The joys and sorrows of spirits are inherent in the degree of perfection at which they have arrived. Each spirit finds in himself the principal of his happiness or unhappiness; and, as spirits are everywhere, no enclosed or circumscribed place is set apart for either the one or the other. As for incarnated spirits, they are more or less happy or unhappy, according as the world they inhabit is more or less advanced.

"Heaven" and "Hell," as men have imagined them, have no existence; they are only symbols; there are happy and unhappy spirits everywhere. Nevertheless, as I have told you, spirits of the same order are brought together by sympathy; but, when they are perfect, they can meet together wherever they will.

The localization of rewards and punishments in fixed places exists only in man's imagination; it proceeds from his tendency to materialize and to circumscribe the things of which he cannot comprehend the essential infinitude. The word purgatory in its true meaning refers to the physical and moral suffering of man on the earth plane, and is the period of expiation, for it is generally the rule that man is forced to undergo purgatory and to expiate his wrongdoing while in the physical body.

What men call purgatory is also a figure of speech, that should be understood as signifying, not any determinate place, but the state of imperfect spirits who have to expiate their faults until they have attained the complete purification that will raise them to the state of perfect blessedness. As this purification is effected by means of various incarnations, purgatory consists in the trials of corporeal life.

Many may ask why spirits who seem to be of high degree reply according to the commonly received ideas of those who question them, in the most serious spirit concerning hell and purgatory. The reason of this is that when the latter are too fully imbued with preconceived ideas they do not care to interrupt their convictions, for if a spirit should tell a Mussulman, without proper precaution, that Mahomet was not a true prophet, he would not be listened to with much cordiality.

Such precautions are conceivable on the part of spirits who wish to instruct us; but how is it, you may ask, that others, when questioned as to their situation, have replied that they were suffering the tortures of hell or of purgatory?

Spirits of inferior advancement, who are not yet completely dematerialized, retain a portion of their earthly ideas, and describe their impressions by means of terms that are familiar to them. They are in a state that allows of their obtaining only a very imperfect foresight of the future; for which reason it often happens that spirits in erraticity, or but recently freed from their earthly body, speak just as they would have done during their earthly life. Hell may be understood as meaning a life of extremely painful trial, with uncertainty as to the future attainment of any better state; and purgatory as a life that is also one of trial, but with the certainty of a happier future. Do you not say, when undergoing any intense physical or mental distress, that you are suffering "the tortures of the damned?" But such an expression is only a figure of speech, and is always employed as such.

There is no such a given place as Heaven as this term is understood by the western people, for do you suppose it to be a place like the Elysian Fields of the ancients, where all good spirits are crowded together pell-mell, with no other care than that of enjoying, throughout eternity, a passive felicity? No; it is universal space; it is the planets, the stars, and all the worlds of high degree, in which spirits are in the enjoyment of all their faculties, without having the tribulations of material life, or the sufferings inherent in the state of inferiority. Many people ask the spirit in which Heaven it dwells because they themselves have the idea of several Heavens placed one above the other like the stories of a house, and they therefore answer you according to your question and your own ideas, but for them the different Heavens express different degrees and grades of purification of the soul and consequently different degrees and grades of happiness and purity.

It is the same when you ask a spirit whether he is in hell; if he is unhappy. He will say "yes," because, for him, hell is synonymous with suffering; but he knows very well that it is not a furnace. A Pagan would have replied that he was in Tartarus.

The same may be said in regard to other expressions of a similar character, such as "the city of flowers," "the city of the elect," the first, second, or third "sphere," etc., which are only allegorical, and employed by some spirits figuratively, by others from ignorance of the reality of things, or even of the most elementary principles of natural science.

According to the restricted idea formerly entertained in regard to the localities of rewards and punishments, and to the common belief that the earth was the center of the universe, that the sky formed a vault overhead, and that there was a specific re-, gion of stars, men placed Heaven up above, and Hell down below; hence the expressions to "ascend into heaven," to be in "the highest heaven," to be "cast down into hell," etc. Now that astronomy having traced up the earth's history and described its constitution, has shown us that it is one of the smallest worlds that circulate in space and devoid of any special importance, that space is infinite, and that there is neither "up" nor "down" in the universe, men have been obliged to cease placing heaven above the clouds, and hell in the "lower parts of the earth." As for purgatory, no fixed place was ever assigned to it.