by Mrs. Kelway-Bamber

The following are transmissions as given (in 1916) to his mother from the other side from Claude who had passed recently, a casualty of World War I.

A DAY’S WORK

You want me to give you details of a typical day of my life? You know there is no time here—that is only a limitation of the earth plane—so we will make it a day by your calculations, and suppose we begin at midnight, for that is when I come for you.

You know, for I have often told you, how when your body sleeps your soul comes over here and we spend hours together, you have sometimes dimly remembered things that happened as in a dream. Thousands of people come over in this way every night, and are more awake and alive while here than on earth in their mortal bodies. To do this, people must be spiritually evolved to a certain degree. Well, we go together to various places; sometimes we work on the third sphere among those who have just wakened in the spirit-world, and are bewildered, and puzzled, and strange in their new surroundings. We explain to them where they are and bring their friends to see them.

I know it seems curious to you that you should be able to do this even better than I, as you are still in a mortal body; but that is the very reason. You see, you are the “half-way house,” as it were, for along that little cord that connects your soul and body are traveling thoughts and desires of the world in which you live. You are therefore more in touch with the earth and bring its atmosphere with you, and so feel more familiar to one who has just come over. You are still controlled and limited by your earth-body while connected with it.

Night before last we were helping a boy whom we could not make realize his new condition, when his mother came, to whom he had been devoted (she had been in the spirit-world two years). He burst into tears and said, “I know now I am dreaming, for my mother is dead and I shall never see her again.” His mother put her arms round him and kissed him, and we left them together.

The meetings and reconciliations here are wonderful and touching; you and I often hug each other for very joy and sympathy….

On other occasions I take you to see one of the beautiful scenes in the higher spheres which I have described to you. We have been together to the “Blue” country, where there are a series of wonderful mountains which impress one by their curiously calm grandeur: no rugged rocks, nor jagged outlines; the heights are majestic but smooth and rounded, and surround one on every side. As far as eye can see the color everywhere is blue of varying shades, from almost gray on the mountain-tops to purple in the valleys, and every intermediate shade wonderfully blended in between.

Color has wonderful properties. In this case each color is confined to a certain particular locality. For a few miles away everything is varied in the normal manner. There is also a “Pink” country and a “Yellow” one. You get these effects on earth sometimes for a few minutes in the glow of a sunset.

Blue is a spiritual color, pink a love condition, and yellow an intellectual one.

These color-effects help spirits, not by giving, but by stimulating the perception of those particular qualities. As you know, here in the “Summerland” spirits are still learning and progressing, but are very far from perfection.

Many come over here well developed mentally but lacking in spirituality; others are very spiritual but require that mental quality which is necessary if their spirituality is to be more than a divine ecstasy; while some have neglected to cultivate along with these good gifts enough of that love and charity which is essential to those who are willing to bear each other’s burdens and so fulfill that law of Christ, which is the true way of progress.

People on earth are now recognizing the properties of color and are beginning to use it in a small way. It is useful for the cure of certain diseases, for it has a marked effect on mental conditions, and, as you know, various colored lights cause certain curious changes in plants and flowers.

When it is time for you to return, I take you back and then go home for a rest. I bathe in the lake, and, refreshed, go either to earth again to help on the battlefield, or if I am not required for that I go on with my study of psychic laws.

After this, it would now be your afternoon, I have some recreation and amuse myself; later I go to look up friends on earth. On other days I listen to music, which is beautiful here beyond description: it thrills one. You know I used not to care very much about it on earth before I came over.

Tell Daddy when he plays the piano in the evenings I see his music in “colors” all the time. Nearly all major keys are like primary colors: “C” and “G” specially look red and yellow, “E” not so decidedly; “D,” “F,” and “A” are secondary colors such as mauve and green and certain shades of violet.

“B” is white. The sharps and flats are varieties of these; they tinge of blended colors. The colors vary in relation to the other notes played; for instance, “C” sharp, though actually the same note on the piano, is different when used as “D” flat.

Occasionally I talk to most interesting people, men who were noted on earth and left their mark there as great statesmen, scholars, poets, musicians, teachers, etc. There, of course, I should never have known them,—differences of age, wealth, position, etc., would have made it impossible,—but here there are no artificial barriers, and a community of interest is a sufficient bond of friendship.

You say you are surprised some of the men I mentioned have not progressed higher. Well, they could have done had they so desired, but many are anxious to help those on earth still, to see work and ideas through that they themselves originated; others have remained to help their friends through this world crisis.

When you get beyond the third sphere contact becomes more difficult, and it is only when you begin to feel “impersonal” and have no direct interest left in people on the earth-plane that you desire to go on. Eventually these spirits will probably progress more quickly through this work, for as they give help to those below it is also given to them, according to their needs, by higher spirits.

The law of compensation works in this way even in your world, for there, if love is given unselfishly, generously, and wisely, it will be returned in greater measure by spirits in the higher life by thought and influence which will materialize according to the requirements of the earth-plane.

Meanwhile, life is very happy here and full of interest; even the grief and pain of those you love and have left behind does not affect one in the old way, for one can see beyond the trouble of the day and know it is only for a little while.

VARIOUS PEOPLE, CHILDREN, AND AFFINITIES

What makes this place so interesting is the variety of the people in it, just as the world is interesting for the same reason. It would be very dull if human beings were all exactly of the same stereotyped pattern physically and mentally. I think that is what made the old idea of the conventional Heaven so uninviting; either you would have had to lose all individuality and become an “angel to pattern,” so as to be suitable to the environment, or else one would have to lose one’s sense of humor; for can’t you imagine the idea of one’s friends, large and small, old and young, fat and thin, some with some knowledge of music, others with none at all, sitting, clad in white, playing harps?

As a matter of fact, when we do eventually get to that Heaven which I believe exists, we probably shall have become “stereotyped” to a certain extent, for we shall be so refined as to have become “all spirit,” and so nearer God. Probably our joy then may be in music, for it is, I suppose, the most exquisite sense, and even here it has held me thrilled and spellbound; and you know I am not musical, and could rarely rise to anything higher than a catchy, popular melody, or “chopsticks,” to which you so much objected!

I suppose these ideas in the first place started through the visions of saints who did not realize they were seeing states “afar off,” and thought they were conditions soon after death….

One amusing man I have met here is quite a “crank” in his way. He says he thinks, after having passed through the seven spheres of which we have heard, that spirits must pass on still farther, as otherwise even these places would be overcrowded eventually: he thinks they may go to the moon! He has no grounds for this theory; it is, he acknowledges, purely his own idea! If reincarnation is a fact, as I believe it is, then of course there would be no overcrowding, for so large a number of spirits are constantly returning for further earth experience. In any case, as it is probably several thousands of years away, there will be plenty of opportunity to study it farther on!

I also know some men here who are very keen on engineering and are trying to invent laborsaving devices of every kind.

They think it will be possible to invent tiny machines which will enable men to fly, not by sitting in an airplane, but by propelling each individual separately through the air—not high, just a little above the ground. It would require very great power very much compressed into a small space, so that you could strap, say, a large knapsack on your back and sail along above the ground without fatigue. It may come some day, but not in your time, I think, Mum.

Another man I know thinks moving pavements raised about fifteen feet above the road, on the principle of the staircases at the tube stations, will be used in large and crowded cities.

They would go in one direction on one side of the road and in the opposite on the other, with stairs and stationary platforms at intervals. There would be no attendants required, for no tickets would be necessary; the expenses would go on to the rates and it would be free to all—though I acknowledge the small boys would find it irresistible till they got used to the novelty of it! This would save a certain amount of vehicular traffic. There would still be the ordinary pavement below for those who wished to walk slowly or shop-gaze.

You want to know something further about the children who come over? You remember at first you were quite surprised when I described your brother John to you, and did not recognize him when I told you he was a grown-up man; you had always thought of him as still remaining a little child.

He looks only about my age: of course in earth-life he would have been over forty. Here little ones grow up but never become old, for they have no cares and worries nor the pains of a material body to trouble them.

Many women here care for these little ones. Some have left children on earth they loved; others, the childless, who love children, look after them. Every child, even if unwanted on earth, can find a loving mother here.

Many an earth-mother comes over at night when her body sleeps to see her baby, and though with her limited conscious mind she may think of it as an infant always, her spirit-mind knows the facts, as she will recognize when she herself comes here permanently. These children grow in soul and mind and body, which is just as strong and more substantial than an earth-body, for it is indestructible.

They are all beautiful in varying degrees. They learn very quickly, for their minds are open: they have no consciousness that evil exists, so more readily absorb all they are taught here, and they very soon go on to the higher planes.

While on the third sphere they return to earth to play with children there. It is part of their education, and enables them to understand, and so later to help others still in the mortal body.

As many children in the world are clairvoyant they often see these spirit playfellows, and if they could keep this consciousness it would often be a help to them in later life.

Unfortunately, many grown-up people who do not understand these facts discourage the idea, and so in time the child loses this consciousness. The children here all see Christ: they seem to instinctively understand Him and His Mother. Having occupied a mortal body such a short time they easily go back to the things of the Spirit….

Now you want to know what happens when one of a married pair dies young and the other lives to be old? Well, it depends to a certain degree on the life of the one left on earth as to what extent death separates them. The few years of time would not actually make much difference. I will give you some examples of cases I know here, and explain through them what I mean. The actual soul does not “age” permanently, though it carries the impress of the body when it first comes over, but by degrees here, freed from material cares, the signs of “age” disappear and the spirit-body looks like that of an adult in the prime of life and in perfect health. You can’t tell by looking at a person in the ordinary way on the earth-plane how their souls would look at first on release from the body; you might judge from the character, perhaps.

I know a man here (let’s call him “Charles”) who came over fourteen years ago, leaving his wife (we never speak of widows here), to whom he was devoted. They were true affinities and spiritually developed people, and though not spiritualists professedly she was so conscious of her husband’s continued existence that she lived as far as she could as she knew he would wish.

She neglected no duties, made no parade of her great grief, and studied in every way in order to be his mental and spiritual equal when she should rejoin him. She came over recently, and on this account looks as young as he does.

I know another case of a different kind (let’s call the husband “Tom”), of a young couple married at the beginning of the war. He was killed at the Front a year after.

His wife made a great parade of her grief, wore elaborate, expensive, and becoming mourning, and even contemplated suicide, but decided it was too painful! She then found she could get into communication with Tom. Eventually he was not permitted to return to speak to her, for she only wanted him to help her in various material ways, and made him unhappy with continual reproaches and grumbling. Being out of the physical world he was no longer in a position to help her there, but she had no interest in spiritual or even intellectual things. Under these circumstances her soul will not of course develop properly, and so will “age” for lack of care.

She has married again, but “Tom” does not grieve; he quite understands they were unsuited to one another, and had they lived on earth longer together would soon have discovered it.

Excerpt from Claude’s Book