DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. EIGHT EVENING LECTURES ON THE SUMMER-LAND. ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS [1826-1910] PHONOGRAPHICALLY REPORTED BY ROBERT MOORE ————— ALSO, A VOICE FROM JAMES VICTOR WILSON REVISED AND ENLARGED. ROCHESTER, N. Y. 1911 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865 by ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. The text has not been professionally proofed and experience show that works of this vintage are likely to have more than a few errors compared to recent works. Courtesy of SpiritWritings.com TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. 3 2. SCENES IN THE SUMMER-LAND. 26 3. SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER-LAND. 52 4. SOCIAL CENTERS IN THE SUMMER-LAND. 79 5. WINTER-LAND AND SUMMER-LAND. 101 6. LANGUAGE AND LIFE IN SUMMER-LAND. 129 7. MATERIAL WORK FOR SPIRITUAL WORKERS. 157 8. ULTIMATES IN THE SUMMER-LAND. 173 9. VOICE FROM JAMES VICTOR WILSON. 187 DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE ——— "Death is but a kind and welcome servant, who unlocks with noiseless hand life's flower-encircled door, to show us those we love." I find myself somewhat embarrassed in speaking on a subject which, though it is not a stranger to human hopes and aspirations, is nevertheless quite foreign to most people's habits of thinking, opposed to their educational bias, and which conflicts with popular methods of reasoning on the resurrection. I find three classes of persons who have read, and studied, and investigated the truths of this discourse. One class of minds are prepared for many spiritual things that I do not feel impressed to utter on this occasion. I am to address more especially a second class who have heard a large variety of opinions expressed concerning this subject, and are favorably inclined towards it, yet who have no practical knowledge so far as the general question of immortality is concerned, and who are, therefore, in the rudiments of spiritual education respecting the processes of Death, and scenes in the After-life. Then I find that there is in society supercilious class—I might say a super-silly class, (if this is not a dictionary word, it ought to be,) who fancy and profess that they know all—a band of intellectual finishers—persons who have an unhappy conceit in the perceptive powers—that they are thoroughly "posted." These 3 4 DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. last named persons are accustomed to the newspapers, to the genteel Weeklies and orthodox Monthlies, and to the trans- Atlantic Quarterlies, but are not at all accustomed to think upon the spiritual, practical, and progressive questions discussed from the Harmonial platform. And yet these same persons have a conceit that they cannot be further informed. Every such mind has a social center, and will exert his or her magnetic influence upon others. Now finding the public divided into these mental conditions, it becomes necessary that I should express something which would at least seem measurably familiar to the intuitions and religious education of the people. To speak upon a strange subject, and to describe scenes that are wholly transmundane, and to link such subjects and descriptions with nothing analogous or known, would, to many minds, be building a temple without any basis in either Nature or Reason, and hence, utterly imaginative and unprofitable. For this reason I shall speak to the world from the position of religious conviction and general experience, going on the supposition that all rational men are interested in questions pertaining to the life after death. I begin by asking your attention to the Spiritualism of Paul— the most learned of the Apostles, who, in giving descriptions of death, said: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body;" not that there would be, but there is "a spiritual body." Now there are individuals who think thus: "Paul says so; he is our authority; we do not question his testimony; but it is all a great mystery." But the spiritual philosopher cheerfully and unprejudicially takes the testimony DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. 5 of Paul, stands it by the side of the organized human being, and asks, "Is there a spiritual body?" Paul did not refer to something outside of human nature, but pointed to facts in the organization of persons in the world before him. The question is not whether Paul said it, but does Nature sustain the assertion? All truth must be in harmony with the perfect system of Nature. There are persons everywhere who accept Paul's affirmation as final authority. There need be no controversy between Orthodoxites and Spiritualists on this question. We can shake hands over the subject; we can lock arms and walk together. If, with Paul, you believe that there positively is in each man's organism, not only a natural body, but also "a spiritual body," then you are as much committed to the fundamental teachings of Spiritualism as I am, and I am on this point no more of a Spiritualist than you Christians are, and henceforth we can happily "walk together," because we are "agreed" on the basis of a true spiritual philosophy. So far, then, we are friends. But may I now ask your attention to some correlative questions which we inevitably encounter on the accepted basis of this spiritual reasoning? If, with Paul, we believe that there is a spiritual body, must we not also believe that there is something inside of that body? To believe differently, would be like saying that a jug is designed merely to have an outside and an inside, the inward space being filled with nothing. Most persons would ask "Is that all? Is the vessel not designed to contain something? Was it not made to hold, against all parts of its inward surfaces, some 6 DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. thing besides the interior of a jug? The thought of inventing and owning a jug merely for the purpose of holding a jug, is an imbecility. And it would not be less absurd to believe that the "spiritual body" in destitute of a more interior substance. A body is designed to hold something called "spirit." If Paul was right, then he stood at least in the vestibule of that spiritual temple which we have entered and searched through and through. We have investigated and mapped down the "experience" with as much gratitude and truthfulness as can be found in any ancient Testaments. I make this affirmation with perfect calmness of pulse, and with no heat on my brain; and I know that I shall be ready at any time to reconsider reasons, uttered by persons who feel themselves not yet satisfied, why positions here taken may not be sound in science and philosophy. Your attention is asked to the logical conclusion that, if there be a spiritual body in every man, as Paul said, there must be a fine invisible something treasured up within it. Let us see, now, if we can ascertain what that treasured "something" is. Man is a triple organization. This fact is established in two ways—(1) by the concurrent observations of all seers, sensitives, and mediums, and (2) by the phenomenal developments of individual men and women. Man's external body is a casing, composed of the aggregate refinements of the grossest substances. We will name the physical body "iron," merely to give it a just classification and position in relation to mind and spirit. Next, we find that there is an intermediate organization—which Paul called the "spiritual body" DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. 7 composed of still finer substances, the ultimation of the coarser elements which make up the corporeal or "iron organization." The combination of the finer substances composing the intermediate or spiritual body, being so white and shining, may be called the "silver organization." The inmost, or inside of this silvery body, (which interior Paul definitely said nothing about,) is the immortal "golden image." I use the term "golden image," because that metal is just now exceedingly valuable in commerce, and goes directly to men's uppermost feelings and interests. Yes, a golden image! You cannot obtain it from stock-jobbers in Wall street. And yet it is there when you find yourself there; you may also see it deep down in the spiritual vault of a brother speculator; for whomsoever you meet, and wherever you meet, that person, like yourself, contains, against the lining surfaces of his spiritual body, the "golden image," which, let us thank the, Eternal, cannot be bartered away on 'Change!' Paul did not directly speak of what we have been philosophically taught to call "the spirit." Fully persuaded am I that you cannot escape the conclusion that there must be something within the "spiritual body;" and, if so, you Christians might as well "agree" with our classification of the different parts of man, as to take any other. We call the inmost "spirit"— signifying the finest, the super-essential portion of man's nature, composed of "all impersonal principles," which flow from the Deific center of this glorious universe, taking a permanent residence within the spiritual body which they fill and exalt, just as the elements of the spiritual body live within this corporeal or "iron 8 DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. organization," which is composed of mineral, vegetable and animal atoms and vitalities. Now you may be prepared to take some other steps in the path of spiritual discovery. What are they? take care now where you step—because, if you are in reality a believer in Paul's authority, then you are on the high road to what is termed "Spiritualism." If you are not a Bible-receiver, then other reasonings and evidences will be necessary to promote your progress. Now, mark! If you be truly a receiver of Paul's beautiful spiritual statements (which we accept, not as revelations, but because they agree with the fact's of the spiritual body,) then you stand upon so much of our platform as regards the philosophy that a body is a substance. No substance is no body. Nothing cannot exist. Existence and substance are convertible terms—one means and necessitates the other. Something—i.e. substance—always exists. If Paul was right, then the spiritual body is a fact not only, but it is a substantial fact! That is, the spiritual body is a substance—the under-fact, the "silver lining" of this physical and cloudy organism. If it be an under-fact—a real and substantial body—it is no fiction. Now, let us take another step in this logical path. You accept that the spiritual body is a substance. But do you not know that substance, on the simple rules of science and philosophy, implies the associate properties of both weight and force. Substance cannot exist without weight, however inappreciable; and weight involves force, however fine and unimaginable to man's physical thought or touch. All this follows if Paul told the truth. DEATH AND THE AFTER-LIFE. 9 Now, take one more step. If the spiritual body be substance, and if a substance possess the property of weight, it follows that such weight can never be moved without force. The finest substance, with the least weight, requires the highest force. This principle is plain and simple as the common school-boy's logic, and yet it supports the granite basis of the whole Harmonial Philosophy concerning "spirit," which the churches everywhere are stealthily accepting and promulgating as their own long- entertained doctrine of immortality! If there be a spiritual body, which is a very attenuated substance, and if this imperceptibly fine substance have a delicate weight, and if force be required to move the aerial weight, then I ask "What will be your next and most important conclusion?" This is your next step: That a body so organized, so essentially substantial, and so inseparably linked with a fine force, must exist somewhere and occupy space! If any lawyer among you can escape this last conclusion, if any materialist can go through another orifice in logic, why, I am ready to "skedaddle" through the same remarkable opening. I want the "whole truth" as much as any one else can want it. Therefore, if you can make a philosophical retreat from this military line of logic, I will promise to throw down my arms and run with you. Do not let the simplicity of the philosophy grow weak in your thoughts. If the spiritual body be anything, it is something; if something, it is substantial, if substantial, it occupies space; if it occupy space, then all of our revealments with reference to a 'Summer-Land!' in the bosom of Space, will be inseparable