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The Life Beyond Death2242
and closer companionship between kindred souls than earth-life ordinarily
witnesses. With the dropping and discarding of the sheaths of the physical
body, the soul becomes capable of a far closer relation to kindred souls
than it ever experienced on the physical plane. The Astral fires having burnt
up the dross of the lower attractions, the soul is able to function on much
higher planes of association. On the Astral Plane, soul may meet soul in close
communion and comradeship and the dreams and longings of earth-life,
which were found impossible of realization on that plane, now become the
ordinary incidents of the new life of the soul. That for which the soul has
longed for in vain on earth, now is found in its richest fruition.
To realize just what this means, it is necessary but to think of the highest
ideals entertained by the soul, in earth-life, regarding the relationships
between human beings. Though these ideals are seldom lived up to in
earth-life, nevertheless they abide with the soul constantly, and it is one
of the tragedies of earth-life that these ideals always seem “too good to
be true.” The love of man and woman, of the right kind, always has as its
background this ideal affection and desire, and yet how seldom does
the ideal escape being dragged in the mud. The relationship between
parent and child, between brothers and sisters, between friends, seldom
is found to approach the ideal which dwells ever in the human heart. So
true is this ideal—so constant is its presence—that when, in earth-life, we
see a companionship which seems even partially to comply with the ideal
requirements, our deepest feelings are touched. In fiction, in poetry, in
song, in the drama, we find that the picture of the realization of this ideal
touches springs of emotion and sympathy which lift us up to higher planes
of thought and life. What then must be the joy, the bliss, the happiness, the
satisfaction, of a life on a plane of being in which this expression is the only
natural one, and where the ideal becomes the real is actual expression?
Yes, we do, indeed, “know each other there.” Not only the “other” whom
we may have in mind, but also many “others” with whom we are in natural
soul harmony. Those who are bound together by the bond of earth