BEYOND. CHAPTER I. In the world of thought to-day, few things are more significant than the extent to which the religious dogmas of the past are being questioned, analyzed, and, in general, made to give account of themselves. People are discovering that it is lawful to use the mind as a crucible, and to submit any and all statements, irrespective of their age, to the electric current of modern fearlessness of thought, before accepting them as truth. Scientific formulas, many of them, fare little better, and are made to yield up the kernel of fact they contain, stripped of the husk of theory in which it has long been buried. For the living truth is demanded such value as we obtain in our own life-experiences, if possible; and whenever this can be obtained without paying the price it costs us in life, of pain, or loss, or a mortgaged future, then, indeed, the demand becomes imperious. And this has become especially true of late years in regard to things occult. Formerly the boundaries of the earth-life marked the limit of thought and aspiration, and those who seemed to have the widest experience within those bounds were often the loudest in proclaiming their utter failure to find any lasting satisfaction in all that life could give. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, was echoed and re-echoed until the gloomy thought spread like a cloud over the sky, chilling all noble effort, and blighting the aspirations of the young and hopeful. But a brighter day has dawned. These boundaries, which formerly seemed like walls impenetrable, have grown thin and shadowy, and it is astonishing to note how people everywhere are asking, as with open mind, Is this future life we have heard of so long, an actual fact? If so, what is the nature of it? What are its relations to present facts? and how may I obtain a common-sense view of it? Just what are its relations to me, and what are mine to a future life? Where can I obtain clear light on the subject? This condition of things brings it to pass that a peculiar responsibility rests upon one, like the writer, to whom has been given extraordinary facilities for acquiring the knowledge now so greatly in demand. To relate what those facilities were, how or why given, and what price in the currency of the hidden realm was paid for so much of its treasures as was brought away, might interest the curious, as I have suggested, but it would not materially affect the value of what is to be given. That must stand or fall by its intrinsic worth, not by the circumstances associated with its acquirement.