Life Beyond the Veil

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 561, 14 January 1929, Page 14

Life Beyond the Veil

SIR A. CONAN DOYLE’S REVIEW

Seven Spheres of Spirit-World

THAT the discoveries of the Spiritualists are true, morally beneficial, and fraught with an enormous increase in human knowledge, is the contention of' Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who has been delivering a series of popular lectures in South Africa. Speaking at Capetown, he supported the first contention by describing various psychic experiences of a striking nature which had either happened to himself or had become known to him at first hand. He put it to the audience that such experiences could hear no other interpretation than that which the Spiritualists put upon them.

A S to goodness, how, he asked, could a teaching be bad which urged that happ.iness in the life hereafter depended on the degree of spirituality achieved here on earth? This teaching was the foundation of all religion, and all the Churches ought to be heart | and soul on the side of the spiritual- { ists Instead, the Churches are snarl- | ing and snapping at us all the time,” complained Sir Arthur. A large part of his lecture was concerned with the description in vivid detail of the life of undisturbed happiness led by disembodied spirits in the ' third sphere.” Sir Arthur, who was introduced by Professor Scrimgeour, began by explaining that he was not there to proselytise. He happened to have discovered certain facts bearing on unfamiliar varieties of human experience and he proposed to lay these facts before his hearers. “But,” he added, "what you do with what I give you I must leave to your judgment and conscience." He himself had not always been a Spiritualist. In youth his views had been decidedly agnostic. But there came a stage when he began to read the works of Spiritualist writers, and he continued in reading and experiment till at length the facts became too strong for him. But the full bearing of them was not brought home to him until the War, when the whole world was like Rachel mourning for her children. He and his wife knew that they could tell the world where were the young soldiers who had died in the prime of their vigour, and what they were doing. Most of the last 12 years had been given up to this task. Spiritualism, therefore, was of the utmost consolatory value. Moreover, organised religion, as all the Churches admitted, stood in need of something to revitalise it, something to strengthen religions’ moral sanctions. This, he felt, could only be done from the other side, and it was

only by means of Spiritualism that the Churches could be put in touch with it. He looked to the spirit world for high wisdom and high teaching of a new kind. Is It True? In expounding his subject, Sir Arthur divided it under three heads. First, Is it true? Next. Is it good? And, lastly. If it 13 true and good, what exactly do we get out of it? In regard to truth, he proposed to lay before his hearers various examples of Spiritualistic experience which he hoped would be convincing to their reason. The examples would be all of things known personally to himself or for whose truth he could himself vouch. Among the examples Sir Arthur mentioned was one of a mother whose son had been killed In the War. They were in frequent communication with each other, and the mother, herself convinced of the reality of her son’s survival, used to ask him to furnish evidence by which she would be able to persuade others to her conviction. One day the son spoke to her and told her that a youth whom they both knew had been shot down in his airplane behind the German lines. He described the event in detail, giving the time and the place and how the body was lying. Some weeks later the official news of his death was received and it confirmed the spirit account in every particular. Again there was the famous example of the Cleophas script. A young Irish woman produced by means of automatic writing a document of some 70,000 words. Upon investigation this proved to be a message from one Cleophas, who had lived in the early Christian era. It explained that the “Acts of the Apostles,” as we knew it, represented but three and a-half hooks of a chronicle which comprised 12 books in all. The script of Cleophas purported to supply the missing eight and a-half books.

When it was submitted to the Examin-1 ing Chaplain of the Bishop of London, I one of the highest authorities on! Scripturela sources, he gave it as his I opinion that all the internal evidence | suggested that the document was 1 what the spirit of Cleophas claimed | it to he. The last example was of a professor j of Oriental languages at Oxford who, j though 110 spiritualist, happened to be attending a seance. He heard a voice speaking in ancient Chinese. He himself was at that time engaged on the study of a poem in that very language, part of which he had not succeeded in interpreting. He asked the voice whether it could clear up the obscurity. The voice asked him to quote the first line of the poem. He did so. The voice then recited the remainder of the poem, and gave him the explanation of the obscure passage. The medium through whom these communications passed .vas an uneducated person, wholly Ignorant of any form of Chinese. Is It Good? Proceeding to ask*whetner Spiritualism was good or had, Sir Arthur stated that we could not evoke or call down spirits at our will. We could only prepare conditions so that they could come if they wished. The initiative was always on the other side. Therefore, whether what came was good or bad rested with the other side alone. “But I have never known,” Sir Arthur affirmed, “any message that was blasphemous, obscene, or in any way objectionable. The teaching that 1 have heard has always been beautiful and high.” It seemed that if the matter were approached in a religious frame of mind, results were got which well accorded with religion. But if approached frivolously, the results were frivolous. So that he who complained that the most absurd things happened when he experimented only laid under suspicion his own attitude to the whole question. But how could Spiritualism be evil when the proof of a life beyond was the basis on which ail religion rested? Why the churches should turn against the Spiritualists he could not understand. “The clergy,” he cried, “ought to be a solid mass behind us, instead of snarling and snapping all the time, as they do.” Then what did we get out of Spiritualism? “We get,” Sir Arthur said, “an enormous accession of knowledge. Whenever I am in touch with the spirits I am continually asking them questions about their daily life and its surroundings. These are invariably the same or very closely similar. I should not exaggerate if I said that we have ten thousand answers all alike. Surely that makes an overwhelming case, if human testimony counts for anything. Conditions Behind Death What were the conditions on the other side of death? Attempting to ' answer this question, .he lecturer pre- ! sented on the strength, he said, of ! spirit communication, a picture of a s roseate existence beyond the veil. 1 “What the spirits tell us,” said Sir . Arthur, “is that death is not a painful

process at all. It is a pleasant one, 1 < like drifting away when dead tired i into sleep. Illness may cause pain, but ; long before death it is all gone. They say that what you have in s'ou as you ; sit there is a spiritual body which is ; an absolute duplicate of your present : body. There is not a hair missing, • not a pore of the skin that is not exactly the same. It is this which passes out from you at death and this which i carries on your life. This contains : within it as its character everyt inn:: ill at makes, up you—your knowledge, , your character, everything that is you is carried on to the smallest point. Just as the physical resemblance is the same, so the mental and spiritual resemblance is exactly the same also. You find yourself on the other side exactly as you were before. You yourself and everything around you are expressed in etheric terms, but it all seems to you just the same as before. “In fact, it is most difficult very often to persuade people they are dead,” announced the lecturer. 'When people who have passed over find everything natural and nothing changed they often think they have suddenly recovered from an Illness feeling very strong and well, and they believe they have suddenly come into a beautiful part of the world in some extraordinary manner. The “Third Sphere” Spiritual progress, the lecturer explained, was gradual, and the ordinary decent man or woman after death awoke in the “third sphere,” where they found inexpressible happiness and peace and rest, a place also of congenial occupation. Spirit messages which Sir Arthur j went on to read expressed the joy of those who had passed on at the wonderful conditions found on the “third sphere.” All were couched in general and very similar terms except for one which exhorted the lecturer: “For God’s’ sake, Sir Arthur, strike hard at these people, these dolts, who will not believe.” And the report of the conditions from his dead sister, he said, was “all beautiful and high and so sweet and sunny,” and as to occupations they were “music and children, loving and mothering.’’ The lecturer went on to give an answer to the problem as to the j destination of the wicked. What they j were told by the spirits was that after sins due to heredity and environment and sudden impulse had been eliminated there was very little real wickedness left. The sins held in greatest detestation were cruelty, selfishness and bigotry. “But there are undeveloped spirits,” he went on, “who when death has taken place are earth-bound, so weighted with material ties that they cannot rise to a spiritual sphere. It is a most serious condition. When such a spirit becomes visible to us, it is because its vibrations are very near to our own. That is the reason of phantoms and spectres. Gradually the spirits rise in the spiritual scale , higher and higher until- they attain beyond our reach.” A further remarkable revelation of the after life which the lecturer went

on to make from spiritual informatam -syas that in the spirit world a j process of rejuvenescence set in by ; which spirit entities were restored or advanced to a common normal age or period, which in a man would correspond to about 30 in life and 25 in the case of a woman. “No woman need mourn her lost beauty or man his lost strength,” he declared, “because both are waiting for you on the other side. Children j go on progressing. They have their educational establishments, and are, perfectly happy. If a woman’s child dies at two, and she dies 20 years later, she will find it 22 when she joins it. “Where is this spiritual world?” asked Sir Arthur, and answering the question he told the audience that the spiritual planes were discernible and approachable only through vibrations in sympathy with them. Below the third sphere were two punitive spheres, and beyond it other spheres that were known of up to the seventh. What happened beyond that he could not say; it might be that spiritual entities were absorbed into a composite individuality, hut as to that nothing was known.