Spirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through the vibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind. The individual ego gathers up from each incarnation—if it is true to itself—some knowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain. Its experiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest to highest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever known. This is the justice of the great Creator. The king today has been in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a moment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might remember and know how 'tis himself. Men and women of thought, of great character have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from the destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results of labor and effort.

When the practised soul familiarizes itself with the newly-born, fleshly tabernacle it is to inhabit and use for a long or a short time, it broods over the unconscious being, and at the first indication of intelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life, and what thus comes in is there to stay. The growth of the child, the development of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of the brain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its use upon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, the environment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons.

The soul, the ego, thus placed, is bound and shackled by its human heredity. This is inevitable, it has no choice as to its lineaments or figure. It in a sense bears the "sins of the world"; it can in no way separate itself, really, from the whole human family.

When the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from any cause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can no longer respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is called death—physical dissolution. But this change is simply the unclothing of the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to return again to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to its previous stock of knowledge. The individual soul in each incarnation forms for itself ties more or less real and lasting—with the mother, the fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters upon its earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may, or may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; with family relations; and with friends, public and private. Nearly every person who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side with trains of friends to whom he is attached, and whom he will not forget, and he will stay on and on in his heaven till every claim upon his love, or service is fully satisfied. No more severing of ties; no more broken hearts, or disappointed hopes. No injustice, full fruition in heaven.

This adjustment measured by earthly reckoning may take long reaches of time, but finally, the soul, stirred by the eternal law of progress, of unfoldment, repeats its former experience, drinks of the cup of forgetfulness, and returns again to learn in the great university of unfolding life on this planet. A vast multitude, it is coming and going, unceasingly moving on. No two alike; each in its place pressing forward to the station which the totality of its experiences through many lives entitles it. There is but one law, but one method that abides. It is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it; all who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have already passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them.

Sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until it passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience. Whatever character anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally. It is the reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth. Great souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtue of their many incarnations. Through the great variety of experiences gained, they have come to know. They have earned the right to be what they are. There are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance and hypocracy masquerading as the real thing, but they do not last. Pretenders are soon unmasked and taken at their true value.

Sometimes the spirit is strong enough to ignore its present surroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its material heredity. It depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit whether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to the pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and lose the opportunity for further growth.