it for another as well as itself. It is for this reason, that sometimes, in the doing of a thing, you have a sudden flash of thought, that somewhere, and at some time, you were doing that thing before under precisely similar circumstances. You are carrying out in the physical what you have already carried out in the spiritual realm, and with your spiritual body, and among the spiritual bodies of the people you may not at that time know physically, but were to know physically in the future. If you regard your own spirit’s promptings and prophesyings as idle fancies or vagaries, or are guided largely by the opinions of others, you will not prevent the happier event or phase of life you are to realize in the future,—if not in this, in some other physical existence,—from happening. But you make it slower in coming. You can have your inevitable future happiness delayed through many causes. You can never have its possibility destroyed. The “you” of to-day may use another body a hundred years hence, and the “you” of a hundred years hence will surely have more power than the “you” of to-day; and there is a time when every spirit will attain to a certain power, that it shall be able to look through, or rather call back, all its past physical existences, from its lowest up to its present highest, and see them all as one life,—the different bodies you have used during all these lives being analagous to the successive suits of clothes you wear in this one earth-life.
All things and all events do not have their origin here in this world, but in their spiritual world. Things here in material are as the shadows of the real thing in the spiritual, and as shadows relatively inferior. As the spiritual world advances, so do we catch the impulse and inspiration of that advance. It is our spiritual world that warms all things into life here, and builds them up here, even as the material sun sends us that element which warms into life, plant, animal, and man; and as the sun element through myriads of ages has been growing finer and finer, and as a result building plant, animal, and man into finer forms, so is the spiritual element or power ever acting on this planet, growing finer and more powerful.
XII.
THE PROCESS OF RE-EMBODIMENT.
Thoughts are Things.
The fact that one person may gain such a mesmeric control of another as entirely to absorb that other’s identity, and to make the individual operated on for a time subject to the will of the operator, seeing exactly as the operator desires him to see, tasting as he would have him taste, and being in imagination whatever he desires him to be, is a clew and cornerstone in getting at the mystery of re-incarnation, whereby a spirit is ushered into another life on earth in entire forgetfulness of its past existence or identity, even as the subject under control of the mesmerizer is for a period entirely oblivious of his own individual self and existence.
A mortal may mesmerize a spirit, and this may be done unconsciously. A woman, before-and-after conception, may dwell in thought much upon some real or ideal character, and this may attract to her that very character in spirit life. There are no ideals in the worldly sense. The ideal in thought represents some living type in the spirit. The highest character of which you are capable of conceiving has a representative in spirit, and your present highest conception may be relatively imperfect. Hence, your hero, your ideal, the actual reality in spirit life attracted to you, may still be incomplete, your incompleteness blinding you to his defects.
Such a spirit may be attracted to a woman before her child is born. It may be the spirit of some one who was very prominent in an earth-life. It may have been a poet, a philosopher, a warrior, a statesman, a great artist. That spirit may be very unhappy. It may be seeking rest and finding none. It may, through its imperfectness, be unable to come near those very dear to it in the life of its former body. On earth, spirits of the body may come apparently in close association. Much, then, may be inflicted by one and endured by the other. One side of a husband’s nature may be harsh, unfeeling, inconsiderate, and tyrannical, when the wife is always gentle, considerate, and uncomplaining. In spirit life they cannot again unite, until the defects on one side or the other have been cured. Spirits cannot come into close and permanent association unless their relationship be real. It cannot be assumed.
The woman so dwelling much in thought on some person in spirit life attracts that spirit, and gives to it the only rest it can find. You will here naturally love to be where you are much admired and made to feel at home. It is precisely the same with the spirit. When you entertain some spirit in the thought of appreciation and admiration, when you read of their lives, or dwell on their deeds or utterances, and are thrilled by them, you are often thrilled by the presence of that very spirit. Because, as you have sent out your thought or spirit to him, he sends his in return, responsive to yours, and in proportion to the intensity of your admiration will be the concentration of that spirit upon yours, and the nearness of its presence.
The spirit in question so attracted to the woman at the period of which we speak, and able to find no other rest, may at last, through such concentration of interest, be absolutely, though unconsciously, mesmerized by her. It attaches itself permanently to her. It is unable to leave her. It comes at last to see through her eyes and hear through her ears. Its opinions are swayed and tinged by her opinions more and more, until at last it ceases to have any of its own. The condition of mind so thrown upon the spirit may be seen all about us in greater or less degree. Thousands lose more or less of their individuality through the influence of others. Unconsciously, they think another’s thoughts, hold another’s opinions, see with another’s eyes. Mesmeric control means only thought control. To be much with another person, to have little other association, to be dependent for one’s happiness entirely on one association, involves the danger of the mesmeric or thought control of that person; in other words, of thinking their thoughts and holding their opinions instead of your own. Such control may be held unconsciously by the other, or it may be held consciously. It is to be guarded against by variety of association and periods of solitude, whereby we may “find our real selves.”
So absorbed in the woman, the spirit’s mind drifts towards what most occupies her attention. That naturally would be the child she is to bring into the world, or in other words, the new organization forming within her. It becomes attached to it by a spiritual link. In effect, the woman has unconsciously gained a total mesmeric control of the spirit. She has sent that spirit into a mesmeric sleep or state. In such state the spirit has already forgotten itself and its past existence. It is in a sense but a part of the woman, doing and thinking as she wills. It is then linked by a spiritual tie to the child, because the woman’s aspiration may be for a child like her ideal, the steady flow of thought in such desire-forming this spiritual link. A flow of thought means a flow of substance, as real as any we see and feel. A flow of thought between you and another person is an unseen link between you and that other person, no matter how far distant are your bodies.
The child body is then born with an actually mesmerized spirit linked to it, not that the spirit is within the child’s body. No spirit is actually enclosed in any human body. Its nucleus is there, but a spirit is an organization which reaches far out from the body. A spirit is wherever it sends its thought.
Send all your thought in revery to any place, and most of your real self will be in that place.
The body is an organization distinct and apart from the spirit. It is simply the instrument used by the spirit in the earth state of existence. Being in an earth-life, the spirit needs an instrument of earth in order to adapt itself to the requirements of the earth-life; as when you go down in a coal-mine, you need a coarse miner’s suit of clothes for use in the mine, rather than satin or broadcloth. In this sense the body is a protection to the spirit in its earth-life; and spirits who lose their bodies before reaching a certain stage of knowledge and consequent power feel and suffer much from such loss, because the spiritual body or spirit, obliged by reason of its immaturity to remain on the earth (as very many are obliged to remain), may feel and suffer intensely from the thought of the mortals about it. It is “sensitive”
