LIKE THE MIGHTY RAGING WIND
A Member of Parliament (MP), who lost his wife a few years previously and was seeking evidence of her survival, attended one sitting and had a long and helpful talk with Silver Birch. The MP performed much work in connection with preventing suffering to animals. He went away with a sense of upliftment after being urged to continue his services for reform.
“In your world of matter there is little desire for an understanding of spiritual truths, except among the few of discernment, until sorrow comes,” Silver Birch told him.
“But how can I have that discernment?” asked the guest.
“It is not easy,“ confessed the guide. “You must satisfy yourself, as you have striven to do, that we who speak to you by this and other means are what we claim to be. We can only prove it by conforming to the standard of evidence that your world of matter demands. You must seek that evidence, as you have been seeking it, and judge and weigh with honest criticism what it is that is given to you. If you allow the door to be kept open and yourself provide no unreasoning skepticism, you make the channel easy.
“What I simply crave for,” the MP said, “is definite knowledge that those who have left this sphere are still living and are in touch with one and are endeavouring to influence one. What must I do to acquire that knowledge?”
“You must use a medium who is better than mine at receiving all those vibrations which will bring you the wholehearted evidence that you require. It is not your soul that demands the knowledge. It is your mind which is agitating in uncertainty.”
“Then is there any means whereby I can place my mind more in conscious touch with my soul?”
“That is a question of unfoldment. That is a question of learning how to tune in to the realm of spirit, so that those finer vibrations can become clearer to you.”
“How does one tune in?” the visitor wanted to know.
“The activity of your world is often the silence of ours, but the silence of your world is the activity of ours,” explained Silver Birch. “Retire into the silence and learn to be still, passive. Wait, and the manifestation of the spirit can reveal itself.”
“Is there any means whereby I can decide whether particular thoughts that enter my mind come from my side or yours?”
“It is all a matter of learning how to have control over the mind so that it can be still and be tuned in, so that instead of being a wanderer it can be placed under control by yourself, so that, held in perfect silence, it may respond to the higher vibrations. That is why intuition comes in a flash - because our vibration is quick and speedy and subtle. The thoughts from your world of matter are slow, they are sluggish, they are heavy.”
“Does that apply to the most exalted soul on this plane at the moment?” asked the sitter.
“Yes, it applies to every soul. Remember this, you are twofold in nature. There is the ancestry of the animal and the portion of the Great Spirit constantly at war within your being, and there is yourself, you, with the free will to accomplish your evolution. You have to subdue the long line of animal that is part of your evolution and you have to learn to allow the Great Spirit that is latent to unfold itself.”
“The Great Spirit is within every human being, within every facet of life, for all is the Great Spirit and the Great Spirit is all. Within some beings the Great Spirit only stirs quietly, like the gentle zephyr. In others the Great Spirit is like the mighty raging wind. It is all a question of development. The Great Spirit has stirred within your soul and, touched by sorrow, the Great Spirit within you is striving to express itself still more. That is why you are on your quest. That is why you will continue to search, because your feet are now on the road that leads to spiritual truths.”
“Do you mean that desire is the first step in development?” queried the sitter.
“Yes,” said Silver Birch. “First comes the desire to know, in humility, in earnestness, in reverence, and with that desire the determination to use that knowledge not only for bringing certainty to yourself, but to be of service to others. You desire to serve and you have striven to serve, and there are many who have upheld you for many years when your heart has been weary and your soul has grown tired in the fight and you have wondered whether it would not be best to retire from the scenes of activity and to seek in quietude those pleasures, aesthetic pleasures, that you think would bring you happiness. But the restlessness of the stirring Great Spirit within you and the inspiration from my world have encouraged you to go on with your fight to help those less fortunate than yourself.”
Silver Birch told the visiting MP of the guides who were assisting him from the spirit world, and went on:
“I said that to you to make you realize the love that comes to you from our world. If all of you who sought to serve realized the great wealth of love and power that surged round you and knew how you were upheld and encouraged and enthused and sustained in all your labours, you would fight even with greater ardour and zeal and intensity. Not one effort to serve has ever been in vain. Though often misunderstood, misinterpreted and ridiculed by those who should have been your friends and occasionally betrayed by those whom you have trusted, your service will live on.”
“What advice have you to give me?” asked the sitter.
“You do not require detailed advice,” answered Silver Birch. “You are doing greater work than you know. When those who are engaged in service say to me, What can I do?’ my heart is full of joy, for it is a recognition that even as they render service they strive to give greater service. Continue to help the weak and the helpless, to give strength to those who need it, light to those in darkness, a helping hand to the lame and the struggling. Fight to abolish all cruelty, especially that cruelty that horrifies your soul - the cruelty to mankind’s greatest friends, the world of animals.”
Then Silver Birch spoke of the difficulty experienced by guides in expressing themselves in earthly activities.
“They have to register in the world of matter,” he said, “and that is not easy, for you know the vibrations that come to us from your world are not all that they should be. There is so much darkness where there should be light, so much ignorance where there should be knowledge, so much foolishness where there should be wisdom, so much hunger where there should be plenty, so much misery where there should be happiness, so many hovels where there should be fit habitations for all, so much cruelty where there should be kindness, so much hate where there should be love. It is only through a few instruments that the power of the spirit can express itself, but the number is constantly increasing and the tide turns in our favour.”
“It was when sorrow came that your soul was touched,” Silver Birch reminded the sitter.
“Do you think that that sorrow was brought for a purpose?” the MP asked.
“From the greatest sorrow comes the greatest knowledge,” was the reply. “All life is compensation, from shadow into sunshine, from storm into refuge. Light and dark, storm and shine, wind and silence - these are all but reflections of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is in every facet of life. Because of shadow you appreciate sunshine. Because of struggle you appreciate peace. Life is enjoyed through comparisons. The soul finds its own in the bitter crucible of experience, trial and suffering and emerges purified, strengthened, touched, ready for an understanding of life’s greater purpose and meaning.”
“Then is suffering brought to one deliberately, for the purpose of enabling one to realize what it is necessary to have for one’s unfoldment?” - “Yes, for the soul has to have all varieties of experience before it can unfold the highest. The soul is eternal and carries with it the result of every thought, of every spoken word, of every deed, and you are what you have made yourself - second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. You achieve your own growth and all actions that you perform determine the state of your evolution. No one else accomplishes that growth for you.”
“Do you differentiate between deliberate and automatic actions?” the guest next asked.
“That which is done automatically does not mean that the law of cause and effect has ceased to operate. It only stresses that it is in existence. You perform deeds because of what you are.” - “Then you would say that one is what one is as a consequence of what one has done in that past on this sphere?”
“Yes, you are what you are because of what you have done and you will be what you will be because of what you are now. The law of cause and effect operates in unbroken, perfect sequence, and the law of the Great Spirit is so perfect in its operation that it never fails. Though the children of the Great Spirit may cheat the laws of state, none can evade the operations of natural law, for the soul carries with it its eternal registration of what it has accomplished and you are known for what you are, not for what you are not or what you pretend to be.”
“Don’t you think that all men realize when they are wrong?” asked the MP.
“No. Sometimes a man is deaf to the voice of conscience, his heart is hardened, his soul has become covered up and the life force of the Great Spirit is being choked. Men do not always realize that they are wrong. If they did, there would be no war in your world of matter, there would be no cruelty, no starvation. There would not be so much disease and there would not be an excess of plenty while others starved.”
“How can one alter that?” - “By you and I and all of us being determined that the inequalities of selfish materialism shall be vanquished and the bounty of the Great Spirit made available to all His children, that disease and slums, and ill-health and poverty, and all those things which restrict the human soul and body shall be driven from the face of the world of matter, because we know that they are wrong. We must make the Great Spirit within each person so responsive that it will know what it has to be before it leaves your world of matter.”
Bearing in mind that the MP - like many Spiritualists - was involved in animal welfare, it is apposite to feature what the guide once said about spirit help for reformers. He told his circle:
“What we preach fits in with all the noble and elevated ideas that have come to the vision of all the reformers, all the saints, all the seers and all the idealists who have striven in every age to render service.”
“Because they were great souls, their spiritual eyes caught glimpses of the life that could be, and that vision of beauty sustained them in all their adversity and struggle. They realized the spirit plan that, one day, will be put into practice, and so they strove to raise up the children of matter, to serve.”
“Though they were vilified, though they were opposed and ridiculed by those they came to help, their work lived on, even as the work that is being done today in countless small temples, such as this, will live on, though many of the people will be forgotten.”
“The mighty power of the Spirit has been launched once again in your world of matter, and the children of matter do not possess the power to stem that mighty tide.”
“Your world thinks it solves its problems by the shedding of blood. But no problem was ever solved in that way, for bloodshed is needless and leads nowhere.”
“Why cannot they use the reason which the Great Spirit has given them? Why do they think that their only solution must be to kill as many as possible, that the one who is the greatest killer is accounted the victor? It is a strange world you live in.”
