My dear, I am so glad. I wanted to get to you quickly. I prayed I might. This is wonderful, I want to tell you so much. I want you to know just this, that death is all nonsense. I did believe it was, but my body somehow did not. Now I know. It was so easy and so right. I got very tired and so drowsy. I slipped off in the morning, into a light sleep, I think. Then I saw strange lights, curious glowing threads. I felt myself floating and my brain seemed to clear. I said to myself, “I am quite well, I knew I should recover.” I soon began to realize what that recovery meant. I felt so free mentally, I longed to write things and to meet people, and to talk to them. I felt as if I were twenty again, and as if I were going out … to free … the whole world. It was an astonishing feeling.

Then I got rather sleepy again; the threads still held me and made me sleepy. As I rested several [deceased] people came to me. They were dear friends—one was my dearest. There was my mother, but changed and so young. Then I saw others. I was so excited. I felt that the world was the lonely place, and I had come Home. I found myself in a kind of buoyant mist of pearl color, and those who came to me said they must slowly help me out of my body, breaking those threads. So I did as I was told and kept very quiet. Then gradually there came a change, the threads disappeared. I was in a cloud that took shape gradually and I found it was my own shape, just the invisible body, and I learned from the others I could mold it and make it with my mind. Isn’t it splendid? You will understand what it means because you have the creative feeling, all that is so intensified here. I wonder how all my dear friends are—I do get glimpses of them but I can’t get into the threads of their lives.

I will tell you first of that rising up and floating as in some pearl-grey mist; and then later, I saw my poor old body, and it did look so foolish. I was delighted it was not mine any more. Oh the relief of it! Then I thought of dear people who were alive, and I prayed that I might at least get a glimpse of you, [Elizabeth], and Ann [still alive on Earth]. I saw you asleep, looking very tired, but peaceful, and I tried to make your spirit know; but it was not quite ready to pierce through the mist.

There was the breaking of the threads for me when I was escaping from my body. It was very easy because of the help old friends on this side gave. They broke the threads gently, one by one. I found myself looking at myself, and feeling so utterly free, so radiantly happy, because of the rush of new life and energy into me, the marvelous freedom from pain. You know the strange spell at dawn, when there is absolute silence; this was another kind of spell, complete freedom from aches and pain, and after that, to make a long story short, I rested in dimness, sleeping and dreaming, until my spirit had grown accustomed to this etheric body

You would like me simply and briefly to describe my first real and vivid impression of the life beyond death, of the true Reality.

It was a personal one. I write now of that time which followed rest in the “Quiet Place.” For we all must pass through that period of dream and peace, of half-asleep. It is necessary so that we may grow accustomed to our new form, to the image of our Soul, which is our covering, our body, in this new world. I told you Mother met me at the Gate of Death, and gave me back the sense of loveliness and joy, released me from the weakness and darkness of death. Now I will describe my first tremendous realization of this existence, which came with my complete realization of our Beloved.

I saw Mother coming towards me out of a blaze of color and light that caused me to hold my breath in wonder. I have to use the earth terms if I am even faintly to convey the keen ecstasy of that moment. As regards appearance, Mother appeared as in her prime. But there was about her an ethereal quality it is impossible to express in words. A great glow of freshness, a positive fragrance of purity. She came from the “Fields of Light” to me, and perhaps that indefinable spiritual radiance she bore can only be described by Wordsworth’s trailing “clouds of glory.” Mother is one of the higher Spirits, one of the Children of the Kingdom, and I think I may truly say that no human being has ever experienced what I experienced then, in my first meeting with a child of that ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’ Other souls, who have but lately journeyed from the earth, will tell you what I describe in such feeble language, as being true of their first personal experience here, that is when they contact a Higher Spirit .

My Mother possessed the old familiar lineaments, the same features, the same face, and she was as well incredibly beautiful. For her soul, the record of her blameless earth-life, shone in her eyes, radiated outwards from her whole being. The poor physical body darkens and conceals that fine essence of the soul. Equally here, those who have led a foul earth-life, express it in a hideous and marred appearance, and such souls remain in that dim sphere until they rid themselves of their false and evil ego, and through that process are transformed, and are then able to look upon each other, and to bear the light and color of Summerland.

Mother, when she took me to herself on this occasion, and brought me Home, enveloped me in a sort of passion of tenderness. And I was glad of the pain of all my life, because of the intensity of joy this experience gave me.

The earth life is distinctly one of progress. Indeed, it is very important in the long cycle of evolution towards the life of Pure Spirit. We call the Earth the “Place of Pain,” for though some primitive and evil souls meet with pain in the lower spheres here, it is nothing to the suffering all mankind meet with in their terrestrial experiences. But this pain should mean to those who learn its lessons an immense advance. We regard an Earth life as a short cut from the tortured limitations of matter to the fine, free, illimitable existence of the soul. Some travel by a much longer and easier road, incarnating in subtler substance on other planets. But I am glad I chose the road to freedom through the earth plane. Though the discipline was painful, the experience hard, it was of shorter duration than another on a different road, or line of progress.