Nature is so persistent in its determination to preserve and perpetuate the human race, that the building of the organic body of the child goes on; and the Individual Intelligence is so potent that it often triumphs over these prenatal obstructions, but by no means always. If “there is a spiritual body” in the mother organism during the present life, as I am entirely satisfied there is; and if the child is laying the foundation and weaving the pattern and fabric of a spiritual body of its own for the present life and that immediately beyond; then these psychological influences and conditions are of transcendent importance and may be largely determined by our intelligent choice.
A higher race of beings will never inhabit this earth till these fundamental laws are recognized and regarded.
We may illustrate and symbolize this spiritual habitation we are building by the over-tones and the harmonics in music.
Its nature and function and the whole process of building and development are a refining and purifying process.
It may be conceived in the vito-magnetic field of man, as that which is in nearest relation and closest touch with the soul, the Individual Intelligence, and through, and by which the soul acts.
Being in synchronous relation with the physical organs and functions, like a chord in music, a high with a lower tone (but still harmonic), the direct vehicle and agent of the soul would be this spiritual body; and when the physical body or vehicle dies, or is cast off, the spiritual body with the soul escapes.
Empirical evidence along just these lines is so abundant in the annals of every people, and in all ages, that it is unnecessary to quote it here. Whole volumes are filled with it, outside the annals of Spiritualism and the Psychical Society, and antedating them by centuries and millenniums.
The most important consideration is that the building of character by voluntary choice and personal effort, the “growth of the soul,” and the evolution of this spiritual body are inseparable. This trinity which is man, is potentially (and may be actually) a unity.
The evolutionary and devolutionary lines run in precisely opposite directions, are easily differentiated and defined, are usually recognized by observation and by the individual himself. It is very difficult and takes a long time to deceive ourselves with regard to the upward or downward trend of our own life, till we have blunted by misuse and degraded all the finer faculties, capacities, and powers of our being.
A quickened conscience, a moral uplift, a desire to do right, a noble ideal, mark the beginning; but self-study, a rigid and persistent self-analysis, taking account of stock of all our resources and capacities, all our real possessions and opportunities, is the scientific process by which man may become master of his own life and evolve to higher and still higher planes of being, even here in the present life.