IN THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18889, 12 October 1929, Page 8

IN THE SPIRIT WORLD.

To the Editor. Dear Sir,—For some occult reason, our local spiritists do npt carp to discuss the spirit world, about which they must know a great deal. A man who has had 3000 conversations with the “ dead ” should be able to give us a graphic picture of that eerie abode. Perhaps the scenes delineated by other spiritists read too much like bunkum for our local representatives to risk the taunts of ridicule. Let us peep into the ghosts’ retreat. “ There was a man (let us call him Sandy) who was killed by being run over in the streets of London. lie awoke in the spirit wQrld and found himself in a very quiet place out in the open country. He was lying on a grassy slope, and wondered how he came to be there. He did not realise he was dead until some friends came and told him.” Apparently Sandy was a bit “ thick-headed,” and wanted evidence that he was now a “ spirit.” He starts off on a hike. “He visited a glorious temple where they were having a service. He visited the homes of several people, some old friends and some new. He went excursions into the forest lands and into the hills, and visited different communities.” Now, after all this travelling and visiting, Sandy was beginning to think he had passed the Biblical tenure of life. Inquiring of a spirit., he was told “it was just about a fortnight.” Gee whiz! Jn this earthbound life of ours, Sandy wa.s a carpenter, but now that be is in the spirit world tools are no longer necessary. Now he and other carpenters “ gather round the spot where the building is to stand. They concentrate their minds on the figure they wish to place there, and (Jo and behold!) it gradually appears on the spot. They continue the operation, and it becomes solid and permanent.” Marvellous, Sandy! When Sandy desires to communicate with, say, his old union secretary, “ there is opened up with the invisible world a kind of telephone office. It is open at both ends. . the transmitter and I’eceiver are free and exposed both in the room in which our party is sitting and also at the other end of the line in the spirit world. Thus there both come to us and go to them words which anyone standing round may chance to utter.” By this method confusion is bound to follow, and this is the reason why spiritists hear only moans and groans, gasps and ejaculations of divers kinds'. Sandy then thinks he would like to see and visit his ol*’ union secretary in the flesh. Knowing he will be present at a certain seance, Sandy dives earthwards and enters the room where his friend waits patiently in the dark. As he is only dressed in his “ spiritual ” clothes, he must adopt the raiment of this world, otherwise he cannot be visible to his friend. He effects this by “clothing his spiritual body with material particles. These particles he draws from the bodies of the sitters and from the atmosphere.” Clever Sandy! We must now leave Sandy. Space permits only a peep at his spirit life, but it is sufficient, one thinks, to convince us that the picture of spirit life delineated by spiritists is so far-fetched, childish and ridiculous that only one word describes it—“bunk.” (Extracts from Rev Vale Owen.)—T am, etc., G.RB.