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VI

CELESTIAL RIVERS IN SPACE¹

From each of the earths in our system great electrical and magnetic rivers flow out and in, like a ceaseless tide.² On their soft, golden bosom all death-emancipated men, women and children float into their celestial home. By the same means they and all other voyagers may and do return again and again. The flowing and ebbing of these elemental Gulf Streams correspond in a general way to the forward and backward movements of the blood from its governmental centre—the heart—to the outermost of the human body. As the crimson fluid of the heart pulsates throughout the arteries and veins of the human body, so the magnetic and electric streams

¹ See Views of our Heavenly Home, pp. 76 et seq.
² The theory concerning celestial rivers is put somewhat differently in one of the earlier works and should be taken in connection with the text as it stands above: As there is a vital circulation in the human body so there is a circulation of living forces between the spiritual world and the several planets. The South Pole of the earth sends forth a magnetic stream, and the tide passes through the orbits of Venus and Mercury, very near the surface of the sun, whence it surges silently but swiftly on till it reaches the Spirit Land. From another section of the Spirit Land there starts a lighter fluid, which is also a tidal river, toward the North Pole of earth, and this is unchangeably electrical. It is a positive stream which flows from us to the spiritual world and a negative one from the latter to our own planet. I have observed very often the spirits of our human friends, when at death they pass out of the corporeal body, ascend to a height of some seven miles, where they meet with the celestial river and are transported thereby to their Spirit Home. As there are thus streams of communication between our globe and this bourne of souls, so are there others which connect the latter with every world belonging to our planetary system.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, pp. 414., 416.

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The Harmonial Philosophy

of the upper regions start from geo-centres and helio-centres, flowing through the heavenly fields. The directions of these streams are as various as the radial lines from a globe. These living currents promote the refinement and assimilation of atoms among the organs—that is to say, globes—of the infinite body of God. They form and flow forth between all the solar centres and inhabited globes of space, whence they stream onward and inward into the next great sphere of human existence, which we call the Summer Land.

The earth on which we live is a revolving electrical machine, an immense magnetic battery. With a swiftness beyond imagination the earth's electricity streams in great ribbons and winds itself upon its own natural spool at the North, where it is transformed into a more refined motive force—an etherium or celestial magnetism. This is positive and warm to the negative and cold volumes of electricity. Its warm stream, rising high in air and flowing above the South Pole, pulsates onward and upward, outward and inward, until it breaks like a note of immortal melody on the shores of the Summer Land. There are also electrical rivers setting toward earth and the various planets in our system from different regions of the Spirit Land. They convey constant pulsations to the life of mankind from the Great Central Sun of Intelligence in the Second Sphere. Yet it is an error to suppose that all personal communication between the populations of earth and the higher spheres is possible only through the aerial rivers. There is no space in the fields of infinitude which cannot be crossed by beings endowed with will. The celestial streams can be forded and the very rivers of Paradise made subservient to the eternal unrest of mind. But the orderly method of travelling between the earths and the interior universe is by means of the rivers described. They are the recognised celestial highways connecting spheres and, globes.