In
this thought-provoking article, journalist and medium Craig Hamilton-Parker
examines whether survival after death really does mean eternal life?
WITHIN the Spiritualists' National
Union's Seven Principles is the statement: "Eternal progress open to
every human soul." What does this mean?
Clearly, part of the answer
implied is that life continues after death. But does this also mean that
our soul's life continues for all eternity?
One day the universe will come
to an end. Matter created by the Big Bang will either dissipate into infinite
space, becoming so fine that gravity cannot maintain galaxies, or else gravity
will pull it all back together, resulting in what cosmologists call the
"Big Crunch." Whatever happens, there would be no possible environment
where physical man could survive.
Without a universe to support,
it could the spirit world exist for all eternity? Perhaps it might, as we
have no knowledge of it's relationship to matter.
Arthur Findlay
Arthur Findlay is a famous Spiritualist and Industrialist who Authored many classic Spiritualist books including On the Edge of the Etheric (1931) and The Curse of Ignorance. He received the Order of the British Empire in 1913 for his organisation work for the Red Cross during the war. An active Spiritualist he left his fortune to found the Arthur Findlay College for the training of mediums.
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Arthur Findlay sees the spirit
realms as seven spheres encircling the earth, which gives these regions
only a life span as long as our sun.
In seven billion years the sun
will expand to become a red giant, engulf the earth and presumably, if Findlay
is correct, the spirit world as well.
It is almost impossible to describe
the spirit world in physical terms. Some, like Findlay, William Crookes and others, have made heroic efforts by relating our beliefs to quantum
theory or the missing "dark matter" of cosmology.
Particle physics contains many
enigmas but scientific experiments forget to take consciousness into account.
A pet theory of mine is that consciousness may be a massless form of energy
and can therefore travel faster than light and outside of time.
All
of the above depends on our linear concept of time, that the universe has
a beginning and an end. Yet time is, we are told, different in the spirit
realms. Perhaps the nature of reality is different there also.
I believe we mediums
only scratch the surface of the afterlife with our communications. A spirit
world where beings retain identity, memories and a sense of time and place
may only be the first level of a far greater reality that is not dependent
on the existence of the physical universe.
Before my own mediumship had
fully developed I had an extremely evidential sitting with the medium Doris
Stokes. She gave convincing proof that my brother-in-law survived his death.
I asked what he did with his time in the spirit world. "Oh, he's learning
to play cricket," was Doris' reply. At the time this seemed a preposterous
and simplistic answer. It made me want to reject the sitting in it's entirety.
I now understand that the world
she described does exist in the way she said. However, I also believe that
these classic descriptions of the spirit world are only communications with
an intermediary level of existence.
There may be some souls that
could be satisfied ~with an eternity playing cricket and living a life style
similar to that on earth. But the urge will inevitably be to progress.
The first spirit planes are
similar to our own because a new entrant would find it incomprehensible
to be thrown into an abstract state of existence. He needs a reality framework
that he can understand. Reality, on any plane of being, is only an agreement
that we share between us.
All Spiritualists should think
deeply about these extended planes, incomprehensible as they may seem. If
guides are real, and not manifestations of a multiple personality, then
it must be from these higher realms that they come.
Beings that have entered this
abstract state communicate in a form that we can relate to: North American
Indians, Chinamen, Zulus etc. In reality they are nothing of the sort. But
they manifest in ways that we can comprehend and recognise. Perhaps they
work through and instil consciousness into aspects of our own projected
imagination.
In the higher planes the guiding
principle is the power of love. Love is a surrender of the self. The higher
we go the less important self and personality become.
Great souls become so infused
with this principal that they shed personality altogether and merge once
again with the primal source of all love: God, the highest plane of spiritual
existence.
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