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Mediums and the Spirit World (3)
Our knowledge of the Spirit World has been obtained from many sources, but none is so important than mediumship, whether through clairvoyance, clairaudience, physical, mental, materialisation and writing abilities, and other forms of ESP. Psychical researchers and professional sceptics would be out of business without the gifts and dedicated work of our mediums. There would be no true religion, merely dubious and expensive cults and superstitious practices, which thrive anyway, playing on our ignorance and gullibility. Without knowledge of our spiritual nature and its source in the Spirit World, we would be living a pointless evolutionary materialistic life, with no apparent existence before conception and birth, and after death. What a bleak outlook !
However, as the researcher Frances Banks pointed out 50 years ago, “I believe that knowledge of the actuality of a subtle body (which runs parallel to recent scientific discovery of the liquidation of matter into energy. It is the vital link in a long chain of hypotheses based both upon circumstantial existence and upon alleged Divine Revelation. Moreover, as I believe we stand upon the brink of irrefutable proof of this ‘body’ by scientific means, it would seem wise for spiritual leaders to face in advance the remarkable implications which will be bound to follow such proof.” “Frontiers of Revelation, 1962.”
Valerie Hunt (The Infinite Mind, 1996) is one of the scientists who has more recently been recording the human aura and chakras electronically. In addition to this, EVP and ITC are providing electronic recordings of the spirit body to supplement direct voice and physical mediumship.
We still have the problem of providing true and authentic connections with the spirit world. For example, when Bishop Pike went missing in Israel in September, 1969, only one medium to my knowledge, Ena Twigg, connected with the spirit of the dead bishop several days before his body was found. Other well-known mediums including Arthur Ford, were continuing to give inaccurate readings, saying that he was still alive, until the announcement of the discovery of his long-dead body in the desert. What went wrong here ? Of course, this type of false evidence is what sceptics and fundamentalists pounce on, in denouncing our mediums.
In spite of these lapses, we must be grateful to the dedication of our true mediums to keep us in touch with the spirit world, as well as our home circles, which also have brought us much knowledge of the world beyond. I will be continuing to summarise the findings of their work in forthcoming articles here.
As Ralph Waldo Trine tells us, the saints, sages and prophets of our religions are in tune and touch with the infinite, and around their teachings our religous doctrines and rituals have come into being. However, the work of mediums, whether Spiritualists, Spiritists, belonging to another religion or independent, has taken us a stage above the material, world-based institutions. They have brought us in touch with the Spirit World, our future destination, and the home from which we originally came. They prove to us that there is no death, when they bring messages from our deceased loved ones. Even though they have left this world, they must continue to exist, by the very fact that they are able to contact us.
Now if we were to turn this good news into a religion, we would have several options. We might follow the tradition of Christians, Taoists or Buddhists, and collect together the stories, teachings and events of the life of one prophet, medium and healer, such as Jesus, Lao Tse or the Buddha, and make them the centre of our belief system. Now, for Spiritualism, who should we select as our chief prophet, and would we regard him or her as our saviour ? Then would we worship that person, and turn that image into an idol or god ?
Another option would be would be to collect all the anecdotes from the lives of all our mediums and healers, as has already been done individually in several anthologies, so that we have a more comprehensive account of the Spiritualist movement. This would be a vast undertaking, but useful. It would show that there is replicability in Spiritualism, not in experimentation, but in validation of evidence and the way mediums go about their work. Musicians are evaluated by the quality of their performance, not by constant testing. The same applies to mediumship.
Alternatively we might make Spiritualism a science, and put together all the findings of psychical researchers, from Robert Hare to Gary Schwartz, or William Crookes and Oliver Lodge to Archibald Roy and Archibald Lawrie. to name a few investigators.
Yet again, we could make Spiritualism a philosophy, by making a gospel by combining the teachings of all our mediums' guides, compiling transmissions from Silver Birch, White Eagle and so on. This would be closer to to Hinduism, combing the teachings of the ancient texts, the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Vedas, together with the contemporary gurus, Satya Sai Baba, Paramahansa Yogananda, Maharashi Yogi and Osho aka Shri Rajneesh, and many others. However, their organisations often regard the teachings as copyright, as do many modern channelers, so we would have some problems assembling the material ! I have belonged to sects and institutions which regarded the "purity" of their teachings rather rigidly, and did not like me to introduce foreign ideas from other equally valid spiritual sources.
We can get so attached to our theories and beliefs and our professions and disciplines that that we cannot change them, or let them go, when new evidence, personal or scientific, comes across our path. We turn a blind eye. But we can and should let go of every ideology, every discipline, every paradigm which blocks our vision. Then we can come out of the tunnel and see clearly what really is.
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