Beyond

by Henry Seward Hubbard

Take another illustration. When a ship goes out of the harbor, it is to be assumed that she takes her anchor with her, and carefully guards it against possible loss.

It is likewise true that within the scope of the great and splendid activities of a free spirit, a material anchor is somewhere safely cared for, yet such an anchor has no more prominent relation to the activities of the spirit than the anchor of a ship has to the ship's power to cross the sea. If we could think of a ship with nothing else to do but to lie around the harbor, the relative importance of the anchor would increase very much; and if it had no anchor of its own, it might attempt to tie up to some other vessel that had one. And so with earth-bound spirits whose testimony is sometimes quoted to the effect that spirit-life is as dependent on matter as any other. Most of them are blissfully ignorant of their own poverty, and move about the earth, that is to say in the lower or earthly strata of thoughts and feelings, because they have no desires above them.

They remember this life as a lost heaven, and are continually bemoaning that loss in secret, while their activities take the form of influencing mortals to this or that kind of sensual indulgence, which they wish to share through sympathy. Every impulse and desire is bent upon a possible recovery of the earth-life, and they are so ignorant of, and indifferent to, any higher form of life, that it remains without existence to them.

I would not say they are insensible to the enlargement of their powers consequent upon their release from the confinement of an earthly body. They could not be. Their discovery that death does not destroy the inner consciousness was a great surprise to them, but the novelty of the discovery soon wore away. What seemed so strange at first, became a truism, a simple scientific fact, previously unknown, and unable in itself to supply any stimulus to their higher powers.

It is evident that the testimony of these upon the subject is worthless, while those who have battled for and won the prize of recognition in a higher sphere give abundant evidence of their freedom from the bondage of matter, and the desires that have material things for their object.

Resuming my subject, not only matter, but those forces which are inseparably associated with it, retire into the background, nay, almost disappear, in the Beyond. Emotions take their place.

The atmosphere, or that which corresponds to what we know by the term, seems charged with some powerful element, resembling electricity in its effects, but differing from it in that it seems to be sensitive to thought, and to be capable of responding to it with dynamic force. A shock from this element is in every respect as real to the consciousness as an electric shock is to us. It comes from without and expends its force upon the gaseous body. Being sensitive to thought, it does not impress one as being capricious in its nature, but as though acting according to some law which it is of the highest importance to discover, if possible.

With the perceptive and intuitional faculties wrought up to the highest state of activity, it is presently discovered that it is not thought in the abstract, but thought surcharged with feeling or with devotion to a principle, some cherished sentiment of the soul, which has the power to excite this hitherto unknown element; and gradually it dawns on the mind that this element corresponds to public opinion on earth, that it emanates from the inhabitants of that part of the spirit-realm, and that if your mind does not happen to be in accord with theirs, you must either get away or do battle for your life. By life, I mean your power and freedom of expression, the very breath of the spirit, what a printing-press is to a newspaper, cut off from which, the paper is dead.

Manifestations of emotion, both in kind and degree, depend upon two things, our spiritual state or condition, and the nature of our surroundings. Passing over the first of these, it is evident that earth-surroundings greatly limit the expression of emotion; and when we observe the effect of a powerful current of this kind upon the physical tissues of the body, weakening and consuming them as by a flame, we see that the length of our stay here is involved in our ability to control our emotions.

Not so in the Beyond, where our stay is without assignable limits, and where the pent-up emotions of a lifetime at last find vent, and pour themselves out as by flood-gates to the sea.