The story of Socrates and his experience after taking the Hemlock and passing into the spirit world, as told by Socrates to James Padgett on July 8th, 1915.
I am here, Socrates, the Greek –
I knew that you thought of me and I was attracted by your thought. If such spirit is in rapport with you or has a similar soul quality; the soul condition is the great medium of attraction.
I have been with you before, and there is a rapport growing out of your soul qualities. I am now a believer in the Christian doctrine of the soul's immortality, and in the teachings of Jesus as to the way to obtain the Divine Love of the Father, as you are, and, hence, our qualities of soul are similar.
I am now a follower of the Master and believe in his Divine mission on earth, although he had not come to earth when I lived. After I became a spirit I realized my belief in the continuity of life after death, and lived in the spirit world a great many years after Jesus came before I learned and believed his larger truth of immortality.
Of course, when I taught I had only a hope which was almost a certainty that I should continue to live through all eternity, but I had no other foundation for that belief than the deductions from my reasoning powers and the observations of the workings of nature.
I had heard of the visitations of the spirits of the departed, but had never had any personal experiences in that direction, but I readily believed it to be true.
My conviction of the truth of a future continuance was so strong that it amounted to a certainty, and hence when I died, I comforted Plato and my other friends and disciples, by telling them that they must not say that Socrates will die but rather that his body will die; his soul will live forever in fields Elysian. They believed me, and Plato afterwards enlarged on my belief.
And Socrates did not die, but as soon as his breath left the body, which was not very painful even though the fatal hemlock did its work sure and quickly, he went into the spirit world a living entity, full of the happiness that the realizations of his beliefs gave him.
My entrance into the spirit world was not a dark one, but full of light and happiness, for I was met by some of my disciples who had passed over before me and who had progressed very much in the intellectual development. I then thought that my place of reception was the heaven of good spirits, for there were good spirits to meet me and carry me to my home. I was then possessed of what I thought that I was in the home of the blessed; and I continued there for many years and enjoyed the exchange of minds and the feasts of reason.
To be continued …