St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-12-18

III OI4S hoANH1 NaSJ A>oN
from their labors. That is, it struck
me that way. There are no
passions, therefore no suffering. Dc
you grasp the idea? Now as to
the dual existence. You are sitting
here and hear me talk. l exist only in
the celestial world. All people whom
you know now exist there, too. We
here are not conscious Of this, because
we are weighed down by this weight of
mortality. When that weight is lifted
by what we call death, the celestial
being expands, develops. passes upward
to a more perfect state. At the present.
my other self, my Ego | might call it, is
In a sort of suspended state, and has
been so since this mortal essence be-
came animate. / saw hundreds of
people whom | now recall as former
deniZens of earth. Lincoln, Shake
speare. Plato, Washington, Caesar,
Alexander the Great, Brutus, Socrates,
ZoroaSter, Confucius, Mohalnmed. and
hundreds more who live in the worlds
memory, why it seemed nothing out of
the common for me to speak to them
while l was dead But now, in this
existence, we form conceptions of the
possible state of the departed worthless
of history, and just because of our ina
bility to conceive the truth, we make a
terrific mystery of it,"
unused upon my friends narration,
and it occurred to me to ask If he had
encountered any whose lives on earth
had been accounted evil liveS-men
who had died violent deaths in the
midst of their mlsdOings-and he st I'D
led a moment and replied: Yes. | did.
L remember one man in particular
whom | had known as a notorious GRIM
inal, and who had been killed while
committing a burglary in the state of
Minnesota in 1877. Yes, he had seen
this II moving among the throngs of
spiritual bodies in the higher world.
He was a perturbed soul, constantly
asking forgiveness of every one for his
~stain-aSklng assistance to help eradi-
cate il. No Il seeEed able to assist
him, and his whole demeanor seemed to
me to indicate that he felt very much
out of place. So far as mental suffer-
ing went, he did not seem to uffer par
tlcularly, except that he appeared lost,
embarrassed, sensible of some great
moral Sh0rtcoming. l noticed quite a
number of beings like this: but most of
them we're strangers to me.
Were any of the shades with whom
you conversed sensible of the fact that
they had had an earthly existence?" l
asked my friend who bad dallied with
the cyclone.
L oO uOI hllOW, uC dIS WSICu. L
had no recollection of any former exist
ence. and it never occurred to me to ask
If others had. Recalling my impress
slonS of that strange experience now
it seems to me that all recollection of an
earthly existence is blOtted out after
one has passed from the earth. l know,
of course. how people speculate on this,
wondering if those who have gone be-
fore ever look backward, ever think of
those who are left. When you reflect
that there is a dual existence, that the
soul exists always in the other world, and
for q brief season only in this life, that
souls are never separated from other
souls they have known either in this
world or the next, it seems to me this
fact solves the problem. The soul in
its earthly habitasion is but a spark of
electricity anlmating the earthly taber-
nacle. The life of the body is also but
a spark of electricity. When what we
call life ceases, the electric spark, the
life Of the body passes into the forces of
the air, that other electric spark, the
soul, is reunited to and becomes a part
of the celestial ego.
Ibid you observe anything during
your brief experience in the other world
that serves to Indicate a system of re-
wards IL ~puniShmentS for the deeds
done IN the t1esh?"
mo; [ never thought to inquire. My
presence there did not seem to me to be
anything unusual. | was not on the qui
yive. l was not investigating. l did
not ask the questions that daily and
hourly suggest themselves to us here on
earth. With US all is mystery. While
l tarried in the other world it seemed SO
much a matter of course that no queS-
tons suggested themselves. Could |
hrrt hnun rnooIIaG fhn foaE chat ] boI
just been translated from earth. could /
nave called to mind the earthly exist
ence, no doubt numerous problems
would have suggested themselves. AS
| now recall that brief experience / am
absolutely convinced there is nothing
for any mortal to fear so far as a future
existence is concerned. A relative who
passed from earth just after the wal
was with ME a good deal of the
time. We were speaking Of going to
a distant planet. 1t was impressed upon
me that the soul had but to wish to
move to be there. AS we talked the
scene, the myriad shades of men, women
and children. by whom l had been sur
rounded. dissolved from view. l sighed
and awakened, in the flesh, on my
dining room table at home, with two
physicians bending over me. This was
TWO days after the cyclone. l had been
put in a caSket. But my wife, detect
ing all almost imperceptible shadow ON
the glass above my face, declared | was
not dead. They tried to argue her out
of her conviction, but she wouldn't
have it. Humoring the fancy of a
grIef-distracted BRAIN as they called it,
Drs. - and - were called in. They
applied some lnfallible tests, among
them a strong electric current, and l
was revived. And this is the whole
story" l looked at the strong,
healthy, happy husband and father,
who begged to prescribe two fingers
OF the finest Maryland rye before | took
my departure. He rang for a servant.
Across the hall came stealing the ravlsh-
ing strains of the Swedish wedding
march. The happiest wife ia Minnesota
was seated at the piano. Then came a
summons from the top of the staircase:
Papa, is 90 comm up to bed wiz me
an tell me q sto'y befo' l say my pray
erS?" 1t was time for Inc to depart. On
Summit venue there was the silence Of
midnight. A lone copper" showed up
in the curve OF our greater boulevard.
Far above the snoW-mantled world the
stars winked in the clearer atmosphere
of a perfect winters night. | marveled
at the beauty of the scene, and, pom
dering the unpierced mysteries beyond
these tWlnkllng orbS, wondered what
sort of a racket my celestial, my other
ego was on, the while this earthly ego
wondered II the man who owns the
house would give me two or three more
days. grace while l hustled for the
rent.