works for all those that may need its work ; it aids millions of victims of faulty earth- teachings; it loves for the benefit of any and all souls in the spheres and at the surface of the earth. Earth-life, sphere-life, divine life, each is a campaign, a combat with lower forces. The end is not realized, the final result not announced during man's residence in the terrestrial system. The activity of souls of the eighth sphere extends over all the branches of soul-science known to the souls in the earth-spheres ; over the currents of the earth's aura, and the soul-currents in the fold of earth-sphere knowledge. A few of the labors of this class of souls may here be stated. In the case of a developing instrument, where after months of patient labor no results are forthcoming, the controls call for an eighth-sphere soul to examine certain features of the instrument, and render its advice. A ship is sinking in mid-ocean ; a medium is aboard. His controls ask an eighth-sphere soul, " Can you save our friend ? " The divine being with- draws physical force from a number of Indian souls, who, to save a medium, willingly allow this depletion The Divine Spheres 191 of their force. By the aid of this force the divine soul succeeds in impressing the medium's brain, directing him to a wooden plank on which he saves himself. The reader may think a person in such distress would find the plank without impressions from the " Other Side " ; but ill-fated mortals welcome any quick impression that may save their life. We know of impressions communicated to mediumistic engineers — none others ought to be employed — operating the locomotives of certain passenger trains, who by instantaneous obedience to the impressed command " Stop at once ! " prevented collisions and saved human lives. Recently to our knowledge such an engineer brought his train to a full stop within thirty feet of an enormous land-slide covering the track in front, on the other side of a curve. The in- stantaneous effort of another such gifted railway employe stopped his train a few feet from a collapsed bridge. An unmediumistic or unimpressionable engineer would have led the train to inevitable destruction. Eighth-sphere souls seek to prevent : 1. Suicide, This terrible calamity would occur more frequently but for the services of departed souls specially installed by their eighth-sphere superiors for its prevention. 2. War and its Bloody Deeds. Through the agency of one or more eighth-sphere souls some older 192 Soul-Return inhabitant of the same sphere seeks to influence the tigers of earth before they seize their prey. 3. Shipwrecks. The sensing powers of invisible lookouts on a ship are keener than nicotine mortal eyes. With psychic improvement on board a ship, timely impressions on the auras of officers and crew would prevent many an accident at sea. 4. Conflagrations. Eighth-sphere souls readily detect fires, red-hot pipes, damaged flues, defective boilers, and may bring them to the attention of impressionable watchmen. 5. Undue Activity of Low and Earth-bound Souls. This is noticed generally by souls of the eighth sphere when that class of malefactors clogs human auras. Eighth-sphere souls seek to promote : 1. Inventions. A mediumistic inventor occasion- ally is controlled by a soul of this class. Non- mediumistic inventors are escorted by some earth- sphere soul that endeavors to impress them under the instruction and guidance of eighth-sphere souls. 2. Mediums hip. It is developed through souls of this class by means of instruction given by them to earth-sphere controls. 3. The Study of Soul-Science. The teachers of soul phenomena whose auras are mediumistic will be guided by the instruction of souls of the highest por- tion of the eighth sphere. 4. Impressionability. An earth-sphere soul per- forming earth-work and wishing to promote the The Divine Spheres 193 impressionability of his protege consults first an eighth-sphere soul. 5. Aura-Development. Advanced eighth-sphere souls aid the aura-development of mediumistic mortals. Few things please a divine soul better than to be " impinged upon" by a gentle current from man's material plane of life. Such a welcome event hap- pens whenever the genuine prayer of a human being reaches the divine mansions. Prayer-currents reach them only in rarely occurring, isolated, delicate threads finer than a gossamer. The soul or divine aura impinged upon immediately responds. Sometimes eighth-sphere souls send the prayer-current of a mor- tal to some tenth-sphere divine soul. To do this they pray and give the current a certain impetus, conveying the wish " Come down ! " The tenth- sphere soul condenses the current, retains it and answers it through the same agency. Whether the mortal recognizes the answer depends upon his medi- umship or impressionability. To sensate the answer the mortal need not be a medium, nor mediumistic; but he must be impressionable or sensitive. All mor- tals capable of praying in the genuine way may acquire sufficient sensitiveness to cognize divine answers to their prayers. The souls inhabiting the ninth sphere differ from the former class of souls as the sun differs from the 194 Soul-Return moon. Their aura is luminous throughout, of a greater extent, purer tint and finer tissue. It re- sponds to the faintest current from the zone below. Human beings have no conception of the grandeur of such an aura. All sources of inspiration, impression and other medium istic activity, and nearly all guides of psychic instruments, belong to this class of souls. Its mem- bers patronize inventors, and stimulate the energies of many a mediumistic discoverer. They are instru- mental in producing impressions of peace in the auras of those authorized to terminate an existing feud or war. They make it their duty to resist hostilities They seldom succeed, because on this planet the joint forces of the earth-bound and the crude-physical are too powerful. Ninth-sphere souls are the natural guardians and protectors of human auras that produce works of genius. As soon as a young aura shows signs of maturing into this phase of mediumship, a ninth-sphere soul is made acquainted with the fact. The tenth or highest sphere is of larger extent and rarer ether than the preceding. Its most advanced inmates live near stellar space ; their auras are of the quality prevailing on higher planets. Their homes are white temples, surrounded by gardens and parks, whose splendor is in harmony with the tenants, the princes of this earth. The beauty of this sphere is The Divine Spheres 195 extraordinary. No mortal can conceive or describe the spiritual bluish light ; the rosy tint of the ether mountains ; the deep blue color of the waters ; the whiteness of the temples ; the gorgeousness of the flora, and the majestic presence of ancient souls. The main activity of this class of souls consists in receiving, preserving and operating the principles existing in the spheres and at the surface, such as those of Justice, Love and Charity ; the Arts, the Sciences, and other human activities. This " receiv- ing" and " preserving" is accomplished in ways whose demonstration exceeds the purpose of this volume. A faint resemblance may be found in the preservation of human speech in the record of a graphophone. Tenth-sphere souls associate together and form bands. When they manifest to mortals in a seance- room, which they do rarely, they usually introduce themselves as members of a certain band whose name they indicate. A spirit-band possesses great strength. Although each soul acts individually as a unit, yet the action of each is that of a fraction of its respective band. But the principle of the entire band is shared and operated by each member. The labors of this class of souls benefit the lower zones, and through them terra firma. The excep- tions, that is, the cases where tenth-sphere souls touch the mundane plane of life direct, are those of genuine prayer and occasional manifestations. 196 Soul-Return The difference between the labor of mortals on terra firma and that of earth-sphere souls is slight ; while that between either class of souls and the divine beings in the three highest spheres is like the difference between the science of picking pockets and the science of Astronomy. IX Other Worlds " It is a truly sublime spectacle, when in the stillness of night in an unclouded sky, the stars, like the world's choir, rise and set, and as it were, divide existence into two portions : — the one, belonging to the earthly, is silent in the perfect stillness of night; whilst the other alone comes forth in sublimity, pomp and majesty." — W. von Humboldt. — The Starry Heavens, Letter I, 56. WHAT has soul-science to do with the starry firmament ? If the reader sup- poses his earth-life constitutes all there is, the myriads of luminous balls sus- pended in the heavens will answer him : " No, these balls are precious ; they serve a purpose." Every- thing, from the bacillus to the elephant, from a speck of dust to the brightest star, has a purpose. The reader's soul, his wife, his misery, his fault, each has a purpose. When he inhabits the earth's spheres, mourning the lost opportunities of his last earth-life, the truth of what is here said will strike him with singular force. And still later, when ready to leave this globe, he will remember this chapter, and wonder that of the myriads of other worlds only one is destined to receive him, until " further orders," which he will receive from nature. He may ask, " Why just that one?" A lover, referring to the ideal of his soul, *97 198 Soul-Return might ask, " Why just that one ? " A mother whose only son was slain in battle asks, " Why just he?" Such questions are put in vain. Nature is ever silent, except that she proclaims the wonder of her works through the song of birds and prima donnas, the tears of women and sentenced, criminals ; the moans of the bleeding victims of military grandeur and dissolving empires. " Why just he ?" has been asked millions of times ; not once was it answered. The only response known is : " Because of anything and everything in this world there is only one." One is nature's only number ; all others are of human imagination. The tumultuous bustle on the mundane stage of life is a world of its own ; the silent incense of soli- tude, the creator of works of the imagination, is another world. Earth-life may truly be said to com- prise at least two worlds. The next world to come is the earth's aura, and after it one of the planets mentioned before. How the soul will get across universal space when it must pass from our globe to planet Jupiter or Saturn is explained in another volume of Fred Max. It has been stated, that from either of these planets the pilgrim of earth passes over to star Alcyone. In his dreams, his writings, his distractions, his imaginary transactions man lives, as it were, in another world. Our nearest planet just now is the moon, uninhabited. Some day nature will fit it up Other Worlds i 99 for the abode of souls. A lunar home will be a home of the far future. A lunar soul will seek soul- development in a form at the surface of the moon, and thereafter the disembodied lunar soul will live in the aura of the moon. None of the souls now in- habiting the earth will pass to the moon. The future lunar denizen will come from some other planet, after the manner of man, who, as we are informed, came to this globe originally from planet Neptune. Of the other planets we know little, except what we learn through occasional limited messages from Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. We are not acquainted with the conditions on Mars or Mercury. No soul- life exists in the aura of the sun. The fitness of a planet as an abode for the life of disembodied souls is decided by the planet's aura. Messages from Jupiter and Saturn received by the oldest souls in the tenth sphere of our globe state that the auras of these planets as compared with the aura of the earth are exceedingly fine, of greater spiritual power, and greater capacity for psychic life. A number of heavenly bodies belonging to a com- mon, concentric system, fed by a central sun, con- stitute a solar system. The number of such systems in the universe is unknown. It would be folly to suppose that they sustain no relation to one another. All of them together, could they be viewed from a distant mountain, might be seen to form a grand and beautiful entity. 2oo Soul-Return A test of a developed materialized soul is its capacity of producing and bringing with it its own light. Less developed souls shine and make them- selves known by lamp-light in the room. Similarly the degree of perfection of all heavenly bodies is one of luminosity ; and the imperfect ones, the planets, shine by reflected or borrowed light. The eye of a well-developed incarnated soul issues a mag- netic fluid which is instantly recognized by another well-developed soul. Human bodies and human edifices perish ; nations go under ; and heavenly bodies dissolve so that their fragments drift aimlessly through space. But the soul remains, and continues to exist. Whether in the lower or higher spheres, on terra firma or the briny deep, the soul lives somewhere, struggling on in order to reach ultimate perfection. The perfected souls of the earth's aura entertain little doubt that the starry firmament with its visible and invisible myriads of millions of suns, stars, planets, milky ways, nebulae and comets is all one celestial body, a tremendous, all-powerful and almighty entity that eludes our comprehension and consciousness because too infinite to enter human cognition even in one hundred thousand years hence. Nor do the per- fected souls of this globe doubt that it is the mission of all souls in terris et in ccelis to learn the laws governing the currents of the universe ; and, what is more, to understand them ; and, what is still Other Worlds 201 more, to be able to practise them. The child that bakes mud-pies ; the assistant in a laboratory ; the scholar that measures the distance of the stars ; the disembodied soul that returns from the ether zones to rap at a bed-post, to write on a slate or to materialize ; the divine soul that writes these lines through the mechanism of a human hand, are, one and all, souls in different stages of development, studying, practising, manipulating the laws of the most powerful entity : Nature. Mortals are taught to consider nature a vulgar mass of earthy rules and vulgar acts, too mean or small for man, a mere handmaid to something else. Such teaching is wrong Those that see but the coarse in nature must see by analogy but the coarse in man. They have learned erroneous lessons which were imparted to them to their damage. Nature comprises the coarse and material as well as the lofty and sublime. She operates the human machine as well as the human edifice of science, art and ethics. The chemistry of the stars is the same as that of the kidneys ; the motions of the moon re- semble those of the moth encircling a source of light ; the little wax candle burns under the same law as the corona of the sun ; the cries of an infant are related to the prayer of the multitudes ; the strains of a poet descend to him from the spheres even as fertilizing rain descends from the clouds and the inspirations of genius and messages from 202 Soul-Return other planets descend to the souls of this globe. They are processes of nature so lofty and so far removed from jealousy, wrath and revenge, that nature cares little whether she figures in the human brain as a Lord or a Lady, as an archangel or a com- posite Power ; as a helpful or hostile force ; for she is always sure of her leadership, the continuance of time in her favor, and the impossibility of any one's escape from her realms and jurisdiction. Nature is a firm, relentless but modest teacher, undesirous of adulation and worship, but insisting on two things, viz., obedience to her laws and the study of them. The material world imposes its duties on man ; the crude-physical burdens him with its dicta ; past cen- turies impress him with the inertia of time ; climatic and physical catastrophes operate changes on him ; the avalanche of habits, enjoyments and vice burks his talent ; the virtues and loveliness of woman lift his eyes to the higher spheres. If he perishes through the ascendancy of crude, bloodthirsty, de- structive forces, he will make up for his shortened incarnation by a longer detention in the spheres, where he will gradually outgrow the Physical and thereafter admit the error of his former mundane views. Ultimately the greatest punishment to him is this extended delay in the seven earth-spheres, for it is a suffering full of psychic discomfort, pain and remorse. Millions of departed souls are now its Other Worlds 203 victims. To undertake to explain their terrible condition would be an idle task. In the streets of a city we often hear the exclama- tion, " Help the Blind ! " This book is a response to that appeal for more light, and the delivery from the darkening influence of the crude-physical. If the fabrics of existing human institutions are to endure, nature's facts, her laws, her commands and precepts must prevail. If these remain shrouded in mystery ; if they are derided and belittled, decried as vulgar, occult and treacherous, then the currents of the crude-physical have won. But if they are held in proper esteem ; if they are studied, analyzed and described ; investigated, discussed and shielded from the scorn and abuse of the vulgar, then human- ity will gain. And its greatest gain at the end of a mortal's earth-life and development will be the econ- omy of time, of hundreds, thousands of dolorous years. A single fact, and its continuance as a fact, of revenge, war and bloodshed will delay that price- less condition of a people or race, in which it can exclaim : " We have won. Time, once our enemy, is now ours ! " A single fact, like a single individual, is more im- portant than a thousand mob-made laws or a million imaginary dicta of the brain. Every one of the " Other Worlds " is a separate and distinct fact, pro- duced for a purpose, and existing for a purpose. X Harmonies " The hidden soul of harmony." Milton. — L'Allegro, line 144. A FEW notes of music, played together, may be harmonious ; or they may be totally dis- harmonious, that is, they may grate upon the ear. A painting may suffer from a lack of harmony in its grouping, shades of color or some other detail. Many a statue displeases because something about it is inharmonious to the whole. A family living under one roof may be out of harmony with itself ; perhaps its members take undue liberties in their actions, opinions or privileges. Individuals may exhibit inharmonious traits of character ; that is, some constituent psychic part of theirs may be coarser than others. Anything lacks harmony whose predominant attri- butes are either out of proportion or in dissonance with the rest. It has been stated, that a medium cannot give a correct message, unless his control is harmonious to the communicating soul. Nothing of the kind is noticeable in the ordinary affairs of mun- dane life. For example, when A tells B to inform C that something will happen, harmony between A and B, or B and C, or A and C is of no moment. But 204 Harmonies 205 the case is different, where A is a departed soul de- sirous of giving a message ; B a medium's control, and C a sitter wishing to hear from A. Unless A's ether vibrates in unison with the ether of the control, the message lacks truthfulness because of this want of harmony. The phrase "vibrate in unison " means, that every wave of the one must coincide with every wave of the other. Where this is not the case the currents are inharmonious, resulting not only in the well-known lack of harmony but also in the weaken- ing or deadening of the effect of the currents. To illustrate : Photographs not infrequently show minute black dots. They are caused by the absence of white light ; or, what is the same, by a number of in- harmonious light rays whose light-effect is nil. Their waves failed to coincide with one another. When the ether waves of two souls do not blend into one another, there is disharmony. The reader may find overwhelming proof of this in the homes of the ill-mated, where a developed soul is chained to an earth-bound soul. For further evidence he is re- ferred to the children of such ill-fated couples whose misfortunes are the curse of their offspring. When two disembodied souls are inharmonious, they may be near one another without being aware of each other's presence. That is, unless currents pass from one to the other, the two souls do not know they are close to each other. Harmony between two departed souls manifests itself in 2o6 Soul-Return various ways. Sincere friendship between two souls means an exalted degree of harmony. In their earth-days neither may have known the other ; they may have been enemies ; they rarely were friends, for earth-friendships are seldom based on soul cur- rents. The often-heard question, " Will husband and wife be husband and wife in the Hereafter ? " may be answered, "Yes, provided their soul-currents are highly harmonious." It may also be answered, "No, unless their soul-currents are harmonious." Soul- life in the Beyond is based on currents of the soul; mortal life on terra firma is not based on soul- currents, but on currents of the concrete of earth and the ether of the spheres. The laws of harmony in the ether spheres differ from those of terra firma. A mortal's "I love you" is of inferior order to the " I love you" whispered by one disembodied soul to another. In the former ease the allegation is complicated because it includes many things that affect a mortal ; in the other case, the allegation is simple, meaning merely the blend- ing of mutual currents. This blending gives rise to the closeness of the two souls. It continues until progression becomes unequal and causes separation. The concrete world, more properly the world of condensed ether, also manifests laws of harmony at the surface of the globe. Sodium and chlorine at- tract each other, which results in a staff of mortal life, viz., salt. Certain electric currents attract one Harmonies 207 another ; their attraction interests mankind in many ways, from the chair on which murderers expiate their crime to the traction of ponderous vehicles. Certain magnetic currents attract one another ; their attraction is illustrated by the mariner's compass. Rays of light are ether currents of a coarser kind, which manifest harmony only in a lower degree. The harmony of a mortal's body-currents is dis- turbed locally or generally when the mortal is sick. A headache, for example, disturbs currents pertain- ing to the brain or certain blood-vessels. The effect of this disturbance the soul sensates as pain ; it is usually expressed by the vocal organs. To find the cause of the headache is the business of the phy- sician versed in the facts and phenomena, symptoms and laws of the human bodv. Sickness, unless of a purely nervous character, cannot be cured by genu- ine prayer, because even most intensely concentrated soul-currents fail to affect the currents of the ailing portion of the body. A mortal's body-currents are coarse, and his soul- currents fine ; consequently his coarse currents drown the soul-currents unless the latter be properly strengthened and maintained in proper condition. When a person is on a sick-bed his soul-currents are weak naturally, and his friends on high are less able to reach him at such times, unless he has strength- ened his soul so as to maintain its currents in har- mony with theirs. 2o8 Soul-Return Just when a person is sick he needs and longs for the assistance of his invisible friends. He should lay the foundation for such comfort while still in good health. To get correct communications or even cor- rect impressions during one's illness is appreciated best by those who spend cheerless, lonely days and nights awaiting the return of health. Just when a person is sick he ought not to be sick in nine cases among ten. If he had been in commu- nication with some departed soul for at least a year and met it weekly, probably he would not be sick. Warnings would have reached him in time ; pre- cautionary measures would have been suggested, and most likely the causa causans of the disease would have left. The study of one's self and one's predispositions is one of the many advantages of spirit-communion. Harmony implies not only a complete blending of waves but also a similarity or sameness of velocity. The most satisfactory blending of waves or currents would fail to produce harmony, however, if one set of waves, that is the waves of the currents of one individual, had a velocity twice as great as the waves of another person's currents. In such a case the character of the two sets of currents would not be the same ; and the two mortals would not be harmo- nious to each other. Perhaps the reader experienced a sensation of discord when conversing with a per- son of unusual slowness of speech. However har- monious the person might be otherwise, the reader Harmonies 209 was indifferent or even repelled. The reason of this lay in the difference of velocity of certain vocal cur- rents ; and such phenomena go to show that dishar- mony may spring even from minor causes. Complete harmony between two sets of waves or currents demands an additional requirement, viz., the waves must be of the same, at least of similar, material. Perfect harmony does not exist between a negro and a white man, although their waves may blend, and their velocity be identical. This dis- harmony is owing to the difference in the material of the two sets of currents. The frequent disso- nances of married persons result often from the dif- ference in the material of their currents, the mate- rial of the masculine as a rule differing somewhat from that of the feminine. Harmony is most important in the operation of the forces and currents of the universe. Its strongest phase may be called Love ; its weakest, Attraction. Harmony is a necessary ingredient of daily life ; it consumes neither force nor energy, yet it requires that its presence be felt or known by every mortal. Its ultimate cause or foundation is a mystery. Notwithstanding the incessant play of currents in and about a mortal he is conscious of comparatively few, because he has only a few receptacles through which to receive currents, and because each of these receptacles is capable of admitting but a very few of them, perhaps only one out of every ten million 2io Soul-Return currents. If he is patriotic, learned and brave, and a heavy drinker and smoker, he will solemnly assert that the world contains only one such current ; that he knows it, and that the remaining nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine cur- rents are a swindle and a sham. If he lacks those heroic virtues, and is merely a tax-payer, an obliging friend and devoted husband, he will duly respect those seven figures, and endeavor to become familiar with as many currents as possible, knowing that be- fore completing his school-days on this planet he must study all the ten millions ; and that whatever labor in that respect he performs now, he need not perform later where such labors are more tedious and require more time than they do here below. He may be called a harmonious mortal ; he sensates har- monies that brainy heads despise. Harmonious mor- tals are usually very sensitive. They perfect their gift by applying themselves to frequent tests, in order to ascertain the correctness of their early lessons. A developed soul is never in harmony with a crude-physical soul. Marriages between individuals of the two soul-classes are always unhappy. The combination or union is unnatural. The currents of the crude constantly rasp the refined currents of the other, at first creating inexpressible fatigue ; later, inexplicable aversion; and finally abject misery. For details on this subject we refer the reader to Harmonies 211 the divorce and alimony columns of the daily news- papers. The existence of greater harmony between the incarnated w r ould result in peace and happiness. But to establish these the soul is too weak, too ethereal. More than soul-effort is required. It is attainable with the aid of the brain. In other words, humanity must be instructed in the facts, phenomena and harmonies of the ether world in which man has his residence. How singular, for him to dwell in and breathe a fluid of whose nature, properties and possibilities he is ignorant ! First, then, in the regeneration of the Physical are man's acquaintance and familiarity with the soul ; next, his acquaintance and familiarity with his de- parted loved ones ; lastly, his acquaintance and familiarity with the laws of harmony. Every human being save the lowest crude-physical one can master the first and the second ; but not every one, perhaps not more than seven among ten, can master the last, for perfect harmony is one of the qualities of a divine soul. The happiness of mortals — largely a pleasant dream — is based upon the harmony among the senses, the harmony between the different parts of the body, and that between the brain and the brain- aura, all of which is not easily obtained, A person may be very healthy, yet be unhappy, if, as is so 212 Soul-Return often the case, discord reigns between his brain and his brain-aura. The question arises, " Can between two mortals harmony exist without love ? " The answer is " No." Love is built upon harmony. Anything that weak- ens this foundation turns love into hatred. But a mere semblance of harmony encouraged by the brain and brain-aura may deceive. The great deceivers of mankind are the brain and the brain-aura. But when the delusion disappears, love disappears also. A practical knowledge and understanding of har- mony is neither favorable nor desirable, because in its effort to master the subject at present the human race would misunderstand many of its principles, and might be led astray. Soul-science and soul-harmony are new phases of knowledge. Fifty years ago neither of them was known. On terra firma, harmony is the exception ; in the earth-spheres it is the rule, though not without fre- quent exceptions ; in the divine spheres it is all. Unbeknown to mankind divine currents seek its homes from time to time. Unbeknown to the chil- dren of earth the fruit of these currents is ripening slowly. They are preparing humanity for the inevi- table struggle which is to come in the near future, the battle between the darkened and darkening cur- rents of benighted crude-physical texts and traditions on the one side, and the rising sun of truth on the Harmonies 213 other. The old question shines afresh, "What is Truth ? " Readers of this volume comprehend the difficulty of answering it, which difficulty those ex- perience that live without a conception of the nature of facts and facts of nature, nor any idea of the essence of what is real. Everything is true that has living currents ; everything is untrue, unreal and a sham that has no living currents. Among the entities of living currents none ranks as high as the human Soul. On the stage of earth- life it acts in a flesh-and-bone costume. When the curtain is down, it lays away this costume, and goes home. There it acts without the flesh-and-bone mask, in ways that now are known to the reader to be natural, real. Humanity loves inversions. It in- verts the fact that man is a soul into the pretence that he has a soul. The human races will join in peace and happiness whenever they restore the human soul to all its rights, and relegate inversions and brain-dicta to the ash-pile of modern back-yards. An inverted pyramid looks inharmonious ; a tight- rope performer looks unstable ; a miserly woman looks unnatural ; and a crook looks idiotic, because man's physical as well as psychic eye seeks harmony first, long ere it becomes reconciled to inversions. XII Conclusion THE reader's world, that is, his atmosphere, fauna, flora, conditions, activities and pro- ductions are materialized portions of a world more beautiful, systematic, harmonious and refined than the haphazard combination of coarse currents and promiscuous ether qualities that con- stitute his visible, material world. An ether plant is not the same as its correspond- ing plant in the material form at the surface of the earth. The ether plant is more unfolded, more beautiful. When a material plant dies, the ether plant, i. e., the soul of the material plant, passes away. In the case of a pine, for example, as soon as the material pine is dead, the ether pine, which is the real pine, passes into the spheres, where it locates at a suitable place in space, absorbs ether materials, and in about five years obtains its mature growth, if it did not obtain it when still in the form. Its fragrance penetrates a radius of several miles. The material pine was rooted in the soil ; its soul, the ether pine, is rooted in' condensed ether ; its branches are in con- stant motion, and produce a most refreshing coolness. Of all this, mortals perceive nothing. 214 Conclusion 215 A tiger dies. Tigers being crude of soul, the tiger, after passing away, remains not far from solid ground, and cannot go higher. Many an ethereal tiger or other beast of prey, now as gentle as a lamb, may have passed through the reader's room. An ether tiger is harmless ; but if it were permitted to materialize in a cabinet, its propensities of earth might reappear and remain until the animal demate- rializes. A materialized cat, as it leaps from a mate- rializing cabinet into the room, purrs and scratches ; a materialized dog barks, and if provoked may bite. A man dies. His soul passes to a suitable stratum of ether near the place of death, and remains there for some time ere it can rise. Its subsequent rise or growth depends, as we have seen, upon its ether- conditions. But when all things are summed up, the problem still is open, " Are you quite sure that when a man dies he does not die but lives on ? " The answer is : "No, we are not quite sure that he does not die; but we are sure that he lives on." More than that : We are sure that he continues living as if no inter- ruption had occurred except such as mortals experi- ence once in twenty-four hours, viz., sleep. In a certain sense the human body dies every night, but lives on the next morning ; and a person would be thought idiotic if he maintained that a night's sleep meant the discontinuance of life. Of course, in the one case the body is stone-dead ; in the other it re- ceives a hearty breakfast. 216 Soul- Return If the reader should conclude that it is wrong for him to lift the curtain, he certainly cannot be wrong to read of his neighbor's lifting it and about his luck in doing so. Let him try the dictations of departed souls, which are not of the brain but of the soul, not of the papier-mache soul he sang of in his youth, but the genuine, living soul that loved and hated when it inhabited the body ; that cremated its hatred after its transition, and preserved and increased its love. People read travels in distant lands, in the polar regions, in southern climes and elsewhere ; why can they not deepen into a few pages written by a few departed souls ? If it is wrong to lift the curtain, persons can at least visit their demised father or mother, or other loved one, often enough to enable the soul to greet them. Let mortals not grow restless, nor flee when the departed loved one is under way. Manifesting souls must be given time. Parents waited upon their children many a year before the little ones reached their growth ; may not the son or daughter now wait on them a few days, a few minutes ? It helps the parents much more than the investigator. If it is wrong to lift the curtain, one should at least obey the mandate from on high and once a week, for ten minutes, sit for centration, not the concentration of the mind, but that of the soul, so that one's soul-currents shall pass over to the oppo- site shore and gradually reach its wonderful homes. Conclusion 217 No one should stop until he has gained the certainty that his currents reach his ancestor, his parent of a former incarnation, whose home he hopes and prays may be his own some day, after many centuries shall have passed away. In pleasing ways, in joyful moods, in sacred tunes man perpetuates his mundane thoughts, while souls arrange their lives and ether tasks in even beats. In the ethereal homes and cheering fields of heaven the accidental, ephemeral and surprising of earthly activities is scarcely held worthy of notice. Will it harm to foretaste the future by a few occasional communions with those commonly denominated " departed " who are ever nigh ? There may be failures in the beginning. Let the investigator in the seance-room remember the fact that clear and distinct manifestations, correct mes- sages and satisfactory answers demand more or less clear and satisfactory conditions, of which not he but the invisibles are the judges. The medium is a mere instrument, unable to produce the desired departed souls. A person that wishes to meet a particular departed soul at a sitting should concen- trate his soul upon it off and on during a few days before. Investigators begin their search usually with doubts, hesitation and misgivings. Let them keep the brain, the heart and the soul separate from one another. If they are too anxious, too brainy, too intellectual, too learned, they will obtain what 218 Soul-Return answers or corresponds to the searching element, viz., brain-currents. That is, they will draw brain- currents from the human battery, for the mani- festing souls have no brain-currents to respond with, and the brain-currents so drawn will counter- act the useful currents of the soul, whereby condi- tions are weakened and the manifestations rendered poor. Again, if investigators come to a seance with hearts overflowing, at times near the tear-point, perhaps in the memory of happier days spent with the demised, they will attract another set of cur- rents that weaken the main or more useful soul- current, which insures poor manifestations or total failure. The investigator at a seance should let his brain and heart rest in perfect oblivion and permit his soul-currents to sally forth. They will attract the soul-currents of his loved ones and be a valuable aid to him. A failure to understand the composite nature of seance-currents or battery-currents has caused the brainy, the learned and the skeptic many disappoint- ments and failures, leading to denials of soul-exist- ence and soul-return. The brainy and the learned should remember that in examining the unknown they deal with a multiplicity of occult currents, which they must not presume to attract, treat, ignore or classify according to the investigator's accidental mood or humor. Ether currents, and ether bodies Conclusion 219 called souls, are entirely different from brain, flesh, muscles and bones. Nature, when condensing a soul for incarnation, wisely deadens all memory of previous life, to pre- vent a double life or a multiplicity of lives of the ego, which would harass the ego were the memory of previous earth-lives and sphere-lives present in its mind during the new incarnated life. Such a memory would render earth-life an impossibility. But the brain, with its inventions and discoveries, has created a condition of things on terra firma that overpowers soul and heart. The time has come, when the soul must receive instruction and assert its rights. The progress of mankind is based upon one thing only : The progress of the individual. It is not con- fined to brain unfoldment, aesthetic culture, sensa- tional or sentimental dreams about a divine mind or other opiates. It includes the individual's knowledge of himself and his future. Distorting it into mean- ing all sorts of other things does not aid the human race, but engenders a falsely pretended state of civil- ization of an insecure kind, supported by bayonets, doctrines and cannon. Cutting off heads ; passing laws of portentous phraseology ; parading senti- ments ; issuing doctrines ; publishing edicts and distributing property, — all these and a hundred other occupations and crowning acts only bring 22o Soul-Return about the government of blood, the rule of Nero, the reign of zero. History teaches that most revolutions are sown in good intentions, reared amid favorable conditions, and killed in ignorance of soul and self. The next revolution threatens to be a repetition of former ones unless a generation grows up that knows how to drink the currents of peace, inhale the currents of forgiveness, and enjoy the vapors of unselfishness. The diver at the bottom of the earth's ether ocean should first learn who he is, what he is, and why he is here below. No one as yet has taught him that. He should have an opportunity to unfold. Then will terrible war, misery, starvation and plagues become unknown, and History cease its horrors. The new forces will enlighten mankind concern- ing the souls that made the last two thousand years of the world's history. With few exceptions they were of a low quality. Many have been cast in stone or bronze, and cut in steel and copper ; and fools engrave them upon the tender and sensitive brains of the young. The new forces will sing in a different key, viz., the key of harmonious truths, without accidentals, flats, sharps or transposition. It will be a straight tune, lofty enough to elevate humanity ; thorough enough to mark a harmonious, even tempo in the base. The tune will be simple, yet speak of all that vibrates in the human heart. Notwithstanding clouds, darkness and rain there will be love, mirth and happiness finding their way Conclusion 221 earthward; seeking and finding a new race relieved of worry and care, free from fraud to its kind and from adulation to the gods. Either of these is as foreign to the development of the soul as is a shop- lifter to a self-sacrificing divine heroine. XIII Questions and Answers The following Questions are substantially questions that we hear persons ask and discuss from time to time. The Answers are our own. — The Authors. 1. Question. Since organic life means soui-life in a form, what is meant by inorganic life ? Answer. Inorganic life means the existence or life of condensed, i. e., materialized ether devoid of soul. 2. Q. Why are some persons clairvoyant, and some persons mediumistic ? A. Some persons are clairvoyant and some are mediumistic because the properties of different auras are different. Both clairvoyance and mediumship depend upon aura-properties. 3. Q. How do we know that a speedy reunion with some friend or loved one still living in the form benefits the departed more than it benefits the mor- tal friend or loved one ? A. We know that a speedy reunion of the de- parted with a mortal friend or loved one benefits the departed more than the mortal from the fact that the departed so state. 4. Q. Suppose a person dies at noon, where will his soul be say at six o'clock of the same day ? Questions and Answers 223 A. Six hours after a person's transition his soul will be still near his death-bed or place of demise. If the soul is a dark one it will be close to the ground ; if it is a developed soul it will be higher up ; if it is a highly developed soul, perhaps as high as the roof of the building in which it passed out. 5. Q. Could a clairvoyant see a recently liber- ated soul ? A. A clairvoyant may see a recently liberated soul, provided the soul can condense sufficiently to become visible to him. 6. Q. What is clairaudience ? A. Clairaudience is a psychic gift enabling its owner at times to hear " voices," that is, the speech of disembodied souls. 7. Q. What is the main difference between a mortal before and the same mortal after death ? A. The main difference between a mortal before and after death is the fact, that after death the mate- rial body is dead ; and the soul that inhabited it is liberated or disembodied, and enjoys greater freedom and greater capacities than it could enjoy during its incarnated state. 8. Q. How will a profound knowledge of incar- nation and its purpose help the great number of highly sensitive beings on terra firma ? A. A profound knowledge of incarnation and its purpose helps the great number of highly sensitive beings by making them understand, that they are too well developed for the coarse fibres of their mortal J24 Soul-Return bodies. To understand that, is to escape great un- happiness. 9. Q. Do automatic writers also get independent slate-writing ? A. Good automatic writers do not get indepen- dent slate-writing. The two phases have nothing in common with each other. Automatic writing is performed through the hand of the instru- ment; the other writing, termed independent, is disconnected entirely from the hand of the instru- ment. 10. Q. Were the pages of this book written in daylight ? A. Some of the chapters of this book were writ- ten in an entirely darkened room ; others, by the light of a small lamp. No portion of the book was written in broad daylight. 11. Q. How did the writer of this volume know when to write ? A. The writer of this volume was impressed to sit down to write; but this was done only in his own apartment. Frequently, after being seated, the room entirely dark, and having the paper before him and pencil in hand ready for the task, he spent a few minutes in waiting and was then told, " We can get nothing ; we will return at — — o'clock/' At other times he was told simply to wait because " we are debating" ; or a lack of conditions requisite for automatic writing was indicated, and he was told to come later. Questions and Answers 225 12. Q. How was the instrument told, " We can get nothing/' etc ? A. By a control speaking with the vocal chords of the instrument, after the manner of trance-mediums when they speak under control. 13. Q. How sure is the writer of this book, that he wrote without his brain or mind cooper- ating ? A. The writer of this book can, and before his demise will, testify under oath that he knew nothing of its contents before it was begun ; that neither from day to day, nor from one sitting to another did he know what was going to be written with his hand; and that while writing automatically he did not know the word coming next, nor the coming line. Also, that prior to beginning to write automatically he had no preparation or knowledge of the subject-matter. In other words, his brain, mind, thoughts and con- sciousness had nothing to do with what was written automatically through his hand. 14. Q. How long was the writer of this book in developing his phase of automatic writing for practi- cal use ? A. The development of the writer of this book into an automatic instrument of practical usefulness lasted several years, and was connected with trouble to him and his controls ; also with loss of time and comfort on his part. The history of his development will be published soon, with specimens of writing he obtained while developing. 226 Soul-Return 1 S- Q- Why does the writer of this book sign by a nom de plume f A. He does so on the adyice of the Authors, for personal protection and freedom from annoyance. 16. Q. Why are soul-phenomena often ascribed to most any other cause than the powers of departed souls ? A. Soul-phenomena are often ascribed to other causes than the powers of departed souls, because mortals fear the thoroughness of life which soul- science and its tenets will produce and dissemi- nate. Another reason lies in the strict and em- phatic prohibition against soul-return by influential classes of persons, including the organizations of the crude-physical, whose interests would suffer if the facts of soul-return became common prop- erty. 17. Q. How may we account for the appearance of materialized souls, or "walking ghosts," in so- called haunted apartments ? A. The brief presence of materialized souls on stairways or in apartments is owing to the presence of a sufficiency of aura-currents belonging, or formerly belonging, to some mediumistic mortal of the material- izing phase. 18. Q. Why does a materialized soul before it dematerializes, return to the cabinet, and close the curtain behind it ? A. A materialized soul returns to the cabinet to dematerialize, and closes the curtain, to prevent the Questions and Answers 227 gaseous contents of materials in the cabinet from dissipating into the seance-room. 19. Q. Why do most materialized female souls wear veils ? A. Most materialized female souls wear veils, because the artificial substance of which their face is composed dematerializes easily ; that is, dissolves readily when exposed to light rays, even in dim illumination. For the same reason many material- izing souls wear gloves. 20. Q. Why do materialized souls as a rule speak in a whisper ? A. As a rule materialized departed souls speak in a whisper in order to save the force of the medium. Nothing being gained by loud talking ; and a saving of force being certain by using subdued tones, no rea- son exists why the forms should speak above a whisper. 21. Q. Why may a materialized departed soul be unable to pass closely by some particular sitter when making the round of the audience, but must give him a wide berth ? A. When a materialized departed soul, making the round of the audience in a seance-room, comes close to a sitter of the earth-bound class it will give him a wide berth, because the aura of such a person is a serious obstacle to the soul's attempting to cross it. It acts like a brick wall standing across a per- son's path, 22. Q. Why is singing or any kind of music necessary in a materializing seance ? 228 Soul-Return A. Singing or any other kind of music is neces- sary at a materializing seance because it stirs the air, by which commotion the ether in the room is set in motion. Now ether in motion tends to favor the formation of ether waves and currents in the cabinet, which in turn aids in making up the forms. 23. Q. Why may the cultivation or propagation of skeptic, i. e., polarized aura-currents of a single sitter in a materializing seance, weaken the forms and therefore spoil the seance ? A. The skeptic, i. e., polarized aura-currents of a sitter in a materializing seance, may weaken the forms and therefore spoil the seance, because they tend to overcome or neutralize the main current of the human battery. If the main current be of the ordi- nary strength, a quantitatively stronger skeptical current will weaken, i. e., partly neutralize it ; that is, the stronger current will prevent success. 24. Q. Why will a sitter in a materializing circle draw no "ethereal visitor " who fixes his thoughts on the possible results of his presence at the seance, and on the question of success or failure of his psychic investigation ? A. Such a sitter polarizes a large portion of his aura-currents whereby he weakens himself and there- fore also his invisible friends. 25. Q. Why do most forms manifesting at a materializing seance appear to have the same size ? A. Most forms manifesting at a materializing seance have seemingly the same size, because of the Questions and Answers 229 neglect in this regard on the part of the materializing souls. During earth-life their size was a property of the body, which after transition they deem unimpor- tant. 26. Q. Why is there more than one mode of conducting materializing seances, differing mainly in the manner and the location of the medium ? A. The variety of modes in which materializing seances are conducted are owing to the individual characteristics of mediums, each having his per- sonal equation, and requiring a special mode of conducting his seances. Some mediums sit outside of the cabinet without being entranced during the seance, which is a deviation from the usual course. 27. Q. Why does the materialization of souls not succeed in cabinets erected in crowded halls ? A. Materialization cannot be successful in crowded halls because every crowd contains a large percent- age of crude-physical and earth-bound currents, which spoil materializing currents. 28. Q. Who selects the controls of a material- izing medium ? A. The controls of a materializing medium are selected by souls of the eighth sphere. The proper selection is a difficult task. Great care must be taken to harmonize and blend the aura-currents of the controls and the medium. If the medium has a coarse aura, his controls are coarse souls and often cause coarse conduct during the seance. 230 Soul-Return 29. Q. What part do Indian souls play at materializing seances ? A. Indian souls at materializing seances stand guard round the cabinet, like sentinels, controlling the ingress and egress of souls and preventing the earth-bound class from entering the cabinet. 30. Q. What would the presence of a few earth- bound souls at a materializing seance accomplish ? A. The effect of the presence, at a materializing seance, of a few earth-bound souls would be the up- setting of every preparation made in the way of condensed substances such as form-materials and clothes. Besides, the fiends might overpower the controls, force them to attire the medium as a spirit, and send him so attired out before the audience. They may impress a crude-physical mortal among the sitters to grasp the medium, and then rush into the newspapers with a so-called expose. This occurs from time to time, especially when the Indian forces are weak. 31. Q. What will materialization ultimately re- sult in ? A. Materialization will establish a new era in the religious views of humanity. With the increasing sensitiveness of man the number of materializing mediums will increase, the forms build up stronger, and the investigators learn many laws of this class of manifestations. 32. Q. Why are children usually bright and strong when they materialize ? Questions and Answers 231 A. Children, in materializing, are usually bright and strong because their currents easily mingle with the electric of the body-currents of the sitters. 33- Q- Which country counts the greatest num- ber of materializing seances in a year ? A. The greatest number of materializing seances in a year occur in France. 34. Q. How is fraud coming from or through a trance-instrument best guarded against ? A. Fraud coming from or through a trance- instrument cannot be guarded against in the strict sense of the term " guard," because a mortal at a sit- ting cannot prevent the psychic fraud of the instru- ment or of crude-physical departed souls. But such fraud may often, and with some instruction in soul- science always, be detected. A few general rules are: 1. Do not rely implicitly upon a message obtained at the first sitting with any medium. 2. Do not interrupt. Interruption facilitates the friendly control's being subdued by a crude-physical soul. 3. At the close of the message ask for a special test. But avoid soliciting items that are brain-traces buried or cremated with the brain, such as numbers, places, etc., or "What was your nurse called?" " How long have you been dead ? " " Who was with you when you died ? " " How many napkins were in the big closet ? " " Who was the ruler of your country when you died ? " etc. 232 Soul-Return You may ask for a test involving past events ; the cause and effect of past incidents and the like, such as, " Please state what happened the day before our wedding ?" " What caused my leaving Paris?" "'What became of your favorite horse?" etc. 35- Q- What is mind? A. Mind is the aggregate of one's brain-traces, together with the vibrations of the brain-aura. 36. Q. What is mind- reading ? A. Mind-reading is the cognition by a departed soul of certain brain-aura vibrations. No mortal can cognize or read the mind of another, for mortals can- not grasp or sensate the ether currents, i. e., the amplitude and length of the waves of an ether cur- rent of the brain-aura. The knowledge a departed soul obtains from the analysis of such currents it impresses upon a mortal's brain, and the mortal announces it in human lan- guage. The entire process is covered, in common parlance, by the term " mind-reading " ; and people erroneously believe one mortal can read the mind of another. 37. Q. Can the control of a psychic instrument, or any other mediumistic person, read one's mind ? A. Neither a psychic instrument nor any other mediumistic person nor any human being can read the mind of another. But by long-continued prac- tice a control may learn to read certain portions of the mind, i. e., brain-aura of his instrument. Questions and Answers 233 38. Q. In what manner does a departed soul control a trance-medium ? A. No general rule exists regarding the mode or manner in which a departed soul may control, i. e., occupy, a trance-medium. It is governed by the conditions and quality of the mediumistic aura. One medium's soul is entirely displaced when under con- trol ; another's soul is " deadened " in part. Each medium presents a separate and distinct case. 39. Q. Why are the ordinary impressions of an undeveloped or uninstructed instrument or person incorrect, in most cases treacherous and dangerous ? A. The ordinary impressions of an undeveloped or uninstructed medium or person are incorrect, and generally treacherous and dangerous, because they arise from the intrusion of crude-physical souls into the aura of such persons. Frequently, as a result of the ignorance of such mediums or in- dividuals, trouble and harm arise from their impres- sions. 40. Q. When are impressions upon mediumistic mortals reliable ? A. Impressions upon mediumistic persons are reliable, if 1 They are received at his home, the soul-home mentioned in the text. 2. Each impression is distinctly connected with some test. 3. The mediumistic person, by means of proper diet and obedience to other sanitary rules, is capable 234 Soul-Return of preventing crude-physical elements from entering or disturbing his aura. 41. Q. What restrictions regarding diet are placed upon mediumistic persons ? A. Mediumistic persons should avoid the meat of warm-blooded animals ; heavy vegetables such as cab- bage, beans and beets ; heavy fruit such as cherries, pears and apples ; alcoholic beverages ; tea, coffee and tobacco. Cocoa should take the place of tea and coffee ; and fowl be taken once a week. 42. Q. Why are good seers rare ? A. Good seers are rare, because the auras are rare that can receive and sensate the extremely attenuate currents of future events. Besides re- ceiving this class of currents their auras must be able to translate them after receiving them ; that is, to lead them to the brain, to be reduced to human language. 43- Q- Why do many mortals conceal, disown, or, if they can, destroy their mediumistic properties? A. Many persons, on discovering that they pos- sess mediumistic properties, conceal, disown, or de- stroy them, because they lack proper instruction concerning their slumbering gifts. This refers to the educated or intelligent class of mediumistic per- sons. The repression alluded to results from popu- lar prejudice and ignorance, mixed with a spirit of malice. It causes the well-known scarcity of correct instruments. And without correct instruments no knowledge can become systematized. Soul-science Questions and Answers 235 needs well-trained mediums, just as physical science requires true and correct instruments. 44. Q, Why may a medium be " morally bad," yet give good tests and correct communications from the Beyond ? A. A medium may be " morally bad," yet give good tests and correct communications from the Beyond, because the mediumistic properties of his aura may be wonderfully good, although its quality be physical. In such a case the medium in his actions may echo the actions of his crude controls which they committed in their last earth-life. In other words, the medium may be led unconsciously, even unwillingly, to the commission of acts denominated "morally bad." 45. Q. Why are the means of developing a me- diumistic person wrongly believed to be complicated ? A. The means of developing a mediumistic per- son are wrongly believed to be complicated, because man first investigates and exhausts what is false and complicated before he finds the simple truth Sim- plicity is a part of perfection. 46. Q. Can the proposition that Simplicity is a part of perfection be applied to soul-science ? A. Yes. The facts and phenomena of soul- science and the deductions therefrom are simple ; but the explanations of the causes or laws underly- ing them are difficult. The explanations lead to a simple religious system, superseding complicated theories and unintelligible brain-dogmas. The past 236 Soul-Return four or five thousand years have seen the rise of the Jewish, Persian, Indian, Christian and Mahometan systems, built in the dark ages, none of them suffi- ciently simple or plain for practical use. They are giving way to the plain and simple facts of the human soul. As soul-knowledge rises and takes its place in the scientific field those systems sink. The basis of soul-science are the facts of soul-life, soul-return and soul-future. Being simple, unobtrusive, indisput- able, unrevengeful facts of nature, they supersede all fantastic images and nebulous verbal edifices. 47. Q. Can one investigate the facts of soul- return, receive communications from the Beyond and meet his departed loved ones, yet be and remain a church-member ? A. A person may remain a church-member while he is investigating the facts of soul-return in any of its phases, just as one may be a Christian without adhering to the cosmogony of the Old Testament. 48. Q. What is the final advantage of soul- science ? A. The final advantage of soul-science over all mortal systems consists in this, that it alone can ele- vate the human race on terra firma. The elevation of the human race can be accomplished only by eliminating its great curses : greed, revenge and war. They are the enemies to its progression. The sys- tems mentioned under Q. 46 have shown themselves incapable of eliminating them. 49- Q- Will the banishment of greed, revenge Questions and Answers 237 and war from mortal life affect the departed souls ? And if it will, in what way ? A. The banishment of greed, revenge and war will affect both the departed and the incarnated bene- ficially. It will promote longevity on terra firm a, whereby the souls entering the spheres in the future will be better developed. This will lighten the labors of the departed and hasten their progression It will also lighten the tasks of the divine souls, and permit their earlier departure from this globe. 50. Q. Why are crude-physical disembodied souls hostile to the correct and honest manifestation of soul-facts ? A. The crude-physical portion of the Beyond, to which may be added the crude-physical portion of the incarnated — the two really form one body psychic — are hostile to the correct and honest manifestations of soul-facts anywhere, because their auras are too coarse to seize or comprehend psychic facts. An ox cannot grasp the beauty of the rising moon because its aura is too coarse. The dog has a better concep- tion of it, for a dog's aura is less coarse. A mortal of crude-physical soul may have an Olympic brain and Newtonian learning, yet will he fight the facts of soul-science because his aura is coarse and crude. After his demise he continues the fight for a cen- tury or longer. His aura is so constituted that it deprives him of inwardly-directed aura-reflection, a subject that cannot as yet be explained to mortals, because too difficult and in need of new terms which 238 Soul-Return soul-science must first establish. His deprivation is characteristic of the lower classes of human auras and the higher animals. It induces the belief in him that ether manifestations, ether condensation and the laws of higher induction are crimes and wrongs, just as in the dark ages things were considered crimes that are now held to be honorable. 51. Q. Why cannot a mortal of high education but of crude-physical soul investigate as calmly, patiently and perseveringly as one of a well-de- veloped soul ? A. A highly educated crude-physical mortal lacks the patience, will and good faith necessary to the investigation of soul-facts. A coarse condition pre- dominates in his aura, whereby his soul dominates his brain, and dictates conditions to nature under which alone he will " believe/* as he says. This peculiar condition of brain and soul-coarseness polarizes his aura and brain-aura to such an extent that the returning and wishing-to-manifest soul can- not stay, and will be prevented from manifesting by crude attracted forces. There will be fraudulent answers or a total failure of response. The crude forces here mentioned are attracted by the crude aura of the crude-souled mortal. The same is true when committees investigate mediums. They are of mixed, and of anxious, auras ; hence their results are generally nil. The learned mortal of crude-physical aura should not meddle with what is unattainable to him. His place Questions and Answers 239 is at the investigating table of the coarser elements of nature, such as the physical or medical sciences, wherein his crude aura will hinder him less. 52. Q. What individual has done most for the progress of the human race in the ~ast two thousand years ? A. The individual that in the past two thousand years has done most for the human race is Jesus of Nazareth. He was enabled to do what he did do for humanity through his wonderfully fine and highly developed aura, and its strongly mediumistic prop- erties. This combination enabled him to get com- munications from ancient souls and deliver them unchanged. Had not a few physical souls at times stolen access to, and taken advantage of, his mediumistic properties to give exciting and provok- ing communications through him, he could have lived unmolested. 53- Q- What is a sensible course of life to lead? A. A sensible course of life requires essentially three things : An occupation seriously followed ; daily mirth and happiness ; and intercourse with one's friends on high. There is enough of the first ; not enough of the second; too little of the third. A happy, cheerful and merry soul-feeding mortal has more credit in the higher realms than one sour-faced who forever criticises somebody or something. The sour fellow has no account there, because he deposits nothing. Whatever soul-force he has is spent in things electric. 240 Soul-Return 54. Q. How may soul-facts be investigated ? A, First, find an instrument that cares more for truth and success than financial compensation ; next, remember that success is impossible at a sitting in which books, business, aunts, cousins, gossip or literature fill one's head. Third, whatever is ob- tained should be kept private for some time. Lastly, in spite of preliminary failures or obstacles the search should be kept up. Success is inevitable, for reasons now known to the reader. 55. Q. In the case of a thief that escapes pun- ishment, what is his lot in the next world ? A. A person's theft is conspicuous in his aura. He cannot escape his aura. His aura is spotted. He was a thief here below, because his aura was spotted. His punishment in the Beyond is certain, for it is a consequence of his aura-condition. The thief will be in the company of low souls, unable to rise, los- ing valuable time. All of which, to a disembodied soul, is a severe punishment, a terrible calamity. 56. Q. What becomes of a spotted soul after transition ? A. It remains near the surface of the earth, which to a disembodied soul is like being chained to a post in a cellar. In common parlance it is hell. 57. Q. How may the human aura be developed or improved in one's earth-life ? A. By genuine prayer ; kind thoughts; just acts. 58. Q. What reward has the Beyond for mor- tals ? Questions and Answers 241 A. Quick progression, i. e., rapid transit to the divine zones, which to a disembodied soul is all that is grand and desirable. Punishment and reward, so- called, are not strange freaks of nature, but the results of psychic laws fixed and immutable like the law that heat expands all bodies. Owing to the fact that it lacks ripeness, earth-life is a punishment rather than a reward. 59. Q. How do disembodied souls arrange for visiting their loved ones at certain hours ? How do they know what is the clock ? A. Departed souls performing earth-labors post themselves on solar and local time. The clocks in their ethereal mansions are made of strongly condensed ether, similar to the material clocks of mortals. Although departed souls inhabiting the earth -spheres never see the sun, their days have the length of earth- days for the sake of convenience. 60. Q. If clocks in the spheres are made of ether of a less degree of condensation, of what nature or composition is this ether ? A. By means of their sensing capacity disem- bodied souls know and select iron currents, i. e., iron ether, the primeval substance of the metal which in its solid form is known as iron. Mortals know iron, i. e., solidified iron currents, through their senses. Ether currents exist in the earth's aura in myriads of kinds, grades and qualities. Departed souls experi- ence no difficulty in converting copper and zinc with some other ingredients into an alloy, by a process 242 Soul-Return unlike that of mortal metallurgy. A thorough study of materialization based on the methods of science will amply demonstrate the truth of this brief allu- sion. In most respects the reader's mortal world is a trashy imitation of the ether realms. Whatever is found in a condensed state at the surface of the globe is a poor counterfeit of the corresponding ether item in the spheres. Even human thought is a faint imitation — as a general thing a poor one — of the original thought existing in the world above. A building planned by a mortal architect is first erected in his brain-aura as a thought-product. This product consists of factors or elements drawn from the spheres. If the architect is mediumistic, or, in the language of the world, talented ; or a genius, i. e , a medium of extraordinary power, these factors or elements are moulded, shaped and combined with the aid of attracted souls who in their last incarnatediife were experts in planning buildings, The stronger his mediumistic capacity, the higher the character of the attracted souls. Should the reader find it difficult to conceive in- visible objects composed of strongly condensed ether, let him remember that a clairaudient person hears the result of ether tongues in motion, viz , words clearly enounced by departed souls ; and that these words in no wise differ from the same words emitted by mortal tongue. 61. Q. Since the ether organism called a "dis- embodied soul " resembles in all respects the clay Questions and Answers 243 organism called the Lord of Creation, how do disem- bodied souls take food, and how do they digest it ? A. The organs of a disembodied soul are the real, the original organs. As a result of the incarnation of the soul certain portions of them are materialized; the Lord of Creation possesses the aggregate of these materialized parts. A disembodied soul has a mouth, tongue, aesophagus, stomach, intestinal canal, and so forth. It absorbs fumes ; it digests them after the manner of the digestion of the material body. In- stead of drinking it absorbs a peculiar kind of water vapor, i. e., aqueous spray, much finer than the water vapor of the material world. Disembodied souls, be- ginning with the third sphere, have flower gardens round their homes, the vapors of which are food to them. 62. Q. Suppose a cannon-ball, flying through the air with a velocity of twelve hundred feet per second of time, happens to pass through a disem- bodied soul, what becomes of the soul ? A. The flight of the cannon ball has no effect upon the soul. The substance of which a disem- bodied soul is composed is so rare that an iron ball passing through it does not affect it. What happens in such a case resembles the stirring up of a pond with a stick : after removing the stick the water flows together again and forms the original body of the liquid, regardless of the previous disturbance. Soul- ether passes through the iron at the same time that the iron passes through the soul-ether. In other 244 Soul-Return words, if the ball were suspended in mid-air, and at rest, and a soul traversed it at the rate of twelve hundred feet a second of time, the soul would suffer no change. A solid body is so densely coarse that a rare fluid like ether passes through it, or it through ether, without the slightest alteration. This is an- alogous to the fact that rays of light are not inter- fered with by the severest storm. 63. Q. What is the velocity and mode of motion of disembodied souls ? What is their position dur- ing motion ? A. The soul is an ether organism, a magnetic entity. Except in the case of mediumistic auras its magnetic field is not large. One pole of the soul is in the aura of the brain ; the other in the aura of the generative organ. All souls, when in motion at the surface of the earth, are in an upright position, es- pecially when on duty in a mortal aura. When they pass through the air, their velocity is usually a trifle greater than that of rays of light, and smaller than that of most currents in the human body. Between points at some distance from one another, souls generally move with their body in a horizontal posi- tion, head to rear, their front toward the earth. Earth-sphere souls have no vision, but they " sense," and they move by means of currents ; they are aware of the darkness around them. When two disembodied souls are near one another, in order that they may sense each other, that is, know of each other's presence, a current must pass from one Questions and Answers 245 to the other. They see each other, however, when they happen to be in the aura of an instrument har- monious to both. 64. Q. How is the sex of infants predeter- mined ? A. The sex of infants is predetermined by the incarnation of the soul. Souls are either male or female. The result of the incarnation of a male soul is a male infant ; that of the incarnation of a female soul is a female infant. 65. Q. Is attraction between the sexes known in the Beyond ? A. Attraction between the sexes is known in the Beyond, inasmuch as many a disembodied male soul prefers associating with a disembodied female soul. Even divine souls find this difficult to explain. Mor- tal sex-passion, however, is unknown in the Beyond. 66. Q. Why is soul-science neglected ? A. Soul-science is neglected because the physical elements of human society oppose it, A large num- ber of men, and many who don men's clothes, fear the establishment of soul-science, because it might disestablish them ; which leads them to declare, that the facts and phenomena of soul-science are the works of Satan. That is, your loved one appear- ing, giving you tests of identity, good advice, hints toward living an unselfish life, and the admonition to forgive your enemy, they maintain is the mani- festation of Satan. This pretence has weight with the ignorant. 246 Soul-Return 67. Q. Why is not the human soul studied like other subjects such as, e. g., the human body? Why is it a plaything at the mercy of trapeze-performers ? A. People do not notice the soul as they notice a volcano in full activity. Nor does it impress them with the same importance as the human body or the brain. The world appreciates, first, gold ; next, the human body ; third, the brain. The soul might stand forth in order, if its rank in society could be arranged. 68. Q. Why did not soul-knowledge come earlier ? A. Had soul-knowledge come earlier it would have lacked intelligibility. It is based on ether currents, not on brain-made idols or painted images and old texts. It needed the world's progress, in- ventions, discoveries, ether facts and ether phe- nomena that were quarried in the past century. If at the time Peter of Amiens inflamed motley crowds to start a crusade in quest of certain bones a mortal had attempted to explain electric and magnetic attraction, repulsion and currents, the revolution of the earth, the telegraph, telephone and graphophone, not his days but his minutes would have been num- bered. At about that period of time began the era of human torture, mutilation and slaughter, which directly and indirectly destroyed over a hundred million human lives. To cite only one instance : The Duke of Alba tortured human beings in the Questions and Answers 247 Netherlands without cause ; hanged estimable citi- zens without a hearing, and executed persons under sham-proceedings, killing not less than eighteen thousand persons during his brief authority in that country. Which so delighted a distinguished Italian that he sent Alba a consecrated sword, calling him his "dear and beloved son"; and to Alba's chief, King Philip II of Spain, he sent a letter of thanks and blessings for Alba's course. In those days the contents of this volume would have been neither comprehensible nor acceptable. Things were con- sidered important at that time which now no longer interest humanity. 69. Q. What causes the grotesque variety of faces in a crowd ? A. The grotesque variety of faces in a crowd is caused by the fact that no two souls are alike. Indi- vidualism is a principle of nature. 70. Q. What notions, entertained by mortals, seem particularly odd to departed souls ? A. The following are some of the notions that seem odd to departed souls : Nothing exists except what is visible to mortals ; an individual ceases to exist when his body dies ; individuals in order to exist must have flesh and bones ; the only real things are those which man can grasp with the senses ; gaseous individuals such as souls are a myth ; the universe is made specially for queen- bees ; the souls of this globe are vastly better than those of other globes ; the government of the earth 248 Soul-Return is left to a lot of hoodlums ; nature is a poor madam fenced in by philosophers and wiseacres; nature cares more for one people than for an- other. 71. Q How should mortals view the material forms and duties of life ? A. A mortal should not be bewildered by the great varieties of physical forms and appearances, nor believe that they are the truth and essence of what they claim to be. They should be viewed merely as nature's means of soul-progression. Nor should he neglect earth-life's possibilities in the con- templation of the future and the Beyond. He is placed within the electric of the earth for a wise purpose ; his paramount duty is to be human, and engage in human pursuits. But his instruction, guidance and control in worldly as well as ethereal matters require his proximity to one or more of his departed loved ones. 72. Q. Are legal divorces needed? A. Legal divorces are needed and desirable wherever they promote the happiness and prosperity of either party They are as desirable as marriages. Instruction in soul-science will diminish divorces, and increase the number of marriages. 73- Q- What becomes of the divine souls ? A. The divine souls, having completed their immense tasks in the earth-spheres and studied the currents of the earth's aura and its souls, leave this planet by means of currents specially adapted to this Questions and Answers 249 purpose. Some of them proceed to Jupiter ; the others to Saturn. Every human being, even the lowest savage, however dull his brain, must ulti- mately become a divine soul, and after long ages depart for either of those planets. 74. Q. How do we know that Jupiter and Saturn are populated by disembodied souls ? A. Ancient divine souls of the upper portion of the tenth sphere of the earth's aura, have stated that planets Jupiter and Saturn are populated by such souls. Their information imports absolute verity. Occasionally a message passes between the earth and either of the two planets, generally Jupiter. It comes in pictures ; it is wafted to our globe by magnetic currents of a peculiar kind that strike the earth after the manner of the light rays that come from those planets. The message-currents are so attenuated that only the oldest tenth-sphere souls can decipher them. 75. Q. When will the last mortal leave this globe ? A. The transition of the last mortal upon our globe will not differ from the ordinary occurrence called death. Nature does not change her plan regarding the soul's terrestrial progression The time elapsing until reincarnation shall cease upon this planet is long. The influence of the crude- physical at the surface of the globe and in the earth- spheres prevents its being shortened. 76. Q. What is Telepathy? 250 Soul-Return A. Telepathy is the sensation or impression experienced by a mortal who sensates attenuated ether currents, generally those coming from a dis- tance, 77- Q- What is Hypnotism ? A. Hypnotism is the disturbing effect of a de- parted soul upon portions or a portion of a human aura and one or more organ-auras. By " disturbing effect " is meant that the respective organ-aura or aura-portion is deprived of the motion of its particles among themselves. 78. Q. What is Suggestion ? A. Suggestion as applied to hypnosis is the aid of the brain-aura in the work of the departed soul that wishes to hypnotize. 79. Q. How may war and bloodshed be dimin- ished for the present, if not entirely avoided ? A. War and bloodshed will be diminished by the familiarity with the fact, that the fumes of blood that has been spilt attach themselves to the slayer or slayers, and harm them in the Beyond, in spite of a million absolutions, pardons or indulgences. 80. Q. How may the evil committed by mortals of the earth-bound class be diminished ? A. Mortals of the earth-bound soul should be well taken care of, to be able to improve during their life in the form. Separate camps, of large areas, well-guarded and well-equipped, should be set aside for them, to prevent them from. coming in contact with the outside world. Questions and Answers 251 81. Q. Why are some persons afraid to meet re- turning souls ? A. Some persons fear to meet a returning soul because they are cowards by nature ; others, because their conscience keeps them away ; others again be- cause they are indifferent to what happens to the individual after death. 82. Q. Since earth-sphere souls, i. e., the ma- jority of departed souls, are blind, and move about using their spirit-eyes, how are they aware of objects at a distance ? A. Earth-sphere souls are not aware of objects at a distance. They have no knowledge of matters and things except those things in current touch with them. They never see the sun or moon ; they are not aware of the presence of mountains, rivers or railway tracks unless they are close upon them or in the aura of a medium or mediumistic person that is harmonious to them. When a disembodied soul is in such a harmonious aura it can see within the extent of the aura. 83. Q- Why do dying persons sometimes see the faces of departed friends or loved ones ? A. Dying persons sometimes become clairvoyant, owing to the fact that in such cases the spirit-eyes of the soul about to depart have become more inde- pendent, able to behold condensed ether entities in a mediumistic aura, which aura is either that of the dying person or of some other mortal. 84. Q. How comes it that the approaching 252 Soul-Return death of a person is sometimes announced to a dis- tant friend or relative in a way different from the ordinary ? A. The approaching death of a person is some- times announced to a friend or relative by means of raps, speech or other psychic phenomena. Such manifestations occur only when the friend or relative is a member of the battery. They are produced through currents operated not by the departing soul but by some other member of the battery present. 85. Q. What does it mean when raps and other noises are heard in a building constantly ? A. Raps and other psychic manifestations con- tinuously heard in some part of a building mean, that physical souls are performing labor in a medium- istic aura or in remnants of mediumistic currents. Every such rap or other manifestation is work done by a departed soul, and helps this soul in its pro- gression. 86. Q. Is it true that graveyards swarm with departed souls ? A. Graveyards are the natural homes of many crude-physical departed souls. They are held to their bodies by physico-psychic currents, which in the case of lower-class souls are not easily torn, but subsist for some time after transition, still attracting the soul to the body under ground. Cremation of their bodies would benefit such souls. 87. Q. Since a disembodied soul has no arms or limbs, why, when it is visible to a clairvoyant, may Questions and Answers 253 the soul appear as a complete human being, the per- fect counterpart of human life ? A. Disembodied souls using their condensing powers may create their own arms and limbs, such as they had when living in their incarnated state. More than that : They may change their soul-face into a face resembling their last incarnated face. They do these things by virtue of their soul-powers, one of which is the power of condensation. 88. Q. Where is the most essential and im- portant part of the human soul situated ? A. The most important part of the soul is the aura. It protects the inner parts of the soul, and is the exponent of the entire system. The human soul is not a lump, figure or kernel in a nutshell. It is a complex entity, composed of many parts, each of which is essential to the whole. Particular currents hold these different parts together, and make them sympathetic to one another. The various parts of the body are condensed or materialized portions of their respective ether parts. The conglomeration of different parts of the soul is very strange. For example, what relation has the oesophagus to the heart ? None. What relation has the lung to the brain ? None. Yet these organs are important ether portions of the soul. The brain- aura serves to furnish material for steering the whole ; the remaining organs serve for the main- tenance of the body, the soul-body or the material body as the case may be. Now the real ego, the part 254 Soul-Retuin that steers the whole and determines the character and nature of the soul, are certain non-material- ized central organs, which require no materialization because in a certain sense they are independent of the brain or brain-aura, and of all the other organs. To describe these central organs would require a separate book, and necessitate the descrip- tion of currents utterly non-describable to the scien- tific reader. They are situated between the brain and the generative organ. They are intimately connected with the aura. To mortals, a knowledge of the aura and its functions must for the present suffice. 89. Q. When a person is in the hypnotic state, is the central portion of the soul affected ? A. The central portion of the soul is never affected by hypnosis. 90. Q. What is the effect of the use of tobacco upon the soul after transition ? A. The use of tobacco harms the soul after transi- tion in this way : The tobacco fumes — not the smoke — enter the aura-tissue and produce there a set of currents which interfere with certain magnetic currents in the aura. After transition the aura is not as strong as it should be, owing to the fact that it must waste force on neutralizing the tobacco currents. To seance-goers it is no secret, that women, being non-smokers, ^ are stronger when appearing material- ized, that is, they manifest with more force than most Questions and Answers 255 men-souls. This difference is owing to the weakening effect of tobacco currents in the male aura. 91. Q. Do alcoholic beverages harm the soul in its progression after transition ? A. Alcoholic beverages harm the soul in its pro- gression after death in this way : Alcohol, like tobacco, is an organic compound. As such it has invisible fumes, which mingle with the tissue of the aura. This mixture generates currents ; in the case of alcohol very crude electric currents which en- feeble the aura after transition, because the aura must waste force or energy to neutralize the alcoholic currents. 92. Q. How comes it that tobacco and alcohol fumes remain in the aura after death ? A. The fumes of tobacco and alcohol, after once entering the human aura, are converted partly into electric ether currents, partly into other kinds of cur- rents. They combine more or less intimately with the aura-tissue, and thereafter form an integral por- tion of it. In nature nothing is lost. The currents of organic fumes are among the most lasting tissues. Coarse food causes similar existing, damaging condi- tions of aura-tissue. 93- Q- Why does pure love benefit the human soul ? A. Pure love benefits the human soul, because it engages the soul-body. It affects the brain and other organs indirectly. It stimulates the non-materialized 256 Soul-Return soul-portion, and thereby affects the entire system, in- cluding the psychic part of the ego and the aura. We have observed the aura of mortals that love with their soul, not with their senses ; notably do we remember the soul of a woman who loved like a divine soul, that is, with the soul-body, and with noth- ing else. She was a highly-developed soul. Her aura shone in a brighter tint ; its motions were slightly accelerated ; its depth was steadily increas- ing. 94. Q. Why is the human soul precious ? A. We are not acquainted with the reason why the human soul is precious ; but we know that it is a psychic not a physical entity. This makes it an organism of a high order. Besides, its progression is a wonderful evolution from a very dark, crude ether body. 95. Q. Why is human life precious ? A. Human life is precious, because on this globe nature's all-important task is the maintenance and progression of the human soul in a human body. Whoever destroys or tends to destroy the human body violates her law. The slayer of mankind, the miser, the rich, the false teacher, the bellicose orator, the thief, the liar, suffer in the Beyond in proportion to the damage their life has inflicted upon the lives of their incarnated fellow souls. 96. Q. Why is the night-time most favorable to the labors of departed souls on terra firma ? Questions and Answers 257 A. The night-time is most favorable to the earth- labors of departed souls on terra firma, because light- rays exert a dissolving effect on condensed ether entities. The human body, the animal body, and the plant are protected from dissolving influences in the daytime by the constant effect of nutrition, which sup- plies waste-tissues and neutralizes dissolving currents. 97- Q- What effect upon a mortal has his com- munion with a departed friend or loved one ? A. The effect of the communion carried on by a mortal with a departed friend or loved one is above all beneficial to the mortal's health. He will be told what to abstain from in the way of eatables that are difficult for him to assimilate. No two human beings assimilate the same kind of food with the same ease. In that as in many other important matters every mortal has his personal equation. Medical science does not, cannot, individualize ; in the adjustment of personal peculiarities, therefore, it is utterly helpless. The mortal will receive suggestion specially adapted to his case, modified by his past life, and wherever possible, modifying past habits. His daily dress, habits of exercise, choice of companions will be dis- cussed. He will learn from his unseen friends whether his meals are prepared in a careful or care- less manner; whether the ways of the cuisine are clean ways. In the next place, he will be told who are his friends ; what they will be in a hundred years hence ; 258 Soul-Return whether he is liked by one, loved by another, hated by still another, or an object of complete indifference with a fourth. Friends still in the flesh sometimes simulate friendship. 98. Q. Can a person become so proficient in the communication with departed friends and loved ones as to be permanently benefited ? Can he outgrow the fraud-period every investigator is exposed to ? A. Every person can become so proficient in the practice of communicating with some one or two departed friends or loved ones, except the persons so unfortunate as to be earth-bound souls. The reason of this exception lies in the fact, that scarcely any one among the better class of departed souls would care to approach an earth-bound soul. Close proximity to such an aura, whether it is that of a mortal or a dis- embodied soul, tends to spoil one's aura-tissue. Of course, proficiency is based upon patient labor, extending over at least a year. In this world a mor- tal obtains nothing that will be of permanent value in the Beyond without laboring for it. 99. Q. Since earth-life means soul-life in a form, for the purpose of soul-improvement, how come about ten per cent of the entire population of this globe to be developed souls ? Why were they incarnated ? A. About ten per cent of developed souls and such as are nearly developed are incarnated in order that their lives may benefit the remaining ninety per cent. They are martyrs to a great cause. Questions and Answers 259 100. Q. Why may creeds and sects be called artificial systems ? A. Creeds and sects may be called artificial sys- tems, because they are not based upon facts of the psychic part of nature, but upon productions of human brains ; that is, brain-aura currents. Now brain-aura currents are facts of psychic nature only in so far as their existence goes ; they are not founded upon any set of psychic facts. 10 1. Q. Why are earthy, physical souls in human garb disposed to criticise and ridicule mat- ters that are above the material plane of life ? A. Earthy, physical mortals criticise anything that transcends the material plane of life, because their aura is coarse, and their brain-aura currents, i. e., thoughts, are coarse, that is, devoted solely to material things. But such thoughts are physically strong; they repel or crush more attenuated, refined currents. 102. Q. After the transition of a crude-physical soul, and during his magnetic sleep, who, if any one, stands guard over it ? A. After the transition of a crude-physical soul, and during its magnetic sleep, some loved one stays with it, or engages a friend to stay with it until it is in a stable position, except in cases of earth-bound or otherwise abnormally coarse souls. The loved one must be relieved at least every four or five hours by some generous soul that lends its services for that labor. The watch is necessary until the sleeping soul 260 Soul-Return awakens, to protect it against evil-disposed souls which the Beyond, i. e., the lowest sphere near the earth's surface, contains in great numbers. (Other volumes of this writer explain this danger more fully.) io 3- Q« What, if any, information has a soul of its impending condensation and incarnation ? A. Souls receive no information of their impend- ing condensation for incarnation. A divine soul that makes a specialty of this kind of work, condenses the soul into the size of about a walnut ; another divine soul takes it and plants it in any convenient " garden- spot," where it grows into an ego and in due time be- holds what in common parlance is called the light of day. The process is one of the innumerable mys- teries of nature. 104. Q. When may the psychic decay of a nation begin ? A. The psychic decay of a nation may begin a century before the dawn of its material decline. The decline may be at its height, yet the country still revel in opulence, brains, pig-iron, pigs and bubbles. The psychic decline of a nation is a process of ether decomposition, which, once begun, remains in con- tinuous operation. The ether vibrations known as light rays from the Polar star are to-day the same as they were thousands of years ago ; the psychic de- cline of Rome began shortly before the First Punic War was still active ; wars, expansion, imperialism. Questions and Answers 261 papal Christianity could not check it. Unlike the blessings of medical science the blessings of ether are still occult, as occult as were Therapeutics five thousand years ago. 105. Q. What is meant by genuine prayer? A. Genuine prayer is an appeal to one or more divine souls for particular currents. It is distin- guished from ordinary or common prayer in this that the latter does not land anywhere; it merely stirs the air about the place of prayer. 106. Q. Why does common prayer land no- where ? A. Common prayer lands nowhere because it does not go anywhere. 107. Q. How is the common prayer prayed ? A. Common prayer is prayed by the brain and the brain-aura. 108. Q. How is genuine prayer prayed ? A. Genuine prayer is prayed by the soul. 109. Q. What is the earliest age at which a young person may begin to practise genuine prayer ? A. About seven years. 1 10. Q. Who said that the Lord's Prayer was given Jesus by way of Inspiration ? A. The soul that gave the Lord's Prayer to Jesus by way of Inspiration was Zoroaster. The authors of this book have heard him state it. in. Q. Where was Zoroaster when Jesus was crucified ? 262 Soul-Return A. During the crucifixion of Jesus, Zoroaster was close to him. 112. Q. If Zoroaster was so close, why did he not save him ? A. Zoroaster could not save Jesus, because the conditions of Jesus' s aura at that time were unfavor- able to the work of divine souls. 113. Q. Can a sick person practise genuine prayer? A. Sick persons are able to practise genuine prayer, generally speaking ; but there are cases where sick persons are unable to practise it. This depends upon the condition of their body-currents. 114. Q. Why is it necessary at a seance that the members have their feet uncrossed, that is, flat upon the floor ? And why does the practice of genuine prayer require the same position ? A. Every member of a seance, and he that prac- tises genuine prayer, must sit with feet uncrossed, that is, his feet flat upon the floor, because in such a position the feet receive from the earth the greatest quantity of the needed fluid, which is often called electric. This fluid mingles with the main current of the battery, and contributes to the production of phenomena. 115. Q. Why is it at some seances necessary for the sitters to join hands ? A. The sitters should join hands whenever the main current is weak. The chain of elements in- creases the quantity of current. Questions and Answers 263 116. Q. Why cannot everybody obtain messages or communications from departed souls ? A. Only those can get messages or communica- tions from departed souls whose aura possesses the property requisite for receiving them. Similarly, only a wire connected with a battery can receive and pass a telegram. So the human aura, to be the re- cipient and bearer of a message from the Beyond, must possess electric properties, which the ordinary aura does not possess. Whatever message or communication one mortal receives from another in the common every-day opera- tions and transactions between persons, is possible only through the agency of currents which in one way or the other enable a person to think, speak and hear. Man must accustom himself to consider his daily transactions and operations the results of cur- rents. 117. Q. How does a divine soul inspire the mor- tal that is called a genius ? A. A genius is inspired by a divine soul in this way : The divine soul accompanied by a number of other divine souls of a less-developed rank, by a large number of developed seventh-sphere souls, and a num- ber of good physical souls, arrive in the aura of the genius. The divine soul issues forth its thoughts and produces pictures of them, which are perceived by the other divine souls. These souls then reproduce the pictures, at times amplifying them ; after which 264 Soul-Return they are fully perceived by the seventh-sphere souls. Then the seventh-sphere soul most harmonious to the mortal, reinforced by physical currents, impresses the new pictures upon such portions of the mortal brain as lead direct to the cells or nerve-centres that com- municate with the channels through which writing is performed, if writing is the work of the genius, or to the vocal chords if speaking is his work. The cur- rents select the channel that affords the least re- sistance. The difference, therefore, between an inspirational writer and an inspirational speaker lies in the construction of the communicating channel. If the gifted mortal's aura is so connected with the auditory apparatus that the combination of aura with the apparatus produces what is called a musical genius, the melodies — not the harmonies — are given by the inspiring divine soul in the same way, but are led along the channel last referred to. Most such composers first hum the inspired melody ere they transpose it on paper. In similar ways other arts are given expression by the inspirational phase of mediumship. 118. Q. How does a departed soul impress a mediumistic person ? A. A mediumistic person is impressed by the act of a departed soul in this way : The impressing soul, having sufficient physical currents, impresses its thought upon the gifted mortal's brain. The brain takes it up, and mingles it with any harmonious Questions and Answers 265 affiliated brain-currents, whereby the thought is modi- fied, amplified, transformed or otherwise changed. Then the new thought impresses itself upon the brain a second time, this time in a more distinct and intense manner, so that the mortal is imbued with the idea that the impression is original with him. It then passes along one of the several channels referred to in the previous Answer, according to the special cur- rents of the individual being on literary, musical or other artistic lines. The more refined the ether of the impressing soul, the higher the nature of the impressions. 119. Q. How does a musical composer get the harmonies to his melodies ; and how does a writer obtain descriptions ? A. The harmonies in a composition are the work of the composer's brain and brain-aura ; similarly, the descriptions, dialogues and other incidentals of a lit- erary production come from the brain and brain-aura of the writer. 120. Q. Can a person of crude-physical soul be made to understand his psychic condition ? A. A person of crude-physical soul can be made to understand his psychic condition when he awakens from his magnetic sleep in the Beyond ; seldom before. 121. Q. How is the brain of an ordinary busi- ness mortal impressed and by what class of souls ? A. The ordinary business mortal, unless medium- istic, is impressed by souls of the earth-spheres. He 266 Soul-Return that is at the mercy of more than one soul, or of a few souls that impress him successively or alternately according to their and his temporary condition and harmony, is of a vacillating character, ever amending his plans and methods. In the course of a month a hundred impressing souls may have had access to his aura. If he practises genuine prayer he will be saved the ordeal and disgrace resulting from such a state of mind, because in that case his aura will be rendered strong enough to resist so great a diversity of currents. 122. Q. When is a medium fully developed ? A. A medium is never fully developed. 123. Q. How may one know the length of the radius of a medium's aura ? A. The length of the radius of a medium's aura may be known from the distance at which the me- dium's controls are able to read inscriptions on rail- way cars, houses, signboards and the like. 124. Q. When will the earth be depopulated ? A. The earth will be depopulated after the transi- tion of the last surviving mortal. The precise time of this event is impossible to tell. 125. Q. When will the next installment of tenth- sphere souls leave this planet for Jupiter and Saturn ? A. The next installment of tenth-sphere souls will leave this planet for Jupiter and Saturn sometime within this century. 126. Q. Will Jesus of Nazareth be among those that will leave the earth during this century ? Questions and Answers 267 A. He is one of the tenth-sphere souls that will leave the earth for planet Jupiter during this century. 127. Q. If a tenth-sphere soul that shall leave the earth in this century has a loved one in the tenth sphere that is not among those that are going to leave with him, will that soul depart alone ? A. A tenth-sphere soul ripe for exchange of planet will leave his unripe loved one behind. The loved one may follow with the next installment, but may not go to the same planet. In such a case there is a separation apparently final. Whether it is final or not we cannot say. 128. Q. Who tells tenth-sphere souls when to leave the earth ? A. Nature's forces ; the same forces, but of a higher grade, that tell the young chicken to leave the egg. 129. Q. Do departed souls enjoy worldly pleas- ures such as theatres, concerts, lectures and the like ? A. Yes ; and they read whenever they have an opportunity, within a harmonious mediumistic aura on terra firma. They cultivate the arts and sciences. They develop their knowledge along with their soul. (More concerning this may be gathered from other volumes written through this instrument.) 130. Q. Who is the greatest and most honored of the oldest souls of the tenth sphere ? A. Yarmen, of the sunken Atlantis. 268 Soul-Return 131. Q. Could Yarmen give an account of the catastrophe that befell that island ? A. Yarmen could give a full account of the sud- den collapse and sinking of that island, through an automatic-writing instrument. But his pictures re- quire an enormous quantity of force. The quantity of force might be gathered for the purpose, but the purpose is not one for which the strength of this in- strument should be sacrificed. Things more necessary have been, and still are to be, written through this instrument. 132. Q. Which of the arts is best liked by de- parted souls ? A. Both the earth-sphere souls and the divine souls prefer music, especially instrumental music, to any of the other arts. In part this is attributable to the aid which music affords to their progression. I 33- Q- What occupation for man do departed souls prefer ? A. All departed souls, without distinction of grade or sphere, like for a man to devote himself to agriculture. 134. Q. What occupation do departed souls like women to follow ? A. All departed souls, except the earth-bound class, like woman to follow the occupation of motherhood. Index Alba, Duke of 28 Aura 20 Aura, Depth 22 Aura, Divine 194 Aura, Functions 24 Aura, Mediumistic . 44 Authors of this Book 61 Automatic Writing 59 Bands, for Materialization 74 Bands, Tenth Sphere 195 Battery . 67, 11 1, 113 Beethoven 91 Blood 103 Bloodshed 175 Body-Organs 33> %° Brain 148 Brain-Aura 21, 65, 144 Brain-Traces 144 Character, Human 131 Charlemagne 176 Clairvoyant 13, 101 Color 64 Communications from Ancient Soul .... 104 Conclusion 214 Condensation 47, 81 Conscience 96 Contents, Table of 4 Controls 84, 117 Crude-Physical 45, 125-7 Currents, Electric 34 269 270 Index Currents, Magnetic 34 Currents, Power of 165 Currents . 144 Decay of Nations 166 Dematerialization 65 Detection of Crude-Physical Souls . . . .172 Detection of Earth-Bound Souls 173 Development of Soul 51 Developed Souls . . . . . . . 28, 29 Divine Souls 189 Divine Spheres . 188 Earth-Bound Souls 173 Earth-Spheres . 31 Egos, Six . . . . . . . . . 138 Eighth -Sphere Souls 190 Eighth-Sphere Activities 1 90-3 Equation of Life 174 Ether . . . 64, 165 Ether, Two Properties of 47 Etherealization 13, 80 Fraud, Different Kinds no, 115 Fraud, Psychic 109 Gravity . . . . . ... . . 56 Harmonies 204 Human Character . ... ... . . 131 Imagination . . 180 Impression . . .90 Impression, General 95 Incarnation . ... 23, 32, 48, 51, 78, 219 Individualism . 154, 219 Inspiration . ........ 89 Index 271 Instruction and Currents 144 Introductory Remarks ........ 9 Jesus 118, 124, 162 Lessing 159 Levitation 54 Light Rays 76 Light Difficulty . . .77 Lincoln, Abraham 156 Locating Phase * . . 97 Longfellow 91 Luminosity 200 Mahomet 118 Marriages 210 Materialization 13, 66 Materialized Souls, Activities 80 Mind 179 Mozart 89 Napoleon I 28 Nero 28 Ninth-Sphere Souls 193 Ninth-Sphere Activities ...... 193-4 Obstacles to Soul-Communion 158 One, Nature's Number 197 Organ-Aura 20, 33 Organic Life, Defined 23 Other Worlds !07 Philip II of Spain 28 Physical, Necessary I2 4 Physical Souls \ .28 Physical Manifestations 07 Population of Earth X rr 272 Index Prayer, Genuine 159, 165 Progression of Soul 31, 156 Progress of Mankind 219 Psychic Fraud 109, 115 Psychometric Phase .94 Purpose of Life 29, 30 Questions and Answers 222 Raps 56 Raphael 89 Retention of Soul in Body . . . . . 33 Shakespeare .90 Schopenhauer 70 Scientific Branches 147 Seance after Death .40 Seers 92 Sex-Passion 139 Slate -Writing 57 Sleep, Magnetic . 37 Soul, Currents 23 Soul, Defined 20 Soul and Body Held Together 33 Soul-Labor 43 Soul, the Magnetic in Man 23 Soul, Physical . . . ... . . .122 Soul-Return 54 Soul, Structure of 47 Soul, Task of . 157, 200 Soul, Will of 50 Substitution 73 Table-Tipping 102 Tennyson 91 Tenth-Sphere Souls 194 Tenth-Sphere Activities ; . . . . . .194 Index 273 Tests ■ 71 Tests, Scientific, of Soul 82 Thought 129 Trance-Phase 84 Transfiguration 73 Transition ... 36 NOV 2 1903 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 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