The Blue Island and Other Spiritualist Writings (Life on Other Worlds Series)

by William T. Stead

What I have to tell will be of interest to many, and will be useless to many more, but I am going to tell of things which each one of my readers can, up to a point, test for himself. You can each one of you test it by soul knowledge, and by that you will know that I am giving you words of value, words which God in His infinite love has permitted me to be the means of passing to you. It is not my idea of the mysteries of life, it is a discourse on those mysteries.

Death is only the doorway from one room to another, and both rooms are very similarly furnished and arranged. That’s what I want you to appreciate thoroughly; it is under the same guiding hand. The same Personality rules all spheres.

You have your daily lives to lead and you must always do well the work in hand. Never neglect the present because the future appears more brightly colored. Carry on with today, but with a corner of your mind on tomorrow, and remember also that phenomenal Spiritualism is not for all. Many minds could not absorb the greatness of the subject together with the facts of the phenomena and still continue in their routine in normal manner—these are the people for whom phenomena Spiritualism is not. They will be wise to go no further into the subject than knowledge gained from books and from the experiences of others. In this sense, Spiritualism is not for all.

Our arrival was greeted by welcomes from many old friends and relations who had been dear to each one of us in our earth life. And having arrived, we people who had come over from that ill-fated ship parted company. We were free agents again, though each one of us was in the company of some personal friend who had been over here a long while.

realize that the next step after death is only a very little one. You do not go from indifferent manhood to perfect godliness! It is not like that; it is all progress and evolution, and as with people, so with lands. The next world is only a complement of your present one.

It must all sound very unreal and dreamlike, but believe me, it was only like being in a foreign country and nothing else, except that it was absorbingly interesting.

need—I seemed to draw much more strength and

energy out of the atmosphere itself.

This I attributed to ...

and a...

The chief work on this island is to get rid of unhappiness at parting from earth ties, and therefore, for the time being, the individual is allowed to indulge in most of earth’s pleasures.

The routine of a day here is similar to the routine of a day on earth; the difference being that earth’s routine is often made by force of circumstance, whereas here it is made according to the desire for knowledge on this or that subject.

At first there is practical freedom of thought and action, and there are only certain limitations imposed not by rule but by conditions.

Beyond these limitations there is absolute freedom.

That is why on earth it is so essential to control your bodies by your minds, and not the reverse. When you come here your mind is all-powerful, and everything depends, for your own degree of happiness here, upon the kind of mind you bring with you.

To sum all these up, it is the quality of mind control over body versus body over mind. Mind matters and body matters—on earth. Here only the mind matters, it is in your keeping entirely, and is in whatever state you have made it by your life. On your arrival here the degree of your happiness will be determined automatically by the demands of your mind.

“I suppose he’s carrying on.”

So are we, we people in the Blue Island.

Mind and its work—thought—is the force that drives and creates

everything on earth.

To a great extent the individual hardships of earth life are directly due to wrong thinking.

To realize oneself that one has failed is far more bitter than the consciousness that others know it.

Anyone who sits for a moment and allows his mind to dwell on some dear

is registered; the personal ones are, as I have previously said, of no importance so long as they are not allowed to

This is why I say that whilst on earth it is not only advisable, but essential, to keep your minds under control and in order. It is only wisdom so to do. The difficulty is that people will not realize this whilst upon earth, although they know from their own inner consciousness that I am stating a truth.

So long as you are upon earth you are Body (Physical) and Soul (Mind) and Spirit (Self). When you come here you are Mind (Soul) and Self (Spirit) only.

Earth was made beautiful for Man to enjoy—not merely to tantalize him—lead him on and then say “No!” That is not the way of our blessed Creator. He has given beauty and the faculty of enjoying beauty to all mankind, and so long as the mind rules it will continue to be beauty, but when only the body rules, influencing and degrading the mind as it will, then trouble lies ahead. Much trouble and much acute regret.

I want you first to realize that by the change of death you do not become part of the Godhead immediately

can only see a little farther than you, and I do not by any means possess the key to the door of All Knowledge and All Truth.

We leave people behind on the earth who dutifully mourn for us, who are genuinely upset at their loss—but after a while, short or long—their remembrance of us grows thin. They cease to think of us, to recall us,

and to remember our companionship. Those are the only partings. In some cases even those people come back to our lives when they themselves come to this land. Gradually, as they throw off the influences which dimmed their remembrance of us, they find the foundation of the old affection. Sometimes it is untouched; sometimes spoilt but these are the only partings.

the earth people will not know he is there, and seeing them but being unable to make his presence known causes him much disappointment and sorrow, and gradually he will go to them less and less. Realizing that they are ignorant of his presence and think only of him as dead, he will finally stay away altogether, content to wait until they join him.

The governing force is love.

When you come, through death, you are attracted by the ties of love into the set of people who vibrate

the same affection, and if you have had an affection for another which is not equally shared, although you will at first be together, you will gradually and yet quietly cease to attract each other, and cease to be in each other’s company.

Premonitions concerning an arrangement made which is afterwards not fulfilled are caused by the influence of spirit friends trying always to guide their charges to the benefit of themselves. In this way you can figure out the cause of all so-called premonitions.

In every case it is spirit friends trying to communicate with the person chiefly concerned—he often fails to register what another will pick up.

The Blue Island is a transient life; a land for acclimatizing the newcomer, and as soon as he’s fit, he passes from it to what I might term the Real World, inasmuch as each one will be much longer on it than any has yet been on earth.

We can at will return to the Blue Island, and many do so frequently, both to meet newly arrived

friends and associates, and to help any person or group with whom we are in sympathy. These are only visits, and we do no...

It is only the spiritual and mental knowledge and development which hinders and advances the individual here; and spirit knowledge is not hindered by whatever one’s job on earth may have been. In this respect there is a great and sudden broadening of the point of view of all comers to this land.

It is a land of freedom. A land of happiness and smiles.

land of happiness brought about through the real love of man for man. A land to work for—a land in which your place is made according to the knowledge you have had whilst upon...

It is impossible to over-emphasize the degree of freedom in this new world, or the jo...

The form of life differs here enormously according to temperament, personality, and the influence of earth life.

Once on this Real World, and once passed the first initiation and payments of debts, we are free to do as we wish, but we have to progress or we ourselves curtail our liberties.

Once free, we can travel at will over our own world and over yours. So great is our speed and method of travel that we can be in two places almost simultaneously.

Everywhere we go we are conscious of the general love for one another. It is much more evident than on earth, and that great affection is the direct cause of the general brightness and radiance of this world.

Life here is a grander thing—a bolder thing, and a happier thing for all those who have led reasonable lives on earth, but for the unreasonable there are many troubles and difficulties and sorrows to be encountered. There is a great truth in the saying that “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

I have been away from my earth life now a number of earth years, and although I have been in constant and unbroken touch with my old conditions and affections, I have never, since leaving the Blue Island, had any desire to return to the earth for habitation.