Life in the lower stages of the astral world duplicate in every detail our lives on earth.

"The next stage of life to earth is a replica of your world of matter," declared Silver Birch. "Were it no so, the shock for the many who are uninstructed and ignorant would be more than they could stand. And so it has to be accomplished by very easy stages. The next stage of life resembles your world. That is why so many do not know that they have passed beyond the physical.

"Here essentially it is a world of thought, where thought is reality. And, being a thought world, thought moulds every expression of its life and its activity. Being so near to your world, and peopled by men and women who are naturally still very material in their outlook on life, the expression of the thought is very gross and so, whatever they think is in terms of physical things.

"They cannot think of life apart from its physical aspects. There has never filtered into their consciousness any understanding of a life apart from the purely physical. They cannot visualise spiritual activities and, because they cannot visualise them, they have no place in their scheme of things. But there are degrees of astral life, for gradually as awakening comes, the grossness slowly but surely becomes more refined. And life, they begin to see, is something beyond its material aspect. When spiritual realisation dawns they are dead to the astral world and they begin to live in the world of spirit. There are many deaths and many births."

The lower astral plane is for the uninstructed and the ignorant, those who are unaware of the existence of spiritual realities, who cannot visualise anything beyond the purely physical. The astral world is part of the world of spirit. It is one life in many varying grades, from the lower reaches to the highest stages. It is not divided into watertight compartments.

You do not climb from one sphere into another; you grow, you evolve. The lower gives way to the higher. You 'die' and are born again and again. You do not lose the astral body in quite the same way that you lose the material body. It becomes rarefied, it becomes refined, as the lower drops away. That is its death, for death really means transformation, resurrection, the rising of the higher out of the lower.

Your "dead" relatives are closer than you know. They know your secrets, the unspoken desires of your minds, your wishes, your hopes and your fears. And all the while they bring their influence to bear on you, to guide you so that you may be able to extract from your earthly lives the experiences so necessary for the growth of your souls. They are not vague, shadowy, nebulous beings, but real men and women who love you still and who are in reality closer to you than ever they have been before.

There is no 'parliament' in the spirit world because there is not need to make laws to regulate the lives of the people who dwell there.

The natural law, takes care of people in the spirit world because they are confronted with it in a form which is inescapable. They no longer have physical bodies; the problem of physical life does not concern them. They are now expressing themselves in spiritual form and the natural law is in operation. There is no need for any intermediary.

In the halls or buildings of learning there are collections of varying kinds, of objects relating to earthly life throughout history, and also collections of interesting forms of spiritual life. For example, flowers that have not bloomed on earth and many other phases of natural life unknown to the third dimension. There are examples of these in the halls of learning.

Gifts, talents and faculties which people had on earth do not end with death. Death brings them greater freedom and the extended opportunities to express those talents.

Telepathy is the common method of communicating with another. But it is possible for those who know how, to address vast numbers and to reach them, even when they are not themselves present.

There are no newspapers in your earthly sense, because there is no necessity to chronicle happenings, as you do. Information is constantly being dispensed to those who should have it by the ones whose occupation it is to spread these facts. There are people engaged on the task of disseminating these thoughts. They are specially trained for it.

If someone passes on who is known to many people by a certain name, it may be convenient for him to keep that name as long as it is necessary for him or her to be so identified. That may take hundreds or even thousands of years. But once you have passed beyond the magnetic field of the earth, the name does not matter because you are then known for the individual that you truly are. Once you have passed the stage of earthly association and reached the span of spiritual life to which you are thus entitled, you emit a light, an aura, a radiation, which indicates who and what you are.

There are many, many books. There is a duplicate of every book known to earth, and there are many other volumes of which there are no originals on earth. There are vast halls or buildings dedicated to all the arts, and literature has its place among them. It is possible to obtain knowledge of any subject in which you are interested.

There is nothing in your world of matter with which you can compare the life of the spirit, freed from the trammels of the flesh, escaped from the prison of the body of matter, with liberty to go where you will, to see your thoughts take shape, to follow out the desires of your heart, to be freed from the troubles of money. This is the world where the artist finds all his dreams come true, where the painter and the poet realise their ambition, where genius has full power of expression, where the repressions of earth are swept away and all gifts and talents are used in the service of one another.

On the other side there are no clumsy words to express inspiration, but where thought is the living language and reveals itself with lightning rapidity. This is the world with no money worries, no competition, no driving of the weaker to the wall. No unemployment, no slums, no selfishness. No sects - only one religion - Love. No sacred books, only the operation of the divine laws to instruct one and all.

To die is not tragic. To live in ignorance on earth is tragic. To see the garden of the Great Spirit choked with the weeds of selfishness and greed and avarice, that is tragedy.

To physically die is to enjoy freedom of the spirit, which has been imprisoned behind the bars of the material body. Is it tragic to be released from suffering, for the soul to come into its own? Is it tragic to see wonders of colour, to hear music that does not belong to material expression? Do you call it tragic to express yourself in a body that has no pain, to be able to roam all over the world of matter in a flash and to taste the beauties of the spirit life too?

Flowers such as you have never seen, colours such as your eye has never beheld, scenes and forests. We have birds and plants, we have streams and mountains. You have nothing to compare them with. And you will be able to enjoy them, for, even though you will be "ghosts", you will be real ones!

Remember - you visit the spirit world every night during your sleep time. That is your preparation. Otherwise, the shock of transition would be too much for you.