The Life Beyond the Veil Volume I: The Lowlands of Heaven - George Owen, Kenroy Hunter, Geoff Cutler (best novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

and yellow—which shone like gold, but softly. Up these we went, and at the great doorway, without any door to it, we met a very beautiful lady, stately but not proud. She was the Angel of the House of Sorrow. You wonder at the word used in this connection. What it means is this: The sorrow is not of those who dwell there, but is the lot of those to whom they minister. The sorrowful ones are those on Earth, and it is the business of the residents in this House to send to them vibrations which have the effect of neutralizing the vibrations of sorrowful hearts on Earth.

 

You must understand that here we have to get at the

 

bottom of things, and learn the cause of things, and that is a very deep study, only learned in gradual stages bit by bit. I therefore speak of the causes of things when I use the word “vibrations,” as one you will understand best.

 

She received me very kindly and took me within, where she showed me over part of the place. It was quite unlike anything on Earth, so it is hard to describe. But I may say that the whole house seemed to vibrate with life, and to respond to our own will and vitality.

 

This, then, is my present and latest phase of service, and a very happy one it promises to be. But I have only just begun to understand the prayers which are brought to us there and registered, and the sighs of those in trouble we hear—or rather, they are also registered, and we see or feel them, as it were, and send out our own vibrations in answer. This in time becomes involuntary, but is a great effort at first, I find it so. But even the effort has a reflex blessing on those who work so.

 

There are many such places here, as I learn, all in touch with Earth, which at present would seem impossible to me except that, as the effects are also registered back again to us, I know the amount of comfort and help we send. I only am on duty for a short space at one time, and then go out and see the sights of this city and its neighbourhood. And very glorious it all is, even more beautiful than my old

sphere, which I also revisit to see my friends. So you can imagine the talks we have when we do meet. That is almost as great a joy as the work itself. Peace in Jesus our Lord is the atmosphere all around us. And this is the land where there is no darkness and, when those mists are of the past, dear, you will come here, and I will show you all —until you are perhaps able to take me by the hand, as he did, and lead me to see the work in your own sphere. You think I am ambitious for you, dear lad. Well, so I am, and that is a mother’s—shall I say weakness, or rather blessing?

 

Good-bye, dear. Your own heart at this moment is a witness that this is all real, for I can see it glowing happy and bright, and that is gladness also to me your mother, dear son. Good night, then, and God will keep you and yours in His peace.

 

 

Thursday, September 25, 1913.

 

What we want most to say to you tonight is to be understood as a very imperfect attempt to tell you what is the meaning of that passage of which you have often thought where our Lord tells St. Peter that he is an adversary to Him. He, as you will remember, was on the way to the Holy City, and had been telling His Apostles that He would be killed there.

 

Now, what He evidently wished to impress on them was the fact that, although to men His mission might seem to have ended in failure, yet to eyes which were enabled to see as He would theirs might see, His end was only the beginning of a much more powerful and glorious development of the life-giving mission which He had undertaken on behalf of the Father and for the uplifting of the world.

 

Peter, by his attitude, showed that he did not understand this. Which is all plain and easy enough, so far, to understand. But what is usually lost sight of is the fact that the Christ was pursuing one straight line of progress, and that His death was but an incident in the way of His onward path, and that sorrow, as the world understands it, is not the antithesis of joy, but may be a part of it, because, if rightly used, it becomes the fulcrum on which the lever may rest which may lift a weight off the heart of the one who understands that all is part of God’s plan for our good. It is only by knowing the real “value” of sorrow that we understand how limited it is in effect, so far as making us unhappy goes.

 

Now, He was about to inflict the heaviest sorrow He possibly could on the Apostles and, unless they understood this, they would be unable to use that sorrow to lift themselves above the turmoil of the world, and so, unable to do the work he had in hand for them to do. “Your

 

sorrow shall be converted into joy,” He told them, and so it came to pass, but not until they had learned the scientific value of sorrow—in a limited measure indeed, but in a measure nevertheless.

 

All this sounds very simple when it is written down thus, and no doubt it is simple, in a way, because all the fundamentals of God’s economy are simple. But to us, and to me at the present time, it has an importance which may not be apparent to you. For the problem which is the chief study of the new House in which I spend so much of my time is this same subject, namely, the turning, or converting, of the vibrations of sorrow into the vibrations which produce joy in the human heart. It is a very beautiful study, but many perplexities enter into it because of the restrictions imposed on us by the sacredness of freewill. We may not overrule the will of any, but have so to work through their wills as to produce the desired effect and yet leave them free all the time, and so, deserving, in a way and in a measure at least, of the blessing received. I get tired sometimes, but that will pass away as I become stronger in the work. What is your question? I think you wish to ask one.

 

No, thank you, I have no particular question in mind.

 

Wasn’t there something you wished to ask about something to do with the method by which we impress

you?

 

I did think of asking you that this morning. But I had forgotten it. I suppose there is nothing much to explain, is there? I should call it mental impression.

 

Yes, that is correct, as far as it goes, but it does not go far. Mental impression is a phrase which covers up a great deal which is not understood. We impress you by means of these same vibrations, some of a different nature from others all directed on your will. But I see you are not much interested in that matter at the present moment. We will return to it, if you wish, at another time. I want to speak of those things which are of present interest to you.

 

Then tell me something more about that home of yours and your new work.

 

Very well, then, I will try to do so as well as I can.

 

It is beautifully appointed within and without. Within are baths and a music room and apparatus to aid us in registering our work. It is a very large place. I called it a house, but it is really a series of houses, each house allotted to a certain class of work, and progressive as a series. We pass from one to another as we learn all we can from any particular house. But it is all so wonderful that people would neither understand nor believe; so I would

 

rather tell you of the simpler things.

 

The grounds are very extensive, and all have a kind of relation to the buildings, a kind of responsiveness. For instance, the trees are true trees and grow much as trees do on Earth, but they have a kind of responsiveness to the buildings, and different kinds of trees respond more to one house than to the others, and help the effect and the work for which that particular house was raised. So it is with the grouping of trees in the groves, and the bordering flower-beds of the paths, and the arrangement of the streams and falls which are found in different parts of the grounds. All these things have been thought out with marvellous wisdom, and the effect produced is very beautiful.

 

The same thing obtains on Earth, but the vibrations there are so heavy, comparatively, both those sent out and those which respond, that the effect is almost unseen.

 

Nevertheless, it is so. For instance, you know that some people can plant flowers and trees more successfully than others, and that flowers will last longer in some houses— that is families—than others; cut flowers, we mean. All that is the same thing in grosser state.

 

Here these influences are more potent in action, and also the recipients more sensitive in perception. And that, by the way, is one of the things which help us to an

 

accurate diagnosis of cases which are registered here for us to deal with.

 

The atmosphere also is naturally affected by vegetation and by buildings, for, let me repeat, those houses have not been raised merely mechanically, but are the outcome— growth, if you will—of the action of the will of those high in rank in these realms, and so of very powerful creative wills.

 

The atmosphere also has an effect on our clothing, and enters into the influence of our own personalities in its effect on texture and colour. So that while, if we were all of the same quality spiritually our clothing would be of the same tint and texture, by reason of the atmospheric influence, this is in fact modified by the degree in which our own characters differ one from another.

 

Also the tint of our robes changes according to the part of the grounds in which we happen to be. It is very interesting and instructive, and also very beautiful, to see them change as one turns down a side walk where different vegetation flourishes, or where the arrangement of the various species of plants is different.

 

The water also is very beautiful. You hear of water-nymphs and suchlike beings, in the Earth life. Well, I may tell you that here, at any rate, these things are true. For the

whole place is pervaded and interpenetrated with life, and that means with living creatures. I had some idea of this in the sphere from which I have lately come, but here, as I grow accustomed to the strangeness and newness of it, I see it all much more plainly and begin to wonder what it will be a few spheres onward. For the wonder of this place seems to be about as much as any place could hold.

 

But there, let it rest. He Who enables us in one part of His beautiful Kingdom will enable us in another.

 

Which is a word for you, my dear son, and which I will, leave with you now, and my blessing.2

 

 

Friday, September 26, 1913

 

Our last instalment was given in answer to a request by one of our band that we should try to impress you in a rather deeper kind of way than heretofore, but we were only able to begin, as it were, and not to complete our explanation. If you