CHAPTER VI

AN EDITOR AND AN AUTHOR GO TO A SEANCE

A FLEET STREET editor, with some experience of Spirit-ualism, put questions to Silver Birch on the difference between thought and inspiration, and this is how. the guide answered:

　"You who live in the world of matter are most unoriginal creatures. You do not, except very seldom, create anything. You are receiving stations and also transmitting stations, Thoughts come to you; they lodge within you; you add to their wings and send them forth where others receive them. The thought that comes to you is not the same as  when it leaves you; your personality has quickened it, or slowed it down, enriched it, or impoverished it, made it more beautiful, or more ugly, given it new life, or perhaps vitiated it. But over and above all that, you can, when you attune yourself, receive positive inspir-ation from those of like mentality to yourself. When people 'die,' as you call it, they come to our world, but all the richness of soul and mind which is theirs cannot die. It is divine, infinite, and like all things divine and infinite, it cannot perish. All the qualities of soul and mind continue to grow, to unfold, to develop and to mature in our world. The mere fact that you possess these great qualities of the soul means that when you reach this world of ours, you soon desire to render service to those less fortunate than you. You find, or strive to find, people like yourself.

　"If you were a poet, you seek a poet, a musician, you seek a musician, like interests wherever possible, so that you can give freely all you have learned in your new world. The difficulty is to achieve the process of attunement. It is not our fault that inspir-ation is limited to brief flashes. If the laws that regulate con-ditions between the two states of life were perfectly understood, if the people of your world were to rid themselves of the many prejudices and superstitions which create barriers to a full and free communication, this wisdom of the infinite could be poured through human instruments into your world. It always depends on having an instrument to receive what we give and the ability of these instruments to attune themselves to receive the highest that can be given. All inspiration, all wisdom, all truth, all know-ledge is dependent upon your capacity to receive."  

　The next question was: “I still cannot quite understand why these things should come in a flash."

　The guide answered: “It is because at that moment you have attuned yourself and the chord of response has been struck."

　Answering another question, Silver Birch said: “It is very hard to draw the line. Often thoughts are not only sent to you and received by you from people in your world, but they also come from people in our world. There is a constant cycle of thought. Certain qualities attract certain thoughts. This process is going on all the time. But inspiration is a definite attempt on the part of someone, attracted by a similar quality, interest or calling, who is trying to give you what he has already achieved. Much of your music, poetry, writing and art is not born in the physical brain, but really originated in our world.”

　"Is there any answer to prayer?" the editor asked. “Some-times," was the reply, “but it depends on the prayer and the motive. Often people pray for things which in the nature of the request cannot be given to them, for they would interfere with their own progress or disorganise their own outlook on life. Prayer is not asking for something and then here we hold a counsel and say yea or nay. Prayer is attuning yourself to the higher realms so that you yourself provide the conditions so that the response can sometimes come.

　"How would you describe a genius?" was the next question. "You must appreciate that nature, or the law, whichever title you use, never evolves in one straight line," said Silver Birch. "There are variations, there are cycles, or even spirals of progress. Although you can clearly see the ascending scale of man's evolution from the amoeba to the spirit, there are often some who are in advance of their evolution and others who are behind it. You always had the precursors and the retrogrades. Your genius is the precursor of evolution. In centuries to come the whole race more or less will have evolved to what your genius is today. He is the advance guard."  

　Answering the comment that his conception was vastly different from earthly standards, Silver Birch said: "Always I approach things from a different standpoint. I see with the eyes of the spirit. I do not see with the eyes of your world. You can-not help considering all your problems in their physical aspects. You live in a physical world. You have physical difficulties to conquer, food, clothing, shelter. The very nature of your daily existence makes you cognisant of the world of matter in which you live. It is hard for you to approach all these problems from the standpoint of eternity. But we see you as spiritual beings, pilgrims on an infinite march. We know that your world in which you are living is not your eternal home. You pass through it for a few brief moments compared with the eternity in which you will live. Our focus is a much wider one. We view all your questions in the light of simple truths. What good will they do? How will they help others? What service will they render? All through the years I have used this instrument I have repeated, until sometimes I have felt I must get wearisome, that the truths we have to teach are very simple, that the only religion is the gospel of service. That is because we see truths which many do not.

　"Millions of people think the world in which they live is the only world. They think the life they are living is the only life they will live, and so they try to accumulate all the things of matter, the earthly treasures which one day they will have to leave behind. The cause of your wars, bloodshed, misery, sick- nessーpractically all of them—is due to the fact that the secret of life eludes millions who do not know that they are eternal spiritual beings here and now, that they are not bodies only. They are spirits expressing themselves through bodies. They are placed in a world of matter to grow and to develop that soul which will fit them for their real home which begins from the moment the Angel of Death touches them on the shoulder and says: 'Come hither.'”

　The guide's statements led to a discussion on evolution in which Silver Birch joined, saying: “All children are part of the Great Spirit, part of the process of infinite creation. They them-selves help to determine the law of which they are a part. It is all part of the scale of ascending values. From the moment con-sciousness began to express itself there was spirit and a spiritual evolution began to take place. Physically, man has reached practically the apex of his evolution, but spiritually he has a long way to go." 

　When an author, whose name is known all over the world for his novels, attended the circle, Silver Birch said to him: “I do not like calling you stranger, because, in reality, you are not a stranger to the power of the spirit." The author had watched the circle greet its band of spirit guides, some of them even better known in their own day than he is now, but they are happy to serve under the wise old Indian spirit, whose next words, dwell-ing on the writer's own psychic powers, were:

　"But yours is not a conscious exercise. Yours is the inner gift of the one who knows of the welling-up from within that cries aloud for expression, of words that demand to be used, of ideas that cry out until they are clothed with language, of the beauty that rises and seeks to envelop you, of a world which sometimes has puzzled you. Is that not so?”

　"That is perfectly true," said the author. 

　"And yet," said the guide, “as I say to so many, in moments of reflection, when you have pondered on the processes behind life and have asked yourself the answer to the inevitable questions of how, why, where, you have seen the finger of destiny that has pointed the way in your own life, even from early childhood days. Is that not so?"

　"That is true," was the response.

　The guide went on: "We are always proud to welcome those who, in any fashion, enrich the world in which they live, who help to fill it with beauty and with joy, who bring comfort in any shape or in any form. But there is something far greater to be done than you have already achieved, and that I wonder whether you know."

　"I should very much like to know," said the author. “But do you feel it?" asked the guide. “I do," was the emphatic answer. "You know he is a psychic,” said Silver Birch to one of the circle, who answered: "Yes, he has got ‘psychic' eyes.

　"But it is an untrained faculty. It is purely natural,” the guide commented, and then, turning to the visitor, he said: “You do not know those who guide you. But they have helped you even more than you realise."

　"What is it he has to do?" asked a sitter. “It is something much bigger than he has already done,” said Silver Birch. "It will unfold itself, but he knows because it fills and pervades his being, and sometimes will not give him any rest. You understand me, don't you?" he said to the author, who answered, "Perfectly."

　"Try to realise this," said the guide. "You, like all people in your world, have a large soul within a small body. It is a crude and clumsy way of expressing it, but you are compelled to express yourself through a body which is patheticaly inad-equate for the soul of which it is the medium. As you allow all the faculties of the soul, which is your true self, your reality, the abiding presence, as you allow all these talents and gifts and faculties to find expression, so they seek to escape from the thraldom imposed by the body. And because the soul is itself superior, even though it is temporarily encased by matter, so it devises ways and means of asserting its mastery and its suprem-acy, unconsciously, without any training or development. That is what has been happening to you. All the inspiration, all the activity, all the unseen side of you has temporarily burst the bonds and flooded and suffused your being and you cannot resist it. You understand me, don't you?"

　Again the author answered quietly: “Perfectly."

　"But you have been assisted by those who are in my world," said the guide, "people whose souls are freed from the temporary limitations of the flesh body. They are tied to you by love, for love is the greatest tie in the world. Love naturally unites itself with its beloved, and there is no one, no power, no force that can separate love from its beloved. And those who love you, with all the wealth and warmth that love can bring, they help you because so much of what has happened could not be explained by you in your own expression of your life. But, in addition to them, there are others, greater in soul-content than your loved ones, with no kinship of blood, of family, but attracted for the reason of a common interest and a common purpose. They are the ones who have assisted far more than at present can be des-cribed and they will, at some time, if you will allow them, make themselves known to you."

　And then the man who has written books that sell by the thousand, books with a message of great beauty in them, replied: "I should be very happy to know them, and would you also thank all my friends on the Other Side?"

　"They hear you,” said the guide. “What I would like to be able to leave with you is the realisation of the closeness of the power which surrounds you. I am an old soul who has returned to this world because it was felt there was some work I could do, that the little knowledge that I had assimilated could be used to help people of your world. I have found many friends, many instruments to whom tasks were assigned. In some cases the tasks were specific, like my great friend, Parish, who has raised up a monument of sacrifice and service"ーW.T. Parish, the great healer, was also present at this circle. “But not all instruments are conscious of the part that they play, except, in fleeting moments, there comes an overwhelming inner realisation and they know that they are part of a majestic purpose, helping to fulfil its destiny."

　An American journalist visited the circle, and his first question was: “What can you tell me about the spirit world?" No doubt because the guide heard one of the members of the circle declare that the journalist "would call himself a psychical researcher;" Silver Birch began his answer by saying humorously:

　"I am one regarded by your world as being dead. I am not supposed to exist. I am a collective hallucination on the part of those who are assembled here today. I am a product of the medium's subconscious mind. I am his secondary personality, his multiple personality, or his split personality, whichever of these psychical research terms you choose to employ. But actually I am a human being, one just like you, except that I laid aside, a long time ago, the body of flesh through which you are manifesting today. That primarily is the difference between us. You are a spirit expressing yourself through a physical body. I am a spirit expressing myself through a body of spirit.

　"I passed to the world of spirit, I died 'roughly 3,000 years ago. That is a long time to you, but it represents very little in the span of eternity. I had made some progress. When you have been for some time in the world of spirit, still subject to laws of evolution, increasing the expression of whatever gifts with which the Great Spirit has endowed you, you make some head-way, you move higher and higher through the planes of spirit life. I do not mean that there are separate planes of existence, each marked off from the other with fixed boundaries, but that there are grades of spirit life, each occupied by people qualified to exist in them. As, spiritually, you improve and progress, so you leave behind one plane of existence and merge into another. It is one long ascending ladder of progress with an infinite number of rungs.

　"You can easily imagine that after many hundreds of years you leave the world of matter far behind and have no desire to be in association with it. After all, it is not a very beautiful world. It is not filled with all the noble qualities expressed by the majority of the people who live there. There is much that is rotten and corrupt. There is much, too, which casts its dark shadows over human life and the sun of the spirit penetrates, alas, to but a few. When you live in another life where there are no economic stresses such as you have, where money has no value of any kind, where earthly riches do not count, where physical possess-ions are of no moment, where all are known for what they are, their only riches being the richness of their spirit, their only possession being the strength of their character; when you live in a world where there is no struggle for existence, where there is no exploitation, where there is no vested interest, where the weaker is not automatically driven to the wall, where all natural talents, however dormant, find their full expression, the world of matter seems very squalid and very unattractive. After many hundreds of years, I, with others, was told that there was a great need, that the world of matter required the help of beings like myself who could return, and perhaps impart some of the know-ledge of spiritual laws which they had understood, so that a per-plexed and weary mankind might be told how to find guidance and inspiration, and the solutions to problems which it found baffling.

　"We were told that power would be given us, power to quicken men's souls. But we were also told that it would be a hard task, that we would encounter many who would not look upon our mission with favour, even though they held high office in the churches of religions. We were warned that we would be regarded as emissaries of the devil, as evil spirits, misguiding,

tempting, seducing men to paths of wickedness. In short, we were told that it was not an easy task, but a hard one, and, if I may add this, in order to accomplish it, we would have to forgo all the joys, all the beauties, all that we had earned through many long years. Yet not one refused out of all who were approached. And so, in company with some others, I came back to your world, not to live in it, but to work within its orbit. I had to find an instrumentーalways the hardest task. I had to

learn your language and familiarise myself with your customs. I had to have an understanding of your civilisation.

　"Then I had to learn how to use this instrument, so that I could say through him those few simple truths, so simple that they would revolutionise your world if all accepted them and lived their implications. At the same time I had to learn that, whilst working close to earth, I had to maintain touch with those who sent me, so that always I could be the mouthpiece for greater wisdom, for greater knowledge, for greater learning. It was very hard at first. It is not so easy now. Gradually I was able to reach those who were amenable. Not all welcomed the news that I brought—there were many who preferred to sleep. There were others who liked their little prison that they had constructed for themselves. They were safe in their cell. They were afraid of what liberty might bring them. But here and there I made friends. I had nothing to offer them except truth, reason, com-mon sense, simplicity and the love of a fairly old soul who desired nothing for himself except to help any who might be brought to him.

　"We have gone a long way since then, touching many souls. There are many who no longer are in the darkness of ignorance. There are many who have rescued themselves from the mists of superstition. There are many who have liberated themselves from prejudices. There are many who have gladly enrolled under the banner of freedom. There are many who no longer shed tears because now they understand the purpose of death and the meaning of life."

　The journalist's next question was: “Do souls begin when men are conceived, or do they pre-exist?"

　"Now you touch upon a matter of great controversy," said Silver Birch. “I can only speak for myself. Always I have appealed to reason and judgment. I have always said to those who hear me, if there be anything which I say which makes your reason revolt, which insults your intelligence, or which you cannot accept, then discard it, reject it. You will not hurt me; you will not offend me. I will love you just the same. Swaffer is as yet amongst the unconverted. The others, I think, have fallen to my wiles and believe in a pre-existence. For myself, I say there is pre-existence, in many cases voluntarily undertaken for a specific purpose."

　"I have never denied that,” said Hannen Swaffer. "I only object to the idea that reincarnation is necessary for soul development."

　"I am glad, then, you are with me at least part of the way," answered the guide.

　"You told me once that I was reincarnated," Swaffer said. "I only deny that there is a law of reincarnation."

　"May I point out that whatever happens is according to a law,” was the spirit reply. "Even voluntary reincarnation can only take place if there is a law. When I speak of a law, I mean a law which controls reincarnated birth into your world. We teach that everything in the whole universe, no matter how small or how large it may be, is controlled by law.”

　The American inquired: "Is it true that our difficulty in under-standing time makes it hard for us to understand reincarnation?”

　"Let me put it another way, the way I always see it,” was Silver Birch's reply. "You do not know yourself; you are un-aware of that you which has never yet expressed itself in matter. You are only conscious of that infinitesimal portion which registers itself through a body of matter, but the real you is much larger than that which has ever manifested through your body. You, as you know, are not your body. You are a spirit with a body, not a body with a spirit. Your consciousness has an existence apart from your physical body, for example, in the sleep state, but that consciousness is not able to bring an aware-ness of itself through the limitation of a physical brain.

　"And so you are able to appreciate only that part of con-sciousness which is expressed in matter. The larger part remains unexpressed, except in fleeting glimpses, until the processes of development enable you to become aware of the larger self. But, generally speaking, it is not until you have passed through the veil of death that you are able to come into that true inheritance which is your own. That is answering your question another way. The consciousness which you are now expressing cannot, through a physical brain, be aware of that larger consciousness until, either by process of development, or you have discarded the physical body, you begin to register that consciousness through a body which more properly can express it."

　"You describe this world as being full of ugliness which does not exist in the world where you are," said the journalist. "Why is there this evil and ugliness in our world?"

　Silver Birch replied: “We must differentiate between evil, or the lack of enlightenment, as I prefer to call it, and the ugliness caused by the deliberate free will of those who have power to impose it, and that evil and ugliness which is the result of man's imperfect development on earth. You must try to understand that a good deal of the ugliness and evil exists because of the vested interests of those who find it pays them to build slums, those who are interested only in the money that they can make, who are unconcerned with what happens to their brothers as long as they line their own pockets. The evil often results from the sordid conditions into which these people are plunged.

　"But then you must remember that man is infinite, that the whole of life is a struggle from darkness towards the light, from the lower towards the higher, from the lesser towards the greater, that through evolution man's spirit is constantly rising. if there were no struggle, if there were no distress, then there would be nothing for the spirit to conquer. While there are the potentialities of the Godhead within man, it is only through development that they can be expressed. The process of develop-ment is like the extraction of gold. It consists in crushing, refining, purification. Ultimately you will rid your world of much that is called evil and ugly, but always there will be some betterment that is possible, for as man becomes increasingly aware of his innate divinity, so he becomes dissatisfied with the standards of yesterday and sets himself a higher standard for tomorrow.''

　The journalist commented: “There seems to be a conflict sometimes between the golden rule of doing things for your neighbours and the survival of the fittest."

　"I do not believe in the way the law of evolution has been translated as the survival of the fittest, meaning the survival of the most ruthless in your world," replied Silver Birch. "The survival of the fittest means the survival of those with the fitness to survive. That means that those who have developed qualities of survival will survive. And you must remember, when you look at the animals who have survived, you will find that their sur-vival is due, not to ruthlessness, not to their being the fittest, but because they co-operated with the law of evolution. If it were true that only the fittest survived, why are the prehistoric animals extinct? They were the strongest creatures, but they have not survived. The law of evolution is a law of growth. It is a law of unfolding all the time. It is a law of co-operation, service. In short, it is the law of the golden rule.”

　Answering another inquiry the spirit guide said: "The world is not ruled by chance; it is ruled by law and order. No matter where you turn, whether it be to attempt to comprehend the vastness of the interstellar spaces, whether you range with a telescope far over the horizons of the sky, or whether you take a microscope and begin to examine the small creations of life, all is subject to natural, unchangeable, immutable law. You are not the product of chance. Chance holds no place in an ordered universe where cause and effect follow one another with un-alterable sequence. The power which fashioned all life pro-vided rules or laws for its governance. It is perfect in its con-ception and organisation. These laws are spiſitual laws, because all life is spirit. Life exists because its energy does not come from a world of matter, but because it is spirit. Spirit is life, life is spirit. Wherever life takes conscious form, there you have individual spirit. That is the difference between you and the lower beasts. Man is an individuated spirit, part of the Great Spirit.

　"You either live your life as an individual, as a class, as a nation, as a world, in harmony with the law, or contrary to the law. If you live contrary to the law you get all the results, darkness, disease, difficulty, chaos, bankruptcy, misery, bloodshed. But if you live in harmony with the law you enjoy all the fruits of the spirit, all its wisdom, knowledge, understanding, truth, justice, equity and peace. That is what the golden rule means.

　"You are not an automaton. You have free will, true, within restricted limits, but you have to make your decision. This is true of individuals and nations. Those who choose to live with the law, those who adopt the law of service to one another as their rule, automatically reap the results from nature and from the universe."

　Asked about our attitude to our enemies, Silver Birch said: "To me all are spirits in bodies. I do not see Germans and Englishmen and Americans. I see spirits, part of the Great Spirit, and I know they are all part of His family. You may have to indulge in remedial punishment, but, as I have said before, you will not build a new world on hatred or vengeance. You will only build it on the desire to serve all mankind. Those who now shout, as they do, for reparationーan eye for an eye, a tooth for a toothーare sowing the seeds of future warfare. There is room for all. There is enough for all, if all would solve their problems with reason and common sense. I could not make it simpler, could I? Why has America made progress in its short history? Because of one wordーtolerance. And England has made progress in its long history because of its tolerance. You have solved in your country all the problems of race, nationality, religion. You have almost solved the problem of colour. You have learned already through the history of your own country that all peoples have a contribu-tion to make, and the addition of all their qualities produces, in time, the best individuals.

　"What is already happening in your land must, in time, happen all over the world. You are seeing in miniature what is the solution to world problems. If you examine yourself, you will find it hard to determine all the strains that make up your being. Your country is none the poorer because it is composed of individuals of many strains; it is the richer. In breeding it is the constant addition and accumulation of new factors that produces the best results. It is so because nature thrives on the constant addition of new strengths, of new strains, for the infinite varia-tion produces the best qualities. Nature is a restless march.''

　A Polish officer, who had been invited to the circle, sent this question: "Would it be true to say that only the people who see beauty in this world will be able to appreciate it in the next world?" 

　"No," said the guide, who went on: "It would be very unfair, for millions are unable to appreciate any beauty because they lack the educational facilities that enable them to have a true standard of appreciation. Our world is a world not only of retri-bution, but also of compensation, where all that you lacked in your earthly life is given to you so that a true balance may be struck."

　The sitter who asked the question on the Pole's behalf com-mented: “What I think he has at the back of his mind is the fact that we take over to the Other Side those qualities we possess when we ‘die.'”

　"You must remember that your world are expressing only a small portion of an infinite mind,” said Silver Birch. "This mind has only five windows and these are very inad-equate. Once you are released from the body you begin to have a fuller expression. The mind is able to come into its own, for it now has a more perfect instrument through which to express itself. There are all kinds of beauty and the ability to appreciate beauty depends upon the individual's development. You can put two people together and show them the same sight. One will get from it richness and wonder, but the other will not. Then there is the other kind of beautyーbeauty of the soul, beauty of the mind, beauty of the spirit, where one can derive deep enjoyment from the everlasting things of life. A well-stocked mind, contemplative, reflective, able to absorb the higher aspects of life, has a nobility and beauty all its own, some-thing far removed from and inexplicable to those who have never appreciated it."

　When the next question: "What is the best way to develop an appreciation of beauty?" was read to the guide, he replied: "Very largely the answer is that it is a matter of individual development. Granted that all reasonable educational facilities are available to all, the desire for beauty will automatically be expressed as individuals unfold. The higher your scale of values, the more your mind has grown, the more you will be dis-satisfied with ugly, sordid surroundings, because they strike immediately a note of disharmony. It is always the first sign of evolution and growth when the individual wants to beautify his surroundings. All your striving to beautify the physical world is an unconscious expression of your own soul's growth. It is also part of your contribution to the work of creation, which is infinite. The divine mind has provided you with all the materials, many of them in their unfinished state, and it is the application of your soul, your mind, your reason, your intelligence, your growth that will help to bring perfection of beauty everywhere.

　"It always comes back to the individual and his growth. The more he expands, the more he evolves, the more he allows the Great Spirit within him to find full expression, the more will he desire beauty. That is why I always insist on the moral and ethical implications of all this knowledge. Slums are wrong because the Great Spirit within you should not have to live in a slum. Starvation is wrong because the temple of the Great Spirit should be well cared for. All evils are wrong because they are an attempt to frustrate the expression of the Great Spirit within you. True beauty means true harmony everywhere, in all aspects of life, physical, mental and spiritual."

　For his third question the Polish officer asked what he could do to instil into people's minds the idea of beauty. "Each soul must grow," answered the guide. "You can provide all the con-ditions and, if the soul does not desire to grow, you can do nothing. All you can do is to spread knowledge, driving out ignorance, driving out bigotry, driving out prejudice. Spread knowledge. Sometimes it will fall on stony ground, but very often it reaches receptive soil and the tiny seed that you have dropped will blossom. Our task is to spread the light wherever we can. Gradually the rays of truth will illuminate your world

and all that belongs to the darkness of superstition, all that makes for ugliness and squalor will be transformed, as man desires to see conditions around him fit for the particles of the Great Spirit to dwell in."

　There is a story behind this prayer by Silver Birch. Members of the circle had been discussing beforehand the failure of Orthodoxy, as shown, for example, by the inability of clergy-men to explain what God is. Then came this invocation, the guide later explaining that he had deliberately phrased it to give a spirit conception of the Deity:

　"Oh Great White Spirit, Who art Thou? What art Thou? What are Thy qualities?

　"We teach of Thee as perfect law in operation. We point to a universe, perfectly conceived, perfectly organised, perfectly governed. We say that this universe is the mirror of Thy handi-work and that Thou art the infinite mind which conceived all its universal life. 

　"We point to every facet of nature, to every creature, to every flower, to every brook, stream, river, sea, ocean, to every hill and mountain, to every star and planet, to every beast and to every man and we say that all of them are regulated and controlled by Thy infinite law.

　"We teach that the whole of the universe is controlled in turn by a series of laws working within the great law, so that we recognise Thee as perfect law in operation. 

　"We know Thou hast no favourites. We know that Thou can-not display any partisanship. We know that pictures which have represented Thee as despotic, jealous, cruel, tyrannical are wrong because these human qualities can form no part of an infinite God,

　"Because we have seen the operation of this law in worlds other than that of earth and have never found it to be at fault at any time, we pay tribute to it and to the mind which designed it, and strive to teach of it in all its operations, physical, mental and, more important, spiritual, for it is in the spiritual where all reality and llfe begin.

　"We know that when all Thy children understand Thy law and realise that human life must be shaped in accordance with it, all the misery, all the darkness, all the sadness, all the distress, ali the cruelty, all the hatred, all the war and all the bloodshed will be purged from the earth and everywhere all Thy children will

dwell in peace and amity and in love.

　"That is the prayer—the prayer which does not consist of vain repetition, but the desire to find more and more instruments through whom truth, wisdom, light, understanding and toler-ance may spreadーof Thy Indian servant who seeks to serve.''

　Then Silver Birch forced home the lesson behind his prayer. "There is a reasonable, rational explanation of the universe, so far as it can be explained to people in your world,” he said. "It is only because there are so many who are wilfully blind, so many who have vested interests to defend that you are in the darkness. All wars are caused by living contrary to the law, by one, or a

group, or a nation setting out to defy the law, either through wrong thinking, through greed, through lust, through love of tyranny, through seeking domination. Whatever the cause—it comes back to an ignorance of the laws of the universe. There can be no dictatorships in a world where all possessed spiritual knowledge, for they would order their systems of life to make it impossible for one man to rule millions. There could be no blood-shed in a world where all possessed spiritual knowledge, for they would build a system of life which would make wars impossible.

　"Our task is to spread knowledge. We are propagandists in the true meaning of the word. It has become perverted in your world today, but in its literal sense it means to spread truth or knowledge. We have lived in your world; we now live in another aspect of the universe, one, two or perhaps three steps removed from you. We have seen the operation of certain natural laws. We know nothing about miracles

, we know nothing about favouritism, we know nothing about chosen races, we know nothing about one unique son of God, we only know that law exists everywhere.

　"Because we see that the whole universe, mighty, majestic though it be, is controlled by law, we strive to teach you about the law. The law is that cause and effect are unalterable in their sequence. The law is that you reap what you have sown. The law is that no one can cheat in the end, for you yourself register indelibly all the hallmarks of your own character and growth. On these simple foundations true religion must be built, for whatever contradicts this simple, elementary, fundamental truth is wrong, no matter whether it be taught in the palaces of arch-bishops, in the cathedrals of your large cities, in temples, syna-gogues, mosques or any other place of worship throughout your world. These are the simple truths, that the law controls life, that service to one another is the one thing that matters because it increases the growth of your spirit, moulds your character and makes you equipped spiritually for the world in which you live beyond the grave.

　"It is only because we see that those who should be our greatest allies, who presume to teach religion, are ranged against us that we indict every system which compels men to turn their faces away from the light, which forces men to lean on discarded creeds, which compels them to ignore the inspiration that can be

received today and makes them turn their minds back into the dim, fusty days of the past to search for inspiration. It is not that we condemn them as individuals, for many of them are sincere according to their lights. Many of them are earnest, many of them are doing the best they can under difficult circumstances, but we condemn the whole system that makes men tied to error when they could have truth, that forces millions to dwell in dark-ness when they could have light.

　"Now could there be anything simpler than that? Here you are in the midst of a great war where misery and distress abound throughout the world, where millions want comfort, a staff on which to lean, some indication that indeed there is a God Who cares and who is not indifferen to the sufferings of those who are called His children. They go to their priests and they hear repeated the same old creeds, perhaps with a little variation to make them modernised. They turn to their "holy book,' a different one in other lands, and read the same old words. They repeat the weary old formulas! But of evidence that there are spiritual realities they have none to offer.

　"They speak of faith in which many of them no longer believe in their heart. How can they give assurance when they them-selves are uncertain? How can they give comfort when they themselves do not know the road on which humanity must travel? How can they give solace to the bereaved when their views on what is called the hereafter are comprised within a question mark? How can these who are indeed blind lead a heart-hungry, dissatisfied, wondering world? And yet all the while there is waiting for them the richness of knowledge, the fountain of wisdom, the light of truth, if they would but humbly ask for it. They do not understand that there is nothing wrong with religion. What is wrong is the caricature presented as religion. What has the Holy Trinity to do with religion? What has the Immaculate Conception to do with religion? What has the Virgin Birth to do with religion? What has the Vicarious Atonement to do with religion? Are you more religious if you believe in them than if you do not?

　"Your world loves to worship titles, labels, names. It does not matter whether a man calls himself a Christian or an atheist. It is what does he do with his life that is important. Give me the man who makes no pretence to religion, who does not bow when the name of the Great Spirit is mentioned, but who is honest, who tries to serve, who extends a hand to the weak, who helps the lame dog over the stile, who is full of sympathy for the down-trodden and really strives to help those who are in difficulty. He is religious rather than one who makes a pretence of religion, who accepts every creed, every doctrine, who is most punctilious in pronouncing his belief, but has no charity in his heart and no service in his life.”