1. Each one of us is a spirit with a body – not a body with a spirit.
Our fundamental nature is that we are spiritual beings, with a physical body, which is designed to die away from us. Two important consequences flow from this.
- The first of these is that your afterlife has nothing to do with your belief or lack of it, but a function of the way we were all created. Anyone who tells you that you have to believe in a particular religion or creed in order to have an afterlife, is trying to sell you something God has freely given to you. But you may have to play ‘catch-up’, if you haven’t lived your earth life as selflessly as you might have. (That’s all of us!) An ‘afterlife’ is for everyone, not just Spiritualists. Consequently Spiritualism is that remarkable thing - a non-elitist religion. But our happiness in that condition depends upon the character we have developed.
- The second consequence is that, if we are spiritual beings, it follows that we have spiritual senses. This is why it is often said that we are all potentially mediums. However, we are conditioned by our education and culture to focus on physical things, using our physical senses. A minority remain in touch with their spiritual senses and use them to help that majority of us, who are outwardly focused and not so attuned to our own spiritual senses. Mediumship can be seen as the spiritual nature of man in action. Mediums can be seen as our ‘proxy intuitives’ for those of us who are less-gifted.
After we die, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. Here and now, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
2. Spiritualism does not teach Salvation
Because our Spirit teachers have eschewed the idea that we are born in ‘Original Sin’, there is no need for Salvation. Their teaching is that we are born, not as sinners, but as learners. Throughout our lives, we build our character, which determines our immediate condition in Spirit life – and therefore our place in it.
Spirit life is as progressive as this one and its lessons and their consequences - whether good or bad – continue. No harps to play and no clouds to rest upon. Just a continuous, progressive life of expanded consciousness and growth. And no little adversity. No challenge, no growth. This is what separates us from orthodox Christianity. The moral and ethical aspirations are pretty much the same, as our second principle, The Brotherhood of Man, affirms.
3. It’s about evidence, rather than blind faith.
Mysticism – of which mediumship is an aspect - always answers the spiritual needs of the day and, as the afterlife has been in doubt since the Enlightenment, mediumship is one of its present expressions. Whilst faith is not lacking in Spiritualism, it is based on evidence rather than tradition. Our philosophy is grounded in our unique experience and free from dogma. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, has been described as a ‘collective agreement to believe the impossible’ which weakens its moral case and undermines its ability to stand up to materialistic science and, increasingly, public scepticism. Spiritualism is the only religion in the world based on evidence.
4. Scientists investigated and endorsed Spiritualism.
In 1870, as Spiritualism continued to rise in popularity, the eminent scientist William Crookes announced to the Royal Society that he would, by the scientific method, “consign the residuum of Spiritualism into the unknown limbo of magic and mumbo-jumbo”. He examined the leading mediums of the time, D.D. Home, Kate Fox and Florence Cook among others over a period of four years and, in 1874, announced that he could find no way in which the phenomena he had witnessed could have been achieved by fraud. He was photographed arm in arm with a materialised form and wrote a book, “Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism”. The scientific establishment laughed at him – it was not the conclusion they wanted him to come up with – and it set back his career for some years. However, he was later knighted and became President of that same Royal Society. After his death, his family burned many of his séance-room photographs “to protect his reputation”.
Sir Alfred Russel Wallace – the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of evolution – was also a Spiritualist, who wrote and researched heavily in the subject. He, too, suffered the sneers of the (un?)scientific establishment and remained a Spiritualist to the end of his life.
In the early 20th century, the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge announced himself as a Spiritualist following the death of his son, Raymond in the first world war. The establishment claimed his judgment had been affected by this bereavement. But Lodge - like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - had been a convinced Spiritualist since the 1890s and had merely ‘gone public’, to give comfort to others.
5. An Anglican Commission investigated and endorsed Spiritualism.
In 1936, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, was persuaded to set up a commission of enquiry into Spiritualism. Using some of the Church of England’s finest minds, the investigation sat for two years and produced a majority report signed by seven of the ten participants broadly (this was the C of E) favourable to Spiritualism. (A minority report reserved the judgement of the other three signatories in the hope of some other scientific knowledge being found to explain away their experiences.) Among other things, it said that the products of mediumship were not so much similar to the miracles of the Bible, as identical. This was not the conclusion the archbishops had hoped for and they banned any attempt at publication, much to the displeasure of the signatories of the majority report.
In the late 1940s, however, a leaked copy of the report surfaced in the press and a furore followed. A recommendation that the Church should maintain contacts with ‘intelligent people who were Spiritualists’ but that no publicity should be given to this, was not followed up . . .
6. It is Universalist and Inclusive
Spiritualism is a modern expression of the universal religion just as earlier religions served earlier generations. It consequently shares the principles of the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of man and the Spiritual future of man with the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions. If it were discovered that none of the leaders of the main religions had actually lived, most religions would be seriously undermined. But Spiritualism would be unaffected, because its inspiration is in the present and always contemporary. It could therefore be argued that all revealed religions are an offshoot of Spiritualistic experience. As you will find if you investigate further.
7. It is a Subversive religion!
Spiritualism is not merely a Dissenting tradition, it is a subversive one! By proclaiming that man is a Dualism (body and spirit), whereas orthodox science rests on the idea that he is a Monism (body only), it undermines a basic assumption of materialistic Science. Hence the displeasure of the scientific establishment towards the likes of Sir William Crookes, Sir Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Oliver Lodge.
And by proclaiming that man is not bound by rituals and creeds, it renders the idea of priesthood (but not of Ministry) largely redundant. All of which begins to explain why so much energy has been expended by both orthodoxies to discredit this relatively tiny movement. If we could have chosen our critics, we might – in all good humour – have chosen more wisely!
8. Spiritualism has always been socially progressive.
From the beginning, Spiritualists espoused socially responsible causes. Medium Nettie Maynard gave spirit messages to Abraham Lincoln, strengthening his resolve to free the slaves. Google ‘Nettie Maynard’ for further information. It was a Spiritualist, Dr William Price, who pioneered cremation in Britain. And the works of Thomas Paine – long ostracised by Church and pious society – are taught in the Spiritualist Children’s’ Lyceum. So, capital punishment was opposed and women’s’ suffrage, a union of nations, old age pensions, the Rights of Man – all causes championed by Paine in the 1700s - were supported by the Spiritualists. The marching and callisthenics exercises, practiced in the Children’s Lyceum, were observed by educationalists, which led to PE classes in Britain’s schools.
Unlike most religions, women have held all official positions in the movement since Jessy Greenwood became the national president of the Spiritualists’ National Union in 1923. And there is no anti-Gay teaching.
9. It brings the mystical root of religion into the present day
All religions have mysticism at their root and most are then sustained by a priesthood, who prefer their mystics to be deceased so that a settled doctrine can be established without the interference of new knowledge. Spiritualism has mysticism in its root, branch and blossom, which allows for an expansion of its message as our intellectual, social and spiritual development requires and permits. The conflict with orthodoxy is really that between the priest and the living, functioning mystic. And the threat that the latter presents to the authority of the former.
Revelation is given to mankind, from time to time, according to his needs and his capacity to understand. Since biblical times, our educational attainments and our capacity to understand, has increased greatly. The philosophy given to us - and the evidence our age demands - is served in the modern era by Spiritualism.
10. Living your earthly life in the context of your eternal life
All philosophy emphasises the futility of acting out of short-term advantage. By demonstrating the reality of the larger life, Spiritualism incentivises the wisdom of living and acting for the long-term, which usually involves putting others first and recognising our intrinsic unity. As the former Spiritualists’ National Union president, Ernest Oaten, once said:
“I believe we shall one day find that there is but one life in the universe, of which we are all individualised aspects. Reaching down from the highest point of the Godhead to the meanest thing that moves and grows, it implies the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, for each is a part of the whole.”
A rich spiritual philosophy underlies the movement, built up over more than a century of communication with evolved humans in spirit life. And of inspired men and women on this side of life.
Originally published in Psychic News.
Copyright Geoff Griffiths