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Psychic researchers from around the world have found the same gifts of mediumship and contacts with the world of spirit in the present-day world as have been displayed in the past by the experiences and writings of shamans, mystics, prophets, healers and seers. Now, as then, the only difference appears in the way various cultures and religions and their myths and legends depict and interpret what is seen and heard of the other side. Modern research into trance and higher states of consciousness is finding that religious experience includes or awakens the gifts of second sight and other paranormal faculties. Since these are similar the world over, regardless of culture and religion, we can conclude that they arise from the same source. It is time then for all our cultures and religions to come together at least to acknowledege the similarities and pool their knowledge, leading towards a unified and less contentious world.
However I have found in visiting different groups, sects and religions that many will not share the teachings of their sages and prophets with outsiders unless you convert to their faith. Others, although openly sharing the wisdom of their leader, will not allow you to present any other ideas or demonstrations within their organisations nor at their meetings and presentations, since they do not wish to contaminate the purity of their exclusive teachings. So such communities tend to become cultish and narrow-minded, living in a closed circuit forever replaying the same platitudes which the original teachings have now dissolved into. Yet other groups just want your money, and only allow you into their inner and higher teachings after many hard won and costly initiations and degrees, and continuing courses and seminars. Sadly some mediums have been tempted to do this - or rather, channellers have. The real truth lies within, and although many teachers and mediums do help us along the way at little or no cost, we have to do the inner work for ourselves, and no amount of initiations, gimmickry, gadgets, brain synchronisations or other distractions are really going to help us find ourselves! I have personally come across gifted healers, psychics and mediums who at the same time have a dark side, at one moment healing and giving accurate readings in a magnanimous mood, yet at other times displaying manipulative tendences or destructive telekinesis. Helena Blavatsky was like this, and so was Ted Owens, who could effect lightning strikes and rainfall and start forest fires by remote control, and he caused illness and even the death of those he was angry with. His psychic abilities have been covered in "The PK Man" by Jeffrey Mishlove. The author can be seen talking about his experiences with Ted Owens on YouTube. We cannot deny now that such abilities exist, but we should handle them with care. The churches were wrong if they said that all work with the spirits is evil, but we should heed the warning that some paranormal activity can be lethal. Also, many have turned to alcohol and drugs or become insane after becoming possessed by earthbounds or low level astral spirits.
I am in no way denouncing any particular religion, sect, group or organisation. There is a huge variety of spiritual beliefs and practices around the world. There are many paths towards development of spirituality and enlightenment and ethical behaviour, and who is to know which is the most direct, and closest to the truth. But we share one planet, and all of us come from the same spiritual origin. It is just that we wear different garments. But now the time has come for us to share this common ground, and move towards cooperation and away from competition and profit seeking. The work of our researchers has helped us in this task, by revealing what others have experienced of the world of spirit.
Frances Banks found that the mystics of earlier times provided clear accounts of their contact with spiritual intelligence beyond this world, but even they were unwilling to endorse and publicly share their experiences. Frances Banks, along with Spiritualists, does not share this sceptical point of view, nor does she share the religious taboo against psychic science and communicating with the spirit world. Because of this she was able to progress fast when she herself passed over into the world of spirit, and return so quickly to communiacte. Her studies on earth had taken her away from religious dogma and had prepared her for an active life when she passed.
While she was undertaking her research towards the end of her life here, she did not accept the orthodox viewpoint which opposed examining personal religious, mystical and psychical experiences. She writes "All this, in my opinion, represents a dangerous "blanket" technique. What else, one wonders, did the medieval convents and monasteries expect to happen in the circumstances provided. And surely their own psychology was defective in not recognising both the interim steps to the truly spiritual, and the individual differences which must characterise devotees."
Whatever our faith or philosophy, all of us can share this common heritage of perennial wisdom together with the gifts of the spirit, whether inborn or taught and developed. There is not time in one life to visit every sect and religion. Our own unique choice of spiritual path, or even a journey without direction, will lead us eventually towards the light, and our second sight if shared with others will help us all progress towards a world of peace, harmony and tolerance, embraced by the divine love-intelligence from which we have sprung. The work of Frances Banks here on earth and her communications from beyond have shown how this can and will happen.
"Frontiers of Revelation" examines every type of religious, PK, PSI and ESP experience, and quotes examples taken from 200 respondents who worked on her questionnaire. I will quote at random a few of the responses to illustrate the range of experience and phenomena covered in her investigation.
"I believe in the guidance and protection of a guardian angel and of spiritual presences - probably of those once living here, and now passed to another sphere and eager to help. I believe the veil between us and them is very tenuous and can easily be penetrated."
"In my experience there is ample evidence to prove that the faithful departed for whom the Church bids us pray only that they may rest in peace, are, in fact, very busy people, guiding, inspiring, guarding and consoling by whatever means they are able. Amongst those whose activities are evident today are, to my knowledge, archbishops, bishops, and saintly priests. They might have more rest, and certainly more peace, if our leaders and Christians in general would listen to their witness to the truth, instead of running way from them and thus thwarting their efforts to fulfil their trust. Our perversity disturbs that peace that we pray God to give them." Archdeacon Sharp.
"I have had occasions when I have been conscious of evil; also of possession in two or three cases I have met in this work. On two occasions, people whom I have known who had very probably committed suicide - were brought into my conscious knowledge in a very remarkable way. In neither case was I thinking of them specially, but one I had prayed for very considerably. I seemed to go to a place where each was imprisoned and I seemed to send loving thoughts, and it appeared as though they were released and started their upward journey with thanksgiving. One was a distant relative whom I had loved very much." A spiritual healer.
"I can recognise enemy services [negative or evil energies and intruders]. I think I always could [do so], but I had to train to cope. I have dealt with psychic attacks [from some sort of entity or thoughtform - a tulpa?], quite frequently and deliberately at one time. I have been trained to disarm it, when necessary to track it to its source - enter into combat, and disintegrate it." A trained practitioner.
"A belief in paranormal experience is an unsatisfactory and dangerous substitute for a belief in religious experience. Nevertheless, the two are probably related. Mystical experiences of God probably occurs through the same channels as an extrasensory or telepathic experience of another incarnate or discarnate mind. The danger of course arises from the fact that in telepathic and psychical intercommunication evil minds can and do intrude. I think the Church is very wise to discourage psychical research for these reasons, except among responsible people. Any sort of democratic approach to the subject [amongst the curious, ignorant and uninstructed]would be most unwise." A Christian doctor.
" About 30 years ago I was terribly worried and unhappy. I prayed for several days harder than I had ever done before. I awoke one morning with a feeling of ecstatic happiness that seemed to last about 10 minutes. I knew that love for me was behind all that was troubling me, and that it was just a period I had to go through. There was no intimation that I was being punished in any way, though there are things in my life that I have bitterly regretted and repented. It was rather the feeling that a child might have when being given a hard lesson by a loving father - or being taken to a doctor to be cured of some illness. I felt then, and logic has confimed this ever since, that the Love of God is for all men. I believe the only true failure in life is a failure in Love for our neighbour." A doctor.
"I willed to see a friend who had left and not written since appointed headmistress of a girls' boarding school. I saw her room in detail and colour, the girls' dormitories - and passed through the whole building. The following day I wrote my description and plan and sent it to her... Later I spent a weekend there and my seeing [remote viewing] was correct in every detail." An educator.
"Once in my study I fell asleep in my armchair. In our bedroom my wife had just gone to bed when she saw me or a shadowy form enter the room. Our pet Pekinese (Puff) growled at me. I was unaware of my escapade. On another occasion my wife has seen my spirit form lying prone about a foot above my physical body in bed. Once the seeming misty shape assumed a denser state, and a long tube of white substnace extruded from me and lay on the floor terminated by the form of a huge head and face, my wife observing the manifestation." A retired Brigadier.
"Belief in the reality of things spiritual makes orthodox presentation of them quite unacceptable, unsatisfying, and completely behind the times. In all humility I could say in the words of John Masefield, 'O Glory of the lighted mind, How deaf I'd been, how dumb, how blind.' Spiritually I feel immeasurably strengthened, so that the old form of religious acceptance is a thing of the past, but I am deeply grateful for the early discipline and experience of an orthodox upbringing, ungrateful though many of my answers [to the questionnaire] appear to be." Clergyman's daughter. This same lady was trying to circulate the parish magazine to new subscribers, and found that she was receiving help from the other side. " At one house the lady who opened the door, when asked whether she was Church of England, immediately said, 'No, she was a Spiritualist' and was about to close the door in the face of orthodoxy when with a friendly grin I said that 'so in a way was I, being greatly interested in Psychical Research.' I was then invited in, and in the course of our chat was asked my name (a somewhat unusual one), to be told that this lady had heard it (clairaudiently) in her home a day or two previously. [Back then] when her husband came home she had asked him whether he could link up this name with his acquaintances, but neither he nor the daughter when she came home from school, could do so.
"At another house I was greeted by a lady with asthma, and here soon found myself engaged in a very vital teype of conversation, on her doorstep, on Spiritual Healing. She suddenly said, 'Come on in and sit down, you must be the one'; and to clarify that strange remark told me that she was Church of England, but could not find what she wanted there. She had a Spiritualist friend who told her much about Spiritualism, but she could not sort thing out to satisfy her spiritual hunger in that sphere either. BUT a day or two before I turned up on her doorstep she had received a message (from the other side). through her Spiritualist friend to whom it had come through a sensitive [medium] telling her that a lady would be coming to her from the Church who would be able to help her from both angles. This started a strong friendship which lasted until she passed on about three years later." This lady gives a few more examples of help coming after praying for assistance or for healing. She comments "In the course of two years I visited over 600 houes in this area in my spare time, and my experiences, many of them similar to these, would fill a book."
Reviewed from "Frontiers of Revelation" by Frances Banks. Max Parrish, London. 1962. Comments from Richard R.
To be continued, with more examples of psychic faculties, and the implication of the findings of psychic research for the future of science and religion.
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