(Continued from Part 1, yesterday.)
Children on the higher astral planes are not forced into a numbing conformity or a path that fulfills their parents’ wishes for them, Phyllis McLean tells us:
“[Children] are not influenced by the selfish desires of others to force them onto an uncongenial path, as so often happens on earth, when parents or guardians often endeavour to fulfil their own ambitions or retrieve lost opportunities through the lives of others.
“Here, the individuality of the soul is recognized and children are encouraged to make their own decisions. In this way, they achieve fuller development because they open their minds to the forces of inspiration without becoming clouded, of confused by the conflicting desires and emotions of others.” (1)
Consequently education is not tedious, as it can be on our plane of existence.
“Education is not the tedious affair it is on Earth. Knowledge is absorbed without undue effort. The mind retains the impression it has received. You would be amazed at the extent of the knowledge of quite small children on this sphere. Yet they are in no way precocious. Laughter and happiness are the keynote of this life for the children are one with the spiritual forces of nature, which they know and understand. (2)
The young often surpass the old in mental agility and creativeness, she tells us.
“Their creative ability far surpasses that of adults for they have the necessary faith in their creations and require very little help or direction in their moulding of spiritual matter. The result may not always be perfect, according to architectural standards, but it is certainly picturesque and colourful. Towers and turrets are popular on houses. These are often placed at precarious angles, but that does nothing to detract from their beauty.” (3)
Centers of Higher Learning
We’ve looked at elementary education. What does higher learning look like on the astral plane? Betthy Bethards’ source tells us:
“There are enormous libraries, universities, every type of creative outlet or knowledge all throughout history. Anything which the soul seeks to know, it can learn. All one has to have is the desire to learn and the belief that he can accomplish this.” (4)
Mike Swain provides more details:
“When you want to study the law and learn how it operates, you go to the Hall of Logic. There are many Halls of Knowledge and Wisdom here. You can go to any university you choose, though the lectures are all very informal; you discuss the subject with the lecturer, face to face. You can stay all day if you like; except that that could be forever, because we have no day or night here!” (5)
Teachers are always readily available, Judge David P. Hartch reports:
“There are teachers here who stand ready to help anyone who wishes their help in making real and deep studies in the mysteries of life – the life here, the life there, and in the remote past.” (6)
Study is unregimented and individualized, Mgr Robert Hugh Benson informs us:
“The school was very comfortably arranged; there was, of course, no hint of regimentation. Each student followed his own course of study independently of anyone else.
“He seated himself comfortably, or he went into the lovely gardens without. He began when he wanted, and he finished when he wanted, and the more he dipped into his studies the more interested and fascinated he became. I can speak from personal experience of the latter, since there is much that I have studied in the great library since my introduction to it.” (7)
These teachers, Claude Kelway-Bamber tells us, often come down from higher dimensions to teach, much like the Company of Heaven is doing with us (but in form).
“I know these things definitely; they are not my ideas, or ‘impressions,’ for I am taught them by teachers and guides from the higher spheres.” (8)
The higher colleges are not only open to those who’ve departed the Earth. Incarnated students also attend them at night. Nicola Tesla is an example:
“Every night for a long period of time I would leave my body while I was asleep and go to classes on the inner planes. I would participate in actual experiments in actual laboratories, attend lectures which would add to my understanding of the phenomena and principles of electricity, and then come back to Earth and wake up.
“I often did not have an immediate recollection of what I had done, but I knew even then that I had an enriched ability to make sense of problems. I had answers to questions that had been on my mind the previous day. I had new perspectives, new solutions, and new projects to work on.” (9)
Moreover, after his transition, he himself became a teacher in one such university, teaching electricity to incarnated students at night:
“I teach in a sort of Electrical College on the inner planes. I instruct many people while they are out of their bodies at night. They do not remember this instruction consciously, but the information is placed in their minds and, at the right time, they are able to use it.” (10)
Tomorrow let’s look at some of the teaching aids on this higher plane. What constitutes a book on the astral plane, for instance? What might we find in a museum?
(Continued in Part 3, tomorrow.)
Footnotes
(1) Phyllis McLean in Phyllis McLean in Lesley May, med., Letters from Mother. A Family Biography in Two Worlds. Ed. Edmund Bentley. London: Psychic Press, 1964, 91-2.
(2) Ibid., 92.
(3) Ibid., 89.
(4) Unnamed spirit teacher through Betty Bethards, medium, There is No Death. Novato, CA: Inner Light Foundation, 1976; c1975, 22.
(5) Mike Swain in Jasper Swain, From My World to Yours: A Young Man’s Account of the Afterlife. New York: Walker, 1977, 25.
(6) Judge David P. Hatch, Elsa Barker, medium, Letters from a Living Dead Man. Mitchell Kennerly, 1914, Letter XVI.
(7) Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson through Anthony Borgia, medium, Life in the World Unseen. M.A.P., 1993, 54.
(8) Claude Kelway-Bamber in L. Kelway-Bamber, ed., Claude’s Book. New York: 1919. Downloaded from http://www.spiritwritings.com/claude1.pdf, 18 Feb. 2008, 74.
(9) “Nicola Tesla Returns” in Robert R./ Leichtman, M.D., From Heaven to Earth: The Hidden Side of Science. Atlanta, GA: Ariel Press, 1992; c1979, 49-50.
(10) Ibid., 43.