“For the production of ordinary phenomena a high grade of intelligence is not necessary. You do not need a professor to teach a child its alphabet. The better developed spirits find more subtle ways of imparting knowledge, and select more advanced minds to receive it than those that are satisfied with rudimentary phenomena. But that is necessary to begin with.
“Here as on earth—remember I use a term implying locality for your better understanding, though the spirit knows no locality—all who enjoy a larger light than the multitude are anxious to share it with those less favored. By helping others into it they receive more of it themselves. This is a law. Selfish, indeed, would be the soul who had a faith that supported him through every trial, and yet did not want others to have it. The heart’s desire of every prophet, genius and savior, is to make others see as he sees that which illumines his own soul. For this cause the noblest and best have often perished—that is, given up their physical life—to perish in reality being impossible. Therefore, communion between spirits still in the body and those out of it is one of the most important means of education known—the chief occupation of some who are here.
“Toying with phenomena for the sole purpose of gratifying curiosity—mere wonder-mongering—is always to be deprecated.
“Often, as in my case, the opportunity of communicating with friends left behind sets a spirit free from his own unhappy thought-limitations. It lifts a burden from him. My desire to prove to you that I was not dead held me in bondage until I bridged the gulf. Intense love for one is always a kind of bondage. The perfect love we shall know, when the truth has freed us, is all-embracing, universal, like unto the love of God—it is the love of God.
“When I read these words of Condillac I laughed at them: ‘Though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves; it is always our thought that we perceive.’
“Now I can affirm their truth. We can never run away from ourselves. We take our own world with us wherever we go, for it is made of our thought—‘it is always our own thought that we perceive.’ We are our own thought—and the smallest insect or strongest and fiercest beast or greatest genius is no less and no more.
“In the life of the world I never knew happiness. Behind a cynical and reserved exterior I masked a restless, suffering spirit. Creation appeared a grim tragedy. This was because my inner eyes were closed, and I took the distorted shadow for the reality. I was looking at a fantastic mirror and saw only its exaggerated reflections. I ridiculed the idea of any one’s being happy in such a world. Now I know that man is destined to be happy, but his happiness is of the spirit, and can only come with spiritual development, when he knows that he is spirit, lives the life of the spirit, and so becomes free from the bonds of ignorance. This is what is meant by the truth making us free. Ignorance is the only evil there is—mere blindness to the light, though the light is always shining. When you know the truth, you become the truth, and are out of the darkness of ignorance, therefore free. This is, I am told, the ultimate destiny of the whole human race.
“Remember that God never punishes any one. He only teaches. This, the children of the world have to learn. They, too, must eliminate punishment from their methods of dealing with the wrongdoers, otherwise the ignorant.
“A wise friend told me to cease my self-questioning and striving, and let knowledge find me. He said we have only to let good come to us and it will fill us. To do this we must make ourselves receptive—negative—and the spirit, the one spirit, which includes all wisdom, all love, all life, being positive, will flow into us. He said our continual striving and struggling made us positive, and therefore unreceptive. This enabled me to see a new meaning in the question, ‘Who, by searching can find out God?’
“The law is to be still—ready to receive—and let him enter.