The Ameshaspends, however, do not inhabit the lower Regions of
the Desire World but influence the Izzards. According to the old Persian legend these beings
are divisible into one group of twenty-eight classes, and another group of three classes.
Each of these classes has dominion over, or takes the lead of all the other classes on one
certain day of the month. They regulate the weather conditions on that day and work with
animal and man in particular. At least the twenty-eight classes do that, the other group of
three classes has nothing to do with animals, because they have only twenty-eight pair of
spinal nerves, while human beings have thirty-one. Thus animals are attuned to the lunar
month of[pg 088]twenty-eight days, while man is correlated to the solar month of thirty or
thirty-one days. The ancient Persians were astronomers but not physiologists, they had no
means of knowing the different nervous constitution of animal and man, but they saw
clairvoyantly these superphysical beings, they noted and recorded their work with animal and
men and our own anatomical investigations may show us the reason for these divisions of the
classes of Izzards recorded in that ancient system of philosophy.
Still another class of beings should be mentioned: those who have
entered the Desire World through the gate of death and are now hidden from our physical
vision. These so-called “dead” are in fact much more alive
than any of us, who are tied to a dense body and subject to all its limitations, who are
forced to slowly drag this clog along with us at the rate of a few miles an hour, who must
expend such an enormous amount of energy upon propelling that vehicle that we are easily and
quickly tired, even when in the best of health and who are often confined to a bed,
sometimes for years, by the indisposition of this heavy mortal coil. But when that is once
shed and the freed spirit[pg 089]can again function in its spiritual body, sickness is an unknown condition
and distance is annihilated, or at least practically so, for though it was necessary for the
Savior to liken the freed spirit to the wind which blows where it listeth, that simile gives
but a poor description of what actually takes place in soul flights. Time is nonexistent
there, as we shall presently explain, so the writer has never been able to time himself, but
has on several occasions timed others when he was in the physical body and they speeding
through space upon a certain errand. Distances such as from the Pacific Coast to Europe, the
delivery of a short message there and the return to the body has been accomplished in
slightly less than one minute. Therefore our assertion, that those whom we call dead are in
reality much more alive than we, is well founded in facts.
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