Year 16 Number 100
2008



October 15th, 2008


"Unshakable faith is only that which can face reason face to face in every Humankind epoch." 
Allan Kardec







Religion

Most people’s idea of religion means going to church on a Sunday, reciting much-used prayers, singing the same hymns with startling repetitive regularity and listening to sermons or addresses, themselves often being repeated far too many times for the comfort of the listener. Many people would feel completely lost if they were not able to go through this regular weekly ritual.

But is this real religion? Does regular attendance at a church on a Sunday make a person more religious? Are churches spiritual places of worship, or traditional institutions based upon the material aspects of Man’s necessity?

Pure religion is not the worship of God through regular ceremonial ritual, it is the worship of God through service to one’s fellow beings. Many of the most deeply religious people in the world never enter a church. Many of them cannot associate themselves with being religious. The humble Atheist, much-maligned by Orthodoxy for his denial of the existence of God, a circumstance brought about by the inability of Orthodoxy to prove to him the existence of the Great Spirit, gladly goes about his life in many cases, in service to others with no thought for personal compensation in the form of the securement of a happy and pleasant eternity.

Who then is the more religious? Is it those who attend church as a regular ceremonial ritual? Or is it those who do their best to help their neighbor when that help is needed?

Religion is not a matter of an hour’s devotion each week. It is a seven day a week job that is carried out by many who do not even regard themselves as being religious. It is the latter who are the real religionists, of many of the former I refrain from commenting about.

 
 

 °EDITORIAL


EDITORIAL


 ° THE CODIFICATION


GENESIS: The Miracles and the Predictions According to Spiritism


 ° ELECTRONIC BOOKS


ON MIRACLES AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM by Alfred Russel Wallace

 ° SPIRIT MESSAGES


HEAVEN AND HELL - FUTURE LIFE AND ANNIHILATION


PART SECOND - EXAMPLES [CHAPTERS III]

CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CHOICES


 ° ARTICLES


THE MUSIC OF ROSEMARY BORWN FROM A PIANIST'S PERSPECTIVE


 ° NEWS, EVENTS AND MISCELLANEOUS


SPIRITIST BOOKS - NEW RELEASES


1st U.S. PEACH AND YOU MOVEMENT and the 10th SSB Anniversary


NEWS AND EVENTS AT The Spiritist Society of San Diego


 
 ° EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL

Moral Transformation

"The happiness of man does not depend upon political changes, revolutions or any other social modifications. So long as society remains corrupt, even so will its institutions be, no matter how many changes may intervene. The only remedy lies in that moral transformation to which the higher teachings show us the way. If man would but bestow upon this task a little of that passionate interest which he devotes to politics, if he would only pluck from his heart the root of his ailment, then would social iniquity soon cease to exist."Leon Denis. 'Social Problems', Chapter LV, "Hear and hereafter". Transl. into English by G G Fleurot (1910).

Never in the history of humankind has a message such as the one Spiritism delivers been of as much importance as it is today. Humanity is in desperate need of a clear message of hope, an enthusiastic and rational approach to life and its purpose that will allow us to have faith in the future and strive to reach a better destiny. We have vigorously fought to accumulate technical knowledge and financial treasures in constraint of peace and tranquility. This obstinate search in which we have entangled ourselves to this day have prevented us from abolishing the congenital maladies that yet remain in our spirits and create the barriers of race, exclusiveness and separatism that still plague society in general, leaving profound marks. We are living in a crucial and difficult dilemma, which needs to be wisely approached if we really want to find peace and happiness here in this world.

Human life and all aspects of society are entirely founded on beliefs. The latent spark of faith that ignites all human actions is deeply rooted on the minds of all individuals. However, we know how this natural inclination towards faith and belief has quite often diverted us from the path of truth. Oftentimes we have found ourselves taking for granted theories or systems that appear to be based on a solid foundation of positive values, and the reason for the ingenuous acceptance of these models is because they are always strongly supported by a complex and aggressive net of propaganda. The end result for this faulty attitude is that when we find ourselves facing the slightest sign of doubt, the castle made out of sand will be swept away in ease, leaving behind traces of unquestionable consequences that will make us dazed and confused. Life on Earth is indeed a complex phenomenon that goes beyond solely the scope of science. Therefore, educating ourselves in regard to the natural and latent inclination towards faith and belief is a primary responsibility that must all take seriously if we want to avoid deceit.

The absence of logic and rationality about many precepts and the preachings of all orthodox religions, which nowadays is a fact under the light of modern science, ought not to be an obstacle nor a barrier restraining us from a rational belief in a future life of hope and solace, by trammeling us in a carpe diem. Here stands the greatness of the teachings of spiritism and spiritualism as a valuable asset to help us to face the dilemmas which encompass our life in this world and hereafter. By carefully examining the teachings of these doctrines, one will realizes how grateful we ought to be for the blessing of the opportunity of experience and learning in our earthly journey, to a point that the worries of daily life will greatly diminish under his view. The obstinate and nihilist approach held by atheism and materialism that support the idea of annihilation is what can lead us towards fear and despair. The message comprised in the teachings of the spirits offers us a different point of view, allowing us not to be distressed in front of any kind of adversity and the struggles of the daily life. In a rational fashion, it clearly helps us to understand that if we comply with the duties of our own individual responsibility, we will undoubtedly reach the inner satisfaction enabled by the relative happiness possible to be achieved in this world, no matter what the external impediments.


A L Xavier GEAE 2008

 
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 ° THE CODIFICATION

GENESIS: The Miracles and the Predictions According to Spiritism

BY Allan Kardec
Author of "The Spirits' Book," "The Mediums' Book," and "Heaven and Hell."

Translated By The Spirit-Guides of  W. J. Colville
[Colby & Rich, Publishers - 1883 - Boston - USA]

The spiritual doctrine is the result of the collective and concordant teachings of spirits.
Science is called in to make the statements in Genesis agree with the laws of nature.
God proves his greatness and power by the immutability of his laws, and not by their suspension.
For God the past and the future are the present.


CHAPTER I

CHARACTER OF THE SPIRITUAL REVELATION

Part Four

    Spiritism, very far from denying or destroying the gospel, on the contrary comes to confirm, explain, and prove it. By the new laws of nature that it reveals, it throws light upon the obscure points of the teachings of Jesus, upon all that he has done and said, in such a way that those to whom certain parts of the gospel were formerly unintelligible, or seemed inadmissible, comprehend them without trouble by the aid of Spiritism, accept them, and better understand their importance as they are able to separate the reality from the allegory. Christ appears to them in a grander light. He is no longer simply a philosopher; he is a divine Messiah. Besides the moral power that Spiritism wields is the importance that it gives to all actions of life. It points with its finger at the consequences of goodness and wickedness; gives moral force and courage; gives consolation in afflictions by inducing unalterable confidence in the future, by the thought of having near one the beings that one has loved, the assurance of seeing them again, the possibility of conversing with them, the certainty that all one has accomplished, all one has acquired of intelligence, science, or morality till the last hour of life, nothing is lost, that all yields advancement. One finds that Spiritism realizes all the promises of Christ in regard to the Comforter that he promised to send. Now, as it is the Spirit of Truth who presides over the great work of regeneration, the promise of his coming is even now realized by the fact that it is he who is the true Consoler. ¹

    If to these facts one adds the unheard-of rapidity of the propagation of Spiritism, notwithstanding all which has been done to combat it, one cannot deny that its coming is providential, since it triumphs over all the forces of allied human antagonism. The facility with which it is accepted by such a large number of persons, and that without constraint, without other pressure than the power of the idea, proves that it responds to a need, - that of believing in something after the belief in nothing, which skepticism caused; and consequently it has come at the right time. Afflictions are many in number. It is not then surprising that so many men accept a doctrine which comforts them in preference to one which gives no reasonable hope of a future; for it is to the unhappy of earth that Spiritism addresses itself particularly. The invalid welcomes a physician with more joy than he who is well. Now, the afflicted are the invalids, and the Comforter is the physician. You who combat Spiritism, if you desire that one leave it to follow you, give something more than it supplies, and something better; cure soul-wounds more surely; give more consolation, more satisfaction to the heart, more legitimate hopes, greater certitudes; paint for the future a more attractive picture, and withal one more rational; but think not to gain your end, you with the perspective of nonentity, you with the alternative of the flames of hell, or of useless, sanctimonious, perpetual contemplation!

    The first revelation was personified in Moses, the second in Christ, the third in no one individual. The two first are individuals; the third is collective, which is an essential character of great importance. It is collective in this sense, that it has been made in favor of no one person; consequently, no one can be called the exclusive prophet of it. It has been given simultaneously in all parts of the earth to millions of persons, of all ages, of all faiths, of all conditions, from the lowest to the highest according to the prediction given by the author of the Acts of the Apostles: "In the latter days, saith the Lord, I will send my spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." It has not sprung from any one special civilization, but serves as a rallying-point for all. ²

    The two former revelations, being the product of a personal teaching, have been forcibly localized; that is to say, they have taken place in one locality from which knowledge has extended gradually; but centuries were necessary in order for it to reach the extremities of the globe, and even then without environing it altogether. The third has this peculiarity, that, not being personified in one individual, it is rained down simultaneously upon thousands of different points, which have become centers or focuses of radiation. These centers multiplying themselves, their rays meet again little by little, like circles formed by a multitude of stones thrown into the water, in such a manner that in a given time they will have covered the entire surface of the globe. Such is one of the causes of the rapid propagation of the doctrine. If it had surged upon a single point, if it had been the exclusive work of one man, it would have formed a sect around him; but a half century might have passed before it had passed the limits of the country where it would have taken root, while Spiritism, after a period of ten years, had planted its beacon-lights from pole to pole. This unheard of circumstance in the history of teachings gives to it an exceptional force, and an irresistible power of action. Indeed, if any thing checks it at one point in one country, it is literally impossible to curb it in all points in all countries. For one place where it will be disregarded, there will be a thousand where it will flourish. As no one can reach it in an individual, one cannot attain to the spirits who are the source of it. Now, as spirits are everywhere, it is impossible that they could be made to disappear from the globe. They are always appearing; and the belief in them reposes upon a fact in nature, and one cannot suppress a law of nature. This fact alone should convince those who are not quite persuaded to become believers ("Spir. Review," February, 1865, p. 38; Perpetuity of Spiritism").

    However, these different centers might have remained for a long time isolated from one another, situated as are some in far distant countries. A connection was necessary between them, which should place them in communion with their brothers in belief by teaching them that which was done elsewhere. This union of thought, which would have been impossible to the Spiritism of antiquity, is accomplished by the numerous publications which are now found everywhere; which condense, under a unique, concise, and methodical form, the teaching given everywhere through multiplied methods of expression, and in diverse languages. The two first revelations could have been only the result of a direct teaching; they were imposed on the mind by the authority of the word of the Master, men being too undeveloped to join in the work of their elaboration. Let us remark at the same time a very sensible shade of resemblance between them, important to the progress of morals and ideas; it is that they were given to the same people in the same locality, but at an interval of nearly eighteen hundred years. The doctrine of Moses is absolute, despotic; it admits not of discussion, but imposes itself upon all people by force. That of Jesus is essentially that of counsel and advice; it is freely accepted, and gains its advocates by persuasion; it is discussed by the living person of its Founder, who disdains not to argue with his adversaries. The third revelation comes at an epoch of emancipation and of intellectual maturity, where developed intelligence cannot agree to play a passive rôle; where man accepts nothing blindly, but wishes to see whiter one conducts him; to know the why and the how of every thing. It claims to be at the same time the product of a teaching, and the fruit of labor, or research, and of free examination.

    Spirits teach us only that which is necessary to put us in the way of truth; but they abstain from revealing to man that which he can discover by himself, leaving to him the care of discussing, controlling, and submitting all to the crucible of reason, leaving him often to learn the lesson at his own expense. It gives to him the principal, the materials from which to draw the interest and to put it in use. The elements of spiritual revelation having been given simultaneously at a multitude of points to men of all social conditions and of different degrees of knowledge, it is very evident that observations could not have been made everywhere with the same effect; that the sequences drawn from them, the relation of the laws which govern this order of phenomena, - in a word, the conclusion which ought to establish ideas, - could proceed only from the harmony and correlation of facts. Now, every isolated center, circumscribed in a limited circle, seeing most often only a particular order of manifestations, sometimes in appearance contradictory, having communications generally with the same category of spirits, and, moreover, guided by local influence and party spirit, finds it materially impossible to embrace the whole, powerless to join isolated observations to a common principle. Each one judging facts according to his knowledge and his anterior beliefs, or by the particular opinions of the spirits manifesting, there would soon be as many theories and systems as centers, of which no one would be complete, in default of elements of comparison and of control. In a word, each one would remain content with his partial revelation, believing it to include all the truth, for want of knowing that in a hundred other places one could obtain more or better. It is well to observe further, that nowhere has spiritual teaching been given in a complete manner. It touches upon so great a number of observations, upon subjects so diverse, which exact, it may be knowledge, it may be a special aptitude for arriving at the heart of them, that it is simply impossible to unite at the same point all the necessary conditions. Teaching having become collective, and not individual, the spirits have divided the labor by disseminating the subjects of study and observation, as in certain manufactories different parts of the object manufactured are divide among different workmen. Revelation is thus partially given in diverse places, and by a multitude of intermediaries; and it is in this manner still to be followed up, for all is not revealed. Every center finds in the other centers the complement of that which it obtains, and it is only the joining together of all instructions which can constitute the doctrine of Spiritism.

    It is, moreover, necessary to group the facts gleaned, in order to see their corresponding similarity, to gather the different documents, instructions given by spirits upon all points and all subjects, in order to compare them and analyze them by studying their analogy and difference. Communications being given by spirits of all orders more or less clearly, it is necessary to learn the degree of confidence reason would accord to them; to distinguish the systematic, individual, and isolated ideas from those which had the sanction of the general teaching of the spirits; to separate the Utopian from the practical, to cut away those which were notoriously contradictory, judged by positive science and healthy logic; to utilize the errors even, the information given by spirits of the lowest sphere, for a knowledge of the invisible world; and to form of it a homogeneous whole. In a word, a center of elaboration is necessary, independent of all preconceived ideas, of all prejudices of sect, resolved to accept a self-evident truth, though it be contrary to one's personal opinion. This center forms itself by the force of things, and without premeditated design. ³

Note from the Editor: Parts One, Two and Three of this Chapter I of Genesis was published on the issues # 97, # 98 and # 99 of the Spiritist Messenger.

¹ Many fathers of families deplore the premature death of children on account of the education for which they have made great sacrifices, and say that it is wholly lost. With a belief in Spiritism, they do not regret these sacrifices, and would be ready to make them, even with the certainty of seeing their children die; for they know that, if the latter do not receive the benefits of such education in the present life, it will serve, first, to advance them as spirits, then as so much of intellectual property for a new existence, so that when they shall return they will have intellectual capital which will render them more apt in gaining new knowledge. Examples of this are those children who are born with innate ideas, who know, as one might say, without the trouble of learning. If, as fathers, they have not the immediate satisfaction of seeing their children put this education to profit, they will enjoy it certainly later, be it as spirits or earthly beings. Perhaps they can be again the parents of these same children that they call happily endowed by nature, and who owe their aptitude to a former education; as also, if some children do wrong on account of the negligence of their parents, the latter may have to suffer later by troubles and griefs which will be caused by them in a new existence. (Gospel according to Spiritism, chap. 5, No. 21; Premature Deaths.)

² Our special rôle in the grand movement of ideas which is produced by Spiritism, and which is already operating,is that of an attentive observer who studies facts to seek their cause, and to draw from them definite results. We have confronted all those whom we could possibly gather around us; who have compared and commented upon instructions given by the spirits from all parts of the globe; then we have arranged the whole methodically. In a word, we have studied, and given to the public the fruit of our researches, without attributing to our labors other value than that of a philosophical work deduced from observation and experience, never desiring to put ourselves in the place of a chief of doctrine, or desiring to thrust our ideas upon any one. In publishing them, we have used a common right, and those who have accepted them have done so freely. If these ideas have found numerous sympathizers, it is that they have had the advantage of responding to the aspirations of a great number; of this we are not vain, as their origin belongs not to us. Our greatest merit is that of perseverance and devotion to the cause we have espoused. We have only done that which others also can do. That is why we have made no pretension of being a prophet or Messiah, and do not believe ourselves such.

³ The "Spirits' Book," the first work which took a philosophical view of the doctrine, by the deduction of moral sequences from facts, which had approached all parts of the belief, in touching upon the most important questions that it raised, has been, since its appearance, the rallying-point towards which the individual works have spontaneously converged. It is worthy of note that from the publication of this book dates the era of the Spiritist Philosophy, previously coming under the head of curiosities of experience.

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 ° ELECTRONIC BOOKS

ON MIRACLES AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM

BY

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE,

D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S.


REVISED EDITION, WITH CHAPTERS ON
APPARITIONS AND PHANTASMS


LONDON
GEORGE REDWAY
1896

Digitized for Microsoft Corporation by the Internet Archive in 2007.
From University of California Libraries.
May be used for non-commercial, personal, research, or educational purposes, or any fair use.
May not be indexed in a commercial service.


PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

(1874)


   
THE Essays which form this volume were written at different times and for different purposes. The first in order (though not the earliest in date) was read before the Dialectical Society, with the intention of inducing sceptics to reconsider the fundamental question of the inherent credibility or incredibility of Miracles. The second was written in 1866 for the pages of a Secularist periodical, and a very limited number of copies printed, chiefly for private circulation. The third is the article which appeared in the Fortnightly Review of May and June 1874. All have been carefully revised, and considerable additions have been made of illustrative fact, argument, and personal experience, together with a few critical remarks on Dr. Carpenter's latest work.

    As the second and third Essays were each intended to give a general view of the same subject, there is necessarily some repetition in the matters treated of, and the same authorities are in many cases quoted; but it is believed that no actual repetition of details will be found, care having been taken to introduce new facts and fresh illustrations, so that the one Essay will be found to supplement and support the other.

    I must now say a few words on a somewhat personal matter.

    I am well aware that my scientific friends are somewhat puzzled to account for what they consider to be my delusion, and believe that it has injuriously affected whatever power I may have once possessed of dealing with the philosophy of Natural History. One of them Mr. Anton Dohrn has expressed this plainly. I am informed that, in an article entitled "Englische Kritiker und Anti-Kritiker des Darwinismus," published in 1861, he has put
forth the opinion that Spiritualism and Natural Selection are incompatible, and that my divergence from the views of Mr. Darwin arises from my belief in Spiritualism. He also supposes that in accepting the spiritual doctrines I have been to some extent influenced by clerical and religious prejudice. As Mr. Dohrn's views may be those of other scientific friends, I may perhaps be excused for entering into some personal details in reply.

    From the age of fourteen I lived with an elder brother, of advanced liberal and philosophical opinions, and I soon lost (and have never since regained) all capacity of being affected in my judgments either by clerical influence or religious prejudice. Up to the time when I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism, I was a confirmed philosophical sceptic, rejoicing in the works of Voltaire, Strauss, and Carl Vogt, and an ardent admirer (as I am still) of Herbert Spencer. I was so thorough and confirmed a materialist that I could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any other agencies in the universe than matter and force. Facts, however, are stubborn things. My curiosity was at first excited by some slight but inexplicable phenomena occurring in a friend's family, and my desire for knowledge and love of truth forced me to continue the inquiry. The facts became more and more assured, more and more varied, more and more removed from anything that modern science taught or modern philosophy speculated on. The facts beat me. They compelled me to accept them as facts long before I could
accept the spiritual explanation of them; there was at that time "no place in my fabric of thought into which it could be fitted." By slow degrees a place was made; but it was made, not by any preconceived or theoretical opinions, but by the continuous action of fact after fact, which could not be got rid of in any other way. So much for Mr. Anton Dohrn's theory of the causes which led me to accept Spiritualism. Let us now consider the statement as to its incompatibility with Natural Selection.

    Having, as above indicated, been led, by a strict induction from facts, to a belief - 1stly, In the existence of a number of preterhuman intelligences of various grades and, 2ndly, That some of these intelligences, although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on
matter, and do influence our minds, I am surely following a strictly logical and scientific course in seeing how far this doctrine will enable us to account for some of those residual phenomena which Natural Selection alone will not explain. In the 10th chapter of my Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection I have pointed out what I consider to be some of those residual phenomena; and I have suggested that they may be due to the action of some of the various intelligences above referred to. This view was, however, put forward with hesitation, and I myself suggested difficulties in the way of its acceptance; but I maintained, and still maintain, that it is one which is logically tenable, and is in no way inconsistent with a thorough acceptance of the grand doctrine of Evolution, through Natural Selection, although implying (as indeed many of the chief supporters of that doctrine admit) that it is not the all-powerful, all-sufficient, and only cause of the development of organic forms.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

ANOTHER edition of this little work being called for, I have carefully revised the text, inserted dates, and given a few additional facts either in the body of the work or in footnotes.

    I have also added two chapters on Apparitions and Phantasms, which appeared in the Boston Arena in 1891, and which constitute my latest contribution to the philosophy of Spiritualism.

    Having been more or less acquainted with psychical phenomena for half a century, it appears to my publisher that a few notes on the changes of opinion I have witnessed during that period may not be uninteresting to readers of my book.

    It was about the year 1843 that I first became interested in psychical phenomena, owing to the violent discussion then going on as to the reality of the painless surgical operations performed on patients in the mesmeric trance by Dr. Elliotson and other English surgeons. The greatest surgical and physiological authorities of the day declared that the patients were either impostors or persons naturally insensible to pain; the operating surgeons were accused of bribing their patients; and Dr. Elliotson was described as "polluting the temple of science." The Medico-Chirurgical Society opposed the reading of a paper describing an amputation during the magnetic trance, while Dr. Elliotson himself was ejected from his professorship in the University of London. It was at this time generally believed that all the now well-known phenomena of hypnotism were the result of imposture.

    It so happened that in the year 1844 I heard an able lecture on mesmerism by Mr. Spencer Hall, and the lecturer assured his audience that most healthy persons could mesmerise some of their friends and reproduce many of the phenomena he had shown on the platform. This led me to try for myself, and I soon found that I could mesmerise with varying degrees of success, and before long I succeeded in producing in my own room, either alone with my patient or in the presence of friends, most of the usual phenomena. Partial or complete catalepsy, paralysis of the motor nerves in certain directions, or of any special sense, every kind of delusion produced by suggestion, insensibility to pain, and community of sensation with myself when at a considerable distance from the patient, were all demonstrated, in such a number of patients and under such varied conditions, as to satisfy me of the genuineness of the phenomena. I thus learned my first great lesson in the inquiry into these obscure fields of knowledge, never to accept the disbelief of great men, or their accusations of imposture or of imbecility, as of any weight when opposed to the repeated observation of facts by other men admittedly sane and honest. The whole history of science shows us that, whenever the educated and scientific men of any age have denied the facts of other investigators on a priori grounds of absurdity or impossibility, the deniers have always been wrong.

    A few years later, and all the more familiar facts of mesmerism were accepted by medical men, and explained, more or less satisfactorily to themselves, as not being essentially different from known diseases of the nervous system; and of late years the more remarkable phenomena,
including clairvoyance both as to facts known and those unknown to the mesmeriser, have been established as absolute realities.

    Next we come to the researches of Baron von Reichenbach on the action of magnets and crystals upon sensitives. I well remember how these were scouted by the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter and Professor Tyndall, and how I was pitied for my credulity in accepting them. But many of his results have now been tested by French and English observers and have been found to be correct. Then we all remember how the phenomena of the stigmata, which have occurred at many epochs in the Catholic Church, were always looked upon by sceptics as gross imposture, and the believers in its reality as too far gone in credulity to be seriously reasoned with. Yet when the case of Louise Lateau was thoroughly investigated
by sceptical physicians, and could be no longer doubted, the facts were admitted; and when, later on, somewhat similar appearances were produced in hypnotic patients by suggestion, the whole matter was held to be explained.

    Second-sight, crystal-seeing, automatic writing, and allied phenomena have been usually treated either as self-delusion or as imposture, but now that they have been carefully studied by Mr. Myers, Mr. Stead, and other inquirers, they have been found to be genuine facts; and it has been further proved that they often give information not known to any one present at the time, and even sometimes predict future events with
accuracy.

    Trance mediums who give similar information to that obtained through crystal-seeing or automatic writing, have long been held up to scorn as impostors of the grossest kind. They have been the butt of newspaper writers, and have been punished for obtaining money under false pretences; yet when one of these trance mediums, the well-known Mrs. Piper, was subjected to a stringent examination by some of the acutest members of
the Society for Psychical Research, the unanimous testimony was that there was no imposture in the case, and that, however the knowledge exhibited was acquired, Mrs. Piper herself could never have acquired it through the medium of her ordinary senses.

    Nothing has been more constantly disbelieved and ridiculed than the alleged appearance of phantasms of the living or of the recently dead, whether seen by one person alone or by several together. Imagination, disease, imposture, or erroneous observation have been again and again put forth as sufficient explanation of these appearances. But when carefully examined they do not prove to be impostures, but stand out with greater distinctness as veridical and sometimes objective phenomena, as is sufficiently proved by the mass of well-attested and well sifted evidence published by the Society for Psychical Research. Still more subject to ridicule and contempt are ghosts and haunted houses. It has been said that
these disappeared with the advent of gas; but so far from this being the case, there is ample testimony at the present day to phenomena which come under these categories.

    In this connection also we have not merely appearances which may be explained away as collective hallucinations, but actual physical phenomena of such a material character as stone-throwing, bell-ringing, movements of furniture, independent writing and drawing, and many other manifestations of force guided by intelligence which is yet not the force or the intelligence of those present. Records of such phenomena pervade history, and during the last century, and especially during the last half century, they have been increasingly prevalent, and have been supported by the same kind and the same amount of cumulative testimony as all the preceding classes of phenomena. Some of these cases are now being investigated, and there is no sign of their being traced to imposture. From personal knowledge and careful experiments I can testify that some of these physical phenomena are realities, and I cannot doubt that the fullest investigation will result, as in all the other cases, in their recognition as facts which any comprehensive theory must recognise and explain.

    What are termed spirit-photographs the appearance on a photographic plate of other figures besides those of the sitters, often those of deceased friends of the sitters have now been known for more than twenty years. Many competent observers have tried experiments successfully; but the facts seemed too extraordinary to carry conviction to any but the experimenters themselves, and any allusion to the matter has usually been met with a smile of incredulity or a confident assertion of imposture. It mattered not that most of the witnesses were experienced photographers who took precautions which rendered it absolutely impossible that they were imposed upon. The most incredible suppositions were put forth by those who had only ignorance and incredulity to qualify them as judges, in order to show that deception was possible. And now we have another competent witness, Mr. Traill Taylor, for many years editor of the British Journal of Photography, who, taking every precaution that his life-long experience could suggest, yet obtained on his plates figures which, so far as normal photography is concerned, ought not to have been
there.

    Lastly, we come to consider the claim of the intelligences who are connected with most of these varied phenomena to be the spirits of deceased men and women; such claim being supported by tests of various kinds, especially by giving accurate information regarding themselves as to facts totally unknown to the medium or to any person present. Records of such tests are numerous in spiritual literature as well as in the publications of the Society for Psychical Research, but at present they are regarded  as inconclusive, and various theories of a double or multiple personality, of a subconscious or second self, or of a lower stratum of consciousness, are called in to explain them or to attempt to explain them. The stupendous difficulty that, if these phenomena and these tests are to be all attributed to the "second self" of living persons, then that second self is almost always a deceiving and a lying self, however moral and truthful the visible and tangible first self may be, has, so far as I know, never been rationally explained; yet this cumbrous and unintelligible hypothesis finds great favour with those who have always been accustomed to regard the belief in a spirit-world, and more particularly a belief that the spirits of our dead friends can and do sometimes communicate with us, as unscientific, unphilosophical, and superstitious. Why it should be unscientific, more than any other hypothesis which alone serves to explain intelligibly a great body of facts, has never been explained. The antagonism which it excites seems to be mainly due to the fact that it is, and has long been in some form or other, the belief of the religious world and of the ignorant and superstitious of all ages, while a total disbelief in spiritual
existence has been the distinctive badge of modern scientific scepticism. The belief of the uneducated and unscientific multitude, however, rested on a broad basis of alleged facts which the scientific world scouted and scoffed at as absurd and impossible. But they are now discovering, as this brief sketch has shown, that the alleged facts, one after another, prove to be real facts, and strange to say, with little or no exaggeration, since almost every one of them, though implying abnormal powers in human beings or the agency of a spirit-world around us, has been strictly paralleled in the present day, and has been subjected to the close scrutiny of the scientific and sceptical with little or no modification of their essential nature. Since, then, the scientific world has been proved to have been totally wrong in its denial of the facts, as being contrary to laws of nature and therefore incredible, it seems highly probable, a priori, it may have been equally wrong as to the spirit hypothesis, the dislike of which mainly led to their disbelief in the facts. For myself, I have never been able to see why any one hypothesis should be less scientific than another, except so far as one explains the whole of the facts and the other explains only a part of them. It was this alone that rendered the theory of gravitation more scientific than that of cycles and epicycles, the undulatory theory of light more scientific than the emission theory, and the theory of Darwin more scientific than that of Lamarck. It is often said that we must exhaust known causes before we call in unknown causes to explain phenomena. This may be admitted, but I cannot see how it applies to the present question. The "second" or "subconscious self," with its wide stores of knowledge, how gained no one knows, its distinct character, its low morality, its constant lies, is as purely a theoretical cause as is the spirit of a deceased person or any other spirit. It can in no sense be termed "a known cause." To call this hypothesis "scientific," and that of spirit agency
"unscientific," is to beg the question at issue. That theory is most scientific which best explains the whole series of phenomena; and I therefore claim that the spirit-hypothesis is the most scientific, since even those who oppose it most strenuously often admit that it does explain all the facts, which cannot be said of any other hypothesis.

    This very brief and very imperfect sketch of the progress of opinion on the questions dealt with in the following pages leads us, I think, to some valuable and reassuring conclusions. We are taught first that human nature is not so wholly and utterly the slave of delusion as has sometimes been alleged, since almost every alleged superstition is now shown to have had a basis of fact. Secondly, those who believe, as I do, that spiritual
beings can and do, subject to general laws and for certain purposes, communicate with us, and even produce material effects in the world around us, must see in the steady advance of inquiry and of interest in these questions the assurance that, so far as their beliefs are logical deductions from the phenomena they have witnessed, those beliefs will at no distant date be accepted by all truth-seeking inquirers.

October 30th, 1895.


CONTENTS

                                                                                                                                                                                    PAGE

AN ANSWER TO THE ARGUMENTS OF HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS AGAINST MIRACLES....................................................... 1

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL

        I. INTRODUCTORY....................................................................................................................................... 33

        II. MIRACLES AND MODERN SCIENCE .............................................................................................................. 37

        III. MODERN MIRACLES VIEWED AS NATURAL PHENOMENA................................................................................... 46

        IV. OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE................................................................................... 54

        V. THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS.......................................................................................... 71

        VI. MODERN SPIRITUALISM : EVIDENCE OF MEN OF SCIENCE............................................................................... 82

        VII. EVIDENCE OF LITERARY AND PROFESSIONAL MEN TO THE FACTS OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM............................... 93

        VIII. THE THEORY OF SPIRITUALISM.............................................................................................................. 107

        IX. THE MORAL TEACHINGS OF SPIRITUALISM.................................................................................................. 115

        X. NOTES OF PERSONAL EVIDENCE................................................................................................................. 126

A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM.................................................................................................................... 145

ARE THERE OBJECTIVE APPARITIONS....................................................................................................................... 231

WHAT ARE PHANTASMS, AND WHY DO THEY APPEAR.................................................................................................. 255

APPENDIX TO "A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM"................................................................................................ 279

INDEX................................................................................................................................................................ 287


Next: AN ANSWER TO THE ARGUMENTS OF HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS AGAINST MIRACLES


Note from the Editor
:
The second Essay comprised in this book, The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural, was translated into Portuguese by Jáder dos Reis Sampaio and published by Publicações Lachâtre, under the title of O Aspecto Científico do Sobrenatural.

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 ° SPIRIT MESSAGES

HEAVEN AND HELL
Or
The Divine Justice Vindicated in the Plurality of Existence

Concerning

The passage from the earthly life to spirit-life,
future rewards and punishments,
angels and devils, etc.

Followed by numerous examples of the state of the soul,
during and after death.

BEING THE PRACTICAL CONFIRMATION OF "THE SPIRITS' BOOK"

BY Allan Kardec

Translated from the Sixtieth Thousand - By Anna Blackwell
[London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill - 1878]

Part First - Doctrine

CHAPTER II

  FEAR OF DEATH

Causes of the Fear of Death

Part One
   
    1. MAN, to whatever degree of the scale he belongs, from the savage state upwards, has an innate presentiment of a future life; he has an intuitive persuasion that death is not the end of existence, and that those whose decease he regrets are not lost to him for ever. This spontaneous belief in a future state is vastly more general than the belief in annihilation. How is it, then, that we find, among those who believe in the immortality of the soul, so strong an attachment to the earthly life and so great a dread of death?

    2. The fear of death is at once a proof of the wisdom of Providence and a consequence of the instinct of self-preservation which is common to all living creatures. It is, moreover, essential to the wellbeing of the human race, so long as men are insufficiently enlightened in regard to the conditions of their future life, as a counterpoise to the discouragement which, but for this apprehension, would too often lead them to make a voluntary renunciation of their terrestrial existence, and to shirk the labors of this lower sphere, which are necessary to their advancement.
    We accordingly see that, among the primitive peoples, the intuition of a future life is exceedingly vague, and that it is only in proportion as a people advances that this intuition gradually becomes, first, a mere hope, and, at length, an expectation, but still an expectation that is counterbalanced by an instinctive attachment to corporeal life.

    3. In proportion as man arrives at a true comprehension of the future state, his fear of death diminishes; but as, at the same time, he also comprehends more clearly the uses of the earthly life, he awaits its ending calmly, without impatience or regret. The certainty of a future life gives another direction to his thoughts, another aim to his activities. Before acquiring this certainty, he labored only for the things of the present life; having acquired this certainty, he labor for the life to come, yet without neglecting the duties and interests of his present life, because he knows that the character of his future will be decided by the use he will have made of his present existence. The certainty of again meeting the friends whom he has lost by death, of preserving the relationships he has formed upon the earth, of not losing the fruit of any effort, of continuing, for ever, to grow in intelligence and in goodness, gives him patience to await the appointed term of his earthly sojourn, and courage to bear, unmurmuringly, the momentary fatigues and disappointments of terrestrial life. The solidarity which he sees to exist between spirits and men shows him the union which ought to exist between all the people of the earth; he perceives the true basis of human fraternity and the true aim of charity, and he comprehends their absolute necessity, resulting from the indestructibility of the relationships which unite the present and the future.

    4. To free ourselves from the fear of death, we must be able to look at it from the right point of view; that is to say, we must have penetrated, in thought, into the spirit-world, and we must have have formed to ourselves an idea of that world as exact as is obtainable at the present time; a power of penetration denoting, on the part of an incarnated spirit, a certain amount of intellectual and moral development, and a certain aptitude for disengaging himself from materiality. Among those who are not sufficiently advanced for the acquisition of this knowledge, the physical life takes precedence of the spiritual life.
    Man's real life is in the soul; but, while he remains attached to externals, he sees life only in th body; and, therefore, when the body is deprived of life, he fancies that all is over, and abandons himself to despair. If, instead of concentrating his thought on the outer garment of life, he directed his thought to the source of life, to the soul which is the real being, and which survives the change of its outer clothing, he would feel less regret at the idea of losing his body, instrument of so much annoyance and suffering; but, for this, man needs a moral strength which is only acquired by him gradually, and in proportion as his spirit advances towards maturity.
    The fear of death, therefore, results from insufficient knowledge of the future life; but it also denotes aspiration after a continuance of existence and anxiety lest the destruction of the body should be the end of our career; it is, therefore, evidently due to a secret desire for survival that is really existing in the soul, although partially hidden under the veil of uncertainty.
    The fear of death diminishes in proportion as we obtain a clearer anticipation of the future life; it disappears entirely when that anticipation has become a certainty.
    The wisdom of Providence is seen in this progressive march of human convictions in regard to the continuance of our existence beyond the grave. If the certainty of a future life had been permitted to man before his mental vision was prepared for such a prospect, he would have been dazzled thereby, and the seductions of such a certainty, too clearly seen, would have led him to neglect the present life, his diligent use of which is the condition of his physical and moral advancement.

    5. The fear of death is also kept up by merely human causes, which will disappear with the progress of the race. The first of these is the aspect under which the idea of the future life has hitherto been presented; an aspect which sufficed for minds of slight advancement; but which could not satisfy the mental requirements of intellects that had learned to reason on the subject. The presentation, as absolute truth, of statements that are both irrational in themselves and opposed to the data of physical science, has necessarily led reflecting minds to the conclusion that such a presentation must be unfounded and erroneous. Hence have resulted, in the minds of many, utter skepticism in relation to the reality of a future existence that has been presented under an unacceptable aspect, and, in the minds of a yet greater number, a half-belief, so strongly tinctured with doubt, as to differ but slightly from unbelief. For the latter, the idea of a future life is, at best, but a vague hypothesis, a probability, rather than a certainty; they wish that it may be so, and yet, notwithstanding that desire, they say to themselves, "But what if, after all, there should be nothing beyond the grave! We are sure of the present; let us busy ourselves with that. It will be time enough to take thought for a future life when we have found out whether that future life really exists!"
    "And besides," say the doubters, "what, in fact, is the soul? Is it a mathematical point, an atom, a spark, a flame? How does the 'soul' feel? How does it see? How, and what, does it perceive?" The soul, for most people, is not a positive and active reality, but a mere abstraction. Those whom they have loved, but from whom they have been separated by death, being reduced, in their thought, to the state of atoms, of a spark, or of gas, seem to be separated from them for ever, and to have lost all the qualities for which they formerly loved them. Most people find it difficult to consider "an atom," "a spark," or "a gas" as an object of affection; they fail to derive satisfaction from the prospect of being themselves converted into "monads," and seek to escape from contemplations so vague and cheerless, by restricting their thoughts to the interests, pursuits, and enjoyments of terrestrial life, which offers them, at least, the appearance of something real and substantial. The number of those who are swayed by considerations of this kind is very great.

Note from the Editor: Part Two will be published on the issue # 101 of the Spiritist Messenger.

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Part Second - Examples

CHAPTER IV

[Suffering Spirits]

PUNISHMENT

    General description of the state of the guilty on their return to the spirit-world;
dictated at a meeting of the Spiritist Society of Paris, October, 1860


    WICKED, selfish, obstinate spirits are given over, immediately after their death, to harrowing doubts in regard to their present and future destiny. They look around them, and as they do not at once perceive any object on which to wreak their evil tendencies, they are seized with despair, for isolation and inaction are intolerable to evil spirits. They next begin to examine more carefully the surroundings amidst which they find themselves; they soon perceive the prostration of the weaker spirits who are undergoing punishment, and they attach themselves to these as to a prey, arming themselves against with the memory of their past misdeeds, of which they remind them incessantly by mocking gestures. This derisory pantomime not sufficing for their malice, they swoop down upon the earth like famished vultures. They seek out, among mankind, the souls they thing most likely to offer an easy road to their temptations, they take possession of such, stimulating their cupidity, striving to extinguish their faith in God and immortality, until, having obtained the mastery of their conscience, they draw them into every sort of evil.

    The backward spirit who is thus able to exercise his malice is almost happy; he only suffers when he is unable to act, or when his efforts are frustrated by the action of superior spirits.

    Meantime, centuries succeed to centuries; the evil spirit, at length, finds himself suddenly invaded by darkness. His circle of action closes round him like a prison; his conscience, hitherto passive, pierces him with its torturing stings. Reduced to inaction, carried away by a whirlwind of regrets and apprehensions, he wanders he knows not whiter, possessed with shuddering terror. Presently, a sense of emptiness pervades his being; a frightful void seems to yawn around him; the moment for commencing his expiation has come. Reincarnation stares him in the face, with all its horrors; he beholds, as in a mirage, the terrible trials to which he is about to be subjected; he would fain shrink back, but he is drawn onwards by a force superior to his own. Hurled down into the yawning abyss of fleshly life, he sinks through the horror of emptiness until the vale of oblivion envelopes him like a shroud. Born again into the life of the earth, he lives, he acts, he is again guilty of evil deeds; he is tormented by vague reminiscences that he cannot account for, by fitful presentiments that make him tremble, but that do not yet suffice to induce him to quit the path of evil. Extended on a prison couch, or on a luxurious bed (what matters it which?), the dying reprobate becomes aware, under his seeming unconsciousness, of a whole world of forgotten thoughts and sensations that are coming to life and moving within him. Under his closed eyelids, he sees a light that is not of earth; he hears strange sounds; his soul, about to quit his body, is uneasy and agitated, his stiffened hands clutch vainly at the coverings under which he is lying. He tries to speak; he would fain shriek, to those about him, "Hold me back! I see my chastisement!" But the power of speech no longer exists for him; death settles on his pallid lips; and those about him whisper "He is at rest!"

     But, no; he hears all they say; he hovers around the mortal body that he is unwilling to abandon; an occult force draws him away; he sees; and he recognizes what he sees as something he has seen before. Wild with terror, he leaps forth into space, seeking a refuge in which to hide himself. But there is no refuge, no retreat, for him! Other spirits soon find him out and render to him the evil he has formerly done to others; chastised, mocked at, filled with shame and confusion in his turn, he wanders disconsolate, and he will continue to wander thus until a ray of the Divine Light can find an entrance into the soul that begins to weary of its obduracy, showing it the Divine Avenger as the Divine Victor of all evil, as the judge whose sentence can only be reversed by repentance and expiation.

GEORGE

A truer, more eloquent, more terrible picture of the fate of the evil-doer was never drawn.
Is there any need of adding, to the horrible sufferings thus portrayed,
the phantasmagoria of material flames and physical tortures?

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  CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CHOICES

Inspirationally received by Y. Limoges

          The circumstances of where we are currently in our life are based on the choices we have made, whether in this lifetime or in other lifetimes. If this is true, can we honestly complain about our life? No. Yet, people complain all the time. 

          Spiritism teaches us that the purpose of our earthly life is for our soul to progress to higher levels of morality and intelligence, and our lives will receive the benefit of our good choices, and eventually our situations will improve because our efforts are rewarded. The earth (material life) serves as the place where we should strive to elevate our thoughts and make good choices or, in other words, try and strive to become a better person in order to evolve.

          If we look back, step-by-step, on all the (especially major) choices we have made or not made in our life, we can eventually reach the honest conclusion that our current circumstances are the results of those choices.

Those things that we have experienced or are experiencing that have NO RELATION to anything we did in this lifetime, Spiritism teaches, are the consequences of our choices we made in past lives; therefore, we again have still chosen our own current life’s circumstances.

If we honestly analyze how our life as it currently is, we can determine what kind of choices we have made in the past, and whether they improved us and our circumstances, or harmed us, in any way. We need to look at all aspects of our lives: personal, financial, the different relationships we have had or have with our families, and friends, acquaintances, etc., the jobs we have had or have, our level of education, physical ailments, and the list goes on and on.

We have brought ourselves to the very point…of where and who we are in our lives.

Are we relatively satisfied where we find ourselves in life or how we are? If not, we may now want to make some different types of choices in the way we live and/or we may want to make some personal changes within our self.

There are decisions we have already made that we must see through (responsibilities we now have that we have a duty to fulfill and endure) for we can’t go back in time, but if we have learned some lessons, and, how we handle things from now on, can make a big difference towards our own future betterment and a happier future.

So, don’t be discouraged. Each and every day, as well as in each lifetime, is a new opportunity for learning lessons, making better choices, personal growth, and eventual progress towards a much happier future!

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 ° ARTICLES

THE MUSIC OF ROSEMARY BROWN FROM A PIANIST'S PERSPECTIVE

BY Elene Gusch, B. Mus., DOM

 
   
    Distinguished musicians could again be called upon to commend the work of Rosemary Brown.  I would rather take this opportunity to do it myself, for a music publisher supports a venture in the most convincing way possible.  He risks his own money….
    “I have undertaken publication of the music because I believe in its validity, and because it is necessary if widespread performance is to take place.  How else can the efforts of these composers and Mrs Brown be rewarded?...
    “From the first manifestation of Mrs Brown’s gifts as an intermediary in the mid-sixties, cynics have attacked the weaknesses in the music, whilst enthusiasts have counter-attacked with the many splendid passages.  Both extremes leap to the eye without difficulty.  The real difficulty lies in looking at the phenomenon as a whole and comprehending the boundaries that have been crossed in its making.  Inconsistencies will remain in the quality of the music until communication gets easier (assuming that it can).  But the triumph of contact at this level is so overwhelming that no musician should ignore the results.”  Basil Ramsey, publisher, in the introduction to An album of music for children of all ages

    A great deal of ink has already been spread about on the subject of Rosemary Brown, one of the most publicized mediums of the late 20th century.  Much of that, unfortunately, has consisted of misquotes, inaccuracies, and thoughtless derision, rather than intelligent consideration of the facts of her life and work.  Mrs. Brown herself (possibly with a ghostwriter, no pun intended) wrote four books, though only two, Unfinished Symphonies and Immortals at my Elbow, have been available in recent years.  Another book, an analysis of Mrs. Brown’s musical output by Ian Parrott, has been out of print for some time, and I have not been able to get hold of a copy.  Some recordings were made, but to the best of my knowledge they are out of print too, along with all of the sheet music.  It so often happens that events which seem unexplainable to mainstream thought make a splash at first, and for a while everyone talks about them, but then they are forgotten.  Rosemary Brown’s music has shared that fate.


    Although there have been many examples of musical mediums, Mrs. Brown’s activities were extraordinary in that her work has been transmitted to us in written form.  The story is that, beginning in the early 1960s, she took dictation from a team of well-known deceased composers, writing down hundreds of pieces of varying length and complexity, mostly for piano solo.  Some musical authorities of the time, including Leonard Bernstein, found the works to be convincingly like those of the composers who were supposed to have created them, but unsurprisingly, many other people have scoffed and insisted that Mrs. Brown was a charlatan, or that the composers were only “imaginary friends” of hers.  Yet, it has to be admitted, even by the most skeptical and materialistic minds, that something highly unusual was going on.  The sheer number of pieces is impressive, even ignoring the fact that they comprise so many disparate musical styles.  It would have been difficult for even a very able and well-trained composer to come up with them all, especially to produce them at the speed with which they came through, and it is a documented and indisputable fact that Rosemary Brown had only the most minimal education in music.  (She lived in the same house most of her earthly existence, and there would have been no opportunity for her to get extensive training out of the sight of her friends and neighbors.)  If we are going to postulate that this woman produced such a huge and varied opus purely out of her own unconscious mind, having no idea what she was doing, we still have to explain how a thing like that could be possible.  We are stuck, one way or another, with a realization that human potential must be much greater than we thought.  It is impossible to believe that this music was produced by purely “normal,” everyday means.  Simply saying that it is fake, as someone told me just the other day, does not begin to explain the observed phenomena.

    Of course, there are people among us today who can produce music that is convincingly similar to the work of well-known composers.  One of them is Bruce Adolphe, who produces “Piano Puzzlers” for American Public Media’s program Performance Today.  He recasts a familiar tune in the style of some recognizable composer, and a contestant is supposed to guess both the name of the tune and that of the composer.  It’s generally not hard to figure out, because the composers’ styles are so distinctive.  Bruce Adolphe is amazing, and it’s not entirely beyond belief that Rosemary Brown could have been doing something similar, but for the reasons mentioned above it seems unlikely indeed. 

    The Brown project, we are told, was the brainchild of Franz Liszt, who believed that if people on Earth could receive musical compositions from the other side that could not possibly be produced by ordinary means, they would have to believe that there is more to life than our physical existence.   In Liszt’s own words, given in an introduction to Robert Schumann’s Twelve Cameos, “We in spirit hope to help people to realise that they are evolving souls destined to pass into the realms of non-matter where they will continue to evolve.  This realisation should give them a whole new dimension of thinking, and raise their self-image above its earthbound limits.”    

    Liszt was aided and abetted by Fryderyk Chopin, who acted as second-in-command, and a number of other heavy hitters, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, Robert and Clara Schumann, Claude Debussy, Hector Berlioz, and even J. S. Bach.  Still other composers made occasional appearances. 

    Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with classical music knows that each of these composers possessed a unique and distinctive style, which one might expect to be recognizable in any new works they produce.  In fact, having them write in recognizable styles was crucial to the success of the project.  Liszt explained, “The music transmitted is not put forth with the object of surpassing previous musical achievements.  The aim is to pour through a sufficient measure in terms of musical expression to give clear demonstrations of the personal idiom of each composer concerned.  Therefore, each composer endeavours to filter through the essence of his own spirit rather than to attempt gigantic works of technical virtuosity.”

    Although the composers all have individual styles, a number of them lived during the same time period, influenced each other, and were influenced by the same historical forces, so there are certain resemblances even among their “real” works.  Late Chopin, for example, sounds to me somewhat like Brahms.  Some of the composers—Liszt, Chopin, and Berlioz—were friends during their material existence.  Brahms loved Clara Schumann, and was an important part of her life.  The lifespans of Beethoven and Schubert overlapped those of the Romantic-period composers.  Even among those who were not contemporaries, there are connections; Chopin worshiped and closely studied Bach, Debussy was inspired by Chopin, Liszt was a great exponent of Beethoven, and so forth.  It’s not surprising to find this group of artists working together.

    I have lived with this body of work for the better part of a decade, and although proof of Mrs. Brown’s claims is not possible, I cannot avoid believing in her sincerity and veracity.  I would like to describe what the music is like from the point of view of a pianist.  I am not going to attempt a rigorous musicological analysis; I am only hoping to give a subjective sense of what playing and hearing the music is like, since the reader has probably not had the opportunity to come into contact with it.  I am going to discuss only the pieces for which I have sheet music.

    I first heard of Rosemary Brown in 1998, five years into my own contacts with the spirit world.  I didn’t have much trouble accepting the premise that the music had been channeled, and because I had done some very limited channeling at the piano myself, I was vitally interested.  It took me about a year to get hold of any of the printed or recorded music, though.  I was fortunate enough to meet Jane Ellen, a composer based here in Albuquerque, who happened to have a copy of one recording, as well as a number of the books of sheet music.  Since all the sheet music is out of print, what I have is in the “Xerox edition,” and I have been unable to acquire any more. 

    Holding that music in my hands, and actually playing it, was strangely disturbing at first, even for someone with my background.  The sheer weight of it, the concreteness, was stunning.  Instead of being a vague, it-might-be nice concept, the vitality of the composers, their inarguable aliveness, lay in my hands as a physical fact.  And yet I still balked at believing one hundred percent, and despite all the evidence, part of me continues to doubt a little.  So I do understand, just a bit, why this work has been swept under the very large rug that covers so many signs of survival after death.

    One might expect that, since the method of transmission was so arduous, the pieces in this collection would be quite simple.  That is not the case.  While they are not “gigantic works of technical virtuosity,” many require fairly advanced pianistic skills.  One finds successions of four and even five-note chords in each hand, as well as passages using crossed hands.  Considerable speed is often called for.  Some of the pieces are surprisingly lengthy;  Liszt’s “Woodland Waters,” for example, runs 14 pages.  The majority of the pieces are only a few pages long, and they are relatively accessible to the amateur pianist.  Still, there are a number of pieces that I cannot play up to tempo at this point.  Since recordings are not available for most of these works, I have not been able to hear them the way they should sound, and I can’t give you a complete evaluation of them.

    Earlier pieces are coyly marked “Inspired by…,” but in the later publications one finds “From… as dictated to Rosemary Brown.”  The pieces were largely received without marks of expression, tempo, etc., but there are notable exceptions, particularly with Liszt and Schumann, both of whom used elaborate, untranslated verbal directions that sent me running for my dictionaries.  The editors needed to fix a number of quirks in the notation that were caused by Mrs. Brown’s lack of musical expertise, such as E’s being written instead of F-flats.  Some oddities of notation remain, and some notes may simply be mistakes.  Mrs. Brown made no pretense of being absolutely accurate.  In Immortals at my Elbow, she wrote, “To get anything as elaborate as a piece of music across clearly without any mistakes in transmission, is an almost impossible feat.”  It is common to find errors and discrepancies in the notation of earth-plane composers as well, so this is not surprising.

    Many of the pieces with programmatic titles cited in this article are from An album of music for children of all ages.  Apparently there had been many requests from the public for easier music that could be enjoyed by a wider audience, and this book was the result.  It’s a good place to start if one has access to the printed music. 

    By far the greatest number of pieces came from Franz Liszt, and they are also the longest.  Even a cursory look at the pages gives a strong impression of his style.  As always, Liszt favored heavy religious and philosophical themes, like the arpeggiated, undulating “Jesus walking on the water in the midst of the storm.”  His Italian fluency is on display in marks of expression such as “strepitoso” (noisy) and “sordamente” (muffled). 
    I have an extremely unscientific but reliable method of recognizing Liszt’s work: when I hear it I tend to giggle uncontrollably.  The more seriously he is taking himself, the less seriously I can take him.  I find this effect in Mrs. Brown’s Liszt pieces as well.  Even the quiet and simple “A Rainy Day,” from the album for children, has a certain pomposity.  I do like it very much, though.

    Liszt’s “Grübelei” (Meditation), in my opinion, stands head and shoulders above most of the pieces in the Brown repertoire.  As you can probably tell, I am not much of a Liszt fan, but this piece is wonderful.  It is daunting at first—mostly because the right hand is in 5/4 and the left hand is in 3/2— but it greatly rewards the player who sticks with it.  I have returned to it again and again, and I always find something more in it, which I think is the sign of great music.  Even if Mrs. Brown had produced nothing else, one would have to say that something interesting was going on.

    The genesis of “Grübelei” is an amusing story.  Liszt began it during a taping by the BBC in 1969.  The producers wanted to film the process of receiving the music right as it was happening.  Mrs. Brown was nervous at being tested in this way, and made sure that the BBC people understood that they might end up with nothing at all, since a medium cannot count on getting a message at any specific time.  “Be sure you give me something spectacular!” she said to Liszt.  When the taping began, Liszt appeared immediately and set to work, but the piece made no sense to Mrs. Brown, having those two time signatures juxtaposed, as well as constant changes of key and accidentals thrown about everywhere.  She attempted to play some of it, but found herself unable to cope with the difficulty, and had grave misgivings about the whole thing.  She asked Liszt if perhaps it might be better to do another Hungarian rhapsody or something of that nature, but he assured her that “Grübelei” was going to impress the listeners far more.  A member of the BBC team then asked to try playing the piece, which he was able to do without much trouble.  His comment was, “Mrs. Brown, I think you’ve got something here.”  The piece was later taken to Humphrey Searle, who was a Liszt expert.  Mr. Searle was also impressed with it, and noted a spot which resembled a cadenza in one of the Liebestraums; Mrs. Brown believed that Liszt had intended that measure to be a clue to his authorship.  (Unfinished Symphonies, pp. 88-93)

    Most of my time at the piano is spent with works of Chopin, and I know his style intimately.  When I first played through the Brown pieces of his that were available to me (a prelude, a nocturne, a waltz, and six mazurkas), I felt a little uncomfortable with them.  The mazurkas, in particular, struck me as odd, more angular and less flowing than the familiar mazurkas from his lifetime, and seemed far from his best work.  However, it was hard to imagine anyone else having written them.   More recently, as I have played them again and again, they have grown on me, and I hear parts of them as quite delightful, but I still see them as a relatively weak link in the Brown repertoire. 

    While working on this article, I found myself embroiled in an online discussion of the Nocturne in A-flat, transmitted in 1966.  The opinion of the other writers was that this piece didn’t sound like a nocturne, certainly didn’t sound like Chopin, and was “banal.”  I find their position strange.  Since the piece has a slow, lyrical, flowing melody above a wide-spread, arpeggiated accompaniment, it is in fact very much in the mold of an archetypal nocturne.  As to whether it sounds like Chopin, there is one section in which I hear his voice so clearly that it brings me to tears, but I suppose that is a matter of opinion. 

    I tried running this nocturne past my husband, a professional woodwind player, without telling him what it was or who was supposed to have written it.  His first comment was that it made him think of a certain “warhorse” piece—one that is played frequently, maybe almost to death—and the warhorse turned out to be Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9 No. 2, which has the same type of accompaniment and begins with the same gesture of a rising major sixth.  My husband also noted the vocal quality of the melody and its resemblance to Italian opera, which had a huge influence on Chopin.  The Brown nocturne, to me, is also reminiscent of the Cantabile in B-flat, KK IVb/6.    The Chopin prelude is interesting, stylistic, and not problematic, but it has to go extremely fast to sound right, and so I have not yet heard it properly.

    The mazurkas, angular and 20th-century-like as they are, do sound Polish.  They are built largely of short melodic cells that repeat either literally or in sequences, a characteristic of mazurkas often found in Chopin’s known works.  In the set I have, the keys of the six pieces descend by half steps, and they are unified in style and general mood.  They are simple in construction but not particularly easy.

    Looking at “The Waltzing Doll,” from the album for children, gives a Chopinologist like me something of a turn, since Chopin abhorred programmatic titles and never gave anything but generic names to his works.  However, this piece was meant to fit into a collection in which everything has a cute title, and it is intended to appeal to children, so I suppose he had to conform.  It is pleasant, straightforward waltz with a sinuous melody, and darn if it doesn’t sound exactly like a waltzing doll.  It also sounds like it was written by the same person who wrote the mazurkas.
      Only two of the Rachmaninov compositions are in my possession.  One is a chromatic, étude-like prelude, and the other is a charming piece from the album for children, “Sleigh Ride.”  When I play “Sleigh Ride,” it’s as if I can feel snow falling all around me; the tessitura is high throughout, and its steady, tinkly eighth notes give it a crystalline quality.  My only complaint about this fun piece is that the introduction is a little bit hokey.

    The Beethoven scherzo and bagatelle fit right in with his shorter and easier known pieces, and their forward-rushing energy and expansiveness feel like him to me.  They are fast, and while they are not truly difficult, they are on the tricky side.  There is also a much easier piece in the album for children, “A Little Carol.”  It reminds me of the sprightly middle movement of the “Moonlight” Sonata.

    Johannes Brahms contributed two intermezzi and a waltz.  They contain large chords and dramatic melodies, and they cover a wide swath of the keyboard, as Brahms is wont to do.

    I’m not an expert on Schubert, but I’m sure I hear characteristic gestures of his in the two pieces labeled “Moment Musical,” as well as the tuneful, singable melodies one expects of him.  I’ve also noticed that Schubert seems to be inordinately fond of C-flats, and plenty of them do occur in his Brown project pieces.

    I have listed Clara Schumann among the composers, and indeed she was a composer in her own right, but in the Brown project she acted only to bring works of her husband to the earth plane, often appearing with their friend Johannes Brahms.  Robert Schumann apparently could not manage the kind of focus necessary to transmit the pieces himself.  Liszt tells us, however, that Schumann is in much better mental health these days than he was during his life.  In the introduction to Twelve Cameos, he says, “The pieces illustrate some enchanting facets of the multi-sided genius of Robert Schumann.  He lost his way on earth because the mirrors of his mind reflected false images to him.  Now, of course, his mind is clear, and he shares in the delight of an unclouded vision of the beauty of Creation and its Creator.”

    The Twelve Cameos form an organized whole, with the keys of the pieces rising chromatically from D-flat to C.  Each piece is very brief, and is named for an emotion or psychological state, such as “Uberraschung” (Surprise) or “Nachdenklichkeit” (Thoughtfulness).  All the titles and markings are in German, and for me, complex enough to make a dictionary imperative.  The only thing that strikes me as being different from what I would expect of Schumann is that the two hands do not overlap or intertwine in the way his work often requires. 

    There is also a more extended Schumann piece, “Longing,” which is not part of the Cameos, despite the similar title.  It is a sweet and not at all difficult piece, one of the most enjoyable and accessible in the group. 

    I have two rather atmospheric and decidedly impressionistic pieces attributed to Debussy, both concerning avian subjects.  In the midst of writing this, I played “Le Pâon” (The Peacock) in the presence of my husband, who couldn’t see what I was supposed to be playing and had not heard the piece before.  I asked, “Who wrote that?” and without hesitation, he replied, “Debussy.” 

    Grieg is represented in my collection only by “A Song of Childhood,” which is gentle, lyrical, and easy to play.  It has a sparse accompaniment and the feel of a folk song. 

    I also have only one piece attributed to Bach.  It is a prelude in the typical Bach mode of a repeating pattern that relentlessly continues throughout the piece.  I’m afraid it is not especially interesting, though I cannot say that there is anything specifically wrong with it, or anything that is absolutely not Bach-like. 

    Mrs. Brown found Bach rather intimidating, not someone to chat casually with like Liszt or Chopin.  She said that in the beginning he gave her a few pieces that followed his known style, to establish his identity, and then he moved on to new material that we might not recognize as his.  This brings up an important point: there is no reason to expect a composer, or anyone else, to be exactly the way they were many years ago or to produce exactly the same kind of work.  It is daunting to imagine how one might reproduce a style one used at a much younger age and under very different circumstances.  Yet, for the most part, the composers of the Rosemary Brown project have done just that, and we clearly hear their living voices.

Bibliography

Brown, R. Immortals at My Elbow (in the US, Immortals by My Side), Bachman & Turner, London, 1974
Brown, R. Unfinished Symphonies, William Morrow and Co., Inc., New York, 1971

Books of sheet music:

Music from Beyond, Basil Ramsey, 1977
An album of piano pieces for children of all ages, Basil Ramsey, 1979
The Rosemary Brown Piano Album, Novello & Co. Ltd.
Six Mazurkas for piano solo from Frédéric Chopin, Basil Ramsey, 1981
Twelve Cameos for piano solo from Robert Schumann, Basil Ramsey, 1980

Individual pieces:

Intermezzo in A flat, inspired by Johannes Brahms, 1978
“Le Pâon,” inspired by Claude Debussy, 1978
“Woodland Waters,” inspired by Franz Liszt, 1977

Elene Gusch has been working as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine for the past 11 years, but her bachelor’s degree is in classical guitar performance.  She has performed extensively on Renaissance lute as well as guitar, and over a period of three decades has taught private music lessons on a number of instruments, most often piano.  Her main musical interest is the work of Fryderyk Chopin.  She has gotten the Piano Puzzlers right just about every time.

Note from the Editor: This article was originally published on the Journal of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, issue of July 2008.

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 ° NEWS, EVENTS AND MISCELLANEOUS
 
SPIRITIST BOOKS - NEW RELEASES


A PRIMER ON BEING GOOD

by Meimei (Spirit) / Francisco C. Xavier (Medium)

The Spirit Meimei explains in simple language, appropriate for children, two paths in life: the path of good or the path of evil; God has granted us the freedom to choose either one. It depicts the use of hands to: do good, promote happiness, make friends, help people, and work so that the world may be a better place.

MESSAGE FROM A TEEN IN THE SPIRIT WORLD
by Neio Lucio (Spirit) /Francisco C. Xavier (Medium)

In the afterlife, a teenager named Carlos explains to Dirce (his brother) his impressions on the new life in the spirit realm with his discarnate relatives and new friends. Carlos also affirms the fact that life after death is but the continuation of life in the physical body, and he emphasizes our need to live in accordance with the Christ consciousness teachings.

ETERNAL BONDS OF LOVE
by Ricardo K. Petrillo (Author), Silvia Knoploch (Contributor), Claudio Petrillo (Contributor)

ETERNAL BONDS OF LOVE is a poignant account of a young man's afterlife experiences after his death at age 20. Ricardo  passed after an accidental fall at College on September 18, 2005. He started communicating through written messages to his father on July 2006. In July 2007 he communicated to his parents that they would be writing a book together to be finished and published in one year's time. And so they did! You will find in this unusual book Ricardo's story about his experiences, feelings, emotions and spiritual development in the first two years after his untimely and unexpected passing. He shares his stages of evolution, his 'new life', changes in his 'body and habits' and the 'people' he encounters along the way. Through his verses one is carried away to another reality where love, compassion, understanding and spiritual growth are the dominant features and goals of those living 'life after death'. (Paperback: 366 pages)

1sr U.S. PEACE AND YOU and the 10th SSB Anniversary


                    Transform Your Health
                          With Inner Peace


                          Sunday, October 19th, 2008
                                                     1 pm - 6 pm


                                                 Keynote address:

                  Health, Peace and You
      
                                             Divaldo P. Franco

             Ambassador of Peace, International Spiritist
                Medium, Speaker and humanitarian


Speakers         -         Registration         -         Directions         -         Download         -         Contact


NEWS AND EVENTS AT

The Spiritist Society of San Diego


Hello Dear Friends
   
We are happy to share with all of you that the Spiritist Society of San Diego has started a new phase. Just a few weeks ago we moved to our new location and the new address provides way more space to our meetings and activities in general. If you don’t have the new address yet, here it goes: 6640 Lusk Blvd., Suite A102 – San Diego CA 92121. For more details visit Driving Directions in our website

We have also prepared the new calendar of events for the next 30 days. Notice that we added a few meetings, including a new series of lectures on Sunday mornings and new Study Groups.

Study Groups on “The Spirits’ Book”

The Spirits’ Book is the fundamental and ground breaking work for Spiritist Ideas. Allan Kardec published the book for the first time in 1857 and to this day, it is the most important and contemporary book of the Spiritist Codification.

The book consists of 1019 Questions and Answers that cover topics like the Spiritual Nature of Human Beings, the Natural Laws that rule our life, the Spiritual Realm and the relationship between the Material and the Spiritual elements.

Although reading the book may be just enough to learn the teachings, experience has shown us that a supporting study group can greatly enhance the discovering and learning experience. With this idea in mind, the Spiritist Society of San Diego is opening two STUDY GROUPS focusing on this fundamental Spiritist book. One group will meet every WEDNESDAY evening at 7:00 p.m. and the other every SUNDAY mornings at 11:30 a.m.

The Study Group is also a wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded people and develop long lasting friendships. If you have any questions, call 858 784 1811 or email sssd@sssandiego.org.

Sunday Series of Lectures on Spiritist Ideas

October, 19 - “Nosso Lar, a spiritual home

Let’s study one of the most popular books in Spiritism. In this wonderful book, Andre Luiz tell us, in spirit, what he found in the other side. The book was channeled by the famous Brazilian Medium Francisco Xavier.

October, 26 - “Reincarnation
   
One of the cornerstones of Spiritist Ideas and why it might be important to your life now.

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