PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP

　　　　CHAPTER XX

　　PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP

　ANSWERING questioners on mediumship, Silver Birch, during one of our wartime sittings, explained in these words some of the difficulties that affected spirit communication: "You do not appreciate how difficult it all is today when there are so many passing violently into our world, not realising the change they have experienced. There are others, parted from their physical bodies by shock, who are wandering in the astral pall around your world. Then there are others who are concentrating all their thoughts on their home. And all that is in addition to the chaos of the vibrations of war that constantly intervene."

　On behalf of an inquirer, this question on materialisation was read to the guide, "Why is it necessary for a spirit to build up a shape or form, while manifesting at a seance, if a spirit body already exists?" The member of the circle who put this question went on to inform Silver Birch, "The point behind the inquiry is that the writer has been told that the spirit body is a duplicate of the material body, and he wonders why it is necessary for the spirit body to take a long time building up when it already exists."

　"But it cannot be recognised unless you can see it with the eyes of the spirit," said Silver Birch. "For the purposes of re-cognition, you have to make an impression on a physical plane, and to make an impression on a physical plane you have to build something which can be cognised with the use of one or more of the five senses. That is why you have to show some-thing akin to a physical body. It is purely for the purposes of recognition. I should have thought the answer was very simple to anyone."

　Another person sent a query about trance mediumship to be answered by Silver Birch. The question was: “Is it necessary for a medium to be deeply entranced for a guide or control to come through?"

　"Not at all,” responded Silver Birch. “It is quite possible for controls and guides to speak through instruments without their being deeply entranced. The great virtue of the trance state is that it enables the guide or control to have a greater mastery over the make-up of the medium. And the more you succeed in stilling the consciousness of the instrument, the easier the task becomes; but it is not an essential to speaking on the part of the control or guide for the medium to be entranced."

　In part of his answer to questions on the effect of human love on domestic animals, the guide said: “You must realise that there is no boundary, no fixed boundary, between matter and spirit, but that each is part of the other, that matter is but one aspect of spirit. There is no beginning to spirit, there is no end to spirit. Life is a continuous, unfolding, evolving process. You, as an individual, have a beginning, but the spirit, of which you are an individuated part, has always existed, and that spirit has always been and always will be part of the stuff of life. So that spirit has been, is and will be in all aspects of life.

　"It does not mean," added Silver Birch, "that evolution is denied to those animals who have had no contact with human love. All that human love has done is to accelerate the process of evolution, bringing it perhaps two or three stages ahead of its natural development. You have encouraged faculties to emerge; you have helped to heighten the consciousness and make it more and more human, individualised, by virtue of the love and affection that you have bestowed on one whom you have succeeded in making more like yourself."

　"And given it a recognisable personality?" said a member of the circle.

　"Yes," was the reply. “You must realise that the essence of this knowledge is that you participate in the processes of eternal creation. I always stress that."

　"And being of a higher form, in fact, we are helping to develop it,” was another comment.

　"Just as those in my world help you to unfold," said the guide, "just as those who are more sensitive to spirit vibrations are ahead in evolution of those who are not; it is all part of a similar process."

　Then the discussion turned on personality and whether it persists for all time.

　"To achieve what?" asked the guide.

　"To achieve even more complete personality," was the answer.

　"Yes, but when it has done that?" asked Silver Birch. There was some discussion, and then he said to the questioner, the former Methodist preacher, "Have you preached on the sermon, 'He who loseth himself findeth himself?"

　"It does not mean that you completely lose all identity and personality," was the ex-preacher's reply.

　"But," said the guide, you are using words which you have not examined very closely. When your body goes back to earth the spirit will go on. The body will mingle with natural processes in the earth and that will be the end of it, so far as you are concerned. It has served its purpose; the identity associated with that body has gone; but that identity is only one aspect of a greater consciousness. The body, having fulfilled its task, is no longer required, and the indwelling spirit goes on to its next stage of experience. But you would not say that the sacrifice made by the body is unfair."

　"No," it was admitted, "because the body is not the per-sonality."

　Then a sitter, thinking of some of the involved questions put to the guide, asked, "Why do they worry about these things?"

　Silver Birch, who deals patiently with anything he thinks will help, said: “One of the troubles is that those who have knowledge become so accustomed to it that they forget there are thousands who would give all they possess to be in their position. They forget that the great task is to spread knowledge. They should concentrate on essentials and not on these other aspects which are not of great importance at the moment.

　"Yet I do not want to give them any rebuffs. What you have done is you have made them think that I am an individual to whom they can bring all their questions, and I will give them the immediate answers. And whilst I wish to help, I am really concerned about the ones who need the primary, elementary facts which are still denied them.

　"There is so much work to be done, particularly at this time when the darkness and shadows envelop many in your own land. Strive to help them; strive to bring them comfort, cheer, hope, guidance, so that their aching hearts may be assuaged, their grief may be lightened, and that they may face life with more cheerfulness than they at present possess.

　"It is a great task which requires all your energies, for there is so much to be done, and still so few who can do it. It is very hard for me to work in your world, and if I say to you it means great sacrifice on my part, I do not say it in any vainglorious or boasting spirit. I do it because I love you; I love all mankind and would give every atom of my being to serve any creature whom I thought I could help. I strive to imbue others with this desire to serve, for I see the paramount need of your world is light, still more light."

　Another question submitted to the guide was, "You say that we should cast out fear, but is not fear a necessary part of our equipment?"

　"Fear is born of the darkness of man's superstition," he replied. "It is the relic of the days of early evolution when primitive man did not understand the processes of nature and attributed to them powers that were beyond the natural. He was afraid of the night; he was afraid of the sun; he was afraid of the storm, of the lightning and the thunder; he was afraid of the tempest; he was afraid of all natural phenomena because the explanation of them did not come within his mental orbit.

　"But you are no longer children of a primitive era. You boast that you are highly civilised, that you have grown to man's full, proud estate. Why, then, should you have fear, knowing that you are part of the Great Spirit of all life, that you are co-sharers in the processes of evolution, that you possess the power which shaped the whole universe and gave it direction and purpose, that you possess the power that is responsible for every facet of life, the power that filled the whole of the world with all that it contains? Why is fear essential when you know what you are and can be? No, fear is wrong, for fear makes you afraid and you should not be afraid. You should live in the sunlight of knowledge based on the confidence that you are infinite spirits and nothing can hurt or damage for ever the eternity which is yours.”

　"Is it always right to ask for healing for our sick friends?" was the next question.

　"Yes, of course," was the reply. "You should always strive to direct the powers of healing to those who require them, although it does not automatically follow that in every case healing will be accomplished. The purpose of the rays used from our world is to direct the attention of those charged with the care of the physical body to the fact that here is a force which, if properly understood, can play its part in the curative processes.

　"We do not desire to supplant all those who are engaged in the many aspects of healing; all that we desire to do is to show them that the Great Spirit has placed at their disposal other forces as yet unknown to them, forces which are part of the great force of life itself, and that, where there are suitable instruments, this power, this force, these rays, can be trans-mitted through them and bring healing in its train. Therefore, it is right and proper where there is sickness or disease that an attempt should be made to bring the patient within the radius of the healing spirit power.”

　"Can we make mistakes in the next world just as easily as this?" was the next inquiry.

　"Yes, of course you can make mistakes," said the guide. "You must banish from your mental conception any idea that our world is peopled with infallible beings who never err in the slightest degree. There is an increasing range of spiritual life graded according to the people who live there. Each successive grade is more developed than the one below it, and the higher you rise in the scale of spiritual values, the less possibility is there of error. In the spheres of spirit life which are very close to earth, there is little difference in the mental and spiritual outlook and behaviour of the people who dwell there. As you move further away from the vibrations of earth, so you discard more and more all its errors and its weaknesses; but you never reach the stage when you are completely free from all error, for to do that would be to achieve perfection, and the achievement of perfection is an eternal process.”.

　"Why is it that a person's guides are very often described entirely differently by different mediums?” was then asked.

　"The explanation can be of two kinds," replied Silver Birch. "Either the clairvoyance is faulty, or else the guide is showing different aspects of his individuality. You must remember that we are not restricted to one manifestation when we show ourselves to your world, that the vision seen by the clairvoyant is not the reality. It is but a picture, and for many reasons it may be desirable to show in that picture different aspects of the

one individual. We are no more the vision seen by the clair-voyant than the photograph is the individual or the gramophone record is the person.”

　The next question came from a reader who asked, "Why should so many Red Indians be guides for Spiritualism, bearing in mind that they were rather cruel people in their inter-tribal warfare?"

　"What a strange question to have addressed to an Indian in the midst of the most cruel warfare in history!" was the guide's comment. The European war had not yet come to an end when this question was asked.

　"Will you say from me that I know of no cruelty wreaked by inter-tribal warfare that would in the faintest degree compare with the hideous cruelties wreaked in this war by those who regard themselves as highly civilised because their skins are coloured white?"

　Here a sitter commented: “Besides the picture of the Red Indian is the picture drawn by his enemy, the white man, who drove him out of his own country, sold him whisky, and stole his land.”

　"And he justified his own cruelty by stating the Red Indian was cruel," declared another member of the circle.

　"I will not say that there was no cruelty,” Silver Birch said, "but you have much distortion in your books of history. Unfortunately, whenever the white man has desired to justify his exploitation, he has always painted a black picture of the poor, wicked people he has come to rescue in the name of religion, but in reality to enrich his own person."

　The simple humanity of the guide was revealed in his reply to the question, "Is it unwise for coloured people and white people to marry and have offspring?"

　And his direct answer was: "I am a coloured man. Need I say more? Surely your world must be in error when it thinks that superiority can be determined by pigmentation, by the colour of the skin. 'Superiority'is attained only through service. There is no other road. You are not greater or lesser in spirit because your skin is white, brown, red or black. The colour of your skin does not reflect the development of your soul. Your world tries to judge eternal problems by physical standards, but there is only the one eternal standardーthat is the standard of the spirit. 

　"All races, all colours are part of the Great Spirit of all life Who provides harmony in the perfect mixture of all hues. Look at nature's handiwork and realise that no matter how profuse or variegated are the colours of flowers in a vast garden, never is the note of disharmony or colour discord struck any-where. When the colours are blended among men, you will be emerging towards the perfect race."

　"Is it fair in the present development of human society for half-caste children to be brought into the world?” asked a sitter.

　"Prejudice must be broken down, error must be fought," answered the guide. "Truth will advance, however slowly and painfully, because it is truth. That which is worth having is worth achieving. Achievement comes through struggle. The prize is to him who dares and conquers, not to those who fear and are tempted to shirk their difficulties. Life is a school. Through hardship and struggle, striving and difficulty, adverse circumstances, storms and tempests, the spirit finds itself.”

　"You said recently in a prayer that none is ever forgotten, neglected or lonely,” Silver Birch was reminded at another sitting. "What about the millions of Chinese who die every year from starvation? Aren't they forgotten and lonely?"

　"No," he replied. “All who live, wherever they may be, live according to the law. No one can live outside the law of the Great Spirit; that is impossible. The law encompasses every phase of life, and it could not be that there was one human outside the sphere of its operation. The law takes cognisance of every being, of every circumstance, of every deed, of every action, of every thought. The law is every-where; none is forgotten, none is neglected, none is lonely. You must remember that although there are millions who are unaware of spiritual truth, the spiritual truth is still a truth; it is still a reality, and it functions in the case of ignorance just as it functions in the case of knowledge.

　"Those who love you continue to love you even after death has intervened. In many cases, death intensifies and quickens this love. Even when they cannot, because of earthly ignorance, manifest their presence, they still use their power to guide the ones on whom their love is centred. When death comes, as come it must, they are there to greet them, to help them in their passage across the gulf, to welcome them when they awaken into the new life. The law operates for all.

　"Earthly injustice is only part of the infinite story, for the law provides compensation as it provides retribution. The whole of life's story does not end with earth. Your task is to improve your world so that all who dwell in it may obtain from earthly life the service, the joy, the richness that could be theirs. But whatever happens to the soul, earth is only part of its experience, and in the continuing phases of life there is compensation for all who have been unjustly treated; there is retribution for all who have misused their free will to make life harder for others."

　Another question was: “Isn't it a dangerous thing to impress the facts of Survivalーsuch as the proximity and awareness of loved onesーon those who are young enough to remake their earthly lives after loss? Might not an expression of conviction and fact tie youth to those we call dead, with mental complica-tions and feelings of disloyalty?"

　"No," said Silver Birch. "Life is always lived better when truth reigns supreme. Ignorance is as much an enemy as pre-judice or superstition. Ignorance must be banished, for ig-norance belongs to the darkness and you are meant to be children of the light. When you have knowledge, you can adjust your life in the light of that knowledge; when you have darkness you have no principle or reason to guide you day by day. We have enthroned knowledge and reason as the guides for all human conduct. When you have knowledge and apply your reason, then you should be able to live your life in accor-dance with standards that will make your pilgrimage on earth worth while."

　The next question was from a soldier who wrote from Africa, asking, "What do you consider the terms 'education' and educated man' should mean?" 

　"I have dealt with this when I was asked what I would teach children,” replied the guide. “But very briefly I would say that they should be instructed, not only in all the physical arts, not only in all those subjects which will help their mental equipment, but in a knowledge of spiritual realities.

　"True education is that which enables the mind and the soul and the body to have that boundless freedom which should be part of their divine birthright. Unfortunately, education is too often in the hands of those who have sectional interests to serve. Their teaching is distorted because of the bias they seek to implant. Education should provide all knowledge of all phases of life; then the children will be equipped and ready for the greater life beyond this school."

　"As the majority of Spiritualist churches are situated around London," another questioner wrote to the guide, “doesn't it follow that the people here are more highly evolved?"

　"It does not follow that you are more evolved because you are what is called a 'Spiritualist,'" said Silver Birch. "Your evolution depends upon your life, not upon your label. You cannot cheat the laws of the Great Spirit. You obtain growth by growing, evolution by evolving. Character is what you have made it. It is not the profession, the word, the label, the party, the church, the bookーthese are the trappings. It is what you are that counts and what you do with your life. That applies to all people, and none is outside that law of progress. There is no special prerogative vested in any church, in any place of worship, in the followers of any creed. There are no spiritual privileges obtained by being members of any churches. The only privileges of the spirit that you can have are the ones that you have evolved by the way you have lived your life."

　"Will you explain intuition?" inquired someone.

　Yes, I can explain it in one sentence—the prompting of the spirit,” replied the guide. "Intuition is the means by which the spirit becomes aware of itself; it outpaces the processes of normal earthly reasoning. Intuition accomplishes at lightning speed what normally you would reach after much deliberation. Intuition is that process of attunement during which you receive that prompting which you would reach after much time and thought on the same subject.”