COMMENTS BY THE CONTROL
WE have now reached that stage in our labours with you, at which we shall be enabled to consider any questions you may desire to propound to us, and help to remove any difficulties or doubts that may linger in your minds concerning any of the matters we have touched upon during this course of lessons. Our desire is to assist you to the very best of our ability in any direction that you may require aid. Of course we do not claim that we have entirely exhausted the various subjects we have dealt with; in many cases we have only been able to be suggestive, and point rather, to the much more that remained behind rather than ask you to accept as complete the little that we have been able to present. You understand us well enough by this time to know that we have no desire to dogmatise, or to demand that you accept what we say simply because we say it. In the agitation of thought is the beginning of wisdom; in mutual counsel there lies safety; and in the free, frank and honest discussion of an difficulties there lies the only salvation from ignorance and superstition.
What is the distinction between the will of the individual and the mind?
The will is the executive officer of the mind under the direct control of the consciousness. The mind is largely memorative and cognitive, is engaged in the acquisition of external facts. The inner side of the mind is, of course, related to the consciousness; and the exhibition of energy from the essential soul, the conscious me, as represented in what is called the will, intelligently 123 directs the mental machinery for the accomplishment of specific ends and purposes. The distinction between the will and the mind is so exceedingly subtle that it is very difficult to express it in precise and definite terms, so that it may be easily apprehended. But what we have said, we think, may help you to understand the lines of distinction between them. The will is the executive officer of the consciousness working through the mind.
In higher realms do not family ties become swallowed up in a great and universal love for all?
In the more advanced realms of spiritual existence, such is the case; and the love of the family association as a unit, the parental, selfish enjoyment, is expanded to a larger and broader life and character. This much should be home in mind: that love which is purely local and domestic has within itself the germ, the essential element, of an enduring relation; and that enduring relation blossoms, expands and beautifies, and is not destroyed, and this is embodied and included within the boundaries of the larger love for the human race at large.
Though the larger then contains the lesser, the lesser is not destroyed altogether in its character by its expansion and association with the larger. Those who are truly related spiritually, those whose lives are entwined together by interior powers and bonds, remain in such relationship, in such unity and such affection indefinitely; but their ideas broaden out, their perception increases in various directions, and their operations extend over a wider area. So long as love is a personal, individual and local question, you have only reaped one half of its benefits; but when it brings you out into a wider sphere of operation, and you begin to have a love for humanity, the individual is then elevated into a broader sphere of life and progress.
Are there not those in celestial spheres who have no anxiety, fear, or doubt, and who know the exact results of any work they undertake?
On the plane of their own development it is perfectly correct to say that they are without fear or doubt as to the result of any work they undertake; because they have within themselves, within their mental and personal view and understanding, the laws and principles of the results that are to be accomplished. But when they aim to accomplish something which is beyond them, which leads them into unfamiliar grounds, then, like yourselves, the element of uncertainty enters into their calculations, and they may require assistance and advice from others.
In the accomplishment of labour upon planes of operation beneath them, there is less hesitancy or doubt than would be supposed to be the case upon their own especial plane of development; for having mastered all beneath them, and having had practical experience on those lower planes, they know exactly when to do their work and how to do it, just as a mathematician is certain that he can accomplish certain results in the use of figures, because he has all its laws and principles at his fingers’ ends. But when he attempts to work in new and unfamiliar fields, then experiments have to be made; and they are the subjects of doubt and uncertainty, because of lack of familiarity with the means to be employed to reach the desired end.
Thus it is there is no royal road to absolute knowledge, save that royal road all have to tread, the road of personal effort, and individual activity. So far as you have gone you are a master, and you are a master indeed if you are able to comprehend that which surrounds you in your then present condition. But when you go beyond it you have to make effort again, individual activity is again called for, and you have to work up to the higher grades beyond you, even as you have had to work from the lower grade you have emerged from and ascended out of.
How can a developed medium know whether it will be beneficial or injurious to yield to spirit influence?
The most practical way of deciding the question is to decide by the results of experience. You cannot decide until results are presented, and in this experience, great care, and thoughtfulness should be used. A temporary inconvenience, and distress or disturbance, should not be confounded with the possibility of perpetual disturbance and continued distress. When mediumship develops in the individual there is, so to speak, a sort of interruption of the psychical and mental currents of the life, and consequent disturbance in almost every department of the body and mind; and at first this may be extremely painful and exceedingly distressing.
But suppose you are training the muscles of the body in any particular direction your muscles become very sore at first, your body will be full of pain; and if you are weak in will and not wisely encouraged to go forward, you may stop right there. But if you will persevere you will soon find that the pain will disappear, and that pleasure and benefit and a more complete use of the body will be the result, and you will say that you never felt better in your life, that you never felt so strong and hearty as now. So when the medium feels a degree of distress and disturbance as the result of his mediumship, it is well to proceed a little further upon the road before you discontinue it.
Then after going a little further, and finding no alleviation from distress, but rather an aggravation, finding that the character of the communication is such as rather tends to lead you on a little further and a little further without any appreciable result or satisfaction being obtained, then you will be justified in calling a halt, and demanding of the controlling influences a strict account, make them state definitely what they are going to do. But you should be reasonable in the matter, and not set any limit to-day that shall harass or hamper them, and allow them plenty of time.
When they say they are reasonably sure that such and such things will be accomplished within a certain time, go on and follow the fine they have marked out; and if wise and intelligent spirits they will have given such a margin that proof can be given within the stated time that they were accomplishing what they promised. But after the time has elapsed and no progress is made, and no satisfactory reason given on the part of the controls, and the suffering and distress continue, then you would be perfectly justified in saying, “I have gone so far, I will go no farther; the assurances you have held out to me have not been realised, and I decline to accompany you upon the devious pathway any longer.”
You have the right to expect the same honesty and the same straightforwardness and the same intelligent obedience to truth, fact, and law from the inhabitants of the spirit world, that you have from one another living here; spirits have no more right to play the fool with you than you have with one another, and if they come back to you from the spiritual world for the purpose of developing your mediumship, and so undertake a task they are unable to accomplish, the sooner they confess their inability the better. But if in the end success crowns their efforts and yours, you will be like the athlete, improved and strengthened in every respect. But at all points and stages of your development, it is your bounden duty to hold the spirits who come to you to a strict accountability for every moment of your time and every ounce of your strength that they occupy or consume.
When spirits enter into a covenant with mortals, will they fulfil their obligations?
To the very best of their ability, certainly! But you must bear in mind that spirits are neither infinite nor infallible; they sometimes err through excess of kindness towards you, and at times their desires outrun their discretion. But a spirit that is a thoughtful and intelligent spirit, and who is careful when he makes a promise, like any other rational, sensible being, makes it with the full understanding that he will keep it to the very best of his ability. While such a one cannot guarantee that he absolutely will do so and so, you have a reasonable assurance that it will be accomplished if at all possible.
But when a spirit comes to you with a “Thus saith the Lord,” why then you may assure yourself that you have got hold of one of the wanderers on the threshold, a person who is probably playing a joke upon you. Place no confidence in such statements. A simple statement with the preface that, using their best endeavours, they hope to be successful in obtaining certain desired results is worthy of far more attention and trust.
It is also well for you to remember that however large the promises of the spirits may be, some duty still remains to you, that you shall help them in the accomplishment of their undertakings. If you stubbornly resist them and refuse their counsel and their guidance, refuse even to consider it, you can scarcely wonder if, having created the opposition within yourselves, no satisfactory results should follow by and by when the occasion for success arrives.
Speaking of the employments and conditions of spirit life, are those who are mediums here still mediums there, in the sense in which they were mediums here?
Not in precisely the same sense, but relatively, yes! There are spheres of spiritual intelligence removed and beyond the first spheres in the spiritual life, even as the first conditions of that life are removed beyond your present one; and the intelligence of the exalted sphere floats down into the life of the sphere beneath it, and this intelligence is expressed through sympathetic and superior minds in the spiritual world, in the same way as intelligence from the spirit-land is imparted to yourselves through the sympathetic minds that have been attuned, so to speak, or whose natures have been opened to the spiritual world while living here.
If mediums in spirit life desire to take up the labour again and carry forward their duties in that regard, there is ample opportunity for them to do so. But we want you to bear in mind one very important fact here. All the inspired people are not contained within the ranks of modern spiritualism; you can find them the world over; among the men of science, in the laboratory of the chemist, in the pulpit; among the authors, the poets, the mechanics, the inventors; among the painters and the dramatists, in the active life of humanity itself.
There is inspiration throughout all the domain of human life; and man having a spiritual nature, and that spiritual nature being related to the spiritual world, there is nothing marvellous that the spiritual side of man’s nature comes occasionally into harmonious relationship with the realms of spiritual life beyond; while it is perfectly natural that the inspirations from that world should flow down upon man’s spirit and be felt and recognised while he fives here. Inspiration is more common and widespread and universal than you suppose; and the inspired speaker of modern Spiritualism is only the typical illustration of what will be accomplished by man’s orderly development in harmony with natural principles, and through the natural operation of the spiritual attributes of man’s nature, permitting the receiving by him of inspiration from the spiritual world.
Are the spirits pained and grieved by the sufferings and weaknesses of their loved ones on earth?
They would scarcely be rational beings if they were not. Death does not destroy their humanity, does not sweep away their sympathy, does not take from them the love they bear to those they have left behind. At first they do not all rise up to that intellectual or spiritual plane that enables them to see beyond the mistakes, and that beyond all these things are smooth waters and fair seas; they see the wrong being done, the error being indulged in, the mistakes that are being continued, and having no wider judgment than the area of the mistake, they suffer sorrow and pain when those they love do wrong and suffer from their weaknesses.
But when they unfold to see beyond the present evil, and see the results of law and principle in operation, they learn that they are in some way beneficial—that the soul must pass through them to attain to higher and better things—and accept it as a part and parcel of the purposes of the eternal in relation to the progress of humanity.
But they feel if these things can be avoided, if man can be taught to travel an easier road, the road to happiness through righteousness rather than through wrongfulness, through right and justice rather than shame and suffering and misdoing—they desire to do all in their power to accomplish this result. But they know that no matter how deep are the wrongs that now pertain to their loved ones, and that though they will have to be atoned for in the future, they are but temporary, and will surely yet give place to the law of eternal right and justice. They learn that in the end eternity is long enough for every tangled web of evil and wrong-doing to be straightened out, and for all of these dark places to be made plain.
I have a letter from an old Spiritualist, and would like to have the control answer the objections contained in one paragraph which I will read: “Spiritualism is a truth, but its phenomena utterly fail to make its believers better, truer and purer men and women; on the contrary, the tendency is in the other direction. I speak from an experience of thirty-five years in it. Not that Spiritualists are worse than others, but the system and practice of mediumship, the necessary surrender of one’s individuality to others, “the Lord knows who,” is of itself degrading, belittling, and demoralising.” What can you say to that?
We have but very little to say, though we could say very much. A belief in the phenomena of Spiritualism will never do any one any real moral or spiritual good; but belief in the phenomena of Spiritualism, as the result of intelligent and morally responsible agents, may do a great deal of good to the individual, as a means of determining the character of the life beyond; and it will, in time, become the potent element of a great moral revolution which will induce a spiritual upheaval of human nature that shall ultimately place mankind upon the highest plane of individual and personal righteousness. But we have not reached the spiritual development of this exalted position; therefore a consideration now must be had as to another point raised by the good friend. The effect of the surrender of the individual will to the judgment of any spirit, “The Lord knows who,” is in itself degrading and repulsive.
We perfectly agree with our friend, and entirely endorse the statement, and say that here is one of the barriers of personal progress in Spiritualism among mediums and Spiritualists. Whenever you surrender your judgment and your will to any one, “the Lord knows who,” that comes from the spiritual world, you are doing precisely the thing you would not do to any human being that you happened to encounter in this world; and if any “the Lord knows who” were to happen to meet you on the street, and say, “Come with me and take a ride across the bay, or take a ride in this car,” you would at once want to know who he was, and what he wanted you to do this for; and until he had satisfied you as to who he was and what his intentions were, you would be very likely to decline to join him.
When there comes to you “the Lord knows who,” and he says, “I am a spirit; you must go to this town and preach, you must work here, you must go to that house and say that they must accept the angelic messenger,” and you straightway go and do as you are bid, you will realise the painful experience that a surrender of the judgment and will to “the Lord knows who” is very degrading and belittling. But suppose the spirit to be a person in whom you used to have implicit confidence while living here, suppose that person so clearly demonstrated the continuity of his own life that you have no doubt that it is the same individual, and that person says to you that he wants to advise you, counsel with you, and suggests that you do this or the other thing, you knowing his advice and counsel were good while he lived in this world, will be prepared and willing to give heed to him. But, as here in this world, you will not entirely surrender your reason and judgment to him; and if he is an honest ghost, he will ask you to weigh his counsel by your own reason and observation.
This is very different from an entire surrender of your reason and your judgment to somebody, “the Lord knows who”. The surrender of the judgment and reason and personal will has been the fruitful cause of three-fourths of the misery that has been associated with the development of mediumship; it is a doctrine that can never result satisfactorily in the great majority of cases; here and there exceptional and peculiar circumstances may temporarily warrant it; but, plainly and emphatically, let us put it that when mediumship demands the surrender of reason and intelligence, and makes a man or woman less a man or woman for being a medium than they would have been without being a medium, then surrender the mediumship itself, assert your manhood and womanhood; for an honest man and an honest woman are a great deal more useful to this world than the most brilliant mediumship that sacrifices every element of moral and personal character in its development and operation.
Is there any rule for the development of clairvoyance?
A dozen different rules may be stated, and each one may utterly fail, while the thirteenth may accomplish all that is desired. The simplest rule we can give you is this: for one hour a day seclude yourself from all your fellows, and first try closing the eyes and meditating interiorly, thus shutting out all external thoughts as far as possible; and by and by, with a little practice, you will be able to dismiss them from you altogether. Then, when you have succeeded in establishing that condition of internal communion and meditation with yourself, definitely direct your mind to some especial thing. To do this easily it is better to place a bandage across the eyes, a soft, silk bandage will assist you quite as well, especially if it be black; place it directly over the eyes, and fasten it at the base of the brain, and direct the mind to a dock or picture that may hang in the room.
At first you may find it difficult indeed, and you may perceive no indication of development; but after a few trials, probably five or six, the eyes may begin to recognize streaks of fight shooting across the sight, and there may be pains affecting the brow and perhaps the eye itself, and the mind will seem to be centred in the eye for the purpose of seeing. Persevere, keep the mind continually fixed upon what you want accomplished. Do not make the thought too intense, but make it persistent; and in a few weeks’ time you will be able to perceive, dimly at first, in miniature, the clock or article you are trying to see, and you will presently be able to state the time it indicates. When you are able to perceive the clock and first catch a glimpse of it, and are perfectly sure of the fact, then remove the bandage, and see if what you supposed to be the time is correct. You will then be able to verify the experiment itself it may happen that you have seen the watch inverted, and the very opposite of the time you state will be presented. Remember that little point.
But not alone quietude of mind and internal meditation are necessary; there are other things required as well. The first is perfect cleanliness of the body; the second is the most perfect cleanliness of mind; and the third, and most important of all, the most perfect cleanliness in diet. All these are necessary to successfully unfold the latent clairvoyance. You must refuse A stimulants and narcotics and all flesh diet, living upon plain and simple food, giving strict attention to bodily and mental conditions. It may be necessary for you to be magnetized, and some genial friend or acquaintance in whom you have confidence may be able to materially assist you. After you have discovered that you can develop these latent spiritual powers, then you have to determine in what way or direction the future development shall be exercised; this is an important point that you need to consider carefully, and you should pursue that course in which the development seems to be the strongest and most natural.
Should children sit for development?
As a general thing we discountenance the development of children as mediums. Our observation is, that mediumship should never be developed until the physical system has nearly attained its growth. You can then draw upon the vitality of the system without much danger to the health of body or mind of the individual. Certainly we should say, not before seventeen or eighteen years of age; and if the attempt at development is put off even two years longer, the individual would certainly profit greatly by it, and lose nothing. It is most pernicious physiologically and spiritually to try to hasten the development in any case in growing children; they will become bodily and mentally demoralised, to use a common expression; and we warn you in no case to undertake to develop your children in such a manner until they have reached the period referred to, when they will have a supply of reserve force, so to speak, to fall back upon. From eighteen to forty years, in the meridian of life, is the best period for the development of mediumship; and the best period of all, in the majority of cases, is from twenty-five to thirty-five years of age.
What is the indication where a person sees, after closing the eyes, what they have been observing before the eyes were closed?
It is the perfect impression of the object upon the retina, just the last impression, and is reproduced as a sort of subjective panorama, a sort of camera obscura; by the closing of the eye, a photographic image is recorded on the optic nerve.
Sometimes we say this person has a gift for this or that. Is it a gift from the spiritual sources, or is it in the nature of the individual?
It is in their own nature in every case. The spiritual world can give you nothing. God has endowed you all with the same latent abilities, the circumstances of life determine the quality and development in every case. The spiritual world may assist you in bringing out that which is contained in yourselves.
Spirits that have never had earthly experience of any length of time, when they come back to identify themselves to their relatives and friends, what is the effect upon that spirit in spirit life? Is it beneficial or otherwise, and is it requisite that that spirit should have some experience through a sensitive mind on the earth plane?
There are two very important questions involved in this most exceedingly interesting subject. For instance, the spirits who enter into the spiritual world prematurely, to use the language of earth, enter in from one of three causes: either as a consequence of the wilful operation of the mother, through foeticide, through some malpractice or injury to the human system, or through certain laws having terminated the possibility of their physical existence in this world. In the first case it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that the individual spirit is likely to derive large personal benefit from contact with its mother; but here another interesting point is involved which will have to be considered. Many a woman who has taken this unwise course feels, when this has been accomplished, waves of sorrow and regret sweep over her, and she would give all the years of her life if this thing could not have been.
Now suppose a little spirit growing and developing comes back again into the mortal sphere, and the mother is made aware of that fact, why the floodgates of her soul would be opened, and such a psychological disturbance would come forth as would do that child an infinite amount of harm and mischief for the time being.
Therefore it is that wise guardians in spirit life take charge of such waifs, and keep them in their surroundings and develop them spiritually, and build them up in a manner that avoids the necessity of their being brought again in contact with the material sphere they originally sprang from. Such are sometimes brought into the sphere of human activity, brought to observe the condition of material life through the influence and experience of others, and they gain a practical knowledge of the world they have been so unceremoniously ejected from.
But is it not absolutely necessary that they should be brought back into this world, because the grand army of humanity passes from it and carries a sufficiency of experience forward with them into the spiritual world to be an abundant means of instruction; and these who carry with them much of earth conditions are selected by wise teachers to take these waifs in charge.
When a physiological law has been violated, as in premature birth and consequent death, then, of necessity, the moral and spiritual conditions are very different from the first case. In this instance, welling up with its love, the mother sphere unfolding in the spiritual nature, there is a point of contact with the spiritual thought that is in the spiritual world; and the two blending in harmony and unity, the mother love flows out with sweet affection to the babe and thrills its inmost soul to the centre, and it is drawn to the mother by it.
Thus there are many interesting problems involved in this question, as well as many suggestions. One conclusion we will draw from it; there is one crime against yourself that will stand out before you in the spiritual world as a dreadful guilt, and that crime is the premature ejection into spiritual existence of that which should be the pride and glory of your manhood and womanhood.
At what stage of the growth and development of the child, prior to its birth in this world, is it immortal?
The immortality of the child is coincident with conception itself—, therefore, at any stage of the subsequent development, if it is interfered with, there is the fact of the attempted demolition of a human life. But the essential element of it, nevertheless, still continues, will still be manifest, and grow and unfold. CLOSING COMMENTS BY THE CONTROL We have to thank you most heartily, friends, for the spiritual and fraternal sympathy and support you have accorded us from night to night, during this course of advanced class-meetings; and in leaving you now with our present duties concluded, with great and joyous feelings in our hearts that we have met upon the common plane of mutual desire to gain knowledge, we invoke the blessing of the highest and best upon each and every one of you, and trust that the light that has been gleaming in your souls may become a strong and growing flame of divine radiance in the future. May your days be full of usefulness and beauty, and when the time comes for you to march forward to that greater and better realm beyond, may you be filled with the sublime and peaceful consciousness that you have endeavoured to do your best at all times; and then it shall truly be said of you, even as you will permit us in all humbleness to say of ourselves, “We have done our best, the wisest can do no more, nor should the poorest do less.” May the truth and justice of eternal righteousness and knowledge be with you and keep you henceforth and for ever more.
THE END