SECTION XXIX
[March 15, 1874.—We had received many warnings as to
the danger of deception by personating spirits, and the warning had
gained force by a particular case occurring in our experience, though
outside of our circle, in which such an attempt had been made. Many very
striking
messages were given on the subject, of which the only one sufficiently
public in interest is
the following:—]
We have been particular in our statements, because we are anxious to
reiterate the warnings we have frequently given, as to the danger of
attack by deceptive and personating spirits, whom you know as The
Undeveloped. Of late, too, we have told you that trouble and perplexity
were at hand through this cause, and we gave you special warning lest
you should fall prey to their attacks. We have ascertained that the
spirit who falsely pretended to be
working with us is a personating spirit, whose aim is to injure and
retard our work.
We need to explain fully on this point. You have heard of the antagonism
between the adversaries and the divine work which is in process amongst
you. There is a direct antagonism between them and us,
between the work which is for man’s development and instruction, and their efforts to
retard and thwart it. It is the old battle between
what you call the good and the evil—between the progressive and the
retrogressive. Into
the ranks of that opposing army gravitate spirits of all degrees of
malignity, wickedness, cunning, and deceit: those who are actively
spurred
on by the hatred of light which an unenlightened spirit has, and those
who are animated by
sportiveness rather than by actual malice. It includes, in short, the
undeveloped of every grade and class: spirits who are opposed, for
infinitely varying reasons, to the organised attempt to lead men upward
from darkness to light, with which we are associated, in company with
hosts of others.
It would appear that your inability to see the operations of these
adversaries renders you anable to grasp their existence, or to
appreciate the magnitude of their influence in your world. Not till your
spiritual eyes are open will you really understand how great it is, and
how present. To those ranks gravitate, of necessity, the earth-bound and
unprogressed spirits to whom incarnation has brought no gain, and whose
affections, centred on the earth, where
all their treasure is, can find no scope in the pure spiritual joys of
the spheres of spirit-life. Hovering over their old haunts, they live over again their wretched,
polluted earth-lives, by influencing congenial spirits still in the
body,
and so gratifying their lusts and passions at second hand.
The poor wreck whose lusts have survived the death of that body in which
and for which alone he lived, have survived the means of direct bodily
gratification, finds his resource in seizing on an impressionable
medium, and
goading him on to sin, so that he may get such poor enjoyment as alone
remains for him. The debauched drunkard, who sank his body in disease, and soddened his spirit with the
poisoned draughts of liquid fire, now haunts the dens where his pleasure used to
be, and goads on the wretches whom it finds it possible to
influence. He leers with spite as he drives one more soul to a lower
state of misery, and gloats as he draws his own foul gratification,
though it spread broadcast ruin and woe among innocent women and their
babes, and foster in the midst of your centres of knowledge and
refinement a sink of infamy and disgrace. These things go on all around
you, and attract your notice scarce at all. Where the denunciations that
should ring from end to end of your world while such plague-spots
linger—nay, flourish and abound amongst you? Why is no voice uplifted?
Why? but that the dark influence of those baleful spirits avails to
blind your eyes and to paralyse the voice of truth within you. Not in
the gin-den alone, but far round it as from a centre, the malign
influence radiates, and the vice perpetuates itself. The sot, dead—as
you falsely think—is a sot in spirit still, and his influence
perpetuates his vice among congenial spirits yet on earth.
The murderer, again, whom your blindness has cut off from the trammels of
the body, and let loose in fury on your earth, is not idle. With all his
envenomed passions stirred within him, mad with wrath and sense of
wrong— for his sin is frequently the result of your civilisation, and he
is what you have made him—he goes forth to wreak his vengeance on those
who have wronged him. He incites to rage and destruction of life. He is
the prolific inciter
of crime, and perpetuates the circumstances of which he was the victim.
When will you
learn that crimes for which
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you daily, hourly, visit rude vengeance are but the necessary product of
those mixed conditions of life which obtain in your crowded centres of
life? Why lop off an ugly branch here and there when the root is rotten?
Why punish the wretch because he is what you made him? Nay, if you be but selfish,
why let loose on you a wrathful avenger to your own hurt? Ah! friend, you must
pass through many cycles of progress before you learn that your criminal
code is founded on fallacy, and works to mischief and perpetuation of
the abuses it is intended to prevent.
These and such as these, coming from your world such as you have made
them, are, of necessity, enemies of progress, purity, and peace;
adversaries of ours, and leaders in the attack on the work in
which we share. What else can they be? Can that spirit whose earth-life
has been one long scene of debauchery and degradation become of a sudden
pure and good? Can the sensualist be changed into one who lives for
purity, or the degraded animal into a progressive and aspiring spirit? You know it cannot be. They are, in
company with hosts of others, the foes of man and spirit so far as their
desire is to thwart progress and keep down truth. Count on them as a
perpetual source of antagonism, and if you cannot realise to the full
their influence for evil, do not ignore their power, or invite their
attacks by exposing yourself to them.
We will leave no word of warning unuttered, for the danger is all the
more real that it is so secret and so farreaching. To their efforts
operating on congenial spirits in your world you must refer much of
crime and misery that exists among you: war with its attendant horrors
which yet disgrace and defile your world, and blots your boasted
civilisation and refinement. To them attribute the fostering of the
crimes that befoul your great cities, that
spread a mantle of corruption over them, and make them homes of iniquity
and dwelling-places of
shame.
You tell of your progress of knowledge, in art and science, in culture
and refinement. You boast of your civilisation, and are at pains to send
to far-distant peoples the religion which adorns and elevates your own
country. Nay, you even force it on them as that Divinely-given panacea
for human ills of which you are the favoured recipients. It would be
well that you should keep silence over the fruits which religion and
civilisation
between them have produced among you. For your religion we have said
frequently that it is a
degenerate offspring of that simple and pure faith which alone deserves
the name of Christianity. For you civilisation and culture they are but
of the surface, and do but faintly hide festering sores, all too plain
to spirit-gaze, while in their ultimate effect upon the nature they are
too frequently demoralising to the truest and noblest instincts, and
productive of hollowness, deceit, and selfishness. The Arab of the
desert, the Indian of the far west, in whom nature’s instincts have not
been dwarfed, distorted, paralysed by civilisation, is frequently a
nobler man than the crafty trader, who thinks it clever to outwit and
overreach, or than that baser product of civilised life from whose foul
tongue no character is safe, and whose lustful, sensual life marks
none as sacred from attack.
Foul, weltering masses of vice and cruelty, and selfishness, and
heartlessness, and misery that your great cities are! In them the spirit
is starved and crushed; dwelling in an atmosphere through which
life-giving influence can hardly penetrate, it groans in agony as it
aspires to a purer and serener air; but its groans ascend hardly above
the pall of darkness that hovers round. The aspirations are crushed out
by reiterated temptation; good resolves are stolen away by the
adversaries nigh at hand, and the spirit cares less and less to struggle
against the efforts of its foes. These are only too well seconded by the
recklessness and folly which offer a premium to vice, and make virtue
well-nigh impossible.
And even when the body is removed from those dens of impurity,
sensuality, and woe, which are tenanted by so many of your fellows even within
reach of your own homes, where riches secure exemption from bodily
distress,
what is the result? We do but see gross vice, shameless physical
surroundings, open
degradation of soul and body, but we breathe an atmosphere scarcely less
spiritually bad. Money-hunting is the business of life, and pleasure is
too often found in bodily gratification and sensuous enjoyment. The air
is thick with the greed of gold, with lust of power, with self-seeking
in all its myriad forms. The spirit—do you ever think what is the state
of such a spirit? It has no food, no development, no occupation. It is
dwarfed, or compelled to occupy itself in concerns which drag it back,
and give the adversaries their best chance of fostering and inflaming
passions and desires which are to us
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detestable. Hardly can we reach these more than the debased, where in
crowded alleys and lanes vice has its home—where in the thronged exchanges
and marts money rules supreme, and breeds its progeny of
selfishness and
greed, and larceny—there the adversaries have their centres of action,
from which their baleful influences radiates.
But you know it not. You are ignorant in respect of the world of causes,
and foolish in respect of what you do in your world in providing conditions
favourable to crime and sin. Your ignorance perpetuates these
conditions, and renders it more hard for us to impress upon you the true
principles which should govern the origination and development of life
upon your globe and the cultivation of spiritual progress. Some of your
more advanced reformers have seen the vast
importance which attaches to the subject of marriage; and we have
endeavoured to put forward such views as you were fitted to receive.
Much remains to be said when the world is ready, but that is not yet. We
do but allude to the subject as being intimately bound up with the great
questions of disease, crime, poverty, insanity, which vex and disturb us
in our dealings with men. To the folly, and worse, to the criminal
recklessness, and not less criminal and more foolish conventional law
which governs the marriage customs among you, very much is chargeable.
And this no less among those whom you call the educated and refined than
among the ignorant and uncultured—rather, perhaps, does the greater sin
rest with the rich. You must unlearn much that men have dreamed; you
must undo much that society has sanctioned in the trafficking that goes
under the name of marriage; and you must learn truer and diviner rules
for happiness and progress than you now tolerate, before you wipe away
the great original source of deterioration and retrogression. Mistake us
not! We are no advocates of license—no apostles of social freedom so
called. Liberty ever degenerates with the foolish into license. We spurn
such notions with contempt, even with more than we view the infamous
buying and selling, the social slavery into which you have degraded the holiest and divinest law of life.
Nor have you yet learned that the body is the avenue of spirit, and that
laws of health and conditions under which bodily development are
possible are essential for man incarnated on earth. We have spoken
before of this. Now we only say that in this, as in the other matter,
you are in alliance with our foes. Nineteen centuries have passed since
the pure and refined teachings which you profess to treasure were spoken
amongst men; and you are but little better in all that makes for true
progress, but little wiser in real wisdom, but little advanced in pure
religion; nay, you are worse than the Essenes, amongst
whom Jesus lived and was trained. You are the Scribes and
Pharisees, who drew from Him his bitterest denunciations.
And you know it not. In matters of body
and spirit—matters of vital import that touch
both the life here and the life hereafter—you have well-nigh all to learn.
These are some of the adversaries of whom we have told you aforetime.
They are massed in force, ever ready to thwart, and vex, and injure us. Their
ranks are being perpetually swelled by spirits debased
and degraded by human ignorance.
In all that we have said we have made no account of those who strive to
do for their race and for its development what in them lies. We have
said nothing of the acts of self-sacrifice and devotion, the simple
noble lives, the generous acts that redeem your race, and make us
hopeful of its future. Our business now is to paint the dark side of the
picture: and we have so drawn it as best to attract your attention to
it. We earnestly warn you that its lineaments are sketched with the
pencil of truth; and we warn you in all solemnity that the great truth
which underlies this message, viz. the antagonism between good and evil,
and the fostering of evil by human folly and
ignorance, is one which vitally concerns you and us in the future of the
work which we have in
charge. In what has now been said, we have but recapitulated what has been said before of
the organised opposition from those who are our opponents. But one special form of
attack, which will become more and more frequent, we have not yet dealt
with. As objective spiritual manifestations become more and more
frequent, and as the inconsiderate craving for them increases, so will
it come to pass that powerful instruments will be developed through whom
our adversaries
may be enabled to produce their frivolous or tricky manifestations, so
as to discredit the
true spiritual work. This is one of the special forms of opposition, and
the most dangerous: for in proportion to the undeveloped character of
SECTION XXIX
the spirit will be its power over gross matter, its cunning, and, in some
cases, its malignity. Powerful agencies are even now at work, as we are
assured, who will seize every opportunity of developing mediums through
whom phenomena the most startling may be produced, so as to convince the
inquirers of supernatural power so called. This done, the rest is easy.
By degrees trick and fraud are allowed to creep in, the moral teachings
are allowed to appear in their true light, doubt is insinuated, and the
uncertainty and suspicion which have become the fixed attitude of the
mind regarding phenomena which at first seemed so surely spiritual,
gradually extend to all manifestations and teachings.
No more sure means of discrediting the teaching of those who are sent to
instruct, and not merely to astonish or amuse, was ever devised by
cunning. For men say: We have tried, we have tested for ourselves,
and we have found it out. Either it is connected with fraud, or it teaches base and
immoral doctrines, or is full of falsehood; in short, it is diabolical. It is no
use to appeal to such, and tell them that they must discern between the
true and the false, for their shaken faith will not allow of this. They
have proved what they trusted to be false, and the whole edifice of
their belief lies in ruins around them. The foundation is not secure,
and will not support the
building.
We say again that no more diabolical device for paralysing our work was
ever planned. We solemnly warn you of it. See to it that you act upon our
warning. Beware of encouraging the promiscuous evolution of
violent physical power. Such comes generally from the lower and more undeveloped; and its
development is frequently attended by spirits for whose absence you
should pray. In the encouragement, especially in newly-formed
circles, of undue care for physical marvels is a great risk. Such are
necessary to the work, and we do not in any degree undervalue their
importance to certain minds. We desire to bring home evidence to all;
but we do not desire that any should rest in that material form of belief, in an external something which is of little
service to any soul. We labour for something higher than to show curious
minds that we can do badly under certain conditions what man can do
better under other conditions. Nor do we rest content even with showing man that
beings external to himself can interfere in the order of his world. If that were
all, he might be so much the worse for knowing it. We have before us
one sole aim, and that alone has brought us to your earth. You know our
mission. In days when faith has grown cold, and belief in God and
immortality is waning to a close, we come to demonstrate to man that he
is immortal, by virtue of the possession of that soul which is a spark
struck off from Deity itself. We wish to teach him the errors of the
past, to show him the life that leads to
progress, to point him to the future of development and growth.
It is not with such an end before us that we can tamely allow our work to
be set aside for the development of any strange phenomenal power that
spirits may possess over gross matter. If we use such power at all it is
because we find it necessary, not because we think it desirable, save
always as a means to an end. Were it harmless we should say so much. But being what it
is, an engine of assault from the adversaries, the worst we
have to dread, we are urgent in warning you against promiscuous seeking
after these physical marvels, and against resting in them as the end and
aim of intercourse with us.
Regard them only as means of conviction,
as so many proofs to your minds of actual intervention from the
world of spirit with the world of matter. Look upon them as such only,
and use them as the material foundation on which the spiritual temple may be built. Rest assured
that they of themselves can teach you no more than that; nay, if the
operating spirits find in you no capacity to grasp more, they will
gradually give way to those who can do such work better than they can, and so the means of
further knowledge will pass away. From that basis you must go on to further
steps. You must seek to know of the nature of the agency, of its source
and intent. Surely you would desire to be assured that it is of God, beneficent and
pure in origin and intent. Surely you would seek to know how much the
visitors from beyond the grave can tell you of that universal
dwelling-place of your race; how they can satisfy you of your own soul’s
destiny, and of the means by which you may best fit yourself for the
change which you call death. For if we be not as you, how is our
experience fruitful to you? If we cannot tell you of your own
immortality, what profits it that we prove to you never so conclusively
that we ourselves exist? Such may be a curious fact; it can never be
more.
SECTION XXIX
When you can reach out beyond the
phenomenal to the actual investigation of Truth for its own sake—when,
in short, you can believe our pretensions—then we can open out to you a
realm of which you are yet ignorant, and which has been far more fully
revealed to earnest seekers in other lands than yours. To few only in
your land have higher revealings of spiritual truth been vouchsafed.
Even this means of communing by writing, which seems to you such an
advance on the clumsy rapping out messages and such material means of
communication, is as nothing, compared with the inner communing of
spirit with spirit without the intervention of material signs. In America,
the land from which dates this movement in your days, there are many who
have been so
far developed as to lead a dual life, and to hold face to face intercourse with us. We
have even now a band of workers there who are achieving results which we
cannot command here through faithlessness of mind, materiality of
interests, and even grossness of atmospheric surroundings. It is not
with our work as with your mundane affairs. We read the heart, and it is
useless to feign interest which you do not feel—that you would not do—or
to proceed on our way while
faith is lacking. It has been so in all ages of the world. Efforts have
been made from time to time to pour advanced knowledge; it has been found that the time was
not come, and the effort has been withdrawn. But this is not what
we wish to say. We desire only to warn you against a danger, and to
encourage you to rise
above the material to the spiritual plane. Receptivity must precede
higher development: but we yearn and pray for the time when you shall
have shaken yourselves free from earthly trammels, and seek only after
the higher revealings of Truth. To that end you must have singleness of
purpose: you must have shaken yourselves free from human opinion, and
have dissociated yourselves from the material plane, so
far as an occupant of earth may do so.
Eternal Father! Thou in Whose Name we work, and for the revealing of
Whose Truth we are sent to earth, enable us to elevate and purify the
hearts of those to whom we speak, that they may rise
from earth and open their spiritual senses to discern the things which
we reveal. May Faith grow in them, so that they may aspire to Truth,
and, leaving earthly interests
behind, press on to learn the Revelation of the Spirit.
+IMPERATOR
[I remarked that I had no doubt that all that was said was true, and I
added that I had difficulty in
understanding why some law and order did
not obtain on the spiritual side, so as to curb
those unruly spirits. They seemed to do
what they pleased, and to be under no governance.
Also I expressed my wonder at their
false statements. I could not see why a spirit should
take pleasure in personation.]
You err in supposing there is no law and order with us. It is that the
neglect of conditions on your part frustrates orderly effort. You must learn to
fence your circles round with proper conditions, and then you will
eliminate half the trickery and contradiction. The time will not come
when all that you call evil will be wiped out; for this is a matter of
spiritual training, and we have no power to save you from the process,
which is for your progressive development. It is necessary that you pass
through it. You have much to learn, and this practical experience is one
of the ways of learning.
As to personation you will learn more hereafter. For the present, we tell
you that there are spirits who delight in such personation, and who have
the power, under certain conditions, of carrying out elaborate
deception. Such take names which they see to be desired, and would reply
equally to any name given them. They may usually be excluded by careful attention to
conditions, and by the efforts of a strong guardian
who is able to protect the circle. Those who sit frequently and in open
circles, where no care is taken of the spiritual conditions, and who
have no powerful spirit friends to protect them, are in danger of
incursion from these. In most circles, as far as we know, every facility
is given for the intervention of tricky spirits. The phenomena are
sought after in a spirit of mere curiosity. Personal friends are
greedily summoned, and no pains taken to ascertain whether the spirit
answering be indeed a friend or a deceiver. Foolish queries are
addressed, and foolish replies eagerly swallowed. What wonder that such
are the sport of the undeveloped!
SECTION XXIX
How is one to know that this personation does not extend to all? And
that what in Spiritualism appears good and coherent, will not in the end
prove to be only a clever trick? If such powers are behind, who is safe?
We can but give you the answer you have had before. We have proved to you
our good faith, our truth, our external individuality. We have given you
proof upon proof. We have shown our moral consciousness by
consistent truthfulness in all things—by the presence of a tone in our
teachings to you, which you must estimate for yourself. When complete
they shall stand forth to all as pure and good. Even now you admit them
to be elevated and good in tendency. Your knowledge of us, of our work,
and of our aims must lead you to judgment such as you would frame of a
fellow-man under similar circumstances.
Yes. This personating spirit, by speaking of whom I commenced, would
upset one’s faith very soon, if it had got access.
It might have been so; we cannot tell how far we could have counteracted
the effort; but we do not wish to run the risk. For contradictory
statements would surely have been made, personation carried on, and in
the end the scanty faith you have would have sustained a rude shock.
This is a real danger to you; for the introduction of false and
contradictory statements would do more to foster a suspicious feeling in
your mind than
anything. In the end it would undermine us and drive us away.
Really the subject seems to be a most dangerous one to meddle with.
The abuse of everything is bad; the use, good and commendable. To those
who in frivolous frame of mind place themselves in communion with the spheres; to
those who force themselves from low motives in that which is to them
only a curious thing; to the vain in their own conceit, the triflers,
the untruthful, the worldly, the sensual, the base, the flippant, there is doubtless danger. We
never advise any of unbalanced mind to meddle with the mysteries of mediumship.
It is direful risk to them. Those only who are protected and guarded
round, who act from no inner motive, but in obedience to the impulse
of the guardians, who are wise and powerful to protect,
should meddle, and they carefully and with earnest prayer. We deprecate
always any unlicensed meddling. Nor can any safely mingle with the
spirit-world, and so introduce one more disturbing element into his
earth-life, except he be of even mind
and steady temper. Any unhinged mind, spasmodic temperament, fitful,
purposeless character, becomes the prey of the undeveloped. Doubtless it is perilous for such to
meddle, more especially if their interest be only in the marvellous, to
gratify an idle curiosity, or to solace their own vanity. The higher
messages of the Supreme are not audible to such. Would that they who can hear them would
forsake the trifling of the lower spirits, and, leaving the
inferior planes, press on to the purer atmosphere of the higher spheres
of knowledge.
But all this is caviare to the world. They think far more of a good
thump on the head, or of a floating chair, than of all your information,
which, by-the-by, is hard enough to get.
True, we know it only too well. The present phase of our work is one
that must be passed through. The physical accompanies, but is no real part of our
work. It must, as we say, precede the real development
for which we wait. It will go on all around you with increasing
development; and while we warn you against the dangers which accompany
it, we do not disguise the necessity for it in the present material
state of your knowledge. While we deplore, we acknowledge the necessity.
We have more to add to what has been said, but not now. For the present,
cease.
[After a short rest, this addition was made to what had been said.]
We have told you of the operations of
the adversaries, and of the danger to be apprehended from them. But
other there are who, without being malignant foes, are nevertheless a
cause of trouble to us.
Many of those who are
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withdrawn from earth are not, as you know, very progressive, nor, on the
contrary, very undeveloped. The majority of those who pass from the body are
neither very evil nor very good in spirit. Such, indeed, as are so far
progressive as to gravitate rapidly through the spheres nearest the earth,
do not return unless called to a special mission. The earth-bound we have
already told you of.
It remains to speak of the agency of a class of spirits who, from
mischievous design, or from pure sportive fun, or from love of mystification,
frequent circles, counterfeit manifestations, assume names, and give
erroneous or misleading information. Such are not evil, but unbalanced
spirits who lack even balance, and who delight in plaguing mediums and
circles: in giving exaggerated tone to communications, in introducing
false elements, or in personating friends, and reading in the thought the
answer which they give to a query. The work of such is that which causes
you to say that spiritual manifestations are frequently foolish or silly.
This is due to the efforts of these spirits, who, from fun or mischief,
counterfeit our work, and play on the feelings of those who trust them.
These are they who personate relatives whose presence is desired, and
answer to their names. These are they who make true identification of
friends in mixed circles impossible. Most of the stories current of such
return of friends are due to the work of these spirits. These are they who
infuse the comic or foolish element into communications. They have no true
moral consciousness, and will pray readily, if asked, or will do anything
for frolic or mischief. They have no aspiration beyond the
present: no desire to injure, but only to amuse themselves.
These are they who allure to wrong paths, and suggest wrong desires and
thoughts. They secretly influence mediums much, and prevent noble
aspirations. They view with impatience noble and elevated aims, and
suggest the
material. They act as bars and clogs. They are greatly concerned with
physical manifestations. They are usually shrewd and clever at such work, and they
delight in presenting bewildering phenomena for the purpose of disturbing
the mind. They victimise mediums in divers ways, and find a pleasure in
the bewilderment of mind which they cause. Obsession and possession, and the
various forms of spiritual annoyance, proceed very frequently from such. They
are able to psychologise a mind over which they have gained
influence....These, again, are spirits who befool inquirers who have asked
for personal information. They return plausible answers, and bewilder the
deluded inquirers, or if a personal friend have once appeared, and given a
good test, his or her place on the next occasion may be filled by one of
these spirits, who takes the name and replies to queries, giving vague and
unsatisfactory replies, or telling false stories. It is always well to put
the personal element as far from you as possible, lest you open the way to
deceit.
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