THERE ARE MANY MANSIONS IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE.

Different states of the soul in erraticity.

— Different categories of inhabited worlds.

— Destination of the Earth. Causes of earthly miseries.

— INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRITS: Higher worlds and lower worlds.

— Worlds of expiations and of trials.

— Regenerating worlds.

— Progression of the worlds.

Let not your heart be troubled. — You believe in God, believe also in me.

— There are many mansions in my Father's house; if it were not so, I would already have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you; — and after I have gone and have prepared the place for you, I will return, and I will take you to myself, so that where I am, you also may be there. (Saint John, chapter XIV, vv. 1 to 3.)

Different states of the soul in erraticity.

The Father's house is the Universe. The different mansions are the worlds that circulate in infinite space and offer, to the Spirits who incarnate in them, dwellings corresponding to the advancement of those same Spirits.

Independently of the diversity of the worlds, these words of Jesus may also refer to the fortunate or unfortunate state of the Spirit in erraticity.

According as it finds itself more or less purified and freed from material bonds, the medium in which it finds itself, the aspect of things, the sensations it experiences, the perceptions it has, will vary infinitely; 4 while some cannot move away from the sphere where they lived, others rise and traverse space and the worlds; while some guilty Spirits wander in darkness, the blessed ones enjoy resplendent clarity and the sublime spectacle of the Infinite; 5 finally, while the wicked one, tormented by remorse and regrets, often isolated, without consolation, separated from those who were the object of his affections, suffers under the lash of moral sufferings, the just one, in fellowship with those whom he loves, enjoys the delights of an unspeakable happiness.

In this also, therefore, there are many mansions, though not circumscribed, nor localized. Different categories of inhabited worlds.

From the teaching given by the Spirits, it results that the conditions of the worlds are very different from one another, as to the degree of advancement or of inferiority of their inhabitants.

Among them there are some in which these latter are still inferior to those of the Earth, physically and morally; others, of the same category as ours; and others that are more or less superior to it in all respects.

In the inferior worlds, existence is wholly material, the passions reign supreme, moral life being almost nil. As the latter develops, the influence of matter diminishes, in such a way that, in the more advanced worlds, life is, so to speak, wholly spiritual.

In the intermediate worlds, good and evil are mingled, one or the other predominating, according to the degree of advancement of the majority of those who inhabit them.

Although an absolute classification of the diverse worlds cannot be made, one may nevertheless, by virtue of the state in which they are found and of the destination they bear, taking as a basis the most salient shades, divide them, in a general way, as follows: 3 primitive worlds, destined for the first incarnations of the human soul; 4 worlds of expiation and trials, where evil dominates; 5 worlds of regeneration, in which the souls that still have something to expiate draw new strength, resting from the fatigues of the struggle; 6 happy worlds, where good prevails over evil; 7 celestial or divine worlds, dwellings of purified Spirits, where good alone reigns.

The Earth belongs to the category of worlds of expiation and trials, which is why man lives there grappling with so many miseries.

The Spirits who incarnate in a world are not bound to it indefinitely, nor do they pass through in it all the phases of the progress that it falls to them to accomplish, in order to attain perfection.

When, in a world, they reach the degree of advancement that this world allows, they pass to another more advanced one, and so on, until they reach the state of pure Spirits. These are so many stations, in each of which they are presented with elements of progress appropriate to the advancement they have already conquered.

It is a reward for them to ascend to a world of a more elevated order, just as it is a punishment to prolong their stay in a less happy world, or to be relegated to another still more unhappy than the one to which they find themselves prevented from returning when they have persisted in evil. Destination of the Earth. Causes of human miseries.

Many are astonished that on Earth there is so much wickedness and so many gross passions, so many miseries and infirmities of every nature, and from this they conclude that the human species is a very sad thing.

This judgment proceeds from the narrow point of view in which those who emit it place themselves, and which gives them a false idea of the whole.

It must be considered that on Earth is not the whole of Humanity, but only a small fraction of Humanity. Indeed, the human species comprises all the beings endowed with reason that people the innumerable orbs of the Universe; 4 now, what is the population of the Earth, in the face of the total population of those worlds? Much less than that of a village, in comparison with that of a great empire.

The material and moral situation of earthly Humanity has nothing to astonish, once one takes into account the destination of the Earth and the nature of those who inhabit it.

He would form a most false idea of the inhabitants of a great city who judged them by the population of its most lowly and sordid quarters.

In a hospital, one sees only the sick and the crippled; in a penitentiary, one sees gathered together all baseness, all vices; in unhealthy regions, the inhabitants, for the most part, are pale, frail, and sickly. Well then: imagine the Earth as a suburb, a hospital, a penitentiary, an unwholesome place, and it is simultaneously all of this, and one will understand why the afflictions outweigh the enjoyments, for those who are in health are not sent to the hospital, nor those who have committed no evil to the houses of correction; nor can hospitals and houses of correction be regarded as places of delight.

Now, just as, in a city, the population is not all to be found in the hospitals or in the prisons, so also on Earth is not the whole of Humanity; 4 and, in the same way that from the hospital depart those who have been cured and from the prison those who have served their penalties, man leaves the Earth when he is cured of his moral infirmities.

INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRITS.

Lower worlds and higher worlds.

The qualification of lower worlds and higher worlds has nothing absolute about it; it is, rather, very relative. Such a world is lower or higher with reference to those that are above or below it, on the progressive scale.

Taking the Earth as a term of comparison, one can form an idea of the state of a lower world, by supposing its inhabitants in the condition of the savage races or the barbarous nations that are still found among us, remnants of the primitive state of our orb.

In the most backward, the beings that inhabit them are in a certain way rudimentary. They take the human form, but without any beauty. Their instincts are softened by no sentiment of delicacy or of benevolence, nor by the notions of the just and the unjust. Brute force is, among them, the only law. Lacking industries and inventions, they pass their lives in the conquest of food.

God, however, abandons none of His creatures; in the depths of the darkness of the intelligence lies, latent, the vague intuition, more or less developed, of a supreme Being. This instinct suffices to render them superior to one another and to prepare them for the ascension to a more complete life, for they are not degraded beings, but children who are growing.

Between the lower degrees and the most elevated, there are innumerable others, and it is difficult to recognize in the pure Spirits, dematerialized and resplendent with glory, those who were these primitive beings, in the same way that in the adult man one finds it hard to recognize the embryo.

In the worlds that have reached a higher degree, the conditions of moral and material life are very greatly different from those of life on Earth.

As everywhere, the corporeal form there is always the human one, but embellished, perfected and, above all, purified.

The body has nothing of earthly materiality and is not, consequently, subject to the needs, nor to the diseases or deteriorations that the predominance of matter provokes; 4 more refined, the senses are apt for perceptions that in this world the coarseness of matter obstructs; 5 the specific lightness of the body permits rapid and easy locomotion: instead of dragging itself painfully along the ground, it glides, so to speak, over the surface, or soars in the atmosphere, without any effort other than that of the will, as angels are represented, or as the ancients imagined the manes in the Elysian Fields.

Men retain, at their pleasure, the traits of their past migrations and show themselves to their friends just as these knew them, but radiating a divine light, transfigured by inner impressions, then always elevated.

In place of pale countenances, cast down by sufferings and passions, the intelligence and the life sparkle with the radiance that the painters have figured in the nimbus or halo of the saints.

The little resistance that matter offers to Spirits already very advanced makes the development of bodies rapid and infancy short or almost nil; 9 exempt from cares and anguishes, life is proportionally much longer than on Earth. In principle, longevity keeps proportion with the degree of advancement of the worlds.

Death in no way brings the horrors of decomposition; far from causing dread, it is considered a happy transformation, because there exists no doubt there about the hereafter.

During life, the soul, no longer having compact matter to constrain it, expands and enjoys a lucidity that places it in an almost permanent state of emancipation and grants it the free transmission of thought.

In these fortunate worlds, the relations, always friendly among the peoples, are never disturbed by ambition, on the part of any of them, to enslave its neighbor, nor by the war that ensues therefrom.

There are no masters, nor slaves, nor any privileged by birth; only moral and intellectual superiority establishes a difference between the conditions and gives supremacy.

Authority deserves the respect of all, because it is conferred only on merit and is always exercised with justice.

Man does not seek to raise himself above man, but above himself, by perfecting himself.

His objective is to climb to the category of the Pure Spirits, this desire not constituting for him a torment, but a noble ambition, which induces him to study with ardor in order to equal them.

There, all the delicate and elevated sentiments of human nature are aggrandized and purified; hatreds, petty jealousies, the base covetousness of envy, are unknown; a bond of love and fraternity binds all men to one another, the stronger helping the weaker.

They possess goods, in greater or lesser quantity, according as they have acquired them, more or less by means of intelligence; no one, however, suffers from lacking the necessary, since no one is in expiation; 8 in a word: evil, in these worlds, does not exist.

In yours, you need evil in order to feel good; night, in order to admire light; sickness, in order to appreciate health; 2 in those others there is no need of these contrasts. The eternal light, the eternal beauty and the eternal serenity of the soul provide an eternal joy, free from being disturbed by the anguishes of material life, or by contact with the wicked, who have no access there.

This is what the human spirit finds greatest difficulty in understanding. It was ingenious enough to paint the torments of hell, but it could never imagine the joys of Heaven. Why?

Because, being inferior, it has experienced only pains and miseries, it has never glimpsed the celestial clarities; it cannot, therefore, speak of what it does not know; 5 but as it rises and purifies itself, the horizon broadens for it and it understands the good that is before it, as it understood the evil that is behind it.

Nevertheless, the happy worlds are not privileged orbs, since God is not partial toward any of His children; to all He gives the same rights and the same facilities to reach such worlds;

He makes them all depart from the same point and endows none better than the others; 3 to all are accessible the highest categories: it falls only to them to conquer these by their labor, 4 to attain them more quickly, or to remain inactive for centuries upon centuries in the mire of Humanity. — (Summary of the teaching of all the higher Spirits.)

Worlds of expiations and of trials.

What shall I tell you of the worlds of expiations that you do not know, since it suffices that you observe the one in which you dwell?

The superiority of the intelligence, in a great number of its inhabitants, indicates that the Earth is not a primitive world, destined for the incarnation of the Spirits who have just come from the hands of the Creator.

The innate qualities that they bring with them constitute the proof that they have already lived and accomplished a certain progress. But, also, the numerous vices to which they show themselves prone constitute the indication of great moral imperfection; 4 for this reason God placed them in an ungrateful world, in order to expiate there their faults, by means of painful labor and the miseries of life, until they have merited to ascend to a more fortunate planet.

Nevertheless, not all the Spirits who incarnate on Earth go there in expiation.

The races that you call savage are formed of Spirits who have but recently come out of infancy and who on Earth are, so to speak, in a course of education, in order to develop themselves through contact with more advanced Spirits.

There come afterward the semi-civilized races, constituted of these same Spirits in the way of progress. They are, in a certain way, indigenous races of the Earth, which have raised themselves there little by little over long secular periods, some of which have been able to reach the intellectual perfecting of the most enlightened peoples.

The Spirits in expiation, if we may express ourselves thus, are exotic on the Earth; they have already lived in other worlds, from which they were excluded in consequence of their obstinacy in evil and because they had constituted themselves, in such worlds, a cause of disturbance for the good. They had to be banished, for some time, into the midst of more backward Spirits, with the mission of making these latter advance, since they carry with them developed intelligences and the germ of the knowledge they had acquired; 5 hence it comes that the Spirits under punishment are found in the bosom of the more intelligent races. For this very reason, it is for these races that the misfortunes of life take on the most bitterness. It is that there is in them more sensibility, being therefore more tried by the contrarieties and sorrows than the primitive races, whose moral sense is more blunted.

The Earth, consequently, offers one of the types of expiatory worlds, whose variety is infinite, but all revealing, as a common character, that of serving as a place of exile for Spirits rebellious to the law of God.

These Spirits have there to struggle, at the same time, with the perversity of men and with the inclemency of Nature, a double and arduous labor that simultaneously develops the qualities of the heart and those of the intelligence.

It is thus that God, in His goodness, makes the very punishment redound to the profit of the progress of the Spirit. — (SAINT AUGUSTINE. Paris, 1862.)

Regenerating worlds.

Among the stars that sparkle in the blue vault of the firmament, how many worlds there must be like yours, destined by the Lord for expiation and for probation! But there are also more miserable and better ones, as there are ones of transition, that may be called regenerating.

Each planetary whirlpool, moving in space around a common center, drags with it its primitive worlds, of exile, of trials, of regeneration and of happiness.

You have already been told of worlds where the newborn soul is placed, when still ignorant of good and evil, but with the possibility of walking toward God, mistress of itself, in possession of free will; 4 it has already also been revealed to you with what ample faculties the soul is endowed for practicing good. But, ah! there are those that succumb, and God, who does not want them annihilated, permits them to go to those worlds where, from incarnation to incarnation, they purify themselves, regenerate, and return worthy of the glory that had been destined for them.

The regenerating worlds serve as a transition between the worlds of expiation and the happy worlds; 2 the penitent soul finds in them calm and repose and ends by purifying itself.

Without doubt, in such worlds man is still subject to the laws that govern matter; Humanity experiences your sensations and desires, but freed from the disorderly passions of which you are slaves, exempt from the pride that imposes silence upon the heart, from the envy that tortures it, from the hatred that suffocates it. On every brow, one sees written the word love; perfect equity presides over social relations, all recognize God and try to walk toward Him, fulfilling His laws.

In these worlds, nevertheless, perfect happiness does not yet exist, but the dawn of happiness.

Man there is still of flesh and, for this reason, subject to the vicissitudes from which only the completely dematerialized beings find themselves freed; 6 he still has to endure trials, but without the poignant anguishes of expiation.

Compared to the Earth, these worlds are quite fortunate and many among you would rejoice to inhabit them, for they represent the calm after the tempest, the convalescence after the cruel malady; 8 yet, less absorbed by material things, man discerns, better than you, the future; he understands the existence of other enjoyments promised by the Lord to those who show themselves worthy of them, when death shall have once more reaped their bodies, in order to grant them the true life.

Then, freed, the soul will hover above all horizons. No more material and coarse senses; only the senses of a pure and celestial perispirit, breathing in the emanations of God Himself, in the fragrances of love and of charity that emanate from His bosom.

But, ah! in these worlds, man is still fallible and the Spirit of evil has not completely lost its empire.

Not to advance is to recede, and, if man has not established himself sufficiently on the path of good, he may fall back into the worlds of expiation, where, then, new and more terrible trials await him.

Contemplate, therefore, at night, at the hour of repose and of prayer, the blue vault and, of the innumerable spheres that shine above your heads, inquire of yourselves which are those that lead to God and ask Him that a regenerating world may open its bosom to you, after the expiation on Earth. — (SAINT AUGUSTINE. Paris, 1862.)

Progression of the worlds.

Progress is a law of Nature; 2 to this law all the beings of Creation, animate and inanimate, were submitted by the goodness of God, who wills that everything be aggrandized and prosper.

Destruction itself, which to men seems the final term of all things, is only a means of arriving, through transformation, at a more perfect state, since everything dies in order to be reborn and nothing suffers annihilation.

At the same time that all living beings progress morally, the worlds in which they dwell progress materially.

Whoever could follow a world in its different phases, from the instant in which the first atoms destined to constitute it agglomerated, would see it traverse an incessantly progressive scale, but with degrees imperceptible for each generation, and offer to its inhabitants a dwelling more and more agreeable, in proportion as they themselves advance on the path of progress.

Thus march, in parallel, the progress of man, that of the animals, his auxiliaries, that of the vegetables and that of the dwelling, for nothing in Nature remains stationary.

How grandiose is this idea and worthy of the majesty of the Creator! how, on the contrary, mean and unworthy of His power is the one that concentrates His solicitude and His providence on the imperceptible grain of sand that is the Earth, and restricts Humanity to the few men who inhabit it!

According to that law, this world was materially and morally in a state inferior to that in which it finds itself today and will raise itself, under that double aspect, to a more elevated degree.

It has reached one of its periods of transformation, in which, from an expiatory orb, it will change into a planet of regeneration, where men will be fortunate, because in it the law of God will reign. — (SAINT AUGUSTINE. Paris, 1862.)