Mysty River, and stood within the awful gates of—Eternity!
The majority of people imagine the Soul-world to be spacially (to coin a good word) outside of this sphere; and so it is, in one sense; but in another, it is not. A notion of what I mean may be had by comparing the other and higher with certain phases of the true dream-life. The scenes of action of either are totally removed from both time and space, and yet the events of each are actual experiences of the soul; for even in dream-life we suffer and enjoy quite as keenly as in the wakeful world of grosser sense. A woman who sleeps and dreams, finds herself in two widely-different states within the four-and-twenty hours. Now, the normal spiritual state is very like a prolonged dream-life, to which our world-sense or earthly condition is just the same as is spiritual clairvoyance to an inhabitant of the physical body; that is to say, it is possible for spiritual beings to become en rapport with this earthly world, and the interests, persons and things thereof; but this is not their normal state or condition, any more than the clairvoyance, induced mesmerically, is the normal state of the subject possessing the faculty.
It requires long and persistent effort to induce a condition in a human being, which will for a time intromit him into the greater or lesser Soul-worlds; and. just so it is no easy matter for the inhabitants of those higher and highest worlds to become en rapport with this.
These remarks are introductory to what follows.
After the first great thrill of terror had passed over, I became comparatively calm, and soon lost all consciousness whatever. Not a sensation ever felt before in all my life was experienced now, but a new magazine
