I think his experience will be yours and mine. We talk about wanting pleasure, and we seek it in amusements and at theaters, routs, and balls; and I tell you that this feeling arises from the same cause as the miser’s misery. We have hungerings and thirstings of soul which we are required to satisfy, and except we comply with these requirements we will be disquieted. If those of you who love the opera, the theater, etc., will go forth and tread these streets, and find out the objects of need—those worthy of aid—and visit them, and administer to their comfort, you will no longer feel the need of theaters, routs, and balls; and you will find greater satisfaction in such a course than these amusements can afford. Try the experiment, and I will guarantee you will be successful. That this city, like all great cities, is pursuing after pleasure, as the paramount object to be attained, is because their souls are hungering and thirsting after that food necessary to build them up into the stature of perfect men and women. This makes time seem cruel, and hang heavy upon them; and, like the victim who seeks to drown his sorrow in the cup, they seek to fill up the long hours in dissipation. To return to my subject.

This sphere of lust, I say, then, does not arise from the body, nor from the influence of the body on the soul. It arises from our neglect of our spiritual needs. This lust, this desire proclaims a divine life within, which demands activity corresponding to our real natures; and we can never get peace and happiness until those real demands of our natures are supplied. I appeal to all pleasure-seekers whether this is not true. You have heard it argued whether there be more pleasure in anticipation than in participation. The world’s pleasures are always in the future, never in the present. The man or the woman of the world is never satisfied with present conditions or present attainments. Why not? Because the man and the woman of the world are not attending to the present needs of the spiritual nature. The finite man ought to understand that he lives only in the present. God the Infinite only belongs to the future. Man’s needs pertain to to-day. His physical, moral, and intellectual needs are all bearing upon the present, and not the future. The past is his schoolmaster, to teach him how to be ready to enjoy the future. It is to-day that we should take thought for; hence the divine saying of the man of Nazareth—“Take no thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” If we look to the present, and supply the needs of the present, the future will take care of itself. The man seeking for religion thinks he wants it for the future, in order that he may die right; but a man does not want religion to die by. There will be no trouble about his dying if he only lives right. I do not care for religion for the sake of having it to die by. Only give me its living benefits, and you are welcome to its dying benefits. This shows the false estimate the world sets upon religion.

I desire to impress upon your minds this principle, that when you look down to the real basis of selfishness and lust, you will find that they do not originate in the body, but that they pertain to the spiritual being. There are certain needs, however, which do grow out of the physical body; but when the spirit is separated from the body, it no longer feels these physical demands; for instance, it will no longer feel the need of food, experience thirst, or be susceptible to the effects of the elements—heat and cold—as is the physical nature; but that which administers to the demands of the mind, independent of the body, belongs to the mind. And when you enter the Spirit world, if you take truth with you, you will also take falsehood—if you carry purity with you, so you will impurity—if justice goes with you to that sphere, so will injustice. Now think of society in its individual action, social, governmental, and religious action, and tell me whether the world, or the individuals of the world, are governed by the true, divine impulse? Are they searching after the true needs of the body and mind, or after pleasure and self-gratification? And in your activity, which controls?—a sense of need, or a desire after gratification? You settle this question for yourselves, and I will settle it for myself. If you are under the rule, and in the sphere, of lust you belong to the sphere of outer darkness; and if you are under the rule of charity, you belong to the second sphere or Spiritual Paradise. His servants you are to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey. It is for you to say whom you will obey.

Now this earthly sphere is the lowest and darkest sphere. Its influences are dark and defiling. In this sphere men are swallowed up in worldly matters, and striving to gratify self.

But when a separation takes place between the mind and the body, we shall come into new relations, although we shall not at once change our thoughts, feelings, and affections, and shall recognize ourselves. Our lusts and self-love will follow us to the Spirit-world. There is not, as many seem to suppose, a miraculous process, by which man is changed while passing through the dark valley of shadows. If a change takes place in him in the Spirit-world, it must be in accordance with the same divine law which governs him in this sphere of existence. If you will but exercise your reasoning faculties on this point, you will see that it should and must be so. When we come to understand the Spirit-world, we shall find that in our Father’s house there is a mansion suited to those who seek after self-gratification, and that that world, like this, is subdivided into many minor spheres, corresponding to the various grades of development in the different spheres of mind. There are physical spheres, intellectual spheres, moral spheres, and religious spheres, as there are in this world; and they are very much of the some description as those here, because they proceed from the same basis. Individuals passing from this sphere to that, will fashion out of the materials which their own conscious elements furnish the same kind of a Deity there that they worshiped here. As in New York city there are many degrees of advancement in these different departments—one man seeking to gratify his lusts through appetite, and another man in some other way; and as you can find here every sphere, except the divine sphere (I doubt whether you can find that), so in the Spiritual world you will find all these different degrees of advancement, each occupying its own appropriate sphere.

Here is one man who seeks gratification, it may be, in strong drink, and he worships the bowl; another seeks it in food, and hence becomes an epicure, and worships the stomach; another, it may be, seeks gratification in practicing certain games or tricks, or following after some amusement; while another seeks gratification in sexual indulgences. So you may go on and enumerate the endless variety of channels in which men seek to gratify their selfish desires; and it will be found that those in the same pursuit affinitize with one another—drunkards with drunkards, etc.—every sphere delighting in that which corresponds to the desires of those who compose it. So in the Spirit-world; the Spirit who was a drunkard here seeks gratification in the same direction that he did on earth; the seeker of pleasure there still has a love for the theater, routs, and balls; the libertine still delights in miserable songs he was accustomed to hear.

Governments, institutions, and associations and relations, whether social, spiritual, or otherwise, are expressions of what are the loves and delights of the soul of man. Therefore, in all institutions, you will find displayed the characters of those who founded them. The government of any country is but the child of the ruling mind or minds of that country. Then, if we wish to understand the dark spheres in the Spiritual world, we have only to drop the body and have our spiritual eyes opened, when we will see that there exist there all the phases of society that we find here. The cause of this arises from the sphere of lust. You have there your gambling Spirits, your drinking Spirits, your lustful Spirits, etc. And how do these poor creatures live there? That is the next question. What do they do to gratify their desires? I will tell you. You understand it to be a psychological principle, that when two men are brought into sympathy, or into rapport with each other (one being positive and the other negative), feelings, sensations, and desires can be communicated from one to the other. To give an illustration: You have seen, in mesmerism, an exhibition of mind separated from the influences of the body. When the mind is thus separated, and this mesmeric sympathy is established between the subject and the operator, any surgical operation can be performed upon the subject without giving him pain, because his being of sensation is removed from his body; but you can not pull the hair of the operator, or hurt his finger, or otherwise give him pain, without giving pain to the subject. Whatever the operator enjoys or suffers, the subject also enjoys and suffers. Now it is in accordance with this principle that Spirits of the other world gratify their desires. Spirits who visit this world are obliged to make use of and come into rapport with, those who have appetites and desires similar to their own. If the mind is separated from its own body, it can experience the sensations of another body with which it may come into rapport. On the same principle a good mind, or, if you please, the Divine Mind, can flow into the individual mind, and impart thought and sensation to that mind. Or a good Spirit can flow into a medium, and awaken sensations and thoughts in accordance with the law of action and re-action, becoming negative or positive, according as he wishes to impart or receive influence. Here, then, is the means by which the Spirit is enabled to gratify its desires by visiting earth. Those Spirits who allow themselves to be influenced by their lusts are called tempting Spirits, and they influence individuals on earth that they may make use of them as a means of gratifying these lusts. The same law is manifested by individuals in the body. It is not because Spirits wish to injure the bodies which they thus use, but because they desire self-gratification, and know of no other means of obtaining it, except in this sphere of outer darkness. The lowest in this scale of unfolding corresponds to this lustful nature in man. Every affection in society that can affect societies of men has its representative in the individual man; so that every subdivision of the sphere of lust has its representative in each individual; and the question is whether he lives in one of these departments or another. If I am developed in the moral department, there I live, and love, and worship; and when I pass to the Spirit-world, I go to a sphere corresponding to that ruling affection by which I am controlled. So it is in regard to any other sphere of unfolding, whether it be relational or absolute, or otherwise. Hence man himself determines his sphere. Take any man or woman you please, and let them be developed to any sphere, from the darkest sphere of lust to the purest sphere of love, and if there is any place in God’s universe where they can find that which corresponds to that lust or love, they will find it. If there is any condition suited to make them happy, they will find it. If this were not so, the Spirit-world would be the worst hell imaginable. To compel a man to go where he has no affinity would be to inflict upon him one of the greatest punishments conceivable. Compel a lustful libertine to remain in a Methodist class-meeting, and shout and sing with the enthusiastic Methodists, and he would be extremely miserable—he could find many places where he would be infinitely more happy; and in order to be happy, he would be obliged to go where he could find that which would correspond to his cast of mind. We can determine where a man’s God is when we ascertain what it is to which he will sacrifice every thing else.

After having thus given the law governing this lowest sphere of the Spirit-world, which represents man in his undeveloped nature as an intellectual and moral being—we are qualified to comprehend that sphere, and understand that the same spheres of mind which belong to this belong also to the Spiritual world, and that undeveloped Spirits from that lust-sphere visit earth, or societies of earth, not for the purpose of redeeming them, but for the purpose of seeking their own gratification. I have presented to you my views of that sphere as I understand it, and I shall be prepared, in my next lecture, to take up the second sphere, and tell you what constitutes it, and how it is that it becomes a mediatorial sphere—middle sphere. This second, or Spiritual sphere, is between the dark and light, or divine sphere. It is the means through which the lustful are brought out of their lusts to the divine.

CHAPTER III.
THE SECOND, OR RELATIONAL SPHERE.

The subject now to be considered is that of the second sphere of mind, both in its perceptions and affections. Our last discourse was upon what we denominated the first sphere, which was characterized as being a sphere of self-love or lusting after self-gratification. The individual in this sphere was described as being in the lowest department of his mind, and as allied in his affinities with the lowest pleasures of existence. It was remarked that this plane of lust could be manifested as well in the intellectual, moral, and religious plane, as in the animal or physical plane. The criterion by which we determine whether it is selfishness is to inquire whether the motive prompting to activity has for its object desire after gain. If this is the ruling impulse, then the individual’s love is the love of self. Though the grossness of the lust may depend upon the direction given it, yet it is essentially the same whether exercised in the moral, intellectual, or physical plane. An individual who sought the happiness of another without reference to his own interests was described as belonging to the second sphere. He would seek association by the affinity of his moral or second-sphere nature.