Thought-Forms
I was shown those who existed in the thought-forms and scenes of their recent human states: Such as these were surrounded with the “things” (forms of things) familiar to them on Earth, and apparently necessary to their happiness even in the new state of existence. These scenes illustrated that our lives even in the human state, consist largely of “states of mind,” that we see the things we are accustomed to see, or have trained our minds or wishes to see omitting many and sometimes most of the things of beauty and of import that we might see.
The spirit states that are “exactly like the scenes of Earth” are composed of the thought-forms of the spirits’ imaging or reproduction, and are the reality to them. I recalled the weaving of a web that I had once seen an industrious spider perfect and he was afterward caught in his own web. I wondered if we are not often in human life—and the states that immediately follow the weavers of many such “cobwebs”? These thought-webs seemed to proceed from the minds of the spirits fashioning them and in which the spirits seemed to be ensphered, sometimes enshadowed. Before my questionings had taken form in my mind the answer came from the Presence: “No, they are not enmeshed by the thought-forms; their creation is the result of the present condition; remove the power to produce thought-forms, i.e., to create ones own environment and you remove all activity of mind. As the Spirit unfolds the thought-forms change and then disappear as perception takes the place of limitation by the senses.”
With the almost axiomatic proposition that “our world of life is what we make it” our spirit-surroundings and conditions the result of our states of unfoldment, it became less difficult even when returning to the limitations of human organism to understand the conditions of existence in the “next stage” of personal experience beyond the “transition” misnamed “death.”
Spirit states are as varied as are the personal states of those composing them; the knowledge—or lack of it—possessed by the person IS the spirit state, i.e., knowledge of spiritual principles.
Oh, if one could coin new words, or new understandings, in order better to express that which one knows when set free from Earthly environment! Yes, the New Understanding; that is the great need; and that must really be attained by unfoldment, growth from within, the pervading all illuminating power of the spirit.
Those in the spirit states who were reproducing the familiar scenes of their recent Earth conditions were satisfied and even very happy—especially when the scenes so reproduced were of a nature that had brought comparative happiness in Earth life—in their ability to make things seem “exactly as they did in Earth life,” not even knowing that this similitude was the result of their own thought-forms instead of being inherent or organic in the “spirit land.”
Interesting and absorbing as were these lessons of observing, the process of weaving their thoughts into the forms most desired or needed by the spirits producing them, there were many whose reproductions were of the shadowed kind and were not voluntary, but results of the deep impress that the shadows of Earth-experiences had made upon their minds. No one illustration could serve—but all states and conditions that I could realize were shown.