SECRET OF JOY
We were thrilled with our experiment and poured out all the details to our dear teacher. He listened attentively and when we had finished he asked us once more where we would like to go.
‘Why, may we travel again already?’ I asked in surprise.
‘You are going to travel a great deal,’ he assured us. Then he went on to explain that since we had been made free of the planes we must use our new powers in order to make them for ever our own.
‘You must choose our next visit,’ I told Janet. She at once decided to look up Rose and Greig so we sent out messages to them. Very soon we were with them in the Hall of Books!
Reg was our next choice but we found it difficult to reach him with a mind-message.
‘Where can he be?’ said Janet. ‘He must have his mental veil very firmly drawn.’
‘I wonder whether we can get a message to him by Robbie,’ I suggested.
We began to concentrate again while our angel sat silently beside us. Presently Janet touched my hand. We had contacted Robbie together! He replied to our enquiries happily and even across the vast distance we sensed his especial joy. It appeared that he and Reg were together in the Hall of Audience and that they had just returned from the Plane Between where they had been united for Eternity!
‘Reg and Robbie!’ Janet cried gladly. ‘I never guessed,, did you, Bernard?’
‘No; but what wonderful news. I remember how happy they were in the Hall of Adventure when they wrestled together on that rock… No wonder Reg did not receive our mind-message though, since they have just arrived in the Hall of Audience.’
‘Can we go there at once?’ Janet asked longingly. ‘We are sure to see our King of Love there-.’
‘Janet,’ I interrupted, ‘I have a great suggestion to make. Suppose we visit those planes where He is? Suppose we follow Him from Hall to Hall – would you like that?’
She turned with radiant face to our angel who had been listening with a smile to our talk.
‘May we, dear angel?’
‘Of course, children. Remember, the Master never sleeps.
That is the secret of our joy in Heaven’s realm. Once we have learned how to travel, how to function in all our different bodies we may follow Him at the time, never letting Him out of our sight, as it were.’
‘Really?’ Janet’s face glowed with happiness. ‘Oh angel, I have felt a little bit sorry, sometimes, when He has left us. To think that we may follow Him wherever He goes-.’
‘Not quite that, little ones,’ our angel corrected tenderly, ‘for you are only made free of the lower planes, as yet. However, He is often there.’
‘Then we will be there, too,’ I declared. ‘How shall we know where to go?’
‘I will direct you,’ he promised. ‘I have been with Him
constantly while sitting here in The Broad Field. I very rarely let Him out of my sight.’
‘Oh!’ we cried out in one breath and drew closer to our dear guide. Sometimes his homeliness blinded us to his grandeur. At other times a chance remark revealed him and we longed to bask in his benediction-ray. To be with our King so often, constantly communing with Him, knowing where He was, what He was saying and doing… to be able to sit in a field in meditation and yet follow the Beloved through the planes – how exalted he was!
‘Children,’ he chided us, breaking in on our thoughts, ‘I am but of the fourth order. Do not be so awed. There come and draw close within my arm and we will rest awhile and talk of our King.’
One on either side we pressed against him and he put his arms round our shoulders. Then, while we all looked out over the Causeway to the distant hills, he followed the Master with his inward sight (which is not quite the same, he explained, as functioning in another body and walking with Him) and told us what he saw.
A long time passed in this way and then our teacher sent us off to meet Reg and Robbie in the Hall of Audience and, when we returned very happily from this visit, he directed us to many other planes. How busy we were! We soon become quite accustomed to the donning of ‘cloaks’ for ‘winter’ regions and the discarding of them for ‘summer’ visits. It seemed incredible to us that we had not known, that we had thought of Heaven as a number of distant places instead of a ‘here and now’ (as the angel said.)
In all our wanderings we met our Beloved King but the visit that gave us the greatest joy was the one to the Haven of Prayer. Here, on the fringe of the forest we walked by His side and here He explained many wonderful things to us, revealing to us also the full significance of our bronze seals. He told us that these would later be replaced by silver ones and later still, by gold. Then He called to our minds the presentation of the flowers of purity, telling us that those who had a flower growing in the Garden of the Lord would one day find it fastened beneath the golden seal.
Many more things He told us during that walk in the forest and when at last He dismissed us we went with light hearts knowing that we would often follow Him through the planes. He knew it, too; He smiled at us and murmured:
‘A little while…’.