A 19th Century Near Death Experience

The following chapter is from the free ebook Beyond the Bourn. In a postscript at the end of this book, the author says the following:

Chapter 10. Spirit Relationship and Achievement

Now we turned from this happy sphere and glided back through the heavenly spaces. Everywhere about us as we went were spirits of the immortals, some bound on distant missions, others gathered together in converse and communion, families and friends, great ones and humble, all intent upon the joyful activity of the eternal life.

Their surroundings, discernible by the disembodied soul, were fraught with glories and beauties which to physical sense would be imperceptible and to those dependent upon physical senses must be incomprehensible. To picture them to the minds of mortals, I should speak of grottoes and retreats where loveliness of form and color were combined in perfect harmony, pervaded with all the charms of sound and odor that can delight the soul; of quiet groves, of lovely gardens, cool fountains, inviting slopes and refreshing shades, of gorgeous structures in the sublime ether, the grand architecture of nature in the free heavens, gleaming with hues brighter and more varied than light can furnish to human vision, and wrought with a perfection no artist or architect ever conceived in his most exalted dreams.

By such imagery alone can the mind of man gain some faint notion of the spiritual abodes; and yet their beauties are not material, are not beauties of form and color and are not filled with sounds and odors. Still, they are of a nature that gives to the disembodied spirit a far more perfect and exalted joy than could be conveyed by the senses of the flesh in their most exquisite state.

Through these scenes in their myriad forms we passed till we reached a quiet retreat in which seemed to be united everything that could delight the soul, and there with ineffable joy we reposed in what I may call our own home. My soul and my soul’s beloved wife mingled in a manner that gave supernal joy, far more ecstatic than could be derived from any communion of spirits hampered in the body. Then did I feel that one moment of this joy that was to be eternal was compensation for all the sufferings of my mortal existence.

Reposing in this celestial home we remained for a time in a restful revery, like a dream of bliss. Then came again my desire to learn more of the new life.

“Ah!” I said, “our earthly hopes of reunion and of blessedness with those we loved were not unsubstantial dreams. Here we are united in the eternal home with unending years before us. The happiness of the earthly life was but a beginning, the interruptions of death were momentary. This is the real life and the ties formed there hold us here forever.”

“Yes, it is so,” returned my friend, “and yet the earthly beginning of these ties of family was not always right, and wrong cannot be perpetuated, Here there is truly no marriage, no carnal relationship, and all association is the result of natural attraction. Mortals on earth are wont to call marriage ‘sacred, divine’; but it is and ever was a device of man—a necessary safeguard in an imperfect state of society—while love alone is sacred.

“Marriage is far from being a holy institution in itself. Persons unfitted to enjoy each other’s society, unfitted to promote each other’s growth and development, unfitted to aid in ameliorating the race, assume with haste and folly a union which human laws force them to hold through a life perchance of hatred and unhappiness.

“No divine law compels such incongruous and wretched unions to continue here. Love is indeed divine, and where that exists and brings souls together while yet in the body, their communion is sweet, their influence upon each other is beneficent, they have offspring of still more gracious aspect and character than themselves. Such spirits will continue in their relations of love in the life eternal,—but that is only because they are relations of love, and not because they existed on earth or were in conformity with human laws.

“Thousands of unions on earth are sources of misery. When at last death effects a release which human society would not—perhaps cannot—countenance, then there is freedom at last. Every hated alliance is broken and there is no longer subjection of the will where affection is not. Every soul seeks communion with those that are the natural and satisfying objects of its love.

“Vast and varied are the relationships of this life, and every soul is involved in its destiny with all others, but the intimacy of association is in exact proportion to the natural congeniality of the spirits. No matter what former relations or ties may have existed under the restraints of human laws and the necessities of human society, here freedom is perfect and universal. Each spirit seeks out for its love those that understand itself and have an attraction for it, and cleaves to none other. There is the most intimate communion where this attraction is strongest, and affection grows wherever characters are adapted to excite it in each other.

“A soul let loose in the heavens will soon find out its companions and always join its own company. Those for whom it has most love, it may have been separated from through most of its former existence, and those that it lived with may be the ones in whom it finds no reciprocal attraction.

“Many souls are united after long estrangement and cruel separation, and marriage may be what separated them. Families may, indeed, be separated in heaven, but only when they are not fitted to be together.

“Many a wife will leave a husband she ought never to have had and will find her supreme joy with one whom she can really love; aye, with thousands whom she loves—if you will dissociate that word from its lower misuses, and take its nobler, truer meaning. Husbands that were, if they loved not their wives, cleave to them no longer but seek the companionship of those whom they do love. In short, the human relations continue just so far as they were relations of love, and no farther; and where love is, there will the demonstrations of love abound.

“There is no conflict, and no jealousy; for where freedom is perfect jealousy cannot exist. Our associations are manifold, and love of one does not exclude love of another. Certain necessities and purposes of the mortal existence created exclusiveness and restraints, but here there are none. Those necessities and purposes no longer have force, and the freedom of love is perfect.

“The consummation of love in communion and interchange of thought and feeling has nothing in it of carnal limitations. Wives and husbands, children and parents, brothers and friends, whose relationships sprang from love, find themselves bound together here with an affection more exalted and in a communion more perfect; but those relationships that were forced and unnatural are abandoned and forgotten. There is indeed no marriage or giving in marriage, no families defined by law or kept together by restraint, but perfect freedom, perfect harmony and perfect bliss in communion of spirits.

“The harmony of disembodied souls is ever increasing. Many come here whose character is likely to produce discord, but they find around them benign influences and every encouragement and assistance to develop their better powers and capacities. Growth and development are characteristics of this life as of that on earth. Spirits find themselves here oftentimes but little developed, on account of the untoward circumstances of their earthly experience, and such have their lives to begin almost anew. Others have been crippled and distorted and have a thousand stubborn faults to correct.”

“But,” I said with surprise, “do the bad, the wicked, the vicious, the criminal, enjoy the same advantages as the good and virtuous?”

“Ah!” said the spirit with a kind of angelic sadness, “who shall judge and punish the wicked? An all-wise Creator has brought the human race into being and placed it on yonder little planet, with all its powers, its capabilities and its tendencies, to grow up through struggle and conflict, through error and wrong, into the strength and purity of a perfected state.

“Some with happy endowments and favoring circumstances may attain a goodly growth during the lifetime of the body, but the growth of the race as a whole is the process of many generations. Meantime thousands are constantly falling in the struggle and are trodden under foot; thousands wander far astray; and of the millions that are continually perishing from the face of the earth few have fairly got started on their life. The laws most favorable to the whole in the long process of growth, necessitate the crushing down of many for the time being; and who shall condemn them for their misfortune?

“It is the lot of many a soul to receive in the conception and gestation of the bodily organism, tendencies which, with a feeble will and no encouragement, it cannot overcome and can but weakly resist. It is blind as to its own nature and destiny, and no one imparts light and knowledge to it. It violates continually the laws of bodily and spiritual well-being and receives continually the penalty that follows as an inevitable consequence. It was planted in a bad soil with conditions unfavorable to healthy growth, and becomes wild, rank and noisome.

“Another soul is introduced to life through a more wholesome medium and begins with tendencies toward a healthy development and circumstances which favor and encourage it. It becomes vigorous, symmetrical and pure.

“There is struggle and effort such as the person is capable of in both cases; in one success, in the other almost total fail. The merit and the blame in the eye of the All-wise differ but little in the two cases. Both souls leave the body. One finds itself fitted for association with the pure and good, the wise and great of the race, and ready for the activities and the renewed and vigorous growth of the celestial life. This is compensation enough for sufferings and drawbacks such as he has had. The other sees at last the great destiny of being, but finds itself far from its attainment, unfitted for its joys, almost an outcast from the celestial hosts, not because they cast it out, but because the character it brings does not fit it for their company. Is not this sufficient punishment, if punishment is deserved? Should not this poor soul’s forlorn condition excite pity and compassion rather than resentment and wrath?

“Every spirit that has passed from the body and its limitations and entanglements has enough left of the instinct of growth and the yearning for perfection to begin with new hope, for without hope nothing can be attained.

“These unhappy ones are taken from the wilderness in which they got continually lost; they are freed from the passions and appetites pertaining to the flesh, which drove them into pits and sloughs; they find that the spirits of the just and good do not look on them with disdain but with pity and love, and are ready to give them aid and encouragement. So the poor dwarfed, distorted cripples soon come into relations of sympathy with happier spirits and begin to learn the great lessons of life. They labor with an eagerness which those can hardly show who have not been through the darkness that they have passed, and they feel a joy more keen for the misery they have endured.

“Their moral sufferings are gradually transmuted into sinews of strength and they make their way up among the wise and good, growing in knowledge, in power and in purity, and feeling a pleasure in them which former privations intensify. Surely they have compensation and not cruel punishment for the disadvantages of their earthly existence.

“Children come here with little or no earthly experience. This is a disadvantage, but it has its compensation, also, for they have few wrong tendencies to correct and no evil habits to remedy. They are taken in charge by loving teachers who train them tenderly in the knowledge and grace which are the objects of life. In this sphere of development the stages reached are infinitely varied, but every person is striving on toward perfection, which can be attained only in eternity. The knowledge to be acquired is infinite, the faculties to be developed have no strict limitation, and only an eternity can complete the process of growth to perfection.

Every condition of spiritual character comes here from the earth and from the other worlds, and each has something to impart to the others. The qualities and experiences of all the individuals have their effect in forming the character of the whole. Some have been here for what on earth would be regarded as long ages, but even with their enlarged powers and the greater facilities of the spirit world, they have scarcely begun upon the infinite resources of life. There are no false standards of judgment, but every soul speedily finds the place to which it is entitled by the qualities it brings with it or which it attains.

Many that were high and mighty in the earthly life are humbled when they find for the first time what they really are, and are forced to take their place below the peasant and the slave who strove after spiritual power and not after wealth and high station, which are no measure of true greatness of soul. Many come up through poverty and hardship, through toil and struggle, and find themselves ready to take up the tasks of this life far in advance of some to whom they had looked up, regarding them not only as great and powerful but as good and saintly beyond their own hopes.”

“But the truly great ones of earth,” I asked, “where are they? The saints and sages, the poets and philosophers, those who conquered the hearts of men by the might of intellect, surely they retain their preeminence!”

“Yes, but many of them had lessons to learn which the obscure had acquired before them. Those were not alone the really great, even in intellect, who were known as such; many an unknown and unambitious thinker was the peer of those who gained the widest repute, while those who lived in the mouths of men had unnoted weaknesses which belittled them. Here all are measured by an absolute standard, and there is no place for pretension. Every soul passes for what it is.

“Still, those powers which any possess in a higher degree than others they exercise in the pursuit of their favorite investigations and labors. The unlimited fields of truth are before them and their powers and facilities, actual or to be attained, are as limitless. Each can follow his chosen pursuit. One studies the material elements of the universe, their qualities, operations and laws, while another is engaged in learning of spiritual things; and as each advances in the conquest of truth, he becomes a teacher of others and the advancement of all is promoted.

“The man of science makes calculations vaster than the universe of his mortal conception, penetrates mysteries which had hitherto seemed forever shut against him, and takes all knowledge for his province with hope of bringing it to perfect subjection in the endless time. The philosopher thinks with untrammelled intellectual power and soars on forever, broadening and strengthening his grasp upon abstract truth, and ever approaching but never reaching a perfect knowledge of God and His purposes and meaning, for even here and to us the divine being is an eternal mystery.

“On earth our conception of God had but a glimmer of truth. Now we know Him as the all pervading spirit of the universe that manifests His activity in every operation of nature throughout the numberless worlds, contains us all within His own being, and is everywhere an intelligence and a power, full and perfect. We perceive His presence by the spiritual intuition, as we perceive that of each other; we commune with Him as the finite may with the infinite, and yet we cannot comprehend His vastness in wisdom, in power and in love, and we only draw nearer and nearer to a perfect comprehension as in the long epochs of eternity we acquire knowledge more and more complete of His creation, of the operations of His might, of the objects of His care and His perfect methods in dealing with them.

“As our love for each other grows in intensity and expands so as to take in more of our fellow beings, we begin to comprehend more of His infinite love; and we approach more nearly to it, the more fully we love all the beings and all the things that He has made, for His love in its infinite perfection embraces all with equal warmth.

On earth we were ever striving to imitate in our puny way the works of God. Our efforts to comprehend His creation and His being were but strivings toward what He is. Artists rejoiced in success only as they could copy Him in conception and in achievement, and they were great only as they approached God. The musician endeavored to produce sounds that should be some faint echo of His eternal harmonies. The poet tried to grasp His thought and feeling, and body it forth in language that should make others thrill in response to its beauty and wisdom.

“Here it is the same in a higher degree. All are striving to reach God through His works. Those who are learning to comprehend Him and growing in His likeness are fulfilling their destiny. Here, too, are poets and musicians, and artists, seeking finer harmonies, and subtler beauties, and giving them voice and, form in such manner that other spirits comprehending them are exalted and purified. All are striving in their several ways to learn what God has done, and trying to do something Godlike. Thus through the ages of eternity, their growth is toward God.

“The faculties of the disembodied soul find constant employment, and this is a busy life; but there are periods of repose. Amid the glories of heaven the soul may settle into a blissful quietude, drinking in, as it were, in a revery or an exalted dream, the beauties and harmonies that surround him. He may hold the active powers in suspense and float in joyous idleness.”

As my friend ceased his discourse, I remained for a time in such serene repose as he had just described. Then my mind began to wander back to earth, and I thought of the possibility of sometime making visits there, as we had visited the far-off planet and its happy race. It seemed to me that I might find satisfaction in observing the progress of the human race toward a higher state, though there was no person left behind toward whom I had any yearning.

With this thought I once more questioned my friend. “There was among us on earth,” I said, “a cherished notion that the spirits of the departed were wont to return and watch over the living, attending them in their daily walks, soothing them in sorrow and suffering, and hovering about them to their journey’s end, ready to receive them at the moment of death and take them to the abodes of happiness.”

“Yes, but the thought was born of our weakness and our selfishness. Doubtless spirits have the power to visit the earth, as they may visit any spot in all the vast universe, and they may linger in familiar places and watch those still in the flesh, but would it be well for them to do so constantly? Those living on earth are undergoing the needed discipline of early growth, appointed to them by the Creator under his unchanging laws. We cannot relieve them from any part of the burden or the hardship, and would not if we could, for we trust God’s wisdom and know that what is allotted to them is the best.

“The duration of the earthly struggle is brief, and those to whom it is hardest will find the after life all the richer. Besides, this is a life of activity and of duty, and there are more desirable things to do than lingering near those whom we cannot help and can hardly comfort or encourage. We do indeed return at times and find satisfaction in revisiting familiar scenes, and we take an interest in the circumstances and achievements of those we know. In cases of peculiar hardship or extreme sorrow we may be drawn to linger for a time about them and make our presence felt, soothing the feelings of suffering ones with the consciousness that we are near.

“Oftentimes have your beloved wife and sister and I been near you in your days of loneliness, but nothing that we could do would relieve it, and we knew that it was wholesome for the soul, and the recompense was to come. We never made our presence known, and though you may often have thought of us as hovering about you, you never felt any certainty of our presence.”

“It is possible, then,” I said, “for the disembodied spirit to make its presence known to the living and perhaps to communicate with them!”

“Undoubtedly it is possible. One mind, while still in the body, may exert an influence over another. When it is freed from the limitations of the physical organism, it may do this still more completely. Sometimes it will do so unconsciously to the subject and for a beneficent purpose, directing one’s course in dark times and uncertain places. Sometimes a person peculiarly constituted or in an abnormal condition may be affected by this influence to a remarkable degree, with results that are mysterious to those who do not understand the source and nature of the influence. But it is better for those still in the earthly life to attend to the duties of that life and leave the secrets of the other till admitted to them in the natural course of things. If the life of the present is wisely conducted the life of the future is always safe.

“Besides, efforts to fathom by direct communication those mysteries that are wisely shut from the view of mortals in order that the discipline of the preliminary life may be more complete, are apt to produce unwholesome delusions and misleading fancies. The craving for such revelations becomes morbid and absorbing; it blinds the judgment and displaces real faith with gross credulity, and leads to deception and to perversion of the natural sentiments. When the brain or nervous system is in a state of unnatural excitement, the mind becomes subject to hallucinations. It may see visions and hold conversations purely imaginary, which seem to it so real that it has full faith in their reality.

“Persons in this morbid state think they see the forms of the departed as they knew them on earth, with the same bodily lineaments and even the familiar dress, when the reasoning mind knows that the bodily features are undistinguishable dust, the clothing surely can have no spiritual existence, and the soul is a thing not to be seen with the material eye. Yet many people who are reasonable on all subjects that concern their actual life, become superstitious and irrational when dealing with matters that concern death and that portion of life which is beyond.

“Spirits while still in the body have duties and activities pertaining to their mortal state and the early growth of their faculties. The purposes of their earthly existence will be best fulfilled if they attend to that life and the training of the soul for a higher state of being. This will not preclude a salutary contemplation of the destiny appointed for man, as revealed in his nature and his experience, and foreshadowed by the deeper intuitions of his soul and the exalted faith of those whose spirits are most in harmony with the all-pervading spirit in which we have our existence. Life in the body has a sympathetic contact with the life that is above and around it, and may draw inspiration from it that is uplifting and purifying, but not through efforts at a personal communion which the limitations of the bodily senses make impossible.

“Here the same beings that have passed through the earthly experience enter upon a new phase of the same life, and must devote themselves to its duties, looking forward and not backward, advancing through higher and higher stages of development, approximating more and more toward perfection of knowledge and of power, increasing by using these for the benefit of others, and assuming more and more the divine character throughout the æons.”