Heaven and hell are really states of mind, not geographical locations. Even here we live in heaven or hell, the choice is ours. The world we inhabit after death is not far away up in the sky. It is around and about us, interpenetrating the world we now live in. Those we have “loved and lost awhile” are not in some far-off, inaccessible place seared on pink clouds at the right hand of God and playing golden harps. Very often, they are close by our side, striving to help and guide us and loving us just as they did before parting.
The evidence reveals that love, like life, is stranger than death. It is love that proves to be the compelling force, striving to break down the barriers, which man in his ignorance has created, between this world and the next in order to achieve spirit communication. Often there is grief on both sides of the veil. There are tears shed over loved ones who had died and the grief they experience when they try to reach but fail to make their presence known.
There are many spheres of existence that are invisible to us because they function in a different manner from the Earth. Millions of sound vibrations are lost to us because they are outside our hearing range. And millions of vibrations of sight fail to be registered because they are beyond the scope of our eyes.
Microphones and radio receivers enable us to hear what is normally beyond the range of our ears. The telescope and television will bring into focus what is beyond our vision. The inhabitants of the spirit world are very real even though we cannot hear or see them.
There are, however, highly sensitive individuals who have developed their innate psychic faculties with the result that they can tune in to the spirit world and its denizens. These human television and radio sets are called mediums. They become the agents through whom the spirit communication is achieved.
There is nothing supernatural about this happening, though it is supernormal. Everything in the universe is in accordance with natural laws. They are divided by God, and God is perfect. If it was God’s will that we should be ignorant about His natural law then we would know nothing about them.
God is not only perfect but all-powerful. God is spirit. He is not an old man with a long white beard who sits on a throne in heaven. To picture God as a human being is to impose limitations. Were He human He could not be in all places at once, neither could He hear every prayer.
God is not a person but a creative universal spirit. Wherever there is life there is spirit there is life. We exist because a spark of divinity is within each one of us. This is a diving relationship in which God is our Father and we are all His children.
We can, by our lives, fan the spark into a flame so that a greater expression of divinity is made known through us. The result will be to sustain and uplift and help us in our spiritual development. And we have the free will to reject and ignore the spark of divinity.
The result is that we fail to make the progress we should and deny ourselves the beauty that life has to offer.
We do not believe in vicarious atonement as preached in some orthodox religions. We regard Jesus as an example, not a saviour. Man has no saviour but himself. We are each personally responsible for our sins and must atone for them here or hereafter. It is far more moral to acknowledge our sins and try to make amends than to try to place them on the shoulders of another. We believe that Jesus was divine, but only in the sense that we are all divine. There is a difference of degree but of kind.