Q. Why did not the angelic helpers prevent the deportations and the worse precedent happenings in Belgium and elsewhere?

 

P. The Angels can only work to the extent to which men enable them to act by their appeals and sympathies. The force generated by the whole people was great enough to permit of the

 

Mons manifestation. The force generated by these poor mothers was not sufficient to overcome the destructive force that came out against it; just as black clouds of chemical fumes would darken the petals and blot out the fragrance of fields of lilies-of-the-valley— this is but a simile. I can say more, but you could not bear it. There is, however, a silver lining even to this blackest cloud. God bless and keep us all!

PHILEMON.

 

 

February 1917.

Philemon greets you.

 

Q. Do you know how grateful we are for this intercourse with you?

 

P. It is a privilege of which I gladly avail myself.

 

Q. Shall we continue to question, or will you speak to us?

 

P. Question me. That is the better method for yourself; it shows what you are ready to receive.

 

Q. Is there nothing on this earth we can do for you? You have done so much for us!

 

P. There is nothing you can do for me but that which is really everything—give me your loving thought. Why do I ask this? Because human love bridges, as with a span of light, what were otherwise the dark abyss between the seen and unseen worlds.

 

Q. Will you tell me something of the nature of the transition from the seen to the unseen world?

 

P. The nature of the transition varies in each case. I will tell you about myself. I fell into unconsciousness, and discovered that the two ends of the thread of severed consciousness were held together by a super-consciousness.

 

I fell into earthly oblivion, but awakened to full awareness in another set of surroundings. I was a spirit, among spirits—some clear and perfectly defined, others as it were in a fog. I did not then know that I was "dead." But I wondered at the fog-bound friends whom I knew so well, yet could not see. Later I discovered that the fog-bound spirits were incarnate friends. The clearly defined beings were the "dead," old college friends. "Khaki" and my mother were the first who made me realise I was a spirit among spirits—I now think I "died" twelve hours before my body ceased to function, because I went to all the dear ones, and could only see them as in a mist. Directly my body ceased to function, I escaped from the earth and saw the friends of my youth, "Khaki," and my mother, and then I knew that the change called death had supervened. I went to all who really loved me, not to those who just admired or respected me; and, dear friend, the latter were, they are, the majority. In the state between the two worlds no mistakes are made. The spirit follows, is drawn, by the bands of love.

 

Q. Were you able to help poor Mme. L. last week?

 

P. I only succeeded in dulling the pain, so far as I know. I reduced the angry vibrations to waves of rhythmic harmony, so I know the pain was lessened and the nerves stilled and tranquillised. I left a helper who will, I trust, stay to the end. I do not see a speedy termination, and I would leave the issue in the hands of the Father of Mercies. That is my decision after my visit. The suffering is not so real as it appears. Believe me, this is so. The daughter's love exaggerates every movement as a sign, an unmistakable evidence, of pain. Tell her, very gently, that the suffering is less, and will grow less rather than increase, but the self-control will lessen with the growing decline in strength. Let her remember this, or she will torture herself needlessly. Just one or two more questions. To-night I cannot stay long—there is a great call for help, and I shall try to be seen of all those of our communion who to-night will find a watery birth into the unseen. Now, is it not strange?—I shall not appear as an angel. I shall look a vigorous, venerable priest, and shall take them by the hand and greet them. I hope to have with me helpers who have gone through the same experience.

 

Q. Can you not take with you my brother to help?

 

P. The dear spirit brother you mention must do his own work in his own place. Later we may work together. He would know me. You see, the normal breaks the shock of the new experience. Some who know me, by picture or sight, cry out with delight at a familiar face. They forget that I "died." Then they cry, "Oh, you cannot be he! P. H. is dead! But you are so like him!"

 

"You are 'dead' too," I reply, "and I am he. I am P. H." We laugh, and then all goes well.

 

Q. Do they ask for cigarettes as stated in Sir Oliver Lodge's book, Raymond?

 

P. All the conditions are different, and our consciousness alone has remained unchanged. A man living in a submarine would not need submarine accessories on dry land unless his mind had become warped through long living under water. And no one wants the things when he realises their uselessness. The cigarettes and whisky-and-soda were dreams, realistic dreams. The medium was not subtle enough to be able to transmit Raymond's statements so as to be understood. In despair Raymond had to let it pass. But he does not stop at the ethereal whisky-and-soda and cigarettes, and those who object to the book have never given themselves the trouble to go beyond the, to them, objectionable materialism of the spiritual world. These objectors "spiritualise" matter to such an extent that they live in a universe as vague and as formless as a mirage.

 

Q. If morphia were a "required sedative," and a beautiful soul entered your world, i.e. the next condition to the physical, would it be given if the longing for it was very great?

 

P. Yes, and No. I should never have allowed either on earth. I would withhold both or their equivalents in any state of existence. But those who would administer either on earth need not kick against their use in the next stage on the grounds of incongruity. That is all artificial spirituality to the extent to which it is not a subconscious condemnation of such practices anywhere. I should prefer to keep the sufferer semiconscious until the spiritual faculties were sufficiently powerful to lift the soul into the condition where these pseudo-physical cravings would atrophy and fall away of themselves.

 

Music, its equivalent, is one of the safest and surest means to that end. Love, true, brotherly loving sympathy, in addition, would be necessary in order to feed the starved emotional nature, the main cause of all these cravings.

 

Q. How do you know of Sir Oliver Lodge's book Raymond?

 

P. I only know of Lodge's book what I get from you and others, but I know of the boys and men who slept here and in their dreams enjoyed banquets (they had starved on earth); and, remember, these dreams are often transmitted by mediums as well as the waking experiences of those who are here. Raymond will explain this to his father some day.

 

Q. Will you tell me what you feel about publishing a book like Raymond?

 

P. The impression which I have received of this book is that it is the brave effort of a loving soul recorded by a cautious yet fearless investigator; it resembles the necessary breaking up of the earth, in order, later on, to bring about the beauty and usefulness of smiling cornfields and vineyards. Raymond is an essential step in many persons' advancement at the present stage.

 

Q. But might not such a book encourage indiscriminate experiments and seances?

 

P. It is better to make mistakes than to do nothing. And I am speaking now, not of the expert, but of the average man, who has no true touch with the unseen world, does not even wish for it, until it conceals from sight and touch all that he holds dear. For such Raymond is a way towards the light.

 

God bless and keep you!                                               PHILEMON.

 

 

May 1917.

Philemon greets you.

 

Q. Do you sing in heaven?

 

P. May I smile a real old earthly smile? Do we sing in heaven? Why, my dearest friend, everything sings even on earth, but you cannot hear the singing nor the grass growing unless with a microphone. It is true, but mercifully we do not hear, because in an imperfect world, a world of tragic failure and shortcomings, we should catch more swan songs than hymns of joy and praise. In the more advanced realms the senses, as we understand them, are interchangeable. We hear with our whole being, and so on—we return to conditions on a higher rung of the spiral of life.

 

With you, music appeals only to the sense of hearing. You only hear music. We see music, we feel music as you feel the winds of heaven, we scent music as you perceive fragrances: you do not feel as a physical sense impression, or see, or sense the fragrance. Your musical souls have only the spiritual perceptions of these things. Our soul senses react all of them to music in a way of which I cannot give you the faintest notion.

 

Q. Is the veil between the two worlds getting thinner? And is it intended to grow thinner?

 

P. No to the first question, and No to the second.

 

"The thinnest veil of matter lies Between your world and ours, And even that is rent aside In life's deep, solemn hours."

 

Do you see the point of these lines? They contain the usual fallacy—attenuated, it is true, to the superlative degree. But the truth is, the Universe is one. The veils, the barriers, are formed by man's limitations. As these fall away, he sees deeper and deeper into the truth of things. The veil of matter is a figurative expression only. As men's senses grow keener and surer, the threshold of the seen advances, the line of the unseen retreats.

 

Q. Is it good for spirits who describe themselves as beings in darkness to try to get help from those on earth?

 

P. The ideally best does not obtain in any world with which I am acquainted practically. It is still ahead, for which I am profoundly grateful. It might be far better for these darkened ones to be helped from the other side, but they often get no help except through the incarnate, with whom they are in closer touch than they are with the disembodied.

 

This question, like all others, depends upon circumstances. Few are fit to undertake this work, and should not seek it of their own volition; but no request for prayer and help should be refused. On the other hand, to sit deliberately and invite that kind of visitant seems to me folly, if not even presumption.

 

Q. Do you often see Mr. Stead

 

P. I see Stead seldom. But when we do meet it is a soul feast. He has grown into an awe-inspiring, majestic spirit. He has shed the earthly trammels in a most strange and unusual degree. Stead shed them even on earth, and outlived much that some of us still carry with us through many stages of the new life. I look up to him with reverence, and he loves me and helps me in my work. But he is more universal than I am.

 

I cannot look down upon the world and see things happening, because I am not outside of or above it at present Stead is. I am in the middle only of the thought sphere and the emotion zone. I need earthly minds and intellects to name for me the correspondence of the colour sounds and waves.

 

Stead has been over much longer—also he has detached himself and hence can look down. In the midst of a battle one cannot see one's relation to the whole. I elect to stay for reasons given. I cannot have the advantage and escape its corresponding limitations.

 

Q. But do you get no rest—no repose from your labours?

 

P. My loving-hearted friend! I have renewed my strength as the eagles, that fly upwards to greet the sun. Yet I rest, as we rarely rest on earth after our first infancy.

 

Q. Have you anything corresponding to sleep?

 

P. There is here, as with you, an inner world of blissful peace and rest and joy which transcends our habitual enjoyment on our plane of comparative heavenly calm.

 

Q. Is there a transition, a sort of death, between your plane and the next?

 

P. I do not yet really know about this, as I have been so bent on doing all that I found at hand, needing attention. I am still but a newcomer in that strange world of which we sang:

 

"Heaven is our home."

 

I go. God bless and keep us all!

February 1917.

Philemon. How could you doubt my being here?

 

Q. Tell us, please, the meaning of—"And there shall be no night there."

 

P. The sun, as you see it, is the body of the real sun, which has also a soul body. By this I mean that the physical sun enlightens and vivifies the physical world. But the soul or mind of the sun is that which illumines and vitalises your mind, as the Spirit of the sun is the Holy Ghost to the spirit of man. There is action, with reaction; there is ebb where there is flow. "Endless day" is a verbal form expressing perfection, but it is only a poetical phrase. There are periods of retreat, of retirement within the heart of things, just as with you; but the periods are not of the same duration. We have a darkening which becomes our night, a silence which betokens the joy and duty of repose. Spirits rarely admit this, because they feel it cruel to needlessIy destroy cherished illusions which might be difficult to replace. Every simile we can use only conveys a partial truth.

 

Q. What is your outward appearance where you now are? And have you need of food?

 

P. Where I am I look and am a replica of my earth self. We take in nourishment as you imbibe air. And, its virtues assimilated, we expire the residue, as with plants on your earth. There are no gaps in evolution. Very, very slowly our heavenly bodies will drop obsolete organs, but where I am the process is so slightly advanced that outwardly I appear a perfect man as when on earth. (The word "perfect" should be "complete.") But in reality my astral body is but a shell compared with my old physical garment. Many of these spirits around me have outworn all but the form of humanity. They live in a body of light the rays of which fold round their forms and clothe them in living light. Every quiver of emotion, every thought of beauty, of aspiration towards perfection, changes the colours, scintillations, and folds of these living garments, so that we truly know as we are known. That is not my condition. I am, as yet, far from it. But I rejoice to know it awaits my progressing soul and evolving spirit. It was a knowledge of these glories which made St. Paul speak of our

 

light afflictions."

 

Q. Does the human form continue through all spheres?

 

P. Our real self is not even now human in form. It manifests through and in form, but is formless in essence, because it is non­material. But all consciousness, as I know it, manifests in form, and the Great Ones are sublimated human forms.

 

Q. Is the problem of evil now made clearer to you? Were you on the right lines?

 

P. You ask do I understand more clearly the origin and mystery of evil. Was I on the right lines when I held that man was evolving upwards, not that he had fallen from a high estate?

 

Roughly put, those were my views. Now I see I held only one aspect of truth. Both are true as it appears to me now. It was not falling in the moral sense. It was rather falling into the physical condition. The spirits going into the earth conditions had to take on denser and yet denser matter until the low, slow earth vibrations were reached. It was like gradually darkening a window so that the light within and the sun without were more and more barred ingress and egress. When the darkest point was reached, the spirit within and the God without worked sometimes in unison, sometimes hindered rather than helped by the indwelling soul of man, for the restoration of primal splendour; but the window is a living body, and the object appears to be to add to the God-consciousness in the Universe. And this brings me back to the idea I held that only through the choice of good and evil could intelligence be evolved that should companion and in some degree comprehend, as well as apprehend, the Parent-intelligence of the Whole. Otherwise I am no nearer.

 

Q. But what is the origin and first cause of evil?

 

P. I fear to give my answer, as you might regard it as a feeble evasion of the whole question. Evil begins with the first attempt at going away from God in the intellectual sense, the smallest departure from Him, and increases until we get to the hells you find upon and around your earth. Good is the return, during which you realise that your will is the Father's Will, and you cannot have any other. This lesson learnt, there is no more "going out." The fallen angels are still in darkness, not yet having learnt that lesson. They still seek self-expression apart from the Divine Will, and find supporters and victims in this and other worlds.

 

Q. Do they still find occasional adherents among the Heavenly Host?

 

P. I do not know whether they recruit the forces of evil from among the Heavenly Host, but I do know that the evil ones frequently see the disintegrating effects and final doom of evil persisted in, and through the intellect rather than the emotions return to the Right-hand Path.

 

Q. What of the Spirit Lord of this earth planet—is he not among the fallen?

 

P. The Planetary Spirit of this earth is struggling back to its place in the Hierarchy of Heaven.

 

Q. Is it a fact that this earth is at present wrongly polarised?

 

P. The polarisation of the earth is not wrong as things are now. It is orderly and sequential to its present stage of evolution. That is all I can give you on the subject at present. God bless and keep you!

 

PHILEMON.

 

 

February 1917.

Philemon greets you.

 

Q. Is it possible in sleep to go on to the plane where one becomes visible to one's beloved?—"materialised" in a perceptible, sensible form?

 

P. Earth-dwellers who love with an undying love, mournfully sigh in the words of the poet:

 

"Here in the body pent, Absent from thee I roam,"

 

and they do not know that in deep, unconscious sleep they and their beloved are together in a world, and in forms, as sensible to the senses of the soul as are physical world and form to the senses of the body. How else would there be instantaneous remembrance and recognition, even in cases where there has been the passing from infancy to full development, as with parents and young children?

 

Have I seen E. M. here on this side? I may say, indeed I have. Shall I tell you that I was—well, rather awed by her stateliness and intensity of purpose? She was not then looking for me. She passed as it were through me, beyond me, in her quest. And I knew where she was going and whereon she was bent. And I clasped my hands in my old way and prayed that she might realise her heart's desire. But I saw her again, and this time she saw me, and she rushed at me, not as the stately being who awed me before, but with the gladness of a child at seeing its father, and we were very happy. But these memories must fade with the dawning day, lest the earthly prison appear too dreary and too lonesome to be borne. But these memories are there, and are parts of the eternal or everlasting contents of the soul; and one of the joys of heaven will be the recovery of just these memories, these vital experiences which mean so much and yet have to die away in the light of "common day," as the stars faint from sight when the sun of everyday appears on the horizon.

 

Q. Why is it we retain no memory of the blessed experiences, yet brine, back such sad and painful memories, often of the old suffering, pain, and anxiety?

 

P. Have you ever assisted at the resuscitation of a drowning person? It frequently happens that the return to consciousness is most distressing and painful. I have known a man swear at his rescuer for bringing him back to "die over again." You see, the experiences of pain and suffering connected with our best-beloved have made their almost indelible impressions on the fabric of the mind, the memory of the earth experience. In these heaven experiences the spirit transcends this lower or mental plane, for the higher one of the spiritual intelligence. It has to return by the way it went out. The pictures of the heavenly realms fade out and the waking consciousness becomes aware of those deep impressions on what have often been called the tablets of the mind. These persist. The glories have died away.

 

Q. Are the appearances of Christ and the Saints, reported to have been seen by the faithful, projected by the minds of the latter, or are they real appearances?

 

P. It is very difficult to give an answer that covers all the cases. In all instances the vision is occasioned by some real wave of

loving interest on the part of some spiritual being. A slum-child recovering consciousness in an accident ward, seeing a beautiful lady bending over her, may imagine it is the Queen. This is one extreme. There are other cases where I should judge the experience to be an actual one, to emanate from the Being personified. You will notice one thing: the percipient, as a rule, clothes, fashions the visions along some lines of convention. Where this is not done—which is rare— what I have said does not so much apply. Bernadotte saw a representation of the Blessed Virgin, who sent her an answering thrill in response to her ardent faith. "According to thy faith be it unto thee," holds good despite certain elements of error and superstition.

 

God bless us, one and all!                                              PHILEMON.

 

 

March 1917.

Philemon. I am with you.

 

Q. What do you feel about women being admitted to the priesthood?

 

P. I still retain a sort of prejudice, perhaps, in favour of a male priesthood, to which women may contribute almost more than the priesthood—remember, I said a prejudice.

 

Q. Yet we are told, "in Him there is neither male nor female" does this not apply to priesthood?

 

P. The delicate adjustment of the means of communication is so easily jarred, that it is difficult to know where the hitch comes in. But the answering of questions always must be conditioned by the sphere of their application. I have hitherto dwelt on my world, my sphere, my present life. But when the questions deal with your world, your sphere, your life, they must meet those needs. Where is the priesthood of women to prevail? I feel at present that a female priesthood will fail as other priesthoods fail. I feel He did not intend the establishment of a Church and priesthood in the modern sense at all. To introduce good women into such a decadent institution as is the Church of to-day would degrade women without elevating the Church. This is your-world answer, not an answer which applies to an ideal world where the spiritual aspect is the predominant factor.

 

I just want to add that the Church of a few years hence will be utterly transformed, and then the Church of the future will return to its pristine form on a higher level, for progress is in the form of a spiral. The agitation for a female priesthood will hasten that day of reform; therefore I welcome and bless it.

 

The admission of women to the councils of the Church, as members of the Lay Council, would be productive of nothing but good. That is a different question altogether from the one of a female priesthood. The old bottles are ill fitted to contain the new wine. That is my sole objection. The new wine will be wasted and the old bottles shattered ere their full meed of service be yielded. That is the practical objection to the whole movement as matters stand. The reforms will come through the withdrawal of the spiritual elements, to such an extent that the body itself will break up, disintegrate. Women already are becoming the spiritual guides and teachers of the race. The two modern movements which, despite all errors and shortcomings, have prospered the most are the two which have accorded fullest and freest, nay, even perfect, equality to women: Spiritualism and the Salvation Army. Theosophy, though according equality to women, has taken to itself the deadly elements of a priestcraft, and is on the highway to decadence and consequent decay. As yet Spiritualism is free from those elements of disintegration.