hard, monotonous labour, while others grow up surrounded by beautiful things and have a delightful preparation for life. How is the unfairness of such cases taken into account?
THE soul registers its own evolution. People in your world judge always by material standards and not by the expression of the soul. To all, whether born in low or high estate, comes opportunities for service, for the soul to find itself and to express its own divinity. That is the only standard of judgement. All things in your world judged by a material standard, seem to produce inequalities, but the true compensation is the compensation of the soul, which learns to express itself through all difficulties.
Q: But why does a bad person have a good time?
YOU judge once again by your worldly standard. How do you know that the soul of the one who has a good time is not miserable, is not tortured, is not racked with anguish and pain? Because you see a smiling face, because you see luxury surround that person? Do purple and fine linen go hand in hand with a satisfied soul?
Eternal standards are the standards of the spirit, if not the world of matter.
Otherwise there would be no justice.
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Q: But surely it is easier for a soul to express good motives when surrounded by a good environment, rather than in surroundings where sin, hunger and everything that is low predominates?
I DO not agree with you, because I see that nearly always the great souls of your world have been born of low estate. All the great masters of your world have come from low estate. The more difficulties that the soul has to struggle against, the greater the soul can become. It is the struggle against circumstances that enables the soul to come into its own. Try to judge not from without but from within.
Q: Has the human spirit evolved simultaneously with the evolution of physical life?
IT has evolved, but not on the same pathway, because it was necessary for a certain amount of evolution to take place in the physical body before the spirit could express itself.
Q: As we can progress after ‘death’ if we will, is it possible to sink to a lower level by sinful motives after ‘death’?
Oh yes. There are many who do not progress for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years who are still filled with the desires of earth even when they have passed to the world of spirit. Their lives are filled with greed and desire, and they seek not to understand the laws of the spirit. The things of the spirit make no impression upon them, for they are still of the earth, earthy, and they sink from lower planes to still lower planes.
Q: Does a soul ever sink so low that it is extinguished altogether?
NO. It may reach a stage where the spark of the Great Spirit within it is but a small flicker, but the light never goes out, for the link which binds it to the Great Spirit is a link forged in eternity. No soul descends so low that it cannot rise. No soul is so high that it cannot descend to help the lowest.
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Q: Does the individual lose his or her individuality after passing through the various spheres, eventually merging with the Great Spirit, and then being redistributed in various forms through material and other substances?
I KNOW of none which has yet reached a stage so perfect that he can be merged into perfection. The more you perfect yourself, the more you find still to be perfected, for you are allowing more of your consciousness to be revealed. Because your consciousness is part of the Great Spirit it is infinite, always stretching out to reach infinity. We know nothing of ultimate perfection.
Q: Is it not a fact that, as individuals progress, they tend to become merged into group personalities, losing their own identity in that of the group?
NOT as far as I know. What does happen is that, in order for certain work to be accomplished, those who are of one mind pool their knowledge and their resources, allowing one to act as their spokesman on behalf of the rest. While that happens, they all sink their identity into one, but that is only temporary.
Q: Have you any knowledge of the survival of lower animals, other than pets?
YES, I have. There were many animals which were friends of ours when we lived on earth and who were, to us, what your dogs and cats are to you. These animals, where they learned to express a personality, survived with us. But that survival is not eternal. It lasts only for a time, and then the animal goes on to merge with the group spirit which perpetuates the species.
You must understand that all the children of the Great Spirit, because they have the power of the Great Spirit, can transmit the power to survive the changes called death to those whose consciousness has not yet been expressed in evolution. You can make it possible for the evolution to express itself before its time because of the love that you show.
Q: Apart from pets, do animals survive individually?
NO
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Q: If animals, not pets, do not survive individually, what relationship exists between the Great Spirit and, say, an uncared-for and perhaps ill-treated animal? How does the life of such an animal reveal the love of justice of the Great Spirit, viewing it as a matter between the Creator and the created?
IT is very hard to explain to people in your world things which are so far beyond their understanding. I have tried to explain that animals, when they pass on, go to join the group spirit, but even then there is a principle of compensation. They are able to work out in divine justice all that compensation which is due to them, but it is on different lines from that of the human evolution. You may as well try to explain what is the difference between a flower that is cared for and a flower that fades and is allowed to fade because it is given no attention. You cannot understand the law behind that, but there is one just the same.
Q: Are animals compensated individually?
NO, in the group. The suffering brings forward the evolution of the group.
Q: If there are in one group animals that have been ill-treated and animals that have not, and the group is treated as a group, it is difficult to understand how part of the group can get more compensation than another part.
EACH group is made up of those who have gone through similar experiences.
Q: Do you mean there are separate groups for those who have been badly treated and those who have not?
THERE are divisions that make up a whole, as you have a body with many forms of cell life as part of that body.
Q: What reason is conceivable for the existence of the lowest forms of life, and how is their creation and necessary destruction compatible with a universe ruled by love?
MAN has free will. He can make the world of matter a Garden of Eden, if he chooses, by exercising the power which the Great Spirit has given him and by using the wisdom which the Great Spirit has given him to discern between the things that are right and the things that are wrong. If, instead of making it a Garden of Eden, he
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chooses to allow dirt and filth to exist, why should the Great Spirit be blamed for the results of man’s filthiness?
Q: Where is the evidence of God’s goodness and love when creation has come through a blood-red track of carnage in its evolution?
WHY do they look only to one little comer of the picture and not at the whole picture? Because there is evolution, is that not proof of the God of love? Has that never occurred to them? Because you evolve from the lower to the higher, is that not proof that the force which is behind the Law is a force of love?
Q: Why does God allow earthquakes and volcanoes?
WHEN you say: “Why does God allow?” you must remember that you are trying to question the operation of natural law. I only seek to teach the law and the experiences I have had of the law. What you call earthquakes are part of the cleansing process in the evolution of the material world. The world of matter has not yet reached a stage of perfection in evolution.
Q: In that case, thousands of innocent victims have to suffer because of the earth’s evolution. Is that just?
I DO not see that what you call death is a disaster. To me, it is the great hour of freedom for the soul.
Q: Do you mean that all the people killed in earthquakes are at that particular stage where they are ready for death?
YES, but they are there because of what has happened in their past lives in your world.
Q: Are there other worlds inhabited by human beings more - or less - advanced spiritually than ourselves?
Oh, yes. There are plenty of worlds inhabited by those who are in advance of your world of matter. This planet you call earth is only one of many planets in the vast universe. There is one planet less spiritually advanced than you.
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Q: Why is it that sometimes we want to follow a line of our work that we think is important and we find continual obstruction to our plans?
ALL the things that are worth doing and worth achieving are those that are the most difficult to perform. The path of attainment is not an easy one. It is full of difficulties, of obstructions, of hamperings that come in the way. Those things are part of the building of character, so that the way you face your difficulties determines the growth of your soul. If you could allow the highest that is within you to express itself without difficulty, it would have little value.
Do not despair. Remember there is no difficulty or obstacle that crosses your path that is so strong that you cannot overcome it by the use of the latent powers that you have within you. Even the difficulties that others place in your path can be swept aside if you will but allow all that is within you to rise and become the master. Your world does not understand that you express so little of yourself while you are in the world of matter.
Q: Of what use is the earth life of all the countless millions of human babies who perish at, or soon after, birth by infanticide or otherwise?
AS long as people judge eternal principles by material standards they will never understand these things. The wisest of your wise do not see beyond earthly knowledge. When the light of spiritual knowledge reaches them through their evolution, then they will see the Plan which is, as yet, not revealed to them. They see through a glass darkly, and so they do not understand.
Would you attempt to judge the life of a schoolboy only by the years that he goes to school, and ignore that greater life which starts beyond his school? There is a greater life than the one in which you live - a world of beauty, a world of colour, a world of love, a world of labour, a world where every sincere desire finds expression, where every creative impulse can express itself, where everything that cannot be fulfilled in your world is able to realise itself. Until you have seen this world, you cannot criticise the Great Spirit.
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Q: Those high spirits with whom you take counsel, do they sometimes come here?
NO. They are all links in a great chain. As my medium is a link between you and me, and I am a link between you and those beyond me, so they are links between me and those who are beyond them. So it stretches into the inner realms of spirit, much further than my eyes can reach.
Q: Will we ever reach the very highest of all?
NO. You do not understand. In your world, you can only manifest a small portion of yourself. You cannot express the whole of your soul because it does not yet possess a vehicle of expression. The more I go back into the inner spheres, the more I express of that which is me. That is why we go back at Christmas and Easter, to get something of our real individuality.
You are all children of evolution. That is why you mourn. You should remember that those you love go to express more of themselves in my world.
Q: But why do they go so soon sometimes? It seems they could not have learned their lessons.
THEY leave your world because a law has been broken. It is only through the bitter crucible of experience that the children of earth will learn, in time, the lessons of the Great Spirit.
If it were all easy, then man would not want to work out his own salvation. Then, in a few generations, you would have nothing in your world through which the Great Spirit could manifest. The soul that goes through the agony of pain, illness, bitterness and sorrow, comes out a greater soul, a soul that understands the sufferings of others.
The soul that lives only in its own butterfly happiness and chases always the illusion and the shadow, one day must learn to touch reality. Do not envy those who you think have an easy time. The hardest road in their life is yet before them. The children of earth must go through every experience, either in your world or mine.
There is a lesson to be learned in everything. You do not reach out and create a vehicle in which to enter that inner perfection until you have emerged triumphant from every experience.
It is hard. Why should it not be hard? Should it be easy to become a saint or a martyr, to be a leader or to be a reformer? Why should it be? The soul that seeks to
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escape responsibility is not worthy of leading.
Let me say categorically that evolution, physical, mental and spiritual, is a part of the operation of natural law.
The law of evolution embraces every facet of life: insects, birds, fish, humans.
They all have their parts to play and are related to one another. No aspect of life is isolated, every form of life is integrated so that the totality forms a composite whole.
You are part of the same law of evolution that is responsible for how animals progress.
If you work with the natural laws, if you are in harmony with them, you not only fulfil yourself but at the same time you help the evolution of all other aspects of nature. The whole scheme is divinely ordered so that you play your part as cooperative elements in it. Those who violate nature instead of working with it are performing a disservice to what they violate, and to themselves. Those who cooperate with nature are helping its growth and also helping the unfoldment of their spiritual natures.
Evolution is not a straight line. It is a spiral. At the top things look beautiful, at the bottom they do not look so beautiful.
When I speak of spheres I do not necessarily mean round worlds. I mean planes of being, each graduating into the other, not separated geographically, from the lowest to the highest. It is an infinite evolution.
There is no summit to be attained. As the spirit unfolds, so it is realised there is more to be achieved. It is like knowledge. The more you have, the more you realise there is further knowledge to be gained.
The sphere or plane on which you exist in our world contains individuals at the same stage of spiritual development as you are. You can’t go higher spiritually until you are ready. You can go lower, as many of us do in order to perform missionary work among the unenlightened beings in the lower spheres.
Progress consists of shedding imperfections and striving and growing towards perfection all the time.
Destiny
Q: To what extent does destiny play its part in man’s earth life?
Could you describe destiny? Is predestination an outside force or
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your own choice? If you accept reincarnation, can you say why and what purpose it serves?
IT could be both. An outside force helped you to make the choice. You can have free will and destiny at the same time. If you are content to accept that earthly life is the sum total of physical existence, then so be it. But it is conceivable that the spirit which inhabits your present earthly body has existed before, with not necessarily that facet of spirit. It could be that you are a fragment of a very large diamond, with each facet incarnated at differing epochs to make their contribution to the whole.
Q: Has the mechanical age helped evolution?
IN the end it does help. You must see evolution as something which is not a straight line. It is a series of advances and retreats. Man rises and falls, man struggles to rise again and rise higher than he fell, and so gradually the race evolves.
You can point to epochs and say, “Look! That is a dark stain in evolution”. But that is not the whole story: it is but a part of it.
The human spirit is gradually evolving, and with that evolution there comes the obvious lesson that is learned as more and more understand the nature of their own beings, as more and more realise their own possibilities, as more and more know the plan of existence and strive to fit themselves into it.
Centuries ago there were but a handful who dreamed dreams and saw visions.
Now the vision splendid has come to hundreds of thousands, and there are countless numbers of reformers, pioneers, teachers, all at work because they know what could be and they desire to help to achieve it. That is where the growth has been made.
Do you think that the latent powers of the soul, infinite in their possibilities of expression, could realise themselves without difficulty and pain, without shadow, without sorrow, and without suffering and misery? Of course not.
Do you think that the latent powers of the soul, infinite in their possibilities of expression, could realise themselves without difficulty and pain, without shadow, without sorrow, and without suffering and misery? Of course not.