THE FUTURE EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH—PSYCHOMETRY Tuesday, April 1, 1919. 5.29—6.20 p.m.
AWHILE the whole space within our ranks was filled once more with silence. And they two sat together within the Throne, for she had bidden him sit beside her.
Then we heard the voice of one of the great ones who had led those who came to the Sphere Ten and prepared us therein for our advance earthward. He stood behind the Throne and above it, and he cried:
"I speak to those who are of my own company, and to those who were called to array themselves with us descending earthward. For to you this Manifestation is given in order that you may with understanding get you to the further work. We who came to you to lead you had even then been given to know these things. But to you they now shall be shown new. Therefore take very good heed of them that you may step without hesitancy on the road which lies ahead of you. God our Father sends to you of His strength for the work by the commission of His Beloved, Who leads us, and through Him that Stream is poured upon us and shall enable us to the work. To Him our Author be all worship always."
And now there came a radiant mist upon the Throne, and encompassed the earth about till it was not to be seen of us any more. This slowly expanded and filled some quartern part of the sphere of space and then stayed in its enlarging. It began to revolve and seemed to take upon itself somewhat of solidity, but was not solid as matter is solid. If you will image an earth material still but yet etherealized half-way into transparency, there you have the look of it.
As it went round upon its axis there appeared shapes of lands and waters upon its outer circumference. These were not co-terminous in outline with those of earth as they are to-day. We were now being shown our future sphere of work, and these were changing as they are now changing on earth's surface, but more quickly. The ages ahead of you were foreshortened for us and we read them as a moving model.
There appeared also the cities and their peoples and animals also, and the engines which the people made for their several uses. And as the globe turned its surface to us, continually revolving, we were able to see the progress of it all.
I mean this: take, in token of other lands, your own islands. I noted them first as they will be a few years hence. Then they sailed round out of view. When they came before us again they had become changed a little in configuration of coastlines, and as to their cities and people. So, as the globe revolved, these lands, and the whole human race and their works of building and engines of locomotion and all their handiwork progressed in their ages, but condensed from millennia into hours. I must suit my words to your way of thinking, my son. Years have not the same significance to us as they have to you.
Now it would not be permitted to me to fish for you in the deeps of future ages. You of earth must net your own supper. That is as it should be. Nevertheless, it is permitted to me to tell you where the fishinggrounds are like to be. Then those who will think of me as a good admiral will set their sail to my chart, and out upon their quest. So.
Now, the earth became more beautiful as it sailed round upon its voyage of the ages. The light increased upon its surface, and its mass became more radiant from within. The peoples also hurried not so greatly here and there, for nature had become more at one with them and yielded more genially to their abundance. So their lives were less fevered and more given to meditation. Thus they became ever more in harmony one with others, and all of them more nearly attuned to us who were able, in our turn, to spend upon them a larger degree of our power and of our sweeter peace.
As this attunement advanced it enthused us with a largess of happiness to know we had gained for ourselves, after much stress of warfare, these younger companions of our ancient race. It was very sweet to us, my son.
And gradually earth itself was changed. Let me tell you.
You have a new word among you which I have seen in the mind of you and of others; psychometry. I understand it signifies that faculty by which from solid things some incident of the past is read by reason of a sort of vibrant record left in those solids by events in which they have had a part.
Now, there is a truth here which will not be fully known to you until the substance which you call ether has yielded up to your scientists the secrets of its composition and the forces inherent in its atoms. The time will come—we saw this plainly as we watched the globe revolving—when you will be able to deal, both analytically and synthetically, with this cosmic ballast which you call ether. You will deal with it as now you do with liquids and with gases. But that is not yet, for I your bodies are still much too gross that you should be permitted this great power with safety. Meanwhile your men of scientific mind will be preparing the way.
THESE psychometric vibrations, therefore, are—so we have concluded after study of the matter—writ, or indented upon the ether, which suffuses matter. But not that alone. The ether acts upon the substance of matter, and according to the inherent properties which energize through this ether, so does matter become transmuted into a more sublimated substance. These properties come upon ether from the outside of it, invade it, and, using it as a medium between themselves and matter, act upon matter through the ether. For the particles material are held in solution in the ether, as your men of chymics have told. But they have not yet ventured farther than the vestibule. There lies ahead of them the Temple, and within the Temple the Sanctuary. When they have ventured beyond the vestibule of the material into the temple: of the ethereal and not until that time, will they begin to understand that this Sanctuary is the dynamo from which the ether, and through it matter also is energized. The Sanctuary is the abode of Spirit.
And so you get the scheme of this affair in its due order, namely, Spirit impinges upon ether dynamically from the outside, that is, from that realm which is superior, both in powers as in degree of sublimity as to its basic substance. It energizes ether, which, in its turn, acts on and refines those particles which, with itself, make up the substance matter.
But this action is not automatic; it is wilful. Where will is there also is implied personality. It is individuals expressing their personality who give character to the ether, and the consequence is faithfully carried on into matter. It therefore issues in this: that according to the degree in holiness of those spiritual entities who operate on matter through ether, so is that matter the more gross or less gross in substance of its mass.
The quality of the matter of which earth and all things thereon are made is, therefore, responsive to the character of those spiritual individuals who act upon it wilfully. These are spirits both incarnate and discarnate.
And so it came to pass that as the people of earth progressed spiritually higher, so earth itself gradually but faithfully answered to their influence which was registered upon the substance of which, earth is builded up. Matter became less gross and more ethereal. That is why it became brighter with radiance from within as we saw it revolving. It was no more nor no less than cosmic psychometry in mass, but essentially identical with that you at present know manifested in detail.
As earth and its peoples became more and more etherealized, so the hosts spiritual were able with greater ease to consort with those peoples, and their conversation was both more frequent and more free than it is today. And, to shorten my story, we came to that period when progress had been made to such a degree that the communion of spirits with people of earth was normal and continual. Then it became possible that one great Manifestation be made of which I will tell you anon.
But this first: I leave out constellations and speak now of our own sun and his planetary system, so—
Those planets which your scientists have charted are, say they, material.
They have noted further that the matter of which these planets are made is not identical in the proportions of those ingredients which go to make up their material mass. But they have not yet proceeded to register one other factor which enters into the causes of difference of density. This is the spiritual factor of which I have told you, and which has entered into the evolution of some of these planets so as to produce them forward on their evolutionary pilgrimage ahead of earth. ad of earth.
There are others which are not visible to you of earth for they are those which have progressed in their etherealization beyond the material, and have become ethereal. They may be seen by those who live on planets of like substance. They are not spiritual, but between the material and the spiritual estate. Their inhabitants are cognisant of the other planets of which earth is one. And they act upon these planets very powerfully, being at the same time more progressed than earth people, and yet nearer in estate than the spiritual people are.
These of which I speak are true planets of themselves. But there are other ethereal planets, so to say it. One of these encompasses earth. For it is of the engrossened ether of which this ethereal planet is composed that earth is suffused. This is not merely a belt of ether solely for service of earth. It has its own continents and oceans and peoples. Most of these have lived on earth in bygone ages, and some have never been earthdwellers, never having reached material manifestation in body of flesh and blood.
Is that what some call the Astral Plane?
That name is not understood equally by those who use it. But, as yourself have read it and understand it, this ethereal planet of which I speak is not it. It is what I have said of it. Those of human-kind who have come to be there are old denizens as we have been told, and their residence there is uncertain as to its future duration. They are a kind of by-product of humanity of earth in long ages past.
Do you pass through this ethereal planet on your way to earth from the higher spheres?
Locally we must do so. But we are not responsive to its environment in normal as we pass through it. We are not sensibly conscious of its presence. It has not relation to the spheres one, two, three, as I have spoken of them in their degree by numbers. It is another order of creation, and a very strange one. It lies away off the highway of our goings, so that I know little of detail concerning it. What I have told you, and a little more, was explained to us in order to help us to account for some erratic events which perplexed us much until this new factor was brought to our knowledge. And then we understood.
THE MANIFESTATION OF THE CHRIST CONSUMMATE — THE HYMN "OF THINGS IN HEAVEN, AND THINGS ON EARTH, AND THINGS UNDER THE EARTH" (Philippians ii. 10; Revelation v. 3). Thursday, April 3, 1919. 5.20—6.50 p.m.
NOW that we have cleared the ground, my son, we will tell you of the Manifestation which was given us. Its purport was to show us to what end the present evolution was tending, in order that we might with the greater assurance set our course ahead.
Earth, as we beheld it before us, had come to that stage when the ethereal and the material had almost equal place in content. The bodies of men were still of matter, but purified and more readily co-responsive with the heavens of spirit life than in former times—these same times in which you live to-day.
Earth had responded to the upliftment, and the vegetation which it produced lay upon its bosom almost as sentient as a babe upon his mother's breast.
No kingdoms were upon earth, but one confederacy of peoples whose colours were not so diverse, each from other, as they are to-day.
Science also was not the science of Europe as it is now, but the powers of ethereal dynamics being understood, the whole life of men was transformed. I will not farther in detail. That is no affair of mine. I lay the stage in its setting only so you may the more clearly discern what came upon us for our instruction.
