In this new field of perception, nothing impresses more than the enormous differences in spiritual rank and attainment existing among mortals who, judged by tape-line and scale, stood fairly equal, and whom human law necessarily places on a plane of perfect equality, or perhaps, through its deference to wealth, makes unequal in the wrong way.
The thoroughness with which past illusions are stripped away from the mind tends to leave the spirit fairly aghast at its previous blindness.
Frequently forgetting that the motor nerves of the physical form are no longer responsive to its touch, it starts to rise, that it may go and tell the world of these wonders just discovered, but finds itself in the firm and quiet grasp of death, a touch that seems to speak and say:
"Never mind; that is all right. You forget you are not free. Lie still and learn your lesson."
"But shall I not return?"
"Possibly, but the mortal life is no concern of yours at present. You are dead."
All this as in a flash, for words do not belong to this state, ideas rather, the spiritual essences of thought that seem to need no time whatever to make their mark upon the mind.
To some of these the mind is so receptive that they sink at once to the very core of being, while others are held upon the surface.
This last communication, You are dead, is sure to be so held. It seems such an evident conclusion to respond, If I am dead, there is no death but this seems such a contradiction to life's long lesson, namely, that amidst a wilderness of uncertainties, death is the one thing certain. And then the recollection of the shrinking of the soul at thought of death, how to account for that, if there were no reality behind appearances so countless?
This in another flash of ideation that leaves a sense of mystery as of a problem not worked out, and which may not be while death as a condition rests upon the form. I say, may not be, but would not be understood to mean that the hindrance is mechanical in this case. A pure soul, even in death, has certain reserve forces which can be put in action if the need is great enough, but the consciousness of being in a friend's control, especially when that control is apparently absolute, will tend to check all restless impulse in this region of the dark, till now all unexplored.