SPIRITUAL SPHERES

 FOUR LECTURES 

DELIVERED THROUGH THE TRANCE MEDIUMSHIP OF

MRS. CORA L.V.  RICHMOND

Published  1886
 

THE SPHERE OF SELF-Read  Page I

THE SPHERE OF BENEFICENCE-Read  Page II

THE SPHERE OF LOVE AND WISDOM-Read  Below

THE SPHERE OF SPIRITUAL SPHERES-Read Page IV

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III
THE SPHERE OF LOVE AND WISDOM

The subject tonight is, "Spiritual Spheres: The Third Sphere--The Sphere of  Love and Wisdom."   Properly these two are necessarily combined and form what the human being has pictured of the attributes of the Infinite.  Whatever lesser states may intervene between you and God, finally must be merged in that divine power which means infinite love, and that divine adjustment of the universe which means infinite wisdom.  In the dual nature of the soul--of which the soul, perhaps, is unaware until it reaches the sphere of love and wisdom--there is an equal measure of both these qualities; and it was not a mistake to address the Father or Parent as Father and Mother, since in the outer world the type of love is the mother, and the type of wisdom is the father.  And since these qualities combined make the father tender as the mother, and the mother wise as the father can be; and since in the perfect soul unquestionably these attributes are correlated and equal, and govern with unswerving fidelity the soul in its contemplation, its research and its usefulness; so in that sphere into which, from the sphere of beneficence, the spirit finally rises to the understanding of the causes of things interior to that which gives outer ministration to suffering, interior to that which relieves pain or ministers unto others merely, there is a consciousness of the law which governs the suffering and of the divine wisdom that shapes the ways and ends of life, so that even out of pain shall come joy, and through the love that the divine Wisdom possesses every pain shall have its subsequent balm and healing. 

We called your attention last Sunday evening to the sphere of beneficence as the one of ministration in which spirits rise out of their own suffering by ministering to those that are in sorrow, and that this sphere interpenetrates your own lives oftentimes and forms the connecting link by which your spirits rise to that sphere on entering spiritual life.  As we stated, this sphere of beneficence interpenetrates also the lower sphere that immediately surrounds the selfish natures of earth, and by some ray of divine beneficence at last raises them from the prison in which they may by selfishness have become immured.  Such, undoubtedly, was the divine beneficence whereby, it is told, Jesus during the three days that his body slept in the sepulcher visited spirits in prison--those who were disobedient in the days of Noah--releasing them by that divine visitation from the long period of penalty for their disobedience.  This is a figurative statement--allegorical it may be, but it typifies that beneficence which even reaches long periods of darkness and imprisonment in souls, rescuing them finally by some ray of its divine light. 

This sphere of beneficence, as we stated, extends to all branches of active labor for man, and includes all of inventions that uplift human toil, all of healing that ameliorates the condition of man bodily and spiritually, all of those powers of ministration to which belong ministering spirits, and those that are sent on special missions and errands of mercy to the earth, to which belong the corps of spirits that are under the guidance of some leading mind to release souls that go out from earthly life in bondage, who go out, perhaps, from prison cells, from the penitentiary, from the gallows, from some place of earthly shame, and crime, with the stamp of sin upon them, still tied to the sphere of beneficence by some golden chord of uplifting love. 

In comparing, it is revealed that the sphere of healing is nearest to the earth, because most required, because the first thing that the sin sick or imperfect spirit needs is healing, because mostly upon earth this is what spirits stand in need of.  Hence, the ministering spirits are those that come most frequently to earth, are those that attend most largely upon your lives, are those that carry you healing and strive to uplift you from individual sorrow by pointing to the higher uses of life.  Hence, this sphere of beneficence reaches more earthly minds than any higher state of spiritual existence--because most earthly minds are like children that stand in need of the parent; they require the parent spirit--or the spirit that takes the place of the parent of earth--to minister to wants, to sufferings, to actual sustenance of the spirit, and for guidance and strength in outward life.  To this sphere mostly belong guardian spirits, those of your departed friends that are appointed or are led by their affection to take charge of your earthly life; to this sphere belong all that intermediate class of spirits that under divine and beneficent minds, work out, even sometimes unconsciously, the great work of spiritual healing, and by such working they become enlightened, uplifted and disenthralled. 

The plains of that sphere which we pictured on last Sunday evening are adapted to all stages of the wants of the spirit, and stretch far away into solitudes where quietness is found necessary, or merge into open plains of sunlight where vast assemblies are met together for instruction, amusement or healing.  The power of beneficence reaches every weakness and every requirement of the spirit, and touches at every point where the mind needs strengthening or the soul drawing forward to its higher estate.  Removed from this, yet still merged in it, as one sphere must ever be merged in another, is the sphere of love and wisdom, for the high estates of the sphere of beneficence are states governed by love and wisdom, and every charity and grace eventually merges into love and wisdom, and all spheres of art or science, of politics or religion, that are adapted or intended for the benefit of man must finally culminate in the one center that forms the very radius of all these circles. 

Therefore the points of love and wisdom radiate through these various degrees until they reach the lowermost state; and therefore the uppermost in the sphere of beneficence touch with their brows the sphere of love and wisdom, and such minds as have charge over great bodies of healing spirits, over great bodies of ministering spirits and the legislations of the earth, over great bodies of spirits appointed to adjudicate human invention, or over any of the various stages of thought and action, are themselves in the sphere of love and wisdom, are completed souls, are in each portion of their dual nature equal, equal in love and wisdom, because the two imply equality, and each must govern to the fullest extent the action and life of the spirit and the lesser degrees beneath. 

For the first time, however, on entering the sphere of love and wisdom the soul becomes aware not only of the healing power of kindness upon others and upon itself, not only that sorrow is assuaged by administering to those that are in sorrow, not only that grief becomes less by active occupation in alleviating the grief and suffering of others, not only that knowledge is the divine boon and panacea for pain and ignorance, but also the soul becomes aware that all the paths that have led deviously and by various ways of pain and suffering are merged in the divine love and wisdom.  In that sphere alone the soul first becomes conscious of the usefulness of suffering.  Now, there are many spirits in the sphere of beneficence who are able to minister to suffering, many who are able to assuage suffering by love, and sympathy, and charity, but the uppermost of that sphere, and the merging of the sphere of love and wisdom, is requisite for the soul to understand the necessity of suffering.   You will comprehend the difference at once.  Philanthropists see the pain that is in the world, realize that knowledge can cause it to be assuaged, set themselves heart and hand to work to alleviate it, and this is their life work.  All great minds do this in their respective spheres of life, and are made happy by the knowledge that relieves mankind from suffering. 

But there comes a time to every soul, and sometimes it comes even upon earth.  It came to Christ upon Calvary; it came undoubtedly to martyrs and saints in their prisons or at the supreme moment of life which is called death.  It comes unquestionably to the spirit when any great suffering admits the soul into a loftier state of spiritual companionship and thought.  Then, for the first time, it comes to the spirit that suffering is one of the paths of progress, is one of the appointments of divine wisdom consciously jagged for the welfare of mankind.  And this is the delicate point wherein rationalists and theologians have been at warfare, and concerning which various intermediate stages of religious belief have not enlightened mankind.  Shall we ask your consideration of our view, that you may see how rational is the system of life, and how needful is suffering until the knowledge of the law which supersedes it takes the place of the penalty of violated law? 

Every age of the earth has its own particular experience, political, religious and material; and the knowledge of all the ages of the earth if practiced by the present age would be sufficient to save mankind from all suffering, but that knowledge does not come by dictation nor by the experience of others excepting in a relative degree.  It is true that scientific knowledge comes somewhat by the experiments of others, but it is not true that individually the knowledge comes except by individual experience.  Everything that pertains, to the possibility of the individual must be the growth of that spirit itself.  For instance, no one can love another for you, whether that love be high or low, whether it be on a basis of material or of spiritual life.  The love which one man bears to another, or which a man bears to his wife, does not answer the purpose of the individual experience, which is to also love the fellow being as well as to love the wife, the parent and the child.  And this kind of experience, if it be born of ignorance, sometimes begets suffering, and even with the highest estate of knowledge frequently begets the highest or severest degree of suffering by the self sacrifice that you are called upon to make.  This is what we mean by the experience of the individual. 

The sorrow that you have for the loss of a friend may be sympathized with by another, but no sympathy is so great and so accurate as that which comes from having had kindred suffering, and the one great lesson of life that people learn is that suffering gives to people a unity of humanexistence and common bond of sympathy without which life itself were oftentimes cold and voiceless and merged in the individual.   Not only do you become aware of this, but everything that pertains to the spiritual nature of man is and must be a matter of individual growth.  No one can join the church for you; no one can experience the change of heart requisite.  It is a growth within your souls.  Christ comes to humanity, but he comes to each individually, not to mankind in bulk. The spirit of truth comes in the same way.  No one can comprehend it for you.  You are not enlightened by the conviction, or by the intelligence, or by the consciousness of your neighbor; if the power be not quickened also in your own spirit, his knowledge is of no value to you.  Your knowledge reveals finally to you the fact that he and you are on the same plane of thought, but if you are not both there one cannot discover it for the other.  One may help the other; each one may win another to a loftier standard of truth, but when it finally dawns upon the soul the knowledge is of the soul itself. 

In the sphere, therefore, of love and wisdom, this revelation takes the place of all lesser charities.  Now what we mean by the lesser charities we will explain.  You give to the suffering because it reliever the sufferer.  There is a kind of wisdom that probes the wound to heal it.  There is a kind of wisdom that understands the experience, soothes the pain, but lets the suffering take its legitimate effect.  There is a kind of love that is beyond, for the time being, mere personal sympathy, and rises to the consciousness of the divine love, which sustains through the suffering the end that the spirit gains.  Nor is this hard, nor is it cold; nor is it devoid of sympathy.  That compassion which would have a child for ever in its swaddling clothes, or that would fasten, after a child can walk, the strings of its garments to yourself; or that would cause the mother to keep her son forever within the radius of her influence or love merely, is not the wisdom which would give the child all the love, and at the same time, as its strength comes, say, "There is the world; I love you all the same; go vanquish that world."  This is what the true hearted mother says, who sees the welfare of the child instead of her own.  This is what it is when the eagle pushes its young out from the nest that they may learn to fly, but always dives beneath to catch them if they fall.  This is what it is when any experiment of outward life brings pain.  The pain itself becomes the basis of the future joy and strength when the life and the spirit and the mind are strong enough to bear it. 

The sphere of beneficence pities the sorrowing one, takes the cripple, the maimed, the blind, the deformed soul into its keeping and ministers to it.  The sphere of love and wisdom pities none the less, but by all the strength which wisdom can bring to bear after the healing brings the consciousness of strength.  You know what it is, perhaps, to fall a victim to outward appetite--to have the temptation so strong that all the helps of social life and pledges may be in vain to win you from it.  Again and again the wife, the mother, the friend, may have plead in vain; again and again your own spirit has striven to overcome this one besetting sin.  Ministering spirits in the body, by hedging you round with a wall of strength, may save you for the time, but there must come a time when the individual spirit rises, and, not leaning upon friends, the love of wife or of mother or social influence, says, "I will vanquish this evil," This is the reformed inebriate; this is the man whose spirit is strong enough to vanquish the evil.  These are the helps, but a thousand times they fail.  The one final and utter strength must come from within, and must be the victory of the individual spirit over that one organic and besetting sin.  So it is with suffering.  It is true that those who mourn require comforting.  It is true that when death is at the door the tears of friends are soothing.  It is true that when there is no longer any possibility of relief, and the sorrow is there, the sympathy of loving hearts is valued--but you know that there is a kind of sympathy that weakens; that tears are sometimes only so many avenues for breaking away your own inward strength, and that you frequently see that strong kind of sympathy that up-bears and sustains you without a weak word, and which you can rely upon all the time, in sorrow, in darkness.  This is the sympathy that you cling to, and this is the kind of sympathy that you feel comes from the Divine mind. 

We think that man has misinterpreted Christ.  The mediator does not stand so near to the individual sorrow as people think.  It is well enough for them to think so.  There are those spiritual agencies who do.  There are beneficent and wise spirits who crowd every avenue of human life and strive to alleviate the suffering; but the man Christ, in his most exalted state, stands near to man to show him the triumph over suffering, even to vanquish the very last thing that man dreads, namely, individual pain of body, mind or spirit; and when that is vanquished what have you to fear here or here-after?  Physical pain is to be avoided by bodily health and observation of hygienic laws; but it is not so much to avoid pain in the high estate as it is that you shall be perfect human beings.  The pain is the penalty of violated law, and undoubtedly leads men to study more closely the meaning of life and health.  Without pain hygienic laws would probably be far in the background; but it is not for the avoidance of pain, it is that man shall stand in the sight of nature as perfect an expression of the divine intention as possible; and if that suffering leads him to a comprehension of the laws which he has unwittingly violated, then suffering becomes the surest means of scientific advancement in the world.  There, has been a theory abroad in the world for the last few years [*Euthanasia ] inquiring whether it might not be permissible, under certain circumstances, for appointed physicians and regular organized bodies to delegate power to physicians of terminating human life when, in certain diseases, they seemed incurable, as, for instance, hydrophobia, or some of those terrific forms of disease that seize upon humanity and are in themselves incurable.  If the physical were the only consideration, we should say this might be permissible; and of course every physician will pardon us if we state that it has oftentimes, unwittingly, been the case in practice in materia medica, that the person really is treated in the very way to terminate the physical existence, though the intention is to cure, and of course the practical result would be no different if the intention were to put them out of their suffering.  But there are spiritual considerations.  No board of physicians is competent to decide at what point the spirit is ready to be severed from its body.  No board of persons, however well versed in the science of Anthropology, or that which pertains to the law of physical being, can decide what is the exact point of the spirit and its state.  One moment more of suffering, one week of suffering, may do more for that spirit than all the teaching that ever has been given, for the reason that as the spirit feels itself waning in its external control, as the body no longer yields to its power, there grows up a strength beyond the pain and above the suffering.  In all forms of disease, or In, perhaps, most violent forms, this may not be true; but, as we say, the spiritual as well as the physical perception would require to be fully unfolded before any earthly body of scientific men could be deputized to send spirits consciously into the other world. 

Those leaders of justice, administrators of human laws, those who visit upon criminals the penalty of their misdeeds, assume to know when to do this; but, in our judgment, it is an assumption that transcends any possible sphere of human justice, and makes them responsible for the condition of lift into which a spirit thus sent enters the spirit world.  The love and the wisdom that would encompass all pains and penalties of life, and bring them within the sphere of usefulness where, by divine compensation and by laws fitting the appointed, the soul may reap knowledge from even devious and darkened ways, is the surest evidence of Divine appointment; not In the interpretation of the severest form of theology that the Deity delights to inflict suffering upon his children--but if there be a canker you must take it away from the child; if there be any sore you must apply the remedy, and that may be contingent to the existence of the life below, until the races of men have vanquished the material contact.  Therefore all of science were useless if the pain had been unnecessary or had not existed in the world.  If toll were no pain, if drudgery were no labor, if to bear the yoke of servitude and slavery were not galling, if exposure to the elements and ignorance brought no disease upon humanity; if all these things with their pains had not been in the beginning of things the necessary contact with matter, and inevitable, then all that science boasts of--your whole system of human physiology, anatomy, hygiene, materia medica, philosophy itself--were undiscovered, and thus much of the material universe would have been unexplored by man. 

If labor were not troublesome, all inventions for the amelioration of the condition of toil would have slept in the womb of time, and mother earth would not have yielded her motor powers, her divine systems of mechanism; the grand universe would have been dumb and silent today, perhaps, but for the galling chains of physical labor and servitude.  It is the plodding man, sometimes toiling along and scratching with a stick the dusty soil that he may sow the seed, who invents the more useful instrument of labor; It is he who, by grief, reaches beyond his present state, that finds out all the mysteries that lie about him.  Nature were voiceless to a race of angels who could not suffer, who bad no need of physical pain, who bad no contact with earth to make them suffer.  The great earth would be blind and dumb to their souls.  Atoms whirled into existence, shaped into forms without meaning, were here when crowded into these outward tenements.  The soul looks around and endeavors to shape itself to organism.  When the organization cramps and dwarfs the spirit every avenue is an outlet, and even pain becomes a relief to the monotony of a lack of knowledge. 

Lucifer is not a fable in the essential spirit of its highest meaning.  There would be war in heaven if there were but one degree of happiness, and that inherited alike at the same time, by all souls.  There might be a choice of a spirit to explore a world or plunge into a planet; there might be a choice to do so even to meet the suffering, rather than the monotonous cycles of existence that were unchanging.  Look what men do for knowledge.  Ships are builded; seas are sailed over--oceans of ice intervene between them and the object of their search.  Hundreds of men have perished and gone down in the northern seas, leaving no voice behind them save the tracks upon the wintry waste, and others are just as ready to follow.  Do men seek to avoid pain?  Not when the possession of knowledge compensates them for their suffering.  If the soul stood upon any height of eternity, and there was one sea of happiness all around, and over there a darkened gulf unexplored and unknown, that soul, clad in the armor of its strength, would say, "I plunge in to see what is there."  Down into the ocean go divers, and they bring up the treasures from the deep. 

Knowledge is what the spirit wants, gleaning it from every possible source.  The gray haired sire says, "Young man, don't fall in love.  I assure you it will only bring suffering and pain upon you."  The young man does not know what he means; but straightway the experience of life begins, and he travels the path by which that experience only is gained.  Another one says, "I know all of happiness there is in this life.  Family and friends and reputation all are mine, but my advice would be to stay as you are, put stones upon your children's heads, that they will not grow; cram their feet into shoes that are too small for them that they may not walk."   This is what you do when you say, "Don't have this or that experience."   But the point of wisdom is to say, "Young man, life is before you; you will have such and such and such experiences; but take my advice; there are quicksands here and shoals there.  I do not cut off the career of your life, but I point to the quick sands and the shoals."  This is what the voyager does.  This is what souls do who go on in advance; this is what great minds have always done for earth, and which, alas! great minds only can understand; and this is what the mariner does out upon the polar seas, who leaves along the course the frozen body, the indication of raiment here and there; and who knows but what some future mariner shall bridge over that wide sea of ice and find, perchance, the open sea beyond, and the continent peopled with different races.

Knowledge is what men seek.  In the sphere of love and wisdom this knowledge is seen and the thirst of it is understood, and all conditions of spiritual and human life that the spirit must necessarily pass are recognized, acknowledged, and known.  Warnings are given; ways are paven with indices.  There is a cross here and a grave there along the great highways of time.  The mad reveler, the ignorant and the uncultured, do not know the meaning, but there are always souls to whom these indications serve as beacon lights, as guiding buoys to the channel of life, as an uplifting and sustaining strength to show that some soul has been there before and understands the peril and the danger and has vanquished it. 

This is the meaning of that divine contemplation wherein the soul can sit in love and sympathy and minister with gentle yet firm hand all that is needful for the uses and instruction of life.  This is that divine contemplation wherein are ensphered those wise minds that through the love and the wisdom of centuries guide the nations of the earth to their appointed places, and know that some must fall and fall, and some must rise, but that in the end there is hope for all.  This is that surpassing angelhood that gives to humanity a consciousness that there is something above suffering, after all, and makes them even court the martyr's fiery death, or go out upon the battle field, so that they may taste what this is that lies beyond.  It makes them better steeled to brave the misfortunes of life and overcome them, winning by degrees all knowledge that they can wrest from matter, and thus they build up the rightful inheritance of the spirit. 

Oh! This grandeur of human pain and knowledge!  This divine beneficence that shapes the course of life through paths of pain for the sweetness of conquering them!  This wonderful and sustaining law that makes the struggle of the individual spirit the value of the treasures that it attains afterward!  You know how little happiness is worth that another wins for you.  Taking you as a babe in spirit and placing you upon the acme of power, what could you do there?  Kings have fallen when thus placed, and dynasties have crumbled out of the hand of some infant soul who could not wield the scepter wisely, and all become dwarfs in the light of that surpassing soul that makes kingdoms but toys, and scepters and crowns but baubles before the light of the spirit, while here is a man crowned in the dust who has vanquished himself, his pain and his suffering. 

The motherhood and the fatherhood of the coming races of men are thus typified in the sphere of love and wisdom; and that parent on earth who is both wise and kind, that mother who loves her children, and also is wise to them through the divine blending of her nature with the skies, is aware of the meaning of this sphere, even though she may not have named it.  That love that shapes the path and shields the way as well as it may be shielded, but would not take from any human spirit any needful experience, is the love that the sphere of love and wisdom possesses.  And those ensphered there wield with wise hand the destinies of men and nations, see where beyond war and above crime the dawn of peace shall come; and know that out of human slavery shall be born a great war that shall deluge the earth with blood, but see through that war the only pathway whereby the children of earth will recognize freedom. 

When the time comes that there shall be no slavery, no injustice, there will be no angels bending in compassion over blackened battle fields, stained with human gore.  When the races of men shall have risen to the consciousness that all kinds of injustice are violent, that justice only is peaceful, that every wrong inflicted upon a human being, even to the smallest portion of a penny gotten unjustly, is in itself warfare, then courts of justice, halls of legislation, criminal cells and battle fields will be unknown to the nations of the earth.  Until they do, the wise Nemesis of justice that sits enthroned behind love, knows that out of that state of passion will spring a state of violence, and that through that only will come the peace that the world covets; that out of that state of stormy passion of youth, or of manhood which is worse than youth, there will come a time when the soul will have vanquished and risen to a loftier acme; that out of the tempests of nations and of ages there comes a calm of knowledge and of learning that sweeps away all remembrance of violence and crime, leaving only poesy and art and religion and the flowering of human life in the loftiest uses of existence.  But until men are strong as well as gentle, until love does not bring weakness, also until wisdom and love shall go hand-in-hand, and not stern justice be on one side, and yielding mercy on the other; until charity shall be blended with proper justice; until out of the great soul of love shall be born also a great soul of strength, and that weak thing that men call love shall perish and be absorbed in the higher and loftier passion of the divine love; until that weak thing that men call justice shall break its prisons and its fetters, and only wisdom, calm browed and mild, shall abide, you will not know much of the sphere of love and wisdom. 

But the earth has seen evidences of its possibility.  There have arisen above the night of time, and at last gone out into their appointed places in that sphere of spiritual life, stars that like shining lights have shown the path which men will follow by-and-bye.  They have risen pale, and front earthly pain and the night time of suffering, but luminous in their souls.  They have risen voiceless--perhaps with no divine song to do them justice on the lower earth, but a song sung by angels and seraphs when they have entered the abode of love and wisdom.  They have risen from many a martyr pyre, and many a hall of inquisition; they have risen from many an altar of self immolation upon earth, unrecognized and unknown.  But because they were wise and loved humanity they went out unknown, until in after years men in looking back said, "Behold, what a planet rose and set."  No one knew that it was there, save by the pathway of light left behind. 

Somewhat of this love and wisdom have been typified in the highest lines that you have known, and all around you there may be a glimmering of its light as of a loftier sphere shining through the sphere of beneficence--as of a light beyond a light.  Have you never seen, when in the summer time some sudden tempest has swept up a storm of clouds, that between you and the horizon there were luminous clouds, and beyond those luminous clouds there were others more luminous and sunny that seemed to rest upon the very ether itself, that shone through and behind the less luminous ones, making them almost seem darkness; and then sweeping boldly in, tempest clouds came, like the first sphere of spiritual life, obscuring, or in some manner obstructing, the glory beyond, which still would shine through?  So it is with the intermediate spheres that lie between you and that of love and wisdom.  The terrestrial sphere of spiritual life is in itself beneficent.  It takes men one degree further in the journey of existence.  The sphere of beneficence is in itself wonderful.  It shapes all science, and art, and learning, and wisdom, to the uplifting of mankind and the pursuit of knowledge. But crowning and over reaching all, even as the starry firmament crowns and over reaches the whole, even as the blue ether itself enspheres the stars, and the firmament, and the solar system, and the sun and the moon, and all things that are bright, making them all glorious by its sublime vastness and presence, so the infinite love, and the infinite wisdom, and the angels that abide there dwell in sublime contemplation and wonderful harmony, guiding, ministering, directing the powers that are beneath, and the ways and ends of human advancement, and all paths that seemingly diverge and wander into far away places, and are lost in marsh and wilderness, finally upon the mountain tops reappear, and in that height are made glorious by the divine marriage of love and wisdom. 

End Part  III