Extract from Two Worlds Issue No.4355
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Guide describes planes in the spirit world
Wisdom from the world beyond
Taken from David Gow's long out of print book "Ask the Spirits," this month guides give their views on God, the various planes in the Higher Life, how Jesus is regarded in the beyond and the significance of music. The names of the books from which Mr Gow selected extracts appear at the end of each section.
Is God a personage or a principle?
God is a principle and also an identity. If God was from the beginning, and in Him was all knowledge, power and wisdom, it must have been through these attributes that everything was created.
To suppose that matter existed ab initio would confer on an unconscious substance the same properties that belong to God, especially if He did not create it, or at least, existing at the same time with Him, it would have had a creator antecedent to God who possessed more power than He did or does.
One remark is true - that God pervades everything. But listen. Let the mind go back to that period when Spirit of the First Cause sprang forth, self-created and in all the glory of His might and majesty.
Imaging that, standing alone amid the everlasting space, He looks around and sees nothing existent but an infinite nothing.
Then suppose Him creating from His own body the several properties which constitute matter and from another principle developing spirit. If the mind can grasp this idea, how much opposed to all the fundamental principles we have taught would it be!
But when you realise the existence of a cause to which is known to belong all the requirements of matter, and all the laws which would develop it, you feel satisfied that in this principle of development you have a starting-ground on which to predicate opinion.
"Spiritualism, Vol II"
Can you tell us something about the different planes?
There are many planes in each sphere, the mundane being the lowest plane of the first sphere, where we meet all sorts of conditions of men.
Even here, we choose our own friends, as like clings to like, and there are no society (so-called) friendships to be considered.
This is a state where we are known as we are and not as we wish to be known, maybe. When we enter the second sphere, we are beginning to feel more ourselves.
Our associates are more congenial still and we are feeling stronger altogether and fit for a little work - and plenty of work there is for everyone to do, some in Spirit and some on the earth plane.
We all find our level, so great is the fall of many people who were much thought of on the earth and who thought much of themselves. I refer to actors, statesmen, scientific men, popular preachers, specialists etc.
If their inner lives have not been good, they rank below many of inferior birth and education.
Some of the most eloquent men - poets, preachers, statesmen, authors, artists, etc - who thought themselves so gifted in their speeches, writings and paintings come here to find, to their amazement, they have simply been mediums, instruments for spirit control.
With the power all gone from them, to use a figurative expression, they stand shivering like newly-born sheep, divested of all that was so comforting to them. Such as they have a tremendous comedown when they find their level here and that brain power is often nil.
Do not take it as a sweeping assertion, applying to all gifted men. Far from it, but it is applicable to more than you have any idea of.
The second, third and fourth spheres are much alike, except that in each, as we advance, there is a more spiritual element and less of the earth condition clinging to us.
We wear our ordinary earth clothes in the lower spheres (thought-forms you may call them, but to us they are just as tangible as yours are to you), or a dark wrap thrown around us.
When coming to the earth plane, no matter what sphere we hail from, we generally put on earthly garments for the sake of identity, if we come to manifest through a medium. In the fourth sphere, we wear a light Grey sort of cloak, if we prefer it.
The scenery here is beginning to be picturesque. We live in communities, as we do not have a little resting place or home to call our very own until we enter the fifth sphere, but upon our entrance into that sphere, all is changed.
It is verily a commencement of higher life. We enter it with a baptism, a passing over of hands by some spirit from a high sphere, who throws his lovely spiritual power over us and gives us our robe.
This robe may be white or pale mauve, whichever we prefer, but we mostly choose white.
The wonderfully bright influence we have been bathed in clings to us for hours afterwards and we literally shine from the contact. Alas! The brightness does not last. We are not advanced sufficiently in the fifth sphere to be shining lights in ourselves.
I now come to the sixth sphere, the one I have just entered myself. It is much the same as the fifth, but we grow flowers here. In the fifth there are none - only grass, trees, mountains and rivers.
All is order, peace and spiritual advancement. We have now earned a spiritual star, which we wear on our foreheads to denote our sphere.
"Not Silent - if Dead!"
How is Christ regarded in your sphere?
Do you accept him as the son of God or in the sense that he is a son of God as any one of us might be?
I can tell you about Christ here, but you must put Christ, as you know him, far from your mind. I speak as we think of him.
He is a son of God, so are all of you. But he has more of the spirit than you have. He is a great thinker and a prophet also.
But his ideas are not the ideas you have made use of simply because his spirit could not penetrate the thick crust of the world's selfish lust of gain.
Here there is no gain or loss. That part of the cosmos is destroyed - gone in a flash - when you leave your body.
But Christ over here is an influence still, a great influence, but he has done his work in the world in a sense.
I will explain that you to you. His light came slowly from him as the light of a star slowly comes to your earth.
His influence at first rather added to the chaos of the world than helped it to gain the peace he preached. But gradually the change that was essentially his worked its way and he has left his impression behind him.
It has now done its work and a new era is beginning where men who are alive can do without the impossible ideal which served them for a guide in the darkness for so long.
He is regarded as the greatest of the prophets over here - not as a deity to be worshiped, but as an artist rather - a lover and a philosopher as well, for his philosophy, which is that of love and sacrifice, is as old as the world.
He clothed it in a manner which gave it a new beauty and ecstasy for those who were able to follow his meaning. But in the course of time and even quite soon - even after he had made his last psychic impression on the world - men had entirely changed all this.
It came from themselves, not from his teaching, for that is the result of the sudden and vivid flashes of light which illumine your world from time to time.
These flashes cast gleams of brilliant light, but they leave behind them a deeper shadow. Here Christ is still a unity - a single influence. He shines as brightly here as he did in the world and throws light on his own particular problems.
Not on the universal problem, for only the great multitude of sages, poets, artists and lovers can deal with this cosmos problem.
"Towards the Stars"
What is the true significance of music?
Music is the highest interpreter of thought. It enters a region where speech is dumb; it transcends speech.
Now, on earth, only a soul here and there can rise into this musical consciousness. You call such a one a genius and do not even try to understand his power, much less enter into a like experience.
But when you come here, you learn that musical expression, which on earth you had regarded as a pleasure or luxury, is the language of every soul as it rises into higher and ever higher spheres.
It is a part of everything and interprets us as speech expresses your longings and desires.
If we are sad, music flows round us in softened notes of sympathy and hope. As we listen, the harmonies fill our souls and revive us again.
When joy is our portion or ecstasy thrills us, then these celestial strains are full of mystic sound, woven of sunlight and the breath of flowers and all fair things.
You know it has been said that beautiful architecture is sound crystallised into form. Now that is really true.
Music is behind all form. When form is unlovely, it is because there has been discord instead of harmony in the vibrations which produced it.
If on earth your ears were sufficiently attuned, you would be able to hear all the music that flows through nature.
Sometimes, you do hear it in the falling of water or in the dashing of waves. At other times, it sings to you in the wind or forces your attention in the storm or tempest.
Often as you sit in silence in the forest, you hear it in the whispering of trees or the hum of insects. Nature is full of music, waiting ever for the ears that are open to hear, the heart that can respond to her voice.
When the weary and heavy laden come to this Land of Light, the music of the spheres greets them, they realise that the journey is finished, the fight over, and that they have come home at last.
"Further Messages across the Border-line"
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