A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands

When we die our body remains behind on this planet, but where does our real self—soul, spirit, consciousness—go? Can something so vital one minute disappear into nothingness the next? Some say that we cannot know, that nobody has ever come back to tell us. But is this true? Many believe that angelic beings as well as “the dead” can transmit information to us telepathically via gifted human receivers, and many accounts brought through from “the other side” indicate that the universe is teeming with life.
A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands, by Franchezzo, is such a work. It is one of the classic “channeled” books, included in the LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS SERIES, that provide firsthand glimpses of places we are destined to visit or inhabit when our lives on Earth are over. That the descriptions of these places vary with the describer is explained by Franchezzo in this passage:

“Thus in giving a description of this or any other sphere you will naturally be able to tell only what you have seen, and to describe those places to which you were attracted, while another spirit who has beheld a different portion of the same sphere may describe it so very differently that men on earth, who limit all things too much, and measure them by their own standards of probability, will say that since you differ in describing the same sphere you must both be wrong. They forget that Rome is not Genoa, Milan, or Venice, yet these are all in Italy. Lyons is not Paris, yet both are in France—and both will bear certain characteristic features, certain national traits of resemblance. Or to extend the simile still further, New York and Constantinople are both cities upon the planet Earth, yet there is between them and their population so great a difference, so wide a gulf, that it requires that we should look no longer for national characteristics but only for the broad fact that both are inhabited by the human race, differing, however widely, in manners and appearance.”

The main theme of A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands is: What we sow in our earthly life we will reap in the world to come. In his after-death explorations Franchezzo discovers that if our life on earth was tainted with selfishness, greed, ambition, cruelty, pride, and other spiritual poisons we will find ourselves, according to natural law, in a world where like-minded creatures dwell—a literal hell of our own making. He learns that “the seeds of goodness” lie hidden in all mortal beings, but only through self-awareness and enlightenment can we overcome and remove our baser instincts. Franchezzo is himself a repentant “sinner” who has come around after having seen a glimmer of light, first through the love of his earthly partner. In his spiritland wanderings he encounters and attempts to help those still in darkness, that they may earn the right to join him in the “Lands of Light.”