“Yet this external world surrounding us is not material and fixed like yours. It is what we call substantial or spiritual. It is plastic to spiritual forces. It changes, not according to your natural laws, but according to the changes in our own spirits. This is the key to the great difference which exists between the world you have left and this glorious one in which you are to live for ever.
“Our light here changes. It is day or night with us according to our own spiritual relations to the great Fountain of life. In one state of mind we are in the city, in another in the country. Certain emotions carry us to the mountain-tops; others place us among the sands and shells of the sea-shore. In one state of thought we are walking in flower-gardens of ethereal beauty; in another we are sitting by rivulets which echo the music of our [pg 182]own hearts. Thus mountains, fields, rivers, cities, houses, animate and inanimate objects come and go, appear and disappear, according as they represent or symbolize the interior changes of our spirits.”
“All this,” said I, “is so beautiful that it seems impossible. Liberated now from the thraldom of time and space, I understand you; but I doubt whether the most gifted philosopher in Athens can conceive of a world without time or space; of a world so phantasmagoric in appearance, yet said to be so genuine and eternal in reality.”
“Our spaces are determined,” said my father, “by spiritual affinities. Similarity of thought and feeling determines presence; dissimilarity makes distance or absence. When you here direct your thought to any person on the same plane of life, as we call it, with yourself, having at the same time a desire to see him, that person becomes aware of the fact, and, responding to your desire, is face to face with you at once.
“Let us both,” he continued, “fix our thoughts intently upon our noble and lovely friend, John, called the Baptist, who was beheaded in prison, and is performing here a similar office to that which he so well executed on the banks of the Jordan.”
We did so; and in a moment there was a beautiful flash of azure light, like a great sheet of water reflecting the sun and sky.
“That,” said my father, “is the sphere or symbolic appearance which always precedes and announces the coming of the gentle herald of the Lord.”
Then stood before us the young prophet of the wil[pg 183]derness, beautified, etherealized, glorified beyond conception.
He saluted me with brotherly warmth, and we entered into a long conversation which I shall not repeat; but from which I learned a thousand interesting and wonderful things about the spiritual world—things incredible to men in the flesh, most of whom, like birds of night, are satisfied with the darkness of nature.
