A phenomenon similar to the panorama of life usually takes place when a person is drowning. People who have been resuscitated speak of having seen their whole life in a flash. That is because under such conditions the vital body also leaves the dense body. Of course there is no rupture of the silver cord, or life could not be restored. Unconsciousness follows quickly in drowning, [pg 157] while in the usual post-mortem review the consciousness continues until the vital body collapses in the same manner that it does when we go to sleep. Then consciousness ceases for a while and the panorama is terminated. Therefore also the time occupied by the panorama varies with different persons, according to whether the vital body was strong and healthy, or had become thin and emaciated by protracted illness. The longer the time spent in review, and the more quiet and peaceful the surroundings, the deeper will be the etching which is made in the desire body. As already said, that has a most important and far reaching effect, for then the sufferings which the spirit will realize in purgatory on account of bad habits and misdeeds will be much more keen than if there is only a slight impression, and in a future life the still small voice of conscience will warn so much more insistently against mistakes which caused sufferings in the past.
When conditions are such at the time of death that the spirit is disturbed by outside conditions, for instance the din and turmoil of a battle, the harrowing conditions of an accident or the hysterical wailings of relatives, the distraction prevents it from realizing [pg 158] an appropriate depth in the etching upon the desire body. Consequently its post-mortem existence becomes vague and insipid, the spirit does not harvest fruits of experience as it should have done had it passed out of the body in peace and under normal conditions. It would therefore lack incentive to good in a future life, and miss the warning against evil which a deep etching of the panorama of life would have given. Thus its growth would be retarded in a very marked degree, but the beneficent powers in charge of evolution take certain steps to compensate for our ignorant treatment of the dying and other untoward circumstances mentioned. What these steps are, we shall discuss when considering the life of children in heaven, for the present let it be sufficient to say that in God's kingdom every evil is always transmuted to a greater good though the process may not be at once apparent.
Purgatory.
During life the collapse of the vital body at night terminates our view of the world about us, and causes us to lose ourselves in unconsciousness of sleep. When the vital [pg 159] body collapses just subsequent to death, and the panorama of life is terminated, we also lose consciousness for a time which varies according to the individual. A darkness seems to fall upon the spirit, then after a while it wakes up and begins dimly to perceive the light of the other world, but is only gradually accustomed to the altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity of light bearable to our organism.
If under such a condition we turn momentarily from the bright sunlight and look back into the darkened room, objects there will be much more plain to our vision than things outside which are illumined by the powerful rays of the sun. So it is also with the spirit, when it has first been released from the body it perceives sights, scenes and sounds of the material world, which it has just left, much more readily than it observes the sights of the world it is entering. Wordsworth in his Ode to Immortality noted a similar condition in the case of new-born children, who are all clairvoyant and much more awake to the [pg 160] spiritual world than to this present plane of existence. Some lose the spiritual sight very early, others retain it for a number of years and a few keep it all through life, but as the birth of a child is a death in the spiritual world and it retains the spiritual sight for a time, so also death here is a birth upon the spiritual plane, and the newly dead retain a consciousness of this world for some time subsequent to demise.
When one awakes in the Desire World after having passed through aforementioned experiences, the general feeling seems to be one of relief from a heavy burden, a feeling perhaps akin to that of a diver encased in a heavy rubber suit, a weighty brass helmet upon his head, leaden soles under his feet and heavy weights of lead upon his breast and back, confined in his operations on the bottom of the ocean by a short length of air tube, and able only to move clumsily with difficulty. When after the day's work such a man is hauled to the surface, and divests himself of his heavy garments and he moves about with the facility we enjoy here, he must surely experience a feeling of great relief. Something like that is felt by the spirit when it has been divested of the mortal coil, and is [pg 161] able to roam all over the globe instead of being confined to the narrow environment which bound it upon earth.
There is also a feeling of relief for those who have been ill. Sickness, such as we know it, does not exist there. Neither is it necessary to seek food and shelter, for in that world there is neither heat nor cold. Nevertheless, there are many in the purgatorial regions who go to all bothers of housekeeping, eating and drinking just as we do here. George Du Maurier in his novel “Peter Ibbetson” gives a very good idea of this condition in the life lived between the hero and the Countess of Towers. This novel also illustrates splendidly what has been said of the sub-conscious memory, for Geo. Du Maurier has somewhere, somehow discovered an easy method which anyone may apply to do what he calls “dreaming true.” By taking a certain position in going to sleep, it is possible, after a little practice, to compel the appearance, in a dream, of any scene in our past life which we desire to live over again. The book is well worth reading on that account.
When a fiery nebula has been formed in the sky and commences to revolve, a little matter in the center where motion is slowest [pg 162] commences to crystallize. When it has reached a certain density it is caught in the swirl, and whirled nearer and nearer to the outward extremity of what has, by that time, become the equator of a revolving globe. Then it is hurled into space and discarded from the economy of the revolving sun.
This process is not accomplished automatically as scientists would have us believe,—an assertion which has been proven in The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception and other places in our literature. Herbert Spencer also rejected the nebular theory because it required a First Cause, which he denied, though unable to form a better hypothesis of the formation of solar systems,—but it is accomplished through the activity of a Great Spirit, which we may call God or by any other name we choose. As above, so below, says the Hermetic axiom. Man, who is a lesser spirit, also gathers about himself spirit-substance, which crystallizes into matter and becomes the visible body which the spiritual sight reveals as placed inside an aura of finer vehicles. The latter are in constant motion. When the dense body is born as a child it is extremely soft and flexible.
Childhood, youth, maturity and old age are but so many different stages of crystallization, which goes on until at last a point is reached where the spirit can no longer move the hardened body and it is thrown out from the spirit as the planet is expelled from the sun. That is death!—the commencement of a disrobing process which continues in purgatory. The low evil passions and desires we cultivated during life have crystallized the desire stuff in such a manner that that also must be expelled. Thus the spirit is purged of evil under the same law that a sun is purged of the matter which later forms a planet. If the life lived has been a reasonably decent one, the process of purgation will not be very strenuous nor will the evil desires thus expurgated persist for a long time after having been freed, but they quickly disintegrate. If, on the other hand, an extremely vile life has been led, the part of the expurgated desire nature may persist even to the time when the spirit returns to a new birth for further experience. It will then be attracted to him and haunt him as a demon, inciting him to evil deeds which he himself abhors. The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not a mere fanciful idea of [pg 164] Robert Louis Stevenson, but is founded upon facts well known to spiritual investigators. Such cases are extremes of course, but they are nevertheless possible and we have unfortunately laws which convert such possibilities to probabilities in the case of a certain class of so-called criminals. We refer to laws which decree capital punishment as penalty of murder.