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Dion Fortune's book,
Through The Gates Of Death. 
 
 
 
THE GREAT ANAESTHETIST. 
 note, Anaesthetists are doctors who have completed a full medical training. As 
graduate doctors they choose to complete further training to become an 
anaesthetist.
 
DEATH is a universal experience. No one can hope to escape. It is only a matter 
of  time till it comes to each one of us and each one of those we love. Yet 
Death is called the King  
of Terrors and is the supreme threat of the law to the wrong-doer. What is it 
that makes a natural  
process so terrible? Is it the pain of dying? No, for anodynes can deaden that. 
Most death-beds are  
peaceful when the time comes, and few souls go out struggling. What, then, is it 
we fear in death that  
it should be for us a thing of grief and dread?  
Firstly, we fear the Unknown.  
 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this 
mortal coil?  
 
Secondly, we dread the separation from those we love. These are the things which 
make death terrible. How differently should we set out to cross the Threshold - 
were our minds at rest on these two points.  
It is recorded that the great gift of the Greek Mysteries to their initiates was 
re le a se from the fear  
of death. It is said that no initiate ever fears death. What was it that was 
taught in those secret rites  
that robbed death of its terrors?  
 
In the centre of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh there is an empty stone coffin. 
Egyptologists tell us that  
it was prepared for a Pharaoh who never occupied it. 
 
8  
It has also been said that it was a measure for com. It was neither of these 
things, but the altar  
of the Chamber of Initiation. In it lay the candidate while his soul was sent 
out upon the journey of  
death and recalled, and this constituted the supreme degree of the Mysteries. 
After that experience he  
never feared death again, Tie knew what it was.  It is the knowledge guarded in 
the Mysteries  
which I propose to reveal in these pages.  
 
Death, for the man who has this knowledge, is like the embarkation of the rich 
man upon a liner.  
He is educated, he knows where he is going, he acquiesces in the journey, 
realising its necessity and  
advantages. His knowledge and resources enable him to travel in comfort and 
safety. He can keep  
in touch with his friends at will, and return to them when he desires. For him 
there is no final and complete severance from his native land.  
 
Far otherwise is it with the poor peasant emigrant.  
Ignorant and helpless, the journey to him is a dangerous and hazardous 
undertaking and the land of  
his sojourn may be filled with wild beasts or undermined with volcanic fires. 
His ignorant imagination pictures all the terrors he can conceive and applies 
them to the Unknown.  
 
The ancient Egyptians placed in every coffin a so-called Book of the Dead, the 
ritual of Osiris in  
the Underworld, which instructed the soul concerning its journey through the 
kingdoms of the shades.  
It might more truly be called the Book of the Everliving, for the soul was 
conceived of as going through certain stagey in that cycle of life which takes 
place in the unseen.  
 
9  
 
It would be well for us were we taught from our earliest years to think of our 
lives as rising and  
falling like a boat on the crest of a wave. Now descending into matter through 
the gates of birth;  
now re-ascending to the invisible world through the gates of death, ever and 
anon to return again and  
withdraw again in the rhythmical cyclic tide of evolving life.  
 
Uninstructed by the Mysteries, our lives are bounded by the horror of birth and 
the terror of  
death. How great is the gift of the guarded wisdom which reveals the road of 
evolving life stretching before our feet and robs the Unseen of its shadows.  
 
Let us cease to think of Death as the Fury with the abhorred shears and conceive 
of it as the Great  
Ancesthetist, bidden by the mercy of God to cause a deep sleep to fall upon us 
while the silver cord is  
loosed and the soul set free.  
 
From that sleep we awake refreshed, with the problems of earth far behind us, 
like a young childs  
memories of the previous day, and embark upon a fresh phase of our existence. 
Well is it for us if our  
friends give us quittance and permit the soul to go free to its own place. Ill 
is it for us if the grief of  
those we have left behind shadows that bright morning waking. Just as we feel 
that we have the  
right to ask for tendance in our sickness from those who are kin to us, so 
should we feel that we have  
the right to ask of them fortitude in their bereavement.  
 
For it is their bereavement, not ours. Whom do we grieve for when we mourn at a 
funeral? For  
the Ever-living Dead, in their bright awakening?  
Or for ourselves in our loneliness? Assuredly we grieve for no-one but 
ourselves, for it is well with  
the dead: they have gone to their own place and are at peace.  
 
10 
 
It is those who are left behind who are suffering, not those who have gone 
before us into Galilee. And  
what shall we say concerning their suffering? That like all pain, it must be 
bravely borne, and especially so in this case, for its reverberations may affect 
others as well as ourselves, and be as a mill-stone about the neck of the soul 
that is seeking to rise up on the strong wings of aspiration. Let thoughts of 
love, not grief, follow that soul upon its journey, as sea-gulls follow a ship. 
Let us bid him God-speed and good cheer, and look forward to the reunion.  
 
For there is much we can do for the departed. Our work is not finished when the 
coffin is borne  
from the house and we have put away the sad paraphernalia of illness. If they 
know more than we do of the ancient, guarded, secret Wisdom, it may well be that 
they will return to comfort us and give us  
good counsel. But if we know more than they do,  
if the soul has gone out in bewilderment and fear, or if it be that of a young 
child, then it is our  
bounden duty to follow it out into the Unseen as far as lies in our power, until 
we feel the coming of the  
Angels (of which more shall be said later), and know that our loved one has 
passed into their care and all is well.  
 
And there may come to us if we ask, that Angel which giveth the beloved sleep, 
the deep sleep which  
is well known to fall upon the watchers of the dead and which is like no other 
sleep ; and from that sleep we too should awaken to the morning calm, for it has 
been permitted to uS to look through the gates ajar and see that beyond the 
Threshold there is neither terror nor oblivion, but another world,  
another phase of life.  
 
Out of this sleep which the Angel of Death giveth to the beloved there cometh 
security and assurance;  
for we have seen, even if we do not remember. Let us, therefore, when the hour 
is over, ask of the  
Great Anaesthetist this lesser mercy that we may be tided over the first wrench 
of the separation and  
be the better enabled to take up the burden of life and do our duty to those 
loved ones that are left to  
us, depending upon us and needing us.  
 
And let us, above all things, never forget that in due course the dead will come 
back, and we never  
know when we shall see looking out at us from the eyes of a little child a soul 
we have known. Let us  
therefore, seeking expression for the love that now has no earthly outlet, turn 
it to the endeavour to  
make the world a better place for the return of those we love.  
 
This service at least we can do them. That no repining of ours shall make bitter 
their journey, and  
that as far as lies in our power, the rough places of the world shall be made 
smooth against their return.  
 
  
 

 
 
CHAPTER II.  
CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.  
 
WHEN all that medical science can do has been exhausted, those who stand in the  
death-chamber awaiting the end are filled with an overwhelming sense of 
impotence; they  
have the desire to help, but the total inability to find any adequate practical 
expression thereof. The  
consolations of religion may comfort those to whom the spiritual life is a 
reality, but for many it is no  
more than a vague hope, and for some, a negation. Have we anything to offer to 
these?  
 
Yes, we have. We can offer them knowledge. Knowledge derived from the experience 
of many,  
many souls who have crossed the great gulf and returned to tell us of their 
adventures; and also from  
the experiences of those others, fewer, perhaps, but for us more convincing, who 
can remember their  
past lives. In Europe they are rarely to be met with among adults, but many 
children, before the  
shades of the prison-house of worldly things close about them, can give us 
memories of past lives if  
we ask wisely. In the East such memories are common, being the rule rather than 
the exception.  
 
This knowledge concerning the hidden life of the soul can not only give courage 
and comfort to the doubting, but be the means of actively helping those who are 
passing over. We need no longer stand  
with empty hands at the bedside of the dying.  
Though our hands may find nothing more to do, our minds should be active, and we 
should be making ourselves ready to accompany our friends on the first stage of 
their journey. We can literally  
" set them on their way� as we would do with the parting guest.  
 
But before we can consider exactly what may be done for the departing, we must 
first understand  
the process of the putting off of the flesh.  
 
There are two kinds of death, natural death and violent death ; and there are 
also two kinds of passing, the peaceful passing, which is normal, and the 
unpeaceful one, which is pathological. For dying is no less a natural process 
than being born, and has  
its norm and its pathologies.  
 
Natural death is that which takes place gradually, the soul loosening itself 
from the body before its  
departure just as a childrens milk teeth become loose in the socket and fall out 
painlessly. Violent death, however, is like the pulling of a tooth by the 
dentist.  
There is a wrench, a shock, and some bleeding and soreness. Normally, however, 
the Great Anaesthetist gets in his work rapidly, and with the first opening of 
the line of cleavage between soul and body, the Greater Sleep descends upon us 
and we know no more. Where, however, there is much fear of death, or a desperate 
clinging to life, the work of the Great Anaesthetist is frustrated, and then are 
seen those terrible death-beds when the soul goes out struggling.  
 
This should never take place, and need never take place where there is adequate 
knowledge of the  
processes of death and the after-death life. The dying man should surrender 
himself into the hands  
of the Merciful Angel with the same confidence and gratitude that he would 
submit to the offices of the  
physician who is giving the anaesthetic that is going to shield his 
consciousness from the work of the surgeon. As soon as the ether gets in its 
merciful work, the pain and fear will fade and he will sleep for a while, 
knowing nothing. And so it is with death, the Dark Angel closes one by one the 
avenues of  
consciousness, and we sleep within ourselves while the processes of the 
separation of body and soul go on. When all is over, then we are freed from the 
body, the Angel will re-open the gates of awareness upon a higher plane, and we 
shall live again, though in another dimension. We may find it difficult to 
realise the kind of life to which we shall open our eyes as the day dawns once 
more, but we may rest assured that when we awaken on the next life, it will 
appear to us as normal and natural as the Earth-life to which we are accustomed 
because we shall find that we are adapted to it.  
 
The soul that goes to meet death with understanding, invoking the merciful 
offices of the Grey Angel  
and welcoming his healing ministrations, will draw out from the bourne of time 
and space as quietly  
and steadily as a great ship putting to sea. The changes come gradually, there 
is no shock or surprise, and as one shore fades, the further one begins to rise 
above the sky-line.  
 
Insensibly we have drawn away from the body without noticing it. The lower 
consciousness is now  
deeply anaesthetised. The higher consciousness is opening, and we find ourselves 
in what has been  
called by various names, but which we will call the Body of Light. This is not 
the same thing as the  
Etheric Double, or subtle, magnetic aspect of the physical body It is this which 
is anaesthetised by  
the Grey Angel, for it is in this that the physical processes of death go on ; 
but we know nothing about  
them, any more than we know of the operation that is performed upon us while we 
are under chloroform.  
 
It is not everyone, however, who falls into a deep sleep when passing through 
the Gates of Death.  
Souls with any degree of psychic development pass out in full consciousness. For 
although the physical body lapses into insensibility, we should not take it for 
granted that the soul is unconscious. Anyone who has had experience of trance 
knows that this is not necessarily so, and that consciousness can be transferred 
from the body to the soul and retained unimpaired. It is this which happens in 
death.  
The consciousness is transferred from the body to the soul, and the soul departs 
to its own place on the Inner Planes, taking the consciousness with it.  
 
It may be wondered whether the soul will not be lonely and forlorn when it first 
arrives in the Heaven-  
world, but all who have returned to tell us about the pathway of death, and they 
are very many, agree  
that this is not the case. The Heaven-world appears familiar to the newcomer, 
and for this reason, we  
are all accustomed to go there in sleep every night!  
 
There is a sleep-life of the soul of which the average person is unaware because 
he does not bring  
back the memory upon waking. It is beyond the realm of dream, which is purely 
subconscious, and  
the soul of little psychic development remains sound asleep while out of the 
body, or at best, drowsy and  
 
difficult to rouse. It is the rousing of the soul to consciousness upon this 
plane which produces the  
dreams which are not like ordinary dreams, of which many people have had 
experience.  
 
The psychically developed person is at a great advantage when it comes to 
passing through the  
Gates of Death, for he goes over in full consciousness. He does not sleep the 
sleep of death , he merely loses consciousness of the physical plane while 
retaining all his faculties. Anyone who has ever experienced trance with 
retained memory, or a lucid dream, has died and risen again, and he will find 
that death is exactly the same.  
 
 
 

 
But although the Heaven-world will not prove to be unfamiliar to us, seeming 
rather like the home of  
early childhood revisited, we are nevertheless not left comfortless. There is 
organised charity in the  
next world just as there is here , and there are disembodied souls who give" 
themselves to the work of  
receiving and ministering to the newcomers, companioning them until they feel at 
home.  
 
It is well known how often dying people exclaim that they see a great light, and 
in that light are the  
faces of friends and relatives who have passed out before them. Whenever there 
is a strong bond of  
love between souls on different sides of the gulf of death, those on the far 
side invariably come down  
to the shore to welcome the newcomer upon his arrival.  
 
It is a great thing to know that as the physical world recedes from us, the 
coast of the next world  
is rising above the horizon of consciousness, and on that shore will be awaiting 
our coming all those  
 
who have loved us and who have gone before us into the Unseen. We shall land 
amid familiar faces,  
as the last words of many a passing soul, calling a greeting, give evidence.  
 
But what of those who have no close ties with any in the next world. Are they 
left comfortless? No,  
indeed. They will be met by those who knew unrequited love while on earth, and 
who have given to the service of all the love which was not needed by the one. 
There come to meet the friendless ones  
those who have in their own lives achieved the ideals, however dimly realised 
and rarely glimpsed, which appealed to each soul as the noblest goal of life ; 
and by their help the soul goes forward to its lessons and its achievements.  
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER III. 
HELPING OR HINDERING THE DEAD.  
 
THE question of communication with the departed has always been a vexed one. On  
the one hand we have those who deny its possibility and say that all so-called 
communications  
are either fraud, delusion, or credulity; on the other are those who admit the 
possibility of traffic with  
the dead, but call it necromancy and condemn it unsparingly. Meanwhile, those 
who have lost dear  
ones have recourse in rapidly increasing numbers to mediums who act, or claim to 
act, as psychic telephones between this world and the next.  
 

 
 

It is agreed by those who have extended experience in the matter, that although 
communication with the departed is by no means universally to be condemned, it 
needs to be approached with caution under carefully chosen conditions, and a 
state of extreme grief and desperate emotional upheaval is certainly not the 
ideal condition under which an approach should be made. Sometimes the state of 
mind of the bereaved is such that it is advisable for the dead to return to give 
the desired assurance,  
but to do so is an act of self-sacrifice on their part, and nothing can possibly 
be worse for the departing  
soul than to be called back repeatedly to communicate with those left behind. To 
hold the soul to physical life in this way is an act of great, though no doubt 
unintentional selfishness; it disturbs the  
one who has entered into the light, and prevents him from settling down in his 
new conditions.  
 
It is just as if a fond mother placed her child at a boarding-school, and then 
kept on sending for him and weeping over her loneliness and lamenting the 
parting. What would be the state of mind of a child  
who was treated like that? He would get no pleasure from his new companions and 
his sports, nor profit from his lessons. We, if we keep on calling the departed 
back to us through the instrumentality  
of a medium, are acting just as unwisely and selfishly as the foolish mother.  
 
As soon as this life ends, the next life begins, and the dead have their own 
work to do. We must be  
content to let them do it freely and in their own way, just as a woman, however 
loving and beloved,  
must be content to let her husband or son go forth to do their work in the 
world.  
 
It is noticeable in the communications received from the departed that the newly 
dead are fairly  
accessible to communication, and then, after a while, they seem to go on to a 
further plane where  
communication ceases to be possible. If we keep on calling them back, they 
cannot make this transition and become earth-bound. The process of death is 
incomplete, and they cannot enter into their rest.  
While therefore it may be justifiable, or even advisable, to re-establish 
communication with those who have just passed over, it is in every way 
undesirable to keep up this communication unduly. It should  
be enough for us that those who have passed out send us word of their safe 
arrival upon the other  
shore. Having received that, we ought to rest content.  
 
The state into which the dead enter immediately after departure is an 
intermediate and transitional  
and it is one in which certain definite post- mortem pathologies can occur. 
Cases in which all  
has not gone well are delayed there, awaiting the working out of their problems. 
Normally, the soul  
passes swiftly through this phase and leaves it behind. Delay at this stage is 
very undesirable. The  
soul should be speeded on its journey, and it is for this purpose that the 
Catholic Church says masses  
for the dead; these masses are of great value, and the principle should be 
reintroduced into the liturgies of all faiths. We should not think that we have 
rendered the last office to the dead when the funeral service has been said over 
them, but the consolations of religion should follow them right through this 
transition stage until they are well established in their new life. As long as 
any shreds of earth ties linger, the protection and guidance of organized 
religion should be available to the soul.  
 
This intermediate stage between life and death is hot the same thing as 
Purgatory! It is rather a  
Ending-stage whereon the soul steps ashore and gathers together its baggage and 
greets its friends.  
Purgatory might be defined as a psychic quarantine. 
It is only after consciousness has accustomed itself to the disembodied life 
that the soul goes on to face the purification of Purgatory. Let it be clearly 
realised that Purgatory is not punitive, nor is it  
eternal, but consists in forcing the soul to face its own record. It is the 
reactions of the soul to that  
record which are the cleansing fires. Purgatory is not a place, but a state of 
consciousness; but because, on the Inner Planes, all those with the same outlook 
draw together, Purgatory for all practical  
psychic purposes has a definite astral location.  
 
It is while souls are going through their purgatory that the threads of 
communication with this world  
are severed. Each soul must enter into the silence in order to pass through the 
cleansing fires. No one  
can help them there. They must stand upon their own feet and walk by such light 
as they have. Not  
otherwise can they learn their lessons. We can no more learn for another than we 
can eat for another.  
We must surrender our loved ones into the hands of the Lords of Karma when this 
point is reached. We have this comfort, however, that it is their aim to make, 
not to break the soul, and no one is given  
more than they can bear, nor even more than they can assimilate and turn to good 
use.  
 
The esotericist would not agree with the Catholic teaching that masses for the 
dead can help a soul  
in purgatory. He holds that the value of the prayers of priest and friends is in 
the influence they  
have upon the soul during the intermediatory period; once the soul has passed 
through this phase  
it finds its place in the great cycle of life on the Inner Planes and will be 
cared for.  
 
After the soul has drawn clear of Purgatory it is not only possible but 
legitimate to re-establish communication with it, provided the right methods are 
used. If we are able to raise consciousness to the higher psychic planes, we can 
of our own volition come into telepathic touch with the departed and  
hear their voice with the inner ear. It is not advisable to try and see them 
with psychic vision, because this belongs to a lower sub-plane of the Astral for 
that upon which the blessed departed, cleansed  
from their sins, are privileged to abide.  
 
Clairaudience is the right method to use in communication with those who have 
passed to the heaven-world.  
 
It will be noticeable that descriptions of the heaven-world are nearly always 
second-hand; the  
psychic is told what that world is like, but does not actually see it. There 
are, of course, exceptions to  
this general rule in the case of exceptionally gifted psychics, or exceptional 
circumstances, but generally speaking it will be found to hold good, and we may 
know that if we see the departed with psychic vision, they are still 
intermtermediate world, and  
 
 
that when they have arrived safely in the heaven- world we shall hear but not 
see them when they  attempt direct communication.  
 
When we are trying to get into touch with them, therefore, we should listen, but 
not look; and in the  
still small voice of the inner consciousness we may not unreasonably expect to 
hear at least a word of  
greeting; once contact is established, there will be times when we shall get a 
distinct impression of a  need so tangible that we feel we have only to etch out 
the hand to touch it; but if we open our  
eyes we shall find nothing there.  
 
The dead, upon their plane, are minds without bodies, and when they speak, they 
speak to our  
mental, and not to our bodily senses. That is to say, it is the intuition that 
perceives them, and not  
the sight.  
 
It is good that normal, intuitional communication could be established between 
the dead and the living, for it robs death of its terrors. We ought to look upon 
the dead as living in another state of consciousness, not another place. If we 
can tune in to their vibration, we can hear them and speak to  
them. In fact we can speak to them much more readily than we can hear them, for 
the dead, being  
bodiless, are normally psychic.  
 
It is for this reason that we should guard our thoughts carefully in  
relation to the dead, and especially strive to overcome our grief and learn to 
acquiesce in their departure. Our attitude towards the dead should be the same 
as it would if they had set out to seek  
their fortunes overseas. We would send to an emigrating son or lover a word of 
good cheer to hearten him in his distant enterprise. If we continually sent a 
tale of woe, enlarging on our own sufferings in his absence, could we expect our 
letters to be eagerly welcomed?  
 
Would they not rather be dreaded as an ordeal? What should be our aim? To help 
and encourage and hearten the dead, or to indulge our own grief and relieve our  
feelings at their expense? The parting and the loneliness, the loss of the 
breadwinner and protector, or the lifelong companion, are indeed a grief, but a 
grief to be bravely borne in order that our darkness  
may not overshadow the beloved one. We ought to accept our lot cheerfully so 
that they may be free  
to go through the great experiences of the soul and enter into their rest with a 
quiet mind.  
 


 
 

CHAPTER IV.  
THE OVERCOMING OF GRIEF.  
 
THE way in which we face bereavement is one of the greatest tests of our 
spiritual under-  
standing. Our attitude towards the death of the body, whether our own or that of 
one dear to us,  
depends upon what we really believe life to be. Do we, in our hearts, look upon 
the physical body as  
the real man, and all it means to us upon the physical plane as constituting our 
relationship with the  
soul we love, incarnated in that body? Then how canwe do otherwise than lament 
our irreparable  
loss when death breaks the frail vessel that holds our loved one? But do we 
actually know, from our  
experience of inner things, that man is a spiritual being, eternal and immortal? 
Then we shall be  
able to look beyond the death of the body to the e that is hid with Christ in 
God.  
 
There is more than one kind of love, and bereavement will reveal which kind is 
ours. The lowest kind of love is more of a hunger than anything else, We hunger 
for affection and care and attention,  
suddenly thrown upon our own resources by bereavement, we feel the pangs of 
emotional starvation.  
 
An other kind of love, and one that is not so very much higher than the 
obviously selfish kind, relieves  
an emotional tension by pouring out demonstrative affection and service upon the 
beloved one, without stopping to inquire too closely what his needs may be. This 
kind of love, suddenly denied its  
outlet and thrown back upon itself, shakes the nature to its foundations and is 
responsible for many break- downs after bereavement.  
 
p.26. 
 
It may seem a strange thing to say, but true love is hot emotional in its 
nature, but is an attitude of  
the soul towards life. True love is a spiritual radiation, like sunlight, and 
like the sun, it shines upon the evil and the good, the just and the unjust, not 
blind to their condition, but loving them just the  
same. This is the noblest love, and it has healing  
in its wings.  
 
True love proceeds from a loving nature, not from stimulated emotions. It is the 
only kind which will  
make for happiness in marriage or any other relation of life, and it is not this 
kind of love that leads to mental breakdowns and extremities of grief when the 
beloved one is removed by death.  
 
It is true there must always be shock and emptiness when one upon whose love we 
have leant for years is taken from us, for the whole life must be readjusted; 
but the shock should not be of such a  
nature as to bring the whole structure of existence crashing down. If it does 
this, we may know that we have broken the Second Commandment. We have made a 
graven image and worshipped it, instead of knowing and serving the one true God.  
 
There can be but one true centre of life, and that is God. We may have 
companions and dear comrades upon the path of life, but life itself has only one 
centre. If the hub of a wheel is anywhere save in the exact centre, the wheel is 
out of the true, and useless. We and our loved ones are like spokes in  
 
the wheel of life, but for both them and us the hub should be God. When we try 
to throw the weight  
of our life upon one spoke, instead of upon the hub, we are making a radical 
mistake, a mistake that  
throws us out of balance upon all planes.  
 
If we and those we love are God-centred, death will bring no sense of inner 
isolation, for we shall  
know that they have gone on ahead of us to the goal at which we were mutually 
aiming. If they  
were to return to us after they have passed over, they would say, as did the 
Risen Christ to the  
disciples who were mourning His loss, Lord, I go before you into Galilee.  
 
To those who are united in spirit, death is but a temporary severance. There 
must be loneliness, and  
there must be burdens to be shouldered alone that were once shared by the other, 
but there is not that  
sense of spiritual annihilation which devastates those ho have laid up their 
treasure where moth and rust corrupt.  
 
It is this inner certainty of an enduring bond which is the sheet-anchor in 
times of bereavement,  
or many, it is a certainty which no materialistic philosophy, no logical 
demonstration of mortality  
can affect. They may not understand the grounds upon which their certainty 
rests. To them it may  
be a blind belief, admittedly illogical. Nevertheless It is there, a fact of the 
inner life.  
 
The mystic, however, with this knowledge of the Inner Planes, is able to explain 
this feeling and  
show that it is a true psychic intuition, and by no means illogical. On the 
Inner Planes there is  
neither time nor space as we understand it. 
 
28  
 
 We are near to those with whom we are in emotional rapport, and far from those 
with whom we are emotionally out of tune. When there is a real tuning of two 
souls, they are literally together on the Inner Planes, where to be in one mind 
is to be in one place.  
 
Do we not know only too well that it is possible to share bed and board, and yet 
be as apart as the  
stars? Equally is it a fact of inner experience that if there is a true 
spiritual union, we remain in touch,  
wherever our bodies may be.  
 
If we observe life, we shall see how true this is. There is a subtle difference 
between a man or a  
woman who is well and truly mated and one who is not. They need not to be 
together for this to be apparent, for it is a subtle psychological difference, 
and separation does not affect it. The man or  
woman who loves and is loved retains that sense of spiritual fulfillment even 
when separated for long  
periods. It is well known to psychologists that the lack of this mating, which 
is called by esotericists  
Polarisation, is responsible for many nervous illnesses, and that these can 
occur even in marriage if there is no spiritual affinity and companionship.  
 
If we continue to love and be loved, even after the loss of the loved one, this 
spiritual widowing  
does not occur, and we are not left unmated. The intangible influence of the 
love continues to make  
itself felt, and the personality remains polarised.  
 
The bond of physical union weakens with the passing of youth. The bond of 
emotional union is  
broken with the withdrawal of the personality from physical sight, but the bond 
of spiritual union survives all severance, whether of space or time, and 
continues to inspire and to protect both of those who are held in its tie, upon 
whatever plane they may be.  
 
29  
 
 
The bond of spiritual union reveals itself in a common idealism, a comradeship 
in the things of  
the spirit. Where this exists, it will endure as long as the spirit endureth, 
for it is as eternal as God who  
gave it. This spiritual communion continues uninterruptedly through the death of 
the body and all the after-death experiences of the soul. It needs no psychic 
powers to bring it within reach of mundane  
consciousness. It is like the sound of a brook; we may not hear it when we are 
busy with the toil of  
affairs, but in the quiet of the night, when all sounds are stilled, we hear the 
purl of the running water,  
going steadily on, hour after hour, and we know that it has been sounding all 
day, although we have  
not heard it.  
 
When spiritual love is coming to us from the inner Planes we have only to still 
the outer senses  
for a moment to hear it purling like the brook, a steady flow, coming to us all 
the time from the  
eternal and steadfast soul that has gone on ahead to the Next Country. And we on 
our side, if we still  
love, may send out an equally steady flow to comfort our beloved. Let us 
therefore gather up all our  
courage so that the brook of love may not carry the debris of dead hopes on to 
the Inner Planes, to be  
perceived psychically by our loved one to his distress. Let us keep our hopes 
alive by working for  
the ideals that were dear to us both. So can we make a channel through which 
those ideals may still  
come to fruition, for our comradeship with our beloved can continue in the Path 
of Service.  
 
  
 
 
CHAPTER V,  
THE APPOINTED TIME.  
 
 
we do not wish to have towards death the fatalistic attitude of the Mohammedan,  
however much we may admire his courage; nor yet the panic-stricken clinging to 
life  
of many so-called Christians. Whoever has any knowledge of astrology knows that 
the time when  
death is likely to occur can be predicted with considerable accuracy; but if he 
has had any practical experience of the same art, he also knows that that which 
is threatened does not necessarily befall. 
There are a great many factors to be taken into consideration in a horoscope, 
and the judgment is  
after all not the answer to a sum in arithmetic, concerning which there can be 
only one result, but the opinion of the astrologer concerning the ultimate 
outcome of an indefinite number of counterbalancing 
factors. Astrology is much more of an art than Science, and the personal factor 
in both quitrent and astrologer is a very large one.  
 
No one can deny, however, that there are tides of death in every horoscope, 
tides on which the soul  
may readily slip across the harbour-bar into the great Beyond. The cords are 
loosened then, and if  
sudden stress comes, they may part. On the other hand, a compensating force may 
come into play. 
iiy; the faith or the will-power of the querent himself, or of one close to 
himself, may suffice to hold the soul in the body till the tide has run its 
course and the knot of life tightens automatically.  
In such a case we may literally say that a new lease of  
 
life has been entered upon, and that there is little likelihood of death until 
the planets, once again have  
moved into a fatal position. It is very instructive to retrogress a horoscope, 
if such a term may be permitted, and observe how the planets stood in the 
critical periods of crisis in the past. We shall find that there may have been 
more than one period, that the Angel of Death drew near but passed by. What has 
happened once  may happen again, and it is as unwise to assume the certainty of 
death before the breath is out of the body as it is to count chickens before 
they are hatched. 
 
One thing is certain, if life be trembling in the balance, the knowledge an 
astrologer has is a very powerful depressant and may serve to turn the balance.  
 
Here then jump half a page to top page 33, because some of this  
Onlinetext can not be interpreted. 
 
 
It cannot be other than a misfortune if death comes before the age of threescore 
years and ten,  
because in each incarnation a long period of preparation has to be undergone 
before maturity of  
the faculties is reached and we begin to reap what  We have sown. To have to 
undergo another period  
of infancy, childhood, and youth before full return has been obtained from the 
investment of life-values  
in the present period is a misfortune, though not necessarily a tragedy if seen 
against the wide land-  
scape of evolving life. We should therefore reinforce  by every means in our 
power the battle against a  
premature death; but after our allotted span, unless we have work to finish, we 
are wise to take our  
guidance when it comes, going tranquilly out with the tide, secure that our life 
is hid with Christ in  
God. It is better to go and take a new body than To cling to one that is fast 
becoming uninhabitable. If  
We Have passed the allotted span, we may well say, Lord, now suffer your servant 
to depart in  
Peace. 
 
By this I do not mean it to be understood that we would refuse ordinary 
precautions and remedial  
measures. It is our duty to fulfil the laws of Nature as long as we are under 
the jurisdiction of those  
laws. It is the attitude of mind to which I refer, we may fight death grimly to 
the last ditch, holding  
body and soul together with all the power of a concentrated will; or we may turn 
our thoughts to the heaven-world and begin to reach out towards it.  
 
Before threescore years and ten it is our duty to fight death with spiritual 
resources as well as material;  
but after that time, unless there is some definite reason to the contrary, such 
as obligations unfulfilled, or work unfinished, we do not to place our-selves in 
Gods hands, for He will not recall His servant until his work is done and the 
time of rest  
is due.    (here To page 34)  
 
 
 
We must get out of the way of thinking that death is the ultimate tragedy. There 
are conditions under  
which it may be a misfortune for all concerned, both for the passing soul and 
those around him. But on  
the other hand, it may be the next stage in life. It is only the man sunk in 
matter who calls the Angel  
of Death the Great Enemy, his esoteric name is the Opener of the Gates of Life.  
 

 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER VI,
TRADITIONAL CUSTOM AND PSYCHIC FACT.  
 
THERE are many old customs connected with the passing of a soul which have their 
roots  
in psychic fact and are not merely superstitious. Some, of course, are pre-
Christian in origin and their usefulness has passed away; others are still 
valid, and it is helpful to observe them.  
 
Among these is the beautiful custom of placing candles and fresh flowers in the 
death-chamber as  
soon as the soul has departed. There is a brief Interregnum in between die dis-
animation of the  
physical body and the withdrawal of the soul from the etheric double. During 
this period the soul re-  
mains close to its physical vehicle, gradually disentangling itself from the 
meshes of matter and re-orientating itself to its new state. The etheric double, 
cut off from the supply of prana, or etheric  
vitality, which it derives from the sun while in incarnation, and not yet 
adjusted to its new condition, is  
apt to draw this vitality from whatever source may be available to it. This fact 
accounts for the sudden  
feeling of exhaustion and depletion, or even fear, which not infrequently comes 
to those whose duties  
cause them to be in the immediate neighbourhood of dead bodies unless they have 
shielded themselves behind the armour of callousness. Those who have  
loved the dead are especially susceptible to this form of depletion.  
 
 
36  
 
Now it is undoubtedly a humane act to companion departed souls with thoughts of 
love and protection, while they are going through the period of adjustment; and 
we may even, in certain cases,  
feel it wise to permit a soul that has gone out in fear and distress to cling 
for a while to our physical  
vitality before persuading it to take up the task of living its new life. These 
things have to be wisely  
and compassionately judged. We should always bear in mind, however, that the 
help we give to the  
dead should be directed towards helping them to make the transition to their new 
life, and not  
towards maintaining them in an intermediate state, which may lead to their 
acquiring, the habit of death-in-life, and so becoming earth bound.  
 
There is a great difference between a mental rapport and an etheric rapport. The 
latter is not a desirable thing; it rapidly becomes pathological for both the 
living and the dead and should never be  
suffered to establish itself.  
 
There will, however, always be an Instinctive, involuntary reaching out after 
etheric vitality by the  
etheric double pending the commencement of its disintegration, and we can not 
only protect the  
living, but help the dead by understaning the nature of this phenomenon and 
acting accordingly. 
 
Fire is an elemental form of eteric life, and the unguarded flame of a candle, 
fully exposed to the  
air, emanates a not inconsiderable proposition of etheric substance. If we place 
a lighted candles round the death-bed and cover it with fresh flowers, there 
will be available sufficient etheric emanation to meet the needs of the etheric 
double, tide it over its transition stage, and prevent it from drawing upon the 
vitality of the living. This is in every way more natural than allowing the dead 
to get into what may well end by being an unwholesome rapport with those who are 
left behind, and is at the same time more humane than affording them no help at 
all.  
 
It is not right to leave the dead alone and neglected in the interval between 
their passing and  
the funeral of the body, when the final quittance is given; neither is it 
desirable or necessary to maintain a continual watch beside them ; but three 
times  
each day, at morning, noon, and night, it is well to kneel in prayer beside the 
body, or, if this be not  
possible, to project the thoughts towards the spot where it lies, and imagine 
ourselves to be kneeling  
there as we pray. This is a great help to the departed, and should never be 
neglected, for, next  
to Christian burial, it is the greatest service we can render the dead.  
 
It is not a good thing to burn incense in the death- chamber, because the fumes 
of incense lend them-  
selves too easily to a materialisation, and it is our aim to help the departing 
soul to pass as swiftly and  
easily as may be through the phases of death and enter into the spiritual life, 
so that it may not linger  
within the atmosphere of earth wherein the pathologies of death occur.  
 
The drawing of the blinds when a death takes place is another custom which has 
its roots in psychic  
fact. Nothing disperses an etheric double so quickly as sunlight, and it is in 
order that the processes that follow immediately upon the withdrawal of the soul 
from the body may not be unduly hastened that the blinds are drawn, the sunlight 
shut out, and the living flames of candles alone used to light the death- 
chamber.  
 
38  
 
An exception should be made to the rule, however, when the nature of the disease 
has been such  
that partial death of the tissues has taken place before the death of the body 
as a whole, or when  
processes of disintegration follow rapidly upon the passing of the soul, as is 
the case with certain  
diseases. For this means that the etheric double has been almost out of the body 
before the actual  
end; there is therefore no need to await its disentangling, and the sooner the 
etheric substance returns to the soul of nature, the better.  
 
The wearing of deep mourning has a very marked psychic effect. Black insulates 
the wearer from  
etheric vibrations, and a person so clad is more readily able to get in touch 
with the subtler planes  
than one clad in colours, which each attract their corresponding vibration.  
 
The custom of tolling the church bell, however, is as pagan as the keening and 
wailing at an Irish  
wake. It is intended to drive away evil spirits and should have no place in 
Christian burial. 
 
It is a great mistake, nay, a blasphemy, to think of our loved ones as dead, or 
to associate them with  
the dust that is returning to the earth whence it came. We should think of the 
vital mind, the over-  
living and aspiring spirit, going up and on with its evolution and calling us to 
comradeship in that great  
adventure. It is for this reason that, from the esoteric standpoint, cremation 
in so much better than  
burial, for it frees not only the soul of the dead, but the soul of the living. 
We cannot cling to a handful  
of dust flying in the wind as we can to a body committed to the ground, 
returning slowly to Mother  
Earth.  
 
Further from chapter TRADITIONAL CUSTOM page 39.  
 

The last earthly service of love should be to take the ashes of the beloved one 
to some spot sacred to  
the memory of happiness, and there scatter them on the wind, giving back to 
Nature that which  
Nature gave. There, as at an altar dedicated to love's memory, may we seek to 
re-establish our con-  
tact, not with the dead, but with the Ever-living, sending forth our thoughts 
like birds into the  
Unseen. It is seldom that they will return to us without the green leaf of hope.  
 
But we cannot do this as long as we identify in thought our loved one with the 
dead body. Let us  
return that body to the elements at the earliest possible moment in order that 
we may free our love  
 
from the sense of death. Where cremation is not possible, then I would plant 
upon the grave some  
strong-growing tree or shrub that shall draw up the etheric life from the earth 
and give it to the air.  
I have seen graves that are little gardens; not sealed with a stone, but full of 
life and beauty. Between  
the making of the grave and the placing of the stone there must elapse a period 
of at least a year, and  
what can be more beautiful than to sow wheat upon the bare earth to symbolise 
the life that is given of  
God? For there is a legend that wheat does not belong to the evolution of our 
earth, but was brought from another planet by that Great One who came "without 
father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor 
end of life.  
 
Somewhere in the decoration of gravestone or coffin it is invariable to find the 
Cross. Unfortunately in our ignorance of the science of symbolism, it is almost 
invariably the Calvary cross that is  
represented. There are many different forms of the Cross, however, and the 
Calvary Cross represents  
sacrifice, and renunciation; it is the Keltic Cross, with its long, tapering 
upright, and small arms,  
upon which is superimposed n circle, which is the sign of Life Triumphant unto 
Salvation. This is the  
Cross beneath which all that mortal of an initiate should take its rest.  
 
 
To enclose a body in a leaden shell is a relic of barbarism. The soul has 
finished with the lardy and  
cast it off. Why should we seek to preserve it? The best casket for the mortal 
remains of those we love  
is one that will restore them to the earth as rapidily as may be. For this 
reason the traditional elm is  
better than oak, which is too enduring If it is not possible to commit the clay 
to the swift and purify-  
ing fire, let the kindly earth perform its office in its own way, returning the 
elements of mortality each  
to its place in nature. The soul is not really free until this has been done. 
Some shadow of earth  
will remain to cloud its awakening.  
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER VII, 
THE DEATH OF THE BODY.  
 
THE human body is a machine, dependent for integrity of its parts and the supply 
of  
its working, like any other machine, upon the fuel. It is a machine for 
generating energy, the  
energy which is employed by the personality in the process of spiritual 
unfoldment; for it is by means of the experiences undergone when in the body, 
that the soul gathers together the raw material which it works upon in the 
process of its evolution. The occultist who knows these things is therefore not  
sentimental over the physical body, but endeavours to keep it in good repair 
while he has it, because  
good work cannot be done with a bad tool.  
 
We should learn to think of death as part of the processes of growth. A 
caterpillar dies as a worm  
to be reborn as a butterfly. In many of the lower forms of existence the cycle 
of life goes on under  
our eyes. In the higher forms, however, part of the cycle takes place in the 
visible sphere of matter,  
and part of it in the invisible sphere of mind. What we call birth is the 
process of taking on a physical  
body, and what we call death is a process of dis- carding it ; and as the 
processes of birth include more than the labour, so do the processes of death 
include more than the passing of the breath.  
 
If, of course, by death we simply mean the stopping of the human machine, then 
death is an instantaneous occurrence, such as it is popularly believed to be.  
 
42  
 
But if by death we mean the sum-total of the processes which constitute the 
transition  
from one phase of existence to another, we are speaking of death as the 
esotericist understands it,  
and it is in this sense that we shall consider it in these pages.  
 
There are two ways in which death may come: naturally, and in accordance with 
divine law ; or un- naturally, as a breach of divine law. Strange as it may 
seem, the esotericist docs not reckon death by disease as among the natural 
deaths. Disease is due to a breach of God's law; in some way violence has been 
done to Nature, and the breakdown of the  
human machine is the result.  
 
Natural death, the death brought about by the workings of divine law, only takes 
place when the  
karma allotted for that incarnation has been worked out. Until this is done, the 
vital tones will keep  
old age at bay and retain the powers but little abated to an advanced age, as is 
proved by the many in- stances of men and women strong in God's service far 
beyond the allotted span of three score years and ten.  
 
Natural death only takes place owing to the wearing out of the working parts of 
the machine or, to  
change the metaphor to a more exact one, to the silting up of the tissues. The 
machine depends for  
its working upon the balance of intake and output, technically known as 
metabolism. The Intake is  
always in excess of the normal output. In order that there may be a reserve 
available for emergencies.  
In childhood and adolescence this extra intake is absorbed in growth; during 
maturity in reproduction.  
 
 
Top page 43 in original book.  
 
That which is not absorbed in physical repro- duction is, or should be, worked 
off in some  
emotionally satisfying pursuit, whether of work or play. As soon as the 
upbuilding phase of life is  
past, the surplus of intake or output begins to be stored in the tissues in its 
most compact chemical  
forms. Hence the wise and witty saying that a man is as old as his arteries.  
 
There are various ways in which natural death may come. As time goes on, the 
heart finds it more  
and more difficult to pump the blood through the increasingly inelastic channels 
of the arteries; the  
blood supply to the various organs becomes inadequate, and one or another may in 
consequence get out of order and cease to function, thus depriving the system of 
some essential product or service, and  
so stopping the machine..  
 
Or one of the smaller arteries, usually in the brain, may become so weakened 
that it can no longer cope with the in- creasing pressure of the blood pumped by 
a still  
adequate heart, and finally bursts, causing the well- known phenomenon of a 
"stroke." Equally, the  
heart on its part may no longer be able to overcome the resistance of the 
arteries, and finally stops its  
rhythmical drive at the time of lowest vitality, usually the small hours of the 
night, and the person  
"dies in his sleep�. 
 
 This is the true, normal, harmonious form of death. It is ushered in, not by 
any definite disease, but by a gradually increasing tendency to fatigue, 
revealed (and compensated) by  
the steady rising of the tide of sleep, more and more of the twenty-four hours 
being spent in tranquil  
oblivion, until finally consciousness is withdrawn and never returns. It is thus 
that the soul passes  
when it has fulfilled its tasks and has no more to do in the earth-life of that 
incarnation.  
44  
The unnatural, or pathological death of the body is brought about by some 
external agency; either  
the mechanical injury of a vital part; the poisoning of the vital processes, 
whether by some substance  
taken into the body, or by the excreta of bacteria that have found lodgment in 
the tissues; or by the  
deprivation of an adequate supply of some factor necessary to the fuelling of 
the machine, whether it  
be food, vitamins, water, air or sunlight.  
 
Every ill that flesh is heir to will find a place in one of these three 
categories, and the esotericist regards them all as forms of pathological death, 
for, given different conditions, they could ill have been avoided. If the injury 
had not taken place, the man would have lived. If he had not come into contact 
with the virulent germ, the trouble would not have started. If he had had 
adequate supplies  
of the necessities of life, neither too much, so that the issues were replete, 
or too little, so that they were enfeebled, he would have been alive to-day.  
We can always say of these pathological forms of death that if such and such a 
thing had not happened, the dead would not have died. Therefore we say that 
these deaths are all unnatural, and if we were living in the golden age of the 
earth's perfection, they would not have occurred. The normal way of dying is to 
die in the sleep in extreme old age.  
 
 
 
CHAPTER VIII,  
GOING TO MEET DEATH.  
 
IF we are filled with terror at the thought of Death coming for us, let us go to 
meet him, at our  
leisure.  
 
This may seem a strange idea, but there is a great deal in it that is 
essentially sensible and practical.  
There are several religions, notably the Roman Catholic and the Buddhist, which 
instruct their followers to meditate regularly upon their own deaths.  
This is a very valuable discipline, and we should all be the better for pursuing 
it.  
 
This meditation upon our own deaths, however, should not concern itself with the 
dissolution of the  
body. The body is not the real I. When it is cast off, it is but common clay and 
we are no longer in  
any way concerned with it. Let the living care for it for sanitary reasons, not 
superstitious ones. We  
should think of ourselves as escaping from the body, getting free from its 
limitations, and begin to  
imagine the kind of life we shall lead when this occurs. We can see ourselves 
meeting with those of  
our friends who have preceded us through the Gates of Death. If death appears to 
be imminent we may send out telepathic messages to them, asking them to meet us. 
If we are indeed nearing the Threshold it is not unlikely that some response 
from them will reach us. We can be quite sure that they will do their best to 
signal to us across the gulf and tell us to be of good cheer; but unless we have 
some psychic  
 
 
development we may fail to perceive their answering signals. I may instance a 
cate I once came across where a woman who had recently lost a dearly loved 
sister was sitting in the fire-light one  
evening trying to get into touch  with her telepathically. She tried for some 
time without success. when  
 
her attempts at concentration was disturbed by her sisters dog who was lying at 
her tort, and who appeared to be hunting in his dreams, us dogs do.  
Suddenly he woke up and looked about him in surprise as if expecting to see 
someone, and then  
rushed from room to room of the house barking joyously. This was the first time 
he had shown any  
interest or animation since his mistress's death. My friend was of the opinion 
that she had succeeded in summoning her sister, but had not been able to 
perceive her; dogs, however, are notoriously psychic, and the dead woman's pet 
had sensed her presence, his experience being interpreted in his  
dream even as our own are, and he awoke so firmly convinced that he had seen his 
mistress that he ran through every room barking and looking for her.  
My friend told me that nothing could have been more convincing to her than this 
simple little manifestation of a dog's experience.   
 
 
But in addition to those personal friends in whose affection we have confidence, 
there are others upon  
the Inner Planes whose companionship we may seek and whose acquaintance we may 
make even before we pass over. We may recall our Lord's promise, "I will not 
leave you comfortless," and pray to  
Him that our guide may be made known to us in life, so that we may pass out in 
confidence when our  
call comes. 
47  
 
There is, however, no purpose in doing this unless death is near, because guides 
change their  
tasks on the Inner Planes, the work of meeting the dead is one of the first they 
are employed upon When they come over, and in due course they pass on to other 
duties. They only come down to the shore to await our coming when the barque of 
the  soul has cast off its mooring-ropes.  
 
The research that has been done by spiritualists has revealed what very 
important work goes on in  
that part of the spirit-world which is contiguous to the earth-plane. There is 
abundant evidence from  
innumerable sources that the bands of invisible helpers are highly organised, 
and that no soul is allowed to pass out alone and unaided.  
 
When a ship is about to sail, she hoists the Blue Peter, and every one who has 
business with her hastens aboard. When the soul is about to depart from the 
body, it  
too flies a signal, and there are those on the Inner Planes whose business it is 
to watch for those signals and see to it that all travelling souls are guided 
and  
guarded and welcomed as they move from out our bourne of time and space.  
 
Even when the Star of Death is below the horizon we do well to familiarise 
ourselves with the nature  
of the after-life states in order that we may become accustomed to the idea of 
them and that they may  
not seem strange or terrible to us. We can rob death of its terrors in this way 
more effectually than  
in any other.  
 
Moreover, we may meet someone who is hagridden* by that cruel and terrible fear 
of death which secretly afflicts so many who have been brought up in the old 
concepts of death and hell.  
 footnote.
(Hagridden definition, worried or tormented, as by a witch.) 
 
It is a thing that very few people will confess spontaneously, and to meet 
someone who has escaped from that bond- age may be like a light dawning in 
darkness to them.  
 
In our meditations upon our own deaths do not let us concentrate so much upon 
the passing out as  
upon the life we are entering upon. Let us think joyously of the new hopes and 
activities that are  
opening up before us. We shall he free of the cumbrance of the body which, as 
our tune draws near, becomes increasingly a drag upon our activities; we shall 
rise up in the Body of Light, as it is called by  
the ancients; the burden of old age and ill health will have fallen from us, and 
we shall be vigorous  
of form and clear and buoyant in consciousness. In death we literally take on a 
new lease of life. We  
shall enter upon that new life with all the vigour and enthusiasm of youth, for 
we are indeed born  
again.  

 
CHAPTER  IX. 
THE HIDDEN SIDE OF DEATH. 
 
THE processes even of physical death are not nearly so simple as popular 
imagination believes, and it was a knowledge of the subtler aspects of death 
that gave ri^e to many of the funeral  
practices of the ancients which we look upon to-day as pure superstition.  
 
With the passing of the (last) breath, the soul itself is gone and is no more 
concerned with its cast-off body than the chick with the egg-shell. But those 
who remain are concerned with it, and certain of the  
subtler problems of the shock of bereavement are due to the little-understood 
processes that are going on in the discarded clay.  
 
We have two tasks to perform before our service to our loved one is finished ; 
we must see to it, that  
dust returns to dust as swiftly and harmoniously as possible, giving rise to 
none of those happenings,  
which may be termed the pathologies of death; and we ought to follow up the 
departing soul with the  
right kind of telepathic communication until it is safely established on the 
Other Side and will want  
to enter into its rest for a period. These two aspects of the last services to 
the departed are of very great importance, and we ought to give them our serious 
attention. Moreover, there is nothing that will help us in our grief so much as 
to feel that there is still  
something to be done for those who have gone over, and that we are not free to 
let ourselves go unreservedly in a paroxysm of emotion as we might do if we felt 
that we had nothing but ourselves to  
consider.  
 
50  
 
Let us study first what happens to the discarded and empty body immediately 
after the departure of the soul, for this will guide us in our attitude towards 
it and our manner of dealing with it. Firstly, the departure of the soul only 
means the death of the central nervous system, there is a great deal of organic 
life still left in the body itself. It does not die all in - one piece. Indeed, 
for some days before death, or even longer, the soul may have been out of the 
body, floating at the end of the silver cord a few feet above the bed, looking 
like a sleeping ghost  
and clearly visible to any psychic.  
 
While this condition prevails there is deep unconsciousness on all planes and no 
suffering. It is only when the silver cord is severed that the soul finally 
departs and actual death occurs. The sudden rally and return of consciousness at 
the end, is caused by the soul, which recovers consciousness on its own plane as 
the end approaches, making a last effort to concentrate on the body, in order 
that the process known to occultists as the etching of the seed-atom may take 
place effectually.  
 
this seed-atom is a nucleus of force of the same type as that of the physical 
plane, which is retained  
by the soul throughout its evolution, and which plays an important part in the 
processes of rebirth.  
The term etching is, of course, metaphorical, and represents the tuning of this 
nucleus to a certain type of vibration and its impression with certain images.  
51  
 
If this has already been done, the soul is ripe for death, and the last rally 
may not take place; there-  
fore the absence of this rally does not mean that the processes of death are not 
going on as they should.  
 
On the other hand, when violent death takes place, if the body is so shattered 
that death is instantaneous, no etching of the seed-atom is possible.  
 
Therefore it is held by esotericists that the soul immediately seeks rebirth, 
before the second death takes place, and equally rapidly passes out again, 
having merely assumed a physical body long  
enough to enable it to make its exit from life in due form. It has often been 
remarked by mothers and   
midwives that the new-born child which has an extraordinary appearance of 
intelligence and maturity in its eyes is not going to live. It is the eyes of an 
adult soul that they see looking at them, and all the  
service that soul requires at their hands is the rites  
of burial according to its faith. It is not meant to live, it is only meant to 
die adequately.   
 
It may seem that this inflicts a hardship on the mother who has made her great 
sacrifice to bring it  
into the world only to lose it; but if we examine the karmic record of the case, 
and no occultist would  
ever attempt to judge a matter in the light of a single incarnation, we shall 
find either that there is  
a karmic debt owing, which is settled in this way, or if no such debt can be 
traced, then karmic credit  
has been given. This karmic credit is a point that is often forgotten.  
 
Sometimes the Lords of Karma owe us a debt which entitles us to one of those 
sudden strokes of pure luck which we can explain by means of no hypothesis which 
only takes account of  
one life. The Good Samaritan, the complete stranger who renders us a totally 
unexpected service, may be a soul for whom we have opened the gates of birth and 
death in a previous life.  
52  
 
Once the soul has safely withdrawn, however, there is an immediate change. Any 
sensitive person can feel the difference between the atmosphere of the chamber 
of death, however peaceful, and the  
atmosphere of the chamber of the dead. During life, a man is under the lordship 
of the Archangel of  
his race and the Saviour of his religion; but after death this domination is 
withdrawn; or rather, it  
follows the soul and leaves the body to its own devices as being no longer of 
any concern. The vacant clay then passes under the domination of the Regents of 
the Elements, and the eltmental force of earth,  
air, fire and water each withdraw that which Belongs to them and restore it to 
its own kingdom. In this  
process they are assisted by a certain type of life, which belongs to the most 
primitive form of existence and which is fast passing out of manifestation.  
 
I refer to the unicellular organisms that live on dead matter, the saprophytic 
bacteria which cause decomposition. The parasitic bacteria which feed upon 
living tissues and cause disease are another matter. They belong to certain 
forms of life whose day is overpast and who, defying the law of evolution, 
refuse to withdraw from the physical plane. They are rebels against cosmic law, 
and advancing knowledge is gradually driving them out of manifestation.  
 
The curious �feel�of the death-chamber and the fear that most people have of a 
dead body are  
caused by this opening of the gates of the elemental kingdoms. 
53  
 
 The beings of the elements are present and active when organic matter has to be 
disintegrated and returned to its respective spheres. Sensitive people feel 
their presence, and because  
elementals belong to a very primitive form of life, find them disturbing. It is 
for this reason that it is  
not good for the living to remain in the immediate neighbourhood of the dead.  
There are, however, four mighty Archangels who are called the Archangels of the 
Elements because  
they rule the elemental kingdoms as overlords in the name of God. These are 
Raphael, Michael,  
Gabriel and Uriel , and they equate with the four Evangelists of the Christian 
tradition. Hence the  
childrens prayer :  
 
"Four angels round my bed, 
Two at the foot and two at the head. 
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 
Guard the bed that I lie on. 
 
Every rite for the dead ought to commit the clay into the care of these four 
great spirits before the  
Throne. When they are invoked it will be found that the somewhat sinister 
atmosphere sometimes  
felt in a death-chamber will immediately lift and clear.  
 
The return to dust of the body, however, is but half the process of physical 
death, for there is  
another body, equally physical, equally mortal, which is called the etheric 
double. 
 
It might aptly be called the body of electricity, for it is an organfed system 
of electro-magnetic stresses, and its meshes every cell and fibre of the 
physical body lies  
like a bottle in a bottle-rack. It transmits to every molecule ot the body the 
vital force which keeps disintegration at bay and maintains the unstable 
compounds of organic matter in their elaborate and  
fugitive forms.  
 
It is the withdrawal of this etheric double which marks the critical moment of 
death when the  
breath is seen to pass. Embodied in it, the soul remains in an unconscious 
condition for a brief period, from a few hours to three days; if its tenancy of 
the etheric body is prolonged beyond this time, or if the  
soul wakes up to consciousness while still in the etheric double, one of the 
pathologies of death has  
occurred.  
 
It is this waking of the soul while still in its etheric double which, in 
popular phrase, causes its ghost to walk. Within the appointed time, however, 
unless something abnormal occurs, the magnetic forces of this body of 
electricity will have been exhausted ; it will be like a battery that has run 
down, and the soul will slip out of its meshes and no longer have any link with 
matter.  
 
It is not this, however, that we call the Second Death; it is rather the second 
half of the physical  
death, and while it is going on, the soul is asleep in the deepest 
unconsciousness.  
 

 

It will now be seen why it is so unwise to try and get into touch with a soul 
immediately it has passed over, for we may wake it from its etheric sleep and 
cause it to "walk."  Do not let it be thought by this that the esotericist 
condemns communication with the departed; but there is a right and a wrong way 
of effecting this communication, and there are times when it may safely and 
helpfully be done, and times when it had better be left alone, and we need to 
know these things if we are to deal with death  
rightly. Our modern thought places adults in the same position in relation to 
the mysteries of death  
that children endure in relation to the mysteries of birth; there is a 
conspiracy of silence which confuses the Issue and places us at a grave 
disadvantage in dealing with our problems.  
 
 
55 in original book.
 
 
 
CHAPTER X, 
PURGATORY.  
 
WE have already told of the merciful work of the Great Anaesthetist, who causes 
a deep  
sleep to fall upon the soul as it passes out of the gates of the flesh. The 
etheric body fades and  
falls away from it unnoticed, and it sleeps on in that state of consciousness 
which occultists call the astral plane.  
 
But presently it begins to dream. The memories of its earth life are still 
present with it, though faint  
and far away, like the memories of early childhood.  
But it does not dream of these happenings as they appear to us who shared them; 
it reviews them instead from the point of view of its present state of 
existence. It is in the World of Desire, and it sees them from the standpoint of 
fulfilled or frustrated desires.  
 
But the brain no longer clogging consciousness, the soul is not only conscious 
upon the plane of its  
present existence, but the higher consciousness is also awake and active , and 
all the time that this  
Phantasmagoria of dream is going on, the higher self is holding up the mirror to 
consciousness and bidding the soul look therein upon its own image. All the time 
the inexorable spiritual standards are kept before its eyes. The soul, forced to 
contemplate these, undergoes a struggle severe in proportion to its deviation 
from the spiritual standards. Nothing  
explains these states so well as the terminology of analytical psychology. The 
soul is in the throes of  
a conflict between its higher and lower aspects. This conflict is subjective and 
expresses itself in the  
imagery of the astral dream, and the soul is said to be in purgatory.  
 
58  
For purgatory is simply the forced realisation of the significance of our own 
misdeeds.  
Its scenery, so often described by saints and psychics is such stuff as dreams 
are made of, the dreams of souls forced to face the truth. This scenery, there- 
fore, is by no means idly phantastic, but has definite symbolic relationship to 
the problems of the soul,  
of evolution, and of the cosmic reactions. Every soul has its own personal 
symbolism, derived from  
the experiences of its own history, even as we find in the psycho-analysis of 
dreams. In addition to  
this it has the symbolism of the types of its religious faith, which it shares 
with all the members of its  
faith. Therefore the hell of the Christian will differ in many ways from the 
hell of the Moslem. On the  
other hand, it will have much in common, because there are certain type-symbols 
which are common  
to all sentient human beings, being formed out of their common human experience, 
such as the pain  
of burning and the torture of thirst.  
 
Each individual soul is taught by these dream- pictures that sin brings 
inevitable suffering, for it is shown the consequences of its wickedness or 
folly and may not turn away its eyes. It feels in imagination as it would feel 
if it had actually come to the state which its dreams depict.  
 
Sisyphus the ambitious rolls his eternal stone up the hill and may not rest; 
Tantalus the drunkard sees the cup recede from his lips. Thus each learns the 
vanity of his weakness.  
 
59  
 
The initiate has never believed in the appalling doctrine of eternal punishment. 
No psychic has  
ever confirmed this belief, no spirit returned from beyond the grave has ever 
reported it. What is there any man could do in the brief spell between birth and 
death to deserve it?  
 
But every spirit reports purgatory and has a wholesome respect for it. But these 
are not the  
flames of eternal torment but the cleansing fires that purify the soul as gold 
is tried, in the furnace until  
all its dross is burned away and it is pure and precious.  
 
It is not maintained, however, that the dross of an evolution can all be burnt 
away in the purgation of a single death. Few souls are so pure and strong that 
they could endure so severe a trial without their fibres being disintegrated. 
Therefore we are shown no more at a single purgation than we can well bear and 
profit by. We are permitted to wipe out a certain proportion of our karma, and  
then come back to earth with the rest still bound about our neck, and it is this 
unexpiated karma that causes our sufferings in the next life. And so gradually, 
with what we realise while in purgatory and  
with what we make amends for while on earth, we compensate our karma and adjust 
the balance.  
 
Thus does the soul make its growth.  
But although purgatory is primarily a subjective experience, it is not wholly 
subjective. The vivid  
dreams and feelings of the souls going through this experience create a very 
definite atmosphere about them. On the astral plane there is no time and space  
as we understand them, but a mood is a place, and those who are in the same 
emotional state are drawn together.  
60  
Can we not readily understand how the atmosphere made by all the souls at 
present out of  
incarnation, who are struggling with thwarted hate or unsatiated lust, would 
mould the scenery of Hell  
out of the plastic astral ethers?  
 
All those who hate, all those who lust, congregate together, and it is largely 
the cumulative atmosphere that they make between them which causes the 
abreaction of the higher type of soul, the soul that has possibilities of 
redemption. The minor transgression, which appears venial enough in ourselves, 
looks very different when we find ourselves in the midst of a sphere where 
innumerable souls are carrying it to all extremes and we have to live in its 
atmosphere. Indulgence in the sins of the flesh, which may not appear so bad 
when it is being done by a single person in an otherwise clean environment, will 
soon nauseate even its most hardened habitu� when he is compelled to practise 
his chosen vice in company with thousands of others who are all doing exactly 
the same thing, and is not allowed to stop when he has had enough, because the 
irresistible momentum carries him on willy-nilly. This is the most effectual way 
to cure the sins of the flesh, and the Lords of Karma make full use of it.  
 
If, however, a soul has largely risen above its weaknesses during life, or if it 
is not very deeply  
imbued with them, its visit to the purgatorial fiery whirlpool will be brief, 
for its struggle to resist the current will soon cause it to be thrown out upon 
the bank, free. None, however, may escape the experience of facing their own 
weaknesses in the company of those like-minded to themselves. No amount of 
masses and candles and prayers is going to spare them this.  
61  
 
We can, however, concentrate upon Souls, a telepathic current which shall focus 
spiritual  
forces upon them and thus cause them to win to a realisation and reaction more 
quickly. In brief, we  
can apply spiritual healing to the souls in purgatory.  
 
Many people endure great anxiety concerning the fate of some loved one who has 
died in sin and unrepentant. It may be a great comfort to them to know that 
spiritual healing forces can be applied  
just as effectually to souls in purgatory as �absent treatment� can be given to 
souls in incarnation.  
 
Let us always remember that if we can communicate telepathically during life, we 
shall have no difficulty in communicating telepathically after death. For if 
minds can communicate without material means while both are upon earth, the 
position will not be materially affected when one of the pair has no longer got 
any material means wherewith to communicate, but has to rely exclusively upon 
the mind.  
 
One of the occult disciplines consists in reviewing each night (evening,) the 
events of the day in the reverse order, that is to say, from the evening to the 
morning.  
Although this may be a little confusing at first, for the mind naturally 
attempts to follow its habitual  
sequence of cause and effect, one soon becomes habituated to it and experiences 
no difficulty. There is a twofold reason for this operation. The first is to 
accustom the mind to work out of its normal sequence and so enable it to 
penetrate the veil of birth and recover memories of past incarnations,  
and the other is to keep the karmic debt within bounds. By abreacting each day 
any errors we may have made, we prevent our purgatorial debt from accumulating.  
62  
Of course, if we merely abreact them each day and repeat them again the next, we  
are not doing ourselves very much good, for although we may have neutralised 
that particular portion of karma, we are acquiring plenty more of an even more 
unpleasant nature, for we are making sure of a place for ourselves in die hell 
reserved for hypocrites, and anything more painful than the unmasking of a 
hypocrite to the depths of his selfish and cowardly soul it is hard to imagine. 
The mills  
of God grind exceeding small,and not so slowly either, all things considered.  
 
Let us always bear in mind, however, that purgatory is neither punitive nor 
retributive, but essentially healing to the soul. The cautery of hell- fire 
clears up the septic wounds that life has left us.  
 
There is clean healing after that burning. Let us therefore, during our life-
time, clear up all we can  
of those things we have done amiss, whether in wickedness, error, or weakness. 
If we can cure  
ourselves of our evil tendencies, hell will not have to teach us our lessons, 
for we shall have already  
learnt them. And finally, when our time comes to die, let us go over with 
courage, knowing that our evil dream will not last long; going to our purgatory 
as we would go to the dentist, knowing that it is going to be more or less 
painful, but not more than flesh and blood can bear and be none the worse for 
it.  
 
And let us, above all, realise that we are in skilled hands. Picture below left- 
astral helpers are all the time working for helping those thought- imprisoned in 
the lower astral levels. 
 

 

 
CHAPTER XI  
THE HEAVEN-WORLD  
 
WE hear a great deal about the Heaven-world in Spiritualistic communications, 
and many  
people are repulsed by the idea, for they feel that everything is represented as 
being so  
material. They read of Raymond smoking cigars and drinking champagne and feel 
that Heaven falls  
short of their expectations. Or again they read of a golden floor and perpetual 
harping, and feel that  
this would not appeal to them either. A rather higher type of Heaven is 
described by the spirits,  
who tell us that the artist paints marvellous pictures upon illimitable canvas; 
or the scientist penetrates  
the secrets of nature by merely looking at them.  
Delightful as everything is made to sound, we feel instinctively that there is 
something wrong, for all  
this does not ring true. Moreover, we feel that we should be thoroughly bored 
even if it were true, for  
there is no pleasure in an age-long, effortless perfection. So much of our joy 
in achievement lies in  
the triumph of difficulties overcome. There can be no such joy in an effortless 
Heaven.  
 
For many people, too, there could be no joy in a Heaven that did not include 
their loved ones.  
 
Now what are we to say to all these contradictory statements which do violence 
to our deepest in-  
stincts? They cannot all be right. But nevertheless, are they all wrong? How are 
we to understand  
them? First of all we must realise that Heaven is a state of consciousness, not 
a place. Pure mind is independent of time and space, as we know by our dreams, 
whether the dream of sleep or the day-dream.  
64 
We can phantasy ourselves to be in ancient Egypt or far Cathay, and for all the 
purposes of  
consciousness we are there for the moment. We see the sights, we hear the sounds 
of these times and places in proportion to the vividness of our imagination. 
 
When we are first dead, we are simply disembodied minds and obey the laws of 
dream consciousness. Purgatory is our dream of remorse and purification , and 
the Heaven-world is our wish-fulfillment. Freud tells the story of the little 
boy whose ration of cherries was limited by a careful  
mother, and who on awakening next morning announced, 'Hermann has eaten all the 
cherries.�  
His dream had fulfilled the ungratified wish of the previous day.  
 
So in the sleep of death, the dreams that come to us during our Heaven-world 
phase are wishful filaments. But they are something more than the idle 
gratification of fancy. They arise from the deep  
brooding of the mind upon its hopes and ideals.  
These may not seem to us very lofty, but they represent the phase of experience 
through which that particular soul is going in its evolution, and it may be 
necessary for that soul to go through the realisation of its hopes in order to 
profit by the lesson.  
 
The Mohammedan Heaven with its houris may not appeal to the Westerner, but it 
has been potent to send thousands of fanatical devotees to a sacrificial death 
in order that their faith might be spread among the infidels, and that faith has 
been a great force for good among tribes so primitive that they could not 
respond to a more sophisticated appeal.  
65 
We must not judge another man's Heaven by our own standards. His Heaven is his 
wish-fulfilment, not ours.  
 
We must face the fact that the cat-burglars Heaven would be full of easily-
climbed porches.  
 
When we call back the spirits of the departed to tell us of their experiences in 
the Heaven-world  
whither they have gone, we are listening to their acount of their dreams in the 
sleep of death. It is only when we are fortunate enough to get hold of one of 
the souls that are freed from the wheel of  
birth and death and are continuing their beneficent work for humanity upon the 
Inner Planes instead  
of entering into their rest, in other words, it is only when we get into touch 
with a Master, that we shall  
hear an account of the Heaven-world that shall give  
us a real understanding of its nature and the relation of its parts to the 
whole.  
 
The account which is given by a person recently passed over, is comparable to 
the account that is  
given of the working of a great hospital by one of the patients in its beds. He 
sees only a very small  
portion of the whole, and has no means of assessing significance.  
 
The account which is given by the guides, ministering spirit-friends, and others 
whose task is to  
assist the departed, is equivalent to that which we might receive from the 
probationer nurses of the  
same hospital. It is not until we hear the doctors lecturing to the students 
that we begin to grasp the  
significance and scope of the great institution we are investigating.  
66  
Purgatory is a hospital for sick souls, where they are operated upon. The 
Heaven-world is first a  
convalescent home, and then a school. For some few it may also be a college. In 
the lower fields of  
Heaven, so often described in communications from the Inner Planes, souls rest 
and recuperate, dream- ing pleasant dreams meanwhile that soothe them and make 
them happy. But this phase, having ful- filled its purpose, passes off and gives 
place to the next.  
 
In order to understand the significance of these inter-incarnation phases, we 
must enter somewhat deeply into the philosophy of the subject. As we have 
already noted, heaven, and equally hell, are states of consciousness, not 
places. But if we realise the actual facts of the matter, we shall find that 
earth is also a state of consciousness. Modern physics is showing conclusively 
that matter is simply a form of force which, owing to the fact that it is 
equilibrium, appears to us to be static.  
 
There is no such thing as dense matter as popularly understood. When you "bark 
your shins� over the coal-scuttle, you are really falling over electrical 
resistances. Incarnation is the state of consciousness  
l which perceives these forms of force.  
Discarnation, or death, is the state of consciousness which no longer perceives 
them but has become subjective and is only aware of the content of its own 
consciousness.  
 
In death the gates of the senses are closed. Otherwise the man is unchanged. In 
fact we might say that viewed from the standpoint of the soul, death is simply 
the closing of the gates of the senses.  
 
(comment. but according to the spiritual science of the Danish wiseman or seer 
MARTINUS, 1890-1981, we do have similar spiritual senses/�organs� in the 
different bodies. r�.remm) 
 
If a man's consciousness is entirely limited to the five physical senses, though 
such men are rare, he is as much shut in with his own thoughts and as 
inaccessible as the sleeper lying oblivious upon a bed.  
67  
 
But does this sleep of death yield nothing but pleasant dreams and rest? No, it 
does much more than this. Any one who is familiar with the practice of mental 
work and meditation knows how powerful is the concentrated brooding of the mind 
upon some spiritual ideal. The highlands of  
heaven are the mounts of meditation. The soul, thought-forms and giving itself 
auto-suggestion.  
These processes play an important part in formulating the vehicles of embodiment 
when the time comes for it to reincarnate.  
 
The artist who dreams his dream of cosmic canvases is building faculty. On earth 
the realisation of his vision was limited by the skill of hand and eye. In the 
Heaven-world he is under no such limitations, and bodies forth his vision as he 
sees it. This trains faculty, and when he reincarnates, he will have gone some 
way towards building himself i physical vehicle in which hand and eye will co-  
operate with the inner vision and give it form. Life after life of effort, 
together with the intervening periods of meditation on the inner planes, 
gradually make the soul that which it wishes to be. If its wishes are unworthy 
or untrue, the regularly recurring spells of purgatory neutralise its efforts. 
Like Penelope's web, that which was woven by day is unpicked by night.  
Those things which in our earth-life we have realised but failed to attain are 
achieved in heaven.                                    68 
This subjective achievement builds faculty and we return to incarnation with the 
power to achieve latent in us. Life has done its work for us when it brings 
realisation , even if we are unable to achieve our realisations, for in the next 
life these will be within our grasp.  
 
CHAPTER XII,  
COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEPARTED.  
 
THE question of communication with the dead is a vexed one. Some people consider 
it  
entirely free from any element of harmfulness or even error, and feel it is not 
merely unnecessary  
but even blasphemous to "try the spirits whether they be of God.� 
 
 Others, and among these are many occultists, consider any attempt to 
communicate with the dead to be open to grave objection and harmful to both dead 
and living.  
 
As in most other questions, the middle way between two extremes is the way of 
wisdom. Let us  
examine these two viewpoints and see where that middle way lies. Let us try to 
understand the factors involved in communication with the departed and consider 
the principles that should govern our relations with them, for we have relations 
with them hether we are consciously in communication with themor not. As long as 
they live in our memory re is a psychic rapport between us. As long as we 
feel any emotion about them, whether of love, grief, resentment, or fear, we are 
actively in touch  
with them; we are affecting them, and they are ting us. We should therefore 
strive by all  
s in our power to achieve right relations with who have passed over, and the 
most effectual way of achieving right relations is to possess accurate knowledge 
of inter-life conditions.  
69 
 
The person who has recently passed over is still in the same consciousness that 
he was upon the earth- plane. He awakes from the sleep of death into which he 
has been thrown by the Great Anaesthetist in exactly the same frame of mind as 
he was in prior to his passing. In this state he is readily accessible from the 
earth-plane. This condition soon fades,  
however, unless his memories be renewed and kept vivid by communications through 
a medium. Provided the disembodied soul is of normal and harmonious character, 
it does neither the dead nor the living any harm to exchange greetings during 
this phase of the discarnate period. In fact, if the departed soul has any 
unsolved problems upon his mind, or is anxious concerning his dear ones, it is 
of the greatest advantage to give him the opportunity of unburdening himself and 
completing any arrangements that he was unable to make before death came upon 
him. Souls sometimes cannot rest until they have done this, and remain in this 
intermediate state, anxiously trying to make themselves heard upon the earth-
plane. To such souls a medium can be of the greatest service.  
 
We must always remember, however, in dealing with the departed, that in a normal 
death-process,  
this phase is comparatively brief, a matter of months at most, and that if we 
keep the attention of the dis-embodied soul focussed upon the earth-plane by 
continually "calling him up� through a medium, he may fail to fall into the 
second sleep which heralds �the second death�. We may, in fact, cause him to  
develop astral insomnia and he will "walk" - as the old phrase so expressively 
put it. It is possible for  
spirits to become earth-bound simply because they are kept from the astral sleep 
too long and adapt  
themselves to an intermediate condition instead of going on with the death 
processes and attaining to  
the next phase of the inter-life states.  
71  
 
Generally speaking, while it may be justifiable to �get through� once or twice 
to those we love after  
they have passed over, it is inadvisable to keep on doing so because it is bad 
for both them and us.  
They, on their side, ought to be left in peace to get on with the tasks of their 
new life and to enter fully  
into its experiences; on our side, too, certain things have to be taken into 
consideration. Contact with  
the non-physical states of existence has a peculiar effect upon the living, 
tending to draw them away  
from the plane of objective life and to discoordinate consciousness. This occurs 
even when the  
commumcating entities are of the highest type, and it is well known by all who 
have had experience in  
the matter that precautions have to be taken to close the gates behind us each 
time we return after having issued forth from the house of flesh. People who are 
uninstructed in these matters do not understand eidher the necessity or the 
technique of these processes. 
The medium of high type, who is working under good guides, is looked after by 
the guides themselves, who see to the closing of the gates from their side of 
the Veil. But the sitter who has no guide 
to protect her may go out from the seance room with her head whirling with the 
experiences she 
has been through, and if susceptible, may even be in a semi-psychic state 
herself. To clairvoyant  
sight she will appear surrounded by a host of beings who have been attracted to 
her sphere during the stance and who have not been dispersed at its closing.  
72  
Trained psychics, be it noted, tend to forget their Inner Plane experiences as 
soon as the gates  
close behind them, and memory remains in abeyance until it is recalled by the 
concentration of thought once more upon the Inner Planes. It is very necessary 
to the health and stability of the  
psychic that he should be able to keep the planes of consciousness strictly 
separated, and this is one of the first things he learns to do when taught the 
technique of the Mysteries. The inexperienced sitter  
has no such technique and may have no one to advise her, and the consequences 
are apt to be un-  
satisfactory, or even disastrous. She becomes in- co-ordinated and unsettled 
upon the physical plane,  
credulity growing with what it feeds upon, until the bounds of rational living 
are over past and mental  
unbalance becomes apparent.  
 
The question of research by trained investigators is upon a different footing; 
for the most part they  
are dealing with "a different type of entity to those who come at the call of 
the bereaved. They are  
dealing with entities who are consciously and intelli- gently co-operating in 
the research, or who have  
come at the bidding of co-operating entities. More- over the investigators, 
being experienced, know how to conduct their researches without injuring their 
communicators.  
 
It is a natural impulse for those who have lost a loved one to rush to any 
source that holds out a  
hope of renewed contacts, but caution and dis- crimination are needed when so 
doing; it is not  
enough to obtain an evidential message, we must satisfy ourselves that we are 
obtaining it under conditions that will not injure either the dead nor the 
living, and these are conditions that have to be carefully observed with due 
regard to all the circumstances of the case and the temperament of the 
disembodied soul.  
73  
 
The Spiritualistic movement has rendered an incalculable service in bridging the 
gulf that used to separate the living from the dead. The fact of the survival of 
bodily death has been established beyond any possible question by any reasonable 
person who will take the trouble to acquaint himself with the evidence. If we 
want to do the best possible thing for those we love who have passed over, we 
willi accept the fact of survival upon the basis of the evi- dence already 
available for us, and leave those we love to go on their way in peace. If all is 
not well with them, they themselves can take the necessary steps to get through 
to us. Let us leave the initiative  
with them. It is far better for all concerned not to call them back for any save 
the gravest reasons,  
But on the other hand, if a psychic spontaneously informs us that someone wishes 
to get in touch with  
us and gives us clear evidence of the genuineness of the message, we should not 
hesitate to respond.  
 
But here again there is need of caution, human nature being what it is, for 
cases have been known of  
physics who, whenever they hear of a death, take the stepsto get in touch with 
the relatives and induce �to sit� � at so mucha sitting!  
 

 
�The Spiritualistic movement has rendered an incalculable service in bridging 
the gulf,
 that used to separate the living from the dead.� 
CHAPTER XIII,   
THE PATHOLOGIES OF DEATH � 1. 
 
HITHERTO in our studies we have been considering the normal course of death; but 
if  
we are to understand the nature of death and its problems, we must also consider 
what takes place  
if the processes of death do not run their normal course and the soul fails to 
obtain release from the  
bonds of matter and lingers unduly in an intermediate state.  
 
The pathologies of the death-process can occur at 2 points: the state of mind of 
the person about to  
may be such as to prevent him from falling into the sleep of death; or having 
passed out safely,  
may either refuse or be unable to pass on to the second Death, and linger 
indefinitely in an inter-  
mediate state, becoming more and more abnormal as time goes on. There are a 
number of different  
forms of each of these pathologies, which we must consider in detail. The 
subject is a terrible one, but  
the best way to overcome fear is to face i t, and we never know when we may be 
brought face to face  
with these problems. The understanding of their nature robs them of the 
superstitious terror with  
which they are invested in popular thought and brings them within the sphere of 
those things which  
we can face and deal with.  
 
The spirit in which a person faces death is all-im- portant in determining the 
harmony or otherwise of thedeath-processes.  
76  
Just as the unborn child �presents" at the Gates of Life, the bony girdle  
of the pelvic arch, and its birth is normal or abnormal according to the manner 
of its presentation, so does the outgoing soul �present" at the gates of death; 
and just as he should enter life head first, so  
should he go out of it with the higher levels of consciousness detached from 
earthly things and drawing the lower centres after them. For the lower 
consciousness to be forced out by the collapsing body before the higher 
consciousness has gained a foot- hold in the Unseen is a trying experience.  
 
Psychics frequently meet souls upon the Inner Planes who have gone through this 
experience, and they are invariably confused and distressed like lost dogs until 
they are enabled to make their adjustment and take hold upon the new life. A 
large proportion of the  
service that is given upon the Inner Planes is directed to "rounding up� these 
wandering souls  
and helping them to find their right place.  
 
It is for this reason that the Church prays that we may be saved from sudden 
death, for the soul  
needs to make its preparations before withdrawing from the body. The soul of the 
man who is killed instantaneously, or who dies without recovering consciousness, 
has certain difficulties to overcome which do not beset the person who dies 
naturally and gradually. There are those upon the Inner Planes, however, whose 
work it is to deal with innocent souls thus flung violently out of life, and to 
minimise their distress; psychics tell us that these Watchers hover like hawks 
in the Hither Hereafter  
watching for outcoming souls, and going on swift wing to those who show any sign 
of distress.  
77  
It is rare that souls come out into the next life who have not got some friend 
who has already passed over to welcome them; but if they have to be ejected 
violently, as it were, from the plane of earth, and are thrust out backwards, 
struggling and resisting, their faces are turned towards the plane which they 
have left, and they cannot be induced to turn round and look towards the plane 
upon which they are entering. It is a case of malpresentation upon the plane of 
death, and skilled care is needed to restore normality.  
 
The man who fears death greatly is liable thus to �malpresent� and he is born 
into the next life  
with suffering, difficulty, and danger. If he fights up to his last breath, the 
Great Anaesthetist may be  
unable to get in his merciful work, and that soul goes through the death process 
in full consciousness.  
Such souls generally fail to realise that they have died. They are accustomed to 
look upon death as synonymous with the extinction of consciousness, and if they 
find that they have not lost consciousness, and still retain, in their own 
imagination at any rate, same body they have always had, though devoid of 
sensation or weight, it takes some persuasion to  
convince them that they have passed through the Cates of Death and are 
disembodied. They see  
themselves still as having their accustomed form,  
and they cannot be made to realise that it is only a thought-form in their own 
imagination, and that  
nobody else can see it unless he is psychic. They naturally associate this form 
with their familiar  
haunts, and because they think of themselves as being there, ipso facto, see 
footnote, they are there, and can be perceived by psychics and sensed by any of 
their  
friends who are at all sensitive, often with very un- fortunate results.  
78  
(footnote. Ipso facto is a Latin phrase, directly translated as "by the fact 
itself", which means that a specific phenomenon is a direct consequence, a 
resultant effect, of the action in question, instead of being brought about by a 
previous action.) 
 
The person who sees death coming, however, knows what to expect, and when he 
wakes from the sleep of death he is prepared to find himself without his 
physical body and so has no  
difficulty in making his adjustment. In fact, people who have been to the very 
verge of death and returned again have often reported that when they recovered 
consciousness they were amazed to find  
that they were alive, and at first could not be convinced that they had not 
died.  
 
The dead man who does not know he is dead naturally receives a shock when he 
finds that he is impalpable to those with whom he expects to be able to get into 
touch. He speaks to the watchers at the bedside, and they do not answer him. He 
stretches out a hand to touch them and attract their  
attention, and it passes right through the shoulder upon which he would lay it. 
To him, they are  
ghosts, and he is overwhelmed with bewilderment.  
He wanders from place to place of his familiar haunts, seeking to accost those 
he knows, but they turn a deaf ear to him. Presently, however, he may  
find one who, being psychic, may be aware of his  
presence.  
 
 
 
Here to insert some similar on just this: 
Adelma von Vay, (An Austrian baroness, herself is an excellent medium from the 
1800s, and through, which more spiritual value food has enriched the spiritual 
literature,) recounts in, study in the spiritworld,  how an officer, Captain A., 
who fell in the war in 1866, even several months after his death, was not fully 
aware of his change. She wrote even a message from him. He had come, he said, to 
make a visit to his old friend and comrade, Captain K., who at that time visited 
Baroness von Vay. About himself, he recounted that he was wounded at the battle 
of the Nachod and then fell into a kind of hibernation. But when he regained 
consciousness, he called on to his comrades and rushed into the worst fight and 
"bet the Prussians emphatically, " forcible, and  
curiously enough without a hair bent on his head. Then he went to his home, took 
the first train, then by car and last walked, he went on foot. But at home there 
was no one who recognized him he said. 
Yes, he found to his astonishment that he might have been/became, invisible and 
pondered much on this. Now he had sought out his old friend mr.K., who he knew 
was a spiritualist, to ask if he could explain this. He also expressed his 
surprise that Baroness von Vay 'sat and led a record of everything he said."  
 
(In fact it happened such that A.'s guardian spirit led the medium's hand and 
thus echoed his thoughts). He acknowledged that he hardly had any body, yes, he 
was so thin that he could go through the smallest chink. And yet he owned a body 
that he felt hunger, (he was in mortality a great gourmand) and thought it was 
sad that he could not eat as much as before. A cigar he had to have and then he 
would have a chat, because it had always been his greatest pleasure.  
Only after several s�ances it succeeded for  his friend mr.K. to convince him 
that he had left mortality. So real was this even for him, and so earthbound he 
was. But as he had been a good-hearted man, it went relatively easy for him 
after he had come to clarity of his (new) condition, to shake off the earthly 
shackles. 


 
 
Now we come to an important question, especially important for the readers of 
these pages, who being interested in these subjects and giving them their 
attention, are generally in possession of some degree at least of awareness of 
the Unseen, often in fact of more than they realise. They have got to be 
extremely careful how they deal with the panic-stricken disembodied soul, or 
they may find themselves in the same situation as the would-be rescuer of the 
drowning.  
79 
The wisest thing they can do, unless they are experienced psychics, is to refuse 
to attempt a  
rescue for which they are ill-equipped, and to go quickly to fetch help, asking 
the services of some  
person or group with the necessary knowledge who will take the wandering soul in 
hand and help him  
to adjust himself and go on with death's journey into the fuller light. For 
remember this, once a soul  
has crossed the Great Divide, the way of light lies ahead, not behind; the one 
thing to do is to thrust him off from the earth-plane and by all means in our 
power to prevent him from obtaining a foothold upon that dark and slippery shore 
that leads down to the waters of Lethe.  
(a river in Hades, afterlife, whose water when drunk made the souls of the dead 
forget their life on earth.) 
 
Make him turn round and swim to the other bank whether he likes it or not;  
it is the kindest thing to do, however he may cry out against it, and the swim 
is well within his powers  
if he will but try. With each stroke that takes him away from the dark shore of 
Death-in-Life he is  
nearer to the Life-after-Death.  
 
He is struggling from darkness to dawn, and the way becomes  
brighter as he advances. Do not let us fear the dead when they come to us, but 
do not let us allow a panic-stricken disembodied entity to clutch us round the 
neck, like a drowning man, in its efforts  
to remain on the plane of form. The cowardice of a departed soul may evoke our 
pity, but it cannot  
command our sympathy and we ought not to pander to it. To do so is not to help 
him, but to condemn him to a terrible fate, the fate of the Earth- bound. At all 
costs he must be made to let go his  
hold on the plane of form and induced to set out upon his journey to the Great 
Light, which shall en-  
lighten even his darkened consciousness.  
80  
 
The man who dies an accidental death, passing  suddenly out of life in the full 
possession of his  
faculties, is usually dazed but not distressed, because death has come so 
quickly. He feels nothing and his mind is more or less a blank, or working very 
slowly and disconnectedly. The newspapers often remark upon the extraordinary 
fortitude of those who have been severely injured in an accident; any- one who 
has ever been in an accident knows that  
the shock is its own anaesthetic, and the pain and collapse do not come till 
later. Often they do not  
know they are injured till someone draws their attention to it. The severity of 
the injury is in-  
variably in inverse ratio to the screaming.  
 
In some cases of head injury, a person will linger for days, or even weeks 
before finally passing out.  
In those cases they are for most part as deeply unconscious upon the Inner 
Planes as they are upon  
the physical Plane, but towards the end of the time, when the body is getting 
ready to set the soul free,  
there may be brief periods of dream in which they glimpse the Inner Planes more 
or less dimly. In  
such a case the outgoing soul can be greatly helped by the rites of the dying, 
even if unconscious, and  
there should be prayer, at the bedside if possible - even where there is deep 
unconsciousness, and this should be kept up until they breathe their last. If 
unable to be present at the bedside in the flesh,  
imagine yourself to be there, and you will be present in the spirit, and the 
outgoing soul, waking to  
psychic consciousness, will see you, even if the bystanders do not.  
81 
A great deal of help can be given in this way, and the soul is prepared 
subconsciously for departure even when there can be no conscious preparation.  
 
 
 
CHAPTER XIV,  
THE PATHOLOGIES OF DEATH, 2.  
 
INTENSE fear, as we have already seen, prevents the soul from falling into the 
sleep of death and going through the death processes in a normal and harmonious 
manner.  
 
We must bear in mind however, that there are two kinds of fear, the fear  
of the person who will not go to me et death as he should when his time comes, 
and the fear of the person who is being attacked. In the latter case, the fear 
is not of death, but of the attacker. Souls thus thrust violently out of life 
are kept from the sleep of death by their fear, even as are the others,  
and do not realise that they are disembodied, nor that they have passed beyond 
the reach of their  
attacker. For a time there is terror and confusion, but that is soon allayed by 
the services of the Invisible Helpers.  
 
We have no need to be anxious for the welfare of the souls of the innocent 
victims of violence. They pass on to their own place and are speedily soothed 
and restored to normal.  
 
The thought-form of their fear, however, is another matter, and this may remain 
at the place  
where the crime occurred as an exceedingly jnvid image in the thought-atmosphere 
of the spot. If  
anyone comes there in whom the etheric double is loosely knit so that he has 
some capacity as a  
materialising medium, the thought-form may even take on a shadowy shape and the 
sounds of the  
struggle be heard again. Let it be clearly realised.  
 
84  
 
however, that the unfortunate victim of a crime is not earth bound, and 
compelled to haunt the spot of his murderer, and victim which remain. No one is 
suffering; it is alarming and unpleasant but  
Not dangerous, and can be readily dispersed by the use of the appropriate 
methods, some of which  
suitable for use by persons who are not trained occultists, I have given in my 
book, Psychic Selfdefence.  
 
The practice of holding a service on the spot where a violent death took place 
is also of the greatest  
value, for it breaks up any thougt forms that may have been left behind in the 
reflecting ether. Firstly  
it enables thought to be concentrated for meditation much more effectually than 
can be done if there is  
no focusing point for the mind to centre upon.  
Secondly � it enables the meditations of several persons to be syncronised, thus 
greatly reinforcing the effect of their work. 
 
The following little service may be found helpful in bringing rest to the soul 
of one who has passed  
out of life suddenly and unprepared, and of easing of  reconciling the hearts of 
those left behind. Even  
if there be none to assist in the performance of the ceremony, it should 
nevertheless be read aloud  
with the appropriate actions as instructed. It is not nearly so effectual if 
performed silently.  
 
If it is not possible to perform the ceremony at the scene of the tragedy, let 
something intimately  
associated with the deceased be held in the hand of whoever takes the part of 
celebrant.  
The ritual can be performed by a single person, but it is more beautiful and 
effectual if performed  
by two, the one reinforcing the other. In our terminology, they are called the 
ministrant and lector.  
 

 
 
RITUAL FOR THE PEACE OF THE SOUL THAT HAS PASSED OUT BY A SUDDEN OR  
VIOLENT DEATH.
 
Ministrant: At eventide it shall be light.  
 
Lector: The Lord is my light and my salvation,  
whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be  
afraid?  
Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;  
though war should arise against me, in this will I be content. I had  
fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the  
Ever-living. Wait upon the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall  
strengthen thy heart. Wait, I say, upon the Lord.  
 
Hymn 103.Jesu, lover of my  
soul. 
 
Ministrant (kneeling):  
All-loving and heavenly Father, look down upon our grief for one (those)  
taken suddenly from us in the midst of life and strengthen us that we may  
have courage and confidence in Thine unfailing mercy.  
 
Amen.  
 
Mmistrant: (Raising right hand as in calling attention and pressing to his 
breast the relic  
of the departed held in the left hand).  
Let us now summon our friend (gives full name) to join in our service, with  
us adoring the All-merciful Father of us all.  
 
(All present visualise the deceased standing facing the ministrant.)  
 
Ministrant: Let us pray.  
 
AU: (kneeling, and visualising the deceased kneeling with them).  
 
Jesus son Mary, have mercy upon us. 
 
Christ, son of God, have mercy upon us.  
Jesus, son of Mary, have mercy upon  
 
Mmistrant: O Master Jesus, Lord of love and compassion, who didst descend into 
the  
place of death and preach to the spirits of prison, take, we beseech Thee, the  
soul of our dear one into Thy loving care. O Thou good shepherd, seek that  
which is lost, and bring the wandering soul safe into Thy fold.  
 
All: Amen.  
Lector: Jesus saith: "Come unto Me, all ye  
 
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Verily, verily I say  
unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice  
of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. The people that sat in dark-  
ness saw a great light, and to them that sat in the region and shadow of death,  
light is sprung up.  
 
Ministrant: O Father of Lights, in whom is no darkness nor shadow of turning, 
send, we  
beseech Thee, the angels of Thy Presence to minister to our beloved one,  
who passed unprepared, that he may not wander as a sheep lost upon the 
mountains, but be  
gathered safely into the fold of Thy Son our Saviour, Jesus Christ.  
 
All: Amen.  
 
Hymn 223.  " Hark, hark, my soul, angelic songs are swelling."  
 
Ministrant: (kneeling). Lord, now suffer Thou Thy servant to depart in peace, 
according to  
Thy word, that he may enter into Thy rest until it shall please Thee to bid him  
go forth again in Thy service.  
 
All: Amen.  
 
Ministrant: (rising and making the Sign of the  
Cross over the place where the deceased  
has been visualised as standing).  
Depart in peace, beloved friend,  
marked with the Sign of Christ.  
 
 
 
There are certain points to be observed if this  
ceremony is to be magically efficacious. Firstly  
there must be some link with the departed, and this  
link can be of various forms. It may be the link  
of place, when the ceremony is performed at the site  
of the tragedy; or it may be the link of time when  
it is performed on the anniversary of the tragedy; or  
it may be known to 0ccultists as a magnetic link. 
 
 
All who take part in the ceremony should visualise  
the departed as standing on a particular spot, and  
imagine him entering into the ritual of the service  
kneeing, when they kneel and praying with them. 
  
This builds up a thought-form which provides a point of contact with the 
departed spirit. It is not  
designed to produce a materialisation, for this would be undesirable. But it is 
essential to the efficacy of the operation to obtain the presence of the 
departed the visualition of his physical form and the simultaneous calling his 
nameis the readiest way of doing this. 
 
This method should only be used when it is desired to get in touch with a 
departed soul, which may be wandering on the astral plane, in order to enable it 
to pass onward upon its journey and complete the process of departure which the 
violent and unprepared death may have disorganised. To  
employ it to induce the departed soul to return again  
and again to comfort us in our affliction is unjustifiable, for it is very 
harmful to the soul to be thus held to the earth-sphere. 
 
 His condition may be likened to that of a man who has attempted to leap  
across a stream and has missed his footing and fallen into the mud and reeds of 
the nearer bank. We call to him, attract his attention, and reach him a hand and 
pull him back to shore again ; but we only  
do this in order that we may be able to give him a fresh start. If, having 
grasped his hand, we cling to it, we should thwart his purpose. Once he has  
been enabled to gather himself together upon firm ground, he is able to take a 
run and leap, and this time he should land safely on the further bank.  
 
It must be clearly realised that the dead man, once he has quitted his house of 
flesh, must at all costs  
go on and complete his journey before the night of the soul overtakes him. If we 
delay him unduly by  
constantly recalling him to contact with the earth- plane, we expose him to the 
worst evil that can possibly befall him, the state which, by occultists is 
called Death-in-life and by spiritualists, earth-bound.  
 
Normally, if left to its own devices, the soul will eventually succeed in 
reaching the further bank, but  
it is in our power to help greatly in that process in the way indicated.  
CHAPTER XV,  
HOW THE ADEPT MEETS DEATH.  
 
IT is a maxim of the Path that those who have overcome are known by their 
serenity; the Adept  
dies, as he has lived, serenely. Death has no terrors for the man who knows the 
actuality of reincarnation through his own memories of past lives.  
 
He has died many times before and the process is  
familiar to him. He is accustomed daily to withdraw consciousness from the brain 
and enter into the Higher Self in meditation. He knows that the time has now 
come to go out through that familiar gate and close it behind him, returning not 
again.  
 
Through long years of discipline upon the Path to adepthood he has been laying 
up treasure in heaven ; he is accustomed to think of himself as a spirit, not  
as a physical body; for him the body is but an observationpost which he has 
constructed for himself upon the plane of earth.  
 
He knows that the call to withdraw has come to him for one of two reasons; his 
physical body may  
be no longer a serviceable machine, and it is better and cheaper to scrap it and 
get a new one than to  
patch up that which is past repair. Or it may be that he has completed his task 
upon earth and is  
summoned to go up higher. He accepts death freely and without cavilling, for he 
knows that if it were  
not his Master's command that called him forth, all the powers of Death and Hell 
could not prevail to  
drive him out of his habitation of flesh.  
92  
As he awaits the processes of the body that shall  
open the gates to him, he sinks deeper into meditation, seeking to distil the 
essence of life's experiences, observing the lessons it has set him, noting 
those he has learnt and those which are as yet imperfectly acquired, and 
striving by intensive effort to complete his realisation of those lessons before 
the time comes for his departure. Soon he will know whether he has completed his 
task or  
whether he is destined to return to earth again to finish his work. 
 
 
 
If he finds that earth-life is not yet finished for him and that he is to 
return, he will bend his energies to the task of constructing the archetype of 
the etheric mould which is to give form to his body and  
direction to his destiny, when he comes once more to earth; he endeavours to 
engrave upon the seed-atom the memory of the Mysteries wherein he has been 
initiated, thereby surrounding it with those  
�trailing clouds of glory" with which the initiate soul is invested when it 
passes out once more  
through those gates, which when seen from above are the gates of birth and when 
seen from below are the Gates of Death.  
 
Clearly and persistently he formulates his ideal so that his soul, when it goes 
forth, shall be directed towards its goal and not wander aimlessly in the other 
world. He knows that within a cycle of three lives he has complete free will. If 
this life has borne  
the fruits of past endeavour, then he may count with reasonable certainty upon 
the next life, seeing the  
achievement of his aim. As soon as he finds that his grip upon this life is 
loosening, the adept is preparing for the next life. 
93  
 
For the adept, there is no parting from those he loves; he has long learnt to 
love the spiritual essence  
of each soul, and the loosening of the silver cord and the breaking of the 
golden bowl mean to him the  
casting down of the barriers that separate him from perfect union with that 
which he loves in each one  
of those dear to him.  
 
Which is best, to be in physical touch with those whose souls are remote from us 
through lack of sympathy, or to be in a spiritual union of perfect sympathy and 
understanding with the real, die immortal and indestructible Higher Self of one 
dear to us?  
 
The former is the real separation, not the latter.  
Those who have the higher consciousness can commune together independently of 
the body while they are still in this earth-life, and death only increases their 
faculty of communication. They are far  
closer to each other spiritually when there are no longer any barriers erected 
by the limitations of the body.  
 
When the time comes for the adept to set forth, he summons to him those who are 
dearest that they  
may ease his parting and companion him upon the first stages of his journey. 
Those who can come in  
the flesh gather about him ; those who cannot, come thither in the astral 
projection ; and those who have gone on ahead through the great Gates are 
summoned also that they may return and await him upon the threshold.  
The Magic Circle is drawn about him, sealed at the four quadrants with the Names 
of the four  
mighty Archangels, and candles burn at head and foot. All sit silent in 
meditation while the dying  
man treads once more the Path of withdrawing, the path of symbol-vision that he 
has trodden so often  
when rising on the planes.  
94  
 
As he withdraws, the Gates swing softly for his passage, and those who  
are watching see in the spirit-vision the coming of a Mighty One to meet him, 
the Archangel of his  
Order; a light shines about the bed like the last ray Of the setting sun darting 
from under a cloud, clearly visible even to the physical eye, and the soul of 
the adept is gone.  
 
It is the promise of the Mysteries to their initiates that they shall go in full 
consciousness and be met by the Great Initiator; it is also the privilege of 
those of his brethren who companion the initiate upon his last journey that 
they, too, shall stand upon the  threshold and look beyond  
into the hereafter and see for themselves the path they will follow when their 
time comes.  
 
the end.

First published 1930. 
About the Author.
Dion Fortune is the pen name of Violet Firth, one of the most mysterious and 
significant figures of the British esoteric tradition of the early twentieth 
century. Born in Llandudno, Wales, in 1890, she exhibited strong psychic 
tendencies even as a child She decided at an early age to pursue a career in 
nursing, whished her to an interest in human psychology. She became an early 
Freudian, but soon saw the limitations of psycho analysis and pursued the deeper 
implications of human psychology in occult and magical traditions. Raised on 
Christian Science gravitated first toward Theosophy and then to the Order of the 
Golden Dawn, where she became an initiate and received the hieratic name of Deo 
Non Fortuna, which eventually became her pen name, Dion Fortune. In 1922, she 
formed her own esoteric society, The Society of the Inner Light. Dion Fortune s 
legacy is her writings, both fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, her books 
Psychic Self-Defence, The Mystical Qabalah, Through the Gates of Death, and 
Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage still stand, 75 years later, as the 
premier statements on their respective subjects.  

More: 
 
Dion Fortune (born Violet Mary Firth, 6 December 1890 � 6 January 1946) was a 
British occultist, Christian Qabalist, ceremonial magician, novelist and author. 
She was a co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, an occult 
organisation that promoted philosophies which she claimed had been taught to her 
by spiritual entities known as the Ascended Masters. A prolific writer, she 
produced a large number of articles and books on her occult ideas and also 
authored seven novels, several of which expound occult themes. 
 
Fortune was born in Llandudno, North Wales, to a wealthy upper middle-class 
English family, although little is known of her early life. By her teenage years 
she was living in England's West Country, where she wrote two books of poetry. 
After time spent at a horticultural college she began studying psychology and 
psychoanalysis at the University of London before working as a counsellor in a 
psychotherapy clinic. During the First World War she joined the Women's Land 
Army and established a company selling soy milk products. She became interested 
in esotericism through the teachings of the Theosophical Society, before joining 
an occult lodge led by Theodore Moriarty and then the Alpha et Omega occult 
organisation. 
 
She came to believe that she was being contacted by the Ascended Masters, 
including "the Master Jesus", and underwent trance mediumship to channel the 
Masters' messages. In 1922 Fortune and Charles Loveday claimed that during one 
of these ceremonies they were contacted by Masters who provided them with a 
text, The Cosmic Doctrine. Although she became the president of the Christian 
Mystic Lodge of the Theosophical Society, she believed the society to be 
uninterested in Christianity, and split from it to form the Community of the 
Inner Light, a group later renamed the Fraternity of the Inner Light. With 
Loveday she established bases in both Glastonbury and Bayswater, London, began 
issuing a magazine, gave public lectures, and promoted the growth of their 
society. During the Second World War she organised a project of meditations and 
visualisations designed to protect Britain. She began planning for what she 
believed was a coming post-war Age of Aquarius, although she died of leukemia 
shortly after the war's end. 
 
Fortune is recognised as one of the most significant occultists and ceremonial 
magicians of the early 20th century. The Fraternity she founded survived her and 
in later decades spawned a variety of related groups based upon her teachings. 
Her novels in particular proved an influence on later occult and modern Pagan 
groups such as Wicca.