“Do you ever see your earthly friends,” I asked, “struggling and toiling in the dark abyss of nature, before they cast off their earthly covering and rise into the light and beauty of these higher worlds?” “Not directly!” replied my brother, “for there is no continuity between spirit and matter. To speak philosophically, there is continuity and correspondence; but spirit and matter are not degrees of the same substance, differing only in tenuity, as is commonly supposed. It is impossible for us to see or hear anything in the natural world, except through the medium of some living man whose interiors have also been opened. “Wonderful as it may seem to you, the spirits of men still living in the flesh are really in the spiritual world, all the time connected secretly with spiritual societies. They are invisible to us, however, because their thoughts, affections and senses all open downward and outward into nature. They become dimly visible, but do not communicate, when they are in states of profound abstraction or great spiritual elevation. “We see them occasionally also by correspondences, which would appear to you like visions or dreams. In every society these manifestations are different, depending on the nature and functions of the society. In ours, for instance, the mental states of our earthly friends are sometimes revealed to us architecturally. That is, we see them as in a dream building houses: and without knowing their names or earthly whereabouts, we judge of their characters by the materials, the progress, the execution, even to the minutest details of the work they seem to be doing.” “Wonderful and beautiful!” I exclaimed. “I can show you this wonderful thing more easily than I can explain it. We have here the power, incomprehensible to you at present, of recalling these symbolic images and making them appear before us again, as if they were external and real things. “Look,” he said, and the horizon toward the north seemed overcast. A thin veil of mist arose before us, and through it we discovered a dim range of hills, upon each of which a house was in process of erection. “Every man in the flesh,” said my brother, “is always engaged, unconsciously to himself, in building his future house in the spiritual world; for the entire spiritual life of a man is represented symbolically by his residence here and its appointments. All the activities of your hands, heart and brain in the good and true things of the earthly state, are so many contributions to the materials, style, form, color and finish of your eternal home. “Observe,” he continued, “that some of those houses are nearly finished, others are barely begun. Some of them are in styles of great grandeur, others are very plain. The materials, too, and the execution differ immensely. Observe also that a man alone is at work on some; a man and a woman on others.” “Why is that?”