Life and the Afterlife Explained from the Other Side

Centre of Spirit Silver Birch quotations

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Spiritualist journalist Maurice Barbanell (1902-1981) was also the trance medium for the transcendental communicator known as 'Silver Birch.'  In this article are shared some excerpts of Silver Birch's channeled wisdom.  The source book is The Silver Birch Book of Questions & Answers (1998) compiled by Stan A. Ballard & Roger Green.  The passages are preceded by headings stating the topic of each quotation and/or the question associated with the response.  
 
The discourses of 'Silver Birch' show a simplicity that prompted Hannen Swaffer in his Foreword for Teachings of Silver Birch (1938) to recall that a minister instructed to present his most difficult theological questions "came away confounded.  Silver Birch had made difficult theology too simple for a theologian."  Commentary of Silver Birch is also included in several previous blog articles (1, 2, 3). 

 

Silver Birch is among the transcendental communicators to express that there are people living on Earth unable to develop a full spiritual understanding of life with some individuals equating success merely to wealth and material interests.  Silver Birch affirmed an eventual expansion of spiritual knowledge among the whole of mankind.  There is the quotation in Teachings of Silver Birch: "I, like many others, have come nearer to the vibrations of the earth to help to push forward that great new world which waits just round the corner . . . "; and in Philosophy of Silver Birch (1969) there is the declaration: "I would strive to manifest love, never to reproach with anger, and prove by precept and example that I was what I claimed to be—a messenger of the Great Spirit."

The following excerpts are in chronological order as presented in The Silver Birch Book of Questions & Answers.

  

God — the 'Great Spirit'

Q: How would you describe God?

A: It is impossible to give you a complete picture.  God is infinite.  All language, concepts and pictures must be finite.  The lesser cannot include the greater.  You can obtain some idea of what the Great Spirit is like by looking at the Universe.  See how it is regulated by natural law, where provision has been made for every facet of life, even though these manifestations are multitudinous in their variety.  Whether it be minutely small or majestically mighty all that lives, moves and breathes, all that exists, are controlled by natural law.

Nothing is outside the orbit of natural law.  The seasons follow one another, the earth rotates on its axis, the tide ebbs and flows.  Whatever seeds you plant, what will grow is contained within it; it will be true to its nature.  Law reigns supreme.  Every new discovery, whatever it may be, wherever it may be, is controlled by the same natural law.  Nothing is forgotten, nothing is overlooked, nothing is neglected.  What is the power responsible for it?  It is infinite.  It is not a magnified man, the Jehovah of the Old Testament.  It is not a deity who is full of vengeance and sends plagues because of displeasure.  It is not a capricious, wrathful deity.  History and evolution show that the world slowly moves forward, upward, revealing that the power behind it is beneficent.  So gradually you get this picture of infinite love and wisdom that rule all, that govern all, that direct all and are within all.  And that I call the Great Spirit.

Jesus — (the Nazarene)

Q:  Would it be possible by automatic writing or some other means to tell us what Jesus said?

A: I don't know.  The difficulty is that no one recorded the utterances of the Nazarene at the time and so memory would have to play its part.  His main teaching was the gospel of love.  "Love thy neighbour as thyself," "Do good to those who hurt you."  Love is the fulfilling of the law.  What else is required to help mankind?  Love is the highest expression of the spirit.  Love is what the Great Spirit has to offer.  Love is what we offer you.

The object of the Nazarene's mission was to demonstrate spiritual reality.  If the Nazarene were to appear in your world today and to repeat what he said 2,000 years ago, I doubt if anybody would listen.

Q: Are Christ and Cosmic Christ, two aspects of the same existence?

A: You are allowing names to bother you.  There is the man Jesus, whose surname was not Christ, and there is what is called the Christ power, the power of the spirit.  If you differentiate between the man and the power that animated Him you have the clearest picture of all.

Purpose of Creation

A: A continual expression is many and varied manifestations of the consciousness which is the Great Spirit.

Circumstances at Birth

A: The soul registers its own evolution.  People in your world judge always by material standards and not by the expression of the soul.  To all, whether born in low or high estate, comes opportunities for service, for the soul to find itself and to express its own divinity.  That is the only standard of judgement.  All things judged in your world by a material standard, seem to produce inequalities, but the true compensation is the compensation of the soul, which learns to express itself through all difficulties.

Evolution

Q: Is it not a fact that, as individuals progress, they tend to become merged into group personalities, losing their own identity in that of the group?

A: Not as far as I know.  What does happen is that, in order for certain work to be accomplished, those who are of one mind pool their knowledge and their resources, allowing one to act as their spokesman on behalf of the rest.  While that happens, they all sink their identity into one, but that is only temporary.

Spiritual Entities of Higher Spheres

Q: Those high spirits with whom you take counsel, do they sometimes come here?

A: No.  They are all links in a great chain.  As my medium is a link between you and me, and I am a link between you and those beyond me, so they are links between me and those who are beyond them.  So it stretches into the inner realms of spirit. much further than any eyes can reach.

Spiritual Revelation

Q: Is the spirit world planning a further revelation by sending another teacher like Jesus?

A: Different methods are being used to suit the different needs.  You must remember that your world has become more complex, more interdependent, and more channels of communication have had to be opened.  We have to meet with different temperaments and different habits, thoughts, ways and modes of life.  Our message has to be adapted to national environments and characteristics, to racial habits.  It has to be given in the language and the limitations of a variety of people.  But behind the focus of the power is the same driving force.

Fulfillment

A: If you can help just one soul to find itself, if you comfort only one mourner, if you heal only one sick person, then the whole of your earthly life has been justified.  How privileged you are to be aware of the tremendous power that is around and about you, that enfolds you, guards you, directs you and ensures that you will continue to unfold your latent divinity and the gifts which are your cherished possessions.

Divine Justice

A: Your world for too long has been deluded with the idea that the ones who call themselves religious possess a spiritual advantage over their fellows.  That is not axiomatic.  You are not the spiritual superior of your fellows because you believe in certain theological doctrines.  The only test which is applied is the test of daily life.  Your spiritual nature is exactly what you made it to be, and there are many materialists and atheists and rationalists and agnostics who are the spiritual superiors of thousands who think they are amongst the elect because they have bowed the knee in homage to the Great Spirit and accept certain doctrines.  The test is not what you believe, but what you have done, otherwise there would be a complete mockery of divine justice.

You cannot limit divine justice.  Being divine it will operate, just like nature, irrespective of what you wish, think or desire.  You cannot make comparisons between divine and human justice.  Human justice is fallible, makes mistakes, the innocent is sometimes guilty and the guilty is sometimes innocent.  Being human you must err, because you cannot be infallible.

The Reaction of Anti-Spiritualists Who Find Themselves in the 'Spirit World' after Earth life

 

A:  It is a complete overthrow of a lifetime of philosophy and they cannot understand it.  They think that there must be something wrong with the universe because it does not agree with their conceptions, which they had proved most logically and most scientifically.  And so the adjustments have to be made and there are long arguments and discussions.

Other Side: where is it?

 

A: It is the invisible and the inaudible side of the world in which you live.  You are as much now in the world of spirit as you ever will be.  You will not go there when you pass from your world, you are in the spirit world now.  You cannot register it unless you have developed the gifts of the spirit so that you can tune in to all its vibrations and frequencies, or whatever word you care to use.  It is not another world.  It is an integral part of the universe of which earth is but one aspect.

Reincarnation

Q: Does the soul know when it is about to reincarnate?

A: The soul knows, but cannot express itself through the mind.  The Soul, which is the Great Spirit, expresses itself through all eternity, gradually, step by step, and at any stage there is a vast portion still not expressed.

Spirit Guides/Guardian Angels

Q: Does every human being have a spirit guide?

A: From the moment of conception and even before that, there is attached to the incarnating soul someone who volunteers to act as his guardian.  "He has given His angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in Thy ways" is a literal truth.  The guardian will maintain to the best of his or her ability the function assumed until the time comes for you to cross the border.  The task becomes easier when you are aware of the guardianship; it becomes difficult when you are unaware of it.  There is only one guide, but many helpers.  The guardian angel knows before he assumes his task what lies ahead of him and does not have a free choice in the matter either.  Not everyone can say I will be the guardian to this or that person.  Ours is a very organised world. 

Infant Prodigies

Q: Will you explain infant prodigies?

A: There are three kinds.  Some are incarnated souls with a memory of past experiences to help.  Others are mediums subject to spirit influence, albeit unconsciously, and therefore receptacles of much learning, wisdom, knowledge and truth from our world.  The others are geniuses who are advanced guards of evolution.


Sin in the Ascended Realm

Q: Is it possible to sin in the world of spirit?

A: Of course it is possible to sin in our world.  The sins of the spirit world are the sins of selfishness, but in our world they are speedily revealed.  They are known as soon as the thought is in the mind, and the effect is seen much more quickly than it is in your world of matter.  It registers on the one who commits the sin and makes him spiritually lower than he was before.  It is difficult to define more clearly in your language what these sins are, except that they are sins of selfishness.


Survival of the Strongest

Q: How can this be applied to human and spiritual matters?

A: Have you heard of symbiosis?  Isn't that a law of nature?  And isn't it a fundamental law that co-operation existing in nature enables nature to fulfill its purpose?

The tree absorbs the poisons in the atmosphere, purifies it, and enables you to be healthier. Is that strength, or is it not harmony and co-operation at work?


Spirit World

Q: Why are there variations in mediumistic description of the spirit world? 

A: You have to realise that we live in an infinity world and thus there must be an infinite variety of experiences for its dwellers.  Life in our world is graded spiritually and thus there are differences of experiences for all who are here.

Anyone communicating with you can transmit only what he or she has experienced at that time.  With progress, that soul will move to another plane of being which can cause him or her to revise an opinion previously held.

So it depends on the evolution of the communicator as to what pictures are being transmitted to your world.  You must remember that the closer the communicator is to your world, the more limited is the ability to express what is higher in the scale of spiritual values which he or she has yet to attain.

My advice is always the same.  Treat every communication from our world with reason.  If your commonsense says, "No, I cannot accept this," then reject it.  We are not infallible.  We have not attained perfection, because that requires eternity.  The process, as I have already said, is infinite.


Vegetarianism

Q: Shall we, after we pass on, be punished for having eaten animal food?

A: When you have reached that stage in your evolution when you know it is not right to eat the lesser creation of the Great Spirit, then you inflict on yourself a punishment for doing that which you know to be wrong.  If you have not reached that stage of evolution, then your soul is not yet aware that it is wrong and there will be no punishment.  Always there is a price to be paid for knowledge.  That price is responsibility.

Q: Would this be a happier world and would people become heathier if they were vegetarians?

A: I will answer the question by saying that in my view the answer must be "Yes."  From many points of view meat eating is deleterious.  These points of view include physical, mental and spiritual aspects.  Not only is the moral question involved, the health question is involved too.  From the spiritual point of view I would go so far as to contend that, with the evolution of the race, vegetarianism will become the increasing diet of larger numbers of people.


War

A: The Great Spirit, with infinite wisdom and love, has created earthly children and given them some free will.  The Great Spirit has also arranged the whole of their minds, spirits and bodies so that they can unfold the divinity that lies within them which, in full flower, can provide infallible signposts as to how individuals should live.  The Great Spirit could have created all the earthly children as marionettes, puppets, whose actions would be strictly regulated with no power of choice, no freedom.  But you cannot have free will without, at the same time, the responsibilities of your actions.  If you have the choice to do good, you also have the choice to do evil.  Good and evil are opposite sides of the same coin.  So are love and hate, light and dark, storm and peace.  This is a polarity.  Yours is the choice as to which it should be.  So you must come back to the motive and ask: "Why do people wage war?  What is it that they seek to share in common?  Or is it to gain domination over others?"  You must answer these questions.  It is your world.  You can make it a paradise or a hell because you have the means and the choice to do so.

Q: I cannot — a single person cannot — do that.

A: Your world is made up of an aggregate of single units.  The more single units are determined to abolish greed and rapacity and cruelty and despotism, the more they are likely to succeed as their numbers grow.  Your responsibility is your life, your actions, your words, your thoughts.  Nobody will ask you to pay the price or to receive the reward for what others have done.  That is the law.  There will be for a long time, outbreaks of war somewhere because man has not learned a simple truth.  All are part of one spiritual family.  Though you may destroy bodies you cannot destroy spirits.  We are not responsible for man's inhumanity to man.  This is cause and effect in operation.


Youth and Drugs

Q: In dealing with the question of young people on LSD who were becoming possessed of harmful entities, the guide said:

A: Unfortunately some of these drugs open a psychic centre that can reach out no higher than the lowest astral field surrounding your earth.  The beings who can invade them are like themselves, often drug addicts, or alcoholics seeking satisfaction because their unevolved state chains them.  They are not free.  The healing power is the catalyst.  This can help to clarify the whole complex situation created by physical, spiritual and astral conditions getting mixed up.