Souls E-Book

Mary Alling Aber

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Mary Alling Aber with this unforgettable book.

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Souls

Mary Alling Aber

Contents

Introduction

Every living thing has a soul: and each thing which develops normally, according to the laws which govern its type, has the power of separating soul from body at will; but men on this planet have so far lost this power that rarely can it be exercised when the body is awake and the mind conscious.

This book is a result of the recovery of that lost power; and it is a record of facts. The author knows that a conscientious student uses the word fact with care, and that all human effort is subject to limitation and error; and in these respects, she claims no exemption from the common lot.

CHAPTER I.

HOW SOULS ARE EDUCATED.

A human being, in passing from cradle to grave, doffs its old clothes and puts on new ones many times; so the soul of man with­draws from one body and enters another.

If the suits of clothing, from the garments put upon the new-born babe to the last worn by the old man at death, could be photo­graphed, the photographs would give a fair notion of the physical changes and outward circumstances of the man. If in addition to the suit of clothing, each act performed, each word uttered, and the thoughts and feelings which moved the mind of the man when wear­ing the suit could be photographed and phonographed along with it, and this be done for each suit, the series of pictures would give the hidden motives of the man, relations to his fellow men, and his dealings with them.

In the non-physical earth, is preserved such a record of the lives of the souls who have inhabited this planet; and this record shows how souls are educated on this planet.

Imagine a small globule poised over a mass of mineral matter. The globule is a luminous, mobile substance, but is not physi­cal matter. The globule descends into the mineral matter, moves about until it finds con­ditions suitable to its activity, and then builds about itself a body, that is, a crystal. When that body is destroyed, the globule seeks new conditions, and builds itself a new crystal body. This process goes on until the exper­iences of the crystal state are exhausted.

The globule then incarnates in a plant form. It passes rapidly from one form to another, higher and higher at each step, until it can get no more growth in the plant world. The globule throughout its career is a soul; and in the mineral and plant experiences, is gained the beginnings of every human attribute. The third phase is the human, that of pre-historic man.

The careers of two souls through the human phase will now be given.

A man has a house and a wife. He takes his wife with him into the forest to gather wood. She helps him. Unable to move the end of a heavy log as he bids her, he strides toward her and deals her a blow. She falls senseless. He turns the body over; the eyes open once, the body gives a convulsive shudder, and the soul inhabiting it is gone.        .

Passing the second incarnation, in the third these two are together again, and holding the same relation. The woman sits by the fire nursing a baby, a boy a few months old; and standing beside her is a girl of about two years. The father enters; his supper is not ready; this angers him; the mother calls atten­tion to the nursing of the baby. At this, the father seizes the infant by its legs and with one sweep of his arms flings its head against the wall of the house. The shock breaks the bones; and the brains fall upon the floor. Later, the winter comes on; there is scarcity of food; they must migrate. The girl is a hindrance,— one more mouth to feed, a burden to carry in addition to the, necessities for the journey. The father persuades; the mother is reluctant but yields. The two start on their journey, leaving the child in the house with the door open. She toddles out and moves about in the cold, crying for her mother until devoured by wild beasts.

These scenes are from the first and third of more than eight hundred incarnations in which this soul occupied the body of a civ­ilized man or of a barbarian in contact with civilization. These incarnations represent many, races and occupations, and all social ranks.

In the fourth century B. C. this soul is a Greek, Alexander the Great; and in the first a Jew, an adept and hermit [see Appendix I]. In the second century A. D. he is a Roman and a priest of Apollo, who is converted to the Christian faith, and martyred in the first persecution under Marcus Aurelius: in the fifth he is Alaric, in the eighth Charlemagne, in the twelfth Abelard, in the fourteenth the Black Prince, and in the sixteenth Henry the VIII.

Between Alexander the Great and Henry the VIII, there are twenty-two incarnations; and in each of them this soul was a warrior, priest, or king. In these twenty-four incarna­tions, this soul experienced, many times over, all that the world afforded of physical devel­opment and action, of material pomp and glory, of learning and intellectual delights, of arduous labors and responsibilities.

Up to a certain point, souls develop as wild vegetation does, by the action of laws external and internal, and their own inherent instincts. Then, as a gardener takes a wild-crab tree prunes, cultivates, trains, nourishes, plants its seed in different soils until he has a fine fruit good for human use; so the gods (see Chap­ter VI) take a soul, train and prune it, until it is fit to nourish by example and precept the souls of other men, and to pass beyond earth.

The soul of Alexander the Great, on leaving the body of Henry the VIII, passed under the immediate care of the gods; and the fourth phase of its existence began,—the phase of purification; for as a fruit may rot because of too much sunshine, so may a soul, and all rot must be purged away.

In the family of a poor fisherman on the west coast of England, this soul grows up as boys commonly do in such places. He shares his father’s occupations. Restless in so nar­row a field, he gets possession of a boat and starts northward on a voyage of discovery. His boat is crushed between ice floes, his crew and supplies lost. Another adventurer takes him from the ice floe and carries him down through the North Sea to London. After a time, he owns another boat, and this time he sails southward. His boat is wrecked on an island in mid ocean; and again he escapes death through being picked up by a wandering skipper and returned to London. Trouble follows him. No sooner is his hand on one thing, and some of the possessions which he covets within sight of his hopes, than the thing in his hand and the hope in his heart are dashed to pieces.

Disgusted with the fortunes of a sailor, he joins an army. In the first skirmish, he is wounded, captured, and thrown into prison. In a dark, foul cell nine years pass. The bit­terness abates; the soul ceases to chafe. Death approaches; he longs to look once more at the sun. The iron door of his cell opens; his keepers tell him to go; he cannot lift his head. The men are moved; they take him up, carry him out, and lay him down on the green sward outside the prison-gate. The soldier draws a few breaths of clean air, looks at the sky and sun, and dies; and the soul escaping from that body has lost its craving for phys­ical luxury and its dependence on physical comfort for contentment.

Soon after, this soul finds shelter in Africa. His father rules a small but happy kingdom. The boy grows rapidly in the equatorial heat. One day, a gang of slave-hunters put heavy chains on his free limbs. He is taken to the coast, put into the hold of a small vessel, brought to America, and sold to a Virginia planter. His training begins; the process is difficult; no punishments can force this “sullen nigger.” He is too valuable to be maimed or starved for long; but so intractable that he is sold from master to master, bringing a high price because of his build and health. On a plantation farther south, his overseer has more fiendish devices for torturing him than any before encountered; but still he will not do what is required of him. A wandering preacher comes along and tells the story of the crucified with a rough eloquence that touches him. He believes the preacher; and bows his proud, sore, angry mind in meekness to his lot. More than thirty years has he been a slave; but now, for the first time, he works willingly and serves humbly. His fellow-slaves, the overseer, and his master are surprised at the gentle faithful­ness with which he bears his daily burdens for a few months.

One morning in early spring, as the sun rose, this negro came out of his cabin, sat down upon the ground behind it, leaned his back up against it, picked a little wild blossom growing close to the cabin-wall, smiled, and stuck the flower in his coarse shirt. Then, drawing up his long legs, he clasped his arms around his knees, bent his head upon his chest, and fell asleep. Gently, the soul within was

disengaged from the sleeper; and, leaving this life of slavery, this soul left its pride, arro­gance, scorn, and sensuality.

The next incarnation was in the family of a farmer in the southern part of New York State. He became a carpenter, lived a chaste bache­lor forty years, and died. This incarnation was a rest to the soul.

Later this soul is a boy in Boston. His father is a merchant, trading with the West Indies, amassing property. The boy graduates at Harvard, travels a little, and then comes home. His father is counting on adding his son’s ener­gies to his own, and offers him a generous share in the business. His sister counts on him, too. She is two years younger, and dreams of social triumphs. To the anger of the father and the chagrin and many tears of the sister, he refuses to share their plans. He owns a little property, received from a relative a few years before; and the income from this is enough for him. His sister calls it a pittance; and his father is ashamed that any child of his is so devoid of decent ambitions as to be con­tent with it. The details of business, dinners, parties,—these bore him. To yield to the wishes of father and sister will but add to their pride and greed of money and social position; and chain him in perpetual boredom. These, he thinks he sees plainly, and he sees nothing more; so he leaves home.

An unpretentious person, whom few notice, he travels from land to land, seeking what he calls truth — in reality following the craving of his soul to know the meaning of life. When nearly fifty, he meets, in Persia, a man of twice his years, who comes nearer to giving what he seeks than any schools’ or men found elsewhere; but it does not satisfy. He returns to America. While he has been gone, his country has been through the Revolution, his father and sister have died. He builds a small hermitage on the southern edge of the Adirondack forests, spends a few years in study and meditation, and dies.

Homeless, enduring exposure and fatigue, he had sought in many lands what was at his own father’s door; and the stirring times of the Revolutionary War. had been the opportun­ity to find all of truth he was capable of receiv­ing.

At the opening of this century, an Indian lad plays on the slopes of the Rockies, and listens to the tales of his race. It is the soul of Alexander the Great who listens. When this lad has reached twenty, his tribe, in its wanderings, comes in contact with the remnant of another tribe. In this, is a girl about six­teen whom he loves the moment he sees her. Another eye has seen, too; and, seeing, deter­mined to possess,—the eye of his chief. The chief spends no time in wooing, but demands the girl of her mother, the father being dead. The girl is much beloved by her people; and when she shrinks from the suit of the chief, no one is disposed to force her. The chief, with presents and many fair speeches, is dismissed. On the following night, with a company of his braves, the chief steals upon the smaller en­campment and carries off the girl.

The girl has a cousin, a boy of fourteen, who cannot brook this treachery; our Indian, too, thinks it intolerable. These two meet and arrange a plan to release the girl. So well does the plan succeed that, before the chief has had opportunity to enjoy his prize, she is freed and hid in a rocky cave known to her people only. In returning for some supplies for the girl, the older of these youths is captured.

So enamored of the girl is the chief, that he sets aside Indian usages, and offers life and freedom to this one who has so openly dared to defy him, if he will but disclose the girl’s hiding-place. Well does this young Indian know the results of refusal; for, as a lad, he had seen white men put to death by these same braves. But he refuses. He is bound to a stake; a fire is kindled in front of it; gashes are made in his flesh and filled with hot coals; sharpened sticks are burned to redness and thrust into his eyes; and, when cruelty can devise no more, the burning fagots are piled about his feet, and the soul escapes.

What is the meaning of this ? Go back to the first human incarnation. The debt to that woman’s soul is paid; for the Indian girl is her incarnation, and that of Katharine of Aragon also.

After a few years this soul incarnates in one of the eastern states, and is still undergoing purification. In its present incarnation, it has paid the debts it owed for the crimes of its third. One more necessary human experience awaits this soul,—womanhood.

In a stony field, a man turns the soil with a rude plow. The plow is drawn by a woman whose soul’s career the reader is now asked to follow. She is heavy and stolid; and unwil­lingly draws the plow under the lash of the man who is the father of her child, which lies at the edge of the field.

In the second incarnation, these two are together again; and they have a large family. The mother and children are indoors; the father enters, cuffs the children about, and begins his meal. A man enters; this man and the father quarrel and come to blows; the mother starts to part them just as a blow from the man kills the father. The mother goes off with the man, leaving the children to shift for themselves; two only get care from others and grow up.

In the third incarnation, from a respectable home, she drifts into becoming a woman of infamous life and occupations.

In the fourth incarnation, her father is a gardener who supplies flowers to noble houses. Her mother dies; she remains single, keeps house for her father, and helps him in his labors, devotedly attached to both father and flowers. At the death of her father, she enters a convent, and dies beloved by all.

In the fifth, she is among the Waldenses. Barely eighteen, naked, feet chained to the floor and hands to the wall, she stands in a dark, stone cell. After several days without food, drink, or the possibility of lying down, she is taken out and burned at the stake. ,

A few months afterward, she enters upon her sixth incarnation. Born in a noble house, at thirteen she becomes the wife of a feudal baron. Beautiful, rich, petted, she passes a few bright years; and is killed in trying to part her lord from another who has insulted him at his own board.

Immediately reborn, she is Elizabeth of Hungary, whom Gregory XII. canonized as a saint.   •

The eighth incarnation follows soon. She is again born to great station; but the people are poor, the duties heavy, and the place lonely. She meets a cavalier who is richer and more dashing in manner than her lord. She has two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five. Her lord is killed. While his corse still lies in the castle, the cavalier comes for her. The rear walls of her castle are washed by a stream that, in a rocky channel, hidden by dense growths of shrubbery, runs to the sea. She takes the children to the second story, opens a casement, grasps the boy and throws him out. The unsuspecting child turns, grasps a point of rock and looks up, only to see his sister follow him. Her head strikes upon a rock, killing her instantly. The boy knows how to swim; getting one arm around his sister, he struggles manfully; but the current is heavy and swift, and his small strength is soon exhausted. The mother leans far out of the casement and watches this strug­gle in the stream. Satisfied that the struggle is ended, she gathers her jewels, and rides away with the gay, plumed cavalier.

In the next or ninth incarnation, she is Milton’s daughter Dorothy. The tenth is in the United States, and is not yet finished.

In the same period of time in which the soul of Alexander the Great has had more than eight hundred incarnations, this one of St. Elizabeth has had but ten.

Thus far, the soul of Alexander the Great has occupied the bodies of men; the soul of St. Elizabeth, those of women. A soul who started at the same time as these two and has had nearly seven hundred incarnations, has occu­pied both kinds of bodies; and in some periods alternated quite regularly between them; and this soul is incarnate in the United States today.

The following are some of the conclusions which the author has reached in examining the non-physical records on our planet:—

A globule in building a crystal body works with conscious intelligence, as does a soul in building its body of flesh. The mineral world is alive; wherever is life is consciousness; and everything from a crystal to a purified soul has intelligence after its kind.

The soul is of no time, country, race, sex, creed, nor family ties. The parents of Alex­ander the Great in this incarnation have never been his parents before; and in this last incar­nation, St. Elizabeth has borne some children whose souls have been through hundreds of incarnations, and her husband had had more than five hundred, in contrast to her ten. When souls just beginning development, and souls in the phase of purification are put together in families, there must needs be friction; but let not the soul undergoing purification shrink from the contact—he is their means of devel­opment; they his means of purification.

The soul is not only developed and purified, it pays the debts which it contracts with other souls on its journey: but not every soul is so fortunate as was that of Alexander the Great, when he died to save from harm the same soul whom he had so grievously wronged; for souls pass beyond earthly incarnations, and the debtors left behind pay to some other soul, as a man pays the son a debt he could not or did not pay the father.