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On the right is Stansted Hall, the home of the Arthur Findlay College, maintained by Spiritualists' National Union in the U.K.
S.N.U. is, for me, the preeminant body in the Spiritualist movement in the U.K., and the College has students from all over the World. It has a long and high minded history, setting the primary goal of proving each of us has a spirit which survives death. For all I've attended many workshops here, it is for you to weigh it and compare it with others, and there are others, in the U.K., America and elsewhere. |
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Its museum is interesting, but for all its long history, few people would claim S.N.U. has proved survival or that this is even possible.
Why have this page on Spirit?
The answer is simple.
If there is nothing beyond this single life, if the mind is simply the product of the brain, and the materialists are right that there is nothing beyond what we can detect with our senses, extended by instruments, in the physical world; then countless millions of people are deluded. There is no point in enquiring further, and there certainly is no possibility of reincarnation.
As it happens, there is quite a bit of evidence for the existence of spirit, both our own, other people's, and spirit which isn't human at all, and evidence that spirit survives physical death.
The Spiritualist movement is vast and Worldwide; there is no place for a proper survey of it here, but you can get a flavour of it from a B.B.C. page on religion, and this has the benefit of a host of further links from that site. For another site with a truly vast range of information and links, including a great deal on the history of Spiritualist beliefs, there is this site: The History of Spiritualism , the site as a whole has a mission well beyond the present purpose here - its home page states,
""Spiritualist" is a non denominational resource for Spiritualists or anyone who has an interest in modern Spiritualism. The site is intended as a guide to Spiritualist churches, the mediums who serve them and to assist generally in promoting Spiritualism. There is also open discussion available via the forum and periodic articles below."
You could easily spend many hours following just the trail of links which start here, I will return to basics.
In S.N.U. churches across the U.K., and in other cases far beyond, spirit mediums give information they could not have known, to perfect strangers, as evidence they are in communication with a deceased loved one of this stranger; information about the deceased is often detailed and often confirmed as correct. There are, of course, many accounts of psychic and paranormal events which cannot be explained except by the actions of disembodied spirit. There are reports of near death experiences, there are even experiments in which a dying person is weighed shortly before death and immediately after it, the dead body is reported as being slightly lighter than the dying person.
It is objected this is not proof. So what is proof? It is that level of evidence which people require before they acknowledge a fact; it is a matter of belief. What decides how much evidence amounts to proof depends on how much resistance there is to believing it.
So, why should people resist belief in spirit? Like all simple truths the answer is obvious, but uncomfortable. In all of us is a sense of “I” identified with our consciousness, this is who we are. The “I”, or ego, is fearful of admitting there is anything more to who we are than itself, it will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to deny it. The first step to discovering spirit is therefore to quieten this ego and set it aside, to reach other parts of who we truly are. This is the gateway for the metaphysician, spiritual medium, psychologist or researcher into past lives.
As noted elsewhere on this site, there is a quick way to suspend the conscious mind, hypnosis, and it is no coincidence that overwhelmingly most research into past lives today is done by hypnotherapists. While this is perfectly good for investigating your own spirit, it will not tell you about any other spirit.
If you want to be a medium, and contact such spirits, you have to learn to distinguish thoughts feelings and impressions which are not your own, which must therefore have come from some other spirit. Understanding this distinction is a knack and a skill which can be developed, it is a good thing to do in any case; just remember, not everything in your head is your own. Are you likely to pick up other lives than your own? Actually, if you are aware of the possibility, it really is not hard to distinguish.
If you are not a medium, nor attended workshops to develop awareness, you may have to practise before you achieve the knack of distinguishing, your only difficulty in this will be your own ego.
Why have this page on Spirit?
The answer is simple.
If there is nothing beyond this single life, if the mind is simply the product of the brain, and the materialists are right that there is nothing beyond what we can detect with our senses, extended by instruments, in the physical world; then countless millions of people are deluded. There is no point in enquiring further, and there certainly is no possibility of reincarnation.
As it happens, there is quite a bit of evidence for the existence of spirit, both our own, other people's, and spirit which isn't human at all, and evidence that spirit survives physical death.
The Spiritualist movement is vast and Worldwide; there is no place for a proper survey of it here, but you can get a flavour of it from a B.B.C. page on religion, and this has the benefit of a host of further links from that site. For another site with a truly vast range of information and links, including a great deal on the history of Spiritualist beliefs, there is this site: The History of Spiritualism , the site as a whole has a mission well beyond the present purpose here - its home page states,
""Spiritualist" is a non denominational resource for Spiritualists or anyone who has an interest in modern Spiritualism. The site is intended as a guide to Spiritualist churches, the mediums who serve them and to assist generally in promoting Spiritualism. There is also open discussion available via the forum and periodic articles below."
You could easily spend many hours following just the trail of links which start here, I will return to basics.
In S.N.U. churches across the U.K., and in other cases far beyond, spirit mediums give information they could not have known, to perfect strangers, as evidence they are in communication with a deceased loved one of this stranger; information about the deceased is often detailed and often confirmed as correct. There are, of course, many accounts of psychic and paranormal events which cannot be explained except by the actions of disembodied spirit. There are reports of near death experiences, there are even experiments in which a dying person is weighed shortly before death and immediately after it, the dead body is reported as being slightly lighter than the dying person.
It is objected this is not proof. So what is proof? It is that level of evidence which people require before they acknowledge a fact; it is a matter of belief. What decides how much evidence amounts to proof depends on how much resistance there is to believing it.
So, why should people resist belief in spirit? Like all simple truths the answer is obvious, but uncomfortable. In all of us is a sense of “I” identified with our consciousness, this is who we are. The “I”, or ego, is fearful of admitting there is anything more to who we are than itself, it will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to deny it. The first step to discovering spirit is therefore to quieten this ego and set it aside, to reach other parts of who we truly are. This is the gateway for the metaphysician, spiritual medium, psychologist or researcher into past lives.
As noted elsewhere on this site, there is a quick way to suspend the conscious mind, hypnosis, and it is no coincidence that overwhelmingly most research into past lives today is done by hypnotherapists. While this is perfectly good for investigating your own spirit, it will not tell you about any other spirit.
If you want to be a medium, and contact such spirits, you have to learn to distinguish thoughts feelings and impressions which are not your own, which must therefore have come from some other spirit. Understanding this distinction is a knack and a skill which can be developed, it is a good thing to do in any case; just remember, not everything in your head is your own. Are you likely to pick up other lives than your own? Actually, if you are aware of the possibility, it really is not hard to distinguish.
If you are not a medium, nor attended workshops to develop awareness, you may have to practise before you achieve the knack of distinguishing, your only difficulty in this will be your own ego.
