Excerpt from Chapter Twelve
of the Book
Spiritual Teachings and Universal Truths
Copyright © 1998 by Raphael. All rights reserved.
The
Development of Mediums
Whatever
is intended to serve a
particular purpose must first be suitably produced, prepared and adapted, as
machinery and utensils are constructed to meet the ends for which they were
designed.
Mediums are the instruments
of the spirit world and are intended to make possible communication between the
spirits and material beings. Therefore,
these mediums must be rendered capable of doing whatever may be necessary for
attaining that object. This is
accomplished by the development of their mediumistic powers.
Mediums are primarily sources of energy from which the spirits draw the
motive power for their work. It is
they who furnish the spiritual energy force.
To make the steps in the training of mediums as intelligible to you as
possible, I will again make use of a comparison.
To run your automobile, you require gasoline derived from petroleum.
When opening up the sources of the latter, the first step is to obtain
enough petroleum by drilling, to make its production profitable.
But the crude oil as it flows from the wells cannot be used as such.
It must first be refined and undergo a number of forms of treatment to
make it suitable for the various uses to which it is to be put.
In the same way the spirit world must provide for obtaining as great an
amount of spiritual energy as possible from the mediums.
This spiritual energy, however, is firmly united with the medium's body
and it is essential that it be so treated that it can be liberated freely and
lent to the spirit in the quantity required.
When dealing with artificial fertilizers, you speak of the solubility or
ability of being dissolved of their components.
You differentiate between total phosphorous, potassium, nitrogen and
calcium contents and the soluble percentage of these elements.
Only the latter portion is of value to you and it alone commands a price.
Similarly, only that spiritual energy is of value to the spirits that can
be released by reason of its ability to detach itself from a terrestrial body.
The more readily detachable a medium's spiritual energy, the greater the
amount which can be liberated and the more striking and comprehensive the
phenomena which the spirits can produce.
While speaking of the spiritual energy which is made available by the
training of the mediums and which is used by the spirits concerned, I must not
omit a very important observation. If
the activity of a spirit relates to the execution of a special command of God,
the spirit will have at its disposal more spiritual energy than is possessed by
all creatures on Earth put together. In
this case the spirit stands in a particular connection with the sources of all
spiritual energy force, God Himself, and can draw upon this source to the extent
required for carrying out the divine mission assigned to it.
If, for instance, God commands a spirit to impart instruction to mankind,
the requisite amount of spiritual energy is supplied to that spirit.
The spirit will, however, make use of your spiritual energy also, because
the spirit world employs this precious force as sparingly as you do your worldly
valuables. In this case you
reinforce the spiritual energy at the spirit's disposal with your own and enable
the spirit to prolong its disclosures beyond the time originally planned. To make use of an illustration taken from your daily
experience, it is like adding fresh water to the water of a cooling-jacket that
has been cooled off already, in order to increase the efficiency of the
cooling-jacket and the duration of the operation.
If, however, the good spirits are acting, not at God's command but upon
their own responsibility, even though with His sanction, the work they can
accomplish depends on the quantity of spiritual energy available from
terrestrial sources, that is to say, from the mediums.
The amount of spiritual energy that can be liberated differs with each
medium. With one, it barely
suffices for the simplest tasks of the spirit world, with a second it permits of
a much greater scope, while with a third it may be plentiful enough for the most
difficult undertakings in this field. Among
these is the corporealization of a spirit by means of a condensation of
spiritual energy so pronounced, that the spirit stands before you as a complete
body, differing in no respect from an ordinary human being.
It was in a similarly embodied state that three of God's messengers
appeared to Abraham, that the Archangel Raphael accompanied young Tobias, and
that Immanuel stood before His Apostles after His resurrection.
It rests primarily with the medium to make his physical spiritual energy
as readily detachable as possible. This
he can accomplish by steadfast fixity of purpose, or by what you call
"concentration". Only
persons who are able to fix their minds on a given subject and to divert their
thoughts from all worldly matters can become good mediums.
Your most powerful mediums are found among people in whose religious
training concentration is an important feature.
Of all nationalities, the Hindoos of India produce the most mediums
because their religion exacts of them daily practice in concentrating their
minds from childhood on. They call it "submersion of the spirit" and many of
them attain great perfection in this direction.
Since the human spirit employs only its own specific spiritual energy
during such periods of concentration, the physical spiritual energy is allowed
to rest in the meantime. No strain
is put upon it and because of this it may be liberated all the more readily for
the use of the spirit world.
The more often a person devotes time to such spiritual concentration, the
easier it is for the person to release the quiescent spiritual energy and to
surrender it by means of radiation.
The proceeding is like the behavior of a magnet.
The first time this is used, its power is very slight, not enough to
attract even the smallest particle of iron, but the more the magnet is used, the
stronger it grows and in the end becomes capable of sustaining relatively heavy
iron objects.
It is the same with the spiritual energy force, in the early stages of a
medium's development it is feeble, but the more often a person practices
concentration, the more powerful does the spiritual energy radiation suitable
for spiritual communication become.
Therefore, the primary object of
the training of mediums is to develop their ability to release as much spiritual
energy as possible by mental concentration.
The amount or the strength of this terrestrial spiritual energy is of
equal importance, both to all spirits good or evil.
A second problem in the training of the mediums is the adaptation of the
mediums' spiritual energy to that of the spirit which works through them.
To solve this problem is the task of the spirit world. The adaptation of the spiritual energy varies greatly,
according to whether it is to be used by superior or by inferior spirits.
A superior spirit must purify and refine all mediumistic spiritual
energy, or filter it, so to speak, whereas an inferior spirit does not find this
necessary, as its own spiritual energy is impure, and readily accommodates
itself to the unpurified terrestrial spiritual energy.
With some mediums there is still a third purpose to be achieved by
training. If a medium's entire
physical spiritual energy is to be used by the spirits in their work, this is
possible only if the medium's spirit leaves his body.
In this case, conditions must be made for the liberation of his spirit.
To accomplish this is not easy, and requires very difficult, time
consuming labor on the part of the spirit world.
During the process the medium's sensations are not unlike those of a
dying person. In the case of the
latter, death ensues from the separation of the spirit from the body, as you
know. As to the difference between
the body of a medium whose spirit has projected itself from it and a dead body,
I have already explained this to you. You
will remember that when the spirit of a "deep-trance medium" leaves
his body, it still maintains connection with the same by means of a band or cord
of spiritual energy, whereas in the case of the bodies of the physically dead,
death has been caused by the breaking of this cord.
From what I have said you must have a clear idea of the objective pursued
in the training given to mediums. This
objective includes the liberation of the greatest possible amount of spiritual
energy, the purification of the same for the tasks undertaken by the superior
spirit world and finally, the release of the spirits of deep-trance mediums from
their bodies.
The development of the faculties of clairvoyance and clairaudience
likewise requires training. Here
too, the spirit is released in part from the clairvoyant's body and the
spiritual energy which surrounds his or her spirit must undergo an appropriate
degree of purification, but such partial separation in the case of clairvoyants
differs radically from that in the case of the spirit of a deep-trance medium.
It is true that the clairvoyant's spirit is projected, nevertheless it
remains bound to the entire physical spiritual energy and to all parts of the
body. The spiritual energy merely
expands, to use an everyday term and by its expansion allows the partial
projection of the spirit. With a
clairvoyant, a separation of the physical spiritual energy from the spirit does
not take place.
With a deep-trance medium the entire physical spiritual energy, except
for a spiritual energy cord, is separated from the spirit, which is thereby
set free, being able to leave the body and to travel for great distances from
it, thanks to the high elasticity of that cord.
When the medium's spirit has left the body its place is taken by a
different spirit, which proceeds to deliver its messages.
With clairvoyants this is not possible, because in their case no
different spirit can enter, seeing that their own spirit is still united with
the whole physical spiritual energy of their body and that, in consequence, no
space is left available for occupation by a different spirit.
In the case of the clairvoyants, there is a close union that is
maintained between their own spirits and the spiritual energy of their bodies
and in that of deep-trance mediums an almost complete liberation of the spirit
from the physical spiritual energy.
With the clairvoyants, it is their own spirit which tries to see and
hear, with the deep-trance medium, the medium's spirit surrenders its place to
another spirit, allowing the same to manifest itself through the medium's body
by means of the utilization of the physical spiritual energy remaining.
There are, however, clairvoyants who are also trance mediums, of either
the part-trance or the deep-trance type.
You will readily understand that the spirit world has varied and
difficult work to perform in educating and perfecting the mediums.
You can, of course, form no conception of what it "costs" the
spirit world, to use a worldly term, to train mediums.
How much power, how many precious remedies are consumed in the process.
Spiritual operations, often much more difficult and serious than those
undertaken by surgeons upon terrestrial human bodies, are necessary.
Many mediums have inner defects that must first be cured before their
training for the part can begin.
Spirits have their instruments and medicines, just as Earthly surgeons
have theirs for the operations that they undertake, because with them there is a
spiritual counterpart for everything that you possess in material shape.
It goes without saying that spirits are never ill and never require
operations or treatment, they use their ample knowledge and resources only on
behalf of the incarnate Creation, to cure humans and beasts and to educate
mediums to serve as vehicles for communication with the spirit world. They too, have specialists in all departments.
They have their chief and assistant physicians and workers trained in the
most varied duties. They have a
great store of spiritual instruments, anesthetics, stimulants and medicines, all
of which find employment in the education of the mediums.
Consequently, the number of spirits that take part in the training of a
medium to serve the good cause is very great.
Just as a definite duty is assigned to each assistant at an operation
conducted by human beings, while a medium is being trained, each spirit
connected with the process has its special work to do.
Everything is beautifully systematized.
Mediums while under going their course of preparation are in good hands,
provided that they place themselves at the disposal of the good spirits, that
they shun all evil and walk in the light of God.
No one needs to be alarmed at
witnessing what goes on during the training of a medium, particularly during
that of a deep-trance medium. Everything
follows fixed laws. The good
spirits are the best friends you have and you have nothing to fear from them.
The training of mediums is accomplished most speedily at the so-called
spiritualistic séances. On this
account and in view of the great importance of such training I will go into
great detail as to the way in which these séances should be held.
At the same time I will give you the reasons for the particulars which
must be observed on such occasions. I
will also explain to you the things that happen at these séances in the course
of a medium's training.
A Holy Séance and
the Development of Mediums
(1.) When a group of
sincere seekers of God and the Truth has decided to unite in an effort to get
into communication with the good spirit world, the first thing to be determined
upon is the place at which its
meetings are to be held regularly. This place should be chosen so as to ensure the greatest
possible privacy. You too, when
conducting the more important of your worldly affairs, are careful to provide
against intrusion and this is more essential when the question at issue is the
establishment of a purely spiritual bond, which would be much more susceptible
to disturbing influences than would any worldly undertaking.
(2.) The best time for such meetings
is in the evening after eight o'clock, when the day's work with its worldly
cares and worries is over and people can devote themselves to calm reflection.
(3.) Generally
speaking, séances should not be held
more than twice a week.
(4.) Before the
meeting, the premises should be thoroughly aired to rid them of all vapor,
tobacco smoke and stale air, because the spiritual energy power of the
participants is greatly lowered by a polluted atmosphere and in consequence, the
spiritual energy radiation, which is so important to the spirit world, is
obstructed.
(5.) To keep the air
pure a large bowl of fresh water
is placed in the room; this absorbs a
part of the air that becomes contaminated in the course of the séance.
(6.) Upon the table
at which you will sit are placed for each of you a few sheets
of paper and a pencil.
(7.) Immediately
before the opening of the séance you
must not have conversation about material or worldly subjects, but must
concentrate your thoughts and dismiss all purely worldly matters from your
minds. Remember that it is for the purpose of serving God that you
have met.
(8.) The
place chosen by each of you at the first meeting should be regularly occupied
by you thereafter, because the spiritual energy radiation that varies with each
of you must gradually be brought in a certain equilibrium.
For this reason those of you who are present should seat yourselves
alternately according to sex, because the spiritual energy of the male is
preeminently positive, while that of the female is negative and to offset one
with the other is the best way of establishing an energy balance.
However, this alternate seating arrangement is not imperative, it merely
facilitates the balancing of the spiritual energy for producing an effective
current. A change in the order of
seating after this has been adopted should be made only in response to an order
to that effect from the spirit world, transmitted by a trained medium or by a
medium undergoing training.
(9.) If there is a
musical instrument like a piano or an organ in the assembly room, it
is best that the meeting be opened with a spiritual song, sung to
instrumental accompaniment. For
want of anything better, a recorded hymn or song may be played.
The singing and playing of a beautiful song inspires your minds with
harmony and turns your thoughts to higher things.
Such music is also a good safeguard against the influence of the world of
evil spirits, which will try to force their way into your meeting for the
purpose of obstructing and disturbing your efforts because evil is discord and
does not feel at home in surroundings in which the harmony of lofty thought and
sentiment finds expression in song and words.
That was why, as the Bible relates, the evil spirits departed from King
Saul whenever David played the harp before him and sang psalms.
(10.) After the
singing and/or the playing of the song is over one
of you must say a simple prayer of your own composing.
Should you be too bashful to deliver this without the aid of notes,
you may write it down beforehand and read it out loud with due reverence.
Every one of you who attend these meetings should take your turn at
offering a prayer.
(11.) Following the
prayer, one of you must read a truthful
passage from the Old or the New Testament, which must be discussed by
everyone present. The aggregate
time given to the song, the prayer, the reading and the discussion should be
half an hour.
(12.) At the
termination of the discussion, all of you must join hands, the light being
dimmed as much as possible, each of you laying your right hand over the left
hand of your neighbor. This is
called "forming a chain", and is necessary in order that the
spiritual energy force of each of you may be united into a single current, just
as separate lengths of wire must be connected whenever it is desired to pass an
electric current over a line. It
must always be kept in mind that the ability of the spirit world to perform its
work at a séance depends on the strength of the spiritual energy current and
that the efficiency of the spiritual energy is greatly enhanced by dimming the
lights.
The formation of the chain also has a highly symbolic significance,
because just as you join hands and thereby become linked outwardly into one
unit, so you must be of one mind and one soul among each other.
You must love one another as spiritual brothers and sisters, help one
another, forgive each other's faults and banish from your minds everything that
might disturb the internal harmony of the group.
It was for the reasons I just mentioned that the early Christians used to
join hands when they gathered together for worship.
They in this way sought to typify unity of mind, but primarily they
strove to create a powerful spiritual energy current in order to enable the good
spirit world to deliver its messages.
The "chain" should be maintained for fifteen minutes.
During this time you
all must strive to keep your minds concentrated, to exclude thoughts of all
worldly subjects and to have nothing but good thoughts.
To this end you may engage in introspection, review your own past in this
life, your shortcomings, your relationship with God and with your fellow humans,
your sins of omission and the like. You
should give thanks to God for all the blessings you have received, praise and
exalt Him, and reverently ask Him to be allowed to communicate with the good
spirit world. You may include in your prayer anything that will promote
your spiritual welfare.
(13.) When the time
allotted to the "chain" has elapsed, the leader of the assembly asks
that it be broken. Each of you should now pick up the pencil before you and lay your hand
with the pencil in it lightly on the sheet of paper in front of you.
When doing this you must have the strength of mind not to write of your
own volition, all the while keeping your hand relaxed so that it will yield to
any motion which may be imparted by the spirit world.
At the first few séances the available spiritual energy force is usually
very small in amount and the obstacles encountered by you are very serious.
Everything is still too new to you.
You will find it difficult to keep your thoughts collected and you might
fall into a state of tense expectation. It
is precisely this tension which most of all prevents the liberation of your
spiritual energy, as I will explain later. In addition, you are like a new, unused magnet, which
develops strength only through repeated use.
However, it might happen that your mediumistic development is much
further advanced than you yourself realize.
If this is the case then it may be that the workings of the spirit world
will manifest at the very first séance. You
may feel a pulling at or stiffening of the hand which holds the pencil and which
then begins to move. You must not
give the slightest resistance to this impulse, but must allow the hand to yield.
At the first few séances nothing more convincing may be executed with
the pencil by the spirit world than some straight lines, curves, circles or
other elementary attempts at writing, before a letter, a word, or a sentence is
formed. This is because the
spiritual energy force released by all of you present is not yet powerful enough
and primarily because the spiritual energy power of the medium in the making is
still in its initial stage. Practice
in writing will progressively strengthen this power.
If the workings of the spirit world are manifested in this or in some
other way, the great obstacle, originating in the tense attitude of those of you
present will now make itself felt. Some
of you will watch with the greatest intentness to what is happening to the other
person.
Tense expectancy, however, always represses your spiritual energy
radiation, just as if you were listening intently to someone, you would
involuntarily hold your breath. This
diminishes your spiritual energy current and adds to the difficulties of the
spirit world, this would be similar to the way even the best engineer cannot
make his machine run properly if deprived of all or of a large part of his
energy.
Fear, fright, distrust, doubt and all other forms of inward opposition
exert upon the spiritual energy current
an effect as unfavorable as that produced by mental tension. If you, having such feelings, take part in a spiritualistic
meeting, you not only fail to release any spiritual energy force yourself, but
you interrupt the current liberated by the others. Mediums can tell at once when there is someone present who
acts like an extraneous, obstructive body and are justified in demanding your
exclusion until you have adopted a different mental attitude.
Whenever at your spiritualistic gatherings, there is a lack of harmony of
thought and feeling, there can be no homogeneous spiritual energy current and
the successful outcome of your meeting becomes problematical, if not impossible.
This explains why "scientific" committees that experiment with
mediums often meet with little or no success.
The mediums, who as you know, are the sources of power for the
manifestations of the spirits, feel discouraged and nervous when surrounded by
an atmosphere of distrust. They
realize all the while that their investigators consider them capable of
committing fraud and that they have no faith in the thing itself.
Sensations of this kind are bound to check the release of energy on the
part of the mediums, if not to prevent it altogether.
That is a law of Nature and incidentally, it is the same law as that
which causes the blood to leave your cheeks when you are seized with fear and to
rush to your inner organs, making you turn pale.
What happens is that your spiritual energy as it retreats inward, draws
the blood to your heart.
How unjustly do scientists so often judge a medium's failure to meet
their tests. They would do better
to consider the obstacles placed in the way of mediums as sources of power for
the spirit world, more particularly by the scientists themselves, who need only
remove these obstacles in order to obtain a satisfactory demonstration of the
ability of spirits to make themselves manifest.
It is true that the good spirit world very rarely engages in
communications which do not deal exclusively with the purposes of good but which
serve merely to satisfy scientific inquiry, if not sheer curiosity.
The latter is the province in which the low spirit world is especially
active and in which, unfortunately, it often causes great harm.
Those of you who attend good spiritualistic séances should constantly
remember that it is your duty to banish all doubt and distrust from your minds
and to await what may happen with the utmost patience and composure.
Whenever during the course of a séance you feel an inner impulse to
write down a thought that arises within you, you must do so.
In time you will learn to distinguish between your own thoughts and those
which are inspired, because the thoughts instilled by the spirit world will
force themselves upon you insistently as you try to dismiss your own and will
keep on recurring, try as you will to disregard them.
If anyone present should feel dizziness or heaviness in your limbs, if
your head is turned from side to side, or if your body should perform motions
inexplicable to you, it is a sign that the spirit world has taken you in hand.
These motions of your body are most evident in you who will become
"deep-trance mediums". The
back and forth, up and down contortions of your body are connected with the
release of your spirit from your body. Your
physical symptoms exhibited during this process are often alarming to those who
witness them because they are a sort of death struggle, though there is no pain,
discomfort or danger to you. All
alarm on this account is groundless, because everything happens according to
established laws.
The most difficult period of a deep-trance medium's training is the stage
that is known as the "semi-trance" or "part-trance".
Your own spirit has not yet been completely liberated and has not left
your body, while a different spirit is already making use of the same for its
manifestations. Your spirit, being
still present, hears the words spoken by the different spirit and you are easily
led to believe that these words and thoughts are your own.
This brings about the danger of misunderstanding the entire proceeding
and of regarding the manifestations as self-deception.
Also, it may easily happen, that your own spirit breaks into the
communications being delivered by the different spirit, a proceeding that
naturally awakens doubt among the others present.
It might seem at first glance that the different spirit would do better
not to attempt to deliver its messages until your training was complete, thereby
avoiding unpleasant consequences like those just described, but the reasons
which impel the different spirit to communicate through those of you who have
reached only the "part-trance" stage are so important, that it will
sooner accept all the disagreeable happenings than postpone its communications
until you have completed your training, because it is precisely during the early
stages, when no fully trained medium is available at the meetings, that you
require instruction and enlightenment on too many points to permit a
postponement until a later date. What
you are taught at the very beginning is so important to you that the imperfect
manner in which the messages are transmitted is regarded as a much smaller
problem than would be a total neglect of instruction.
Your transition from the "part-trance" to the
"deep-trance" stage is generally of relatively short duration provided
that you will make efforts to progress within yourself and to combat your human
failings. As soon as you have reached the "full-trance"
phase, you are entirely unaware of what the different spirit is saying or doing.
For those of you who are seeking in good faith to communicate with the
Hereafter, the most serious obstacles of all are the ones put in the way by the
evil spirit world, because in this case as in all others, Evil does its best to
prevent the accomplishment of Good. It
neglects no means of trying to divert you from your purpose, beginning by
instilling into you the idea that the whole process is one of self-deception,
auto-suggestion or hypnosis and doing its best to dissuade you from engaging in
matters which will expose you to ridicule.
The evil ones will have accomplished much if they succeed in arousing
serious doubts in you or another as to the truth, genuineness and worth of your
cause. For this purpose they also
often exploit the most trivial superficial pretexts, especially minor errors and
shortcomings, which are bound to happen as long as you are human.
The evil spirit world likewise tries to terrify you who are being
educated as clairvoyants, by showing you the most abhorrent monstrosities,
grimacing likenesses of the Devil and other sights of that sort, in order to
induce you to discontinue your training and to abandon your cause.
Naturally, people who devote themselves to a low form of spiritualism are
spared these demonstrations, because spiritualism of this type is a connecting
link with Evil, which consequently has no reason or desire to divert mankind
from its pursuit.
End
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