THE NATURAL, SPIRITUAL AND CELESTIAL PLANES OF THE SECOND STATE
The present topic of consideration is “The Natural, Spiritual and Celestial Planes of the Second State.” At times it is supposed that the second state of life is so strangely different, so altogether miraculous in its character by comparison with the life you are now pursuing, that it would seem, if such opinion be accepted as correct, that it would be impossible to give any rational and intelligible conception of its nature.
Naturally, the logical mind would argue, if there is this great difference between the two states, and if the fact of communion between them be true, then those who come to you from the other state can only make themselves understood to your judgment through the agency of symbols and such approximate statements as would best meet the necessities and difficulties that lie in the way.
Therefore in such case all statements concerning the spiritual life would have to be accepted as approximate statements, and not statements of literal and actual fact stated in specific terms, and the results would be that the whole of the literature of Spiritualism dealing with the after-life would be an approximate and not an exact literature; for there could be no exact philosophy of the subject, and you would have to wake up, perchance, into conscious life in the world beyond, with the painful fact dawning upon you that you absolutely were not benefited in any particular by all the supposed information that had been transmitted to you during your residence upon earth.
If the spiritual world could only give you an approximate understanding of the conditions of the future life, it would not render you any very substantial service; you would still be enshrouded in doubts and difficulties, and the real character of that future state would be just as much a sealed book to you after you had received communications from these people as it was prior to your so doing. Clearly, then, if this is the case, the value of the communications will be seriously impaired in proportion as this fact is known.
On the other hand, suppose it to be that you can get not only an approximate but a tolerably exact statement of the facts of that future life, couched in such manner and method as shall make it easily understood and accepted by your intelligence and judgment, then the communications you receive from that future world, Will help to clear away the mists, as well as dispel the superstitious opinions that have surrounded that future life for so many generations past. In this case communications will be advantageous and beneficial to you, instructive and illustrative of the real facts and the actual circumstances that there prevail; and coming to you in such a character, they will store your mind, unfold your judgment, and add to your knowledge of the life beyond, while they will largely rob death of those terrors, that ignorance and doubt have hitherto associated with it.
Shall we take the hypothetical ground or the ground of exactitude? is it impossible to translate the life beyond into the understanding of rational humanity? Must the information be conveyed in the form of symbols and approximations? Our choice is very simple; we aim, as best we can, to be something of the rough and hardy pioneer, who, working through the tangled undergrowth of the forest, strives to carve a way for those who come after, that there may be something of a road and more of daylight upon the path than there was before; and if we can do this in such practical manner as shall make the road we mark out clearly understood by you, then we must come to something of exactitude, and symbols and approximations may be put upon one side as not suited to the task we have in hand.
THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS GRADED
We have divided our subject into three separate sections—the natural, spiritual and celestial planes of the second state; and the inference arising from this division is, naturally, that man passes through certain conditions thus named, and in himself exhibits a natural and spiritual and celestial character as he proceeds.
But at the outset we may be encountered with a criticism and told that to argue that a person passes through a natural condition in the spiritual life is to argue something that does not seem upon the surface to be supported by the facts. We would like to ask one question: How many of the teeming multitudes of spirits are really spiritually unfolded while living in this world? If they are not spiritually unfolded while they are living in this world, how can it be reasonably supposed, save only by the operation of a miracle, that they can become spiritually unfolded as the simple result of having died. The idea that death will put such people into a spiritual condition rests upon a sandy and insecure foundation. Yet, you will tell us, they become spirits. That is true enough. There are a great many human people who just possess mortal bodies, in whom humanity has not yet begun to put forth its fairest flowers; they are mortal rather than human. These people, then, will be spirits rather than spiritual, and herein Les the essence of the distinction; for may it not be accepted that until the divinity of humanity has been elaborated and unfolded, the glorious spirituality which is the perfume of humanity can scarcely be expected.
WE BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
We invite you, first of all, to the natural plane of the spiritual life, wherein all the latent elements pertaining to your present development germinate, flower, bring forth their graces and glory; and wherein all the nobler selfhood that you feel within you now unfolds, matures, and beautifies. Ah! but if we have to take such a step as that, and if all the better part of us that we possess now is unfolded over there, how many of us shall reach the glory in the end, and at what an expense of time, it may be, shall we pass through the ultimates of the natural nature of us, and tread upon the verge of the spiritual that lies beyond?
True, there is no royal road to progress in the second state any more than there is in this; all achievement is the result of individual effort and of personal application. If you wish to grow on the second plane of life, then, even as you would have to labour upon this plane mentally and morally to achieve results, so mentally and morally must you labour on that second plane if you advance and progress.
Now, when we look at human nature we find that there are certain possible characteristics and elements pertaining to man’s natural nature, as it is called, but apparently are in the way—are clogs upon the wheels of his spiritual development; and people tell you if you wish for grace and growth, you must trample underneath all the carnal and material elements of your nature, Very frequently we have to raise our voice in condemnation of a doctrine so sophistical. There is nothing base in man’s nature, it is only the uses that ignorance and undevelopment have put it to. If, then, by ignorance you have descended to ignoble service, if by lack of knowledge you have become chained, slaves to mastering passions, then those passions are not to blame; but your lack of development and lack of knowledge rise up in condemnation, and accuse you of failure to rightly use the powers that God himself hath committed to your keeping.
THERE IS NOTHING COMMON OR UNCLEAN
When the world grows wise enough, and clearly sees the character of God’s great government, it will universally concede the point we are about to urge—that in man’s nature, as well as in the universe itself, the gifts of God are good eternally. It is not in crushing and crowding to the ground and trampling beneath your feet the gifts of God that you are going to attain real progress, but it is in bringing out the principles that are involved therein; in applying them intelligently and wisely to the nobler purpose and desires of your life, and so bringing out the latent elements of good—the essences and all the sweetness and brightness that man’s material nature contains. This cannot be done to-day, but instinctively the individual feels it ought to be done. This instinctive conception has lain within the minds of men for ages past, and the ascetics and monks and recluses of the world testify to the fearful ends men have gone in their attempts to crucify the flesh that the spirit might be free.
Vain efforts were these, for your nature needs its particular development, its true unfoldment, that these latent qualities and powers may be brought to the surface and stimulated, even as the sunshine stimulates, and warms, and brings to the surface the blade of grass as it grows upwards from the soil; and when you can effect this result while you are living here, then so much higher will you stand in the natural condition in the spiritual world when you pass to it; but you need not think that you will pass into a realm or sphere beyond the first division we have mentioned, for the first stage will receive one and all, for there is not a human being living in the world to-day who has attained such superior development and exalted unfoldment, that he has exhausted the natural elements of personal being pertaining to the sphere of life whereon he first commences to be.
In the spiritual states of life you will find the counterparts of nature, the counterparts of humanity; and these natural counterparts of nature and man are the elements of the first degree, so to speak, of spiritual existence. They constitute the natural claim whereon your loves, your affections, your interests, your professions, all that which makes you what you are to-day, come to you, remain with you as a part and parcel of your lives, and do their work there in your further development, and which fit you for the next degree that rises beyond.
THE STRENGTH OF HUMAN AFFECTION
Let us go back for one moment. The natural affections of the heart, so called, the desires of the intellect, the aspirations of the moral man, the emotions and premonitions of the spiritual part of you, all these are working in your lives to-day. You win die, and when you enter on the second plane, all these things will be with you there working with you still; but they will bind you at the same time, for they are links that hold you down to the world from whence you came, and bind you to the friends you love, to the pursuits that were dear to you, to the principles of being you were then related to; and they will hold you just so long as you have not developed beyond, or more properly speaking, developed up to all the possibilities of life at present active within your being.
Therefore, your sojourn upon the natural plane—the second state—will depend entirely upon the character of your affections, the nature of your pursuits; and if your strong affections still bind you to the realms of nature and the people living there, then will you be as dwellers upon the threshold, living actually within the confines of the material thought, even on the spiritual side— remaining unseen, but chained to the conditions of earth, sharing and sympathising with its people in their trials and tribulations when they are affectionally related to you; but, growing a little beyond this in thought and nobler in aspiration, you pass away from the world itself, from the actual conditions of mortal being, and enter into the real conditions of the spiritual life.
THE POTENTIAL GREATNESS OF MAN
We have so profound a faith in, and so deep a worship for, the divinity of man, that at times we feel that if the world’s humanity were only what that humanity can become, the world would need no service from the spirit-world to aid it in its upward progress. There is so much of good, so much of truth, so much of power and beauty, enshrined within this nature of yours, that could all these be brought into active exercise, the world’s people would become angels and gods. Therefore, when we see and know them, and mingle with them on that brighter plane of natural existence whereon the spirit man first stands, we feel and know how divinely great this humanity can be. Over there, then, where love is the ruling element, mingling in every thought and urging all your nature forward, there, on really the lowest round of the ladder of spiritual progress, man unfolds every latent element of the divine humanity, and realizes fully and completely all the elements of human greatness.
In the main, the majority of communicants, who come to hold communications with you, come from the first plane of spiritual existence; there they are dwellers upon the threshold; nearer this life, really, than the other, they have scarcely passed the portals, and are yet those upon the natural plane of spiritual existence, whose interests, sympathies, and desires are still associated with the mortal world. Occasionally, much more rarely than you think, come messengers from the plane beyond, the avant couriers of a better dispensation yet to be unfolded; and now and again their golden words drop into the seas of mortal thought, stirring their waters with a quicker life, illuminating them with a radiant glory that flashes and scintillates before the wondering eyes of those keen enough to feel the power of the deeper thought and the higher presence.
But, no matter how long the time may be, the period surely comes at last when the latent elements of your present careers are all unfolded, and you have grown co-equal with the plane of principles upon which you have hitherto reposed, and therefore need a larger flight, must have a new condition; for now you begin to feel the need of that deeper unfoldment that lies behind the human nature— the cultivation of the spiritual part of you.
PROGRESS IN SPIRIT LIFE
By effort and by sorrow, it may be by pain and misery, most potent teachers in the main, you have become chastened and purified; the discordant and rebellious elements have been reduced to order and to harmony; and being thus clothed in your right mind at last, wearing at last the wedding garments for the spiritual feasting that lies before you, the command comes out of your own necessities, “Come up higher.” out of your own necessities, mind, for you can make no advance in the spiritual states of being until the absolute need of it within yourself compels the movement onwards—you cross the boundaries of nature.
With that crossing we cannot deal now. Suffice it to say you cross those boundaries, and find a new life surging within your nature, new aspirations developed, new relations yearned for; and onward you go, not forsaking or forgetting all that has gone before, but, as it were, gathering and folding it up like a treasured garment, and putting it away, in the recesses of your mind, for use hereafter. The life and thought and action of you go forward now into the upper portion of the consciousness, and is related to spiritual things more deeply; or, in other words, you have now arrived at that plane of evolution in your spiritual consciousness when you have a higher plane of activities, that, by contrast, because of their refinement, are justly describable as the spiritual plane of your being.
Now this spiritual plane is the complement of the natural plane you existed upon before; it is the very essence of all that has gone before. Whereas love ruled you before, now another power begins to operate as a controlling influence upon your judgment. It is the power of spiritual perception. The spiritual perception operates now, and whereas before you had to reason and to argue upon all that entered into your knowledge, now the soul sees beneath the form, through the phenomenon, to the laws and the principle that are beneath it. The more remote powers, as you consider them now, of your souls, are then brought nearer to the surface; and all the virtues and abilities you have dreamed of as being possible hitherto, now become practical realities in your every-day experience.
This spiritual power working within you begins to manifest itself externally, and you behold yourself upon this plane clothed literally in the purity of your own progress; whereas your garments upon the lower or natural plane of spiritual life were the reflection of your personal thoughts and states and conditions, which now have become the outward types and forms of your interior life, and develop a being clothed in that which makes imposition and imposture utterly impossible. Here on this plane of life the spirit always is to outward form just what it is in inward nature. If this sublime law were only realized on earth, what a transformation would be effected in the conditions of human society, how many people would have to change places; those who are up would have to come down, those who are judges would become criminals, while many a poor prisoner might play the role of judge most righteously. Think of it! The time will come when what you really are, out of the purity and sweetness of your progress, will become actually manifest in the external robes that clothe you.
SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION DAWNS
This spiritual state brings you into closer sympathy with the souls of men than you could here obtain upon the natural plane previously referred to. Natures intersphere each other more completely, and more dose communion exists between the inhabitants of this plane; and their affections and their perceptions, running into closer harmony than hitherto, prevent them making misplaced confidences, wrong associations, and injurious affiliations. They find, too, that the purposes of being have a deeper significance than they ever dreamed before; and realizing truly and universally the presence of law and principle in the conditions around them and within themselves, they are at last overwhelmed with a deeper and more spiritual consciousness of the existence and the government of God than ever was possible to them before.
One step further is taken here; and from this plane of the spiritual perception they arise to still more exalted development, which we will call, for convenience sake, the celestial state. There a wondrous development is made manifest; would that we had the power and the skill to bring the glory and the beauty of this third state before your understanding; the radiant divinity of it, the spirit and power, the spirituality of it, the loveliness of it are so divinely glorious, permeated by such loyalty of soul from those who five within it, the omnipotence of God’s great presence, that words fall all too short of being able to give you the slightest outline of it.
EYE HATH NOT SEEN—NOR EAR HEARD
Lives there beat in glorious rhythm with the eternal music of the infinite heart itself, and every latent possibility of the soul to this point rises to its highest altitude, manifests its most glorious activities and divinest powers; the noble messengers of that higher life are indeed fitted to be as even gods to you. How can we speak of them, how can we tell you of their glory and their beauty? There is in their natures one great principle.
If affection and perception have ruled in the previous cases, now comes the godlike power of meditation, or assimilation, whereby the principles already gathered, the knowledge already possessed, the developments already made manifest, are brought within the very consciousness of the soul itself; and love and intellect and meditation here crown the progress of the soul as it passed upward in the second state. Mark well the meaning of these terms. We are speaking only of the second state, not of other states that rise beyond it, mark you, more glorious still, but that one state of spiritual being that you are at present related to, the three divisions of which we have just enumerated.
When these three separate stages of progress have been made, they may now be passed before you in the review that substantially says they are the fulfilment of the natural man as you know him today. They are the realities of the spiritual man as you feel him within yourselves, they are the blossoming and unfolding of the divine man that lies beneath all that is the very essence of your natures.
THE EQUILIBRIUM OF HARMONIOUS LIFE
Here we have, then, observation perception, and reflection, love, justice and wisdom manifesting themselves in their proper orders; and as they increase in power and come into harmony each with the other, and when love is directed by reason, and reason controlled by wisdom, then love, justice and wisdom (Justice promoting the action of the intellect), then, when these three are brought into mutual harmony and unity, what a perfectly rounded life, by comparison with the fives of men to-day, is presented for your consideration!
When this final stage of this second state has been reached, behold a marvellous thing occurs. The mind’s action, or, more correctly speaking, the action of the conscious soul itself produces a wonderful result; and all that has been so far reached becomes absorbed into the very nature of you, and becomes the foundation element that is the basis of your progress in the next state that rises beyond, the second state you will encounter when you pass from this your first.
The process may be indefinitely repeated. These triune developments, their associations in action and their final assimilation into one compact element, will go on indefinitely; until the soul in its attributes of justice, love, and wisdom, and all the elements that make up man’s nature, affectionally, intellectually, and spiritually, shall grow to such gigantic proportions, and possess such divine abilities, that all you have ever dreamed of concerning even Deity himself shall pale into utter insignificance by the side of the reality you shall personally possess.
May we not, then, pause here, asking you to remember that we have only dealt in plain and simple terms and on general principles with some of the most important facts which will be your experiences when you pass from this stage to the world beyond? We here endeavour to present to you, not an approximation, but a literal statement of the fact that the three planes of your present natures, the natural, intellectual and spiritual, as we should, perhaps, more correctly interpret them, are unfolded upon the first general degree of experience after death, and that over there the three are represented by the terms natural, spiritual and celestial.
And as you thus progress, the principles of your divine humanity, the elements of your immortal minds, the qualities of your eternal souls, are successively developed and unfolded as you go along the second plane of your being, and each unfoldment lays the possibility of the one that comes afterwards, and as it grows and develops, it makes you nobler and more divine; until at last, having exhausted the possibilities of the first plane of your spiritual existence, all these beauties and glories in their triune departments become concentrated and embodied in yourself, and behold a diviner humanity than you ever have dreamed of yet is the glorious and beautiful result.
PREPARE TO-DAY FOR TO-MORROW
May we meet you, then, not as dwellers upon the threshold, for then it would pain us to know that you had not yet reached that plane of spiritual development that fitted you to pass behind the outer portals. But let us meet you upon the inner side of the celestial doorway of the two worlds, and grasp your hands, and say we are glad to see you thus unfolded and thus beautified.
May this, your plane of natural existence in the spiritual world, lead to that of which we have told you. Then shall we know that you have lived this life worthily, that you have done your best to unfold and exalt your powers and natures, and truly fitted yourselves for that natural, spiritual state that is to be your first experience after death.
And, as you march forward, labouring faithfully, earnestly and zealously, gathering knowledge and increasing strength and stature, we shall know that you shall surely go forward to that sublime and celestial condition further still. And as you go up there, wise and loving, true and thoughtful, souls will be with you at every point, to give you aid and help whenever you need it.
Live then, in this world, under the solemn and serious consciousness that you are preparing for the second plane of life; and may your deeds and thoughts and growth be such that you shall pass through the gateway into the natural life that lies beyond, where, under the blessing of the wise and the good, and the providence of the Eternal Power, you shall learn the mighty lessons of nature as you can never learn them while you are here; for then you shall be able to see beneath the form, beneath the phenomenon, and learn the law and discover the principle of the life and world in which you live.
If you will so five then you will earn for yourself free admission beyond the threshold, and hear the glad welcome of the glorious hosts beyond as they speed to meet you and warmly clasp your hands in greeting, “Welcome! well done, thou good and faithful worker!”