"When I visited the spiritual world during my embodied life I was governed by this same law and subjected to the same limitations, and hence what I related was not entitled to full credence and belief. So it has been in all cases of trance in the past, and will continue to be in the future for ages yet to come. In my next I shall speak of some instances illustrative of this truth."
"As illustrative of the proposition submitted in my last I will only mention a few among numerous instances.
"The book of Revelations states that John visited the Isle of Patmos on the Lord's day, and was then and there in the spirit. (I should have used the expression 'entranced' or 'trance state,' or that 'the Lord permitted me to see.') While thus in the spirit or trance state he was taken to the heavens. After resuming his normal condition in the body he essays to write out what he thinks he saw, or so much of it as he is enabled to retain in memory, and call up after again fully controlling the physical body. He says that he saw beasts worshiping around the throne of God, and that he saw a beast rise out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns; that a book written in heaven was handed him with the command that he eat it, which he assures us he did, etc. Does any one believe that these were veritable occurrences, 'that there were beasts in heaven full of heavenly love, evinced in worshiping before the throne, and that books were written in heaven for men to eat? The Koran of Mahomet is an improvement on this, for it was not eaten, but preserved for use.
"Now, I want to say to the world, especially the New Church people, that my visions of the hells had no more foundation in fact than John's beasts, dragons and golden candlesticks. The difference between John and myself, that is, the important difference, consisted in the fact that John's symbolic visions were explained to be unrealities, while I was left to believe mine to be absolute verities. In fact one was as unreal as the other, and only forcibly illustrates the unreliability of this mode of deriving true and genuine spiritual knowledge.
"Your own Andrew Jackson Davis is another instance corroborative of my proposition. He avers that he has been, not 'in the spirit,' like John, nor 'in the trance state,' like myself, but, in more æsthetic phraseology, 'in the superior state.' They all practically mean the same thing. Davis says he located while in the 'superior state' the spirit world proper, and found it to be in or beyond the 'milky way,' thus inflicting a cruel blow upon the science of astronomy. Astronomy teaches, and correctly, too, as every well informed spirit knows, that the 'milky way' is a vast assemblage or constellation of suns, worlds and systems of solar worlds, and yet Mr. Davis was honest.
