2.6 Spirit Life
Errant Spirits
A spirit does not always return immediately to bodily life after leaving the body.
Sometimes reincarnation follows at once. More often, there is an interval of shorter or longer duration between one existence and the next. On more advanced worlds, this return is almost always immediate, because the matter of those worlds is less dense. In such conditions, an incarnate spirit retains nearly all the faculties of spirit life, and its ordinary state resembles that of a lucid somnambulist.
Between incarnations, the soul exists as an errant spirit, awaiting a new destiny and aspiring toward a new existence.
This interval may last only a few hours, or it may extend through thousands of centuries. No fixed outer limit is assigned to the errant state, though it is never eternal. Sooner or later, every spirit is given the opportunity to begin another life, and that new existence serves to purify what remains from earlier ones.
The duration of this interval is connected with free will, though it may also involve expiation. Some spirits knowingly prolong it. For some, that delay is a punishment. Others ask that it be extended so they may continue studies that can be pursued more fruitfully in the spirit state than in bodily life.
The errant state is not, by itself, a mark of inferiority. Spirits of every degree may be errant. Incarnation is the temporary condition; the spirit’s normal state is to be disengaged from matter. In a broad sense, all spirits who are not incarnate and who must return to bodily life are errant. Pure spirits alone are not errant, because their condition is final and they no longer need reincarnation.
Spirits may therefore be considered in three states. They may be incarnate, joined to a material body. They may be errant, freed from the body while awaiting a new incarnation through which they may improve themselves. Or they may be pure, perfected, and beyond the need for further embodiment.
Learning in the Errant State
Errant spirits continue to learn, though not in the same way embodied human beings do.
They study their own past and seek means of advancing. They observe what takes place in the environments through which they pass. They listen to the teachings of enlightened beings and to the counsel of spirits more advanced than themselves. In this way, they acquire ideas and insights they did not yet possess.
Progress in the errant state is real and can be considerable. It depends on the spirit’s will and desire to improve. Yet the application of newly acquired understanding belongs especially to bodily life. Incarnate existence remains the field in which many resolutions are tested and transformed into action.
Passions After Death
The shedding of the body does not instantly free every spirit from its passions.
Spirits of a high order leave evil passions behind and retain only aspirations toward the good. Lower spirits, however, continue to carry their passions with them. If they had already overcome them, they would no longer belong to the lower ranks.
This persistence is easy to understand. A person who has been deeply consumed by jealousy, pride, or some other disorder does not necessarily lose it merely by dying. After leaving earthly life, such a spirit is not yet wholly freed from matter. Especially when passions have been strong, the spirit retains a kind of atmosphere still impregnated with those tendencies. It sees the truth only intermittently, enough to perceive the moral road that must be followed, but not yet with the clarity needed to walk it fully.
Happiness and Suffering Among Errant Spirits
The condition of errant spirits varies according to their moral state.
Their happiness or unhappiness depends on what they have merited. Some suffer from the passions whose essence they still retain. Others are happy in proportion to their dematerialization. In the errant state, a spirit understands what it lacks in order to be happier, and this awareness leads it to seek the means of attaining a better condition.
Yet a spirit is not always permitted to reincarnate at the moment it wishes. The inability to return immediately to a new life may itself be a punishment.
Relations with Other Worlds
Errant spirits are not confined in exactly the same way embodied beings are, but neither are they entirely free from every limitation.
When a spirit leaves the body, it is still not completely disengaged from matter. It remains connected to the world where it lived, or to another world of the same degree, unless it has advanced enough during its last life to rise beyond that sphere. Such progress is the purpose toward which it must strive, since perfection is never reached without advancement.
A spirit may visit certain more advanced worlds, but only as a stranger. It receives no more than a glimpse of them. Those glimpses are valuable because they awaken the desire to improve and to become worthy of the happiness enjoyed there, so that one day the spirit may dwell in such worlds rather than merely behold them from afar.
Purified spirits often go to less advanced worlds in order to help them progress. Without the assistance of such spirits, those worlds would be left without guides to direct and support their development.
Transitional Worlds
There are worlds that serve as temporary dwellings for errant spirits. They are places especially suited to beings who are between one stage and another, where they may remain for a time during a prolonged errant state. Since that condition is always somewhat wearying, these worlds offer a kind of repose.
They stand as intermediary stations between other worlds and differ according to the nature of the spirits who are able to enter them. The well-being found there is greater or lesser in keeping with the degree of advancement of those who inhabit them.
Spirits who temporarily occupy such worlds are not confined there. They may leave when the time comes to follow the course prepared for them. Their condition may be compared to migrating birds that pause on an island to recover their strength before resuming their journey.
Progress During the Stay
These temporary stays are not idle. Spirits continue to progress there.
Those who gather in such places do so in order to learn and to prepare themselves, so that they may more easily gain access to better worlds and advance step by step toward the condition of the elect.
The Temporary Character of Transitional Worlds
The role of these worlds is not permanent. They are not destined forever to serve as resting places for errant spirits. Their function is temporary, just as the condition of those who pass through them is temporary.
They are not inhabited at the same time by embodied beings. Their surface is barren, and those who dwell there do not need material provisions.
That barrenness is not everlasting. It does not belong to their nature in any absolute sense, but only to a passing phase.
Yet they are not deprived of beauty. Their grandeur belongs to another order. The vastness proper to them has its own splendor, no less admirable than the forms of beauty commonly associated with nature.
Earth Among the Transitional Worlds
Earth itself has already passed through such a condition. It belonged to that state during the period of its formation.
Nothing in nature is useless. Everything has a purpose and a destination. There is no empty void where life is wholly absent. Life unfolds everywhere in forms suited to the conditions in which it appears.
During the immense ages before humankind appeared on Earth, during those long transitional eras recorded in the geological layers, and even before the first organic beings were formed upon the still-shapeless mass, life was not absent from that arid chaos where the elements were mingling together. Beings existed there who were not subject to our needs or our physical sensations, and they found in that state a place suited to them.
Even in its imperfection, the world was useful. Divine wisdom leaves nothing without purpose.
The thought that only one world among the countless billions scattered through space should have the exclusive privilege of being inhabited is difficult to reconcile with the order and wisdom visible throughout creation. It is far more fitting to understand that worlds not yet suitable for material life may nevertheless be populated by beings appropriate to their condition.
In that view there is something vast and elevating. It opens the way to resolving more than one difficulty by showing that existence is not limited to the narrow forms of life familiar to human experience.
Perceptions, Sensations, and Sufferings of Spirits
Perceptions of Spirits
After separation from the body, the soul retains the perceptions it had during earthly life and also gains others that were obscured while embodied. The body acts like a veil, limiting expression. Intelligence belongs naturally to the spirit, and it manifests more freely when no longer constrained by material organs.
These perceptions are not unlimited. Spirits know in proportion to their degree of advancement. The nearer they are to perfection, the more they understand. Spirits of a high order possess vast knowledge, while those of a lower order remain ignorant in many respects.
The same principle applies to the deepest questions. Spirits do not all comprehend the origin of things. Less evolved spirits know no more about such matters than human beings do. Knowledge expands with purification, but no created spirit possesses absolute understanding.
Time, Present, Past, and Future
Spirits do not perceive time as human beings do. Existing outside bodily conditions, they do not experience duration in the same measured way. What appears long to people may seem only an instant to them, much as irregularities on the ground disappear from view when seen from a great height.
Their perception of the present is often more accurate than ours, just as clear sight judges more accurately than blindness. Spirits see what escapes bodily senses, and they evaluate things from a broader standpoint. Yet this too varies according to their development.
Knowledge of the past is possible because, for spirits, what has been can become present again when they turn their attention to it. Freed from the material veil that clouds human memory, they recall much that incarnate life has hidden. Even so, this knowledge is not boundless. Spirits do not know everything, including the mystery of their own creation.
Their knowledge of the future is also limited. According to their purity, they may glimpse what is to come, but they are not always permitted to reveal it. When they do perceive future events, these may appear to them almost as present realities. The clearer a spirit’s union with the divine order, the clearer this perception becomes. Still, complete foreknowledge belongs to God alone. Even the most advanced spirits do not share divine sovereignty.
Perception of God and Divine Direction
Only spirits of a high order truly see and understand God. Spirits of a lower order do not perceive God directly, but they feel and intuit the divine presence and authority.
When a less evolved spirit says that something is permitted or forbidden by God, this does not mean it has seen God face to face. Rather, it receives an inward impression, a secret warning, a kind of spiritual presentiment that restrains or guides it. What human beings experience faintly as intuition, spirits receive with greater subtlety because their nature is less dense.
Such direction does not ordinarily come to lower spirits directly from God. Divine commands are transmitted through spirits more advanced in purification and knowledge. Direct communication with God belongs only to those capable of it.
Sight and Hearing of Spirits
A spirit’s sight is not confined to a single organ or limited as bodily vision is. It belongs to the whole spirit. Spirits do not need external light in order to see; they see by a light proper to themselves. Darkness exists for them only as part of a condition of expiation.
They do not need to move from place to place in order to perceive what is happening elsewhere. Because they travel with the speed of thought, their perception can extend with extraordinary rapidity. Thought may radiate toward many points at once. Still, this capacity depends on purity. The less advanced the spirit, the more restricted its perception. Only spirits of a high order apprehend things in a broad and unified way.
Spiritual sight may be understood as a kind of universal lucidity. It extends through space, time, and things without depending on material light or overcoming material obstacles in the human way. Human sight relies on an organ that receives light from outside; spiritual sight is an inherent faculty.
For that reason, spirits perceive things more distinctly than we do. Their vision penetrates what bodily sight cannot reach, and nothing material obscures it.
The same is true of hearing. Spirits perceive sounds, including those beyond the range of human senses. Hearing, like sight, is not localized in one part of them. All perceptions are attributes of the spirit itself. While incarnate, the spirit receives impressions through bodily organs; when free, these perceptions are no longer confined in that way.
Use of Perception
Because perception belongs to the spirit, a spirit can generally direct it. It sees and hears what it wishes to see and hear. This is especially true of the more advanced. Less evolved spirits, however, may be compelled to perceive what is useful for their correction and progress, even when they would prefer not to.
Sensitivity to Music and Beauty
Spirits are sensitive to music, but spiritual music differs immeasurably from earthly music. Celestial harmony surpasses anything human ears can imagine. What is heard on earth stands to it as the simplest chant stands to a refined and beautiful melody. Ordinary spirits may still take pleasure in human music because they are not yet capable of fully appreciating what is more sublime. For spirits, especially as their sensibility develops, music has a profound and expansive charm.
They are also sensitive to the beauties of nature. The forms of beauty throughout different worlds are so varied that no spirit knows them all. Appreciation depends on aptitude and advancement. More evolved spirits delight in the whole, in the larger harmony within which individual beauties take their place.
Needs, Fatigue, and Rest
Spirits know physical needs and bodily sufferings because they have undergone them, but they no longer experience them physically as incarnate beings do. Once freed from the body, they are no longer subject to hunger, pain, or organic necessity in the same manner.
They do not feel fatigue as human beings understand it, and they do not require bodily rest, since they have no organs whose strength must be restored. Yet they do have a form of repose. Their activity is intellectual rather than physical, and their rest is a temporary quieting of thought. There are times when thought is less active and is not fixed on any particular object. This is true rest for a spirit, though it is not comparable to sleep or bodily recovery.
The need for such repose decreases as spirits become more purified. The more advanced they are, the less rest they require.
Sufferings of Spirits
The sufferings of spirits are moral rather than physical. When a spirit says it suffers, the pain is mental anguish, often more acute than bodily pain. Interior torment, remorse, confusion, longing, and similar states belong to spiritual suffering more than any physical sensation.
For the same reason, some spirits complain of heat or cold. Such expressions usually arise from memory. They recall what they endured while living in the body, and the remembrance affects them so vividly that it becomes like a real sensation. Often these images are also a way of describing their condition.
A useful comparison is the lingering impression left after removing a heavy garment. Even after the burden is gone, one may still seem to feel its weight. In a similar way, spirits may retain the impression of former bodily suffering without any longer possessing a body that literally undergoes it.
Theoretical Explanation of Sensation in Spirits
The body is the instrument of pain. Even when it is not the first cause, it is at least the immediate one. The soul perceives pain, and that perception is the effect. The memory it retains of pain may be extremely vivid, but that does not mean the soul itself undergoes physical sensation in the bodily sense. Cold and heat do not damage the soul’s substance. A soul neither freezes nor burns.
This becomes easier to understand when one considers how powerfully memory and expectation can affect incarnate life itself. The recollection of an illness, or anxiety about one, may disturb a person profoundly and even contribute to death. In the same way, those who have suffered an amputation often still feel pain in the missing limb. The absent member is plainly neither the seat nor the source of the pain. The impression remains in the nervous system and is still experienced.
Something similar may occur after death.
A clearer understanding depends on the perispirit, which plays a central role in spirit phenomena: vaporous and tangible apparitions, the condition of the spirit at death, the frequent impression among the newly dead that they are still alive, and the disturbing state of suicides, the executed, and those who were deeply attached to bodily pleasures.
The perispirit is the link between spirit and body. It is formed from the surrounding universal fluid. It contains elements comparable to electricity, magnetic fluid, and, to some extent, inert matter. It may be regarded as the quintessence of matter. It is the principle of organic sensation, though not of intelligence, which belongs to the spirit alone.
In earthly life, sensations are localized through the organs of the body. After the destruction of the body, they are no longer confined to separate organs but become generalized. That is why a spirit does not say that it suffers more in one bodily part than in another. Still, the sensations of the perispirit must not be confused with bodily sensations. Bodily pain can serve as a comparison, but not as an exact analogy.
Freed from the body, a spirit may suffer, but not in the same way a body suffers. Yet this suffering is not merely moral in the narrow sense, as though it were only remorse. A spirit may complain of heat or cold, but not because temperature physically acts on it as it acts on flesh. Spirits have been seen passing through flames without pain, which shows that ordinary temperature has no effect on them. What they experience is not physical pain properly speaking, but an inner and often indistinct suffering. It is not always localized, nor does it always come from an external cause. Often it is a memory more than a present reality, though a deeply painful memory. At times, however, it is more than memory.
Experience shows that the perispirit separates from the body more or less slowly at death. During the first moments, the spirit often does not understand its state. It does not think itself dead because it still feels alive. It sees its body nearby, knows it belongs to it, yet does not understand why it is separated from it. This condition continues as long as some bond remains between body and perispirit.
One suicide expressed this condition by saying, “No, I am not dead,” and then added that he could feel worms devouring him. The worms were not acting on the spirit, nor even on the perispirit, but only on the body. Yet because separation was incomplete, what was occurring in the corpse was still reflected to the spirit through the remaining connection. It was not merely the recollection of something once suffered in life. It was the present impression of what was happening to the body, mistakenly taken as direct experience.
During incarnate life, the body receives impressions and transmits them to the spirit through the perispirit, likely by means of what may be called the neural fluid. After death, the body feels nothing because it no longer has either spirit or perispirit. When detached from the body, the perispirit still serves as the vehicle of sensation, but sensation no longer passes through limited bodily channels and therefore becomes diffused through the whole being.
The perispirit, however, is only a transmitting agent. Consciousness belongs to the spirit alone. If the perispirit could exist without the spirit, it would feel no more than a corpse. And if the spirit had no perispirit, it would be inaccessible to painful sensation, as happens with fully purified spirits. The more a spirit purifies itself, the more etherealized its perispirit becomes, and the less it is subject to material influence.
This raises a natural question: if pleasant sensations reach the spirit through the perispirit, do not unpleasant ones do so as well? And if a pure spirit is inaccessible to some, must it not also be inaccessible to the others? It is so, but only with respect to sensations that arise from the kind of matter familiar to us. The sound of human instruments and the fragrance of flowers make no impression on a pure spirit. Yet it enjoys inward sensations of a delight impossible for us to define, because they are as inaccessible to our present faculties as light is to one born blind. We know such perceptions exist, but not how they are experienced.
Spirits possess perception, sensation, hearing, and sight, but these belong to their whole being rather than to separate organs as in human beings. How this occurs cannot be fully expressed in human language, which was formed for the world of incarnate experience and lacks terms for realities beyond ordinary conception.
When spirits are said to be inaccessible to the impressions of matter, this applies above all to the most advanced, whose etherealized envelope has no true counterpart in the physical world. The case is different with spirits whose perispirit is denser. Such spirits perceive sounds and odors, though not through specialized organs. Vibrations are felt throughout their whole being and thus in the common seat of sensation, the spirit itself, but in a manner different from earthly perception and perhaps producing different effects.
They hear the human voice, yet they can also understand without speech, for the transmission of thought is enough. This shows that spiritual perception becomes more penetrating as dematerialization increases. Sight, too, is independent of light. It is an essential faculty of the soul, for which darkness does not exist. Among more purified spirits, it is broader and more penetrating. The soul, or spirit, therefore contains within itself the faculty of perception in general. During bodily life these faculties are obscured by the density of material organs; in the extra-corporeal state they are gradually liberated as the semi-material envelope becomes more refined.
Because the perispirit is drawn from the surrounding environment, it varies according to the nature of different worlds. As a person changes clothing according to climate, spirits change their envelope when passing from one world to another. When more advanced spirits come to a world like ours, they assume a terrestrial perispirit, and under those conditions their perceptions resemble those of ordinary spirits. Yet all spirits, whether more or less advanced, hear and feel only what they choose to hear and feel.
Since they do not depend on bodily sense organs, they can make their perceptions active or inactive by an act of will. There is, however, one thing they cannot refuse to hear: the counsels of good spirits. Their sight remains active, though they may render themselves invisible to one another. According to their degree of advancement, they may hide themselves from less purified spirits, though not from those who are more purified.
In the first moments after death, a spirit’s vision is often dim and confused. It becomes clearer as the spirit disengages from the body and may eventually surpass the clarity of earthly sight, even to the point of penetrating what is opaque to human eyes. How far that sight extends through space, and how much it grasps of past and future, depends on the spirit’s degree of purity and advancement.
These ideas may seem unsettling. Many imagine that once freed from the dense envelope that served as the instrument of pain, they will no longer suffer. Yet suffering may continue after death, and sometimes very intensely and for a long time. Still, it may also cease altogether from the moment bodily life ends.
The sufferings of earthly life sometimes come from causes outside us, but more often they arise from our own choices. Traced back to their origin, many human troubles would be found to come from excess, ambition, and the passions. Much illness and misery are the result of misuse, imbalance, and disordered desire. Simplicity, moderation, and self-command spare a person many afflictions.
The same law applies after death. The sufferings of spirits are always connected to the way they lived on earth. They no longer endure gout or rheumatism, but they may experience other forms of suffering no less real. These sufferings persist only insofar as the spirit remains bound to matter. The more the spirit frees itself from material influence, the more dematerialized it becomes, and the less it is exposed to painful sensations.
This liberation depends, even now, on the use of free will. A spirit can begin in present life to loosen the hold of matter by overcoming its lower passions, renouncing hatred, envy, jealousy, pride, and selfishness, and cultivating good feelings. It advances by practicing what is good and by assigning worldly things only the importance they truly deserve. In that way, even while still in a body, it purifies itself through detachment from matter.
Then, when it leaves the body behind, it no longer suffers from material influence. The physical pains once endured in life leave no bitter trace in the spirit, because they affected only the body. The spirit rejoices to be freed from them, and the peace of a clear conscience preserves it from moral anguish.
The destiny of spirits confirms this law. Their sufferings always correspond to their conduct, and they endure the consequences of what they have chosen. For those who have followed the path of good, the life beyond the grave is a source of deep and inexpressible happiness. For those who suffer, the cause lies in themselves, as it often did during incarnate life. In both worlds, they bear responsibility for the direction they have taken.
The Choice of Trials
Before entering a new bodily existence, a spirit in the errant state has awareness enough to choose the kinds of trials it will undergo. In this freedom lies its responsibility. It is not abandoned to blind fate, nor is every sorrow arbitrarily imposed as a punishment.
Nothing occurs outside divine permission, because the laws governing the universe come from God. Yet within those laws, spirits are given freedom to choose. They may take the path of good or the path of error, and they must bear the consequences of what they choose. If they fail, all is not lost. Divine goodness allows them to begin again where they fell short.
A necessary distinction must be made between what belongs to God’s will and what belongs to the spirit’s will. A danger may exist within the order of things permitted by God, but a spirit may voluntarily place itself in circumstances where that danger serves as a means of progress. In that case, the exposure was chosen, even though the law allowing it belongs to God.
What Is Chosen, and What Is Not
A spirit does not foresee and select every detail of an earthly life. It chooses the type of trial, not every incident. The details arise from circumstances, from the conditions into which it has placed itself, and often from its own actions.
If a spirit chooses to be born among corrupt people, it knows the sort of temptations it will meet there, but it does not know beforehand each act it will perform. Those acts are still the result of its own will. It knows that by taking a certain road it will encounter a certain kind of struggle, but not every event that will happen along the way. Only the major events that bear strongly on its destiny are foreseen.
A person who walks a rough and dangerous path knows that caution will be needed and that a fall is possible, but does not know the exact moment of a stumble—or even whether one will occur at all. Much depends on vigilance. In the same way, not every accident of life has been individually written in advance.
Why Spirits Seek Difficult Conditions
A spirit may ask to be born in surroundings where evil is present because that is the fitting environment for the trial it has requested. To struggle against an impulse, it must often be placed where that impulse can be awakened. If it needs to resist theft, it may be born among thieves.
There is no reason to regret the disappearance of evil from any world. On more advanced worlds, evil no longer finds access, and only good spirits dwell there. Earth itself is meant to advance in the same way.
A spirit does not need to undergo every possible temptation. It does not have to pass through all conditions that might provoke pride, jealousy, greed, or sensuality. Many avoid entire ranges of suffering by taking a better road from the outset. But if a spirit allows itself to be drawn into evil, it exposes itself to the dangers attached to that path.
A spirit may ask for wealth, for example. Wealth can become a trial of greed, selfishness, waste, pride, or sensual indulgence. Yet this does not mean the spirit must give in to all of those tendencies. The trial creates the opportunity for victory or failure; it does not predetermine the outcome.
The Growth of Freedom
At its origin, a spirit is simple, ignorant, and inexperienced. It could not guide itself wisely without help. God compensates for this inexperience by indicating the path to follow, as a child is guided in early life. As the spirit develops, God gradually leaves it more fully to its own freedom.
The wrong choice begins when a spirit no longer listens to the counsel of good spirits and follows a mistaken path of its own will. In that sense, the fall comes from the misuse of freedom.
Even so, the choice of a future existence does not always rest entirely with the spirit. When a spirit’s impurity or obstinacy makes it incapable of choosing what would truly benefit it, God may impose a particular existence. Such an existence serves at once as expiation, purification, and advancement. God does not hasten expiation unnecessarily, but neither does God leave a spirit forever to choices that would only prolong its disorder.
Delay After Death
The choice of a new existence is not always made immediately after death. Many spirits are delayed by their own beliefs and mental states. Some remain under the burden of the idea of eternal punishment, and that belief itself becomes a source of suffering.
What Guides the Choice
In choosing trials, a spirit seeks what may serve as expiation for past wrongs and what may help it progress more quickly.
One may choose poverty and hardship in order to learn endurance and courage. Another may choose fortune and power, though these are often more dangerous than poverty because of the abuses they invite and the passions they excite. Others may seek the harsh schooling that comes through contact with vice.
Not all who live amid vice are there by way of noble trial. Some are drawn to such conditions by affinity. They seek surroundings that suit their still-crude tastes and allow material inclinations free rein. These spirits remain in such states until the bitter consequences of their passions teach them what they refused to learn otherwise. Sooner or later, they understand their wrongs and ask for better trials through which they may repair them.
Why Spirits Do Not Choose the Easiest Life
From an earthly point of view, it seems natural to prefer the least painful trials. But once free of the body, a spirit sees differently. Material illusion fades. Fleeting pleasures are weighed against the lasting happiness glimpsed ahead, and temporary hardship no longer seems so decisive.
A spirit may therefore choose a difficult and painful life in the hope of reaching a better state more quickly, just as a patient accepts an unpleasant remedy for the sake of healing. Those who undertake dangerous explorations in search of discovery do not choose the easiest route; they accept hardship because they see beyond it.
When viewed from the spirit state, the freedom to choose one’s life and trials no longer appears strange. Spirits perceive the goal more clearly than incarnate beings do. After each existence, they see how far they have come and what still remains to be purified. That is why they may willingly submit to the hardships of bodily life and even ask for those that will hasten their progress.
In its imperfect condition, a spirit cannot enjoy existence without suffering. It sees enough of the goal to understand that improvement is worth the cost.
Earthly Images of the Same Law
Human life already offers many reflections of this principle. People labor for years, deprive themselves, and accept exhausting efforts in view of a future good. Soldiers volunteer for dangerous missions. Explorers face severe risks for knowledge, success, or honor. Students choose demanding examinations to advance in a profession. No one reaches a high place in science, art, or industry without passing through many lower stages, each with its own discipline and difficulty.
Bodily life mirrors spirit life on a smaller scale. If people often choose difficult paths on earth to secure a greater future, there is nothing unreasonable in a spirit choosing a laborious existence when it can see farther ahead and knows that earthly life is brief.
Those who imagine they would naturally choose only rank, luxury, or riches see only the immediate surface. Such judgments belong to shortsightedness. The child who wants to grow up only to live among sweets does not understand what life requires. In the same way, the incarnate spirit often mistakes pleasure for happiness.
The Mountain and the Valley
The condition of an incarnate spirit resembles that of a traveler walking through a valley filled with fog. From below, the road seems narrow and confused, and the destination is not clearly seen. Upon reaching the summit, the traveler sees both the road already taken and the one still to come, together with its obstacles and the surest route forward.
Freed from earthly ties, the spirit sees from this higher point. For the traveler, the goal is rest after fatigue. For the spirit, it is supreme happiness after trials and tribulations.
Study Before Choosing
In the errant state, spirits search, study, and observe before making their choices. This too has an earthly likeness. People may spend years examining possible careers before deciding which best suits their ends. If one path proves mistaken, they turn to another.
Each bodily existence is like a phase in the broader life of the spirit. Spirit life is the normal life; bodily existence is temporary and passing. From that wider perspective, successive incarnations are like periods or days within a much larger journey.
Desire During Earthly Life
A spirit may influence its future existence even while still incarnate. Its desires can have an effect, according to their sincerity and direction. Yet once it returns to the spirit state, it often judges things quite differently. Strictly speaking, the choice belongs to the spirit as spirit, though moments of relative independence from the body can already orient that choice during earthly life.
Many people desire greatness and wealth. Often this desire belongs to the bodily side, which longs to enjoy them. But the spirit may desire wealth or power for a very different reason: as a trial, in order to face the dangers and responsibilities they bring.
Trials Continue Until Purity Is Reached
Until perfect purity is attained, a spirit continues to have duties and occasions for progress. Yet these are not always trials in the ordinary earthly sense of material suffering. A spirit that has reached a certain degree may no longer need painful expiatory conditions. Still, it is not inactive. It has duties that involve helping others to improve, and in fulfilling those duties it continues to advance.
Mistaken Choices
A spirit can be mistaken about the usefulness of a trial. It may choose one beyond its strength and succumb under it. It may also choose a life that proves sterile—idle, unproductive, and spiritually empty. On returning to the spirit world, it sees that it has gained nothing and asks for an opportunity to recover lost time.
Vocations and Inclinations
The attractions people feel toward certain careers and forms of life are often linked to the progress achieved in prior existences and to the kinds of trials previously chosen. Present vocations do not arise at random. They continue an earlier history.
Gradual Progress Through Different Conditions
A spirit does not progress by leaps that bypass the necessary stages of growth. More advanced spirits are not born among cannibals. Only spirits of a similar or lower moral development would belong there.
Even so, for spirits of a very degraded order, incarnation among less brutal earthly peoples may already be a step upward. Progress must be gradual. A being cannot pass at once from barbarity to full civilization. This gradual ascent shows the justice of reincarnation. Without repeated opportunities suited to each level, the vast number of deeply degraded beings would have no practical means of rising.
Passing Too Quickly Into Higher Conditions
Spirits from worlds or peoples less advanced than those of civilized societies may sometimes be born among more developed populations. But some attempt this ascent too quickly and do not fit their surroundings. Their instincts and habits remain discordant with the environment into which they have come.
Such cases produce the troubling spectacle of ferocity appearing in the midst of civilization. If such a being were to return to a less advanced environment, that would not necessarily be a regression. It could simply be a return to conditions more suited to its current level, perhaps now with some benefit from what it had partly encountered.
Reincarnation Into a Less Advanced Culture as Expiation or Mission
A person from a civilized society may be reborn in a less advanced one as an expiation. This may happen, for example, when someone abused power in a former life. A cruel master may become a servant and suffer the harsh treatment once inflicted on others. One who commanded arrogantly may later have to obey. In such cases, the reversal teaches justice through lived experience, and God may impose it.
The same outward condition can have a very different inner meaning for another spirit. A good spirit may choose an influential life among a less advanced people, not as punishment but as a mission, in order to help that people advance. In that case, the difficult environment is accepted for the sake of service.
Relationships Beyond the Grave
Spirits do not exist in a state of equality.
Among them there is a real hierarchy of powers, with authority and subordination corresponding to their degree of advancement. This authority is not based on force, rank, or outward distinction, but on moral ascendancy. The more advanced naturally prevail over the less advanced through a superiority that cannot truly be resisted.
Lower-order spirits cannot escape this authority. However rebellious they may be, they remain subject to the influence of those who are more advanced.
True Superiority in the Spirit World
Earthly importance gives no automatic superiority beyond bodily life.
Those who were powerful, honored, or exalted in the world may find themselves among the least advanced spirits, while those who were obscure, humble, or socially lowly may be far above them. Human titles disappear there. What remains is merit.
For that reason, one who was great on earth may feel deep humiliation on discovering a lower condition in the spirit world, especially if pride and jealousy shaped that earthly life. The pain comes not from the loss of title itself, but from the recognition that what seemed greatness was not true elevation.
Even the distinctions that seemed unquestionable during life lose their meaning after death. A soldier who meets his general no longer measures superiority by command, uniform, or social position. Titles are nothing. True superiority is everything.
Affinity, Separation, and the Gathering of Spirits
Spirits of different orders are not isolated from one another in an absolute way, yet neither are they mingled without distinction.
They may see one another, but they remain clearly differentiated. They approach or avoid one another according to the resemblance or opposition of their sentiments. Like attracts like. Similar tendencies create affinity; contrary tendencies create distance.
From this affinity arise groups or families of spirits united by sympathy and purpose. Good spirits gather through their desire to do good. Evil spirits gather through their desire to do evil, through the shame that follows wrongdoing, and through the need to remain among beings like themselves.
The spirit world contains every degree of condition and character, yet these degrees do not blend into confusion. Virtue and vice exist side by side without true union.
Access Among Spirits
The good can go everywhere.
This freedom is necessary so that they may exercise a beneficial influence upon spirits who are still imperfect. Their mission requires access, guidance, and the ability to oppose evil tendencies wherever they are found.
The realms inhabited by good spirits, however, are closed to imperfect spirits. Those lower spirits are prevented from entering places where their passions would disturb the harmony they have not yet learned to share.
The Relationship Between Good and Evil Spirits
Good spirits labor to oppose the evil inclinations of lower spirits in order to help them advance.
This struggle is not one of hatred, but of restoration. It is part of their mission to restrain, correct, and influence those who are still attached to evil.
Evil spirits, by contrast, often seek to draw human beings into wrongdoing. They do this out of spite. Having failed to attain the company and happiness of the good, they try to keep inexperienced souls from reaching the good they themselves lack. They want others to undergo what they endure.
This destructive impulse springs from envy, frustration, and a painful awareness of their own condition.
Communication Among Spirits
Spirits communicate directly through thought.
They see and understand one another without needing spoken language. Speech belongs to material life and is only a rough reflection of spiritual exchange. Among spirits, communication takes place through a universal fluid that serves as the vehicle of thought, much as air carries sound in the physical world.
This creates a constant communication linking spirits to one another, even across different worlds. It is like a universal network through which thought is transmitted instantly.
Transparency and Visibility
Thought among spirits is ordinarily open.
They do not conceal themselves from one another in the way human beings do. For spirits, especially the more perfect, everything is largely laid bare. Even when they are separated, they remain visible to one another.
This openness is not without exception. Certain spirits can make themselves invisible to others when there is a useful reason for doing so. Still, concealment is far more limited in the spirit state than in earthly life.
Individuality and Recognition
A spirit remains distinct and recognizable after the loss of the physical body.
Its individuality is preserved by the perispirit, which distinguishes one spirit from another just as the body distinguishes incarnate beings during earthly life.
Spirits who knew one another on earth recognize one another after death. A son recognizes his father, and friends recognize each other. This recognition is not uncertain or vague. They perceive their past life and read it clearly, as though it were written before them. In one another they see not only the memory of former relationships, but also the course each has taken since bodily death.
The Return to the Spirit World
Recognition after death is not always immediate.
A soul newly separated from the body does not necessarily see relatives and friends at once. It often needs time to understand its new state and to free itself from the lingering influence of material life.
Once returned, the soul is received according to its condition. The just soul is welcomed like a beloved and long-awaited brother or sister. The wicked soul is received as a being held in contempt.
Impure spirits feel satisfaction at the arrival of another evil spirit who resembles them and who, like them, is deprived of the happiness enjoyed by the good. Their companionship does not bring peace, only the grim comfort of likeness.
The Welcome of Relatives and Friends
Those who loved us may come to meet us when we leave the earth.
Good spirits are often received by relatives and friends who preceded them into the spirit world. These loving spirits greet them with joy, as one welcomes a traveler returning safely from a difficult journey. They help them loosen the bonds that still connect them to bodily life.
Such a welcome is a blessing. It belongs especially to souls whose condition allows reunion with those who love them.
A blemished spirit does not receive the same consolation. It may remain isolated, or find itself surrounded only by spirits of a similar nature. This isolation, or this companionship among the impure, forms part of its punishment.
Reunion After Death
Relatives and friends are not always reunited immediately or permanently after death.
Everything depends on their degree of advancement and on the path each is following. If one spirit has advanced more rapidly than another, they cannot remain together continuously. They may see one another at intervals, but full reunion waits until they are able to walk side by side, having reached a similar degree of purification.
The temporary loss of familiar companionship is not arbitrary. It reflects the law of spiritual progress. Sometimes the inability to see loved ones is itself a punishment, especially when it helps a spirit understand what it has lost and what it must become in order to regain it.
Love persists, but harmony requires likeness of condition. Lasting reunion belongs to spirits who are united not only by memory and affection, but by shared advancement toward the good.
Sympathies and Antipathies Among Spirits. Eternal Halves
Among spirits, sympathy does exist, and it is stronger than among people on earth.
Freed from the body, spirits are no longer subject in the same way to the disturbances and fluctuations of the passions. Similarity of character, feeling, and degree of advancement creates a real bond between them, and this bond is more direct and more powerful when material influences no longer obscure it.
Antipathy also exists, but only among impure spirits. These are the ones who foster enmity and division and who often encourage the same tendencies among human beings.
Resentment, Forgiveness, and Reunion
Enemies on earth do not ordinarily remain enemies in spirit life.
Once separated from bodily life, they usually recognize how senseless their hatred was and how childish its motive had been. Only imperfect spirits preserve a kind of animosity until they are purified. If the conflict arose merely from material interests, it fades as soon as those interests no longer matter. When there is no deeper antipathy and the cause of dissension has disappeared, they may meet again with pleasure.
The memory of wrongs can, however, delay sympathy. It may cause spirits to keep their distance from one another.
Those who were wronged respond according to their moral state. Good spirits forgive in proportion to sincere repentance. Spirits who are still evil may cling to resentment and, at times, even pursue the one who harmed them into another existence. Such a pursuit is not outside divine justice; it may be permitted as a form of chastisement.
Lasting Affections Among Spirits
Personal affections among spirits can change in lower conditions, but among pure spirits they do not.
Spirits no longer deceive one another. No mask remains behind which hypocrisy may hide. Because they see one another as they truly are, their affections, when pure, are stable and unalterable. The love that unites them becomes a source of deep happiness.
The affection that two beings felt for each other on earth continues after death when it rested on true sympathy. But if what seemed to be affection depended chiefly on physical attraction, it ends with its cause. Affections among spirits are firmer and more enduring than earthly attachments because they are not subject to selfish interest or the instability of material life.
The Error of “Eternal Halves”
No spirit has a single predestined counterpart created as its necessary other half.
There is no exclusive and inevitable union established from the origin between two souls. Unity exists among all spirits, but in different degrees according to the order they occupy and the degree of purification they have reached. The purer they are, the more united they become. Discord is the source of human misery; concord is the source of complete happiness.
The expression “other half,” sometimes used to describe two highly sympathetic spirits, must therefore be understood as figurative rather than literal. If one spirit were truly the missing half of another, each would be incomplete apart from the other, which is not the case. Every spirit preserves its individuality.
When two spirits are perfectly sympathetic, their union may be lasting; but this does not mean that one completes the being of the other. Their sympathy arises from the perfect harmony of their tendencies, instincts, thoughts, and sentiments. It depends on affinity, not on incompleteness.
Perfect sympathy also corresponds to the degree of advancement reached. It is not founded merely on similarity of ideas, but on similarity of moral and spiritual development.
Progress and Changing Sympathy
Spirits who are not sympathetic today may become so later.
As a less advanced spirit improves, it rises toward the sphere inhabited by a more advanced one. Reunion becomes possible when their development draws them into harmony. If, however, one spirit remains idle and fails in the trials it has undertaken, it may delay this reunion. Sympathy can weaken when one advances and the other does not.
Thus even two sympathetic spirits may cease to be so, at least temporarily, if one remains spiritually inactive.
The image of “eternal halves” expresses the union of kindred spirits, but it should not be taken literally. It belongs to a limited way of speaking shaped by earthly language and imagination. What truly exists is not a pair of beings created exclusively for one another, fated to recover a lost unity, but an ever-widening communion among spirits in proportion to their purification. The more they advance, the more fully they enter into concord, and the more complete their happiness becomes.
The Remembrance of Corporeal Existence
A spirit does remember its corporeal existences.
Having lived many times in human form, it retains the memory of what it has been. At times, seeing its former conduct from a clearer height, it looks back with a kind of pity and even smiles at its past behavior.
This remembrance does not return all at once after death. It comes back gradually, like something emerging from fog, and in proportion to the spirit’s attention. As it becomes more aware of itself and less bound to the confusion of its recent departure from earthly life, its past becomes clearer.
The memory of earthly life is not a complete and indiscriminate review of every detail. A spirit recalls events according to the consequences they bear on its present condition. What contributed to its progress, purification, or suffering stands out. What had no real value may remain dim, fall into the background, or be left unexamined.
If it wishes, it can recover even very small details, including incidents and thoughts. Yet it does not ordinarily do so when no useful purpose would be served. Memory is governed less by curiosity than by meaning.
From the spiritual state, the purpose of earthly life is understood far better than during incarnation. The spirit sees why purification is necessary in order to advance toward the infinite. It recognizes that each existence helps remove some imperfection, and that earthly life, with all its trials and experiences, belongs to a larger movement of growth.
The past may unfold in two ways at once. Some actions appear as though present before the spirit, while others are recalled only by an inner effort. What matters for advancement is vivid. What was merely material tends to fade. The more dematerialized the spirit becomes, the less importance it gives to earthly details.
For that reason, a spirit newly separated from the body may not remember names, personal circumstances, or facts that seem precious to those still living. Such things may already have fallen into forgetfulness because they no longer concern it. Yet the decisive events that aided its improvement remain clearly remembered.
The same principle applies to earlier lives. The whole past can open before the spirit like the stages of a long journey. Still, it does not recover every action with equal precision. Earlier existences, especially those belonging to the spirit’s first stages of development, sink into obscurity and disappear into forgottenness.
The Body After Death
Once separated from the body, the spirit commonly regards it as one would regard an ill-fitting garment that caused discomfort and has finally been laid aside. It is often glad to be rid of it.
When it sees the body decompose, it usually feels indifference. The body has become something external, no longer part of its true being.
After some time, a spirit may sometimes recognize its bones or objects that once belonged to it, but this depends on the degree of its advancement and on the value it still gives to earthly things.
Respect shown toward the belongings a spirit has left behind may draw its attention, but not because of the objects themselves. What reaches the spirit is the remembrance and affection connected with them. The thought is what attracts it, not the material thing.
Memory of Suffering and Pleasure
Spirits often retain the memory of the sufferings they endured during their last corporeal life. That remembrance helps them appreciate more fully the happiness they now experience as spirits.
Those who were happy on earth do not all look back in the same way. Spirits of low order may regret pleasures that matched the impurities of their nature, and those attachments become causes of suffering for them. More advanced spirits do not regret such pleasures, because the enduring happiness of the spiritual state far surpasses the brief enjoyments of earthly life.
Unfinished Works and Human Activity
Those who began important works for a useful end and saw them interrupted by death do not lament having left them unfinished. They understand that others are meant to continue what they began. Far from turning away, they often try to influence incarnate spirits to carry the work forward. Their aim remains the good of humankind, both in earthly life and beyond it.
The same detachment often appears in relation to artistic and literary works. According to their degree of advancement, spirits may judge their own productions very differently after death. They frequently disapprove of what they most admired during life.
Their interest in the arts and sciences also depends on their development or on the mission they may have. What seems magnificent from an earthly point of view may appear small to more elevated spirits, as the work of a student appears to a scholar. They value above all what reveals the elevation and progress of incarnate spirits.
Native Land and Changing Ideas
Love of native land also changes according to spiritual advancement. For highly elevated spirits, the true homeland is the universe. On earth, they feel especially drawn to the places where they find the greatest number of sympathetic souls.
A spirit’s ideas change greatly in spiritual life. As it becomes less influenced by matter, its former views undergo significant modification. Some ideas may persist for a time, but gradually the hold of material life weakens and the spirit sees more clearly. With clearer sight comes the desire to improve.
Astonishment on Returning to the Spirit World
If spirits lived in the spiritual state before incarnation, it may seem strange that they are astonished when they return to it. That astonishment belongs chiefly to the first moments after death, when the spirit awakens in a state of confusion. As the memory of the past returns and the impression of earthly life fades, it recognizes its true condition more fully.
The return to spiritual awareness is therefore not usually instantaneous. It is a recovery of self, gradual and ordered, in which memory, judgment, and perspective are restored according to the spirit’s degree of advancement.
The Commemoration of the Dead. Funerals
The remembrance of the dead reaches spirits more deeply than is often imagined.
When a spirit is already happy, being remembered adds to that happiness. When a spirit is troubled or despondent, the memory of those who loved it brings consolation. Affection does not end with death, and sincere recollection continues to act as a bond between the living and those who have passed on.
Memorial Days and the Call of Thought
Days set apart for remembering the dead do not possess a special power in themselves, yet they acquire solemnity because many minds turn their thoughts in the same direction.
Spirits respond to the call of thought on such days just as they do on any other. What changes is not the law governing their presence, but the greater number of people who remember them. For that reason, spirits may gather in larger numbers near graves and places of remembrance, though each is chiefly drawn to its own friends rather than to a crowd moved by habit or indifference.
If they could make themselves visible, they would generally appear as they did during earthly life. Recognition would come through the familiar form by which they were known.
Forgotten Graves and Lasting Bonds
A spirit whose grave is neglected is not necessarily made unhappy by the lack of visits.
Its true link to the earth is not a piece of ground but the affection that survives in hearts. If no one loves or remembers it, nothing binds it strongly to the place where its remains were laid. Earthly locations lose importance when compared with the wider life now opened before the spirit.
This is why forgotten graves do not, by themselves, condemn a spirit to sorrow. The loss that matters is not the absence of flowers or monuments, but the absence of loving remembrance.
Graves, Prayer, and the Value of Remembrance
A visit to a grave has value because it expresses the thought of the absent one outwardly. It is a visible sign of remembrance.
Yet the place itself has little importance. A prayer offered at home for a departed spirit may be just as meaningful, and often more so, because what blesses the act of remembrance is not the location but the sincerity of the heart. The grave is only a symbol; the true offering is loving thought.
Monuments, Honors, and Earthly Vanity
Some spirits witness the dedication of statues or monuments raised in their honor. Many observe such events when circumstances permit, but they are generally less touched by public honors than by genuine memories.
Attachment to burial in one place rather than another reveals an imperfect detachment from material things. To a more advanced spirit, one patch of earth is no more important than another. Such a spirit understands that reunion with loved ones does not depend on the nearness of bones or the arrangement of tombs.
Even so, family burial places are not without value. Gathering the mortal remains of relatives in one place is a pious custom and a sign of mutual affection. Though such arrangements matter little to spirits themselves, they are meaningful for the living because they help focus memory and sustain family feeling.
A spirit that has reached a certain degree of purification no longer cares about honors paid to its remains. It sees the futility of earthly vanity. But in the first moments after death, some spirits still take pleasure in the honors shown them, while others are troubled if their body seems forgotten. These reactions come from lingering attachment to the ideas and prejudices of earthly life.
Burial and the Gathering of Heirs
Spirits often witness their own burial.
Sometimes, however, they do not clearly perceive what is taking place, especially when they remain in a state of confusion immediately after death. When they do observe the ceremony, the effect produced depends less on outward display than on the feelings of those present. A large attendance flatters only in proportion to the sincerity, grief, respect, or affection carried by the gathering.
Spirits also often attend the meetings of their heirs. This presence serves both as instruction and, in some cases, as punishment. There they see clearly what professions of affection were worth. Hidden motives become plain. Greed, impatience, rivalry, and calculation reveal the true sentiments of those dividing an inheritance. In such moments, the spirit judges with painful clarity the difference between spoken love and real love.
Respect for the Dead
The instinctive respect shown to the dead among peoples of every age is rooted in the natural sense that life does not end with the body.
If human beings had no intuition of a future existence, such universal reverence would have little meaning. Honor paid to the dead arises from the deep and widespread perception that the one who has departed has not been reduced to nothingness. Memory, prayer, mourning, burial rites, and care for graves all bear witness to that enduring conviction.