Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/111

 same principle of induction as is concerned in the development of his personality. It is as the poet remarks:

"All angels form a chain which in God's burning throne begins, And winds down to the lowest plane of earthly things."

Understand, then, each individual is a link in that chain, all put together in the various degrees of unfolding. So that "as each lifts his lower friends, can each into superior joys ascend." As you would raise yourselves, raise the man next below you. As you would labor to save yourself, labor to save your neighbor. Your salvation consists in saving others. There is no way in which a man so entirely defeats his own happiness as when he attempts to make that happiness his highest end. The pleasure-seekers will bear me witness that the real happiness is in performing some duty or fulfilling some end, not with a view to getting happiness. If a man seeks after right, he can not avoid happiness.

Now you can understand that it depends upon you and me to determine our plane—to determine our condition in the Spirit-world.

Jesus said to his disciples that when he should go to his Father, they would see him no more, meaning that he should no longer appear in his form—no longer appear in the spheres of manifestation—Gehenna and Paradise. He can only be communed with by those in the same condition. But previous to going to his Father he told them, "A little while and ye shall see me." He was living then in his physical body, talking with his disciples through their natural under