CHAPTER IV LIFE ON THE ISLAND
Having given you a little idea of this land and its appearance, I want to tell you about the life of the people here, so that you can form a mental picture in completeness. It is only natural that many should say, "What are they all doing?" Now, this is a very broad question to answer, and to help you to see how big a thing I am dealing with in thus attempting to give my story of the next life I must put a simple question to you.
I want you to try to imagine you have not been living on earth and that, knowing nothing of earth life, you have suddenly been landed by an airship in the busiest part of the city of London—with all its traffic and its people. You have arrived from some other world and have not seen this sight before. You will exclaim, "How strange.. What are they all doing?" Well, could you answer that question easily? It would not mean much to you to
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be told they are going about their own individual business—one man bakes bread, another sweeps the streets, another drives a cart, and another sits in an office and runs a business—all that would leave you none the wiser. These are facts, and yet you would not understand them. You could not comprehend them. That is my difficulty in trying to make you understand in a satisfactory way the life of this Blue Isle. I have to consider how to explain it. It is no use my telling you that one person sits by the sea all the time, weeping because of her parting from her lover, and another is in a mental stupor for drink, and another still thinks he is ringing the bells of his local chapel on Sunday, etc., etc.—that is not the life, those are only bits of it. Atoms of the whole. I do not want to particularize, I want to generalize, with some detail. Therefore I must say that if you were to pay this land a visit in your earth bodies, as you are at present, you would be struck by the lack of excitement. You would think it all so like earth. That is what you would say to people on your return. "Oh, it's so much like our life here, only there are a lot of different races of mankind there."
Everyday life for the individual is strikingly
like the everyday life he's always been used to. At first he takes a great deal of rest, having the earth habit of sleep— and it is a necessity—he needs sleep here, too, for the present. We have no night as you have, but he sleeps and rests just the same. He has his interests in visiting different parts, in exploring the land and its building and in studying its animal and vegetable life. He has friends to seek out and to see. He has his pastimes to indulge. He has his newfound desire for knowledge to feed.
The routine of a day here is similar to the routine of a day on earth; the difference being that earth's routine is often made by force of circumstance, whereas, here it is made according to desire for knowledge on this or that subject.
In clothing, we are all practically as on earth, and as there are so many races here you can well understand the general appearance of this land is most unusual, and in an odd way particularly interesting and amusing, also instructive. I think I have said that in general appearance we all are as we all were. We are only a very little way from earth, and consequently up to this time we have not thrown off earth ideas. We have gained some new
ones, but have as yet discarded few or none.
The process of discarding is a gradual one. As we live here we gain knowledge of many kinds, and come to find so many things, hitherto thought essential, not only of no importance but something of a bore, a nuisance, and that is how we grow to a state of dropping all earth habits. We get to the state of not desiring a smoke, not because we can't have it, or think it not right, but because the desire for it is not there. As with a smoke, so with food, so with many a dozen things; we are just as satisfied without them. We do not miss them; if we did we should have them, and we do have them until the desire is no longer there.
At first there is practical freedom of thought and action, and there are only certain limitations imposed—not by rule but by conditions. Beyond these limitations there is absolute freedom. After a time, when the spirit has advanced to the point of desiring knowledge and enlightenment, he will be drawn like a piece of steel to a magnet, into contact with this or that house of organization dealing with the subject on which he desires knowledge. From the time of coming into touch with this house the spirit will be, as it were, "at school." He will perforce have to attend this house of instruction. He will spend a good deal of his time there learning, and, when finished with one house, will pass to another, but it is not compulsory information, it is craved-for information, and nothing is given until asked for. You are not forced to acquire anything. You are more than ever free agents. That is why on earth it is so essential to control your bodies by your minds, and not the reverse. When you come here your mind is all powerful, and everything depends, for your own degree of happiness here, upon the kind of mind you bring with you.
The presence or absence of contentment is entirely due to the earth life you have led, the character formed, opportunities taken and lost, the motive of and for your actions, the help given, the manner of help received, your mental outlook and your use and abuse of flesh power. To sum all these up it is the quality of mind control over body versus body over mind. Mind matters and body matters; it is in your keeping entirely and is in whatever state you have made it by your life. On your arrival here the degree of your happiness will
be determined automatically by the demands of your mind.
When you are inclined to ask, "What are they all doing there?" turn your mind to some dear one on earth who has taken up an out-of-the-way kind of life somewhere abroad, where you are not in constant and intimate touch, and say of him, "I wonder what he's doing now?".. Then answer it yourself by saying "I suppose he's carrying on." So are we, we people in the Blue Island.
CHAPTER V INTIMATE LIFE
CHAPTER V
There is a good deal of reasoning and argument as to why in earth life we should do this or that. Why we should refrain from many of the delights of everyday life and why we should "go straight."
People say it is handicapping in their business or their profession to have to observe these "nice points." They may not confess this thought openly, but to themselves they do—they do not see why such-and-such should not be done. True, they think it may injure so-and-so's business a little, but that is his affair.
All in ignorance.
There is a reason, and that reason can be very easily found by the rule of common sense. I almost might call this a discourse upon cause and effect.
Earth life has deteriorated. The whole scheme of creation is planned with great precision, with the object of allowing free individual development and progress. Its rules are laid down clearly. Every man knows by instinct when he is obeying and when disobeying these rules. It needs no police officer to tell him. He may deceive himself that such an act is all that it should be, but at the same time he knows in his own consciousness that, that act or thought is not only not all that it should be but that it is all that it ought not to be. I say that all mankind knows—but most of mankind prefers to think it does not know.
Not one person on earth can stand up and say I am not speaking a profound truth here!
Mostly these things are not considered from the point of right or wrong, but from the view, "Shall I benefit by this?"—but I say that all people on earth can discriminate, I do not say that they do, between good and not good motive in their lives. Instinct does this for them. They cannot help themselves. They are bound to know. The trouble is that the vast majority by force of habit, the desire for business gain, or social gain, or any kind of gain, but always a gain for itself, has ceased to consider the quality of its actions and thinks only of the first result. It is a pity. It is more than that, Looked upon from the next stage in evolution it is pitiful. Poor undeveloped egos, preparing their own discomfort and suffering—not a hell fire but a mental torture.