"DEATH"

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1938, Page 4

"DEATH"

ITS VALUES EXAMINED

QUESTION MARK OF SCIENCE

ADDRESS TO PSYCHIC

SOCIETY

The subject, "Death and its Values," was discussed by Dr. Maxwell Telling in an address before the Leeds Psychic Research Society in the Philosophical Hall, Leeds, reports the "Yorkshire Post."

Approaching his subject indirectly, Dr. Telling referred to world tendencies, and said that while on the one hand we had seen a triumph of scientific and materialistic progress exceeding almost the wildest dreams, yet on the other bniid we saw an uncertainty and anxiety which almost nullified material progress and its resulting amenities. The advance of scientific knowledge had had three main results. It had cleared away the dense fog of superstitution and much of the miasma of traditional authority because it had been animated solely by the adventurous and courageous search for truth for its own sake; it had added to our conquest and control over Nature; and it had produced results in general amenity to such an astounding extent that it had undoubtedly created in mankind an inordinate sense of self-suffi-ciency. . * DECAY OF FAITH. Yet, looking round the world, disaster threatened it to the point of the possibly chaotic .destruction of civilisation, and whether that be the consequence of our self-reliance and spiritual lag or not—he firmly believed it was—at least it behoved us to consider the matter very carefully. The present time was undoubtedly marked by a decay of what we all understood as faith, which, if it still lived, as he believed it did, in the hearts of most people, was yet almost relegated to the background of consciousness. Science had put its question mark against everything, and as a result of that general challenge and interrogation, so many old dogmas and piously comforting beliefs had been shaken to their foundations that many did not know what to believe, or' in ,what religion or philosophical system to put their trust. But today desir^ for. belief was not lacking, and he would assert that there was more, real spiritual hunger than ever before in the history of civilised nations. A witness to that was the increasing spirit of humanism and care for the under-dog of life, and it was this same vague but sincerely practical humanism which was largely replacing formal Christianity and a more positive faith. He thought the feeling of tension which was so universal today was largely set up and maintained by this hunger on the one hand and its repression on the other, and was responsible for the paradox of the existence of the undoubtedly increasing spirit of humanism side by side with outbreaks of savagery and , persecution almost incredible at this advanced stage of civilisation. A STARTING POINT. In the surge and.flux of philosophic and religious doubt there surely arose a.need to fix upon something elementary and certain on which one could take one's stand, and, from it, try to discern and then travel along the road to a constructive and effective religion by a pathway of-ever widening and illuminating faith. Could we find such a starting point? In attempting to answer that,he had chosen to cite the primary certainty of death. Its factual study and its implications might yield results in the desired' direction and of the first magnitude. Apart from its certainty, the fact of death was provocative of thought. Was it the end, or. did it mark but a stage? In other words, did we survive? It was the primary study of spiritualism, and/it passed comprehension what objection there can be to such study. Even those who were firmly established in a faith such as Christianity, which was absolutely inseparable from the fact of survival, should surely be glad if to those weaker and faith-fainting brethren the study succeeded in bringing- anything approximately to affirmative proof, thereby enabling them also to find a path to faith. The central quest of psychical research was, and still remained, a decision on the question of survival. That study hadj been, and still was, often prosecuted by methods rather less than scientific. But was that all to the bad? Demonstrations and study had" led many to conviction that there was a spiritual basis to life, and, if nothing more, had established an apparently firm belief in the value of a faith and a religion of what one could fairly call a transforming quality. The more deeply and sincerely phenomena were investigated, the more, profound did conversion become. FINAL JUSTICE. Therefore, the second value of the fact and study of death lead to a certain quality of conviction, not finally and necessarily to the certainty of survival, but at least to the proof of telepathy, which/was the only possible alternative to the explanation in and by survival. Telepathy was a halfway house, and by its proof, which today was scientifically assured, one was convinced of the existence of a spiritual side of life. That was where we stood today. , This meant that the study-value of the phenomenon of death, while it did not directly equate to a new religion, or even to a new religious hypothesis, did most certainly provide- a way of escape from the despairing unfairness of death to the radiance of a new reality and the hope of a final justice. That had been the benefit it had conferred on countless thousands, among whom he gratefully numbered himself. One had no right, as he saw it, to say that Spiritualism was a religion, but it was an avenue to the possibility of the acceptance of religion in some form or other. Wb?, therefore, did the Churches still in the main oppose it? Why did they reject that which gave almost the sole promise of "outside" support to the Christian basis of faith? There were signs that that resistance was gradually breaking down. More and more members of the Church — meaning the Christian Churches as a whole —were coming to see the tremendous reinforcement they could get by exploring at least some way along the road of spiritualistic research.