Published in 1922 | 224 pages | PDF reader required
FOREWORD
September in the north land! Nature has not been prodigal with her colours this Autumn; the frosts came early, so the forests change slowly; but yesterday, as if by magic, there was gold among the green, and today there is purple and red; hilltops blaze with their crowns of maple, slopes show grey in the sunlight, vines straggle here and there in lines of bronze, and the great timber reaches stand out in their sombre shades.
Again I have crossed the Canadian border and come into the heart of the wilderness, into the silence where one can think deeply. Here in a cabin, where I have spent many summers, there is a quiet not to be found in the great cities. The crisp air, clean and pure, stimulates like old wine, and the moving waters along the wooded shores soothe tired nerves.
It is good at times to be alone-alone in the heart of a great forest. Listening, one hears new sounds, new voices, voices of the woodland, voices of the furtive folk, voices of the swaying trees and moving waters, voices everywhere for wherever there is life there is language, language of which we in our wisdom get only an indefinite impression. I have heard other voices-voices of those the world calls dead—on more than seven hundred nights, covering a period of twenty-two years, aided by a wonderful psychic, I talked with those in the after life, they using their own vocal organs just as I did.
This astounding statement, owing to lack of knowledge and to erroneous conceptions, staggers the ordinary imagination. These facts will not be grasped, without explaining how it is done and describing the conditions which make speech with spirit people possible. I am going to tell, if I can, in language that may be understood, what the great change actually is and to what it leads. In order to do this, the first fact that must be brought home is that here and now our real body is our inner body; that what is visible and tangible is the flesh garment, which we wear while an inhabitant of this plane; that dissolution is only a separation—a severance of the inner body from the flesh garment; that both are material and that thereafter the spirit body is identically the same as before-the same, but lacking the outer covering. Also, the place inhabited by all these so-called dead is as material and tangible as this earth, and, given the right conditions, those who have gone from us can talk voice to voice with us as when in earthly life.
How stupendous the undertaking! Notwithstanding the great privilege that has been mine, greater perhaps than that enjoyed by most people, I feel unequal to the task, and were it not for the consciousness that an invisible group would in some way guide and help, I question my courage.
All this cannot be done by mere statement of conclusions. Such is human mentality, that each condition must be illustrated and explained, the principle involved must be expounded and made to appeal to one's reason; otherwise, it goes for naught. I have, in many cases, left the explanation of these great problems in the actual words of those who now live over the border; 1 have quoted their statements, describing dissolution, the place where they live and what they do to sustain and enrich themselves in their life from day to day. I will also let them tell something of the effect in that plane of acts and thoughts on this one.
In order to think clearly, I find I must be far from the confusion of business, in harmony with nature, in tune with natural vibrations. For that reason, and to fulfil a promise made to a group of spirit people, I have sought the seclusion of this forest home, as I have done before, to tell again to a hungry world something of what I have learned of the conditions following so-called death.
The twilight gathers; the day and night are blending; purple shadows in the west; the great logs crack; the fire warms; the winds sigh in the branches; and over the wooded island across the bay the full moon glints and rises majestically in the concave sky, flooding the world with light and making a pathway to my cabin door.
The problem of life and death is the most vital of all that confront mankind, and the least under-stood. Here in the quiet of this place all the so-called dead come close. Though I possess no psychic sight or hearing, such has been my speech and acquaintance with them, that they come at the thought call and hold mental speech with me. I catch their silent suggestion.
Death is unknown in nature. Change comes to the human race and man is changing day by day, but final dissolution is only another step in his progression. Those that have gone since the earth was first peopled, live on, and we who tread the earth today will live on. They now hold speech with those who still inhabit the earth plane, as we may do when we join them, if conditions are right. And as communication is better perfected, there will be a better understanding, and finer development, as we come to know this law.
The past comes to me like a dream. Again I hear the voices of those who have gone before, speaking words of encouragement and words of wisdom. I feel again the touch of their hands vibrating beyond measure, yet warm and natural for the moment. And their faces, clothed for an instant with material as when they lived here, I see now in memory as when I saw in fact.
Dissolution will mean little to me, for I know something of the reality of the after life and I have, in my years of work, made many friends there. I will not go as a stranger to a strange land, but as one who has, by effort, gained some knowledge of conditions to be met, and many of those who reside there, whom I never knew in the physical body, I shall have the privilege of calling my friends.
How astounding the fact that human life is lived with no thought of the morrow, with little or no regard of what waits beyond! Nature has a purpose in all things. What is man's purpose? We come out of the invisible, stay for a little time, and go back to the invisible; but which is the real? How many ever give this subject the slightest consideration? What is man's conception of it, and how must he live and what must he do, to meet with self-respect the life beyond?
The morning breaks. I go out on the broad veranda and face the east, as the September sun shows above the hills. It has shown millions of times before and will shine when all that now live in this physical plane are forgotten, and when new generations have taken their place and property. I see about me in volcanic rock, in fossil fragments stolen from decay, in valleys worn between the hills, in ridges lifted from the underworld, in various forms of life, the record of earth's countless ages. In retrospection, I see the bursting bud and leaf and flower in the spring, the fullness and glory of the summer, and the golden autumn, emblematic of man's birth, growth and passing.
Just a short season and the twilight will fall upon the past, our physical eyes will dim, the mind fail to record the memory of events, our ears will become dull, the pulse pause, brain lose the power to think, then, as quietly as the dawn meets morning, the separation comes. Out of the housing of the flesh, the inner material body emerges, though we see it not, and it is welcomed by those who have gone before. This is the second birth, so like the first, except that all the knowledge, individuality and spirituality gained in our earth life is retained, and we as a people live on in the fulness of our mentality and strength as before.
Dissolution neither adds to nor subtracts from the sum total of our knowledge. The inner material body in which we have functioned, we shall still function in for all eternity.
This is what I am endeavouring to explain as it has been told to me. Such is the incentive to write this book.
EDWARD C. RANDALL.
Buffalo, N. Y.
1922.
