of our eyes have contracted so that they
admit a quantity of light bearable to our organism.

If under such a condition we turn momentarily from the bright sunlight and
look back into the darkened room, objects there will be much more plain to
our vision than things outside which are illumined by the powerful rays of
the sun. So it is also with the spirit, when it has first been released
from the body it perceives sights, scenes and sounds of the material
world, which it has just left, much more readily than it observes the
sights of the world it is entering. Wordsworth in his Ode to Immortality
noted a similar condition in the case of new-born children, who are all
clairvoyant and much more awake to the spiritual world than to this
present plane of existence. Some lose the spiritual sight very early,
others retain it for a number of years and a few keep it all through life,
but as the birth of a child is a death in the spiritual world and it
retains the spiritual sight for a time, so also death here is a birth upon
the spiritual plane, and the newly dead retain a consciousness of this
world for some time subsequent to demise.

When one awakes in the Desire World after having passed through
aforementioned experiences, the general feeling seems to be one of relief
from a heavy burden, a feeling perhaps akin to that of a diver encased in
a heavy rubber suit, a weighty brass helmet upon his head, leaden soles
under his feet and heavy weights of lead upon his breast and back,
confined in his operations on the bottom of the ocean by a short length of
air tube, and able only to move clumsily with difficulty. When after the
day's work such a man is hauled to the surface, and divests himself of his
heavy garments and he moves about with the facility we enjoy here, he must
surely experience a feeling of great relief. Something like that is felt
by the spirit when it has been divested of the mortal coil, and is able to
roam all over the globe instead of being confined to the narrow
environment which bound it upon earth.

There is also a feeling of relief for those who have been ill. Sickness,
such as we know it, does not exist there. Neither is it necessary to seek
food and shelter, for in that world there is neither heat nor cold.
Nevertheless, there are many in the purgatorial regions who go to all
bothers of housekeeping, eating and drinking just as we do here. George Du
Maurier in his novel "Peter Ibbetson" gives a very goo