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VII

CONSTITUTION AND LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND¹

The order of the universe is as perfect as its varieties are innumerable. The principles engaged in forming worlds are incessantly decomposing them. In no other way can perpetual youth be bestowed upon the finer bodies in space. Atoms sufficiently refined to ascend above the mineral compound enter into forms of vegetable life. Vegetation delegates its finest atoms to build up the animal kingdom. The most refined animal atoms enter into and support human bodies. The most refined particles of human bodies which are not required to construct and support "the garment of immortality" ascend to form the solids, fluids and ethers of that effulgent zone to which all human beings are hastening.² There is thus established and maintained an eternal youth in the spiritual universe. The spiritual spheres have been termed recently Summer Lands and—counting man's earthly existence as the first world of spirit life—there are in all six spheres in the ascending flight toward Deity, Which fills the Seventh Sphere. The Central Positive Power repels the physical and attracts the spiritual concurrently. The circulation of matter is

¹ See A Stellar Key to the Summer Land, pp. 64 et seq. collected and collated.
² This is stated by Davis to be the result of most careful examinations of the physical structure of the Summer Land, its fertile soils, lovely groves, vines and flowers. But it is added that the world-rearing principles are attracted from human emanations in all the planets.—Op. cit., p. 115.

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therefore outward from the centre, while spirit travels toward the centre from without. These two reciprocal currents flow incessantly. Inconceivable oceans of world-building materials expand from the Fountain at the centre, while innumerable multitudes of individualised spiritual and angelical men, women and children—from all human-bearing planets in space—are marching inward toward the positive attractive Centre and approaching nearer and nearer the eternal sun-sphere of the Father and Mother.¹

The formation of the different Summer Lands can be seen in those principles which evolved the suns and stars of the firmament. It is the teaching of science that world-constructing forces are latent in the mass and that the formation of a dewdrop is not less wonderful than that of an inhabitable world. So also the formation of spiritualised material belts is as natural and rational as that of the primordial rings out of which all planets, satellites and lesser bodies were developed subsequently.

But a question arises whether the spiritual zones will not be themselves broken up and distributed through space by counter attractions. I answer here that they cannot be drawn asunder by any superior external force, for they are constituted of ultimate particles, having only remote affinities for the constituents of other bodies

¹ There is no question that this presents a better synopsis of the subject than we have seen presented otherwise respecting the formation of so-called Spiritual Spheres by means of emanations from the various planets. It is the latter, however, which appeals more especially to Davis, who recurs to it on several occasions, and notably in The Present Age and the Inner Life, where he affirms, presumably on his own authority, that eight hundred million tons of invisible emanations are given off by the earth annually, not to speak of other planets belonging to the solar system. As he is not able to suggest what becomes of them otherwise, he assumes that they go to form the Summer Land of his visions, a material basis for which was necessary to his system.—Op. cit., pp. 413, 414. The scientific aspect of this notion, with its seeming suspension of the law of gravitation, is naturally not worth discussing.

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in space. Another question is why the Summer Land is not round like a globe rather than a vast zone or stratified belt. I answer that according to astronomical science the primary figure was spheroidal. The oval is consequently the first form of matter—its genesis and also its exodus. So also in music the eighth and the first note are essentially the same. The last sound is a perfect reiteration or reproduction of the first and becomes the basis of another and higher scale, onward and upward progressively. This harmonial law of continuous reproduction will answer the question concerning the zone shape of the Summer Land. According to this law, a broad, effulgent, rotating belt or zone is the first form of world-building in the stellar universe. So also it is the highest and final form which matter is capable of assuming in its most exalted condition of ethereal and essential refinement. Lastly, the physical universe is itself spheroidal in shape, composed of a progressive series of successively ascending circles of suns and planets, and it is nothing but the material garment, the organised body of that interior spiritual universe which was not "made with hands" but is "eternal in the heavens."¹

¹ If it were possible—in the case of a writer who not only admits that all his records are the result of impressions received but regards this method as the only way of truth and illumination—to interpret statements according to the values of their literal meaning, it would follow here-from that the spiritual universe, being eternal in the heavens, anteceded the manifest universe, which is a product of time as to present form and mode, whether or not its elements may have pre-existed. It would follow also that the spiritual spheres are not composed of emanations from planets or suns now existing, which involves the grotesque idea that they are expanding continually owing to accretions from without. There is no need to accentuate this point, and it is stated only to show once more, but now after a different manner, that A. J. Davis as a seer who saw visions of another world and of the life beyond therein is to be distinguished from A. J. Davis who owing to impressions of another order—and to his reflections thereupon—attempted to unfold a system of the universe. The findings of his seership will be of permanent interest to those who

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As regards the location of the Second Sphere,¹ it is girdled by the First Sphere, or—more categorically—by the Milky Way, just as its rings girdle the planet Saturn. The analogy is perfect. In appearance it is like a beautiful morning. The surface is diversified endlessly with valleys, rivers, hills, mountains and innumerable parks, the trees and shrubbery of which resemble, however, nothing on earth. They are more like the vegetation of Saturn. An incalculable variety of flowers lends a peculiar prismatic charm to the far-extending territories, and the divinely soft ether surpasses all conception. To be there is to be in the presence of holiness, where every tree speaks to the heart and every flower pronounces a benediction.² Were the size of our earth multiplied seven million times it would give the extent of a single park in the Second Sphere. The latter, once more, is a magnificent belt, bespangled with countless jewels, and it is part of the Divine Vesture of Him Whose praise is celebrated best in the eloquence of sacred silence.

believe that such experience is a general possibility, which in his case may have become actual.
¹ See The Present Age and the Inner Life, pp. 416, 417.
² Another intimation that the visions of Davis are to be read as parables or symbolical moralities.