Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
How to find your way in
the Word Gems library
return to home-page

After nearly 25 years of construction, and almost 60 years of research, Word Gems is a kind of small library now. This was not my original intention, but it just sort of grew into that. It's where I collect my gold-nugget findings. There are 1700 documents on the site; if printed, 10,000 pages might ensue.
Where to start and how to negotiate this labyrinth?
To begin, a most salient feature, Word Gems acknowledges the validity of "the scientific evidence for the afterlife."
Twenty Nobel laureates - physics, chemistry, medicine - have critically examined this afterlife-evidence and have accepted its reality. See a list on the "afterlife" page.
This research data supports the larger metaparadigm that consciousness, not matter, constitutes the undergirding of reality. Many of the early quantum-mechanics fathers, arguably, the greatest scientists of history, affirmed this tenet.
homepage: 100+ topic link-icons
You will find this list of icons near the top of the homepage – from “Afterlife” to “Zen.” Virtually all 100+ are constructed with the same layout and format.
Click on any topic-icon, and it will open to:
(1) an introductory page with many quotations from a wide assortment of thinkers (not all of whom I agree with). Near the top of this page, typically, one will find link-icons to an “Editor’s Report” or “Editor’s 1-Minute Essay” on the subject under review.
However, in a minority of cases,
(2) the introductory page will immedately access a primary article with no bank of general quotations.
homepage: site search and index
These two “search boxes,” located just after the 100+ topics, are valuable resources. For example, if you’d like to know if a subject or phrase is addressed in the Word Gems library, this search function will scan all of the documents and provide a report. Further, the “Index” box offers an alphabetical listing of every word on the site.
homepage: short essays and links to favorite items
Beneath the five books (featured with cover-artwork), to the bottom of the homepage, you’ll discover several short essays plus links to items of special interest. I would encourage you not to overlook these quick-read essays as they represent, in my opinion, some of the best material on Word Gems; for example, the “What We Stay Alive For” writing.

the central theme of Word Gems
It’s on the masthead of every page: “exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity.”
One of my books focuses specifically on how to access the "hidden riches" within:
However, "exploring sacred personhood" is investigated and presented, in the main, via an emphasis on “the scientific evidence for the afterlife.” For example, the vast majority of the 100+ topic-icons are addressed in terms of how they relate to the “afterlife” information. This is so because, as with true love, the knowledge and reality of the next world "changes everything."
With this in view, I might mention that, within the very large body of data concerning the afterlife, I've adopted a certain topic for special interest: authentic romantic love, its nature and purpose, how it plays out on the other side. Many articles and four books speak to this vital subject:
which among the 100+ to read first
The “Afterlife” icon is probably an easy choice for the "chief seat." There, I’ve listed 60+ points of evidence; I could have listed many hundreds but have included only what I feel to be the most significant.
After reading the “Afterlife” page, try one of my favorite writings – accessed by the “Summerland” icon. And be sure to read the “Editor’s Report” for this. It’s a collection of really wonderful information about how things work in our "home-world."
While the scientific evidence for the afterlife takes the spotlight on Word Gems, several other topics are also very important in terms of errant information which, for many, will need to be "unlearned." Where it's appropriate, I've posted the following "inset box" highlighting primary subjects for remediation:
Editor's Note: This article is part of a series; see the 8 link-icons below - each is best reviewed within a wide corpus of knowledge. My research, for nearly 60 years, attempts to get at what's real and true. Concerning priority of the topics, there's a song-lyric, "love changes everything" - so it is with the scientific evidence of the afterlife; its reality changes everything.
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Editor's Essay: the primacy of Universal Consciousness and how a better understanding of it might create for us a natural religion, a natural wisdom.
Editor's Essay: a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Afterlife: 10 Things You Need to Know upon Arrival
why inform yourself about the afterlife
Much could be said here, and I’ve already said it in many articles; but, essentially, the more you know about where you’re going and what will happen when you leave this world, the more confident, the less afraid, you’ll be.
Actually, the necessity for information here is a little more intense. Testimonies from the other side inform us that 75% of those crossing over will spend at least a short time in a dark place. However, let us not be troubled. If this should happen to any of us, not to worry, we can leave the same day. Education, not punishment, is the operative dynamic - see Sensibility: 1-Minute.
We are encouraged to avoid the hubristic self-delusion of “I’m going to live one life at a time and will deal with that later.” This becomes a formula for failure, or worse. If one were planning a first trip to Paris, it would be wise to inform oneself beforehand. And we invest a minimum of 12 years of schooling before embarking upon the adult phase of life, a mere temporary life soon fleeing from us, but then, for many, cavalierly presuming to enter our permanent home-world, an eternal world, without so much as a hip-pocket travel brochure. This kind of purposeful ignorance causes many to stumble upon the shores of what-comes-next in a confused and fearful state of mind, which, for some, could last a very long time until one finds one's bearings. For almost all of us, it’s not what you think over there, it’s not what you were told.

Eventually, or immediately, upon transition, we will find ourselves living in the "real world", Summerland - a spiritual, humanistic, educationally-progressive, not a religious, social order. The Church has absolutely no say there.
a society built around the individual, not the group
Summerland civilization, unlike that of the Earth, is not built around power-structures of the group, the institution, or society, but, instead, focuses on the individual, the growth and development potentialities of each person.
2.0 software upgrade
It's a solid world there, its inhabitants enjoying solid bodies, walking on solid ground, living in solid houses. Summerland is a perfected counterpart of the Earth, the upgraded 2.0 software version (the graphics are awesome, as the kids say), the original blueprint and mould, containing all good things of the Earth-plane plus a great many which are unknown on our planet. Again, to emphasize, there is no good thing here on the Earth which is not available in "the real world" - that's why they call it the real world; what we have here is just the echo, the faded image, the disposable practice turn. People worry, "if I don't get to experience such-and-such during this life, then I'll never find my heart's desire." Absolutely not true.

In Summerland we'll find birds in trees and flowers in gardens, universities and small farms, hide-away cottages and palatial mansions, concerts and theatrical productions, white-sand beaches for lollygagging and mountain trails for hiking, libraries and museums, houseboats and painted-desert retreats, public annual jubilee-festivals and private discussions with your best friend in your living room as you share a drink by a fireplace, art galleries and symphony orchestras, opportunities for far-flung adventure-exploration in the cosmos and secluded oases for quiet meditation, visiting august dignitaries sharing knowledge of more advanced realms and programs of heroic service just for the stalwart of heart ("damn few"), scientific research and poetry readings, reunion with lost beloved pets and therapeutic aid to once-abused animals, close friends and relatives getting together for backyard parties, proto-Twin Soul couples attending classes to learn about eternal love and marriage with a view toward having children of their own, on-the-job training to work as missionary-assistants in the Dark Realms, primary school-teachers, surrogate mothers for orphans, counselors to aid in finding the "true self," every kind of endeavor to serve the disadvantaged and, as one progresses in one’s chosen field, a day will come when “upper management” will ask if you’d like to enter a leadership position and run your own program.

It's a normal life for us to do normal things and lead normal real lives. It's where you get to do all the things you missed out on during your terra-mission. We will find Summerland to be not only the great healer but the great leveler, the grand reification of "the first will be last and the last will be first," a domain where fairness and equity finally rule; a strict meritocracy, such that, what we are, on the deep inside, what we've made of ourselves, is plainly revealed to all in one's energy-aura; no more deceptive smiles for the cameras, with the ultra-advanced there as the embodiment of total sincerity, no role playing, "what you see is what you get", and always on your side.
Editor's note: This kind of talk can make people nervous, because what about those hidden skeletons in the closet we never talk about? well, that's normal, we can make good on that, as here's the good news - everyone can change, everyone, with dedicated effort, no matter one's checkered past, can rise to the highest heights of development over there. How high is that? - you'd be surprised.
Even those who lost the most here on Earth will be made whole. It's a brand new level playing field. Recipients of gain will include those utterly oppressed and merchandized by Earth's power-mad upper class; also elevated are children who died young due to illness and, especially, the babies killed in the womb, those helpless scraps of human life which a godless materialistic society cavalierly deems to be rubbish and refuse. All disenfranchised entities will enjoy restoration of all lost opportunities for life and love; they will regain forfeited health and well-being, babies will grow up to physical maturity, all will find themselves totally repaired.
One does not need to be a saint to enter Summerland. Mistakes due to weakness are normal and, actually, no big deal. Just do your best, don't violate your own conscience, keep your spirit open and be willing to learn, avoid fear-and-guilt based religion, help others as you can, live as decently as possible, and this will be enough to begin.

But those who perpetrate atrocity with design, those who maliciously deprive another human being of any personal freedom - or support those who do as obedient cultish minions - will not yet be allowed into Summerland, but must first contemplate repentance in dark detention, sometimes affectionately referred to as "the rat cellar" or "the sewer pit."
from the Gospel of Thomas:
[Thomas said] "These sayings that you utter are laughable and ridiculous to the world, for they are misunderstood. How can we go forth and preach them, since the world does not respect us?"
[Jesus said] "I tell you the truth: whoever listens to what you have to say and turns away, or sneers, or smirks at these things, will be held in a cramped dark place... They will be imprisoned there..."

sewer-green slime, lizards, rats, serpents, bats
The following is channeled information from the other side as reported in Heaven Revised by Eliza Bisbee Duffey. See the entire quotation on the “sensibility” page.
A missionary spirit-guide is sent to the Dark Realms to help a woman trapped there. The account paints the scene, the hideousness of the environment, pools of sewer-green slime, overrun by lizards, rats, serpents, bats, “and all sorts of noisome creatures.”
The Guide finds the frantic and fear-crazed woman. It seems she had been there for a long time. In the course of the rescue, however, it was brought to light that she had killed her own babies with abortion.
However, this was not a case of a young girl, frightened and distraught, having made a mistake under panic of the moment. Instead, she had heartlessly smirked about it, thought it a joke, didn't even feel shame. In her own sorrowful penitent words:
"I murdered my unborn babes one after another. I had not the excuse of shame which I wished to conceal. I was a fashionable woman, and I wanted my time to devote to society and my own amusement, and children would be in the way; so I murdered them.”
Editor's note: see the "levels of consciousness" article, discussing that the shameless, those who lack even a rudimentary hesitancy to commit barbarity, live on the very lowest level of spiritual awareness. Many of these are found today as the frothing members of political parties who sanction Dear Leader's approval of ruthless and vulgar policies.
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None of this is pleasant, and not meant to be, but, as we've said, people can leave the same day, but the worst cases choose to writhe in suffering there for a long time; they're too angry and too hard-hearted to admit their waywardness, that they'd been wrong. They had believed their own propaganda that there is no survival of consciousness, wanted to believe this in order to license their rapacious ways; but when, to their utmost dismay, it doesn't work out that way, that there's no "big goodbye" or final curtain -- there's no such thing as death, only transition -- now they're really mad and want to fight. This is what Jesus referred to as the "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth": self-pity and outrage - "this should not be happening to me".
In Summerland, properly negotiated, we enjoy a fresh start to just about everything. We're introduced to life as it truly is, not as we learned in sunday school. Most will be very shocked and totally not ready. As my own father, via psychic-medium, communicated from over there, to the effect: "This is nothing like I was told it would be. The Church made a fool of all of us with its false teachings."
The following is channeled information via the mediumship of William W. Aber, the Psychic Research Society, as reported in “Beyond The Veil” (1902), compiled by J.H. Nixon. Testimonies were offered by numerous spirit-persons by means of full-form visible materialization.
“[Then] came [one] in the similitude of a young woman in garments white and glistening … speaking in a whisper, gave ... some of her experience: ‘My name is Stella. I came to the spirit world [as] a young woman. In the earth life I was what is there called a Christian. I was sincere and tried to be devout; and did live as nearly as I could to what I was taught… Of course, [at my transition] I expected my Redeemer to meet me and conduct me to His Father's glittering golden throne, but in all these years I have not found that heaven, nor that golden throne, nor that [judging, angry] God who sitteth thereon, nor His only begotten Son at His right hand, nor … one wearing that crown of thorns, nor Him who is judge of the quick and the dead; for all of those things I hunted [a very long time] and made diligent inquiry, but found them not. Was my whole religious life on earth a stupendous mythological idolatry? Surely it was, I began to conclude. But at last, after long fruitless search, I found friends, or rather, they found me, in this dark and forlorn condition [of ignorance and blindness, having been defrauded of the truth by a rapacious and merchandizing Church]; and I knew some of them, and they looked so bright and so happy! And they told me that the wisest spirits they had ever met in the spirit world had never found that Savior, nor that [judging] God, nor that [mythological] heaven — but they had found conditions infinitely more glorious and beautiful, in which human beings were enjoying happiness and sweet peace of soul that neither pen nor tongue of mortals or immortals could fully portray to human comprehension. Although my progress out of the conditions in which my [false] religion had placed me was slow, I am triumphantly above it now. And, in the hope that what I have been permitted to hint to you may reach many people of your world, and do them good, [I offer these things that my listeners might] avoid the long struggle I had [to endure] in order to reach [the truth of God, life as it really is]. I bid you, my dear friends of earth, good-night."
There's no wispy ethereal existence over there, no floating on clouds, no chubby pink cherubs sailing by, no pearly gates, no streets paved with gold nor strewn with palm branches, no white-marble thrones, no harps (unless you happen to like harp music, then go knock yourself out), no crowns, no Saint Peter as doorkeeper, no "ruling ten cities," no winged messengers (but for carrier pigeons), no pagan concepts as blood sacrifices to propitiate a blood-thirsty god, no halos, no saints to listen to prayer-requests, no holy trinity "and don't try to understand it", no such entities as Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael, no honoring of cynical death-bed repentance and no last minute absolution allowing the depraved to skate lily-white into bliss on a loophole-technicality, no such thing as unrequited true love as those who are romantically meant for each other always find each other in due time, no ruling religious class, no empty-chanting supplications with beads, no charades of spirit-life as legal-fiction sacraments, no holy days and no sabbaths, no such thing as reincarnation, no past lives, no karma, no pre-birth life, but, instead, one eternal life, always pointing forward, one eternal life, which will always be enough, no such thing as joining any fevered two in so-called marriage by means of magic word, magic hand-sign, and notarized signed document, no reigning goddess as de facto power behind the throne, no such thing as a harsh angry judging god, no holy water, no sacred shrines, no genuflections, no patron saints with magic wand, no single-gendered deity as male, no hell-fire, no society of the damned, no eternal punishment - or punishment of any kind - only education and opportunity of renewal and healing for all, no prayers for the dead as lobbying a venal god for mercy, no mysteries you're not meant to understand or question but only believe, no church-going and no priests/ministers/rabbis nor any robed holier-than-thou (at least, not in the sane neighborhoods), no exultation of mindless belief-as-willpower at the expense of rational thought, no infallible holy books and no infallible one-true doctrines, no apostles, no satan, no devil and no demons, no materialistic philosophy of external deity and external salvation, no psalm-singing, no holy mountains, no beatific vision to hold in thrall (except your eternal romantic Twin-Soul mate), no manipulating self-serving prayer as "inform the deity then ask for a favor," no such thing as holy relics, holy medals, or holy pictures, no holy music, no such thing as a worship service (as if God were so insecure and narcissistic as to need constant stroking), no round-the-clock groveling and flattery called praise and veneration, no hallelujahs, no hosannas. We could go on.
We must put away all this darkness, the empty godtalk, the pious prevarication, the sterile formulaic and ritualistic path to God, this farce and charade, this draconian mythology, this patent error and propaganda - which misrepresents authentic spirituality and the real God - a gross deception, fueled by the fear of death, imposed upon us, for centuries, by Despotic Ecclesia with its agenda of power-and-control over the hapless masses. In Summerland, all this parody and fake-news is finally over.
The following is channeled information via the mediumship of William W. Aber, the Psychic Research Society, as reported in “Beyond The Veil” (1902), compiled by J.H. Nixon. Testimonies were offered by numerous spirit-persons by means of full-form visible materialization. A visiting spirit-person speaks:
"Good-evening, friends… I am meeting cases every day, every hour, of troubled souls about their false religion, and these cases come here in such great numbers… I met a friend — I call him a friend… I met this friend who had been taught to believe in that [judging angry] God when he was on earth… but also to believe in the whole train of the usual theological concomitants… [I said] ‘When you were on earth you were taught of Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, whom God had prepared from before the foundation of the world as a savior of the world … And you come here among us looking for that God, expecting to find such an one. And for that Jesus. But, my friend, you see now that you have been awfully mistaught about the whole affair… And you find not your God nor your Jesus, and you may search all eternity for your God and Savior … and eternally you will not find them, nor your devil, nor your hell, nor your heaven.
one solid falsehood
"But you will find that your whole life on earth was lived as one solid falsehood… You come to us, and we are called upon to teach you anew of the God, the heaven, the hell; and to lead you out of that darksome superstition into the light of truth and eternal liberty.' And we meet many thousands like this one, wandering about in search of their Jesus and never finding him… And I am determined to teach your world, so far as I am able, of this great festering theological delusion."
[Another visiting spirit-person adds] “As vividly as he has set out the truth, yet it would be hard to present the far-reaching consequences of the false ecclesiasticisms of your world. And how common orthodox religious teaching of your world holds the souls of millions in bondage and sends them to spirit life in undeveloped conditions… [we] find that those victims of the false teachings are left in lower regions, for a time, to unlearn nearly all that they have been taught on earth.”

Summerland is a world of no favorites, no special plea-bargains because of who you know, no fawned-over celebrities, no intimidating titles, no two-tiered justice system for the haves and have-nots, no blue-blood royalty, no visible government rule, no barriers to entry, no frocked old-boys-club, no Dear Leaders, no elect, no entitled ones, no exclusive fraternities, no grasping elites skimming the cream, no hidden back-room deals, no clandestine power groups with their dark conspiratorial ways, no fake-news, no murdering of babies and calling it one's right of "choice", no big sloppy grins canvassing for support, no political saviors making promises in exchange for allegiance, no dismantling rule-of-law for totalitarian agenda, no postured authority playing the role of smiling benefactor -- instead, it is the dreamed-for world wherein everything is finally made fair and right, plain and good, with perfectly equal opportunities for all. Merit, study, hard work, selflessness, heroic intentions, consecrated devotion to the truth, makes its own way - without invitation or approval from (if it could exist) an envious superior - and sends one's stock soaring. Same rules for everyone, all sons and daughters of God.
It's the prime directive over there, from the very top, and no one can hold you back, or say a word, if you're sincere, thoughtful, hard-working, and service-minded. This is the grand fulfillment of the biblical "work out your own salvation." How far can you advance? as we've said - you'd be surprised.
There is immense personal freedom in Summerland, to become who you were always meant to be, to pursue Jeffersonian unique-and-private definitions of happiness.
Nothing good passes away in Summerland. When you find what you really like you can stay with it as long as you like. No one will bother you. It’s called the “real world” because of this sense of permanence - unlike the Earth-plane, which is the “shadow world”, the “pale copy”, where good things fade, suffer loss, or are taken away.
The following is channeled information via the mediumship of William W. Aber, the Psychic Research Society, as reported in “The Rending Of The Veil” (1898), compiled by J.H. Nixon. Testimonies were offered by numerous spirit-persons by means of full-form visible materialization. A visiting afterlife entity asserts:
"Man progresses more rapidly mentally after he has thrown off the mortal body, for he then gives no thought to food, raiment, or shelter for the physical body. He can pursue any study he takes up uninterrupted by petty cares of life... friend, the spirit world is the real world, and your world is the unreal. The spirit world never decays or dies, while your world is steadily passing away.”

from Arthur Findlay’s The Way Of Life:
"Another native of Glasgow [Scotland], now in that beautiful world, told her sister [via direct-voice medium John Sloan]...
Oh, Jean, it is beautiful, and I have such a dear little cottage to stay in with a beautiful garden. I had never seen such a lovely garden before with glorious flowers of all colours, flowers that you never see on earth, and they do not fade. They bloom all the time, and, when you pick them, others just seem to come in their place. What beautiful perfumes they have, and, Jean, there is honeysuckle growing up at each side of my door, masses of it. I just wish you could see it, it is so lovely, but you will see it some day, dear. I will show it to you.

from Dr. Carl Wickland, “Gateway Of Understanding”:
“Shortly after passing from the physical life, a spirit, Mrs. H. R., sister of one of the members of our psychic circle, was brought to an understanding of her new condition while [speaking through trance-medium] Mrs. Wickland, and gave an enthusiastic description [in “real time”] of her [very] first spirit vision."
Oh, look at that picture! A beautiful walk, with beautiful flowers on each side. There are verbenas and forget-me-nots as far as you can see, then yellow daisies with black centers, and in another row white shasta daisies that come up like a wall. There are lilies, maidenhair fern, all kinds of dahlias and honeysuckle. All these make the wall on each side of the road.
verbenas and shasta daisies
Across the road is a gate which is made of three statues, a lady on each side and in the center another lady holding out her hands over the other two. The statue on one side is Love, on the other Truth, and the one holding out her hands is Wisdom - Wisdom gained through Love and Truth - the Understanding of Life beyond the Gateway. The gate is beautiful scroll work of roses. Now they open the gate and here is my sister, bringing beautiful flowers! She says, “Come with me to the everlasting home, where there is no sorrow, no sickness, only joy and happiness.” Such a beautiful home!
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On first introduction, many will say Summerland sounds too good to true. You'll want to read the evidence for yourself. Many of the great scientists of history have reviewed the evidence and have accepted it as valid.
1700 documents, 10,000 pages: an attempt to encapsulate all of WG
If pressed to distill and epitomize the sum-and-substance of the entire WG site, I would venture this:
We are immortal beings, of vast unexpressed potential “with no discernible upper limit.” We are “sparks of God” and cannot die, sent to the Earth, one trip only, to individuate, to become persons in our own right, to "wake up" to inherent potential. We are to discover “God within” and live from that sacred center. We are to actualize, to bring to the surface of personality, the "inner riches," to become who we truly are. As daughters and sons of God, our presently-dormant “made in the image” potentialities secret an astonishing array of embryonic abilities, eventually to blossom and unfold “superhero” ultra-advanced powers of mind and body. We are to learn how to become an open channel to God's energies, thereby enjoying a "private tutoring" from the divine parent.
This unveiling of the "true self," this "translucence," a shining through, "of the eternal splendor of the One" and of the Truth, prepares us for what comes next - a splendiferous mode of living in Summerland, our home-world, where one's unique and personalized definitions of happiness are reified; including, eternal romantic love with a darling companion, a perfectly matched Twin Soul, deliciously mirroring, complementing one's essential self.
We cannot deny to ourselves, but only delay, with suffering, that which God has planned for us to do and become. We postpone our joy by refusing to access the god-life within. This readily occurs when we fail to take responsibility for our own growth and, instead, surrender personal sovereignty to any external authority or power-structure, any “infallible” guru or purported inerrant way. The truth is a living thing, within us, as we are unalterably, indissolubly, linked to the Source of Life. As such, we do not need "saving" as Big Religion pontificates but only an opening of the eyes to the "factory-installed" inner riches.
Poets speak of our distorted vision, an abrogation of existential mandate, as "we feed on night, make inward bedlam and will not come out," a succumbing, in its many guises, to the fear of death; how few "would crawl out from under the obscure to stand defenseless in the open sunny air." All this, this surrogate living, this delusional capitulation to "I don't have enough" because "I am not enough," this repression and self-distraction, this "embedding oneself in other-power" -- anything that hinders, anything that misdirects, or, as so eloquently stated by Susana Wesley, "whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, however innocent it may seem in itself” – whatever diverts attention from sacred destiny and mandate for growth, becomes the essence of evil for us.
'this great truth'
Missionary Spirit Guides in the Dark Realms speak of "this great truth": that, change and progression are ever possible; indeed, assured. We cannot, ultimately, defraud ourselves, try as we may, of the good things planned for us. Happiness is being stored up for us like an inheritance, safeguarded in a spendthrift trust, beyond the squandering reach of an immature beneficiary - yes, even for recalcitrant ones who presently spurn, and writhe, in the spheres of probationary suffering.
An ancient senior Guide, serving as missionary in the Dark Realms, with great beneficence of mind, addresses his younger helpers on the future of humankind:
“To what ultimate height of development we shall reach, I know not—none can know since there can be no limit to our knowledge or our progress. But I believe that, could we foresee the ultimate destiny of our own small planet, as we can, in part, judge of it from seeing the more advanced ones around us, we should learn to look upon even the longest earthly life [with its inherent suffering], and the longest saddest probation of these dark spheres, as but stepping stones on which man shall mount [so to speak] to the 'thrones of angels' at last.
"What we can see - what we do know and may grasp - is the great and ever present truth that hope is truly eternal and progression is ever possible, even to the lowest and most degraded and sin-stained soul. It is this great truth we would have each of you to preach, both to mortal and immortal man, when you return [as missionary spirit-helpers] to the Earth-plane and to your work there; and, as you [yourselves] have been helped and strengthened and taught, so do you feel bound by obligations of gratitude and ties of Universal Brotherhood [and Sisterhood] to help others [receive the same].”
Editor's note: This comment by the senior Guide stands as glorious and wonderful mission statement for all those who awaken to the god-life within - yes, "this great truth." On the "Summerland" page, I've repeatedly stated that there is no vacuous celebrity culture over there, no worshipping the stars, we're all just friends and neighbors; however, if anyone were to be worthy of laudation -- and the truly advanced would never even hint to encourage or seek for this -- we sense that the venerable servant-missionary Guides, such as the speaker here, constitute the "rock stars" in that world; and everyone there knows this.
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One of the universe’s great paradoxes:
true spirituality, one’s higher sentience, a better level of consciousness, is not obtained by trying very hard, by religious rituals, prayer, fasting, vow, or pilgrimage - but simply by quietly observing the inner disorder
What is it like?

It is like planting an acorn; within, lies dormant a towering, mighty oak. But how is this bold expression of floral life brought to manifestation? - not by great effort or trying very hard, not by “seizing” for advantage...
READ MORE
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From “The Vital Message” (1919) by the great afterlife researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock" fame:
“Now let me epitomise what these assertions [of and from the next world] are. They say that they are exceedingly happy, and that they do not wish to return. They are among the friends whom they had loved and lost, who meet them when they die and continue their careers together. They are very busy on all forms of congenial work. The world in which they find themselves is very much like that which they have quitted, but everything keyed to a higher octave. As in a higher octave the rhythm is the same, and the relation of notes to each other the same, but the total effect different…
“In its larger issues this happy life to come consists in the development of those gifts which we possess. There is action for the man of action, intellectual work for the thinker, artistic, literary, dramatic and religious [work] for those whose God-given powers lie that way. What we have both in brain and character we carry over with us… Let no woman mourn her lost beauty, and no man his lost strength or weakening brain. It all awaits them once more upon the other side. Nor is any deformity or bodily weakness there, for all is normal and at its best.”

postscript
The following is reproduced from the "Summerland" page:
"a perfectly normal world, a life packed with thrills"
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Afterlife testimony, via psychic Geraldine Cummins, from a soldier killed in World War I: Cummins reported that "Maclean [the once-fallen soldier] said he was having an amazing time. He's found his own crowd [fellow soldiers] and they, including himself, were all so immensely relieved to find that they were alive and, not only that, were neither in [a depressing religious] heaven [with harps and chubby cherubs], nor in [a burning punitive] hell, nor in any other hot spot, but they were in a perfectly normal world, leading a [perfectly normal] life packed with thrills."
Editor's Essay: Summerland
Editor's Report: The Scientific Evidence For The Afterlife
Editor’s Essay: After 30 years of investigation, here’s what I’ve found as the most convincing evidence for post-mortem survival.


Editor's note: This photo “Earthrise” was taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts on Christmas Eve 1968 as they circumnavigated the Moon. It’s been called the “most influential photograph” of history. I adopted some of its mystical allure for my article “Earthrise Restatement of The Wedding Song" - one of my very favorite writings in the collection.
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The Dazzling Darkness is a concept representing a frame of mind untrammeled by the dysfunctional ego. Therein, freed from base-alloy animal inclinations, one might apprehend not only the identity of one’s true mate but also a realization of the living presence of God in one’s life. READ MORE
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