Excerpt from Chapter Eleven
of the Book
Spiritual Teachings and Universal Truths
Copyright © 1998 by Raphael. All rights reserved.
Biblical
Accounts of Mediums
Even
though the majority of what
is written in the copies which have come down to you of the old manuscripts of
the Old and New Testament have been purposely falsified and distorted, enough of
the true material still remains to enable the spiritually educated person to use
the Bible as a guide to understand the spiritual truths of God, including those
concerning communication with God's spirit world.
In this chapter I will explain how many of the occurrences related in the
Bible actually took place. This
should help remove all fear and doubt concerning spirit-communication among all
of you, especially those who read and respect the Holy Scriptures.
Most of you of the present times seem to find something strange and new
in the idea of the possibility of communication between spirits and mankind.
This is because you read the Bible superficially and do no reflect upon
its teachings, as you should. If
you did, you would inevitably ask yourselves as you read, "How did all
these things happen? In what way
could they have been brought about? What
am I to think of them? How am I to
explain them?" Seeing that the
very opening chapters of the Bible relate that God conversed with mortals, that
He spoke with Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
Moses, you as rational beings, should at least make the attempt to form a clear
conception of the manner in which this was done.
They, to whom God's spirits spoke in those days, were human beings like
yourselves. They had their sins and
shortcomings as you have yours. The
laws of Nature that governed their life on Earth were no different from those of
today. God and God's spirits are the same today as they were then,
and as you read further and find that there was daily communication between the
people of Israel and the spirit-realm of the Beyond, that every person could ask
counsel of God and would be answered, that the leaders of the people undertook
nothing without the advice of the good spirit-world, your own common sense
should tell you that communication with the spirit-world is possible.
And if it is possible, and was maintained for thousands of years by
mankind in the past, why should it be denied to the men and women of today?
It is true that you seem to believe that it rests entirely with the
spirit-world to communicate with you or not, and that the same is able, of its
own accord and at its own will, to bring about such contact, without any help
from you. You may think that the
spirits are free to visit mankind at any time and at all times, and that all
that is required of mankind is to admit the spirits and to listen to what
messages they may bring. And since
you see no evidence today of the spirit-communication of old, which plays so
important a part in the Bible, you have come to the conclusion that the Beyond
has definitely abandoned all communication with the world of the living.
This is a very serious error. On
the contrary, the good spirit-world is only too anxious today to come to you and
is ready to cross the bridge leading from the Beyond to the Here.
But you must lend a hand in the building of that bridge.
It was true in the past also, that mankind on its part had to fulfill all
the conditions required to enable the spirit-world to communicate with it.
The people of old were familiar with these conditions, and observed them
accordingly.
Today when you read in the Bible the description of the phenomena that
accompanied the manifestations of spirits, you think that these phenomena were
mere external trappings, having no connection with the spirit-communications
themselves. Do you honestly believe that there was nothing more than
foolery and idle outward show in the fact that a spirit of God spoke to Moses
from the "bush which burned with fire" and to the Israelites from the
pillar of cloud, or that he could have made himself understood without the aid
of that flame and that pillar of spiritual energy?
Do you by any chance imagine that God was amusing Himself when He said to
Moses, "Lo, I come to you in a thick cloud that the people may hear when I
speak with you"? And that He
could have increased the carrying-power of His voice without increasing the
cloud of spiritual energy? Or do
you believe that the great cloud that settled upon Mount Sinai amidst thunder
and the sound of trumpets, was also merely outward show, and that these sounds
could have been produced without the cloud?
When David asked Abiathar, the priest, to bring him the ephod with the
Breastplate of Judgment, so that he might consult God and receive His answer,
was that too only foolery? Or were
the flames of the thorny bush, the pillar of cloud, the Breastplate of Judgment,
and the other things that you find in the Bible as you read of the communication
of the spirit-world with mankind the conductors imperatively required for
telephonic conversation from the Beyond to the Here.
As a matter of fact, they constituted the bridge over which God's spirits
traveled to reach the people of those times.
Without that bridge, they could not have come.
The material contributed by terrestrial beings was spiritual energy
force, which became visible to all in the shape of a flame during the burning of
the thorny bush, and in the case of the pillar of cloud as spiritual energy
vapor, by the same token, spiritual energy was required for the many
materializations of spirits into incarnate form, recorded in the chronicles of
those days.
An adequate amount of the same force had to be available to those spirits
which indicated the letters on the Breastplate of Judgment forming the words
which constituted the answer sent from the Beyond.
The sources of spiritual energy force for the spirit communications
recorded in the Bible were, then as now, the "mediums".
In the Old Testament you will find a great deal written of
"prophets" and "schools of prophets".
What meaning does this convey to you?
Do you imagine that the gift of prophecy can be learned at school, as a
scientific education is acquired?
In modern language you use the word "prophet" to designate a
person who can foretell the future, and according to that connotation it would
be natural to assume that it was possible to acquire at the ancient schools of
prophets, the faculty of predicting events to come.
That is a misconception of the meaning of the terms "prophet"
and "schools for prophets" as used in the Bible.
A "prophet" is a person from whom not his own, but a different
spirit speaks. It was in this sense that the Apostle Paul wrote in
Corinthians of "the spirits of the prophets".
If the spirits that speak through a prophet are truthful ones, he is
called a true or real prophet. If,
however, they are lying, or in other words, evil spirits, he is branded in the
Bible as a false prophet.
What were called prophets in Biblical times are today known as mediums.
The choice of words is immaterial; it is the substance that counts.
All prominent characters of the Old and the New Testament were great
mediums, and although the mediumistic conditions under which they surrendered
their spiritual energy force to the spirit-world are not minutely described in
the Holy Writ, they are plainly indicated in many of the accounts recorded.
Abraham was a medium. The
state of trance into which he passed to enable him to release his spiritual
energy during his communication with the Beyond can be clearly recognized in one
passage of Genesis. "When the
sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham; a great horror of a darkness
came over him . . . when the sun went down, and it turned dark, there was a
smoking furnace, and a blazing torch that passed between the pieces."
The "deep sleep" was not a normal sleep, but is called today a
"mediumistic sleep", in which the medium's spiritual energy is set
free to be used by the spirit-world for its manifestation.
The "horror" and the "great darkness" mentioned here,
which usually overcomes a medium serving the good cause, are produced by the
evil spirit-world in its attempts to frustrate the messages brought by the good
spirits, seeing that the sensation of fear will interfere with the surrender of
any medium's spiritual energy, and make the delivery of spirit-messages
impossible. But previous to this
the forces of evil had already tried to exert their harmful influence upon
Abraham.
When, at God's command, he had slaughtered beasts and divided them,
"birds of prey" descended upon the carcasses, "and Abraham drove
them away". The sacrifice had been offered with the object of opening up
a source of spiritual energy supplementary to that of Abraham, namely the
spiritual energy of the slain beasts. What
the Bible here speaks of as "birds of prey" were not actually birds,
but evil spirits materialized as such. Only
in that shape were they able to carry off the pieces of flesh.
Now you can understand what they had in mind.
They first tried to choke the source of spiritual energy that had been
opened by the slaughter of the beasts, and next, to check the flow of Abraham's
own spiritual energy by inspiring him with terror.
The time chosen for Abraham's mediumistic activities was after dark,
because, according to immutable laws, light and heat have an adverse effect on
the required condensation of spiritual energy.
As you already know, the "smoking furnace" and the
"flaming torch" mentioned in the passage I have quoted, were spiritual
energy manifestations.
Moses too was a medium. It
was the spiritual energy liberated by him that shined in the bush like a flame,
his own spiritual energy being supplemented by that of the herd that he was
tending. This incident also occurred at night. The spiritual energy condensation took place in a bush whose
branches acted somewhat like a screen to hold the spiritual energy mass
together, much as this was effected by the screen of the "tent of
testimony" or is accomplished by the "cabinets" used in the
spiritualistic séances of today. The
bush also possessed spiritual energy of its own, which united with the other
spiritual energy.
In very ancient times mediums were called "seers" because they
generally possessed the gift of clairvoyance in addition to their other
mediumistic qualifications. The word prophet is of a later usage; such seers or prophets
were found everywhere.
When King Saul, in the company of his servant, sought his father's asses
which had strayed, the servant said, "There is a man of God in this city, a
man who is highly respected. Whatever
he says is sure to come true; perhaps he can tell us something about the errand
we are on". And at this point
the Biblical account adds by way of explanation in 1st Samuel, "Formerly in
Israel, when a man went to consult God, he said, Come, and let us go to the
seer; for he that is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer. In this way Saul and his servant happened to go to the house
of Samuel.
Samuel was not only a medium himself, but was the head of the school of
mediums in Ramah.
End
of Excerpt
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The Development of Mediums
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