CHILDREN OF EVOLUTION
While theologians preach that man "fell” from a state of grace, Silver Birch expresses the spirit teaching that man has risen and has evolved. He declares that in evolution finality is never reached.
JUST as the seed is put into darkness, there to gain strength before it can burst into life, the seed of human life is put into darkness to obtain the strength of human experience before it can burst into the life of the spirit.
All the experiences of human life are part of the great scheme. Those experiences which you like least of allーsadness, bitterness, tears, disappointments, suffering and painーare very valuable for your souls.
But you cannot realize that at the time. It is only when you can look back on the whole, and not judge by the part, that you can get a clear picture of the values of life. Through all your adversities the character is tried. Through tears and sorrow the soul is strengthened.
We look at life not through physical eyes but with the knowledge of spirit life, where the true balance is struck. Those who live wisely are the ones who seek to turn all experiences into advantage to their souls, who do not try to flee from trial and temptation but seek to use the innermost strength to face difficulties, for it is in that spirit that character is evolved and strengthened.
The Law is perfect, automatic in its operation. Nobody can evade the Law. Even free will is a law, and its operation is known to those who can see because they have reached that stage of evolution.
You can only exercise your free will according to the stage of evolution you have reached. It would be impossible for you to do anything but that which you do, because it is determined by the stage of evolution of your soul.
You are part of the Great Spirit and have an infinity of divinity to express. As that divinity is expressed, so you become accessible to higher laws—which do not contravene other laws, but are only accessible to you as your evolution unfolds.
There is no limit in infinity. There is no limit to the per-fection of beauty, to the splendour of music, and the higher the soul is raised in the scale of evolution, the greater is the world of beauty and harmony available to it. As you risc, so a greater field of harmony awaits the evolved soul.
You are not conscious of the higher whilst you are in the lower, but you are conscious of the lower whilst you are in the higher. Whilst all the laws that control every aspect of that harmony are automatic in their operation, they are not available to you until you have reached them by soul growth.
Your past growth places you in the position of choosing future growth. But you can delay it. What you will do at any moment is determined by the interplay of laws, each of which is automatic in its operation. And your choice is determined by the way that your consciousness responds at that stage of evolution. The soul, if it is aware of itsclf, chooses that which will advance its evolution.
You can only delay the physical consciousness exprcsscd through your physical brain.
You learn natural law through the evolution of your own spirit. You learn first of all to discard all that which is false, all that which makes your reason revolt, all that which is not in consonance with the love and the wisdom of the Great Spirit
Before you learn, you must unlearn. You must discard all that which hinders your minds from thinking as they should. Thus your soul and your spirit grow and you are ready for higher knowledge.
When you meet at séances, your soul is developing and you are becoming more accessible to the infinite wisdom of the Great Spirit. You are learning about the operation of laws that control spiritual phenomena.
You are being taught about the operation of natural laws in relationship to the life that you live. As you fit yourself by progress so greater knowledge comes to you.
I, whom you call Silver Birch, represent only a small portion of the knowledge that belongs to the infinity of the spheres. As you grow, other teachers greater than I can use me to impart higher knowledge and wisdom to you.
There is no final stage. There is no perfection. You are evolving and I am, and those higher than I say that there are working behind them higher ones still.
There is no final height, for if you achieved the end, creation would cease.
For many millions of years you have evolved your body or matter, changing slowly but gradually from lower to higher states, evolving, reaching out, climbing out of the mud to-wards the skies.
Slowly, the beast has becn left behind and the Great Spirit has begun to emerge. How many millions of years has it taken you to reach what you are today in your bodies of matter? And that evolution is not yet finished. How many millions of years can you spend in the evolution of your souls?
Not long ago, you were monkeysーnot the monkeys, actually, but the spirit which works through them. It is all part of the Great Spirit. Wherever you have life, you have the breath of the Great Spirit, otherwise there would not be life. There are grades of that breath. There is development and unfoldment, there is transition from the lower to the higher.
But it is all the breath of the Great Spirit. That is why the lowest form of life in the lowest part of the world of matter is linked with the Great Spirit and with the highest saint whe ever trod the earth, because of the breath of the Great Spirit within them all. The worst criminal in your world and the most beautiful soul are brothers, because of that breath of the Great Spirit within them all. You cannot escape the Law. That is why you are all responsible for each other.
There is a “group spirit" of each species. It is not you who have been the monkey, the fish or the bird, but the spirit which works through you, of which you are a part.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The guide has been asked many questions on evolution A selection from them, with his answers, are printed here:
WHY are children born with defects, such as being crippled or blind, through no fault of their own?
You must not judge the soul from without. You must not confuse the evolution of the soul with the evolution of the body which it uses on your plane.
Although there is what you call a defect, which is caused by the natural law of inheritance from the father or the mother, or both, it does not interfere with the soul's evolution.
You will find, usually, that those who start their material lives with a material defect have in their souls a compensating principle. They exhibit in their characters more kindness, toleration and gentleness to others. There is an eternal principle of compensation. There is nothing that escapes the law of cause and effect.
Because those who are the physical parents have the respon-sibility of providing the materials for the bodies of the coming race, it is their duty to hand on that which should be as perfect as possible. But, if they neglect their responsibilities, the Law cannot be altered.
If a person is insane and is not a responsible being, how does he get on when he passes to the Other Side, since we are all judged by our characters and the manner in which we have stood our tests?
You confuse the things of matter with the things of spirit. When the brain cells are out of order, they cause confusion in your world. The soul knows its own responsibility even if it cannot express itself in your world because the machinery has gone wrong.
The laws of the Great Spirit work according to the evolu-tion of the soul. The soul is not judged from the standards of earth, but from the standards of eternal wisdom. The soul that wrongs your worldly standard may be judged wrongly from your worldly standards, but if a soul is not responsible, then it is not accounted in the spirit life as in your world.
It is the same with those, who, in moments of madness, as you call it, take others' lives or their own. They cannot be blamed because the machinery has gone wrong. In my world, the true standard is the standard of the soul's motive. Where that is concerned, there is no mistake.
If the soul has been unable to learn its lessons in its life on earth, because of the defective machinery, what is its position in the spirit world?
To that extent, it has lost the earthly experience because through the machinery being wrong it does not register its experiences on the soul as it should. It has lost the value of physical experience. But the principle of compensation is at work all the time.
We take into the next world the character we form through passing through the various tests on earth. In the case of an insane person, is he judged by the character he has formed?
He is judged only by his own soul evolution and the motives of his soul.
In our world, some children are born in a slum atmosphere of drink, mental, moral and physical filth, and are faced with a life of hard, monotonous labour, while others grow up surrounded by beautiful things and have a delightful preparation for life. How is the unfairness of such cases taken into account?
The soul registers its own evolution. People in your world judge always by material standards and not by the expression of the soul. To all, whether born in low or high estate, come opportunities for service, for the soul to find itself and to express its own divinity. That is the only standard of judg-ment. All things in your world, judged by a material standard, seem to produce inequalities, but the true compensation is the compensation of the soul, which learns to express itself through all difficulties.
But why does a bad person have a good time?
You judge once again by your worldly standards. How do you know that the soul of the one who has a good time is not miserable, is not tortured, is not racked with anguish and pain? Because you see a smiling face, because you see luxury surround that person? Do purple and fine linen go hand in hand with a satisfied soul? Eternal standards are the standards of the spirit, if not of the world of matter. Otherwise there would be no justice.
But surely it is easier for a soul to express good motives when surrounded by a good environment, rather than in surroundings where sin, hunger and everything that is low predominate?
I do not agree with you, because I see that nearly always the great souls of your world have been born of low estate. All the great masters of your world have come from low estate. The more difficulties that the soul has to struggle against, the greater the soul can become. It is in the struggle against circumstances that the soul comes into its own. Try to judge not from without but from within.
Has the human spirit evolved simultaneously with the evolution of physical life?
it has evolved, but not on the same pathway, because it was necessary for a certain amount of evolution to take place in the physical body before the spirit could express itself.
As we can progress after “death” if we will, is it possible to sink to a lower level by sinful motives after “death”?
Oh, yes. There are many who do not progress for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years who are still filled with the desires of earth even when they have passed to the world of spirit. Their lives are filled with greed and desire, and they seek not to understand the laws of the spirit.
The things of the spirit make no impression upon them, for they are still of the earth earthy and they sink from lower planes to still lower planes.
Does a soul ever sink so low that it is extinguished altogether?
No. It may reach a stage where the spark of the Great Spirit within it is but a small flicker, but the light never goes out, for the link which binds it to the Great Spirit is a link forged in eternity. No soul descends so low that it cannot rise. No soul is so high that it cannot descend to help the lowest.
Does the individual lose his or her individuality after passing through the various spheres, eventually merging with the Great Spirit, and then being redistributed in various forms through material and other substances?
I know of none that has yet reached a stage so perfect that he can be merged into Perfection. The more you perfect yourself, the more you find still to be perfected, for you are allowing more of your consciousness to be revealed. Because your consciousness is part of the Great Spirit it is infinite, always stretching out to reach to infinity. We know nothing of ultimate perfection.
Is it not a fact that, as individuals progress, they tend to become merged into group personalities, losing their own identity in that of the group?
Not as far as I know. What does happen is that, in order for certain work to be accomplished, those who are of one mind pool their knowledge and their resources, allowing one to act as their spokesman on behalf of the rest. While that happens, they all sink their identity into the one, but that is only temporary.
Have you any knowledge of the survival of lower animals, other than pets?
Yes, I have. There were many animals which were friends of ours when we lived on earth and who were, to us, what your dogs and your cats are to you. These animals, where they learned to express a personality, survived with us. But that survival is not eternal. It lasts only for a time, and then the animal goes on to merge with the group spirit which perpetuates the species. You must understand that all the children of the Great Spirit, because they have the power of the Great Spirit, can transmit the power to survive the change called death to those whose consciousness has not yet been expressed in evolution. You can make it possible for the evolution to express itself before its time because of the love that you show.
Apart from pets, do animals survive individually?
No.
If animals, not pets, do not survive individually, what relation-ship exists between the Great Spirit and, say, an uncared-for and perhaps ill-treated animal? How does the life of such an animal reveal the love or the justice of the Great Spirit, viewing it as a matter between the Creator and the created?
It is very hard to explain to people in your world things which are so far beyond their understanding. I have tried to explain that animals, when they pass on, go to join the group spirit, but even then there is a principle of compensation. They are able to work out in divine justice all that compen-sation which is due to them, but it is on different lines from that of the human evolution.
Are animals compensated individually?
No, in the group. The suffering brings forward the evolu-tion of the group.
If there are in one group animals which have been ill-treated and animals that have not, and the group is treated as a group, it is difficult to understand how part of the group can get more com-pensation than another part.
Each group is made up of those who have gone through similar experiences.
Do you mean there are separate groups for those who have been badly treated and those who have not?
There are divisions that make up a whole, as you have a body with many forms of cell life as part of that body.
What reason is conceivable for the existence of the lowest forms of life, and how is their creation and necessary destruction com-patible with a universe ruled by Love?
Man has free will. He can make the world of matter a Garden of Eden, if he chooses, by exercising the power which the Great Spirit has given him and by using the wisdom which the Great Spirit has given him to discern between the things that are right and the things that are wrong.
If, instead of making it a Garden of Eden, he chooses to allow dirt and filth to exist, why should the Great Spirit be blamed for the results of man's filthiness?
Where is the evidence of God's goodness and love when creation has come through a blood-red track of carnage in its evolution?
Why do they look only at one little corner of the picture and not at the whole picture? Because there is evolution, is that not proof of the God of love? Has that never occurred to them? Because you evolve from the lower to the higher, is that not proof that the force which is behind the Law is a force of love?
Why does God allow earthquakes and volcanoes?
When you say: "Why does God allow?" you must remem-ber that you are trying to question the operation of natural law. I only seek to teach the Law and the experiences I have had of the Law. What you call earthquakes are part of the cleansing process in the evolution of the material world. The world of matter has not yet reached a stage of perfection in evolution.
In that case, thousands of innocent victims have to suffer because of the earth's evolution. Is that just?
I do not see that what you call death is a disaster. To me, it is the great hour of freedom for the soul.
Do you mean that all the people killed in earthquakes are at that particular stage where they are ready for death?
Yes, but they are there because of what has happened in their past lives in your world.
Are there other worlds inhabited by human beings moreーor lessーadvanced spiritually than ourselves?
Oh, yes. There are plenty of worlds inhabited by those who are in advance of your world of matter. This planet you call earth is only one of many planets in the vast universe. There is one planet less spiritually advanced than you.
Why is it that sometimes we want to follow a line of our work that we think is important and we find continual obstruction to our plans?
All the things that are worth doing and worth achieving are those that are the most difficult to perform. The path of attainment is not an easy one. It is full of difficulties of obstructions, of hamperings that come in the way.
Those things are part of the building of character, so that in the way you face your difficulties is determined the growth of the soul. If you could allow the highest that is within you to express itself without difficulty, it would have little value.
Do not despair. Remember there is no difficulty or obstacle that crosses your path that is so strong that you cannot over-come it by the use of the latent powers that you have within you. Even the difficulties that others place in your path can be swept aside if you will but allow all that is within you to rise and become the master.
Your world does not understand that you express so little of yourself while you are in the world of matter.
Of what use is the earth life of all the countless millions of human babies who perish at, or soon after, birth by infanticide or otherwise?
As long as people judge eternal principles by material standards they will never understand these things. The wisest of your wise do not see beyond earthly knowledge. When the light of spiritual knowledge reaches them through their evolu-tion, then they will see the Plan which is, as yet, not revealed to them. They see through a glass darkly, and so they do not understand.
Would you attempt to judge the life of a schoolboy only by the years that he goes to school, and ignore that greater life which starts beyond his school？ There is a greater life than the one in which you liveーa world of beauty, a world of colour, a world of love, a world of labour, a world where every sincere desire finds expression, where every creative impulse can express itself, where everything that cannot be fulfilled in your world is able to realize itself. Until you have seen this world, you cannot criticize the Great Spirit.
Those high spirits with whom you take counsel, do they some times come here?
No. They are all links in a great chain. As my medium is a link between you and ine, and I am a link between you and those beyond me, so they are links between me and those who are beyond them. So it stretches into the inner realms of spirit, much further than my eyes can reach.
Will we ever reach the very highest of all?
No. You do not understand. In your world, you can only manifest a small portion of yourself. You cannot express the whole of your soul because it does not yet possess a vehicle of expression. The more I go back into the inner spheres, the more I express of that which is me. That is why we go back at Christmas and at Easter, to get something of our real individuality.
You are all children of evolution. That is why you mourn. You should remember that those you love go to express more of themselves in my world.
But why do they go so soon sometimes? It seems they could not have learned their lessons.
They leave your world because a law has been broken. It is only through the bitter crucible of experience that the children of earth will learn, in time, the lessons of the Great Spirit.
If it were all easy, then men would not want to work out their own salvation. Then, in a few generations, you would have nothing in your world through which the Great Spirit could manifest. The soul that goes through the agony of pain, illness, bitterness and sorrow, comes out a greater soul, a soul that understands the sufferings of others.
The soul that lives only in its own butterfly happiness and chases always the illusion and the shadow, one day must learn to touch reality. Do not envy those who you think have an easy time. The hardest road in their life is yet before them.
The children of earth must go through every experience, either in your world or mine. There is a lesson to be learned in everything. You do not reach out and create a vehicle in which to enter that inner perfection until you have emerged triumphant from every experience.
It is hard. Why should it not be hard? Should it be easy to become a saint or a martyr, to be a leader or to be a re-former? Why should it be? The soul that seeks to escape responsibility is not worthy of leading.