Francis Worcester Doughty

“ Forms, ceremonies, all the tricks and devices of priestcraft aiming at personal dominion are unknown here.
One God and all creation united with him in a harmonious desire to work His will; from the mightiest spirit of spheres celestial, to the humblest germ invisible even beneath the most powerful glass the ingenuity of man can devise. ”

“ Nothing is without a purpose. Marriage is most grossly misunderstood by you mortals. It is to be your work to write of this and other strange experiences through which you are passing, so that those who care to read may know something of the truth.”
“Come to me again!” I cried. “That taste of bliss makes me long for more! Come, my love—my wife!”
She shook her head and smiled.
“Not again, George. You have other duties to perform, as I have said. As it is your life cord was almost severed—you can see it there behind you, trailing like a silver thread.” ”

“ I thought of the big tree in the courtyard beneath which I had passed through that strange experience with Walla, and instantly I was there.
Now for a moment terror seized me, for the courtyard was a lake; the water was pouring over the wall in torrents. But I soon perceived that I was no longer as I had been. I seemed to float above the water, and when I thought wonderingly of what was beyond the wall, I rose higher. I could look over it, and my eyes rested upon a vast sea, extending in every direction.
“Will it never end?” I thought. “Is there more still to come? What is its source? ”

“ Instinctively I floated away from Maurice and found myself inside this temple. As with everything else, I seemed to grasp its purpose at a glance, and knew that here people worshiped one God; a God all-powerful, executing His will through the instrumentality of myriads of ministering spirits. Many statues, superbly cut in snowy marble, stood beneath the great dome overshadowing the vast interior. They were representations of men and women once prominent in the social affairs of these people, whose spirits were supposed still to have the interests of the nation in charge. ”

“ There men are satisfied to leave such things to priests whose mission, it appears, is to terrorize the ignorant, to distort and suppress such few facts as they possess; to load down their barbarous worship with senseless forms and ceremonies, until all knowledge of the Divine principle is obliterated, and all freedom of thought crushed. Even among the few enlightened minds existing on this planet a singular condition of affairs obtains; for these are for the most part men steeped in selfishness who strive to conceal rather than promulgate spiritual truth. ”

“ Fix your thoughts upon your friends, lest while contemplating mysteries too deep for your natural mind, you sever the life cord and return to your proper sphere of usefulness no more!”
Now may God keep the memory of what I beheld at that instant ever green! ”

“ Marriage, my love, is an ordinance so holy that the Divine nature alone can fully comprehend it. In the Divine the male and female, the positive and negative of spiritual force, are truly united. With mortals this is seldom granted; with disembodied spirits it may be called into existence at will in a certain sense, but many who in the world have been unhappily mated, do not will it—they fear, and their fear prevents. But in the Divine it is a mighty force, the creative power calling into being the myriads of immortal souls with which the universe is filled. ”

“ I feel as I never felt before in the presence of anyone, man or woman. It is not love as I have experienced love. It is rather a sense of completeness. I feel as if before I saw you I was but a fragment. ”

“ The faces of the women were perfectly fair, so with the boys; some of the young men exhibited the blackness, others younger did not, but no such thing as beards could be seen. The blackness, then, was the sign of virility, and really, when one comes to think of it, was no more disfiguring than a beard. ”