SPIRIT IS SUPERIOR
While the Roman Catholic Church admits of only three kinds of baptism - baptism by water, baptism by blood and baptism by desire -- it leaves out the most essential form.
“You have all been baptised in the real meaning of the word -- baptised in the spirit,” declared Silver Birch at one circle gathering. “You have been born again. The soul has begun to lead you to find itself.”
“The power of the Spirit is in your midst, and with it there comes not only reality, but certainty. It illumines the whole of your minds, fills your souls with peace and your hearts with love. It is the greatest manifestation of the Great Spirit.”
One of the sitters, rather puzzled by some of the phrases in Silver Birch’s invocations, asked, “Is the Great Spirit really in everything - in every stone, for instance?”
“The Great Spirit is in everything,” the guide replied, “for nothing exists apart from the Great Spirit.”
“Then is the Great Spirit responsible for earthquakes?” the sitter asked.
“The Great Spirit is the Law - the Law that controls all things,” was the reply. “The Law governs all things. There is nothing in the universe which is outside the Law.”
“I have often been puzzled by earthquakes,” said the sitter, not quite satisfied with the guide’s answer.
“I know that earthquakes and storms and lightning puzzle the brains of those in your world,” said Silver Birch, “but they are all part of the universe. The universe is evolving, even as those who dwell in it are evolving. The world of matter is far from perfect yet - and it will not reach perfection. It will evolve higher and higher.”
“Does that mean that the Great Spirit is evolving?” queried the sitter.
“No, the Great Spirit is the Law and the Law is perfect,” replied Silver Birch. “But that part of the Great Spirit that is expressed in your world is subject to the evolution of that world as far as its expression is concerned.”
“Remember that your world is evolving, and these things are the signs of its evolution. Your world was born in fire and tempest and is gradually evolving towards perfection.”
“You cannot say that the Great Spirit is responsible for the beauty of the sunset and the sunrise, for the myriads of glittering stars in the firmament, for all the delightful songs of birds, and then say that the Great Spirit is not responsible for the storm and the lightning, the thunder and the rain. They are all part of the great law of the Great Spirit.”
“In that sense, you might argue that the Great Spirit is responsible for those who are depraved, for those who are so unenlightened that they render harm to their brothers in your world.”
“But to each one of you there is given that amount of free will which, as you evolve, you learn to exercise. The higher you evolve in the spiritual scale, the greater can you exercise your free will. You are your own limitation, but, because you are part of the Great Spirit, you can conquer all the difficulties and obstacles in your world.”
“Spirit is superior to matter. Spirit is the king and matter is the servant. Spirit reigns supreme. It is the essence out of which all life is made, for spirit is life and life is spirit.”
Silver Birch was asked whether free will was limited in the sense that there are definite tendencies of events in relation to individuals.
“There are tendencies, vibrations,” replied Silver Birch, “but these are not insuperable. You are surrounded by radiations and influences, much of which can affect your destiny, but the Great Spirit has provided you with part of Himself, a part of His spirit which, when your free will is properly used according to your evolution, can enable you to conquer all that stands in the way of the fullest expression of that part of the Great Spirit that is within you. For you are the Great Spirit and the Great Spirit is you.”
When people say that communication with the “dead” retards them in their progress and drags them back unwillingly, they cannot know the facts.
“I love to hear the sound of your earthly voices,” Silver Birch said. “It gives me much happiness. And I know that you like to hear from me, for we have much to learn from each other. I try very hard to learn from you, of the things that belong to your world, so that I can add to my knowledge of earthly things and be of greater service if I can.”
“Out of our talks there will come much work, for there is a great work for all of us to do - a work to which many of us who live in the realms of spirit have dedicated the whole of our lives.”
“Part of that work will be accomplished here. You have seen some of it already. You have seen how we have been enabled to touch those who live not only in your own little country, but in other countries in your world” - Silver Birch was referring to the fact that there had frequently been visitors to the circle from overseas, some of whom had gone back and started home circles in their own countries as a result of their experiences here.
“That work will grow,” he went on, “as a power of the Spirit grows here.”
“Just go on with your faithful service and know that not one moment which is dedicated to our service is in vain, for our coming together always brings a rich blessing upon you who are in the world of matter and we who are released from the world’s limitations. That blessing comes because our aim is not for ourselves but only for the service of others.”
Like baptism, the Church - and rightly - places great emphasis on the importance of marriage. But how does the spirit world view it? Silver Birch gave his opinion when addressing Vernon Moore, a circle member and his fiancee, Frances, who for many years took down the guide’s words in shorthand so they could be recorded, printed and sent out all over the world
“I want you both to realize that you begin now the greatest adventure of all, for two lives that have pursued separate courses are now come together to begin a united life,” the guide began. “Even as love has brought you to this place, even as love emanating from a world higher than yours guided your footsteps on paths of knowledge and truth, so has that same power brought you two together. Soon ‘a man of God’ will read a few words from a book and, according to your world of matter, you will be joined in the bonds of holy matrimony. But I say to you there are no bonds unless you bind one another with love and affection. There are no ties unless you wish to tie one another with love and affection.”
“Do not think only in terms of two sharing one life from the physical aspect. Remember that you are two spiritual beings, both portions of the Great Spirit, now coming together with pledges to cherish, to love and to serve one another even as a great love from this world strives to serve you both. Remember that you are uniting two souls to adventure together and that we look not so much upon the material aspect by the spiritual, which to us is the enduring reality.”
“Do not expect that you will escape occasional sadness and sorrow, difficulty, trial and test, for these are parts of your evolution. When they arise, as arise they inevitably must, face them with honesty and know that they help to quicken your character and to bring you closer together. There are many here who look forward with joy to a celebration which will duplicate the one you have in your church, but which will be sanctified in our world by ties we regard as more enduring, for the promises uttered audibly by word of mouth are as nothing compared with the unspoken pledges of the soul.”
“You are richly blessed, for you have knowledge. I wish you, on behalf of many here who stand beside me, a safe journey through life’s seas, happiness and joy abounding, but always ask you to remember that you continue to serve with the added fortification of love around you in the earthly world. Look up, not down, and realize that your strength cometh from above and from within your beings. Fortified by that knowledge, face the future knowing that all will be well and that where love dwells no harm can befall you. And I pray that the blessing of the Great Spirit rest with you and inspire you always in all aspects for your new life, and that you both shall forever be conscious of the love that is round and about you.”
The couple were members of Silver Birch’s circle until 1981 when his medium passed on. Frequently the guide spoke of the natural law. Once Vernon, a former Methodist missionary, asked, “How are we to learn from natural law?”
“You learn through the evolution of your own spirit,” replied the guide. “You learn first of all to discard all that which is false, all that which makes your reason revolt, all that which is not in consonance with the love and the wisdom of the Great Spirit.”
“Before you learn, you must unlearn. You must discard all that which hinders your minds from thinking as they should. Thus your soul and your spirit grow and you are ready for higher knowledge.”
“When you meet here, your soul is developing and you are becoming more accessible to the infinite wisdom of the Great Spirit. You are learning about the operation of laws that control spiritual phenomena.”
“You are being taught about the operation of natural laws in relationship to the life that you live. As you fit yourself by progress so greater knowledge comes to you.”
“I, whom you call Silver Birch, represent only a small portion of the knowledge that belongs to the infinity of the spheres. As you grow, other teachers greater than I can use me to impart knowledge and wisdom to you.
“To save the world, must we broadcast this teaching to everybody? asked Vernon.
“To save the world?” questioned Silver Birch. “The world must learn to perform its own salvation. There is no ready made plan. There is no prepared, cut-and-dried system.”
“Your world has to learn that, behind what it regards as the manifestation of life, there is the eternal reality of the spirit, that the children of matter are not only worldly beings but spiritual beings expressing themselves through bodies of matter.”
“The bodies of matter must be as perfect as they can be made through having all the necessities of life freely at their disposal, as the Great Spirit would have them.”
“Then their spirits must be freed from all dogmatic and credal trammels, so that they do not give allegiance to things that have no real or spiritual value, so that they work only for that which is true, so that the warring and the quarreling and the strife over creeds and dogmas, which have held your world in chains for thousands of years, can be abolished.”
“We preach the gospel of the spiritual brotherhood of all peoples, with the Great White Spirit as the common Father.”
“What stands in the way is the earthly conception, the churches built on error, the usurping of privilege, the pride and the power of tyrants, petty tyrants who hold the whip hand.”
When someone said “Thank you,” Silver Birch, as usual, reminded those gathered that he must not be thanked, but that it was the Great Spirit to Whom gratitude should be expressed.
“We use the earth phrase out of habit,” someone explained.
“I know my son,” replied the guide. “But if I did not always correct you and always draw attention to the laws of the Great Spirit, some would begin to pay us praise and to worship us, and then the same troubles would start once more.”
Silver Birch then spoke, when asked which spirit friends were present, of the enormous number who regularly attended the sittings of the circle.
“There are as many as 5,000 people here tonight.” he said.
“There are not only those you knew on earth, and those who are interested in the circle. There are those we bring to hear you talk, because they do not think that it is possible.”
“Others are brought here so that they can learn how we come through to your world of matter, so that they can use other mediums in other parts of the world. There is a great missionary work, not only for your world but for our world too, for we do not sacrifice any time or power.”
“The great lesson that those in my world have to learn is how to use spirit power in order to impress your minds. The great value of an understanding of these laws is that your minds become accessible.”
“You do not realize how unknown to yourselves you are all the recipients of inspiration from the world of spirit.”
“There are many in your world who are counted as great scientists, great inventors and great teachers. They are only the vehicles of intelligence from my world. It does not matter so long as the truth or the discovery is made known. Who receives the credit is of no account .......”
“Every experience has its advantage and disadvantage. The higher your soul evolves the greater is the progress it has made -- but the more it knows there is to be evolved. That is its disadvantage, it is more dissatisfied. The more sensitive you become to beauty, the more sensitive you are to ugliness. The higher you rise, the lower you can sink.”
“Life is shadow and sunlight, calm and storm. An even monotone is not life; life is composed of happiness and joy with occasional sadness, for it is only by having these extreme divergences that character can grow and experience come to the soul.”
“That is why there is a lesson to be learned from sorrow, from the storm, from the bitterness of life. Sometimes those who are in the shadows rail against the Great Spirit because they do not understand that that experience is necessary to their own unfoldment, but sunshine is only to be truly appreciated if you have been in the shadows.”
“Through comparison, the soul begins truly to live. If your experiences were limited only to that which you thought was good, happy and beautiful, life would be very empty, for it would possess no depth.”
“The wise individual is the one who faces each new day with eagerness and steady resolve, determined to learn from all the experiences that await him, the lessons that they all can teach to help him on the infinite road that leads to the Great Spirit.”
Silver Birch devoted this particular sitting to answering the problems of the sitters. One wondered whether there was unlimited power at the disposal of spirit guides.
“The power we have is dependent on our own evolution and on the ability to receive and transmit,” said the guide. “Our state of evolution determines the amount of power at our disposal. The instruments at our disposal determine the amount that can be poured through to your world. These are the factors which govern the receiving and the distributing of the power from our realms.”
“Then there is unlimited power, if it can be used,” commented the questioner.
“Yes,” answered Silver Birch, “because power comes from the Infinite Spirit.”
The circle member remarked that it seemed at seances that guides were always careful not to waste power, which would appear unnecessary if the supply were unlimited.
“When you are accustomed to manifestations,” said the guide, “you know that if you go beyond a certain limit then the sitters will have to pay the price in depletion and loss of nervous energy and force. We do not wish to be placed in a position where we are accused of undermining the health of those who come to us seeking manifestations of the power of the spirit.”
“In fact, the reverse is true and your health should improve, for power that is normally repressed is brought into circulation - and remember, too, that the power we bring from our world is the power of life-giving essence which invigorates.”
It seemed that the sitting was hardly half over when Silver Birch announced that the time was almost exhausted. But the sitters were wrong and the guide was right, for when the medium came out of trance it was found that only five minutes were left.
Before he went, Silver Birch said: “I have tried to show myself as your friend, guardian and guide. I wanted you to feel that I was near you, that whatever qualities I might possess they did not prevent me from enjoying a close personal touch with you, that I was interested in your problems and your difficulties and ready to give you personal help and guidance if I could.”
“Remember, I am not only a teacher, seeking to teach eternal truths, and reveal the powers of the spirit; I am also the friend of each one of you, for I love you dearly and strive always to help you with all the strength and power that I possess.”
“Come to me always with your difficulties, no matter what they be. If I can help you, I will do so. If I cannot, I will strive to give you strength to help you through your challenges.”
