John Heslop, who died in the early Twentieth-Century, did not believe in “Spiritualistic” ideas. He kept himself and his spirituality fairly much to himself.
And yet, when he died, he found himself in the Christ Sphere, which I think we’d call today the Seventh Dimension.
He sent back to his wife numerous reports of what life was like there. At Christmastime, it might be enjoyable to read some of his descriptions.
How can I tell you of this new and beautiful life, I, who could never speak of these higher truths, even to you? But I was ever striving to live the Christ life on Earth and to understand the deep things of God. My soul and mind were centred in the spiritual, below all outward activities and below my pain. …
My present life is so full, so complete in Christ. How wonderful is the mystery of holiness. The soul rising from perfection to perfection, unending, age after age. But for the glories of these higher spheres I have no words. They transcend all human thought. (1)
We never hurry here. This is the land of infinite leisure and of infinite peace. (2)
I try to give you some dim and faint picture of a spiritual beauty and perfection far beyond your ken, but just enough for an impression of the glory and beauty and joy of this other side. But it is only as you cultivate spirituality while you dwell in the earth-life that you can enter at the death of the body into this glory.
You cannot even see or partake of it, until either on Earth or on this side, you desire it beyond all else that the divine love may fill you and be expressed by you. … Tell our friend … there are cottages, as well as palaces, in the sphere of our Christ. (3)
Everyone in this Christ Sphere knows his own imperfection and need far better than he ever did on Earth. As we rise to fuller heights of spirituality, we receive higher gifts and powers.
Often times we are permitted to direct the waves of Divine love toward you and to bend circumstances for your help. We are, in actual truth, ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who are heirs of salvation. (4)
I am only in a higher stage of development here, and need to progress every day toward the Source of all light, just as you do. I have greater powers, fuller opportunity than you have, and freedom from all Earth’s sufferings and limitations. But I am just your John, knowing my own imperfections a great deal better in this pure and holy atmosphere than I ever did on Earth. Indeed, I am a babe in all things here, where all beauty and perfection are blended, and where the wisdom of all the ages is concentrated.
Think of that! The greatest in music and art, the most advanced in science, vast problems solved, mysteries unraveled, and every form of religious thought all lying revealed to the eye and the mind. It is a stupendous feast, ready for us as we gain power to perceive and appreciate it, and all eternity in which to learn to understand it.
And the needed preparation is begun by the discipline of Earth. If the lesson is learned there, and the soul freed to rise above the hindrances of the world, making its home with God, then death is only the portal to a joy and delight beyond anything you can even dimly imagine. (5)
You are right to point out to our friend the great difficulties we encounter in trying to explain the spiritual, in words and similies of the material. Yet that is the only way in which we can give you a picture of this Christ Sphere.
We try to do for you what an artist does when, for instance, he paints a woodland scene. After all, it is only paint and canvas, but his artistic power enables him to depict the spirit of the spring, which entered into his soul one day in the words. … When you look at his picture you do not think of the paint and canvas at all, only of the spring morning. (6)
Footnotes
(1) John Heslop through F. Heslop, medium, Speaking Across the Border-Line. Being Letters from a Husband in Spirit Life to His Wife on Earth. London: Charles Taylor, 9th ed., n.d. [1912?], 2. The higher dimensions, generally, are undreamed of. Our earthly minds cannot fathom what the higher-dimensional experience of the divine qualities is like.
(2) Ibid., 2.
(3) John Heslop to his wife, F. Heslop, in ibid., 9-10.
(4) Ibid., 25.
(5) Ibid., 45-6.
(6) Ibid., 9.