Posted on 21 October 2024, 8:30

Thanks to Professor James Hyslop for being a guest columnist this fortnight.  This is an abridgement of the concluding chapter of his 1905 book, “Science and a Future Life.” Hyslop was professor of logic and ethics at Columbia University before becoming a full-time psychical researcher in 1902. — MET

OVERCOMING THE FOLLIES OF A FUTURE LIFE

by James H. Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D.

Secularism is the rationalist’s protest against an absurd “other worldliness,” and it seems forced by the very law of human progress to gain its own end by a neglect of the spiritual, similar to that which characterized the religious mind’s attitude toward the earthly. But there is no reason, save the lack of intelligence and high moral development, why both tendencies should not act together. There is no reason why a belief in a future life should be a necessary evil and there is no reason why a reference to present duties alone should be the world’s only virtue. Both ought to be articulated in the highest character, if there is any reason to accept a future life at all.

Of course, a reference to a future life in our daily conduct will get its rationality from the conviction that it is a fact, while ignorance of such a destiny is certainly an excuse for the neglect of it. No duties can have any force or motive power if they are based upon a mere possibility of another life when they are confronted with an equal possibility that it is not a fact. Morality, to be effective, must have some certainties in the causal series of events or it will be largely inoperative. Hence, if we are to use a future life as a motive power in conduct at all, we must assure ourselves that it is a fact and that it represents some degree of progress as the result of effort in the present life.

The ideals of a democracy will live or die with the belief in immortality. Christianity boasted of its freight of hope to the poor and of its placing men on an equality before the world. It taught us that man shall not live by bread alone, and that riches were not the pathway into the kingdom of God.

It is all very well for the rich and cultured to tell us we should have no personal interest in a future life and thus appear to be very disinterested in their views of that life, when the fact is that this is only a subterfuge to escape the duty to share with labor and suffering the fruits of a selfish exploration of them. The truth is that men never became stoical and pretentiously virtuous about immortality until they came convinced that it was not to be had; and then to placate the poor they begin teaching them the duty of sacrifice in this respect while they make none themselves in the field of wealth until they have satisfied all their Epicurean desires. But they will learn in the dangers of a social revolution that the poor will not sacrifice both wealth and immortality. They will insist on sharing one or the other.

I am well aware of the follies which might easily be aroused by the reinstatement of a belief in a future life, as if that belief should become as badly abused as it has been in the past. But the dangers of abuse are no reason for trying to suppress facts. We cannot shy at the truth because some unwise people lose their heads about it. On the contrary our supreme duty is to appropriate that truth and to prevent its abuse. We only double our task when we ridicule facts until they get beyond our control. Our business is not to follow in the wake of movements we cannot control, but to give their truths sobriety and sanity. If a future life is a fact, we cannot disprove it by laughing at phenomena that we do not like. Our esthetics have no more to do with the fact than they have with the eclipse of the sun or with the existence of disease. Emotional contempt of the facts is no more legitimate than the condemned emotional interest in a future life, and if it be a fact we shall not escape it by cultivating indifference to its truth. It is the business of the intelligent and scientific man to command the subject, not to despise it because it is not respectable.

If nature has thrown in our way indubitable evidence of a future life, no matter what its character, if there is no escape from the admission of the significance of the facts for some large theory of the world, it is not only the scandal of science that the facts are not incorporated in its work, but it is also a reproach to our morals that we do not appropriate the facts in some rational and useful way. If we cannot deny them we must articulate them with our rational life and see that they get sober instead of insane appreciation.

If we can infect life with the belief that consciousness survives and that we cannot form an intelligent idea of that survival without many centuries of scientific study we may get the combined advantages of the Greco-Roman devotion to science and art while we sustain Christian hopes and ideals. The mediation between the material and spiritual life may be effected in this union. We do not need assurance of anything but the fact of a future life if we can accept and trust the lesson of evolution, namely, that progress is the law of the cosmos.

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Posted on 07 October 2024, 8:27

Maurice Barbanell (1902 – 1981) was a London journalist and a trance medium, most remembered as the medium for the entity known as Silver Birch, an apparently advanced spirit who assumed the persona of an American Indian guide. Over a period of some five decades, Silver Birch offered several volumes of profound teachings on every conceivable subject related to life, death, and the afterlife through Barbanell (below) at a home circle.

As an example, when Silver Birch was asked whether a soul loses its individuality after it passes through the various spheres and eventually merges with the “Great Spirit,” his usual term for God, he responded: “I know of none which as yet reached a stage so perfect that he can be merged into perfection. The more you perfect yourself, the more you find still to be perfected, for you are allowing more of your consciousness to be revealed. Because your consciousness is part of the Great Spirit it is infinite, always stretching out to reach infinity. We know nothing of ultimate perfection.”

On the subject of death and grief, Silver Birch said: “Death is not a tragedy to those who die; it is only a tragedy to those who are left behind. To go from darkness to light is not something over which you should grieve. If you grieve, you are in reality grieving over your loss and not one who has in truth become enfranchised. He is better off. He will no longer suffer all the ills of the human body. He will not be subjected to the ravages of wasting disease. He will unfold all the gifts with which he has been endowed, and will express them free from any thwartings and will be able to give a larger service to those who require it.”

When asked about Jesus, Silver Birch replied: “The Nazarene is one of the hierarchy behind all the directives we receive when we leave your world occasionally to fortify ourselves to cope with our mission and to glean more of what it is we have to achieve. I have a great reverence for Jesus, the Nazarene, a wondrous example of what the power of the spirit could achieve when divinity assumed human form and gives to those available simple but profound teaching that love is a power that solves all problems when people allow themselves to be animated by it.”

Barbanell was born to Jewish parents, his mother devoutly religious but his father an atheist. Barbanell recalled many disagreements his parents had on the subject of religion. “The years of dissension had the effect of making me first of an atheist and later, in my teens, an agnostic,” he wrote. “My outlook was unashamedly materialistic. My ambition was to carve out a successful commercial career and make a fortune. Fate, however, had other plans.”

In 1931, while serving as secretary of a literary debating society, Barbanell listened to a speaker give a talk on Spiritualism. Very skeptical as to what the speaker had to say, Barbanell decided to investigate by attending some séances. At his second séance, he “fell asleep” and when he awoke he was informed that he had been in a mediumistic trance and that an Indian spirit guide has spoken through him.

Big Secret

It is unclear as to how the mediumship of Barbanell unfolded, but he soon formed a circle that met regularly to hear from Silver Birch.  At some point, Hannen Swaffer, a Fleet Street journalist, began hosting the circles.  Barbanell’s identity as the medium for Silver Birch was kept a secret for many years as he feared it would compromise his standing as a journalist.  He founded Psychic News in 1932 and frequently published the teachings of Silver Birch as they were recorded in the circle.  It was not until many years later that Barbanell was identified as the medium of Silver Birch.

“Silver Birch, as we call him, is not a Red Indian,” Swaffer explained.  “Who he is, we do not know.  We assume that he uses the name of the spirit through whose astral body he expresses himself, it being impossible for the high vibration of the spiritual realm to which he belongs to manifest except through some other instrument.”
 
At one sitting, Silver Birch responded to a question about his identity by saying he was not a Red Indian.  “I am using the astral body of a Red Indian because this particular one had many psychic gifts on earth and therefore became available for me when I was asked to return and engage on this mission,” he explained.  “My life on earth goes back as an individual much further than the Red Indian I use to speak to you.”

The communicating entity further explained that Silver Birch was his medium on that side, just as Barbanell was the medium in the world of those in attendance. “I had to have what in your world would be a transformer, someone through whom the vibrations can be stepped up or slowed down so that I can achieve communication on your level.”

The entity stressed that who he was in the earth life made no difference and no one would be able to prove it one way or the other. He asked to be judged solely on what he had to say.  He added that his knowledge comes from the infinite source and streams through countless beings, “each charged with particular tasks to ensure that as much of its purity and pristine beauty should be preserved.  There is a great host of beings, ranging from what you might call the masters.  They are beyond such descriptions.”
 
Barbanell became one of Spiritualism’s greatest advocates, lecturing frequently, while continuing to investigate many other mediums and writing about his observations.  “Now, after thirty-seven years, I still regard myself as an investigator,” he wrote in his 1959 book, This is Spiritualism, in which he discusses the mediumship of Gladys Osborne Leonard, Estelle Roberts, Helen Hughes, Helen Duncan, Geraldine Cummins and many others he had had the opportunity to meet, interview, and observe. “I am familiar with all the alternatives offered as explanations of mediumship.  Sometimes I think I could make a better case than the critics.  Again and again, I have tried to find normal explanations for the phenomena I have witnessed.  It has always been my criterion that no supernormal theory should be accepted if a normal one will fit all the facts.”

He mentioned that he had received the same spirit messages through different mediums, and it was clear to him that none of the mediums could have known what had transpired at the other séances.  At the same time, he encountered charlatans.  “I have met fraud, both willful and unconscious,” he wrote.  “I think I can say that I have exposed more charlatans in this field than any other person.  My ability to unmask the trickster has been due to the fact that I have witnessed so many genuine phenomena that I was able to recognize the counterfeit.”

Fraud Exaggerated

Nevertheless, Barbanell concluded that the amount of fraud in mediumship had been greatly exaggerated.  This was due in great part to the fact that newspapers would publicize the tricksters and ignore all the genuine mediums.

“The evidence reveals that man, after death, is a conscious, intelligent, reasoning being, possessing memory, friendship, affection, and love, and with the ability, given the right conditions, to guide loved ones left behind,” he concluded the 1959 book.  “So far as I can see, every type of evidence that would establish human identity has been demonstrated.  It shows that man persists as an individual with the traits, characteristics and idiosyncrasies that make one person different from everybody else.”

Barbanell authored a number of other books, including, The Trumpet Shall Sound (1933) Across the Gulf (1940), and He Walks in Two Worlds (1964), but his greatest contribution is no doubt the wisdom of Silver Birch, which was compiled and set forth in at least 12 books by others.  The words of Silver Birch are considered by many to offer the most comforting, realistic, and inspirational philosophy available anywhere.

“I see so many in your world, frantic, despairing, not knowing where to turn, rushing hither and thither with no time to spare because so many ‘important’ things have to be done, and yet the most important of all is neglected and overlooked,” Silver Birch said at one sitting. “Is not this the lesson of all our teaching?  Is not this the purpose behind the return of every being from our world, so that you should derive from your lives the joy, the satisfaction that should be yours as children of the Great Spirit?”   

Next blog post: October 21