The change of state brings on the mental activity spoken of, the effect of which on the material side manifests as heat or magnetism, or both.
The lifting off of the weight of dead matter causes a feeling of buoyancy, and the vibrations of the particles of the gaseous body may be so great that it will seem to expand until one seems everywhere present over a vast territory in the same way that we are now present in all parts of our physical bodies.
The first event of prime importance to you will be the demonstrating and establishing of your spiritual rank. Just where do you belong? In the society of what people, or what class of people, are you content? Does any accusation lie against you? If so, what have you to say in regard to it?
Are there any special credits that you claim which seem never to have been acknowledged? Is there anything you wish to confess? To what concealment do you claim a right?
The answering of these questions may be a very simple matter, or may involve the welfare of nations. While the friends left behind will contribute their quota of evidence, those with whom you have been associated who have preceded you to the unknown country will be the most actively interested in your case. You will find some waiting for your testimony on some point involving their own status, and when you come to speak of the matter you may have to struggle against a tumult of voices before you succeed in testifying. Where questions of fact are involved, of sufficient importance to justify it, most wonderful agencies can be set in motion to determine them correctly in the region of the Beyond.
That precise point in the ether where the event occurred, and which has long since been left behind by the passage of the solar system through space, can be visited and made to yield up its record as by kinetograph; or the surroundings may be reproduced as on a stage, and the one who persists in falsifying is suddenly placed there and told to act his part again according to his own story. He will find it very difficult to play a false part in the presence of those who know the truth.
It may be noted that this picture of a soul on trial is quite different from that given before, where it is held as the prisoner of death; but it is only necessary to bear in mind that events may succeed each other even in a country where time is not, and that such succession marks the stages of one's growth.
If any of your faculties are in a dull or torpid state because the circumstances of your life have been such that they never have been given a field of action, the invisible actors of the Beyond who may have you in charge will know how to awaken, stimulate, and call these faculties into an active state before the final decision is rendered, to the end that no injustice may be done you on their account. Should the verdict of the lower court be such that you are not willing to abide by it, you may take an appeal to a higher court.
At the last you may even appeal from the judgment of angels altogether, and demand a trial by the great Spirit of the universe, but you will not do this recklessly when you know that it involves a trial by ordeal, or a contest of sheer will-power, sustained by conscious innocence alone, with planetary forces.
Not brief nor trifling is a contest such as this; not once in a thousand years does such a thing occur; but the fact that the way to it is always open in the Beyond proves with what infinite tenderness the individual is guarded against injustice.