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The World Beyond (30) Leslie Flint, Richard Zenor, Aivanhov, Swedenborg and Hamlin Garland about the reality of the spirit worlds.
One series of books which have helped us understand what happens after death is “The Life Beyond the Veil” by Vale Owen, the timely publication of which by Lord Northliffe in his newspapers towards the end of the First World War brought consolation to many after so much loss of life. Lord Dowding read Vale Owen’s writing at that time, but he didn’t pay any further attention to Spiritualism until his retirement from the Royal Air Force in October 1941, a year after his successful leadership in the Battle of Britain.
Spirits themselves come to tell us how reading such books during their lifetime helped prepare them for the afterlife. One such was the novelist W.D. Howells, who spoke at length to his friend, the psychical researcher Hamlin Garland in a séance with medium Delia Drake in Los Angeles on October 5th, 1933 . Howells said “My study of Swedenborg was a good preparation for this spirit life.” If we can pick up from our reading some idea of what will happen to us when we die, then we will be able to figure out how to lead our life here, what to do, and find a purpose and meaning for the existence we have chosen here and now. Following our faith, believing in God, The Great Spirit, or Divine Intelligence, continuing with prayer, worship and rituals, all this, spirits say, will prepare us for life in the World Beyond to some extent, as it did them, even though we may not find much detailed information in traditional scriptures and teachings. But at least we will acquire some virtue and reverence for life, which radicalized terrorists as well as rank materialists seem to have lost.
The Bulgarian spiritual teacher Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov had something to say about this when he moved to live in France just before the commencement of World War II. He said “ A few years hence you will see materialism banished and rejected and everywhere, in universities, schools and families, human beings will be taught the science of the spirit. Then they will realize that, for centuries, they have simple been marking time, and that all their technical and scientific discoveries do not really constitute progress. True progress is progress of the spirit; there is no progress except that of the spirit.”
Two voice mediums who have brought through many interesting accounts of the afterlife are Leslie Flint (1911 - 1994) in London and Richard Slocum Zenor (1911 - 1978) in Los Angeles. Leslie Flint’s website contains the dialogues over a ten year period with Stephen Ward, the artist and osteopath, and much information can be gleaned from listening to his two-dozen sessions there, as well as many other talks from guides, public figures and spiritual teachers. Flint was a physical medium, and materialized an ectoplasmic voice-box a foot or two away from his body, which worked quite independently of his own voice. Richard Zenor, a trance medium, let the spirits take over his voice and body to communicate with his sitters. Both mediums began to record their sessions in the 1940s at first on wire recorders, and later on reel-to-reel and cassette tape recorders as they became available. Flint was thoroughly tested by psychical researchers, one of whom was James Ellis, a Canadian ex-serviceman whom I have visted more than once in his west London appartment, not far from Flint's former residence. He sat in weekly group seances with Flint for twenty years, recording the sessions and compiling the teachings of many spirit communicators from different levels of the spirit world, and comparing them with the ancient wisdom and spiritual philosophy. I will review his work in future articles.
Journalist James Crenshaw stayed in Zenor’s house for a year to authenticate the genuineness of his mediumship, and William Eisen compiled two books of the teachings of his various guides. From these I am going to review and condense extracts where two of his spiritual teachers talk about the World Beyond, from their places in it.
First of all, a guide called Dr. Navajo talks about the astral planes, the regions closest to the earth plane.
NAVAJO - The astral world is just as solid to us as the physical world is to you. We certainly do not see through objects in the astral world. If I am sitting in a chair, I am sitting in a solid chair. And when I am talking to John Jones here in the astral world, John Jones is just as solid to my senses as he was to your senses when he was in the physical plane and you spoke to him there. You do not see through spirit when you exist in the spirit world.
But if I go beyond the [spirit] ray and return back into your atmosphere, then I become a spirit to you. Likewise when you project yourself to our side of life during the sleep state, and you are in our atmosphere with the silver cord of life still attached to your body, then you appear as a spirit to us. But it is all spirit, and the solid aspect is determined only by the vibration that you are in. Therefore, you can pass through what is solid to me in the astral world in the same manner that I can pass through what is solid to you in the physical world.
If I were to walk down an astral block in a city or community in the astral world, it would take the same apparent time that it would take you to walk down an equivalent block in your world. This would be so because I would WALK. I would not simply skim down the block, or float down the block, but I would walk in a very normal manner. I would be conscious of the time element because I would be localized in that particular consciousness or that community. And I would remain conscious of the time element as long as I would remain there in that locality.
However, if I were to travel from one community to another, then neither the time nor the space consumed in going from one given point to another would be considered. And it would make no real difference to me whether it would be an adjoining community or a consciousness far removed from the community that I had been in. But with you people, both time and space have to be considered because you are going at a lower rate of speed. But then when I would finally localize myself again, when in other words I would set my astral feet down in that new atmosphere, I would walk again normally and feel and sense and hear just as I had done before, and I would also be aware of time once more….
The travelling from community to community is accomplished through the power of WILL. We have to learn how to will ourselves there…..We travel at greater speed than you do on earth. Our velocity is many times faster than the velocity that you are functioning in. When your thoughts reach us that we should be at a certain place, or when we suddenly desire to be in another community, we merely focus it in our mind, very much the same as you would line up the lens of a microscope or telescope and then focus it. When the point of contact is reached, we are there. ….
The real prison is reserved for the lower planes of the astral world that are comparable to Hell, or the Inferno, or Purgatory, or whatever you want to call it. There are planes in the lower depths of the astral, for instance, where people, thousands and thousand and perhaps millions of souls seem to be literally swarming over one another. This scene is truly a frightening and terrible thing to behold. It is just as though they are possessed with something. They seem to be going over the same thing, repeating the same action, over and over again. It is obviously some crime that they had committed on earth, and they are in their own hellish state. They are in their own purgatory that they had created for themselves. And yet they have all been brought together into the same plane of consciousness because like attracts like.
Some are dressed in uniforms of the Civil War and the various other wars of the earth plane. Others are in civilian clothing, rich or poor. The similarity lies in the fact that they are all carrying out an activity of hatred as if they are going to kill one another. Of course they cannot do this, but they merely go through the motions of it….they just live out an incident in their individual life. one in which they were obsessed with intense hatred or revenge, and they repeat this over and over again because they cannot within themselves break away from the crime that they had committed. …
Now between the lower and higher astral divisions are a vast number of planes or degrees of consciousness which make up what is termed the middle astral divisions. Many of these are very beautiful indeed. When I was just a simple Navajo Indian, in the latter part of the 1700s, I gave much thought to the nature of the Happy Hunting Ground that I was so accustomed to. I had visited that beautiful land many times during sleep, and I often brought back the memory of it. We were quite psychic and we lived very close to Nature. Now this consciousness is still there today, and it takes in a rather large division of the astral world, with its many forests, streams and plains where the herds of buffalo do indeed roam about in a very natural setting.
[Another guide, Agasha, then takes over the dialogue.]
AGASHA - As you look out in space, if you were to have the spiritual sight to see what is really out there, you would see layer after layer, division after division, region after region. Each of these zones contains matter of the etheric vibration, matter of a different frequency than your physical plane matter, but it is still matter, it is real.
Zone after zone constitute the universal spiritual consciousness. This means worlds within worlds within worlds populated by millions and billions of souls who at one time lived, moved and had their being on the physical planets. The etheric worlds were there long before the material worlds were even born.
It is impossible for an individual on a lower plane to vibrate on a higher plane. The only way that an individual could go to a higher plane is by advancing and growing, and this advancement then automatically raises his vibrational rate. When an individual visits the higher planes at night while out of the body, he is accompanied by this guide or teacher, and travels on his ray, his teacher’s rate of vibration, and the visit is only temporary.
Come with me as we mentally whirl ourselves out of the physical and into the mental kingdom, then into the astral, and then finally out of the ethereal altogether and into the great etheric consciousness which is the Kingdom of Reality. First we find ourselves in the great Celestial Consciousness where we stop for a moment as we absorb the beauty, the harmony, and the love radiating out. Then as we raise our vibratorial rates still higher, we enter the great Cosmic Consciousness, which is so filled with light and inspiration that it boggles the mind. This is the highest consciousness known to the average student of the occult on the earth plane today, sometimes known as the Christ Consciousness, [ Nirvana, Satori, the highest state of Savikalpa-Samadhi, risen Kundalini or similar terms.]
But we can even go higher, increasing our speed to the ultimate, when we will eventually find ourselves on the extreme outer rim of fathomless space. This Consciousness of Immensity embraces all that is, the countless solar systems, galaxies and all else. But that Consciousness of Immensity is not just way out there somewhere. It is also right here where you are sitting. It is everywhere; it embraces all that is, from the outer rim of space to the inner hub of the wheel, or core, of Life. It is a consciousness that is or was before anything of a gross [material] nature was ever brought into manifestation.
Now that you’ve been out here, you might ask, “What is the use of my going back to the physical plane when it is so wonderful here? This is what I always want; this is where I want to be forever.” Yet your higher self answers that you must return to the physical plane because it is the ONLY way that you can learn your lessons and so earn the right to live here in this [high] consciousness permanently. Therefore the soul will automatically bring you back whether you want to return or not, but you are just human enough in your outer consciousness to want to stay.
Perhaps this talk tonight might bring a little more light into your mortal consciousness relative to the vastness that lies ahead. There is simply no way for me to adequately describe or tell you about the peace, the calm, and the force that does prevail in the higher consciousness of the etheric, but perhaps you will gain a glimmer of it anyway. And there are even no words that I may employ to fully describe the beauty that awaits you in the higher consciousness of the astral, for that matter.
As for the even higher states leading to the Hub or Core of Life, it is quite beyond me as an individual to adequately describe them God’s universe is truly infinite.
Condensed and reviewed from parts of Chapters 4 and 5 of “The Agashan Discourses” compiled and edited by William Eisen from the trance addresses of Richard Zenor. Devorss & Company, 1978. Also from the same compiler and publisher is a previous collection, “Agasha, Master of Wisdom,” 1977. Further communications are contained in the biography of Richard Zenor, “Telephone Between Worlds” by James Crenshaw. Devorss, 1950.
Information about Aivanhov’s books is available at www.prosveta.com and a synthesis of his teaching is contained in “The Mystery of Light” by Georg Feuerstein. Passage Press. 1992.
Most of the recordings of Leslie Flint’s direct voice mediumship and details of many books about him are available on-line at www.leslieflint.com.
Hamlin Garland's investigations into the spirit world are contained in "Forty Years of Psychic Research: a Plain Narrative of Fact" by Hamlin Garland, The MacMillan Company, 1937.
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