ABOUT half-way along a passage upon the upper floor of our house there is a small bay in which a brief flight of stairs leads to a door. Through this door I have taken many friends, especially new arrivals in spirit lands, for this door opens directly upon a section of flat roof.
From here a magnificent view is to be gained of a great tract of the countryside, with the city gleaming in the distance. To those who have not as yet travelled through these realms, or at least this small segment of them, the view from the roof comes as something of an inspiring revelation to them. With scarcely an exception, we receive the same reply to a question which one or other of us delights in putting to our new visitor, namely: what strikes you most forcibly as you gaze upon this scene? The answer: the riot of colour.
Most assuredly, that is so. It is a sight which never fails to fill us with fresh wonder and charm, seasoned residents though we be. The reason is to be found not only in the delight to the physical sense of sight, but what is more important in many ways, the colour itself is exhilarating. This feeling of exhilaration is not some doubtful spiritual experience, intangible and apt to evaporate after a brief while. It is much more than that. It rejuvenates one, even in these realms of juvenility. It braces one up, as you would say, and acts like a tonic.
The contrast between our world and yours in this matter of colour alone is tremendous. The two worlds are not to be compared. Indeed, what the earth lacks and needs most urgently in some quarters, is colour, a vast deal more colour. Your towns are drab, dreary, and toneless. Perhaps I shall be taken to task for that statement, but you must remember that I once lived upon earth, and that I am now living in the spirit world.
My statement is a comparative one. Were you to have even the most fleeting glimpse of these realms, you would at once be convinced. Bethink you of the dingy state of your buildings. You will, of course, appreciate that I am speaking of normal times on earth and not of now, after all the horrors of war have left their grim marks, and the years of enforced neglect have added to the murkiness.
When your buildings are first erected, they stand in their pristine freshness, and they are more or less tolerable because they are clean, and free from the grime which is bound in time to envelop them. Some folk will admire the dark greyness of the ancient buildings, such as the great Gothic cathedrals. They will say that time has mellowed the newness of the stone, and added beauty and grandeur to the masterpieces of olden days.
As an expressed opinion, one is bound to respect it, but I can say this: wait until you see one of our buildings and the force of my remarks will make itself manifest. You would instantly exclaim how glad you are to know that no grime and dirt can come, no structural dilapidations, to spoil the eternal beauty of our masterpieces of architecture or of even the simplest and most unpretentious cottage.
It is true, of course, that you have such a condition of affairs on earth as we could not have here. The smoke of the towns and cities, for example, which quickly makes the buildings dull and dirty. But the time will come when smoke will no longer be present to constitute the menace it is at present. Other methods will be devised, and the smoke will vanish never to reappear. At least that would ensure that your towns are clean as far as its buildings are concerned. But the colour will still be missing if nothing is done about it.
The tendency through the passage of years on earth has been towards less and less colour, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in the very clothes you wear. There was a time on earth when folk wore the gayest and brightest colours. This was not left to the women-folk alone for the men were equally gaily habited.
If people on earth knew the real value and influence of colour upon the mind, and thence upon the body, which would in turn react upon a whole nation, they would be literally astonished. You will understand that I am not advocating some new essay in dress reform, though there is ample room for that too!
The men are the worst offenders for their clothes are drab and uninspiring from the colour point of view. I am persuaded that the most dismal and lugubrious experience is to stand before an audience or congregation of clergymen, all attired in their clerical black—that is how it seems to me now. Nothing could be more funereal and suggestive of everything that is melancholy and depressing. Certainly some of the clergy have become a little bolder since my days on earth, and with great daring have clothed themselves in sober—very sober—grey. At least that is a turn in the right direction, but religion should be happy and cheerful, and the ministers of it should be attired so as to proclaim that fact. So much that is associated with religion is clothed in black.
Never was the deterioration in the use of colour on earth more noticeable than in the spirit world. For when people arrive here and wear the clothes to which they were accustomed when incarnate, they look utterly incongruous because their clothes are colourless. Usually it is not long before they change to their new mode of dress.
That is a matter we do not press upon our newly arrived friends, but the instant they feel out of place in their old earthly habiliments, the change takes place. There are exceptions, though very few. I recall when my former ecclesiastical superior, a 'prince of the Church,' came to reside here. Following the usual custom, he wore his earthly clothes, by which you will understand that I mean their counterpart. As they were already rich and colourful they looked splendid in these surroundings, so much so that he was persuaded not to discard them just yet. And, of course, he felt perfectly comfortable so attired. Wherever he went, people who did not know him personally or by repute, knew him for what he had been on earth. Eventually, however, he donned his spirit attire which was equally colourful and gracious to the eye.
In the spirit world, colour plays a vital part in our lives for it provides us not only with visual enjoyment, but from colour come musical sounds of surpassing beauty and purity. It also contributes towards the life-giving force from which we derive our very existence.
After spending so many years on earth attired in black, our clergymen friends of these and other realms are delighted when they can at last put it off for the natural brightness of their own spirit clothes.
So many of the religious denominations on earth have shunned any approach to colour, beyond stained glass windows, by abolishing the use of vestments which were at least pleasant to the eye. One Church, however, has retained them fully. Though their liturgical colours may be emblematical yet they serve a useful purpose by adding brightness and colour to the proceedings, whatever the true value of the latter may be.
Black makes its persistent appearance in the services for the 'dead,' to give solemnity to observances which cannot be otherwise than awe-inspiring, for what could be more awful than death?—so it is thought. One could think of something far worse than death itself, and that is the special kind of heaven conjured up in the minds of some folk that is supposed to follow that death!
Black has come to be associated with the various trappings of dissolution, although once upon a time on earth the colour for mourning was not black but yellow. It is remarkable that some people once favoured this particular colour, for yellow is most decidedly a soothing colour for the incarnate if properly used, so that in days past when people like their brethren today were in sore distress at the loss of a dear one—for human affections have always persisted—the use of yellow attire will have exerted a calming and comforting influence upon them. There is everything to commend the use of this bright, cheerful colour in such circumstances. It would be far better had it never been displaced by black.
Colour upon earth presents a wide field for investigation, for its potentialities are scarcely known. It can be made to exert a most beneficial influence upon the health and temperament of the incarnate if it is rightly employed.
Here in the spirit world colour is utilised particularly to bring back stability into troubled minds and in the treatment of folk whose passage into these lands has been violent or otherwise distressing. When I saw a rest home for the first time, I observed a shaft of blue light was descending upon and enveloping the whole edifice. This, I was told, would provide all that was necessary for initial treatment.
There are rays of many colours to be seen descending upon the homes of rest, each for its special purpose. It is not only the colour which produces the required results, but the elements of the ray itself. Indeed, the colour here plays a relatively minor part, though when the ray is actually perceived, the pleasant nature of the colour will bring a large measure of joy to the beholder.
When you come to consider the wide diversity of transitions and their causes, each calling for special treatment and care in the rest homes and elsewhere, you will see the need for the range of colours in the rays to be equally diverse. But as there is no end—or seemingly there is none—to the number of tints and blends which can be derived, you will see that ample provision is made for every type of transition.
These rays are wonderful to view in operation for the colours and their myriad blends are truly thrilling—there is no other word to describe them. You must understand they are not mere coloured light. The shades of blue, for instance. I have seen them from the very darkest and richest to the palest and most delicate, and of such a nature that even the former was brilliant and bright, though darker than the deepest sapphire. You could not simulate this one colour on earth without reducing very greatly the illuminating power and extent of the light.
In the same way, you could not evolve the pale blue without losing brilliance and intensity of the colour. Excepting the light of the sun, of course, your light is otherwise artificial while ours is real and instinct with life. One could say that your light is dead, or rather, lifeless, while ours is living light. That applies to all colour in the spirit world, whether it be of the flowers, of the buildings, of the water, or of the clothes we wear. Colour with us means light; absence of colour means darkness.
A great many people on earth have what they call their favourite colour. So do we in the spirit world, even among the galaxy to be encountered upon every hand. Some will account for this particular partiality—I am speaking of you now—by averring that the colours themselves call to mind various pleasant circumstances. Folk will say, for instance, that yellow and its different tones pleases them most because yellow is a sunny colour and so reminds them of the summertime; others will prefer green, saying that it conjures up the meadows and fields and shady woods. Bright blue will put other folk in remembrance of the sea and clear skies while red makes some feel warm and comfortable, and so on. These diversified mental images could be multiplied almost without number. There is also another side to the story for some people will express great distaste for certain colours because they remind them of unpleasant things. With the latter we are not now concerned.
Such 'association of ideas' with colours provides one with a certain basis for the predilection, but the real reason lies much deeper than that. Just as your physical body will give all outward signs that it requires some special but easily acquired element to keep it in good health, so does the higher self require that which is part of its very substance—namely, colour. This need becomes translated into a predilection for the colour it needs. In speaking of the higher self, I would ask you to remember that every single soul, incarnate and discarnate alike, has the divine element within him.
It may be so crushed by a gross nature and gross living as to be almost extinct, but absolutely extinct it can never be. Even in those awful dark regions where everything is of the foulest, there yet resides within every one of those unhappy souls that celestial element—call it the divine spark, if you wish. That can never, in any circumstances, die or be extinguished. It is from that microscopic gleam that progress will commence, though it may take thousands of years of earthly time before it shows the least sign of activity, of increasing.
The higher self will be manifest in a variety of ways, including that special taste for a certain colour. With you on earth it means that some one colour or another is required in your etheric counterpart, which is thus reached through the physical body, and it reveals itself in this way by implanting in you a preference for a specific colour. The colour which you so favour is completely in tune with you, hence the unmistakable feeling of warmth towards that colour.
If it should, in the process, call to mind such agreeable things as the sea, or the woods, or sunny days, and so on, then so much the better for such imaginings will help to strengthen your preference for that colour and so lead you to introduce and employ it, or its different shades, whenever it is practicable. By doing so, you will derive excellent benefit both physically and mentally. What is yet more important, your etheric body, for which your physical body is but the visible covering, will also benefit.
You will perhaps say that, as things are at present conducted, it is not always easy to incorporate one's favourite colour in such measure as is necessary. Men, indeed, with their excessively colourless and drab clothing, and with their customary diffidence of anything that is not strictly in accordance with prescribed ideas, will feel that the colour question is an impossible one for them, beyond introducing some little extra colour into their homes.
That is a situation which, there is every hope, will be fully remedied in the future. It undoubtedly will take some time because of that diffidence to which I have just alluded. But the change to more colourful apparel will become a universal movement in due course. I am not pretending to prophesy, but solely giving you some idea of a general trend which will be noticed, we are persuaded, before too long.
From this trend it is possible to perceive—according as I have discussed with you a little earlier in these present writings—what we all hope in the spirit world will eventually come to pass, and that is the better and more adequate introduction of colour into your whole life upon earth. It matters not whether it be in your clothing or your buildings so long as the colour is there.
When smoke has been so abated as to vanish altogether from your cities and towns, your buildings will have a better chance of preserving some of their initial cleanliness of surface. You will still have the fumes from vehicular traffic to pollute the air, but that minor problem will also be solved in its proper season. Nothing then stands in the path of making your cities truly beautiful by the wholesale introduction of colour, properly applied and properly blended, into all your edifices.
You cannot imagine, you will say, what on earth a beautiful Gothic cathedral would look like if it were in colour. Hideous, and possibly vulgar; monstrous, you might be tempted to declare. Think of a pink cathedral, or a purple one. Why, the whole idea is ludicrous. Is it really so? Not by any manner of means, my dear friends.
The trouble is that such introduction of colour would be so very unusual to you because you have grown accustomed to being more or less without it. Now you may say that there are certain parts of the earth world that are far from being devoid of colour; that on the contrary, they are so filled with colour as to be regarded as a veritable paradise in this respect. That is perfectly true, but even the most delectable regions of your terrestrial globe are dingy compared with the realms of light of the spirit world. The climate, you will affirm, has much to do with it. In these earthly paradises the weather as a rule is clement and the sunshine is lavish. That is equally true, but of them we are not treating.
The realms of light teem with colour. The buildings, whether the great halls and temples or the simple and unobtrusive 'private' dwellings, are constructed of materials in which colour is always present. Even the paved ways are in colour. The trees, the flowers, the grass, the very soil in which these grow and thrive, the water, whether it be of sea, river or lake, are revelations of colour in every shade, blend, and tint.
Lastly, ourselves. Our spirit clothes are the very embodiment of colour for I verily believe that the widest variety and distribution of blends are to be perceived in our personal habiliments, reflecting, as they do, all the extremely fine gradations of spiritual progression. In this respect colour might serve the purpose of a recording instrument.
You have no scientific instrument on earth that could register results as accurately as colour registers the least degree of our spiritual progression for in this regard colour is infallible in what it reveals. There is no such thing as being able to assume a colour to which one is not entitled by reason of not having earned it. When you hear wise people on earth tell you that we who communicate are nothing but devils masquerading as 'angels of light,' they are uttering the most blatant nonsense and displaying the most profound ignorance of common, elementary, spiritual laws.
Let me say this with emphasis: it is utterly impossible for anyone in the spirit world, no matter who it may be, to assume the tiniest, most minute spark of light to which he is not entitled. Light and colour mean spirituality; their absence, the lack of it. There are no exceptions, no deviations. That is a fundamental law operating throughout the entire spirit universe; a law that is fixed and immutable. Colour is natural to the realms of light. In the grey lands and the lands of darkness it is absent.
With us colour is light, and the light is living light. That, I admit, is difficult to follow, but it is capable of a little elucidation. In this way: take for example, your precious stones, and particularly the diamond. Now all precious stones on earth rely for their beauty upon external light. From the purely artistic point of view, all your precious stones become valueless when they are in absolute darkness. They might be composed of some common substance for all the worth they then are, but the instant they are brought into the light, either artificial or that of the sun, their lustre becomes immediately apparent. The stones are in that respect dead; they have no life in them for they contain no luminosity of their own, and are obliged to rely solely upon reflected or transmitted light.
We have a myriad forms of precious stones in these lands, and of such transcendental beauty and lustre as to surpass, beyond conception, anything that has ever been discovered, fashioned, or created upon earth. Every form of gem in turn has its wide range of colours, from the palest to the deepest. Diamond, emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, to name the most familiar to you, are all represented here, but every stone, no matter whether it be as small as the tip of your little finger or larger than your clenched hand, each single stone carries its own perfect light.
It gives forth its superb colours unaided for it needs no external source of illumination, either reflected or transmitted. It is itself alive. It glows and sheds its exquisite rays with incomparable, ineffable, splendour. The stones are flawless, every one of them. It is impossible to detect the most microscopic blemish upon any stone. Priceless, you will say. Indeed, they are for they are not to be bought. They can only be earned.
For use as personal adornment, these matchless and priceless jewels are given to us as part of our spiritual rewards. They constitute some of those wonderful adjuncts to our life here that bring joy not only to the possessors of them, but to all who behold them upon others. A little fanciful, you will perhaps hint, or eccentric. Not in the least. Were you able to take one of these gems in your hand, all your mundane ideas upon the subject would vanish upon the instant. Those of my earthly friends whose vision has been cultivated, and who are able to see such things as these, will readily be able to substantiate my words, if so be it they have actually seen jewels of the spirit world.
While I am upon the subject, the workmanship in the settings of our jewels is, of course, in perfect keeping with the lustrous stones. They are worn upon the person as part of a head-dress, or as fastening upon a girdle, or suspended from a chain round the neck. And so another chapter is added to the volume of colour.
As it is with our precious stones, so is it with the stones of lesser value—our building materials. The surface of your stone is dull and without colour. The purist will say I am wrong there because the earthly stone can be grey or cream, or even red in tone. Of course, but what of the rest of the colours of the spectrum? Where are those to be found in your stone-work?
The surface of our stone—and you will understand that I am here using earthly terms to describe spirit-world substances—the surface of our stone has an alabaster-like translucence. Upon close examination, it is at once observed that the colour and the light which gives it life come from within the substance itself. It literally glows, yet it has not the appearance of being illuminated from within.
My present difficulty, you see, is to convey my meaning when I have nothing with which to draw a comparison for you because there is nothing upon earth akin to our building materials. The best I can do, therefore, is to try to set down what we see when we gaze about us, and to do so in as literal terms as possible.
The colour of the stone, then, shines forth, but you must not assume from this that all our buildings are aglitter with rays of coloured light, flashy and flamboyant. The glow that one perceives is a soft, gentle, delicate glow of subdued light, not a sharp, penetrating, flood of light, while the colours have the texture of pastel shades as you know them. As the buildings are set amid beautiful gardens with a wealth of flowers and trees and lawns, the colour of the edifice must accord with its environment and not, by the power of its vividness, overwhelm the hues of nature itself.
I must reaffirm that the shades of colour in our buildings are extremely delicate, so that when I tell you that we have such architectural glories as Gothic cathedrals just as on earth (though used for a very different purpose),and that they are built in coloured stone, there is no occasion to take alarm when I suggest that you can emulate us in all the new buildings which in time will rise upon earth. The question of purple cathedrals does not arise! Nor of a flaring scarlet one either!
Once more I do not pretend to prophesy, but to mark for you a trend which is to be observed in our laboratories here, namely, that in due time a substance will be discovered or evolved—or invented if you wish—that will enable builders on earth to apply a surfacing to their buildings that is harder and more durable than at present known or used. Into this will be incorporated any colouring matter of whatever shade is desired from brilliant hard colours to delicate soft tints.
Of whatever the building itself may be constructed, this substance will be applied last of all, and give a most beautiful shade and texture to the whole fabric. It will be smooth and easily cleaned, but with the absence of smoke it will hardly become tarnished. That, my friends, is a simple forecast of what you should be able to do on earth if those 'in authority over you' will only bestir themselves, and think sometimes in terms of beauty and not merely of utility.
Why should you not have both beauty and utility in all your buildings? That is what we have in these highly serviceable lands of the spirit world. Just bethink you what a difference it would make in the whole appearance of your cities and towns were tasteful harmonious colour schemes to be introduced everywhere. In time your own homes will benefit as well for these new discoveries are meant for all people.
I have been permitted to peep into some of the laboratories here from time to time, and that is one item I am allowed to reveal to you. Not a very mighty one, you may say, but nevertheless one that should ultimately help to bring some of that urgently needed colour into the unutterable greyness of the earth—or some quarters of it.
I freely admit that when I was incarnate the old earth looked a very good place in which to live, and in those days I knew little or nothing—mostly nothing!—of what was to follow. I was contented to cling to my life on earth for as long as it was permitted, and to leave it with as good grace as possible. I hope I succeeded in accomplishing the latter. I rather fancy I did, for my friends of those days would say that I had a 'very good death,' meaning, as far as they could see, a truly 'pious' one! We have had much laughter upon this subject since then.
However, the earth seemed a pleasant place, and I was not bothered about the colourlessness of it—until I came here. Then I saw just what I had left behind me as I perceived to what I had come. It is as though you were to gaze upon two pictures, the one in plain grey monochrome and the other in full colour. Try that simple little experiment for yourself, and then, my friends, you will have some idea—some very small idea, of the difference between the absence of colour in your world of the earth and the profusion of colour in our world of the spirit.