We have several different departments of our systems, I have a vital, a nervous, and a mental system, each of which has actions peculiar to itself—actions which sustain to each other certain relations, either commensurable or incommensurable. Now, when my spiritual and vital systems act upon the same key, there is harmony between my internal and external forms; but if they do not undulate to the same key—if there is not harmonious action between my mind and spirit, I can not be a medium for physical communication, for the same reason that if you graft a peach upon an apple, you can not make it grow (according to my information). It is because the vital action between them is an incommensurable action. Now, whenever my mental action is too intense for my nerve or vital action, if you will by any means reduce my mental action so that it may harmonize with my nervous action, perhaps I will get physical manifestations peculiar to myself. I was once one of those things called mediums, and am now, perhaps, to some extent. When I was partially asleep there would be very loud raps, and if you could come in without waking me up you might get a communication, and it has ever been so when I am peculiarly quiet mentally; but the moment I rouse up and ask questions I can get no reply. There are others who require exactly opposite conditions, whose bodies are too active for their minds, in whose presence you can get rappings by reducing the action of the body. But you change them from that point, the manifestation ceases. There are other individuals who in the normal state seem to comply with all the conditions necessary; that is, whose vital and nervous actions are the same; but you make them angry or stir up within them feelings of dread or fear, and your manifestations cease, simply because there is no harmonic action between the mental and physical systems.
Persons boast, at times, of being able to destroy the power of mediums; but nothing could be simpler, for a powerful battery may have its action stopped by lifting out the connecting wire, simply by disarranging the conditions of its action. It is often the case that the entrance of a person into a circle where manifestations are occurring, causes their discontinuance, and the person is perhaps astonished to think the Spirits should be so contrary. It was simply because he had come in and violated the conditions by which they could manifest. He had, so to speak, disturbed one of the plates of the battery. The law to which your attention is called, is this great law of commensurability in form and motion; or, in other words, the law of harmonic action, which is manifested not only in the material plane, but unfolded in every degree upon the conscious plane. In consequence of this law the communication between spheres differing in their characteristics must necessarily be external; that is, I can not communicate with an individual by the internal method, or the method of inspiration, except he is on the same plane with myself. Perhaps there is not one individual here so exactly on the same nerve-plane with myself, that I could communicate with him without signs; yet I can reveal my form so that you can all see me, by an external method, though we belong, perhaps, to very different planes. We can all communicate by external language, provided in our communications, we take that plane of communication which will be familiar to all present. This is the law existing between minds out of the physical body. One mind out of the physical body may communicate with another out of the physical body, by an external means, when he can not by the internal. The external means does not come directly to the affection. The vulgar and the profane man may speak to the refined mind by means of speech so as to shock the feelings; but he can not speak by his sympathy.
One class of individuals in the sphere of lust—in what we call the low and polluted plane—can not come into rapport with those occupying a higher plane. There is an “impassable gulf” between them. Nevertheless, by the external language which addresses the external being, the thought or perception, they may be able to communicate. The same law of communication applies in the Spiritual world. If angels are employed as messengers, they communicate by an external language; because their thoughts can not flow into the lower affection—the lower can not respond to them. If a Spirit in Paradise wishes to communicate with one in the sphere of lust, he must take upon himself the conditions of lust, or he can not communicate by the internal method. He can not communicate by the internal method, because the conditions are dissimilar. Communications made to us from a higher plane must be external, and must be addressed to our thought; and if they operate upon our affection, must flow from the thought into the affection. It is for this reason that God, the Divine, can not communicate with man, the imperfect and finite, except by means of those who can receive truth from the Divine, and who can externally communicate it to those below.
Spirits under a higher and more perfect law can not come and inspire us in our polluted condition, but they can, by means of external language, draw us from our low condition of lust, and bring us to a plane where a Spirit nearer to our plane may by influx come into us and develop within us the true affection; but the high spirit can not do it. Hence it is that there is a gradation between the highest and lowest—that
“Angels form a chain which in God’s burning throne begins, And winds down to the lowest plane of earthly things.”
I may possibly receive a communication from a higher plane by abstracting myself from the lusts and evils of the world, by sending forth my highest, and holiest, and purest aspirations after all that is pure and good—for a moment elevating my condition to a higher plane. That is the condition of true prayer. While in that condition a Spirit of that higher plane may, by influx, raise me up and hold me in that condition. That is, the true effect of the condition known as prayer, is to separate you from the lusts and passions of the world—every thing which is tending to degrade you. Then by fixing your mind on your highest perception, and that which is pure, and true, and holy, you elevate yourself above the plane on which you naturally move—bring yourself where a higher angel can reach down and raise you up. Therefore, though prayer does not change the state of the soul, yet it is one of the conditions by which we climb to the higher spheres. You know the direction in regard to prayer was, “when you pray do not go into the public places and talk a great deal, thinking God is going to hear you for your much speaking.”
The object of prayer is not to inform God—to change his mind—therefore when you pray, retire from the world and all outward influences, and if necessary go into a room, and shut the world out with all its influences; and then, in the secret aspirations of your soul, raise your thoughts and desires to the infinite, perfect, and undying, that you may bring yourself within the plane of blessing—within the plane of that influence which can elevate you. If God could come down to our plane, and by the influx of his Spirit into our consciousness could enlighten our understandings and purify our hearts, there is no excuse for its not being done. He is infinite, and there is an infinite fullness in him; but the reason he does not, is that he can not. It is impossible that God should lie, and it would be lying if he should do this.
Conditions can not be at the same time unlike and like—at the same time discordant and harmonious; the plane of lust can not harmonize with the plane of love. The plane of man in his low condition can not harmonize with the plane of the Divine in his infinitely elevated, pure, and holy condition. Therefore if a man would receive God into his consciousness, he must put himself into the condition to receive influx; and if he would have an influx from a pure Spirit, he must become pure and holy himself. If God did not teach Moses so that he could understand all truth, as did the Man of Nazareth, and understand the great principle, “Thou shalt not resist evil by evil,” it was because he did not occupy the plane of inspiration. He occupied a plane where there could be external manifestations, which he had, but he could not receive a great universal law, because he was not on the plane of the internal and divine. The inspiration of Paul, Peter, Luke, and John, was not equal to that of their Teacher, because they had not arisen to his elevated condition; had they occupied his plane, God could have communicated as well to them as to their Teacher; and it would not have been necessary for them to have a middle-man to come between them and God.
When you have risen to the plane of communication, the communication is internal. You have no outward form of expression, because you have the thought itself by inspiration. In the language of the Apostle, God writes his language in your understanding and in your affections. All communication with the spiritual world proceeding according to this law, each man’s communication will be according to his plane; if in the low plane of lust, his communications will be of that character; if in the plane of love, his communications will be of that character. But even the lowest, by putting himself in the condition of prayer, by aspiring for the good and the holy, by putting up earnest petitions for aid, will always find a Spirit near to sustain and elevate him.