This ought to be universally known among Christian nations, but it is not, and therefore on this point, as on so many others, Theosophy has a gospel for the Western world.  It has to announce that there is no gloomy impenetrable abyss beyond the grave, but instead of that a world of life and light which may be known to us as clearly and fully and accurately as this physical world in which we live now.  We have created the gloom and the horror for ourselves, like children who frighten themselves with ghastly stories, and we have only to study the facts of the case, and all these artificial clouds will roll away at once.  We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them.  The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body—­partly perhaps because they had a much more rational method of disposing of the body—­a method which was not only infinitely better for the dead man and more healthy for the living, but was also free from the gruesome suggestions connected with slow decay.  They knew much more about death in those days, and because they knew more they mourned less.

On Meeting a Friend.—­Fig. 35 gives us an example of a good, clearly-defined and expressive thought-form, with each colour well marked off from the others.  It represents the feeling of a man upon meeting a friend from whom he has been long separated.  The convex surface of the crescent is nearest to the thinker, and its two arms stretch out towards the approaching friend as if to embrace him.  The rose colour naturally betokens the affection felt, the light green shows the depth of the sympathy which exists, and the clear yellow is a sign of the intellectual pleasure with which the creator of the thought anticipates the revival of delightful reminiscences of days long gone by.

[Illustration:  FIG. 35.  ON MEETING A FRIEND]

The Appreciation of a Picture.—­In Fig. 36 we have a somewhat complex thought-form representing the delighted appreciation of a beautiful picture upon a religious subject.  The strong pure yellow marks the beholder’s enthusiastic recognition of the technical skill of the artist, while all the other colours are expressions of the various emotions evoked within him by the examination of so glorious a work of art.  Green shows his sympathy with the central figure in the picture, deep devotion appears not only in the broad band of blue, but also in the outline of the entire figure, while the violet tells us that the picture has raised the man’s thought to the contemplation of a lofty ideal, and has made him, at least for the time, capable of responding to it.  We have here the first specimen of an interesting class of thought-forms of which we shall find abundant examples later—­that in which light of one