Maurice Barbanell (May 3, 1902 – July 17, 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 volumes of profound teachings on every conceivable subject related to life, death, and the afterlife through Barbanell 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.”
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.
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.
Investigator & Medium
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.”
Barbanell 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.”
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.”
“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?”
Some seven months after his passing in 1981, on February 24, 1982, Barbanell began communicating with Paul Beard (1904 – 2002), another renowned British psychical researcher and author, though the mediumship of Marie Cherrie, who had not known Barbanell when he was in the earth life. The book titled The Barbanell Report was recently republished by White Crow Books. Here is a little of what Barbanell reported to Beard through Cherrie. As Cherrie explained it initially, she would telepathically receive ideas from Barbanell, but the words were mostly hers. At times, she would simply say, “He says…” For example, in one communication, she said, “He’s amazed at the number of people who have been over there for some time and who show no inclination to learn or become more aware.” However, the majority of messages are Barbanell being quoted directly but using Cherrie’s vocabulary. Some examples:
Dying: “Passing itself was easy, like going into another room, best description. Like going to sleep and waking up. Was aware of tunnel effect, saw relatives. Next period a bit of a blur. Think I was resting, can’t remember much. Periods or awareness but not all aware.”
Awakening: “One of my first recollections when I passed over was to rid myself of a dream-like feeling. I can see now why it would be so easy for people to exist in this state and find it difficult to come out of it. Unless one were aware of this and prepared for it, one could exist in this state for some time. Being prepared for it, I was on my guard and was not seduced by it.”
Life Review: “It was like those railways you have as a child where you watch the trains going in and around all the different tracks, cutting back, going forward, only it was me I was watching rather than a train……every so often certain events would stand out where I had to make decisions or where there had been a crisis. Some of those I was proud of, I had not thought myself vain or proud yet there were quite outstanding instances of this as I reviewed. I watched myself turn a deaf ear when I should have listened….”
Reality: “It’s much more exciting than I expected, the possibilities are endless and quite daunting. Still some confusion with realities, so much depends on what you want to see. Difficult to keep readjusting. Mother’s reality is not my reality When I am with her have to accept her reality.”
Awareness: I cannot say I have noticed a vast change in my spirit awareness. I expected there to be a vast change. Yet if I compare what I know and am aware of now with what I knew and was aware of then, there is a difference, but the difference seems to be what the subconscious has joined with the conscious. You understand?”
Earthly Ties: “As you know I am still experiencing some difficulty in stepping back from my earthly ties. I feel I am partly able to do this. I know I need the detachment necessary, as if they are chains on my feet holding me down.”
Communication: “Thoughts convey more, more expression. Putting it into words now seems very clumsy. I am making progress but fear slowly….Telepathic communication is so much more satisfying, the nuances that one is able to convey by thought are so much more than can be achieved with clumsy words.”
Silver Birch: “At one time I thought of him as being a higher Self but no, I am quite distinct from him, but I did consider it at one time, if this could be possible. But I find he speaks for a more highly developed group.”
Experience: “More simple the soul, more acceptance. More soul evolves, more questions to be answered, more awareness and need to know and understand. Understand now why some guides speak in riddles, even explaining is difficult, different concepts at work.”
Prejudices: “Find that people hat come over here with prejudices are not easy to speak with. Seem to exist in a world of their own.”
Family Attraction: “Realize there are groups of people over here who are still very much clinging to their families No progress until they move beyond that. Some find this difficult to do. This is why it’s a big step. Maybe would have found it more difficult if my emotional life with them had been different.”
Time: “No sense of time but feel as if I’m doing everything in slow motion.”
Mediumship: “People need to be taught not to put mediumship on a fortune-telling level. I have watched mediums being allowed, even being encouraged, by the sitter to talk about material things because others are doing it. Sitting should be about spirit’s evidence of survival, some help for the sitter’s soul to make progress, not about the new house of the job.”
Learning: “Our understanding on this level here is limited although we may think it isn’t. Our spiritual side works on this level on earth. Should be done with no hope of reward.”
Rewards: “Some have come over here expecting a pat on the back for the work they have done. They are most surprised when this doesn’t happen. One who saw herself – I don’t know whether to say this – one who saw herself as the crème de la crème was most annoyed to discover that there was no rush forward to thank her for the work she carried out.”
Reincarnation: “There are many who discuss it over here much as you do there. This is why I went on my exploration and of course what adds to the confusion is the residue that is left over here, for the whole spirit does not return.” (He went on to explain that the nucleus of the soul remains there.)
Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I. and No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife. His latest book Consciousness Beyond Death: New and Old Light on Near-Death Experiences is published by White Crow books.
Next blog post: December 1
Thanks for this, Michael. I was familiar with some of this but the summary at the end was a fresh introduction to Barbanell’s thinking. What I found interesting is how progress is not so rapid as we might hope, once there.
Thank you always for your wonderful and encouraging writings, Michael! Greetings from Ajijic Mexico (my wife and I moved here 2 years ago). We hope you are doing well 🙏🏼
Fascinating blog, a little troubling in places. The law of karma, for example, seems to be belittled: “Some have come over here expecting a pat on the back for the work they have done. They are most surprised when this doesn’t happen.” The following seems contradictory: “No sense of time but feel as if I’m doing everything in slow motion.” Where there is motion, there must be change, and change can happen only in time, or perhaps I should I say duration. Puzzling also is his comment on reincarnation when he says that “the residue…is left over here, (but) the whole spirit does not return.” Can spirits be halved? Could you clarify this?
Stafford, although they say they don’t experience time as we do, they describe past and future events. On the reincarnation subject, before his death, Barbie reportedly veered in the direction of reincarnation, but after death, he said he couldn’t find any evidence of it. It’s unclear what he meant by the “residue.” Although it sounds simple, many in the afterlife have different opinions as to whether it exists, so clearly, it isn’t straightforward and if it exists at all it’s beyond our understanding. At the end of the four-year communication, Beard asked Barbie again about reincarnation. He said he couldn’t answer the question.
Stafford, I see the comment about reincarnation as being consistent with the Group Soul idea. Silver Birch explained that the individual personality on earth is a small part of the individuality to which he or she belongs. He likened it to a diamond with its many facets, pointing out that the personality on earth is but one facet of the diamond. “what you express on earth is but an infinitesimal fraction of the individuality to which you belong. Thus there are what you call ‘group souls,’ a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work.”
Silver Birch also likened the soul to an iceberg in which one small portion is manifesting and the greater portion not manifesting. He apparently was referring to what others have called the “Higher Self,” the “Greater Self,” or the “Oversoul.” Trying to explain reincarnation to humans, Silver Birch added, is like trying to explain the color of the sky to someone who has been blind from birth.
The group-soul concept had earlier been advanced by the discarnate Frederic Myers through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins. “When I was on earth, I belonged to a group-soul, but its branches and the spirit – which might be compared to the roots – were in the invisible,” Myers, one of the pioneers of psychical research before his death in 1901, communicated. “Now, if you would understand psychic evolution, this group-soul must be studied and understood. For instance, it explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can be removed only by the doctrine of reincarnation. You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true. It is our life and yet not our life. In other words, a soul belonging to the group of which I am a part lived that previous life which built up for me the framework of my earthly life, lived it before I had passed through the gates of birth.”
Myers further explained that the group soul might contain twenty souls, a hundred, or a thousand. “The number varies,” he said. “It is different for each man. But what the Buddhist would call the karma I had brought with me from a previous life is, very frequently, not that of my life, but of the life of a soul that preceded me by many years on earth and left for me the pattern which made my life. I, too, wove a pattern for another of my group during my earthly career.”
Myers added that the Buddhist’s idea of rebirth, of man’s continual return to earth, is but a half-truth. “And often half a truth is more inaccurate than an entire misstatement. I shall not live again on earth, but a new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter into the pattern or karma I have woven for him on earth.”
Stafford,
For us, time and space are linked together, spacetime. A moment in time has a precise cosmic coordinate relative to where the earth is in its orbit around the sun, the sun in its circuit around the galactic center, the galaxy in motion with respect to our local galactic group, and so on and on. When we speak of past and future we are also referring to where our world has been and where in its journey among the stars it is headed. Perhaps the astrologers of old had an insight that the elaborate dance of stars and galaxies throughout the heavens influence terrestrial events.
If the spirit realms transcend our plane of spacetime then whatever might correspond to a sequence of events is objectively distinct from time as we know it. The dead tell us that what they perceive as space can be traversed at the speed of thought. Released from the “dull substance of my flesh” as Shakespeare bemoaned, “nimble thought” can close the gap between me and thee “As soon as think the place where he would be.” So, as the relation to space is altered (eradicated?), it follows that time also does not exist as we know it.
The life review as conveyed by those who have had a near death experience might serve to illustrate how time is altered in the spirit realms. Sometimes people describe their life review in a linear sequence, either from birth on or backwards from the time of “death.” They may experience reliving the entirety of their lives, or just the high points and low points. What is impossible from our experience of time is that all this, along with everything else that occurs during the NDE happens over the course of a few minutes. In this instance time is moving in a flash, rather than “in slow motion.”
Michael…
Your reply to Stafford was an excellent refresher course—many thanks.
Mike,
Thanks for this reminder about the Barbanell Report. I cracked open the ebook version awhile back and left it unfinished. One of the interesting things that Barbanell experienced is a “Temptation to linger and to say: It’s enough that I am here.” A “lolling in the spiritual deck-chair.” I suppose the message is: enjoy the break and when you’re ready keep on moving.
Thanks, Don. Two additional references on the reincarnation matter —
Communicating through Helen Greaves, Frances Banks, an Anglican nun when on the earth plane, said that she used to believe that there were souls with whom we had been in contact with in other incarnations and to whom we owed karmic debts or who owed us reparations for wrong inflicted. “What I believed may still be true in part, but now I realize that those souls who attract us are part of ourselves,” she communicated through Helen Greaves. “They belong to the same Group, the same Spiritual family, the same Group Soul. Their connection with us is deeper and far more permanent than mere earth contacts could make it. They may be part of the same Spirit as that Spirit is itself part of the Great Spirit, the great Company of Divinity, far beyond our comprehension, the Company of Heaven, the Co-Creators, the Divine and Beautiful Sons of God.”
When Frederick Bligh Bond asked a spirit about reincarnation, the spirit replied: “You understand not reincarnation, nor can we explain. What in you reincarnates, do you think? How can you find words? Blind gropers after immutable facts, which are not of your sphere of experience.”
Michael,
I have studied the Gurney Myer Lodge group for many years. In particular Edmund Gurney. The reason is that he is active in my scripts from spirit over the past few years. The SPR founder group carried on and are still carrying on while in the spirit world. I have collected their returns through Cummins and other more obscure mediums. The reason is that the spirits are in a group (I use the term team0) of about 500.
The difference in my mind is that the team is a collection of like minded spirits. The group could be different as they would be linked by the desire of progression.
In my team no Myer has yet come forward.
The bottom line is that they have proved their return but most of these communications have been long forgotten. My role is to assemble these scripts under guidance. My thinking is that this team has long range planning skills to have SPR type mediums available.
I have collected the Returns of Edmund Gurney in to a primitive book. It is one three that they have started. As these scripts have emerged over the years it has improved my own knowledge but I realize that they were streets in front of me.
I also get directed by this spirit team to forgotten books with forgotten information.
I was prompted by your comment from Myer “but of the life of a soul that preceded me by many years on earth and left for me the pattern which made my life. I, too, wove a pattern for another of my group during my earthly career.”
Long range planning. I used the term pattern to explain how things emerge.
Thanks
Bruce (yet to carted off)
Michael…
Just a follow-up thought on the “reincarnation vs. group soul” scenario–while recognizing that none of our thoughts will ultimately take us anywhere beyond mere speculation. As Imperator put it…
“Whether in the eternal counsels of the Supreme it may be deemed well that a particular spirit should or should not be again reincarnated in a material form is a question that none can answer, for none can know, not even the spirit’s own guides. What is wise and well will be done.”
That said–my own inclination is that (1) assuming the validity of the “group soul,” there is (2) no valid reason not to accept the equal validity of “reincarnation.” Based on the substantial input that we have on both questions, it would seem to be foolish to assume that these two possibilities are mutually exclusive.
We’ve been told many times that “life”–both here and on the other side–is a continuous journey of development. We’ve also been told that much of that development can ONLY be achieved in the physical world–but that once an individual (soul) reaches a certain level of spiritual advancement, it becomes possible to break out of the reincarnation cycle, and to continue the process of spiritual refinement in the spirit-world.
With regard to Myers group soul of “a hundred or even a thousand souls”–it would seem logical that none of those individual souls would come out of their earth-life experiences without at least some degree of “facet-polishing” to use Silver Birch’s diamond analogy. As the spiritual worth of the individual soul grows, so does the state of the group soul grow.
Thanks to all for the comments so far. As for reincarnation, I avoid the topic as much as possible because I believe the Glastonbury spirit mentioned above hit the nail on the head when “he” said we are “blind gropers” when it comes to this subject and that it is for the most part beyond human comprehension. Teaching the traditional idea of reincarnation, i.e., that the complete soul is reborn in a future lifetime, is not especially appealing to most people, as it suggests consciousness is totally divorced from loved ones in prior lives even though we might encounter them and not recognize them in future lives. I believe it discourages them from exploring anything outside of orthodox religions.
Michael,
A obscure quote from F. W. H. MYERS.
“I am glad to come to you, my friend.
I have often said, and still repeat, there is no subject in the world so interesting, so fascinating to me, as the subject of spirit identity. After I began to be interested in it seriously, and after the English society was formed, I needed no other recreation, and found nothing of vital importance outside of it for me.
I am still, so to speak, connected with the Society, and whenever I have opportunity I make effort to express something clear to the men who are
interested with me.”
I enjoy finding these quotes,
Thanks
Bruce