Still another class of beings should be mentioned: those who have entered the Desire World through the gate of death and are now hidden from our physical vision. These so-called “dead” are in fact much more alive than any of us, who are tied to a dense body and subject to all its limitations, who are forced to slowly drag this clog along with us at the rate of a few miles an hour, who must expend such an enormous amount of energy upon propelling that vehicle that we are easily and quickly tired, even when in the best of health and who are often confined to a bed, sometimes for years, by the indisposition of this heavy mortal coil. But when that is once shed and the freed spirit [pg 089] can again function in its spiritual body, sickness is an unknown condition and distance is annihilated, or at least practically so, for though it was necessary for the Savior to liken the freed spirit to the wind which blows where it listeth, that simile gives but a poor description of what actually takes place in soul flights. Time is nonexistent there, as we shall presently explain, so the writer has never been able to time himself, but has on several occasions timed others when he was in the physical body and they speeding through space upon a certain errand. Distances such as from the Pacific Coast to Europe, the delivery of a short message there and the return to the body has been accomplished in slightly less than one minute. Therefore our assertion, that those whom we call dead are in reality much more alive than we, is well founded in facts.
We spoke of the dense body in which we now live, as a “clog” and a “fetter.” It must not be inferred, however, that we sympathize with the attitude of certain people who, when they have learned with what ease soul-flights are accomplished, go about bemoaning the fact that they are now imprisoned. They are constantly thinking of, and longing for, the day [pg 090] when they shall be able to leave this mortal coil behind and fly away in their spiritual body. Such an attitude of mind is decidedly mistaken, the great and wise beings who are invisible leaders of our evolution have not placed us here to no purpose. Valuable lessons are to be learned in this visible world wherein we dwell, that cannot be learned in any other realm of nature, and the very conditions of density and inertia whereof such people complain, are factors which make it possible to acquire the knowledge this world is designed to give. This fact was so amply illustrated in a recent experience of the writer:—A friend had been studying occultism for a number of years but had not studied astrology.
Last year she became aroused to the importance of this branch of study as a key to self knowledge and a means of understanding the natures of others, also of developing the compassion for their errors, so necessary in the cultivation of love of one's neighbor. Love of our neighbor the Savior enjoined upon us as the Supreme Commandment which is the fulfillment of all laws, and as Astrology teaches us to bear and forbear, it helps as nothing else can in the development [pg 091] of the supreme virtue. She therefore joined one of the classes started in Los Angeles by the writer, but a sudden illness quickly ended in death and thus terminated her study of the subject in the physical body, ere it was well begun.
Upon one of many occasions when she visited the writer subsequent to her release from the body, she deplored the fact that it seemed so difficult to make headway in her study of astrology. The writer advised continued attendance at the classes, and suggested that she could surely get someone “on the other side” to help her study.
At this she exclaimed impatiently: “Oh yes! of course I attend the classes, I have done so right along; I have also found a friend who helps me here. But you cannot imagine how difficult it is to concentrate here upon mathematical calculations and the judgment of a horoscope or in fact upon any subject here, where every little thought-current takes you miles away from your study. I used to think it difficult to concentrate when I had a physical body, but it is not a circumstance to the obstacles which face the student here.”
The physical body was an anchor to her, and it is that to all of us. Being dense, it is also to a great extent impervious to disturbing influences from which the more subtle spiritual bodies do not shield us. It enables us to bring our ideas to a logical conclusion with far less effort at concentration than is necessary in that realm where all is in such incessant and turbulent motion. Thus we are gradually developing the faculty of holding our thoughts to a center by existence in this world, and we should value our opportunities here, rather than deplore the limitations which help in one direction more than they fetter in another. In fact, we should never deplore any condition, each has its lesson. If we try to learn what that lesson is and to assimilate the experience which may be extracted therefrom, we are wiser than those who waste time in vain regrets.
We said there is no time in the Desire World, and the reader will readily understand that such must be the case from the fact, already mentioned, that nothing there is opaque.
In this world the rotation of the opaque earth upon its axis is responsible for the alternating conditions of day and night. We [pg 093] call it Day—when the spot where we live is turned towards the sun and its rays illumine our environment, but when our home is turned away from the sun and its rays obstructed by the opaque earth we term the resulting darkness: Night. The passage of the earth in its orbit around the sun produces the seasons and the year, which are our divisions of time. But in the Desire World where all is light there is but one long day. The spirit is not there fettered by a heavy physical body, so it does not need sleep and existence is unbroken. Spiritual substances are not subject to contraction and expansion such as arise here from heat and cold, hence summer and winter are also non-existent. Thus there is nothing to differentiate one moment from another in respect of the conditions of light and darkness, summer and winter, which mark time for us. Therefore, while the so-called “dead” may have a very accurate memory of time as regards the life they lived here in the body, they are usually unable to tell anything about the chronological relation of events which have happened to them in the Desire World, and it is a very common thing to find that they do not even know how many years have elapsed since [pg 094] they passed out from this plane of existence. Only students of the Stellar Science are able to calculate the passage of time after their demise.
When the occult investigator wishes to study an event in the past history of man, he may most readily call up the picture from the memory of nature, but if he desires to fix the time of the incident, he will be obliged to count backwards by the motion of the heavenly bodies. For that purpose he generally uses the measure provided by the sun's precession: Each year the sun crosses the earth's equator about the twenty-first of March. Then day and night are of even length, therefore this is called the Vernal equinox. But on account of a certain wabbling motion of the earth's axis, the sun does not cross over at the same place in the Zodiac, it reaches the equator a little too early, it precedes, year by year it moves backwards a little. At the time of the birth of Christ, for instance, the Vernal Equinox was in about seven degrees of the Zodiacal sign Aries. During the two thousand years which intervene between that event and the present time, the sun has moved backwards about twenty-seven degrees, so that it is now in about ten degrees [pg 095] of the sign Pisces. It moves around the whole circle of the Zodiac in about 25,868 years. The occult investigator may therefore count back the number of signs, or whole circles, which the sun has preceded between the present day and the time of the event he is investigating. Thus he has by the use of the heavenly time keepers a very approximately correct measure of time even though he is in the Desire World and that is another reason for studying the Stellar Science.
The World of Thought.