Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/267

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DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD
261

are, so to speak, the givings off of his spirit. God's Spirit is the element, Soul; but of this Soul, none but Himself knoweth.

And as I floated there on the sea of knowledge, animpulse sprung up to know more; and these questions were fashioned in my soul, and that soul derived from out the mystery the answers appended to each question: "Is not man forever in the human form?" In human form, yes; in human shape, no: Man was once the monad—a finite sun. He still is so as to himself (see a previous section), and the body which he uses is but an out-creation, as are his mental pictures; with the difference that the latter are volitional and circumstantial, while the former is constitutional. The shape,—organic, is the very best adapted to the purposes it serves, and it is the effect of a force lying behind the personal consciousness. Its use is for the material; it could have none in the spiritual world, save as the effect of Soul-habit, or as a means of discipline in the lesser or "lower" departments or conditions thereof. "How of dead infants?" Infants have spiritual bodies, and retain them till discipline places them beyond the necessity. In all cases, the bodily forms are attachments to the human, so long as the human is in the sphere of discipline,—hence moves within the possibilities of Good and Evil. When they leave this latter, and merge into the sphere of Uses, the external of the soul corresponds to its new state. A soul is immaterial, as of the nature of Think,—hence needs no stomach to digest food, lungs to breathe air, legs for locomotion, and so forth; for all these are principles of the soul, with mere out-created organs. When it needs