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SHADOW LAND OR  LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE by Elisabeth d’Esperance(1897)

I would come back to these people of the mists, but first let me gather fresh strength and courage from those radiant beings whose smile had warmed and thrilled me with an ecstasy of love and veneration.

Yet a strange sensation as of some great attraction kept me, and in vain I tried to shake myself free from its influence. I wanted freedom, liberty; yet I was like a captive being drawn back to the prison from whence he had escaped. I knew that, resist as I would, I must obey the power which was impelling me; so grasping with all my strength the treasure I had found I obeyed, and sorrowfully, yet elate because of my treasure, I found my former home in the shadow land.

As when I left, the walls appeared to approach and recede.

I passed through as through a mist, and stood with the same sense of unreality looking at the woman lying still, book in hand, either sleeping or dead. That this woman’s form was the prison from which I had escaped I knew now, and that I must again become captive. I knew that I must submit; there was so much for me to do to show these poor struggling spirits that beyond the shadows there is a living reality, absolute and perfect, that the treasure I had grasped might also be theirs, to help them on the way to freedom. Only clothed in these misty garments, could I approach them and tell them these things; so I was content to return, and wait patiently for the time of release, knowing my duty and glad to do it.

The same sense of pain, of faintness and weary depression, and again I was conscious of lying on my couch, book in hand. I opened my eyes; all about me was the same, nothing was changed; the flowers, the pictures, the curtains were as they had always been; but there was this great change, that I had withal a sense of joy, rest and absolute content, such as I had never known before.

How long I had been awry I have no knowledge, for in the world of Reality I had visited, time is not, nor space, nor anything by which to measure as on the earth - strange how the shadow and the reality change places. Had I not known better I should have said that earthly scenes were the realities and the world I had visited the dream-world.

But the treasure I had found there is still in my grasp. This one atom of the living truth has brought me that place which passeth all understanding, and by its clear light I see and know that spirit communication is true; true as that God lives.