http://pc93.tripod.com/lostlght.htmThe heart that is weighed in the scales could not be physical. It was the second or spiritual heart. The Manes appeals to this second heart, as to a person detached from himself, not to bear testimony against him in the presence of the god who is at the balance. This second heart was that which was
fashioned anew according to the life lived in the body. "The conscience or heart (Ab) of a man is his own god," says the
Ritual, and it also is his only judge. The divine words spoken by the soul, the soul’s projection of its highest conception of truth, were to be given flesh and made concrete truth in the life lived on earth.
This recording of its own inner nature upon the body of flesh was the writing of its own book of life. And that which was written upon the outward form would in the repercussion stamp its lineaments back again upon inner spirit vestments, or deposit them in the ark. And this book of life, the record inscribed at the end upon the imperishable soul itself, was opened anew at the beginning, not at the end, of each fresh incarnation of the soul. The facing of the record of the past began afresh for each individual every time he plunged into earth life.
We meet the book of life at birth, not at death! For we bring
with us our own past record, written upon our inner ethereal vestures in letters of character.
In life, not in death, we must face the issues raised by former good or ill. By our active deeds we must break the bondage of the past. Never will moral problems be envisaged aright until it is seen that their issues must be met and settled by conduct in the daylight of life, not in the dark night of death. This knowledge can transform human society.
Revelation (20) records the vision of the seer:
"I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books,
according to their works. The sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to his works."
With the
esoteric reading of the words "sea," "death," and "hell," there is no passage in ancient writing that more explicitly sets forth the meaning of the Judgment than this. Categorically it is declared that it is the "works" wrought in this present domain of life that determine the fate and status of the soul. The truth which is thus overwhelmingly established is that "the dead" come to their judgment in this life. It is, of course, possible to abstract from the phraseology of such passages as this apparent support for the idea that
after this life is over (a thousand years after, it is expressly claimed by numerous cults) the dead will be summoned out of earthly graves and arraigned in ghostly lines before some august spiritual court, by which the record of the deeds done in the life will be weighted against some standard of abstract justice, and the righteous ones rewarded with a crown of eternal life, while the evil ones are parted off for eternal torment. But such a reading is a sorry distortion of the mythical sense, and was never the true intent of the framers of the allegory. This life is, as we now see, the realm of the "dead."
In it, not
after it, is the trial of the soul’s qualities, as every common sense conception of the value of earthly life testifies. We are summoned into this Amenta of the body life after life, and in each we are being put to the trial of our character in a varied series of experiences. This is an incontrovertible fact of common knowledge.
This world is the high mount into which the dark power, Satan, led the Jesus spirit for its trial and temptation. Given a moment’s sane reflection, any soul will know that this life is
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the period of its trial and testing. The soul is drawn here to exercise her undeveloped powers, as Plotinus has so well told us. Without such a testing she would remain forever ignorant of her own latent capacity, or would never bring it to expression.
