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Page 33
I found to my surprise that his thoughts of myself were becoming more
frequent; and one day when he was turning over some old letters and
reading a number of mine, it seemed to me that his spirit almost
recognised my presence in the words which came to his lips, "It seems
like yesterday!" I then became blessedly aware that I was actually
helping him, and that the very intentness of my own thought was
quickening his own.
I discussed the whole case very closely and carefully with one of our
instructors, who set me right on several points and made the whole state
of things clear to me.
I said to him, "One thing bewilders me; it would almost seem that a
man's work upon earth constituted an interruption and a distraction from
spiritual influences. It cannot surely be that people in the body should
avoid employment, and give themselves to secluded meditation? If the
soul grows fast in sadness and despondency, it would seem that one
should almost have courted sorrow on earth; and yet I cannot believe
that to be the case."
"No," he said, "it is not the case; the body has here to be considered.
No amount of active exertion clouds the eye of the soul, if only the
motive of it is pure and lofty, and if the soul is only set patiently
and faithfully upon the true end of life. The body indeed requires due
labour and exercise, and the soul can gain health and clearness thereby.
But what does cloud the spirit is if it gives itself wholly up to narrow
personal aims and ambitions, and uses friendship and love as mere
recreations and amusements. Sickness and sorrow are not, as we used to
think, fortuitous things; they are given to those who need them, as high
and rich opportunities; and they come as truly blessed gifts, when they
break a man's thought off from material things, and make him fall back
upon the loving affections and relations of life. When one re-enters
the world, a woman's life is sometimes granted to a spirit, because a
woman by circumstance and temperament is less tempted to decline upon
meaner ambitions and interests than a man; but work and activity are no
hindrances to spiritual growth, so long as the soul waits upon God, and
desires to learn the lessons of life, rather than to enforce its own
conclusions upon others."
"Yes," I said, "I see that. What, then, is the great hindrance in the
life of men?"
"Authority," he said, "whether given or taken. That is by far the
greatest difficulty that a soul has to contend with. The knowledge of
the true conditions of life is so minute and yet so imperfect, when one
is in the body, that the man or woman who thinks it a duty to
disapprove, to correct, to censure, is in the gravest danger. In the
first place it is so impossible to disentangle the true conditions of
any human life; to know how far those failures which are lightly called
sins are inherited instincts of the body, or the manifestation of
immaturity of spirit. Complacency, hard righteousness, spiritual
security, severe judgments, are the real foes of spiritual growth; and
if a man is in a position to enforce his influence and his will upon
others, he can fall very low indeed, and suspend his own growth for a
very long and sad period. It is not the criticism or the analysis of
others which hurts the soul, so long as it remains modest and sincere
and conscious of its own weaknesses. It is when we indulge in secure or
compassionate comparisons of our own superior worth that we go
backwards."
This was but one of the many cases which I had to investigate. I do not
say that this is the work of all spirits in the other world--it is not
so; there are many kinds of work and occupation. This was the one now
allotted to me; but I did become aware of the intense and loving
interest which is bent upon the souls of the living by those who are
departed. There is not a soul alive who is not being thus watched and
tended, and helped, as far as help is possible; for no one is ever
forced or compelled or frightened into truth, only drawn and wooed by
love and care.
I must say a word, too, of the great and noble friendships which I
formed at this period of my existence. We were not free to make many of
these at a time. Love seems to be the one thing that demands an entire
concentration, and though in the world of spirits I became aware that
one could be conscious of many of the thoughts of those about me
simultaneously, yet the emotion of love, in the earlier stages, is
single and exclusive.
I will speak of two only. There were a young man and a young woman who
were much associated with me at that time, whom I will call Philip and
Anna. Philip was one of the most beautiful of all the spirits I ever
came near. His last life upon earth had been a long one, and he had been
a teacher. I used to tell him that I wished I had been under him as a
pupil, to which he replied, laughing, that I should have found him very
uninteresting. He said to me once that the way in which he had always
distinguished the two kinds of teachers on earth had been by whether
they were always anxious to teach new books and new subjects, or went on
contentedly with the old. "The pleasure," he said, "was in the teaching,
in making the thought clear, in tempting the boys to find out what they
knew all the time; and the oftener I taught a subject the better I liked
it; it was like a big cog-wheel, with a number of little cog-wheels
turning with it. But the men who were always wanting to change their
subjects were the men who thought of their own intellectual interest
first, and very little of the small interests revolving upon it." The
charm of Philip was the charm of extreme ingenuousness combined with
daring insight. He never seemed to be shocked or distressed by anything.
He said one day, "It was not the sensual or the timid or the
ill-tempered boys who used to make me anxious. Those were definite
faults and brought definite punishment; it was the hard-hearted,
virtuous, ambitious, sensible boys, who were good-humoured and
respectable and selfish, who bothered me; one wanted to shake them as a
terrier shakes a rat--but there was nothing to get hold of. They were a
credit to themselves and to their parents and to the school; and yet
they went downhill with every success."
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