The Inner Life

simply sheds his outer physical garment, just as the butterfly sheds its cocoon when emerging from the chrysalis. He has the same consciousness, the same instincts, tendencies and qualities as before, but now minus the means of indulging and expressing them in a body of flesh.

Imagine if you can a drunkard or a libertine suddenly dying and waking in another world, having naturally the same old appetites and lusts of the flesh, but now with no means to gratify them. What would he naturally do, but to seek until he found some way as similar to that of earth as possible? By the very force of gravitation he would be drawn through his desires back to the earth plane of consciousness to the saloons and brothels he formerly frequented, where though he was invisible and could not make his presence known to anyone in the flesh, he would find many other “spirits” like himself gaining vicarious satisfaction from the fumes of spirituous liquors, or the body odors of prostitutes. And what more natural when he became accustomed to this world and learned from depraved habitudes how to influence the minds of mortal men and women, that he should cause them to drink or to indulge in licentious practices in order to obtain such second-hand gratification.

We mention this to show you one phase of the evil side of the inner world, and why men there are exactly the same in nature and consciousness as here. This, of course, means that what and where one’s consciousness is, his soul is, and whatever you are expressing as your outer nature here your soul would be expressing there. For “as within, so without; as below, so above. Likewise, when you die you are only translated from a lower material to higher ethereal consciousness, but it is the same identical you.