SPIRITUAL SPHERES

 

      Next Part II-- 

I
THE SPHERE OF SELF

To those who consider that all of spiritual existence lies beyond death, perhaps our theme may not be interesting; but to those who consider that the spiritual existence means not only the state beyond death but the state of life here on earth, including all the existence of humanity, of which the earthy is but the stepping stone to higher degrees of existence, the theme will be interesting as presenting the gradations of that existence here and hereafter. 

The word sphere itself implies an orbicular circumference; but we use it strictly with reference to the state or condition of the human spirit, and not (except incidentally) with reference to the locality of that spirit.  The difference between a state of mind or condition of existence, so far as the spirit is concerned, and its locality, is noteworthy.  The state of the mind determines the sphere of the spirit, and, whether it be here or in spirit life, that state must be always considered as the sphere or condition in which the spirit lives. These states are in the form of gradations, and there is upon earth, until you reach a very high or exalted degree, precisely a corresponding state with every grade of spiritual life.

The first sphere, therefore, of human existence manifested upon earth is the sphere of selfishness.  The infant who grasps for food, cries aloud when in pain, knows nothing of the broad region of possibilities that lie enshrined within the spirit.  The first demonstration of human life is the demonstration of physical existence, and the babe in its mother's arms has no other sphere, for the time being, than that of physical life--of eating and sleeping, drinking and being clad, while all that slumbers within as the possible future man or woman is not perceived or known in the actions of the child. 

This is the wise provision of Nature to shield the spirit from premature demonstration and to protect the form until it shall have arrived at that stage of growth where it can support lofty thought and sustain the effort of the spirit within.  It is painful to witness a precocious development in a young child.  You always look upon a child that is unduly mature with pity and sympathy.  You know that the spirit is encroaching upon the physical life, and that the burden of that life becomes too great for that physical form to bear if the thought is prematurely unfolded.  Little men and women are not pleasant sights to behold.  You like healthful children, romping boys and girls, passing on, grasping at shadows, and laughing at the sunlight, and whose dimpled faces and fully developed forms show that they mean to stay awhile upon earth.  The spiritual state will take care of itself by-and-bye.  Let your children have the first sphere of existence.  Let them have an abundance of physical life and health.  Let them have the full development of limb and bone and muscle, that the spirit may do its work afterward. 

The sphere of infancy and childhood is the sphere of growth, and you must have growth before the soul can enstamp upon the physical form the images of thought and immortality.  But, after all, it is painful to know that in this form is encased an immortal soul that must wait until the unfolding of the physical life shall enable it to enstamp its immortal thoughts thereon; that you must wait perhaps wearily, perhaps patiently, perhaps with hope deferred and joy afar, until at last the form is unfolded, and the body becomes the fit receptacle for the thought that is enshrined within. 

And sometimes you have to wait beyond the age of childhood.  It is not always even that in youth or manhood the form is developed or the brain unfolded to give expression to the loftiest thought of the spirit.  It is not always nor often that the physical life can contain or express that which the spirit most desires.  But when it is coupled with genius or talent, lofty culture or divine comprehension, there are even then physical barriers and mental obstructions that mar the seeming perfection of the outward world.  The infancy of the race spiritually corresponds precisely with the infancy of humanity physically. 

The first question when people begin to worship is: "Shall I be saved?  Shall I have immortal life and happiness?" Now, when you think of it a moment, this question embodies the very soul of selfishness.  The primal foundation of spiritual life, according to the highest standard, is self unconsciousness or abnegation; but here, in the infancy of the race, the children of humanity, having revealed to them the consciousness of an immortal state and of Deity, are asking the question of individual salvation.  Of course the child must have food and shelter and proper clothing, and of course the spirit, in the infancy of its struggles for immortality, must feel itself to be sure and certain of existence.  But when you reflect, the creeds in which humanity has clothed itself, and the various forms of belief at which men have clutched in order to attain immortality, are just so many methods of pandering to the individual selfishness.   There is no heaven pictured by ancient mythology, by Oriental worship, by the Mussulman [Moslem], by the Hebrew, by the Christian, that in its very essential attributes does not contain a pandering to the individual selfishness.  It is the you that must be saved; it is the I that must find happiness.  It is the everlasting ego that obtrudes itself between you and the Deity, and you pray to God that you may be saved. 

In the crudities of nations and in the early development of worship the forms of praise accorded with this idea of selfishness and assumed a physical shape, so that the worship as love, or fear, or praise, or adoration, took an external form, and it was believed that the gods could only be propitiated by the sacrifice, first, perhaps of blood, afterward of other votive offerings, until finally we believe it was Curtius who thought that Rome could only be saved by a human offering unto the gods.  You will consider, then, that many human beings with exalted purpose throw themselves into the great chasm to fill up the abyss of love, not for themselves but for others.  The primal religions, however, taught that salvation, although an individual gift, was only to be obtained by self sacrifice, and the loftiest moral of the past is that he who has been greatest in religious history is he who has offered himself for humanity. 

Whosoever, therefore, seeks happiness finds it not, and whosoever pursues his own salvation generally omits the things that will entitle him to the highest place in the kingdom of heaven.  They who through creed or ceremonial are more anxious for their own soul's inheritance of happiness and immortal life than for the benefit and welfare of their fellow beings, are not of those that enter the innermost of the kingdom of heaven. 

The first sphere of spiritual existence, like the first sphere of material existence, is thronged with human beings in pursuit of self interests.  Temporal life, every day enjoyment, lead you to a consideration of this subject, and you oftentimes find yourself suddenly checked in some career or pursuit from the very consciousness that the entire purpose with which you follow it is after all a selfish one.  He who devotes his life to others, who is inspired by a lofty principle of self forgetfulness, becomes enthroned as poet, martyr or sage; but he who grapples with material problems solely for his own emolument finds that they fade in his hand, and that even laurels won by ambition are perishable and feed him not in spirit. 

The state beyond death does not differ from the usual state of men in the first condition; but if you cross the line, the spiritual film or veil that divides you from the first sphere in the other world, you will find it peopled with spirits, men and women--souls that have gone out from your earthly life mostly with this pursuit of self still upon them, mostly still as infants in their swaddling clothes, mostly still clinging to the external or first stage of life, instead of seeking the inner and innermost stages of being.  The result is a corresponding spiritual poverty; for you find that when you have pursued self only you are defeated in the object you have sought, and that the spirit takes its next step chiefly from the consciousness of the paucity and poverty of its gifts while having pursued its happiness below. 

We say that the voluptuary pursuing every pleasure of the senses, and grappling with external life solely, is not more selfish than the Christian or the worshiper who pursues religion solely that his soul may enter the kingdom of heaven.  We say that he who dives down into matter, seeking to gain therefrom all that life can extort, supping at the cup of external enjoyment, is not more a debauchee than he who prays and worships and follows the name of religion that his soul alone may be saved while his friend, his kindred, or even one other human soul may be left in anguish, and outside the gates of heaven. 

That creed or religion which teaches a man to seek first the kingdom of heaven for himself and his own salvation, is as materialistic and void of spiritual elevation as the paradise of Mahomet [Mohammed] that presents the future as the abode of pleasure, and reveals in the kingdoms of the blessed only a repetition of physical delights on earth.  That heaven into which you are invited as a perpetual devotee at the shrine of your own happiness, and which you pursue with a view solely to have your individual sins forgiven and wiped out in the sacrificial blood of an innocent victim, we say is as selfish an enjoyment, though it may perhaps aesthetically be of a more refined kind, as that which he enjoys who tips his midnight cup and proposes the health of a thousand deities unnamable in names of worship. 

We ask you briefly to consider this.  The mother who plunges her babe into the Nile or Ganges asks not salvation for herself but for her child.   Remotely this is selfish, but it is self abnegation, after all, of the outermost tie of physical existence, and of the innermost tie of maternal love, save that that love still abides and prompts her to the offering of her child.  He who offers himself a voluntary sacrifice without knowing whether fame, immortality, human life, or God above shall consider his offering valid, is the true seeker for the kingdom of heaven.  He who prays and prays, saying over daily and nightly the prayers by which he hopes to pave his pathway to heaven, forgetting the millions of souls that are left in the outer darkness, and not perhaps thinking that these also might be uplifted and saved by his hand--he is the religious debauchee; he is the one who propitiates the god of self.  He enters the spiritual existence not in the exalted state that he hopes to find, but within the narrow wall of his own individual prayers and selfishness. 

We may illustrate what we mean by two forms, between which lie all the self interests of humanity, and which show the state of spiritual existence of the human mind.  Here is a materialist--we do not mean materialistic in a scientific sense, but in an external sense.  He devotes his life and time to external pleasure.  He builds up only those things which will administer to his self love and his aims.  He gathers wealth that he way fulfill every wish and desire of his external mind.  He gropes with all the problems of existence that he may surround himself with luxury and pleasure, and an honorable name among men.  He leads a life of self interest; all that he does for others he does that he may promote his own interest.  He may be generous or kind of heart, but this is also that he may have helpful hands when he needs, and may gather around him those who will praise his name and consider him great among his kind.  He passes out of earth life.  His sphere in earth life has been such as you know, perhaps, that of a hundred men to have been.  He has ministered to the pride and folly of others, and gratified the lesser tastes of others in gratifying his own larger tastes; and he has found a sufficient number of friends who would bask in the sunlight of his presence because of the plausibility and excuse which it gave them also for selfish enjoyment. 

He enters spirit life.  His is no exalted condition of saint.  His is no heaven set apart for the elect and the just.  He mounts to no altitude because of self denial; there are no adorning memories around his way, no charities with which to grace his habitation.  He enters, perhaps, a void and barren waste, filled only with the selfishness of his own individual life.  He turns from one form to another of the pleasures that satiated him upon earth, and that meet him there face to face as the only inheritance of his spirit.  He finds his life has been barren, devoid of use, and that he has no spiritual power on which to rise.  He hovers near the scenes of his former enjoyments.  He enjoys vaguely and by reflection the repetition of his pleasures in the external life of others below.  He has no anchorage of the soul, no starting point; he does not know the one secret upon which the soul takes the first step in its spiritual advancement--namely, forgetfulness of self in the happiness of another.  He did not find it here; he has not found it as yet, and therefore his spiritual existence, as we say, is a barren waste.  He associates with other spirits like himself who also have no motive nor object; they float around in an atmosphere of self existence.  They perhaps are not wicked.  They do not intend malice, but having no purpose in view they fulfill simply the objects of each casual moment, and drift and drift until they are beset by some spiritual or other power that draws them away from themselves. 

Yonder is a saint--in the estimation of his fellows.  He has fulfilled, externally, all laws of Christian devotion.  He has prayed regularly, and according to every theological idea fulfilled his Christian duties.  He has even been kind and charitable and beneficent.  His name is arrayed in all lists of charitable objects and purposes on behalf of the church and the welfare of Christianity.  He is known and talked of among mankind as a beneficent man.  He has indeed sought the kingdom of heaven by prayers, by vigilance, by justice to his fellow men.  He has not told a lie, because he might not find the sacred citadel when he should die.  He has violated none of the commandments, because if he did he was fearful he would not enter the kingdom of heaven.  He has fulfilled every letter of the law, and given his life to the purposes of worship and devotion.  For what end has he done all this?  That his soul might be saved.  Did he think of the soul of the heathen when contributing to the Board of Foreign Missions?  Did he think of their probable physical and spiritual wants?  Did be think of the poverty at his own door when praying that his sins might be forgiven?  Did he think charitably of the erring one, the Magdalen, who had not the voice to pray, and to whom he might have spoken a word of kindness?  Did he, in his innermost soul, love, the humanity fashioned in the image of God, and thereby wish to be good that be might save them?  Nay, the one thought and supreme idea was, "Save me, oh, Lord!"  And who was he, that Christ and God should come out of their places in heaven for that one selfish pleading, and uplift him to the paradise of the blessed, while over there is a toiling mother, and yonder a chained slave, with no one to pray for them, who are weeping tears of anguish day and night for the sake of loved ones? 

Who was Christ, that this smooth faced Christian should be the one extolled and exalted into heaven, which, with its streets of gold paven with light and land flowing with milk and honey, was supposed to be his divine inheritance?  He prayed with one thought; he worshiped with one impulse; he had but one power, and that was to be saved himself.  He enters spiritual life.  He has his heaven.  The streets are paven with gold, glittering and shining, and cold as his own lifeless brain.  The walls are fashioned of shining light and alabaster whiteness, but without life, void and empty.  There is a heaven within which he is confined, and which he has fashioned for himself, and which is made of his own prayers and aspirations, and so narrow that he has no room to move therein.  He does praise God and sing, on the single harp string of his own selfishness, the song of adoration to the Deity, and oh I how it sounds! Not even the lost souls pictured by Milton, not even Dante's Inferno, could give forth such sound as that one song of solitary praise, for the salvation of this individual soul, from his own lips.  Is he saved?  The walls are adamant; the streets are lifeless; the sound of the voice beats back upon the brain and heart of the singer.  He has not learned the first lesson that his Master taught: The abnegation of the individual me, that others may be happy and blessed. 

Between these two extremes lie all the selfish pursuits of man in a heavenly direction, all the debauchery of creed, all the perversion of worship, all the exclusiveness of evangelical faith, all the tortures of the human mind into the supposition that the individual must be saved to the exclusion of the rest of mankind.  In this sphere are all pursuits that man follows for his own exclusive pleasure; and the spiritual state into which you enter out of that kind of existence on earth, is just such as you have prepared by the selfish pursuit of your own lives.  Nor will it answer and here comes a point of very searching scrutiny--nor will it answer to deny one's self for the sake of exaltation.  The very love and consciousness of praise; the very impulse that prompts self denial for recognition; the very fact that you do anything for the sake of the reward which it brings, is closing the door against the very object sought. 

Spiritual uplifting is in itself so subtle and so searching, that it will not have an offering which is given for the applause of men; it will not have an offering which is even given for self praise.  So that you cannot pat yourself after the act is done, and say,  "Was I not generous and self sacrificing and noble?"  He who is conscious of his generosity has no generosity.  He who is aware of being unselfish is not unselfish; and he who prides himself upon being saint or martyr, or sacrifices himself because of a desire to be such, enters not the abode which he seeks in passing from earthly life. 

We say that the first sphere of individual existence spiritually is, therefore, the sphere of self.  Men pursue religion as they pursue pleasure, as the warriors of old pursued fame, armed cap-a-pie, and prepared to encounter all kinds of terrors for the sake of achieving the kingdom of heaven. Every individual who desires spiritual uplifting, who wishes from the innermost the expression of that which is highest and best, seeks it not, expresses it not in these ways.

The average human life--and we leave it to your understanding, to your own introspection of yourselves--presents a spiritual state of self, and on entering the spiritual existence, the first plane of life into which you pass is that of your own wishes and desires.  These are sometimes as walls of adamant that encompass you; sometimes as shackles of iron that bind you down; sometimes they areas waste and arid deserts, grown and fashioned of your own desires and outward lives.  Sometimes they are as wildernesses of tangled thorns and briars, that bring no fruition of sweet fruits and no blossoming of lovely flowers.  We say that whoever is immured in selfishness after the period of intelligent, conscious life, is immured in dust and ashes.  Whosoever pursues any object, be it art, science or religion, for the purpose of the individual self, pursues that which leads but to bitterness and disappointment.  You do not remember--and perhaps you do--that the crowning work of the mind that reared St. Peter's, in Rome, was not enough to satisfy the mad ambition of 'Michael Angelo, but that he must needs be great in all things, burning up the blessings of art with the bitterness of that ambition which quenched all delight. 

You do know, perhaps, that the greatest warriors and statesmen of the world have been consumed in the fires which their own ambition has fed, and at last have, in exiled obscurity or by violence, faded from the earth.  You may not have heard, perhaps, of the wandering spirit who once, it is said, presented himself for recognition before the throne of Deity, and when asked what claim he had to the recognition of the Most High, said he had served the Deity well, had proclaimed his name abroad upon the earth, had been faithful to all the laws of Allah, had indeed enshrined every letter of every word in his heart.  "And for what end?" said the Deity.  "That l might besaved."  Then the soul thus uplifted by mad ambition was expelled from the presence of the Most High, who said: "Go try again; for this is not the offering that is acceptable in the sight of the Deity."  This seems to be a fable, but it is the fate of every individual spirit that hopes to reap reward from the mere praise of virtue and righteousness.  This may seem to be an overdrawn picture, but it is the actual spiritual state of those who pursue the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness merely for individual salvation. 

It is said by science that no one alone could be dropped from the universe by annihilation without destroying the harmony of the whole starry firmament; and that no star could fall from its place into oblivion without annihilating the universe.  If this be true of matter, which is but a breath, how much more must it be true of spirit, which is eternal?  How much more must it be true of souls that are linked together?

Any thought or power that is pursued merely for the love which you yourself will receive from it, or for the praise which humanity will give you, is not the thought which uplifts and exalts the spirit. 

Across the bridge of death, into the region of spiritual existences, we invite you to wander.  Your departed loved ones are there.  Their lives were fashioned, as your own are, of complicated wishes and desires; of impulses born of the spirit, or born of material life surrounding them.  They have made for themselves the habitations which they enter there.  Their lives have been clothed and adorned with their own wishes, impulses and aspirations.  They are received by kindred spirits into habitations adapted to them and prepared for their reception, and they enter those states in the spiritual condition in which they left the earth.   You cannot always judge what that spiritual condition is externally.  You may never judge it for one another.  If you judge it for yourself, you do well; but you must always consider that that life on earth which contains most of abnegation of self and unconsciousness of it, is the life that is most exalted in spiritual existence.  It is true that the mother by natural impulse loves her child.  It is true that that love when it is external may be a selfish love, but when it is exalted into the spiritual, it becomes one of self denial and devotion, and then it is that the mother is unconscious of her exaltation.  She gives her life as an offering for the lives of her children.  She lives for them, breathes for them, prays for them, nor ever thinks of the one sublime reward or recognition that may come afterwards.  If they love her in turn she is proud and grateful.  If they love her not, she still loves on, praying and weeping by turns, and only asking that they may be blessed. 

After such manner and in such meaning was the love of that Christ who taught abnegation of individual self.  After such manner and with such interpretation is the true spiritual elevation; and the selfishness, therefore, that pursues any object for the recognition of it, comes always before you as a barrier to this divine and perfect love. 

Oh, let us mark out for you that state or condition wherein, upon shoals and quicksands of selfishness and strife, spirits find themselves cast when freed from earthly fetters.  Let us point out to you how dry and and is the waste into which the soul must enter that has no thought save for its own salvation and that of its individual friends.  Let us say to you that the great scheme of uplifting the human spirit is not born of such impulse, and that spiritual states, could they speak to you with their many voices, and spiritual beings, could they with palpable tongues give utterance, would say to you: "Do good for its own sake, and live the life of present duty for its sake. Do that which is highest and best, regardless of what shall come hereafter; for the soul is in the hands of an infinite law, and that law is fashioned by an infinite power that is far kinder than human beings know.  No vengeful wrath, no propitiating offerings, no sacrificial flame, no bleeding doves nor slaughtered lambs, but only the conquest and victory over self, only the slaying of the demon passions that lurk in the human breast, only the fulfilling of the sublime duty of each moment--this is the preparation for the higher estate." 

Let us deal justly, and talk face to face with these spiritual beings.  Let them come to you as they are, not as your imagination pictures them; not the saint, not the angel, not the demon, but only as human beings, partly, and only partly, led by the spirit that is within.  Speak to them as they are; not with uplifted voices, as supposing them out of sight, for they are here in your midst.  Speak to the father, the mother, the friend, in the spiritual state to which their lives have assigned them, and they will tell you, whatever their condition may be, whether they exist upon arid waste, or in blossoming garden of spiritual fruition and life, that the wealth of the spirit (and its possessions) lies not in the pursuit of pleasure materially, intellectually or spiritually, but in doing the duty of every hour and day. 

Mozart's genius--yes, it may uplift the world on the wings of its song; but if it had not true praise in its soul, he was stranded on the first note of melody that rose from his inspired pen.  Kepler's science--yes, it reveals the voice of the stars and communicates to humanity the wonderful working of the spheres; but if it were pursued only with the intent and purpose of praise that humanity has given, the first star is a stumbling block in his pathway, and he meets a wall from which and over which he cannot rise.  The heart of the painter--yes, we have the Madonna of Raphael; but unless there were enshrined within his soul one sacred image of self forgetfulness for whom he toiled, no pictured Madonna shall pave his way to Paradise, and no sanctification by church or creed or worship of the world shall make his name great.   The poor laborer by the wayside, who toils every day for bread, and does it that his children may live, and who, when tears are in his eyes and sorrowings in his heart, has no lofty theme of art or song to turn to, may have paven his pathway with jewels brighter than all the works of genius or art in the world. 

Do not mistake your premises.  Do not consider things as uplifting that only gratify your senses and tastes.  Do not deceive yourself by thinking that art alone can make heaven or science alone, or that religion that is pursued for the mere sake of it.  Any art that does not diffuse itself into humanity and make it loftier and better, is in vain, and the artist of the world of souls is never ensphered in the panoply of his own creations without each creation mocking him from the walls of his habitation, unless they have been inspired by a supreme and controlling love.   The man of science finds himself in a whirlpool of atoms, laws, spaces, and stars that are without voice and meaningless, unless he, too, has been inspired by the helping hand of that love that recognizes that whatever helps another soul uplifts and strengthens the helper.  Any religion that does not clothe humanity with loftier virtue and grace--that does not, while in temple and cathedral praising Deity, at the same time reach out to every child of earth--any religion that excludes from the table of the Lord, from the marriage supper of the Lamb even the furthermost child of earth, shuts out the soul that worships there. 

We say that all humanity, entering at one time or another the first sphere of spiritual existence, must outgrow that sphere before they become spiritual or conscious of that which is highest and noblest in immortal life.  Whether abiding here and immured in earthly forms, or whether by the hand of death released from earthly forms, if the one secret has not entered the mind, and the one consciousness has not probed the soul, you are still in the sphere of self, and self interest surrounds you, and the light that gleams from paradisial bowers and the songs of angels that sing for triumph over these are void and meaningless in your minds. 

Come out from yourselves!   It does not matter whether you are happy or not.  The great aim of life is to live, not to be blessed.  The great object of existence is to do, not to enjoy.  You consider it a base and bestial thing to pursue the appetites of external pleasure.  He who is a votary at the shrine of Bacchus receives your condemnation.  Do you do a loftier thing when you say to man, Seek happiness?   Is salvation then only something that is to come to the individual mind as a consciousness of bliss?  Let us have none of it.  Rather the torture and the flame; rather the inquisition and the rack, so that some great work is done, and humanity not left in the darkness.  Toll is honorable.  The doing of an arduous task is noble.  Who shall toll if they only seek for pleasure; and who shall perform an arduous task if their only aim is self praise?  Nay. We people the world and the spirit spheres with infantile souls. 

Out of your earth you send every day and hour spirits whose aspirations are for individual happiness.  Your first aim and end in life is to be happy, physically, or mentally, or spiritually.  The basis of the first sphere, the primary infancy of humanity, is with you.  Oh let us rise to the manhood of the race.  Let the infancy be outgrown; let the youthfulness be forgotten.  Let us have men and women who are not afraid to live, whether it bring joy or misery; who are not afraid to do every duty, speak every word, embody every truth, whether they suffer or not.  Let us do this, and oh, the sublime consciousness of having triumphed over the paltry aim of individual salvation will be in itself sufficient.  You see one praying there with a Magdalen; you see another groping his way through the midnight streets with stores for the sick and dying; you bear some one speaking a kindly word to another; you hear voices throbbing through all humanity with the sublime purpose to exalt and uplift.  That is enough.  The kingdom of heaven is not far away.  That soul is not intent upon his or her own salvation.  The true Christian does not stop and consider whether his soul is saved or not.  He wishes to benefit his kind, to do his duty.  His soul is in the hands of God.  He is not responsible for its salvation.  He only knows that he is put here for work; for the duties of life; for the honorable purpose of existence to carve his way through time, and sense, and matter, and he means to do it. 

The end is not yet.  The soul in its own innermost consciousness is aware of and trusts in the infinite God.  The infancy of religion is with humanity, and likewise the infancy of comprehension of man's spiritual nature and his needs.  You are all walking and groping blindly in the dark.   You know it, perhaps, and that is one of the avenues if escape from it.

The spiritual states into which souls enter just freed from matter are not far away; they are within your own souls, within the atmosphere around and above you.  The sphere of life is what you make it, and spirits create their own heaven or their own hell.  The great working, living, active soul plods on through earth and through eternity, unmindful of the goal.  So that you do something every day; so that the work of your hands shall have been fulfilled, and the mind have performed its appointed task, your duty is done.  Eternity and that aspiration that clothes your spirit with winged desire and lofty flame descend as ministering powers, and you only feel that you are blessed, even when you have not sought it. 

The state of self will be outgrown.  Churches and spires, prayers and praises will be forgotten.  In the temples of human worship there will be no more propitiation and song, votive offering or uplifting of voice.  In all forms of external life there will no more be the mad pursuit of gain or ambition.  The work of life will be done by willing hands, whether it be the building of a ship or a habitation, the carving of a statue or the making of a pyramid.  In the next sphere of spiritual growth, when mankind shall have entered there, there will be no thought of the I and the me, the "Save me, oh Lord, and bless my spirit," but of service of hand and heart, of brain and mind, to follow a lofty purpose and fulfill an ennobling deed--to do the work and leave the salvation in the hands of the Lord.  Into that higher state where some sainted mother abides, or some sweet spirit that went out from earthly life all unconscious that its life was beautiful, but of whom the angels were aware--into that state your souls will enter and will bloom there even as flowers unconscious of their grace, but shedding their fragrance abroad. 

The practical value of this knowledge is that it brings within human consciousness a knowledge of the things you are to strive for.  The practical value of a comprehension of the spiritual spheres is that it takes away from all life pursuits their fictitious value, and gives the soul its true appointed task to perform.  It takes away individual pride and the blindness of self, and all things that forbid the entrance of spiritual light, and it makes you conscious that as children you are yet unable to cope with the problems of spiritual manhood.  But manhood comes on apace.  The next stage of spiritual growth, so far as the humanity of Christ taught it, and which the world has been trying to struggle up to ever since, was in the end revealed by the life of the master spirit.  Instead of living that life you build temples, you make creeds and fashion monuments of brass, while the one quickening voice is silent in the spirit, and the one glorified state is unattained which Christ attained, and thereby made it possible for you to possess.  Oh cherish this prophecy that comes into the heart of youth and causes it to leap with expectant manhood.  Prepare the way for that divine light that when it does come uplifts humanity, and causes death, and the terrors of Hades, and the darkness of creeds and theological mists and materialism, to fade from the vision, leaving only the light of the serene countenance of the spirit shining all the time within the innermost soul. 

Up there in some loftier atmosphere than that which surrounds the pleasure seeking moths that hover near the earth; up there enshrined within a higher purpose, abide the souls that are leading humanity upward.  Here in your very midst there may be some sainted spirit, wise teacher, guardian friend, who speaks out the words unconsciously that bring to your thoughts and hearts ennobling purposes.  These are the elevators of humanity, the elevators of the race, the disenthrallers of the soul.  These wield no weapons of power; are not enshrined in creed and dogma, do not stand behind pulpit and altar, but they are enshrined in the sweet fragrance of their own existence.  They are voices in the darkness.  Their hands are extended for you to grasp.  They are the means of elevating and touching the soul.  These are human beings; they are sometimes departed souls that have risen another step beyond selfishness, and whose chief delight is in ministering to others. 

Oh, come out of your selfishness.  The tombs are there;  the charnel houses--all that makes life desolate is grouped in the wall which selfishness has reared around the soul.   You do not believe it?  What are your terrors, then, but reflections of your individual fears that you somehow will not be saved in the great reckoning up of souls?  What are your fears of death but base and selfish terrors lest somehow you shall be forgotten in the great sea of life?  What is your grief for friends?  Because they have risen to a loftier estate?  That is selfishness. You immure yourself behind it.  You weep over their graves.  You clothe yourself in habiliments of woe, and drag down the soul that would rise because of your grief.  Are you forgetful of self when you weep?  Are you forgetful of self when you bemoan your fate?  Are you forgetful of self when you say, "Oh, that they had stayed to aid in dragging out the weary length of years?"  Would you rob them of the next step that they had taken?  Would you prevent the child from becoming a man?  Are you envious of the height to which they may have climbed?  Do you dread the condition into which they may have entered?  It could not be worse than what they have left here.  Then what is grief but one of the walls of selfishness?  Are you unappreciated in life?  Do you bemoan the lack of recognition in your fellows?  Do you say this one is harsh, and that one unkind, and another severe?  Do you suppose that you have brilliant powers unrecognized by your fellows?  Are you aware and pained--that they are not recognized?  The wall of self is full of sensitive points.  Because a votive wreath is not hung upon this point or that pivot; because a floral offering is not flung at your feet for this or that gift that you possess; because the world does not stop to admire or praise, or even because friends are seemingly unkind, must you be miserable?  Where is the soul?  If you are aware of these powers, that is enough.  If you do not possess them, it were a shame were they recognized by others. 

Will you wear a mask that others may praise you?  Then there shall come a hand that will tear off the mask, even death, and the world's praise shall sink into insignificance.  Are you then good?  If so, it matters not what the world says.  The consciousness of it is its own reward, and your own soul stands face to face with itself unashamed. 

What are the walls, then, that you rear around yourselves?  They are those of selfishness and materialism.  Oh! banish them, one by one.  Into every corner of your soul let the light enter.  Whatever is morbid there, is selfish.  Whatever is untenanted, is selfish.  It is not intended that any chamber in the great house of the universe shall be void.  If there is a period of sorrow, let it be buried out of sight.  Do not dig up grief continually for the sympathy of your fellows.  If there is a hope that has expired, plant a new one.  There is plenty of room for hopes to grow upon earth, and the flower buds of last year are not expected to bloom if there has been a severe frost.   New seeds for new flowers.  Who shall sow the seeds if you do not plant them with your own hands?  Oh, let there be no empty chambers in the spirit; no void and barren wastes, no desolate corners of despair.  For we tell you that the spiritual world, as the soul goes out from earthly life, is peopled more with vacancy than with fullness of spiritual harvest.  We tell you that the spiritual state for all the souls that are passing from earth has more that is void than full of the wine of the spirit or of the pure grain of life.  Have more of it here.  Let it come out from your lives.  Let the spirit world be peopled with loftier growth of soul.  Let us have, instead of dwarfs and pigmies, spiritual men and women. 

You complain that the voices of angels are unheard; that they do not comedown from the spheres and inspire you; that spirits in spirit life speak frivolous things.  What souls go out from earthly life?  Whose friends are they that people space?  What has been the culture of the spirit here?  How do you draw out the germs of spirituality in your earthly instructions?  Shall you expect to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?  Shall there be wisdom where folly has been sown, and eloquence where silence and ignorance have prevailed?  Shall you have a voice all at once beyond the grave?  And is death the great miracle of life that unlooses the tongue of existence?  No; everything is growth.  From childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, the spirit must grow.   If you send babes in soul into spirit life, you must expect the babbling of infant tongues from spirit spheres until they grow.  Do not complain, but only take the voice home to your heart, and say to, yourself, "Shall I be of loftier stature when I am shorn of external life?"  Take it to yourself, and see what growth of strength, of sublime manhood, of purpose in life there may be; so that the spiritual state shall become at last, not only in spirit life but upon earth, not the Sphere of Self, but the Sphere of Beneficence. 

          End Part I....................Next Part  II-----