"She is dead" they said to him, "Come away! Kiss her and leave her, thy love in clay." And they held their breaths, as they left the room With a shudder, to glance at the stillness and gloom. But he who loved her too well to dread The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead, He lit his lamp and took his key And turned it - "alone were he and she"

Our spirit, or our soul, is clad in an earthly body, and the spirits or souls from that higher life are clad in Astral Bodies. It may be asked in regard to spirit manifestations and communications, how are these things done? Tell me how you think; tell me how buds become flowers and blossoms fruit, or how all live and grow, or read carefully the ensuing pages of this volume on "Death" and they will tell you. All are as fully in accord with the natural law as the blooming of the rose or the rush of this great globe we live on, through the viewless air.

The human heart hungers for the real presence of the dear departed. The tenderest sympathies and affections, the deepest demands of the soul and the loftiest range of the intellect, all reach toward the spirit life beyond and would make it interblend naturally and beautifully with our own earth life; communication with the souls of the dead meet these desires and should cause a harmonious search for truth and light. The fact of their presence near and with you is proof positive of immortality. They come to you, you feel their presence, realize their influence, yet you heed them not, due to ignorance of the science of Occultism and the human mind or soul. Possibly external scientific proofs of all this can not always be had by the materialist, but can the human mind be measured by a yardstick, or a soul weighed in a balance, or seen under the Western man's microscope?

The yardstick philosophy of your most sapient scientists is inadequate in cases like this, and their solemn head-wagging over what it will not account for begins to look foolish to discerning people. They do good work in their way, but they cannot dissect a soul or measure God's universe. There are several things yet for them to learn more of: especially do they need to learn two things: That the Astral Spirits (souls of the dead) can realize your danger or weakness and guide and protect you, and that to ridicule or repudiate what you cannot understand is what really wise men never do.

The Western world is now entering upon a new era. The future will mark the past century as the era of intellectual freedom and activity, of spiritual light, of material development and inventive genius, and the century-now opening as the era of spiritual culture and a more deep and interesting study of the human mind or soul of man. Every one is anxious to learn more of the Occult Powers of the soul, that mysterious and immaterial part of man, and those who interest themselves in the study of Indian Occultism and spiritualism will receive their reward. It is known throughout India and all Oriental countries that the spirits of the dead visit and influence the living. This knowledge has been in all ages, in all Eastern countries, an accepted fact not confined to rustics, but participated in by good and intelligent men.

If human testimony can be of any value there is a body of evidence reaching from the remotest ages to the present time, as extensive and unimpeachable as is to be found in the support of anything whatever that the souls of the dead do return. Spirit manifestations and communications come to us in our highest and purest condition of mind. It is then that the soul asserts its immortality. It demonstrates that your soul can and does exist without the brain, and is an intelligence still when disconnected from your material body. It furnishes proof of a future life for which so many crave, and for want of which so many live and die in anxious doubt, so many in positive disbelief.