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The Spirit World is the Reality; the Material World, the Illusion

The only thing of … permanence is the world of spirit. (Donald Macleod in HT, 18.)

It’s wrong to say the physical forms have subtle counterparts; it’s really the other way around. (Nikola Tesla, NTR, 43.)

You seem to think there is no substantiality to spirit, while we know it is the only substantiality. (Unnamed spirit communicator in SWSL, 63.)

We are the light, you the shadow. We are the reality, you the appearance. (Philemon [Archdeacon Wilberforce] in LFOS, 96.)

Heaven is real and earth the shadow; spirit the reality and matter the unreality. (Spirit control) Mary Bosworth in SWSL, 80.)

Everything has spirit underlying its substance. (Spirit leader Imperator in Moses, MSTTT, n.p.)


The spirit-body is the real man; the earth-body being only its temporary clothing. The dead body of earth thrown aside leaves the real man with all his individuality untouched. (Spirit leader Imperator in Moses, MSTSW, n.p.)

You must learn to … view your external life only as the preparation for the inner and truer life. Ours is the reality, yours the shadow world. (Spirit leader Imperator in Moses, MSTSW, n.p.)

The spirit-body is the real individual; and, though for a time it is clothed with fluctuating atoms, its identity is absolutely the same when these atoms are dispensed with. (Spirit leader Imperator in Moses, MSTSW, n.p.)

Spirit is the real substance; matter is only one of the modes of its presentation.

You regard spirit as eminently insubstantial, vapory and formless; it may be that mist will symbolize your idea. Spirit is a substance, having form and shape.

So the spirit-world is real and substantial, surrounding and underlying the material world; organized of spirit substance in various grades and degrees, from the most impalpable vapor up to the densest solidity.

The realm of spirit pervades your earth, animates all things, and gives to animal and plant and vegetable its real existence.

All that seems real to you is only the shadow of the true. The spirit is the life, the reality, the eternal and essential substance.

And just as spirit underlies man, so does it underlie and inform all matter.

All forces that hold the world in place, and carry them in their orbits, are spiritual. Light, heat, magnetism, electricity, are only the outer coverings of one inner spiritual force. Spirit underlies all.

The elements of matter can have no power to assume form and shape; one of the essential properties of matter is inertia.

The marble cannot roll out of the quarry sculptured in human form. The action of spirit must be brought to bear on it before that can be.

The law is but the external expression of the energizing force. Wherever you turn you see evidence of spirit action, from the worlds that roll in space to the tiny fern.

It energizes all, and, by a subtle process of chemistry, distils from dew and rain and air and lights the delicious juices and fragrances; and moulds the lovely forms to which you are so accustomed that you heed them not. (Spirit leader Imperator in Moses, MSTSW, n.p.)

What is nature? And what are her processes? You know not. You have erected an idol, and called it Nature, and labeled it with some formulae and called them laws; devices to conceal your ignorance.

Nature is spirit, and her laws are spiritual. All your material forms - vegetables, animals, minerals even - are the outer mask which encloses spirit. Man is a spirit and the spiritual holds together the corporeal.

The fluctuating mass of atoms which form the physical body are kept in place and vitalized by spirit. When spirit is withdrawn, they fall into corruption, and pass into other combinations. Spirit is the man, and conversely, man, by virtue of his being a spirit, dominates all creation. He is in advance of all, being endued with powers which other created beings do not possess. (Spirit leader Imperator in Moses, MSTSW, n.p.)