IN THE WORLD BEYOND DEATH

　ADESCRIPTION of the astral world and the conditions of the people who live in it was given one evening. Silver Birch said, in discussing the condition of one who had recently passed on, that life in the lower stages of the astral world duplicated in every detail our lives on earth.

　"I find it difficult to grasp that the astral world is identical with this world,” said one sitter.

　"The next stage of life to earth is a replica of your world of matter," declared Silver Birch. "Were it not so, the shock for the many who are uninstructed and ignorant would be more than they could stand. And so it has to be accomplished by very easy stages. The next stage of life resembles your world. That is why so many do not know that they have passed beyond the physical. Here essentially it is a world of thought, where thought is reality. And, being a thought world, thought moulds every expression of its life and its activity. Being so near to your world, and peopled by men and women who are naturally still very material in their outlook on life, the expression of their thought is very gross and So, whatever they think is in terms of physical things.

　"They cannot think of life apart from its physical aspects. There has never filtered into their consciousness any under-standing of a life apart from the purely physical. They cannot visualize spiritual activities and, because they cannot visualise them, they have no place in their scheme of things. But there are degrees of astral life, for gradually as awakening comes the grossness slowly disappears and becomes more refined. And life, they begin to see, is something beyond its material aspect. When spiritual realization dawns they are dead to the astral world and they begin to live in the world of spirit. There are many deaths and many births.”

　"Are the experiences of people in the astral world subjective or objective?" asked a sitter.

　"It is an objective life because life in my world is regulated by people who dwell on that particular plane of expression. As you advance beyond that, you leave it behind. As the spirit qualifies itself, by growth, progress and evolution, so it naturally passes to the next stage of spirit life. It is very objective in its own field of expression."

　"So it is not a dream world," the sitter said.

　"When they have passed beyond it, it is a dream world," said Silver Birch. "Whilst they are living in it, it is a real world to them. You call them dreams only by comparison. They are not dreams when you are dreaming them. They are dreams when you awaken and, recalling the experience, you say 'That was a dream.' So, when the spirit has passed beyond the lower stages of the astral, it recollects those experiences and says, 'They were dreams.' But when it endured them, they belonged to reality.”

　"Do we all start our life in the spirit world on this lower astral plane?" a sitter wanted to know.

　"Oh, no, it is for the uninstructed and the ignorant," said the guide, “those who are unaware of the existence of spiritual realities, who cannot visualize anything beyond the purely physical. The astral world is part of the world of spirit. It is one life in many varying grades, from the lower reaches to the highest stages. It is not divided into watertight compart-ments. We have to give you terms that you can under-stand.”

　Telling about growth in the spirit world, Silver Birch said, "You do not climb from one sphere into another; you grow, you evolve. The lower gives way to the higher. You 'die' and are born again and again. You do not lose the astral body in quite the same way that you lose the material body. It becomes more rarified, it becomes refined, as the lower drops away. That is its death, for death really means transforma-tion, resurrection, the rising of the higher out of the lower. Whenever we try to explain our world of spirit, which is freed from the limitations of your world, with its restrictions of time and space, we always have difficulty. The lower cannot grasp the higher, the finite cannot include the infinite, the lesser cannot hold the greater, but only by striving can you increase your capacity to understand.”

　"In the astral world, does one retain such things as the heart and pulse beats?" asked a sitter at another séance.

　"Whether they retain these organs depends on their state of consciousness,” said Silver Birch. "If they are com-pletely ignorant of a life after yours and they do not think that there is another world, then they have a complete replica of everything they had in the physical world, and they continue every bodily function in all its detailsーevery function."

　"And what happens at the passing of someone who under-stands about the spirit world?" asked the sitter.

　"The astral body goes through a process of rarification," the spirit replied. "As you appreciate that there is no need for certain organs, you gradually find they become atrophied and in the end they disappear."

　"Does that happen immediately after passing, or is it a gradual process?" a sitter wanted to know.

　"It depends on the state of your consciousness," said the guide. "The higher your consciousness, the less the need for adjustment. You must always remember that ours is a mind world, a spirit world where consciousness is king. The mind is enthroned and mind rules. What mind dictates is reality. When you have read of the appearance of those who come from the higher, or inner, planes, do you not find they are described as shining figures radiating light, rather than as having shape? That is because personality has gone. It is because there is less of the bodily expression about them."

　"What shape are the higher intelligences?" asked a sitter. "What shape is beauty?” countered the guide. “What shape is love? What shape is light?"

　"Does colour form the basis of recognition when you gebeyond shape?” asked another sitter.

　"Yes," said the guide, “but whereas you are governed by certain primary colours we have other ranges of colour beyond your comprehension. We can identify some of the higher teachers by the radiance of their appearance, by the light that comes with the message; because often there is no form of any kind. There is a thought, accompanied by radiance."

　Then a sitter asked about the popular idea of angels with wings. How did the wings originate?

　"When, in the days of long ago, they used to think of the universe," said the guide, "they divided it into three distinct compartments—there was the earth on which they stood, there was hell which was underneath them, and there was heaven which was above them. They knew there were visitors from both places, and they could only visualize people com-ing from heaven as having wings. They could not under-stand how people coming from a long distance above could reach them, unless, like the birds, they had wings. That is how the idea of angels with wings was born."

　"Are there beings with wings?" asked another sitter.

　"Yes," said the guide. "But it is only a thought form, for we require no wings in our world. It is a picture. Often we can only convey ideas to our instruments by building pictures, and the picture of a being with wings enfolding someone suggests guardianship. But there are some who, having to care for the children, have, as it were, grown these wings because there are always children who expect to see them.”

　The closeness of those on the Other Side was stressed when Silver Birch mentioned many dead friends and relatives of the sitters who had asked him to convey messages.

　"Try to remember that all of them are real human beings," he said, "who are just as interested in you as ever they were before. Though they do not speak to you, and you cannot hear them, they are here, each striving to do the utmost to assist you. They are closer than you know. They know your secrets, the unspoken desires of your minds, your wishes, your hopes and your fears. And all the while they bring their influence to bear on you, to guide you so that you may be able to extract from your earthly lives the experiences so necessary for the growth of your souls. They are not vague, shadowy, nebulous beings, but real men and women who love you still and who are in reality closer to you than ever they have been before.”

　That spiritual healing by earthly mediums is sometimes used to benefit spirits on the Other Side was the information given us at one sitting. It started with a reference by one of the circle to the Sanctuary, at East Sheen, of W. T. Parish, the spiritual healer.

　"I go there often," said Silver Birch, "for there I find reproduced on earth conditions which remind me of my other home in the spheres. Sometimes when I grow a little tired I go there to find new strength. There is there a con-centration of power that can be used to heal spiritual bodies in the flesh and those released from the flesh. You do not know the work that is done by many mediums in helping people in our world."

　"What class of spirits would be helped by spiritual heal-ing?" one of the circle asked.

　"Those whose spiritual bodies have suffered shock," replied the guide.   "Those who require the power that will enable adjustments to be made, so that they are ready for the spiritual life. Those whose brains were imperfect registers for their minds, all those where the spiritual body never received the fullness of expression because of some defect.”

　"Would they be mainly those who had just passed on and who would normally be treated in Other-Side hospitals?" Silver Birch was asked.

　"Yes," was the reply, “but the power that is focused in Parish's temple is very vital in its essence. Some of the rays belong to the forces of life itself.”

　Sometimes people wonder what happens to people killed suddenly, as by a bomb explosion. One night we asked Silver Birch what arrangements were made in the spirit world for receiving people who passed on as the result of bombing.

　"This requires simply an extension of the normal facilities which are in operation all the time to deal with arrivals in our world," answered the spirit. "Just as you, in time of war, have to prepare hospitals and institutions to care for the wounded, thus extending the service that is given to those who fall by the wayside in more normal times, so do we have to add to our arrangements to care for the many souls, some sick, some unready, and too many unprepared, so as to assist them and help them to understand the new life into which they have been plunged."