Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/268

248 If spiritual life has been won by the departed, they cannot return to material existence; because different

states of consciousness are involved, and one person cannot exist in two different states of consciousness at the same time. In sleep we do not communicate with the dreamer at our side, despite this proximity, because, though both of us are dreamers, we are wandering through different mazes of consciousness.

In like manner it would follow, even if our departed friends were near us, and were in as conscious a state of existence as before the change we call death, that their state of consciousness must be different from ours. We are not in their state, nor are they in the mental realm wherein we dwell. Communion between them and ourselves would be prevented by this difference. The mental planes are so unlike, that intercommunion is as impossible as it would be between a mole and a human being. Different dreams and different awakenings betoken differing consciousness. When wandering in Australia, do we look for help to the Esquimaux in their snow huts?

In an age of sin and sensuality, hastening to a greater development of power, it is wise to consider whether it

the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing you. What the prophets of Jehovah did, the worshippers of Baal failed to do; yet artifice and delusion claimed that they could equal the work of Wisdom.

Science only can explain the incredible good and evil elements now coming to the surface. Mortals must find refuge in Truth, in order to escape the error of these