Posted on 09 September 2024, 7:21

More than a few “spirits” communicating with “earthlings” have said that their world is beyond human language and comprehension.  And yet, efforts have been made to give some indication as to what that world is like.  One such effort was said to have been made by the famous American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887) through the mediumship of Marcella De Cou Hicks (1888 – 1942) and is set forth in the January 10, 1940 issue of “The Psychic Observer.”  I know nothing about Hicks other than that she authored a 1937 book titled “Eternal Verities,” and without more information supporting her ability and credibility, I have some reservations about summarizing in this blog what she was supposedly told by Beecher.  In a short preface to the front-page article, Hicks states that she heard from Beecher (below) frequently through the direct-voice mediumship of Henrietta Schnelker of Detroit, but that Beecher told her he would dictate a more complete discourse to her in her study.  For whatever it is worth, here is an abridgement of what Beecher later dictated.

"And just as spirit-souls are born into various and diametrically opposite conditions and environments, different races and nations; different social educational and governmental systems – just in like manner do spirit spirit-souls, at the time of transition, go into various conditions of Spirit; differing phases of advancement hereafter; varying and divergent places or points from which to start spiritual progress. All is according to the soul culture, development, and spiritual knowledge each has attained in the flesh, all of which have created for the ego a certain vibration rate which is in harmony with the rate of synchronizing groups here in spirit. And each spirit-soul naturally gravitates, according to LAW, to those of his own rate or kind.

Sound Logic

“Now you ask me, ‘Exactly WHERE is this spirit world to which disembodied earth folk take their flight? Now, how shall I answer you that? Can you tell me WHERE in eternal space your own earth plane or world is located? Indeed, you cannot, and except to locate it relatively, or in respect to its distance from other planets in the solar system which astronomers have discovered and named.  It is not possible to tell WHERE in space the earth world is.  Would you attempt to give the location of one specific drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean? In the infinite void of eternal space, there is neither up nor down; neither north, south, east, nor west. And as regards those other planets by means of which we assign earth its relative position in the solar system – where exactly are they? In a condition of boundless limitlessness, there is no such thing as locating any specific point – all is relative.

“And so, I say, neither is it possible to locate definitely the spiritual realms with respect to space, since the realms of spirit life are infinite in extent. Each planet with its attendant satellites, and the system to which it belongs, is afloat in a universe of spirit and inter-penetrated by spirit.

“Just as each drop of water, continuing its own individual microscopic universe, is only a part of the ocean composed of similar drops, each with its own individual life types – so the earth upon which human beings live is contained by, and exists in, an ocean of spirit – together with the similar worlds similarly contained.

“So far as I personally have been able to glean any definite knowledge, it would seem that spirit life penetrates to the farthermost points in space – although I have been given to understand that here and there exist voids or vacuum pockets that contain nothing.

“Most people think of spirit realms only in connection with the earth plane.  How foolish!  There are hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of planets inhabited by flesh and blood people in all stages of physical and mental and spiritual evolution. There are planets going through the primordial conditions that earth knew millions of years ago and planets inhabited by beings so much further developed in every aspect than earth people that in comparison they ae gods and goddesses.

“No, my dear, I am not digressing.  My point is this: All these people, upon death to their physical bodies, pass into spirit life. When you get the full force of this truth, you will realize how foolish it is to think of spirit life only in terms of the departed of earth.

Erroneous Ideas

“It seems to me, as I listen to people on earth discussing the spirit worlds, that most folks conceive of them as a series of disks, or flatlands, rising one above the other in graduated or ever increasing importance and inhabited by souls at certain definite levels of development. The general idea seems to be that after one has finished his lessons on one disk, he soars, climbs, flies, jumps, or takes the escalator to the next higher disk. There are even folks who can tell you exactly how many miles the spirit world is above the earth. They forget that what is above the earth in daytime, is below it at night. Tis whole idea is so cut and dried as to be actually mechanical in concept and, my child, nothing could be farther from the actual conditions.

“The fact is that the spirit world is practically analogous to your earth plane – not a series of planes, or flatlands but an expanse, infinite in extent, composed of innumerable phases, most of them merging rather than definitely separated.  You don’t go from floor to floor to floor, nor room to room, as in a great building or school but you progress or merge from phase to phase.

“In earth life there are many and varied regions, some ugly, some beautiful; some peopled by the low and degraded, some by the fine and the cultured – so the spirit world has its regions of varying vibration rates and those who synchronize with the rates of a certain phase inhabit that phase.  On the earth plane you have the dens of thieves and the abodes of honest people; the slums and the aristocratic neighborhoods; the segregated districts of the lewd and vulgar and the colonies of the refined and educated. You have the open fields, the woods, the mountains, the hot regions and the frigid zones. You have the city, the town and the country – all manner of phases and all degrees of degradation and culture and all separated as to vibration rates but existing together on the face of the earth.

What are Spheres?

“In spirit life groups of harmonious vibration and similar ideals associate together and it is never compulsory to affiliate with those whose vibrations are distressing or disturbing. Spirit life is one grand whole, containing all degrees of vibration even as the earth life so contains them. You on earth refer to our regions of various vibration rates as planes and spheres, etc. – those terms are all right but they often mislead in the concept they bring to the mortal mind.

“In a school, children of all grades mingle together in the same building, but for class work each group is by itself. The twelfth grader has nothing in common with the primary pupil and so they do not affiliate. As the student progresses he goes on to college, then to the university, and possibly post-graduate work in some great foreign university, taking one degree after another. He progresses into a higher and more advanced group of educators and intellectuals as he grows and develops mentally, yet he still lives in the same world and all those whom he has passed in his upward climb still live with him in the same world.  But their world has ceased to be his world and to all intents and purposes they live in different realms. As he continues to make more and greater progress, his associations keep pace with that progress and he removes himself more and more remotely from the ignorant and unlearned.  But if and when he reaches the peak of all earthly knowledge – he still lives on the earth plane, the same earth plane that harbors the human family in all its variations.

Strive for Perfection

“A human of earth may begin life as a slum dweller, in poverty and ignorance, but it is entirely possible for that person by dint of effort and application – the will to do and the determination to accomplish – to pull himself out of his environment and eventually make a dignified place for himself among the elect of earth.

“In spirit life exists an exact analogy to these matters. Just as one progresses from class to class in the school rooms of earth, then on to college and university, so the advancing spirit-soul progresses from phase to phase toward ultimate perfection. A spirit-soul may come here imbued with naught but malice – or merely frivolous.  He will then affiliate only with those of his own manner of malice or frivolity.  But once imbued with the desire to change his condition, all things ae possible to him and he may climb as high as his desire and perseverance will carry him…

“As I understand it, surrounding such individual inhabited planet are seven main zones of which the planet itself might be called the core…From the accepted fact of these seven zones, which seem to have been known to most ancient peoples, comes, I believe, all the references to ‘seventh heaven’ bound in the literature of mysticism, occultism, and the like. Each zone is composed of an infinite number of spheres or units, which in turn are composed of an infinite number of planes or divisions. Each plane or division in its turn, is made up of less phases, each phase containing countless groups of varying vibration rates. So that there is no gradation of spirituality or progress that is not provided for with exactitude…’

Spirits Progress

“In every cycle, the lowest plane of the first sphere is the three dimensional world created as substance matter and inhabited by spirit-souls in some manner of physical expression. Thus this earth is the lowest plane of the cycle of spiritual evolvement which its human inhabitants must encompass in their progression toward God-hood.

“Understand that there are realms of progress out in infinitude that one enters when he has completed his own cycle, or, in other words, completed all the development that can accrue to him up to and through the seventh zone.  Our information on what lies beyond the seventh zone is very vague. It takes millions or billions of years, measured in earth time, to achieve entrance into the seventh zone and one must have achieved a perfection of spirit that has made of him an angel. And still beyond this are infinite possibilities of progress…

“I do not care to go more deeply into this with you because it is too vague to me and besides there is no necessity. What people of earth want to know is what will be their immediate environment upon making their transition.”

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for bringing attention to this account.  For those readers interested in reading it in its entirety, the periodical in question has been digitally archived by IAPSOP [http://iapsop.com/] where the article is split across the Jan 10th, 1940 and Jan 25th, 1940 issues as follows:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/psychic_observer/psychic_observer_n32_jan_10_1940.pdf [pg.1, cols.1-3; pg.2, col.5; pg.3, cols.3-4]; http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/psychic_observer/psychic_observer_n33_jan_25_1940.pdf

[pg.3, cols.1-5].

As a general comment, there is likely a trove of scattered, shorter gems in such older periodical literature that is barely known, even for those who know the survival-related literature printed in book and monograph form quite well.  Such is the case for myself and I expect it is the case for many others.  IAPSOP is a superb resource for such material, although by no means the only such.

Your initial question regarding the reliability and provenance of this account is of course quite proper and necessary, but the actual content of the message is broadly – and even in its detailed account – consistent with many other unrelated ostensibly discarnate communications that we have.  In terms of topics covered, I thought the dismantling of the naive ‘geographic’ or ‘spatial’ notion of different spiritual ‘levels’, ‘planes’ or ‘spheres’ was particularly of interest.

Best,

Paul

Michael,

I have scanned the SA from 1928 to 1932 to see if anything was interesting. I am used to such searches and set the time period and used different search terms. I picked up a few search articles and this set the tone for SA. I liked these

1930 Article on Spiritualism And Raymond Lodge told his father, “My body’s very similar to the one I had before. I pinch my-self sometimes to see if it is real, but it doesn’t seem to hurt as much as when I pinched the flesh body. ..... .I can move somewhat more freely.” “Has he got eyes and ears?” Sir Oliver then asked. “Yes, yes,” the medium answered, “and eye-lashes, and eyebrows, exactly the same, and a tongue and teeth.”

1932 Article on FRAUDULENT MEDIUMS.  Someone has pithily said that ninety per cent, of is fraud and the rest has still to be explained. Laboratory of Psychical Research at South Kensington actively engaged in exposing the fraud and in explaining the rest. Indeed, this laboratory is one interesting and instructive places in all London. the craftiness of human nature on the one hand, amazing powers of being deceived on the other, revealed.

So SA would be slightly hostile prior to and including 1941.

Thanks,
Bruce

Amos and Keith,

Loved your comments. Amos you might have to ease up when giving messages as we break the news of the afterlife gently. The person loses their body and adjusts to their loss of name so leave them with their personality (for a time). The entity concept is kept to later.

Keith makes a good point about the advice we receive which is often contradictory. Summerland gets marketed in many ways. I group these messages in many different ways. One way is the time since the spirit has arrived – don’t ask the recently arrived of what is going on.

I have loved the various after life descriptions but I have weighted these by the group from which they come.  In other terms I attach greater weight to the descriptions by the group from which they come. Newbies do not get much weight.

Some after life writers have a church background. (There is a joke about a new arrival in heaven getting toured around. He sees a large wall and asks Why the wall? His guide says a certain religion is over inside the walled area. Why? He asks. The guide says They think that they are here on their own). I also have a low weight with the books from ex church people.

At present I am tracking the Myers group (I don’t like calling it Myers more Gurney, Myers for various reasons). I have given this group high weight. This group was not interested in describing the surroundings but only in proof of survival. The contacts by various SPR members in spirit to Sir Oliver Lodge (Edmund Gurney and others) and the continued contacts by this “Myers” group are my main focus.

The Scole Experiment book has a good summary of the Myers’s group attempts on page 146-47 to communicate. The letter left behind with Lodge did not match the messages received by Mrs Verrall (there were three messages received with the reference to the letter left with Lodge).

“For a number of reasons, it soon became widely believed that together with a number of “colleagues in spirit” this indomitable personality (sorry Amos) had formed a team determined to provide irrefutable evidence of survival by an entirely novel device.” Cross correspondences.

“Montague told us that transmissions were complicated”. (I get messages with the opening Stand by for Transmission which is strange phrase in itself).  On page 148 “Montague told us, at an early stage of the investigation with the Scole Group, several references were made by the Scole spirit team to people associated with the early years of the Society for Psychical Research and cross correspondences. There were at least half a dozen references made to sections of the Society’s reports – which were very accurate- and some of them related to the correspondences.

So Lodge has contacts by Edmund and Frederick (in spirit) by mediums, then cross correspondence and later Scole are all great for proof of survival but not much to market Summerland. ACD was asked if there were cigars in Summerland and he said that heaven wouldn’t be heaven without them. A nice video from ACD’s son Arthur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIgIwlnQtbY.

Thanks
Bruce

This interesting piece comes as a coincidence for me as I’m currently working on a new documentary with this same theme - What is it like? I’ll probably call it ‘Spirits Talking’ and I’ve found already that the understandings offered from the Other Side are often contradictory, so it is not an easy subject to summarise and be sure that any assertions are correct, since these spirits’ passages are hardly veridical. I also note that there are many more sources than Borgia and Myers through Geraldine Cummins. Thanks for this, Michael.

Bruce,
I can understand why Edgar Cayce used the term “entity” rather than “personality’ when he referred to spirits in the afterlife.  In my view, “personalities” don’t exist in the afterlife, at least not eternally.  It is a “Soul Consciousness” that continues to survive and in which the personalities of numerous lifetimes become a part.

One’s personality is dependent upon the form the Soul Consciousness finds itself in when in physical life. And that’s important because personality, as determined by the physical form and environment, is what influences one’s experience to learn and grow spiritually in the physical world. But, in the etheric world of energy and vibration, there is no physical form, as understood on Earth, in which the Soul Consciousness lives.  But I suppose it could manifest itself in any of its prior personalities if so desired.

The Soul Consciousness is the YOU that exists inside your head.  It is the thinking you, the feeling you, the emotional you.  It is neither male nor female, black, white or brown. The “personality” of the Soul Consciousness is ever changing as it incorporates its experiences in multiple physical forms to learn to love.  - AOD

Michael,

The Spirit World:  What is it like? is a great article, as always. When you provide medium contact, people always ask “What’s it like over in Spirit World?’. I answer “Same as here without your body and name -your personality is intact”. I often say “You can let me know when you get there.” Cayce used the term entity with a number for his readings.

Over the years I have read the various descriptions from those on the other side. Life in “the World Unseen” by Anthony Borgia. There are many other similar books. I did like this section in Anthony’s book.

“My first question was to ask him how I could put this matter right. He told me that there were several ways in which I could do so, some more difficult—but more efficacious—than others. I suggested that perhaps I could go back to the earth-plane and tell others of this new life and the truth of communication between the two worlds. Many, many people, he said, had tried, and are still trying, to do so, and how many were believed? Did I think that I should have any better fortune? Certainly, none of those who read my books would ever come within miles of receiving or crediting any communication from me.‘Let us assume that you have found the means to communicate. The first thing you will be called upon to do will be to furnish clear and definite identification of yourself. Quite probably, upon your first declaring who you are, there will be some hesitation about accepting your name simply because it carried weight when you were incarnate. However important or famous we happen to be when upon the earth-plane, as soon as we are gone to the spirit-plane, we are referred to in the past tense! Whatever works of literary nature we may leave behind us are then of far greater importance than their authors, since to the earth world we are ‘dead’.” p15.

And in the follow up book “More About Life in the World Unseen”: “Most of our conversation has taken place by the thought process—we are old friends—so that he reveals himself to us as the learned, cultured expert that he is. In common with the great majority of his race, he has retained his picturesque name, with some slight adaptation to spirit world conditions and circumstances.” p41

Michael’s article has In spirit life groups of harmonious vibration and similar ideals associate together and it is never compulsory to affiliate with those whose vibrations are distressing or disturbing.

My experience is that I can tell if they were used to commanding others when they were alive and they are often very frustrated by their dead status. I would also agree that you will fit in to similar interest groups by vibrations. I would imagine that we all will be active on the other side with our different points of view.

Thanks,
Bruce

Mike,

A rather wonderful explanation!

Best Always,
Yvonne

Mike T

Interesting take — heavy on the geo-spatial analysis, reflecting a Newtonian science-framed analysis of where heaven is. But if the mediumship was true, then the spirit was simply trying to answer in a way the average person could understand. Today we have both tran personal psychology and quantum physics to use as an explanation framework, so heaven is not a physical place but rather to a state of being.

Still, interesting take.
Mike S