SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTS
THE NEXT PHASE OF LIFE
I have spoken in the text of the striking manner in
which accounts of life in the next phase, though
derived from the most varied and independent sources,
are still in essential agreement — an agreement which
occasionally descends to small details. A variety is
introduced by that fuller vision which can see and
describe more than one plane, but the accounts of that
happy land to which the ordinary mortal may hope to
aspire, are very consistent. Since I wrote the
statement I have read three fresh independent
descriptions which again confirm the point. One is the
account given by "A King's Counsel," in his recent
book, I Heard a Voice (Kegan Paul), which I
recommended to inquirers, though it has a strong Roman
Catholic bias running through it which shows that our
main lines of thought are persistent. A second is the
little book
The Light on the Future,
giving the very interesting details of the beyond,
gathered by an earnest and reverent circle in Dublin.
The other came in a private letter from Mr. Hubert
Wales, and is, I think, most instructive. Mr. Wales is
a cautious and rather sceptical inquirer who had put
away his results with incredulity (he had received them
through his own automatic writing). On reading my
account of the conditions described in the beyond, he
hunted up his own old script which had commended itself
so little to him when he first produced it. He says:
"After reading your article, I was struck, almost
startled, by the circumstance that the statements which
had purported to be made to me regarding conditions
after death coincided — I think almost to the smallest
detail — with those you set out as the result of your
collation of material obtained from a great number of
sources. I cannot think there was anything in my
antecedent reading to account for this coincidence. I
had certainly read nothing you had published on the
subject. I had purposely avoided
Raymond
and
books like it, in order not to vitiate my own results,
and the
Proceedings of the S.P.R. which I had read
at that time, do not touch, as you know, upon after-death conditions. At any rate I obtained, at various
times, statements (as my contemporary notes show) to
the effect that, in this persisting state of existence,
they have bodies which, though imperceptible by our
senses, are as solid to them as ours to us, that these
bodies are based on the general characteristies of our
present bodies but beautified; that they have no age,
no pain, no rich and poor; that they wear clothes and
take nourishment; that they do not sleep (though they
spoke of passing occasionally into a semiconscious
state which they called `lying asleep' — a condition, it
just occurs to me, which seems to correspond roughly
with the `Hypnoidal' state); that, after a period which
is usually shorter than the average life-time here,
they pass to some further state of existence; that
people of similar thoughts, tastes and feelings,
gravitate together; that married couples do not
necessarily reunite, but that the love of man and
woman continues and is freed of elements which
with us often militate against its perfect realization;
that immediately after death people pass into a semi-conscious rest-state lasting various periods, that they
are unable to experience bodily pain, but are
susceptible at times to some mental anxiety; that a
painful death is `absolutely unknown,' that religious
beliefs make no difference whatever in the after-state,
and that their life altogether is intensely happy, and
no one having ever realised it could wish to return
here. I got no reference to `work' by that word, but
much to the various interests that were said to occupy
them. That is probably only another way of saying the
same thing. `Work' with us has come usually to mean
`work to live,' and that, I was emphatically informed,
was not the case with them — that all the requirements
of life were somehow mysteriously `provided.' Neither
did I get any reference to a definite `temporary penal
state,' but I gathered that people begin there at the
point of intellectual and moral development where they
leave off here; and since their state of happiness was
based mainly upon sympathy, those who came over in
a low moral condition, failed at first for various
lengths of time to have the capacity to appreciate and
enjoy it."
