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==Heading==
===Topic: '''''Nature of Spiritualism'''''===
===Group: [[ABC Summaries]]===
==Facilitators==
===Teacher: [[Unknown|Ron Besser]]===
===TR: [[Ron Besser]]===
==Session==
===Faulting Spiritualism===
I am writing this in spite of what many might consider a subject too esoteric to bother with, but I will
remind all of you, that to have some understanding of the historical nature and origins of your
interest in spiritual affairs is worth the price to enrich your souls and learn to bear no ill will against
any brother or sister that has found what you have found in their own way.
In the 1930's Dr. William Sadler was beset with suspicions about the spiritual approach to himself
and family to help obtain and publish an epochal revelation. Only his wife, Lena, had sufficient
influence to persuade him, and along with the evidence of spirit’s description of the nature of the
Apostles of Jesus, did he finally become won over to facilitate the publication of the Urantia Book.
Dr. Sadler held that the public displays of spiritual contact through Spiritualism were almost always
fraudulent. In fact, only after the Midwayers section on Jesus appeared at his work place did he
accept that the epochal revelation was as it purported to be. Until then, the Doctor managed to file
petitions to the Midwayers asking for some other redemptive proof that the exercise he was taking
on that provoked his fears it was, at some level, an unexplained ruse.
Fear of being cheated of a real performance of spiritual contact, Sadler sought to undo those who
cheated the public about genuine contact with performances that had nothing to do with spirit
contact. With evangelical zeal Sadler would cooperate with friends who sought to unmask
performances at which it was claimed spirit arose and paraded miracles before the assembled seance
audience. And in most cases he and his friends did unmask fraud reinforcing the belief that true
spiritual performances were not easy to find and that the charlatans were aided and abetted by a
sensationalist media in a circus-like demonstration of irresponsible theatrics on their part..
Because Dr. Sadler had experience the LDS Church and had reasonable access to Mrs. White who
most probably used spiritual contact in some form of submissive mediumship, he was not entirely
inexperienced with the mysteries of the church and its knowledge of God directly spoken. He
worked as a medical doctor in one of her sanitariums that treated tuberculosis and educated persons
in hygiene and diet. His disquiet eventually arose with Mrs. White by what he deemed her hypocrisy
of acting to break her own rules and laws of behavior. In this manner, the Doctor, released himself
and his wife from her service. He left California to mid-America having formed a religious
philosophy that the spirit was more likely to work through the human mind rather than through the
human eyes. His Spiritualist friends, few in number but influential, demonstrated their faith in the
wonders of levitation with little concern for the power of spirit to move mountains beneath the
eyebrows of genuine thinkers. This too was a spiritual hypocrisy he had just freed himself from, and
he was determined to teach that the truth lay in the Bible and that it was demonstrated time and again
that it was the way unto the Lord.
When established in Chicago, his anti-Spiritualism campaigns included crusading friends like
Houdini, to unmask those cheating. We do not know for how long this man was under observation
by the universe administrators, but within a few years of establishing his medical practice in Chicago, his demeanor and his moral crusades provoked spirit to ascertain that he was an excellent
candidate to promote a revelation through him. Accordingly, they set in motion those serendipitous
meetings and causes that brought him into contact with a hand written revelation astounding
everyone who read its initial disclosures. But he had to be convinced he was not being duped.
Dr. Sadler knew two kinds of persons. The first kind was the patient. The second kind was the
survivalist who knew what was good to work with and what to adopt to survive. Dr. Sadler was first
a good man and second he survived a serious assault against his views that God was only good and
never a hypocrite. In either case, he sought to hold back evil influences that would jeopardize a good
outcome for his patient or for his survivalist he sought to help.
Using his God-given talents to find truth wherever it appeared, the Sadler team of himself and
wife, braved their reservations at first and tested the means through which all of this began to
appear. Quickly, Sadler learned that it was impossible to determine just how these words came
to be seen by him, but there was no discovery that the process was fraudulent, or that it carried
any verse or statement that countered his strong belief in God. In some ways, we believe, his
counter-intuitive belief in Satan was modified in a way to include Spiritualism as a wily and
duplicitous ruse to trap the innocent and wreak havoc on the works of God to be adopted by the
sane believer if possible. Even the family of midwayers who live just outside of our range of eye
sight, and who were born invisible to human planets some 38,000 years ago in Mesopotamia,
concurred with Dr. Sadler that mischief in Spiritualism was rampant and was to be avoided at all
costs when the truth needs to be told.
The Midwayers were responsible for Part V of the Urantia Papers and they commented on the
materialism of religious practices of the day including the low quality of Spiritualism as then
practiced. The higher authorities of universe spirit spoke about Midwayer work that was not
affiliated with fraudulent practices, and they were decidedly not directly involved with
Spiritualism, although they did beckon their human students into a better way of thinking from
the ranks of the spiritualistic causes done under the general title of Spiritualism.
In Part III of the book, From Paper 77, concerning the work of the Midwayers, the Revelators
wrote the following:
<blockquote>[[77:8|(865.6) 77:8.13]] “Their chief work today is that of unperceived personal-liaison
associates of those men and women who constitute the planetary reserve corps of
destiny. It was the work of this secondary group, ably seconded by certain of the
primary corps, that brought about the co-ordination of personalities and
circumstances on Urantia which finally induced the planetary celestial supervisors
to initiate those petitions that resulted in the granting of the mandates making
possible the series of revelations of which this presentation is a part. But it should be
made clear that the midway creatures are not involved in the sordid performances
taking place under the general designation of “spiritualism.” The midwayers at
present on Urantia, all of whom are of honorable standing, are not connected with the
phenomena of so-called “mediumship”; and they do not, ordinarily, permit humans to witness their sometimes necessary physical activities or other contacts with the
material world, as they are perceived by human senses. “</blockquote>
To me it is curious that the Urantia text would be categorically proscriptive about matters not directly
involved with the writing of the text. Mediumship was not the issue with the revelators, but the
practice of crooks and, by collusion of the medium in a false business enterprise, that did nothing
to educate man about his spiritual inheritance. Since the text does not bother to define one
mediumship kind against the other, one is more or less left to interpret they either mean “all”
mediumship which is rather harsh, or to include only certain organized receptions like the Sadler
“Contact Commission” as an unspoken exception to their general ban. Somewhere in between all
of this may lie the truth that the revelators probably sought to avoid buzz words like “medium,” but
I doubt they would argue against using the term when writings, received on earth though someone
or some group, were genuine spiritualistic output of a group of Melchizedeks stationed on Urantia
and elsewhere.
Dr. Sadler chose a more stringent definition of mediumship. He was free to do so as the Contact
Commission never was perceived as a “medium” for sordid performances the Midwayers
complained about in the Urantia text. It was most likely the doctor ignored comparisons of his
reception committee with mediumistic performances. This dislike he had, and I would suggest it was
really a fear which is much stronger than not caring for a type of behavior one does not approve of,
became entrenched into the Foundation he helped to found. There still is a fear in what he founded
that to accept mediumistic pandering to them would be tantamount to accepting error and evil into
their midst.
In other words, what should have remained a prudent policy about outside interference during the
days of the reception of the revelation by the Contact Commission, the developing fear became a
blunt instrument to enforce the view of the Doctor and to remove unwanted criticism of how the
work was proceeding. Anyone who knows the story about the attendance of Harold Sherman and
his wife Martha, and what they ran into attending the work of Doctor Sadler, well know that the
editorial work of producing the Urantia Book was fiercely confidential and guarded by members of
the Contact Commission with dedication and reverence, and that they suffered because of it.
Only the Sherman Diaries now published years later give us any insight into how Sadler’s belief
about spiritualists and informers of Caligastia were to be handled, and to use the comparative
philosophy of Amish displeasure with one of their own, Sherman and his wife were shunned but
remained anyway from 1942 to 1947 to record the activities of the preparations for release of the
Urantia Papers.
I mention Sherman as the primary example of how what should have been a good working
relationship went bad because Sherman sought to promote more understanding in meetings with the
Forum (the body that helped the Contact Commission revise the Papers through the celestial editing
process) to include the very human interest in how spirit contacts individuals by themselves or in
groups as they were doing. This naturally entangled the Contact Commission with the forbidden
subject of Spiritualism in the Chicago office and home where these Papers were being prepared.
There were other, but more minor similar instances of this nature, which were overcome or defeated
by the imputation by Sadler that any suggestion to accept other viewpoints about the efficacy of
spiritualistic practices by the Contact Commission to help bring the Papers into existence would face
expulsion, or as in the case of the Shermans, to be shunned and cut out of the association with he
leaders of the revelatory practices producing the text at 533 Diversey Parkway.
===The Truth about Spiritualism===
Spiritualism has gained an ugly reputation from readers of the fifth epochal revelation. But it was,
and still is, a force to be considered on our planet as it still contains the seeds of the revelatory
process once so well ingrained in mediums, but now lost to a more progressive element of revelation
called the Teaching Mission and its companion, the Magisterial Mission.
The ignorance of the origin of the practices of Spiritualism about its developmental roots in 19th
century Europe has been totally ignored in modern day practices associated with the Urantia Book.
And when the subject of Spiritualism comes up, they only remember that its practice consisted
mainly of rooms darkened to hold bodies of the paying guests to observe the tricks of the trade
masquerading as the purveyors of spirit truth and behavior. This article can not go into lengthy
descriptions of these practices here for space concerns, but there were foot pedals, and cabinets full
of actors who would pull wires hung with sheets and other articles of clothing across the darkened
room, all appearing to be done so without a hand or other force behind it to make these apparitions
fly.
The public performance was created by the so-called medium who sat usually at a round table about
which many guests assembled, and he or she would have props like a glass ball on the table or a
hidden tourniquet tied around one leg that allowed them to pull it up and bump or levitate the table
when the script called for it. In one case, one Madame Trancella, we shall call her, made the table
jump by hiding a small boy in the center of the table beneath her, and when she pulled on his collar
with a hand of hers tied to the table cloth, he would jump up and down and emerge to fly through
the air with the help of a small kite string made of steel and was hooked on the ceiling with
considerable talent to bear the weight of the child. The wire was stretched across the ceiling of the
room and the exit was made through a hole in the wall concealed with a ladder and cloth assembly
known today as a cubby hole for a mattress or other sundry bed clothing in Victorian houses.
The reader can well see that this had nothing to do with the serious business of spirit, but it had a
great deal to do with pecuniary concerns of the medium involved. And so it became an inside joke
that the dupe was well worth the price of a police conviction if it could be gotten away with often
enough before the law showed up.
As is so often the case in life, the sensationalists learn how to make money off the ignorant, but the
sensationalists really have copied the outward appearances of a much more substantial practice that
The FLURRY - Vol II, No.2 March 26, 2013 5 The Nature of Spiritualism - Ronald Besser
got its name from the fact the spiritualism is a noun that describes the ability to listen to and work
with the spiritual realm. That it became confused even in the true practitioners mind between what
could be false and what was true can be understood especially when we understand the Victorian
mind.
During the reign of Victoria, perhaps thirty years before her death in 1901, it came to be believed
especially in England, that spirit could evoke anything it wished to before the eyes of an audience.
This lent itself to the building of parlors with spacious accommodations for people to attend a person
in them who said they mastered the ability to bring spirit into the room with them and requests could
be made of spirit to show what could be done from the other
side as proof that spirit existed.
Philosophical questions seemed to be reserved for the serious practitioner and who were studied by
academia and science to determine how well they did in answering questions about survival after
death and how many arrows could stick in a body before it expired. The more sensational set up
required a lot of back stage preparations with mechanical devices and a number of actors to sustain
the drama. The real stuff had no such gimmicks, and while both types of seances were ordered, only
one failed, and that was the trickery of the three-ring circus makers that spiritualism became known
for, but failed to perpetuate itself.
That which has not failed is still called Spiritualism, and it still exists as a serious line of inquiry.
However it has taken nearly a century to learn that the substance of spirit has appeared not before
man as apparition, but as a revelatory experience from which he learns his name as a being of
Father’s concerns.
It ought to interest everyone reading this to have some evidence of the concern of people who had
grave reservations about the general misbehavior of so-called spiritualists in the English speaking
countries of that day. As many of you may know, the premier spiritualist of the day in England was
William Stainton Moses (1839-1892 ), and it was he as early as the 1870's who complained about
the besmirching of the serious work with frauds then at work in spiritualism.
I recently cam across an article I would like to include here that was published on December 28,
1878 in the Religio-Philosophical Journal (England). The author was named M. A. Oxon of London
but that is not a person but a title. M A Oxon is really an insider’s language to indicate an education
level while remaining personally anonymous, but it does instruct that the author is one who holds
a Masters Degree from Oxford University. The writer was known to those who read the paper as
William Stainton Moses. Moses was an articulate man well educated as a Rector for the Church of
England.
This article dated 1878 calls attention to spiritualism as a bombastic production of the ignorant and
laments that something should be done to restrict its usage to those who know what they are doing.
He calls these impudent practitioners of spiritualistic schism and debilitating entertainment a “Foul
Disease”, and that what they produce is “Old Shapes” of past understandings that are just plain false.
*ARTICLE: ''Old Shapes of Foul Disease: What Stainton Moses Knew in December, 1878
Lessons of the Year.''
By M. A. (Oxon), London, Eng.
<blockquote>It is the wisdom of prudent men to endeavor now and again to gather up the
lessons that passing events teach them. The end of a year is universally considered
to be a time suited for such retrospects, and the present year has been especially
fruitful in warnings that we Spiritualists should heed. Wherever we turn we find that
phenomenal Spiritualism has been on its trial. In America you have been convulsed
by the discovery that a profitable trade has been made out of mediumship; and you
have had much edifying argument pro and con upon the cause. You have not
overlooked the fact that the almighty dollar is responsible for much of the mischief.
It is plain that, given bewildering phenomena, some of which are easily imitated;
given conditions which would seem to be specially manufactured for the purpose of
facilitating fraud; given a credulous public and some impecunious adventurers with
more brains than principle, and you have the materials for the situation in which you
find yourselves.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In England we have not yet got quite so far. We are familiar with the fact that you
do things on a more extensive scale in America than we can attempt. But the same
causes that have produced their effects with you, are at work among us; for we are
made of the same stuff, tho' a little less highly tempered, and, after all, "there is a deal
of human nature in the world." If these causes be not attacked, if the ax be not laid
to the root of the tree, we shall travel the same road.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Now, it ought not to be so difficult as it is to convince people that phenomenal
Spiritualism, as it is at present conducted in public circles, is sure to produce a crop
of mischief. Not ought any observant person fail to see that this mischief is all the
more serious because the evil is mingled with the good, because it is so hard to say
where the true ends and the false begins. Nor again ought any careful observer to fail
to see that it is extremely difficult, in a given case, to say whether the fraud originates
with the medium or the spirit; whether the invisible operators bring in, for instance,
their own stage properties, or whether the medium is their unconscious tool, made
to play a part as the mesmerizer governs the actions ad words of his helpless subjects;
or whether, again, the whole business is a financial speculation practiced by a shrewd
rogue on a gaping audience. And yet once more, our careful observer ought not to fail
to see that we, the sitters at a circle, are largely responsible by our state, by the
conditions that we permit, and by both what we do and leave undone, for the
character of the manifestations. We may attract to us the elevated and the pure, just
as we certainly do attract spirits very much the reverse by our evil tempers and our
querulous behavior, by bringing to our seances bodies surcharged with food and
drink.</blockquote>
<blockquote>There are other points, but enough has been said to show that the fixing [of] the
saddle on the right horse is not always easy. Indeed, I may say that no problem
that I know of presents more difficulties; and that I known none in which cutting
the knot is at once so easy and so misleading. We want a deal of patience to
unravel the difficulty; and all our patience will not serve without much antecedent
knowledge.</blockquote>
<blockquote>But one or two things are clear:
1. The results we have obtained from public Spiritualism heretofore are not
encouraging, and point to something wrong with our methods.</blockquote>
<blockquote>2. We look the question fairly in the face, we find that, in a majority of cases, the
cabinet** is the great engine of imposture, as well as the great obstacle to careful
investigation. I have been present at a great number of cabinet seances, and the
general result in my mind is bewilderment and disappointment. No sane observer,
without antecedent knowledge on the subject of spirit-intercourse, ought to be
expected to accept as proven any fact in phenomenal Spiritualism furnished by a
cabinet seance. Still less ought he to be expected to assent to that more portentous
fact which is called materialization or form manifestation.</blockquote>
<blockquote>[** - Editor: The cabinet was the place where the medium stored her production tools
and was used to spring ghost-like appearances of people she or he hired to spring out
of it when the time was right to produce an apparition.]</blockquote>
<blockquote>3.Public mediums, of approved power and of hitherto untarnished honesty, are
falling victims to this state of things. Let them, and all who value their good name as
mediums, insist upon sitting in public only on the most unequivocal of conditions.
Let them insist on this as due to themselves or as sensitives who are subject to an
influence outside themselves, under which they are not the guides of their own
actions. And let us who investigate, aid them by declining to receive evidence on any
other than these unequivocal conditions. If promiscuous dark seances were sternly
discountenanced by respectable investigators, they would soon die the death.</blockquote>
<blockquote>4. And when all this has been done by way of purification, we shall always be
liable to fraud and buffoonery until we purify ourselves; until we try to raise
ourselves to the plan of spirit, instead of trying to drag spirit down to the plane of
matter. We must recognize ourselves as factors in the manifestations, and study the
spiritual conditions under which we can best come into relations with the progressed
spirits, who alone can do us service, and leave us the better for the intercourse. This
side of the question has been too much overlooked. We have not regarded the
spiritual, the religious aspect, if you will, at all sufficiently.</blockquote>
<blockquote>We must go outside the ranks of Spiritualism proper, to measure the religious influence that it has exerted, and is exerting in an ever increasing degree. The whole
fabric of modern thought is interpenetrated with the outcomes of its teachings. One
meets it everywhere. Old dogmas and the erections that man has build upon them are
sapped by it, and the crazy old edifice comes rattling about his ears. Here again you
[in America] have outstripped us. But who believes now that this body of flesh, the
seal of so many aches and pains, the cause of so much daily care, the incentive to do
so much that is earthly, sensual, devilish, will be raised up to trouble him again at
some far distant day of judgment?</blockquote>
<blockquote>Who believes now, that if he does what ecclesiastical corporations have
dogmatically decided to be wrong, or if he refuses his assent to all their dogmas in
a bundle, that his body will be perpetually burned in a material hell?</blockquote>
<blockquote>We believes now in the curious psalm-singing, which was the believer's heaven,
but which most of us would find something very much the reverse of the beatific
vision?</blockquote>
<blockquote>Who does not see that these dogmas are dead and inoperative, and that we are in
the very throes of a birth of a new and a better era, when a simpler and a sublimer
faith will be ours? Who does not trace the genesis of that faith to the new daring of
men to think for themselves? And who does not see that liberty wherewith we are
made free, is one of the most blessed products of what we loosely call Spiritualism?</blockquote>
Wherefore, as the end of the year's retrospect, may the Xmas bells:
<center>"Ring out the old! Ring in the new!</center>
<center>Ring out the false, ring in the true!</center>
<center>Ring out a slowly dying cause,</center>
<center>And ancient forms of party strife;</center>
<center>Ring in a the nobler modes of life,</center>
<center>With sweeter manners, purer laws.</center>
<center>Ring out old shapes of foul disease,</center>
<center>Ring out the narrowing lust for gold;</center>
<center>Ring out the thousand wars of old,</center>
<center>Ring in the thousand years of peace."</center>
(WSM is quoting Tennyson there, at the end, with a sort of unconscious irony, given the bit is
part of In Memoriam, a poem concerned in part with the untimely death of a much-loved young
man of great promise.)
===Spiritualism and Transmitting/Receiving===
Obviously, the problems Moses spoke about were not resolved and have not been resolved by contemporary thinkers and practitioners. I say this with all due regard to the Moses ban on speaking
to any body on the planet today, but he has excepted one or two others he will speak with.
Observed, as I have been while writing this article, Moses figuratively tapped me on the shoulder
and asked that I prepare some of his remarks to inform the person who sent me the article (which I
quote above). I have forwarded Moses’ message to them, and I now include the remarks prepared
from Mansion World Three by Moses to the reader, below:
<u>Transmission of William Stainton Moses</u>
I am William Stainton Moses. I come to you to ask that you provide me a seance with me in order
to becalm my view that you do not misrepresent my voice in all of this. I am not an apparition . I
am not a place holder for the dead. I am alive and I am well. Give my regards to the writer of the
email which produced my writing form Oxford and for which I am most grateful. Please convey to
him that I am not a wraith or a charlatan, but I am a good spirit well on my way to ascending to my
Lord and Savior, the Christ I behold before you.
I am never upset at seeing my name in print yet, I am never upset at being told that I have to
formalize my writings better than I did when I lived in London. But I must tell you that I am
secretive above my work up here, because I hold a Masters Degree in tenure on the Third Mansion
World.
Here I sit in worry over the last dialog with you (the medium writing this). I kept it short and your
recognized my wording as coming from the elegance of the 19th century. I wrote then that I was not
perturbed then or now. I am perturbed that no one listens to you and that you have so much to say.
We are feathers of each other’s view. We gather the strength of our views from the Christ I adore
and I am in charge of no other thing than my self for the coming tribute to us from Michael when he
is available on your planet again.
I am yours. I am likely to attribute my heart of God, but I believe you have the gift of thought we
all need to bring our views back to those who follow Spiritualism.
Spiritualism is documented everywhere on this planet. It is not to be used soon. It now carries the
heat of another day, and although Emma Hardinge and I know each other, we do not write often
because we need only to recognize that we contributed to the last will and testament of one known
as the Lamenter.
The Lamenter was a being who came to me often while I wrote the work of Imperator. The
Lamenter is documented in my work as me. But it turns out, it was the devil and the devil has been
vanquished on earth recently. I do not lament its disappearance nor do I write any more about
Lamenter, but I assure you, I was not deceived by Lamenter when I wrote my discourse on “How to
Be Good”, which still resides in my diary without attribution.
We are today waiting for the last lesson to appear on earth. In this I am concerned that the lessons
learned through Spiritualism were not well taken by those who followed me as a writer of thought.
In my diary, there are two different versions of my writings which I wrote both. They are not to be
disturbed by anyone who thinks they know better. They represent two different views which I was
familiar with. I am not concerned that the last diary you have is written well by me. It contains my
thought, but it does not contain my writing as I had it done while I chose to rest at a home of my
friend whom I call Madame Boveri. Boveri was an asset I guarded jealously. I enjoyed her company
and her wit and her tribute to me as Emma Hardinge. In this I regret not informing any of my
colleagues because I had to take a drink of water that nearly killed me at her place and subsequently
left me partially paralyzed in my right leg.
This right leg paralysis, or partial paralysis, caused me to walk with a slight limp. I carried it with
me to the end of my days, and it is not responsible for my accident that eventually killed me.
I also contain information concerning the whereabouts of Master Robin and his case against me
when we determined that Spiritualism was not to be taken earnestly, but that it should be taken as
a slight difference from prayer. In this I mean that Spiritualism is like a prayer but it contains
messages returned to you and any other who attempts to do so. Today I am engaged in learning how
to pray and how to be a constant reminder to those who served me in the flesh in London and other
places in England.
In England I was supposed to be a heart breaking sender of love messages to those from the
deceased. It turns out that I was a sender to the love lost by others remaining on the planet by the
Deceiver. The Deceiver was also the Lamenter. The Deceiver was also the gift to others who held
me well but did not know how nefarious the situation was when I dictated my essential work with
Imperator.
Imperator is determined to return to earth. But he may not do so, because the Christ has determined
that he is to be enshrined on the capital of the universe we all take origin in. I speak of this now,
because Malachi and I were great friends for centuries - meaning I knew him in the flesh, and I knew
him ever since I have arrived on these worlds of the Father and the Spirit and the Son.
I am to be reviewed for advancement to another world in a few hours. I must have the
accommodation and recommendation of those who served me while I live in London and other
places in England. These are the people who gather with me yet on these worlds of progress, and
I am delighted to hear that you [medium] have seen to writing out something that needs to be said
to all who have your wit and sense of responsibility to become an author through which I will
consider writing a third version of my work as then done in the period of 1876-1880. In these works
I prefer to mention that not all of those who sought to find God attended my seances. It is trued, I
have no firm view of God yet. However, they have provided me a text I love and use daily and I am
told it is available on earth as the Urantia Papers.
More is known there then even on my world of ascension because the Christ made me work for the period of from 1892 to 2010 to learn the universe language which I have now mastered. In this work
I have learned to be estimating who does what on earth and who will become our friend when he
arrives on Jerusem, the capital of the mansion worlds. Here I will become a senior guest among all
ascendants from earth and other places. Here I will work to become a master of thought just as I
thought I was a master of the seance.
Here too I begin my lessons on humility and thought, and in them I will become like those who have
preceded me and have gone on to glory.
I am William Stainton Moses, the Third Rector in St Bartholomews in the capital of England and
died in 1892 leaving my bereft mother to reside in Befordshire, England in her 89th year living in
the flesh. She still resides in my heart and I still hear he plaintive call to me in spirit that I answer
her even though I had departed. She still resides on Mansion World One which I left in the earth
year of 1947. It is here that I gave my mother a choice. To read the Urantia Book or to read the heart
of my soul, the Emma Hardinge text on misery which she wrote as she lay dying and ready to depart
this world.
Our heart goes out to those who I left behind. I hate leaving anyone I love to become disconsolate
even as I become disconsolate when I must leave my friends on the Mansion Worlds I must leave
to become better attuned to the next world of ascension. We are grateful for this opportunity to write
all of you, as I understand this will be taken, corrected, and mailed back to the originator of the
article copy made from Oxford in 1878.
:I am William Stainton Moses.
:March 25, 2013
:Received in York, Pennsylvania
Spiritualists like Moses, and the art of transmitting messages of serious intent, however one may
refer to them as mediums, shamans, way-showers, clairvoyants, seers, speakers, trance-dancers,
transmitter-receivers, spirit mover, augur, diviner, prophet, rhabdomancer, Cassandra, a Jeremiah,
futurist, prognosticator, soothsayer, and visionary, it really depends on what era in empire,
dictatorship, republic, monarchy, or democracy they appeared in as to what you call them. Some
were bent on self-destruction, some were determined to lead normal lives and hide their abilities,
others yet want fame and notoriety, and still others wanted to be fruitful and actually serve a high
cause of the Gods to become better attuned to the people.
Spiritualism was for the masses, and while the masses are where God aims as a movement to hear
him, it is not the best place to inform man. Spiritualism was unduly interested in proving spirit
exists through demonstrations of physical exercises or corporeality. Genuine corporeality is an act
of incarnation, and the Deities seem to prefer a program which arguments man in his knowledge and
respect for God rather than a side-show to prove they exist to be touched and smelled. Such actions
to become knowledgeable about the truth of the flesh concerning the appearance of God on earth is
best left to the Paradise Deities who hold all such manufacture of bodies as a secret of one of the
home spheres for their High Sons and Daughters of universe organization.
In passing, it may be said that spiritualism loved the sound of a coin dropping in a box at the
medium’s table or business agent. Spiritualism also poked fun at cabalistic religion too while itself
a black pot of soot filled layers preaching its own religion of the sado-masochist’s desire to prepare
for Armageddon or at best, prepare for the teachings to tear down educational religion and leave the
chaos to the future to clean up. Today, we are the future, and no one has cleaned us up anymore than
they did two centuries ago when the most fierce wars of death and destruction were being planned.
Transmitting-receiving, or in the lingo used today, channeler, or T/R’ing or just T/R, does the same
thing Spiritualism promoted which was to hear the “other side” speak with something to say worth
listening to. The public yesterday craved misfortune and tears in reporting while today the public
hears only what they want with scant regard for humanity or their effect on the future once they die
with their own disconcern still firmly attached to their souls.
Other than the eras are different from the Victorians to the Pluralist Generation or Gen Z, the seasons
come and go with the desire to find God or “something”, there still exists no Gen Why, because to
have such, there must be some sense in them of the depravity of our age accomplishing the desire
of the devil himself to destroy life as it was intended to be lived. This is why Spiritualism took root
in the first place hundreds of years ago, and why we still practice it under a lot of different names.
Excepting the purity of thought brought through by trained mediums, the untrained dabbler still
accepts that they may command spirit to appear in their movies and in their cups at the bar or at the
heroin table. These are mediums too, and they drive drink in place of heart in order to placate the
loneliness of a separate existence without benefit of thought or proper education.
The midwayers classified spiritualism as a default to the age of materialism. They published their
results with the-then contact commission at 533 Diversey Blvd., and stated that man must never hide
from God if he does not want to give up his place in the universe. Spiritualism as then practiced
(1930's) was a potent challenge to traditional religion which has it own problems, but spiritualistic
thinking even made inroads into the Urantia Book by pressing, like Spiritualism did, to be heard
without a full explanation. An example of that is the fact the Urantia Book found few takers, unlike
the acceptance of Spiritualism’s welcome propaganda to the house of cards it built, even though the
latest epochal revelation was produced right in the middle of a titanic struggle of civilization against
the demonic Nazis and militaristic Japan.
If the book had been published in 1910 when many of the great thinkers on the planet were still
working, it would have been embraced by the millions as they would have extolled its value to the
rafters in the universities and the learning centers around
the world.
But by the 1930's the heart of thought was driven out by the loss of jobs, wages, and even some little
hope for survival in the pitiless world of the Great Depression which tore down safety nets and
homes, and in some cases, destroyed all that was left of a family with already pitifully few material
possessions to guard against heat, cold, and despair. Materialism caused the depression more than
impolite disclosures of wrong doing at the banking institutions and badly supported government
subsidies for the poor.
From the Urantia Book, Paper 195, the midwayers write:
<blockquote>195:6.7 “The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the
thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with
things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual
nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. One of the great
troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual
meditation and religious devotion.</blockquote>
<blockquote>195:6.8 Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely
an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an
unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this vast universe of
mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the
conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls — it
concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.”</blockquote>
If I may use my own example of receiving the other side, I have never thought of Spiritualism as
capable of facilitating my need to connect with God. Thought systems as Spiritualism was to
become is religiously weak and useless for my need to experience strong validation. Spiritualism
attempted to develop a secular theology allowing that seemed to allow any spirit of any ilk that
would show up to become master of ceremonies. At least organized religion had its rigid hierarchies
of protocol, but when challenged by materialism, they resort to a peek-a-boo fan wafting the air of
its own self forgiveness to hide their true ignorance of God as savior. Nor did official religion have
a clue about how to ride the calumny of Spiritualism’s errant statements about God’s intention for
man on earth. Perhaps they decided the best defense was to mount no defense at all and let the
rabble come back when they had more sense. Both the organized religions and Spiritualism
promoted the business of belief more than the sacredness of the soul and its requirement for spiritual
education. And both have suffered because of their lack or inability to hear the voice of God in their
own minds to influence their corporate practice with practices that heard that voice.
It must be said that however snarled up the world gets over its self demotion to ritual unions with
God, the world also knows how to right itself when the chips are down. It should not be necessary
to point out that regardless of our own theological bent, the same mechanisms to hear God continue
to serve whatever it is we call our practices we do to hear the Voice. The Shakers knew it as their
God becoming so strong it made them shake to hear the truth and not be deceived by the dark angels.
So they shook in order to be kosher. The Greeks listened to the Oracles with the chief teller at
Delphi determining the fate of wars and empires before the birth of Christ. The Greeks prostrated
themselves in order to be humble before the truth as the Shakers shook to abide in the truth, and both
heard what they needed to. Shaman would enter ceremonial trance and cleanse disease and
strengthen the spirit of the warriors as they danced themselves into honorary membership among the
great Spirits. Elmer Gantry is a movie by the same name called upon the Lord in a trance-like rage
of self-injury to burn the iniquity out of the tents of false prophets, and a great fire erupted
consuming his work. Even self-criticism can light then the eyes of God on the transgressor.
Mediums lead the call for truth whatever their profession, or whatever their desire to do good may
be, and suffer the consequences of notoriety or immortality. Yet the world is today mesmerized by
special effects and lets lie the miracles of Jesus on the ground floor of tribal admiration of the inane.
Has it become that the 21st century sophistication now eclipses the need for God because he does not
prepare entertaining thought and fails to find the language to communicate with his children who fail
no test but aspire to no growth other than having what they desire?
Readers who know the truth know the answer to that question, but we tend to overdo our beliefs
about the efficacy of our methodologies so that we ignore or openly disdain other workable practices.
True spiritualism, and that is not the corporate type, or the cottage industries of amateur mediums,
but that which we still practice under another name in our most serious desire to worship that which
we seek but can not yet find on earth. The trained voice and the happy smile of a transmitter-receiver
stands as being right for our adjustments to hear the Voice, just as is the trained voice and happy
smile of Spiritualism’s medium is right, because it is our faith in God that matters first and the
process second.
Lastly, I say this:
Spiritualism is alive and well in all of us who seek to hear God. Spiritualism is only a word, and we
allow ourselves to be closed off from its rich experience and the inheritance factors that made the
modern transmitter possible, and some Voice heard. Spiritualism’s contribution is not lastingly
found on the practice of the charlatans who promoted sensational entertainment as a way to catch
a buck here and there to feed their egos or their children. Its contribution is that it pioneered that
choice to hear in spite of the dross and glow of traditional theology to open the door to opportunity
which, in turn, plays well to a listening soul today. It is a sad fact that a war has been waged from
all sides of the question as to how evil another practice may be, or how inviting doing things one way
or another attracts the devil, or punishment is sure to follow to those who fail to see one’s own
enlightenment as a practitioner of Spiritualism or a reader of revelation from any text whether they
be the published Catechisms of faith, the Bible, or the Urantia Book.
Not until the incarnation of a Paradise Son on our earth occurs will there ever become enough
understanding between the bickering parties concerning the practices of the other; enough so, to
cleanse the useless errors of the past and to promote the harmony of lovers of Christ and the heart
of the Father’s will that we someday abide in the divine bosom of transparent love. I can not foresee
the day for sure that Jesus walks the earth again and in what form, but the Biblical prophecy has been
amended just enough that the earth shall inherit a situation upon which it will be affirmed by the
righteousness of its choices to be lauded as a planet that learned the hard way to boil an egg. What
should have been fairly routine in development became the nightmare of rebellion and default that
crushed the aspirations of its bestowal Son, Jesus. Even in that debacle, no one foresaw that earth,
the one we call Urantia on high, should become the paragon of evil in the midst of serene beauty of
a universe nearly finalized in this area of space.
<u>Transmission from Jesus</u>
“We now hear that the heart of God needs only to portray my bestowal planet as a place of
redemption, and while the Spiritualists pray, and the heartless bray over their lost investments, those
who know God as the still small voice within, it is they who shall inherit the earth. Those who will
claim their inheritance containing the wealth of happiness, will be sure to bring this planet out of
its rebellious nature, and back into the arms of its savior, Jesus. Lost souls abound around us, and
they will never lose their God even as they suffer, but it is the soul of the man we redeem who is
precious beyond diamonds and pearls, and as they are, the Father takes them to his heart as those
who have failed not the injunction, “Returneth to me thy heart and I fail you not in our thoughts and
destiny.”
===Notes===
We thank a lot of spiritual personalities for their attention to detail in helping the muse come forth from me, and at
times from the minds of several assorted ladies and gentlemen of the spirit including Rayson, ABC 21 (Dolores),
ABC 30 and ABC 25; Manuel; Danny a Primary Midwayer, Lord Tennyson, William Stainton Moses, Michael of
Nebadon, and a Spirit of Divinington, my Thought Adjuster, who marshaled order in the process. I am indebted to
them all and give thanks for their generosity of time motion to keep me well finished to make the point and move on.
The FLURRY is a publication by subscription only. Persons who wish to receive it and any future ABC Summaries
are asked to send an email to aronolac@comcast.net with a request to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the list. All
persons subscribed to the BCC list for the ABC Summaries are also subscribed to The FLURRY. Thank you. RB
[[Category: The Teaching Mission: Dialogues]]
[[Category: ABC Summaries]]
[[Category: Unknown]]
[[Category: Ron Besser]]
[[Category: 2013]]
[[File:Teaching_buddha_small.jpg|right|frame]]
==Heading==
===Topic: '''''Nature of Spiritualism'''''===
===Group: [[ABC Summaries]]===
==Facilitators==
===Teacher: [[Unknown|Ron Besser]]===
===TR: [[Ron Besser]]===
==Session==
===Faulting Spiritualism===
I am writing this in spite of what many might consider a subject too esoteric to bother with, but I will
remind all of you, that to have some understanding of the historical nature and origins of your
interest in spiritual affairs is worth the price to enrich your souls and learn to bear no ill will against
any brother or sister that has found what you have found in their own way.
In the 1930's Dr. William Sadler was beset with suspicions about the spiritual approach to himself
and family to help obtain and publish an epochal revelation. Only his wife, Lena, had sufficient
influence to persuade him, and along with the evidence of spirit’s description of the nature of the
Apostles of Jesus, did he finally become won over to facilitate the publication of the Urantia Book.
Dr. Sadler held that the public displays of spiritual contact through Spiritualism were almost always
fraudulent. In fact, only after the Midwayers section on Jesus appeared at his work place did he
accept that the epochal revelation was as it purported to be. Until then, the Doctor managed to file
petitions to the Midwayers asking for some other redemptive proof that the exercise he was taking
on that provoked his fears it was, at some level, an unexplained ruse.
Fear of being cheated of a real performance of spiritual contact, Sadler sought to undo those who
cheated the public about genuine contact with performances that had nothing to do with spirit
contact. With evangelical zeal Sadler would cooperate with friends who sought to unmask
performances at which it was claimed spirit arose and paraded miracles before the assembled seance
audience. And in most cases he and his friends did unmask fraud reinforcing the belief that true
spiritual performances were not easy to find and that the charlatans were aided and abetted by a
sensationalist media in a circus-like demonstration of irresponsible theatrics on their part..
Because Dr. Sadler had experience the LDS Church and had reasonable access to Mrs. White who
most probably used spiritual contact in some form of submissive mediumship, he was not entirely
inexperienced with the mysteries of the church and its knowledge of God directly spoken. He
worked as a medical doctor in one of her sanitariums that treated tuberculosis and educated persons
in hygiene and diet. His disquiet eventually arose with Mrs. White by what he deemed her hypocrisy
of acting to break her own rules and laws of behavior. In this manner, the Doctor, released himself
and his wife from her service. He left California to mid-America having formed a religious
philosophy that the spirit was more likely to work through the human mind rather than through the
human eyes. His Spiritualist friends, few in number but influential, demonstrated their faith in the
wonders of levitation with little concern for the power of spirit to move mountains beneath the
eyebrows of genuine thinkers. This too was a spiritual hypocrisy he had just freed himself from, and
he was determined to teach that the truth lay in the Bible and that it was demonstrated time and again
that it was the way unto the Lord.
When established in Chicago, his anti-Spiritualism campaigns included crusading friends like
Houdini, to unmask those cheating. We do not know for how long this man was under observation
by the universe administrators, but within a few years of establishing his medical practice in Chicago, his demeanor and his moral crusades provoked spirit to ascertain that he was an excellent
candidate to promote a revelation through him. Accordingly, they set in motion those serendipitous
meetings and causes that brought him into contact with a hand written revelation astounding
everyone who read its initial disclosures. But he had to be convinced he was not being duped.
Dr. Sadler knew two kinds of persons. The first kind was the patient. The second kind was the
survivalist who knew what was good to work with and what to adopt to survive. Dr. Sadler was first
a good man and second he survived a serious assault against his views that God was only good and
never a hypocrite. In either case, he sought to hold back evil influences that would jeopardize a good
outcome for his patient or for his survivalist he sought to help.
Using his God-given talents to find truth wherever it appeared, the Sadler team of himself and
wife, braved their reservations at first and tested the means through which all of this began to
appear. Quickly, Sadler learned that it was impossible to determine just how these words came
to be seen by him, but there was no discovery that the process was fraudulent, or that it carried
any verse or statement that countered his strong belief in God. In some ways, we believe, his
counter-intuitive belief in Satan was modified in a way to include Spiritualism as a wily and
duplicitous ruse to trap the innocent and wreak havoc on the works of God to be adopted by the
sane believer if possible. Even the family of midwayers who live just outside of our range of eye
sight, and who were born invisible to human planets some 38,000 years ago in Mesopotamia,
concurred with Dr. Sadler that mischief in Spiritualism was rampant and was to be avoided at all
costs when the truth needs to be told.
The Midwayers were responsible for Part V of the Urantia Papers and they commented on the
materialism of religious practices of the day including the low quality of Spiritualism as then
practiced. The higher authorities of universe spirit spoke about Midwayer work that was not
affiliated with fraudulent practices, and they were decidedly not directly involved with
Spiritualism, although they did beckon their human students into a better way of thinking from
the ranks of the spiritualistic causes done under the general title of Spiritualism.
In Part III of the book, From Paper 77, concerning the work of the Midwayers, the Revelators
wrote the following:
<blockquote>[[77:8|(865.6) 77:8.13]] “Their chief work today is that of unperceived personal-liaison
associates of those men and women who constitute the planetary reserve corps of
destiny. It was the work of this secondary group, ably seconded by certain of the
primary corps, that brought about the co-ordination of personalities and
circumstances on Urantia which finally induced the planetary celestial supervisors
to initiate those petitions that resulted in the granting of the mandates making
possible the series of revelations of which this presentation is a part. But it should be
made clear that the midway creatures are not involved in the sordid performances
taking place under the general designation of “spiritualism.” The midwayers at
present on Urantia, all of whom are of honorable standing, are not connected with the
phenomena of so-called “mediumship”; and they do not, ordinarily, permit humans to witness their sometimes necessary physical activities or other contacts with the
material world, as they are perceived by human senses. “</blockquote>
To me it is curious that the Urantia text would be categorically proscriptive about matters not directly
involved with the writing of the text. Mediumship was not the issue with the revelators, but the
practice of crooks and, by collusion of the medium in a false business enterprise, that did nothing
to educate man about his spiritual inheritance. Since the text does not bother to define one
mediumship kind against the other, one is more or less left to interpret they either mean “all”
mediumship which is rather harsh, or to include only certain organized receptions like the Sadler
“Contact Commission” as an unspoken exception to their general ban. Somewhere in between all
of this may lie the truth that the revelators probably sought to avoid buzz words like “medium,” but
I doubt they would argue against using the term when writings, received on earth though someone
or some group, were genuine spiritualistic output of a group of Melchizedeks stationed on Urantia
and elsewhere.
Dr. Sadler chose a more stringent definition of mediumship. He was free to do so as the Contact
Commission never was perceived as a “medium” for sordid performances the Midwayers
complained about in the Urantia text. It was most likely the doctor ignored comparisons of his
reception committee with mediumistic performances. This dislike he had, and I would suggest it was
really a fear which is much stronger than not caring for a type of behavior one does not approve of,
became entrenched into the Foundation he helped to found. There still is a fear in what he founded
that to accept mediumistic pandering to them would be tantamount to accepting error and evil into
their midst.
In other words, what should have remained a prudent policy about outside interference during the
days of the reception of the revelation by the Contact Commission, the developing fear became a
blunt instrument to enforce the view of the Doctor and to remove unwanted criticism of how the
work was proceeding. Anyone who knows the story about the attendance of Harold Sherman and
his wife Martha, and what they ran into attending the work of Doctor Sadler, well know that the
editorial work of producing the Urantia Book was fiercely confidential and guarded by members of
the Contact Commission with dedication and reverence, and that they suffered because of it.
Only the Sherman Diaries now published years later give us any insight into how Sadler’s belief
about spiritualists and informers of Caligastia were to be handled, and to use the comparative
philosophy of Amish displeasure with one of their own, Sherman and his wife were shunned but
remained anyway from 1942 to 1947 to record the activities of the preparations for release of the
Urantia Papers.
I mention Sherman as the primary example of how what should have been a good working
relationship went bad because Sherman sought to promote more understanding in meetings with the
Forum (the body that helped the Contact Commission revise the Papers through the celestial editing
process) to include the very human interest in how spirit contacts individuals by themselves or in
groups as they were doing. This naturally entangled the Contact Commission with the forbidden
subject of Spiritualism in the Chicago office and home where these Papers were being prepared.
There were other, but more minor similar instances of this nature, which were overcome or defeated
by the imputation by Sadler that any suggestion to accept other viewpoints about the efficacy of
spiritualistic practices by the Contact Commission to help bring the Papers into existence would face
expulsion, or as in the case of the Shermans, to be shunned and cut out of the association with he
leaders of the revelatory practices producing the text at 533 Diversey Parkway.
===The Truth about Spiritualism===
Spiritualism has gained an ugly reputation from readers of the fifth epochal revelation. But it was,
and still is, a force to be considered on our planet as it still contains the seeds of the revelatory
process once so well ingrained in mediums, but now lost to a more progressive element of revelation
called the Teaching Mission and its companion, the Magisterial Mission.
The ignorance of the origin of the practices of Spiritualism about its developmental roots in 19th
century Europe has been totally ignored in modern day practices associated with the Urantia Book.
And when the subject of Spiritualism comes up, they only remember that its practice consisted
mainly of rooms darkened to hold bodies of the paying guests to observe the tricks of the trade
masquerading as the purveyors of spirit truth and behavior. This article can not go into lengthy
descriptions of these practices here for space concerns, but there were foot pedals, and cabinets full
of actors who would pull wires hung with sheets and other articles of clothing across the darkened
room, all appearing to be done so without a hand or other force behind it to make these apparitions
fly.
The public performance was created by the so-called medium who sat usually at a round table about
which many guests assembled, and he or she would have props like a glass ball on the table or a
hidden tourniquet tied around one leg that allowed them to pull it up and bump or levitate the table
when the script called for it. In one case, one Madame Trancella, we shall call her, made the table
jump by hiding a small boy in the center of the table beneath her, and when she pulled on his collar
with a hand of hers tied to the table cloth, he would jump up and down and emerge to fly through
the air with the help of a small kite string made of steel and was hooked on the ceiling with
considerable talent to bear the weight of the child. The wire was stretched across the ceiling of the
room and the exit was made through a hole in the wall concealed with a ladder and cloth assembly
known today as a cubby hole for a mattress or other sundry bed clothing in Victorian houses.
The reader can well see that this had nothing to do with the serious business of spirit, but it had a
great deal to do with pecuniary concerns of the medium involved. And so it became an inside joke
that the dupe was well worth the price of a police conviction if it could be gotten away with often
enough before the law showed up.
As is so often the case in life, the sensationalists learn how to make money off the ignorant, but the
sensationalists really have copied the outward appearances of a much more substantial practice that
The FLURRY - Vol II, No.2 March 26, 2013 5 The Nature of Spiritualism - Ronald Besser
got its name from the fact the spiritualism is a noun that describes the ability to listen to and work
with the spiritual realm. That it became confused even in the true practitioners mind between what
could be false and what was true can be understood especially when we understand the Victorian
mind.
During the reign of Victoria, perhaps thirty years before her death in 1901, it came to be believed
especially in England, that spirit could evoke anything it wished to before the eyes of an audience.
This lent itself to the building of parlors with spacious accommodations for people to attend a person
in them who said they mastered the ability to bring spirit into the room with them and requests could
be made of spirit to show what could be done from the other
side as proof that spirit existed.
Philosophical questions seemed to be reserved for the serious practitioner and who were studied by
academia and science to determine how well they did in answering questions about survival after
death and how many arrows could stick in a body before it expired. The more sensational set up
required a lot of back stage preparations with mechanical devices and a number of actors to sustain
the drama. The real stuff had no such gimmicks, and while both types of seances were ordered, only
one failed, and that was the trickery of the three-ring circus makers that spiritualism became known
for, but failed to perpetuate itself.
That which has not failed is still called Spiritualism, and it still exists as a serious line of inquiry.
However it has taken nearly a century to learn that the substance of spirit has appeared not before
man as apparition, but as a revelatory experience from which he learns his name as a being of
Father’s concerns.
It ought to interest everyone reading this to have some evidence of the concern of people who had
grave reservations about the general misbehavior of so-called spiritualists in the English speaking
countries of that day. As many of you may know, the premier spiritualist of the day in England was
William Stainton Moses (1839-1892 ), and it was he as early as the 1870's who complained about
the besmirching of the serious work with frauds then at work in spiritualism.
I recently cam across an article I would like to include here that was published on December 28,
1878 in the Religio-Philosophical Journal (England). The author was named M. A. Oxon of London
but that is not a person but a title. M A Oxon is really an insider’s language to indicate an education
level while remaining personally anonymous, but it does instruct that the author is one who holds
a Masters Degree from Oxford University. The writer was known to those who read the paper as
William Stainton Moses. Moses was an articulate man well educated as a Rector for the Church of
England.
This article dated 1878 calls attention to spiritualism as a bombastic production of the ignorant and
laments that something should be done to restrict its usage to those who know what they are doing.
He calls these impudent practitioners of spiritualistic schism and debilitating entertainment a “Foul
Disease”, and that what they produce is “Old Shapes” of past understandings that are just plain false.
*ARTICLE: ''Old Shapes of Foul Disease: What Stainton Moses Knew in December, 1878
Lessons of the Year.''
By M. A. (Oxon), London, Eng.
<blockquote>It is the wisdom of prudent men to endeavor now and again to gather up the
lessons that passing events teach them. The end of a year is universally considered
to be a time suited for such retrospects, and the present year has been especially
fruitful in warnings that we Spiritualists should heed. Wherever we turn we find that
phenomenal Spiritualism has been on its trial. In America you have been convulsed
by the discovery that a profitable trade has been made out of mediumship; and you
have had much edifying argument pro and con upon the cause. You have not
overlooked the fact that the almighty dollar is responsible for much of the mischief.
It is plain that, given bewildering phenomena, some of which are easily imitated;
given conditions which would seem to be specially manufactured for the purpose of
facilitating fraud; given a credulous public and some impecunious adventurers with
more brains than principle, and you have the materials for the situation in which you
find yourselves.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In England we have not yet got quite so far. We are familiar with the fact that you
do things on a more extensive scale in America than we can attempt. But the same
causes that have produced their effects with you, are at work among us; for we are
made of the same stuff, tho' a little less highly tempered, and, after all, "there is a deal
of human nature in the world." If these causes be not attacked, if the ax be not laid
to the root of the tree, we shall travel the same road.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Now, it ought not to be so difficult as it is to convince people that phenomenal
Spiritualism, as it is at present conducted in public circles, is sure to produce a crop
of mischief. Not ought any observant person fail to see that this mischief is all the
more serious because the evil is mingled with the good, because it is so hard to say
where the true ends and the false begins. Nor again ought any careful observer to fail
to see that it is extremely difficult, in a given case, to say whether the fraud originates
with the medium or the spirit; whether the invisible operators bring in, for instance,
their own stage properties, or whether the medium is their unconscious tool, made
to play a part as the mesmerizer governs the actions ad words of his helpless subjects;
or whether, again, the whole business is a financial speculation practiced by a shrewd
rogue on a gaping audience. And yet once more, our careful observer ought not to fail
to see that we, the sitters at a circle, are largely responsible by our state, by the
conditions that we permit, and by both what we do and leave undone, for the
character of the manifestations. We may attract to us the elevated and the pure, just
as we certainly do attract spirits very much the reverse by our evil tempers and our
querulous behavior, by bringing to our seances bodies surcharged with food and
drink.</blockquote>
<blockquote>There are other points, but enough has been said to show that the fixing [of] the
saddle on the right horse is not always easy. Indeed, I may say that no problem
that I know of presents more difficulties; and that I known none in which cutting
the knot is at once so easy and so misleading. We want a deal of patience to
unravel the difficulty; and all our patience will not serve without much antecedent
knowledge.</blockquote>
<blockquote>But one or two things are clear:
1. The results we have obtained from public Spiritualism heretofore are not
encouraging, and point to something wrong with our methods.</blockquote>
<blockquote>2. We look the question fairly in the face, we find that, in a majority of cases, the
cabinet** is the great engine of imposture, as well as the great obstacle to careful
investigation. I have been present at a great number of cabinet seances, and the
general result in my mind is bewilderment and disappointment. No sane observer,
without antecedent knowledge on the subject of spirit-intercourse, ought to be
expected to accept as proven any fact in phenomenal Spiritualism furnished by a
cabinet seance. Still less ought he to be expected to assent to that more portentous
fact which is called materialization or form manifestation.</blockquote>
<blockquote>[** - Editor: The cabinet was the place where the medium stored her production tools
and was used to spring ghost-like appearances of people she or he hired to spring out
of it when the time was right to produce an apparition.]</blockquote>
<blockquote>3.Public mediums, of approved power and of hitherto untarnished honesty, are
falling victims to this state of things. Let them, and all who value their good name as
mediums, insist upon sitting in public only on the most unequivocal of conditions.
Let them insist on this as due to themselves or as sensitives who are subject to an
influence outside themselves, under which they are not the guides of their own
actions. And let us who investigate, aid them by declining to receive evidence on any
other than these unequivocal conditions. If promiscuous dark seances were sternly
discountenanced by respectable investigators, they would soon die the death.</blockquote>
<blockquote>4. And when all this has been done by way of purification, we shall always be
liable to fraud and buffoonery until we purify ourselves; until we try to raise
ourselves to the plan of spirit, instead of trying to drag spirit down to the plane of
matter. We must recognize ourselves as factors in the manifestations, and study the
spiritual conditions under which we can best come into relations with the progressed
spirits, who alone can do us service, and leave us the better for the intercourse. This
side of the question has been too much overlooked. We have not regarded the
spiritual, the religious aspect, if you will, at all sufficiently.</blockquote>
<blockquote>We must go outside the ranks of Spiritualism proper, to measure the religious influence that it has exerted, and is exerting in an ever increasing degree. The whole
fabric of modern thought is interpenetrated with the outcomes of its teachings. One
meets it everywhere. Old dogmas and the erections that man has build upon them are
sapped by it, and the crazy old edifice comes rattling about his ears. Here again you
[in America] have outstripped us. But who believes now that this body of flesh, the
seal of so many aches and pains, the cause of so much daily care, the incentive to do
so much that is earthly, sensual, devilish, will be raised up to trouble him again at
some far distant day of judgment?</blockquote>
<blockquote>Who believes now, that if he does what ecclesiastical corporations have
dogmatically decided to be wrong, or if he refuses his assent to all their dogmas in
a bundle, that his body will be perpetually burned in a material hell?</blockquote>
<blockquote>We believes now in the curious psalm-singing, which was the believer's heaven,
but which most of us would find something very much the reverse of the beatific
vision?</blockquote>
<blockquote>Who does not see that these dogmas are dead and inoperative, and that we are in
the very throes of a birth of a new and a better era, when a simpler and a sublimer
faith will be ours? Who does not trace the genesis of that faith to the new daring of
men to think for themselves? And who does not see that liberty wherewith we are
made free, is one of the most blessed products of what we loosely call Spiritualism?</blockquote>
Wherefore, as the end of the year's retrospect, may the Xmas bells:
<center>"Ring out the old! Ring in the new!</center>
<center>Ring out the false, ring in the true!</center>
<center>Ring out a slowly dying cause,</center>
<center>And ancient forms of party strife;</center>
<center>Ring in a the nobler modes of life,</center>
<center>With sweeter manners, purer laws.</center>
<center>Ring out old shapes of foul disease,</center>
<center>Ring out the narrowing lust for gold;</center>
<center>Ring out the thousand wars of old,</center>
<center>Ring in the thousand years of peace."</center>
(WSM is quoting Tennyson there, at the end, with a sort of unconscious irony, given the bit is
part of In Memoriam, a poem concerned in part with the untimely death of a much-loved young
man of great promise.)
===Spiritualism and Transmitting/Receiving===
Obviously, the problems Moses spoke about were not resolved and have not been resolved by contemporary thinkers and practitioners. I say this with all due regard to the Moses ban on speaking
to any body on the planet today, but he has excepted one or two others he will speak with.
Observed, as I have been while writing this article, Moses figuratively tapped me on the shoulder
and asked that I prepare some of his remarks to inform the person who sent me the article (which I
quote above). I have forwarded Moses’ message to them, and I now include the remarks prepared
from Mansion World Three by Moses to the reader, below:
<u>Transmission of William Stainton Moses</u>
I am William Stainton Moses. I come to you to ask that you provide me a seance with me in order
to becalm my view that you do not misrepresent my voice in all of this. I am not an apparition . I
am not a place holder for the dead. I am alive and I am well. Give my regards to the writer of the
email which produced my writing form Oxford and for which I am most grateful. Please convey to
him that I am not a wraith or a charlatan, but I am a good spirit well on my way to ascending to my
Lord and Savior, the Christ I behold before you.
I am never upset at seeing my name in print yet, I am never upset at being told that I have to
formalize my writings better than I did when I lived in London. But I must tell you that I am
secretive above my work up here, because I hold a Masters Degree in tenure on the Third Mansion
World.
Here I sit in worry over the last dialog with you (the medium writing this). I kept it short and your
recognized my wording as coming from the elegance of the 19th century. I wrote then that I was not
perturbed then or now. I am perturbed that no one listens to you and that you have so much to say.
We are feathers of each other’s view. We gather the strength of our views from the Christ I adore
and I am in charge of no other thing than my self for the coming tribute to us from Michael when he
is available on your planet again.
I am yours. I am likely to attribute my heart of God, but I believe you have the gift of thought we
all need to bring our views back to those who follow Spiritualism.
Spiritualism is documented everywhere on this planet. It is not to be used soon. It now carries the
heat of another day, and although Emma Hardinge and I know each other, we do not write often
because we need only to recognize that we contributed to the last will and testament of one known
as the Lamenter.
The Lamenter was a being who came to me often while I wrote the work of Imperator. The
Lamenter is documented in my work as me. But it turns out, it was the devil and the devil has been
vanquished on earth recently. I do not lament its disappearance nor do I write any more about
Lamenter, but I assure you, I was not deceived by Lamenter when I wrote my discourse on “How to
Be Good”, which still resides in my diary without attribution.
We are today waiting for the last lesson to appear on earth. In this I am concerned that the lessons
learned through Spiritualism were not well taken by those who followed me as a writer of thought.
In my diary, there are two different versions of my writings which I wrote both. They are not to be
disturbed by anyone who thinks they know better. They represent two different views which I was
familiar with. I am not concerned that the last diary you have is written well by me. It contains my
thought, but it does not contain my writing as I had it done while I chose to rest at a home of my
friend whom I call Madame Boveri. Boveri was an asset I guarded jealously. I enjoyed her company
and her wit and her tribute to me as Emma Hardinge. In this I regret not informing any of my
colleagues because I had to take a drink of water that nearly killed me at her place and subsequently
left me partially paralyzed in my right leg.
This right leg paralysis, or partial paralysis, caused me to walk with a slight limp. I carried it with
me to the end of my days, and it is not responsible for my accident that eventually killed me.
I also contain information concerning the whereabouts of Master Robin and his case against me
when we determined that Spiritualism was not to be taken earnestly, but that it should be taken as
a slight difference from prayer. In this I mean that Spiritualism is like a prayer but it contains
messages returned to you and any other who attempts to do so. Today I am engaged in learning how
to pray and how to be a constant reminder to those who served me in the flesh in London and other
places in England.
In England I was supposed to be a heart breaking sender of love messages to those from the
deceased. It turns out that I was a sender to the love lost by others remaining on the planet by the
Deceiver. The Deceiver was also the Lamenter. The Deceiver was also the gift to others who held
me well but did not know how nefarious the situation was when I dictated my essential work with
Imperator.
Imperator is determined to return to earth. But he may not do so, because the Christ has determined
that he is to be enshrined on the capital of the universe we all take origin in. I speak of this now,
because Malachi and I were great friends for centuries - meaning I knew him in the flesh, and I knew
him ever since I have arrived on these worlds of the Father and the Spirit and the Son.
I am to be reviewed for advancement to another world in a few hours. I must have the
accommodation and recommendation of those who served me while I live in London and other
places in England. These are the people who gather with me yet on these worlds of progress, and
I am delighted to hear that you [medium] have seen to writing out something that needs to be said
to all who have your wit and sense of responsibility to become an author through which I will
consider writing a third version of my work as then done in the period of 1876-1880. In these works
I prefer to mention that not all of those who sought to find God attended my seances. It is trued, I
have no firm view of God yet. However, they have provided me a text I love and use daily and I am
told it is available on earth as the Urantia Papers.
More is known there then even on my world of ascension because the Christ made me work for the period of from 1892 to 2010 to learn the universe language which I have now mastered. In this work
I have learned to be estimating who does what on earth and who will become our friend when he
arrives on Jerusem, the capital of the mansion worlds. Here I will become a senior guest among all
ascendants from earth and other places. Here I will work to become a master of thought just as I
thought I was a master of the seance.
Here too I begin my lessons on humility and thought, and in them I will become like those who have
preceded me and have gone on to glory.
I am William Stainton Moses, the Third Rector in St Bartholomews in the capital of England and
died in 1892 leaving my bereft mother to reside in Befordshire, England in her 89th year living in
the flesh. She still resides in my heart and I still hear he plaintive call to me in spirit that I answer
her even though I had departed. She still resides on Mansion World One which I left in the earth
year of 1947. It is here that I gave my mother a choice. To read the Urantia Book or to read the heart
of my soul, the Emma Hardinge text on misery which she wrote as she lay dying and ready to depart
this world.
Our heart goes out to those who I left behind. I hate leaving anyone I love to become disconsolate
even as I become disconsolate when I must leave my friends on the Mansion Worlds I must leave
to become better attuned to the next world of ascension. We are grateful for this opportunity to write
all of you, as I understand this will be taken, corrected, and mailed back to the originator of the
article copy made from Oxford in 1878.
:I am William Stainton Moses.
:March 25, 2013
:Received in York, Pennsylvania
Spiritualists like Moses, and the art of transmitting messages of serious intent, however one may
refer to them as mediums, shamans, way-showers, clairvoyants, seers, speakers, trance-dancers,
transmitter-receivers, spirit mover, augur, diviner, prophet, rhabdomancer, Cassandra, a Jeremiah,
futurist, prognosticator, soothsayer, and visionary, it really depends on what era in empire,
dictatorship, republic, monarchy, or democracy they appeared in as to what you call them. Some
were bent on self-destruction, some were determined to lead normal lives and hide their abilities,
others yet want fame and notoriety, and still others wanted to be fruitful and actually serve a high
cause of the Gods to become better attuned to the people.
Spiritualism was for the masses, and while the masses are where God aims as a movement to hear
him, it is not the best place to inform man. Spiritualism was unduly interested in proving spirit
exists through demonstrations of physical exercises or corporeality. Genuine corporeality is an act
of incarnation, and the Deities seem to prefer a program which arguments man in his knowledge and
respect for God rather than a side-show to prove they exist to be touched and smelled. Such actions
to become knowledgeable about the truth of the flesh concerning the appearance of God on earth is
best left to the Paradise Deities who hold all such manufacture of bodies as a secret of one of the
home spheres for their High Sons and Daughters of universe organization.
In passing, it may be said that spiritualism loved the sound of a coin dropping in a box at the
medium’s table or business agent. Spiritualism also poked fun at cabalistic religion too while itself
a black pot of soot filled layers preaching its own religion of the sado-masochist’s desire to prepare
for Armageddon or at best, prepare for the teachings to tear down educational religion and leave the
chaos to the future to clean up. Today, we are the future, and no one has cleaned us up anymore than
they did two centuries ago when the most fierce wars of death and destruction were being planned.
Transmitting-receiving, or in the lingo used today, channeler, or T/R’ing or just T/R, does the same
thing Spiritualism promoted which was to hear the “other side” speak with something to say worth
listening to. The public yesterday craved misfortune and tears in reporting while today the public
hears only what they want with scant regard for humanity or their effect on the future once they die
with their own disconcern still firmly attached to their souls.
Other than the eras are different from the Victorians to the Pluralist Generation or Gen Z, the seasons
come and go with the desire to find God or “something”, there still exists no Gen Why, because to
have such, there must be some sense in them of the depravity of our age accomplishing the desire
of the devil himself to destroy life as it was intended to be lived. This is why Spiritualism took root
in the first place hundreds of years ago, and why we still practice it under a lot of different names.
Excepting the purity of thought brought through by trained mediums, the untrained dabbler still
accepts that they may command spirit to appear in their movies and in their cups at the bar or at the
heroin table. These are mediums too, and they drive drink in place of heart in order to placate the
loneliness of a separate existence without benefit of thought or proper education.
The midwayers classified spiritualism as a default to the age of materialism. They published their
results with the-then contact commission at 533 Diversey Blvd., and stated that man must never hide
from God if he does not want to give up his place in the universe. Spiritualism as then practiced
(1930's) was a potent challenge to traditional religion which has it own problems, but spiritualistic
thinking even made inroads into the Urantia Book by pressing, like Spiritualism did, to be heard
without a full explanation. An example of that is the fact the Urantia Book found few takers, unlike
the acceptance of Spiritualism’s welcome propaganda to the house of cards it built, even though the
latest epochal revelation was produced right in the middle of a titanic struggle of civilization against
the demonic Nazis and militaristic Japan.
If the book had been published in 1910 when many of the great thinkers on the planet were still
working, it would have been embraced by the millions as they would have extolled its value to the
rafters in the universities and the learning centers around
the world.
But by the 1930's the heart of thought was driven out by the loss of jobs, wages, and even some little
hope for survival in the pitiless world of the Great Depression which tore down safety nets and
homes, and in some cases, destroyed all that was left of a family with already pitifully few material
possessions to guard against heat, cold, and despair. Materialism caused the depression more than
impolite disclosures of wrong doing at the banking institutions and badly supported government
subsidies for the poor.
From the Urantia Book, Paper 195, the midwayers write:
<blockquote>195:6.7 “The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the
thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with
things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual
nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. One of the great
troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual
meditation and religious devotion.</blockquote>
<blockquote>195:6.8 Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely
an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an
unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this vast universe of
mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the
conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls — it
concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.”</blockquote>
If I may use my own example of receiving the other side, I have never thought of Spiritualism as
capable of facilitating my need to connect with God. Thought systems as Spiritualism was to
become is religiously weak and useless for my need to experience strong validation. Spiritualism
attempted to develop a secular theology allowing that seemed to allow any spirit of any ilk that
would show up to become master of ceremonies. At least organized religion had its rigid hierarchies
of protocol, but when challenged by materialism, they resort to a peek-a-boo fan wafting the air of
its own self forgiveness to hide their true ignorance of God as savior. Nor did official religion have
a clue about how to ride the calumny of Spiritualism’s errant statements about God’s intention for
man on earth. Perhaps they decided the best defense was to mount no defense at all and let the
rabble come back when they had more sense. Both the organized religions and Spiritualism
promoted the business of belief more than the sacredness of the soul and its requirement for spiritual
education. And both have suffered because of their lack or inability to hear the voice of God in their
own minds to influence their corporate practice with practices that heard that voice.
It must be said that however snarled up the world gets over its self demotion to ritual unions with
God, the world also knows how to right itself when the chips are down. It should not be necessary
to point out that regardless of our own theological bent, the same mechanisms to hear God continue
to serve whatever it is we call our practices we do to hear the Voice. The Shakers knew it as their
God becoming so strong it made them shake to hear the truth and not be deceived by the dark angels.
So they shook in order to be kosher. The Greeks listened to the Oracles with the chief teller at
Delphi determining the fate of wars and empires before the birth of Christ. The Greeks prostrated
themselves in order to be humble before the truth as the Shakers shook to abide in the truth, and both
heard what they needed to. Shaman would enter ceremonial trance and cleanse disease and
strengthen the spirit of the warriors as they danced themselves into honorary membership among the
great Spirits. Elmer Gantry is a movie by the same name called upon the Lord in a trance-like rage
of self-injury to burn the iniquity out of the tents of false prophets, and a great fire erupted
consuming his work. Even self-criticism can light then the eyes of God on the transgressor.
Mediums lead the call for truth whatever their profession, or whatever their desire to do good may
be, and suffer the consequences of notoriety or immortality. Yet the world is today mesmerized by
special effects and lets lie the miracles of Jesus on the ground floor of tribal admiration of the inane.
Has it become that the 21st century sophistication now eclipses the need for God because he does not
prepare entertaining thought and fails to find the language to communicate with his children who fail
no test but aspire to no growth other than having what they desire?
Readers who know the truth know the answer to that question, but we tend to overdo our beliefs
about the efficacy of our methodologies so that we ignore or openly disdain other workable practices.
True spiritualism, and that is not the corporate type, or the cottage industries of amateur mediums,
but that which we still practice under another name in our most serious desire to worship that which
we seek but can not yet find on earth. The trained voice and the happy smile of a transmitter-receiver
stands as being right for our adjustments to hear the Voice, just as is the trained voice and happy
smile of Spiritualism’s medium is right, because it is our faith in God that matters first and the
process second.
Lastly, I say this:
Spiritualism is alive and well in all of us who seek to hear God. Spiritualism is only a word, and we
allow ourselves to be closed off from its rich experience and the inheritance factors that made the
modern transmitter possible, and some Voice heard. Spiritualism’s contribution is not lastingly
found on the practice of the charlatans who promoted sensational entertainment as a way to catch
a buck here and there to feed their egos or their children. Its contribution is that it pioneered that
choice to hear in spite of the dross and glow of traditional theology to open the door to opportunity
which, in turn, plays well to a listening soul today. It is a sad fact that a war has been waged from
all sides of the question as to how evil another practice may be, or how inviting doing things one way
or another attracts the devil, or punishment is sure to follow to those who fail to see one’s own
enlightenment as a practitioner of Spiritualism or a reader of revelation from any text whether they
be the published Catechisms of faith, the Bible, or the Urantia Book.
Not until the incarnation of a Paradise Son on our earth occurs will there ever become enough
understanding between the bickering parties concerning the practices of the other; enough so, to
cleanse the useless errors of the past and to promote the harmony of lovers of Christ and the heart
of the Father’s will that we someday abide in the divine bosom of transparent love. I can not foresee
the day for sure that Jesus walks the earth again and in what form, but the Biblical prophecy has been
amended just enough that the earth shall inherit a situation upon which it will be affirmed by the
righteousness of its choices to be lauded as a planet that learned the hard way to boil an egg. What
should have been fairly routine in development became the nightmare of rebellion and default that
crushed the aspirations of its bestowal Son, Jesus. Even in that debacle, no one foresaw that earth,
the one we call Urantia on high, should become the paragon of evil in the midst of serene beauty of
a universe nearly finalized in this area of space.
<u>Transmission from Jesus</u>
“We now hear that the heart of God needs only to portray my bestowal planet as a place of
redemption, and while the Spiritualists pray, and the heartless bray over their lost investments, those
who know God as the still small voice within, it is they who shall inherit the earth. Those who will
claim their inheritance containing the wealth of happiness, will be sure to bring this planet out of
its rebellious nature, and back into the arms of its savior, Jesus. Lost souls abound around us, and
they will never lose their God even as they suffer, but it is the soul of the man we redeem who is
precious beyond diamonds and pearls, and as they are, the Father takes them to his heart as those
who have failed not the injunction, “Returneth to me thy heart and I fail you not in our thoughts and
destiny.”
===Notes===
We thank a lot of spiritual personalities for their attention to detail in helping the muse come forth from me, and at
times from the minds of several assorted ladies and gentlemen of the spirit including Rayson, ABC 21 (Dolores),
ABC 30 and ABC 25; Manuel; Danny a Primary Midwayer, Lord Tennyson, William Stainton Moses, Michael of
Nebadon, and a Spirit of Divinington, my Thought Adjuster, who marshaled order in the process. I am indebted to
them all and give thanks for their generosity of time motion to keep me well finished to make the point and move on.
The FLURRY is a publication by subscription only. Persons who wish to receive it and any future ABC Summaries
are asked to send an email to aronolac@comcast.net with a request to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the list. All
persons subscribed to the BCC list for the ABC Summaries are also subscribed to The FLURRY. Thank you. RB
[[Category: The Teaching Mission: Dialogues]]
[[Category: ABC Summaries]]
[[Category: Unknown]]
[[Category: Ron Besser]]
[[Category: 2013]]
