[159] [160] The Rosicrucian Mysteries deep etching of the panorama of life would have given. Thus its growth would be retarded in a very marked degree, but the beneficent powers in charge of evolution take certain steps to compensate for our ignorant treatment of the dying and other untoward circumstances mentioned. What these steps are, we shall discuss when considering the life of children in heaven, for the present let it be sufficient to say that in God's kingdom every evil is always transmuted to a greater good though the process may not be at once apparent. Purgatory. During life the collapse of the vital body at night terminates our view of the world about us, and causes us to lose ourselves in unconsciousness of sleep. When the vital body collapses just subsequent to death, and the panorama of life is terminated, we also lose consciousness for a time which varies according to the individual. A darkness seems to fall upon the spirit, then after a while it wakes up and begins dimly to perceive the light of the other world, but is only gradually accustomed to the altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity of light bearable to our organism. If under such a condition we turn momentarily from the bright sunlight and look back into the darkened room, objects there will be much more plain to our vision than things outside which are illumined by the powerful rays of the sun. So it is also with the spirit, when it has first been released from the body it perceives sights, scenes and sounds of the material world, which it has just left, much more readily than it observes the sights of the world it is entering. Wordsworth in his Ode to Immortality noted a similar condition in the case of new-born children, who are all clairvoyant and much more awake to the spiritual world than to this present plane of existence. Some lose the spiritual sight very early, others retain it for a number of years and a few keep