Spirit Truth

The following is a passage from Through the Mists, authored by Aphraar (Frederick Winterleigh) who returns to Earth to share his experiences in the spirit world through Robert James Lees. The book was first published in 1898, offering a wealth of essential truths regarding our passing from the Earth and living in the spirit world. This passage is from chapter 3 – A Prismatic Landscape (pages 42- 43), wherein shortly after his passing Frederick describes the beauty of what he sees and experiences on his journey in the spirit world:

“We reached the summit of the slope, and I stood entranced by the scene which lay before me. From the foot of a gentle declivity, clothed in grass of the richest, softest green I had ever beheld, a landscape stretched away on every side dressed in more shades of colour, than I had power to estimate. I had gazed upon the skies of Italy, beautiful and calm, but the cloudless grandeur of their star-illumined glories, was like the cold placidity of death-bound sleep, in contrast with the infinite and vaulted dome of eternal energy, beneath which I stood, involuntarily bowing before the baptism of life with which it bathed me. I had seen the magnificence of some Oriental landscapes, with the radiance of a legion of colours, thrown in rich mosaics all around, but it were profanation to compare such hues and shades, and tints with these before my eyes. Pulsations of visible vitality throbbed and trembled in stone and tree and flower, each of which poured forth its rhythmic quota, to the harmonic proclamation which sounded from every side that death is swallowed up in victory, and over the threshold of the future – reaching to the horizon of pole – the legend ran – ‘Life, life, eternal life’.

But why attempt the impossible? Words never yet were able to convey an adequate idea of many scenes on Earth, how then can they be used to tell the greater glories, which the language of the soul has not the power to paint, but leaves the entranced beholder to understand by silent comprehension. Oh, hearts! The milestones of whose pilgrimage are lettered alternately with battle, defeat, and failure; ye outcast wayfarers, ostracised from all that once was dear; ye who are hungering for a look of sympathy, thirsting for a kindly word, groping for one ray of hope; ye crushed and mangled, maimed and tortured on the rack of social propriety; ye banned and banished from a soulless church, because your weary feet have stumbled by the way; ye martyrs to the greed for wealth, and fame, and power; ye weary of life’s struggle; all yea, whosoever will sink down to sleep, and in the wild delirium of your dreams, give rein to all your fantasies; let your imagination conjure before you, all you wish for or would dare to crave; picture to yourselves all you think of heaven; revel among the anticipations of what you there would find; then multiply the product yet a thousand times, and grasp the concept, if you can. But even though you reach the height of this desire, you will not have caught more than a faint reflection, of the provision made for the enjoyment of the righteous, when their bloodstained feet have reached the goal of heaven.

From the foot of the hill on which I stood, a hundred paths diverged to every part of the landscape, not the monotonous prosaic roads to which Earth is so accustomed, but every one had not a name, but a distinctive colour corresponding with the city or district to which it led. They were arranged so that the darker shades curved themselves on either hand in the foreground, each having a greater or less depression according to its tone, until I lost them as they sank beneath my feet; the lighter tints appeared to have a corresponding elevation, until in the centre of the prospect, lay one straight line of faultless white, leading to an arc of brilliant purity in the far distance.

Helen left me for a time, that I might gaze on the sight undisturbed and when she returned, was accompanied by several friends, more or less intimately known to me. We sat down and talked over the events of our past lives, and speculated upon our future prospects with a feeling of restful satisfaction and enjoyment, to which I had hitherto been a stranger. Each individual seemed in some inexplicable manner to add to my sense of gladness, and even now when I know so much more of the life then new to me, I look back upon that reunion, as one of the sweetest recollections of spirit experience.”