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  Page III

THE SPHERE OF SPIRITUAL SPHERES-Read Below

---

IV
THE SPHERE OF SPIRITUAL SPHERES
 
 

INTRODUCTORY 

[ Before the commencement of the discourse (said the control) we have a statement to make, which is that the lecture this evening will be by three separate intelligences in three separate spheres, or states, of spiritual life.  Those who have been present on preceding Sabbath evenings will remember that "Spiritual Spheres" has been the subject--the three spheres: first, "The Sphere of Selfishness;"  second, "The Sphere of Beneficence;" third, "The Spheres of Love and Wisdom."  This evening you will have a discourse, first, from the sphere of Self.  It will not be under the direct control of the spirit, but It will be a direct statement from that spirit concerning his condition In spiritual life.  We trust the audience will bear in mind these facts while listening to the three grades of spiritual life depicted tonight. ] 

THE LECTURE    ( FIRST STATE ) 

Ladies and Gentlemen--I am requested to make a statement.  Impelled certainly not by my own desire, but by a mandate which I do not seem able to disobey, I make this statement.  It is inconceivable to me how it can be of any value to you.  For my own part I should not choose to make known what I shall make known here; but as I am impelled I will describe to you my condition since departing from earthly life.  My departure is very recent, and although I seem to be able to describe it, I am in no way able to understand. 

My success in earthly existence, the achievement of what I most desired, the method of that achievement, perhaps some of you are aware of.  It certainly was according to the accepted methods of human existence. 

I found very early in life that to succeed one must care chiefly for one's self.  I certainly did so.  I found that to be honored and respected among my fellow men I must succeed.  I did succeed.  What measure of honor I received I know not, but I know that I won my point.  The obstacles to success were, regard for others and lack of will power.  The regard for others I soon ceased to be troubled with, for I found very few had regard for me.  I certainly had a sufficient amount of will power to avail myself of the methods of existence in the commercial life in which I was engaged. 

The end and aim of human existence was arrived at.  I do not say that I never had any compunction.  I do not say that I never thought there might be something better.  I do not say that there were not times when that did not seem to satisfy my whole existence.  I saw nothing better presenting itself; I saw nothing which would command the regard and respect of my fellow beings.  I saw no other avenue to work out my way to success.  I became preeminent in the region of my active sphere of life.  I am not aware that I ever voluntarily forgot my own interests;  I am not aware that I ever gave to any human being anything that I could not spare; I am not aware that I ever gave as an object of charity or benevolence, anything but what I considered would bring me a return.  I did not consider it a good investment to give away what I needed myself--to throw away sympathy and charity upon the undeserving, probably, at least upon those who would forget it very shortly.  I may have given to some one who was in sorrow or in want.  If I did, it was very likely in order not to be troubled with them. 

I state myself fairly before you.  I did not wish to be good, I wished to do my duty so far as would leave me blameless before my fellow man and gain the point of success in life.   I knew that death would come sometime; I did not know where it would take me.  I knew of no other world but the one I inhabited. I knew of no other way to inhabit that world except to conquer the things in it; it never occurred to me that I ought to be conquered, for I did not create myself; the faculties of my mind were not of my own creation; the desires of my life were not of my own creation.  If I could afford it, whose business was it? 

I am dead now; the world calls me so.  I won the point which a million men failed to achieve.  There were words written and spoken of me praising the success, but despising the means of it.  Those who do not succeed employ the same means; they fail because they have not the ability.  There may be those who never employ those means.  Of course I know all about philanthropy; of course I know all about religion, but I have not found in these two elements that which the world most prizes, and I have not found that, until many centuries, philanthropists are valued, or that those who have great piety are among their fellow beings praised.  I am now dead, and of course I know the condition into which I have entered; I have made it for myself;  I do not know that I care at present to escape from it.  Why should I care?  The world offered me nothing; I expected nothing from it.  What I gained I wrested from it, and I am ready to meet my fate.  Somehow I find myself, however, without resources.  It is a singular fact that I have noticed since my advent into this new state of existence that the usual methods by which I could turn my energy to account upon earth fail me. 

I found myself seemingly upon a barren plain, at first standing all alone; I did not mind that, but I found nothing of tree, of leaf, or shrub, or plant, nor was I aware whether anything grew in the place to which I had come.   Presently I saw warehouses; I thought I would find employment there at least--congenial possibly.  As I approached them they vanished.   Finally when I gained one it was empty.  Baffled again,  I saw some ships coming over a sea; I thought, "Here will be a cargo at least for me to attend to."  The ships came in near the shore, and there seemed to be no life on board that I could discover.  Baffled again. I saw habitations very like one that I had builded; there were familiar faces appearing there, but as I approached, they vanished, and a form resembling one who died rather unexpectedly, and under peculiar circumstances, because of the failure of a contract, which was no fault of mine, but his--his face haunted me.  I cast that aside.  I saw some squalid houses; I thought I might renovate them.  As I approached them I found them inhabited by persons whom I had not benefited.  Baffled again. 

I am intelligent enough to know the moral of all this.  I recognize in the empty line of warehouses my own earthly power and spiritual poverty.  I recognize in the ships that bring me no cargo the fact that I have no investment here probably in the right direction.  I recognize in the habitation that was my pride, and in the face that haunts it, my own pride at the expense of a fellow being.  I recognize in the rows of squalid houses, that I must pass and repass every day, the people who supposed that I had wronged them. 

I cannot say whether I shall ever have any investments in this world that I have entered.  I cannot say whether I shall ever take an interest in the methods of life around me.  There seems to be nothing real, nothing substantial, nothing that will pay.  I do not take much stock in that self abnegation of which I have heard so much, since I know that I have seen as much pride and as much selfishness with piety as elsewhere.  I do not know about philanthropy; I always supposed it to be another kind of ambition.  Very likely it is. 

There came to me one day since I came into this sphere a little child.  I am sure I was glad to see the child; it had a pleasant face, and it bore a flower.  It did not certainly grow in any region round about me.  I asked where it came from.  She said it came from where they love little children, and where the mothers live.  Then I thought of my mother and of my children.  I had done justly by them before the world; I cannot say that I had done justly by them in my heart and life, and I wondered if it was possible that the whole foundation of my existence had been a mistake, and that I really had not lived, and had not succeeded, and was really dead.  The tomb around me seems to be fashioned of my own life; it is empty and void of useful things, but still exists as the shadows of the things that employed my time upon earth.  All the scenes that I am able to witness bear testimony of my own handiwork, but they bring me no return; they yield no fruition; they are there simply for me to see.  All forms of thought in which I may engage seem to be the echoes of the thoughts that I had in my earthly state and plans for greater success and power, and I hear the sighs and the groans of many an aspiring man who went down because I would succeed. 

This may be a state that will last forever.  It may be that it will be interesting to you, but if I had been left to the choice I should certainly say that it is none of your interest and none of your business.  The common courtesy of earthly existence might prevent me from saying so, except in a business transaction; but I have been called here to make this statement.  These are my exact sentiments.  This is my precise frame of mind.  I care for my interests upon earth; I care for my family so far as regards that interest for the ties that bound me to them, whatever they may have been.  There are other things that haunt me, that I do not care to mention.  I do not know whether this state will last forever, or whether out of that presence of a little child I am to be instructed how to plant some seed that will grow, or ship some cargo that will have weight, or fill my empty warehouses with something of value in this land.  People come and go; friends have congratulated me, I am sure I do not know for what!   A thought just occurs to me.  I wonder if it is a part of my new business to tell this to you, that you may have a better cargo and better filled warehouses than l have?   I go; I leave my statement; I care nothing about it. 
 
 

    SECOND STATE (CHANGE OF CONTROL) 

I come to you, dear friends, after the summons of the guides who control this medium, to make statement of somewhat connected with the state in which I find myself for many years since my departure from earthly life.  I was one known among men to some extent.  I had interest in affairs of State.  I chiefly loved the country that I thought valued humanity most.  I have seen a shadow go out from your presence who seems to have no home in spiritual life, whose grand powers of mind have been perverted to the one aim of individual aggrandizement.  I see the gleam which shines across his pathway even now. 

It doubtless will be the beginning of some surpassing career in spiritual life, since when there is a rebound in great minds that have been greatly perverted, the rebound is as great in the opposite direction. 

My own consciousness of infirmity, when I entered spiritual existence, prevented me from properly judging as to the condition in which I entered. I felt myself unworthy of any high estate; I felt individually my own shortcomings.  I had somewhat of pride, and, coupled with my love of humanity, I fear was a little of ambition.  I strove, however, to make myself beloved, and in doing this I doubtless overcame much of my individual pride.  I strove to make myself believe that my aims were for others.  After what manner I besought my own country to aid in the abolition of slavery in her colonies, after what manner I besought her to improve the condition of her criminals, reached you across the waters, and America has followed in the wake of  England, and the abolition of slavery has been bought with human blood.  But the great nations of the earth go on toward freedom, and the highest work of man becomes the assistance of his fellow man. 

My existence in spiritual life has been among kindred minds who, like myself, have sought on earth feebly, and here with more or less success, to ameliorate the condition of humanity and of those beneath us.  I do not say that we have done this unswervingly. I do not say that nothing of self ever crept in, but I do say that if into my mind there was a consciousness of exaltation or pride above those, beneath, I felt within myself the scourge of such conscience as would even baffle the tortures of any outward inquisition to inflict.  In the spiritual state to which I was admitted and welcomed, I fear with too much kindliness, I have been introduced as one of the co-workers of that sphere of beneficent counsel who seek for the elevation of the nations of the earth by the modification of all laws, of all codes and of all international customs that mar human life or degrade human existence.   I believe that I have discovered that the wellspring of human existence has its origin in a higher and loftier motive than that of the individual pursuit of individual ambition or pleasure for the profit or aggrandizement that may come to the person.   I believe that I know that whoever forgets himself in aiding others, thereby augments their happiness and his own.  Maybe we sometimes do this for the augmentation of our own happiness, but we cannot do it successfully if that be the paramount aim. 

I discover in the sphere that I inhabit all those minds who have successfully, in times past, plead with legislators and with counselors of nations for the uplifting of any class of persons from bondage.  I recognize here, the sovereign souls that have striven to release the nations of the East from serfdom; those who have striven to release Italy from the double thralldom of servitude and priestcraft; those who have striven to release Europe from the thralldom of the laws that inflict heavy penalties upon the poor, while they sustain the rich; of those who wish everywhere that human life shall be held sacred, and that no human being shall arrogate to himself the right and privilege of taking away that which he cannot confer upon his fellow being.  I believe that our aim toward this object has brought about largely the results which have ensued upon earth.  Representative minds from all the nations of the earth, co-operating together in spiritual existence and then again impressing those that sit in legislative halls upon earth, cannot fail to produce results. 

Therefore I say that when slavery has been abolished in England and in America, when serfdom has disappeared from Russia, when the peasantry of France have risen to a higher estate, when Italy has been disenthralled measurably, when the East is being rapidly redeemed from her crimes and servitude, and when the Western land is glowing with a promise of loftier civilization and freedom for man, I say there is encouragement for the spirits in the sphere of beneficence to which I belong to continue our efforts in that direction and carry forward our earnest appeals to the minds of such legislators upon earth as are ready.  Your own Charles Sumner (without detracting from his own aim for the uplifting of the slave) could not fail to be a mouthpiece of the sphere which his brow already touched.  Over in England, Cobden, and now the Brights, Sir Robert Peel, risen to our own estate, carrying forward the alms that were a portion of my own life, could not fail to reach the sphere which I inhabit, even in their places in Parliament.  We commence with earthly minds, when they are not aware of it.  We sit near in solemn council and wait for the opportune moment when a breath may encourage a word that else wise were not spoken.  If the opportunity were lost, if the heart were faltering, if the mind hesitated, then we might bring a power that would make that courage greater. 

Abraham Lincoln, signing the emancipation proclamation, might not have done this but for a voice that came from that sphere of risen souls who gave him the strength that human legislation hesitated so long to give.  The hand that released the serfs of Russia might not in the face of Europe and her rivalries have dared to do this but for the power impelling, and warning that it is not safe to hesitate to do a good deed when the hour is ripe, fearing the consequences.  The Geneva arbitration, promising peace to the nations of the earth where war has been the custom, might be considered a precedent not safe to establish in the face of the agitating causes of political strife in Europe and in America, but whether safe or not, the precedent is there, and he is held all the more responsible who violates a compact that has been possible to be formed in the face of great irritation.  We gained these points by slow degrees.  The inhabitants of earth are wont to think by many deviating methods; sometimes they are of policy and sometimes of fear; but a good act or a good law once proclaimed upon earth, remains there to face the violators of it, and even if the nation fall back, the law is there for the encouragement of future generations.  The massacre of San Domingo was considered evidence that slavery should not have been abolished--an insurrection of a race brought about by severe cruelties and agitation of long years; but was it not rather a comment on slavery itself that could have so crushed and stung a race as to lead them to such deeds? 

All honor and praise to that race that, seemingly held by some omnipotent hand, waited the hour of their deliverance in your own land.  All honor and praise to that piety which trusted to the God of deliverance instead of to the hand of violence for the release of slaves, and who made the first transgressors of human rights also the first transgressors against the last and highest of human rights, that of human life.  If men must go to war, the condition that sows the seeds of strife had better be reaped by those who sow them than by those who sow them not.  If you have sown in the wind if is better to reap in the whirlwind than to bring others into the tornado to gather your harvests for you. 

The great work of human emancipation and elevation is not political merely; it becomes narrowed down to the limits not only of State and Church, but to those municipal laws and local legislations that make up largely the happiness and prosperity of communities.  Nay, more than this, I find it narrowed down to the very small compass of the individual human life, and that for proper legislation we must have proper legislators, we must have proper individuals, and the individuals must have the right thoughts, and must not be taken because available or because it is the best policy. 

The temporizing policy of many nations has put off the day of battle, but culminated the day of earthquake.  The temporizing policy of many people causes the wound to be healed over that should be probed and cured, and brings about destruction to the nations and to the social fabric of life.  The real basis, I find, must be with the individual: the real tenderness to the criminal, and not to the crime.  We do not need to pity jails and penitentiaries; they are made of wood, or stone, or iron; but the man that is in there is the object of our commiseration--his crime we condemn.  Let us exclude the crime by uprooting the cause of it.  We never destroy a tree by chopping off the branches.  Let us find and root out those subtle influences in human life that lead to misery and poverty and ignorance and crime.  Let us disseminate knowledge.  Let us spread abroad useful moral information.  Let us have schools that will establish this information to the eye of even the poorest and most degraded being.  Let us make the conditions of moral growth possible in the world.  Let us have all invitations to the higher and loftier.  Ay, this is the secret--the tenderness for the individual is forgotten in the condemnation of the offense.  We forget the love while we remember the justice.  We forget the human being while we remember the wrong inflicted upon other human beings. 

The great power of beneficence is compassionate as well as just--heals the careless child, or the wayward, while at the same time condemning the waywardness, the folly or the crime.  Between the offense and the offender the law has drawn no line.  In the sphere where I dwell the offense is a moral condition, and not the individuality.  The culprit passes into the shadow; the shadow may remain there for others to pass into, but the culprit must be rescued from it.  He who goes into a crime does not intend to go there forever; he goes blindly and with passion, or is driven on by ignorance and lack of moral power.  We have no business to say that because he is there we shall make him stay forever.  We have no right because a man chooses to drown himself, not to offer him means of assistance; it is our business to save him if we can, and restore his moral sanity, and teach him that it is braver to live than to die.  What would the world say if an unfortunate man or woman on the brink of destruction, led by their own folly, were left to drown because they chose to take that step themselves?  Suicide has been made a crime; of course it is a madness, and is not all crime a species of madness?  Shall we not rescue a man from moral suicide as well as physical?  Shall we add murder to suicide?  I think not.  I think that in the more enlightened ages the gallows will be unknown.  I think that in the more enlightened period of time penitentiaries in their present form will be unknown.  You have inebriate asylums, blind asylums, asylums for the deaf and dumb, and the whole world is an asylum in case of war.  Is not the daily warfare of life as trying to mind and heart and spirit as the one great battle that leads heroes on to moral or physical victory, and maims them when they are proud of it?  Do not these people, falling all about you in daily existence, struggle as manfully, strive as bravely, and wish to overcome yet cannot?

The sanitary board is abroad when the tocsin of Waterloo, or the Crimea, or the American war is sounded; the moral sanitary board of nations is not alert in the daily battle field of life.  We let men go down through indifference, through inertia, through care for ourselves, through the various things that occupy, when a word, a suggestion, a helping hand would turn the scale with them.  This is the great moral power that is to be abroad in the world--that you are never to forget your responsibilities to one another; that you are never to forget that you are on life's battle field, and that the suffering and the sinful and the various kinds of moral obliquity in the world are to be met and overcome by you.  There are helps to do it everywhere, aiding hands extended from the skies, willing minds reaching down; but we cannot reach all the way.  You do not begin to build an edifice from the top--we cannot put on the dome until you have laid the foundation and made the walls.  The structure of moral and social life of earth must be commenced here by you.  What the spirit world can do is to encourage the laborers, point out the aim of the edifice, show the immortal obligations that lie beyond, and wait with the starry crowned dome of perfect social and political life for you at last to possess.  But here on earth your own deeds, and lives, and perceptions, educated and prompted by us, must lay the corner stone.  You must fashion the walls, and if they are not secure and crumble away, you must fashion them again, until finally when on tiptoe, as far as you can reach with every lofty aim and endeavor you rear the social fabric, lay its foundation in human equality, in human justice, in human love; then the hands of spirits engaged in the same work reach down from their height and crown the edifice with the dome that they have fashioned. 

We are building this way.  It is our aim in the future, wherever there is suffering or sin, to find the cause and assuage it; and the great moral healing of the world shall go on when every mind and heart feels his and her responsibility in presenting this fabric for the angels to crown. 
 
 

THIRD STATE (CHANGE OF CONTROL) 

From that divine estate 
Where souls must move and live 
In a supreme accord, 
Where guardian angels, bending, ever wait
To scatter far earthward 
The one, the blessed word; 

From where the portal opens just beyond, 
To show the glimmering light that glances through, 
And unseen splendors, beautiful yet fond, 
Reveal the light that Heaven gives to you;

From where the soul, forgetful of all pain, 
Risen beyond Its doubt, beyond Its fear, 
Beyond its hope, beyond all it may gain, 
Waits only, In that stillest atmosphere.
For the behest of the one Perfect Mind 
That rules and governs by supremest power, 
I come, your varying thoughts in love to bind, 
And wisdom, at this drear and darkened hour. 

The three- fold life that, in the spheres above, 
Is pictured to your minds and thought to-night, 
May here, by charmed work of truth and love, 
Be made to gleam with loftiest influence bright;
Each soul, up-growing from its lower state, 
May fashion out of kindly deeds its home, 
And then beyond may touch the pearly gate 
Through which the innermost of light must come, 

Oh, not In hope and fear, nor yet in woe, 
But through the pathway of a blessed control, 
That dreads no pain, no torture here below, 
So it perform the great work of the soul !

To do the thing that God intends you to; 
To act your part In the great play of life;
To let sunlight or tempest glimmer through, 
While you go on with hope and purpose rife; 
To do the duty nearest to your hand, 
Asking nor praise nor blame from human mind, 
But only strength, that the divine command 
May all your purpose with His purpose bind. 

To ask not whether mortal joy or woe, 
Based upon lower natures, man shall gain,
But whether in the upward, onward flow 
The truth may not sometimes be wrought with pain;
Whether to take the step and plant the germ 
Within the future's not a higher thing 
Than charity; we, stooping, view the worm, 
And find no bird upon the lofty wing. 

Ah! we must climb if we would gain the height!
We must unfold by whatsoever pain 
The thorns of life must bring us, or the night, 
And never ask if it will be dawn again, 
But only, pressing forward in the dark, 
Feel that a hand is 'round us everywhere, 
And, whether silent, cold, voiceless and stark, 
There still is something in the silent air 
That bids us go and do our best the while, 
Sail off in unknown seas, and vanquish them, 
While all the time the spirit's loving smile 
Wilts to receive us with its diadem. 

We know it not; we must not seek the gems 
That wait the soul along the shining strand;
We only know that all along the hems 
Of life's shores are the weary wastes of sand, 
And stones that pierce the feet and heart so sore; 
But still we bear, and tread, and suffer on, 
Nearing the light, and the soul ever more 
Finds strength and sustenance to lean upon--

Strength for the martyrs, heavenward driven by flame, 
Strength for the prisoner, from the dungeon cell 
Wrested without a hope on earth, or name. 
We know that from the heaven to lowest hell 
The law of life and God's love intervenes, 
And souls by slow degrees reach that estate 
Of triumph, where the spirit ever leans 
Across the bars of heaven--only must wait 
For God's one word of calm, divine behest, 
That triumphs over all of life below, 
Yet do all that is needful, seek the best 
That you can think and that your souls can know. 

End Part  IV