SILVER BIRCH ANSWERS BERNARD SHAW

SILVER BIRCH ANSWERS BERNARD SHAW

　"WHAT do you think you are facing when you die?" In an interview, Hannen Swaffer put this question to George Bernard Shaw. The meeting was arranged after Shaw had, in the "Times,” expressed his gratitude for the messages of sympathy he had received after his wife's death. The eighty-seven-year-old genius wrote in this newspaper, “I am awaiting my own turn in perfect serenity.''

　Reporting the interview, Hannen Swaffer states how he told Shaw, when demanding from him proof of his right to be so serene about his passing:

　"I cannot understand anyone, in the present state of the world's calamity, being serene about things, whatever he has done. The greater his intellect, the more a man must take his achievements for granted and see only his failures. Surely he looks on the world as a failure and wonders why he has not done more about it.”

　The journalist considered that Shaw's reply was an admission of failure, for during their discussion G.B.S. said to him: “I feel that I do not count for very much. You and I, we do the same thing. We go on telling people a lot of things. That is very nice, but nothing ever happens."

　"Now this, mind you, came from the greatest literary genius of our time," writes Swaffer, “from our most challenging play-wright, and from a man who, as a Fabian, had done, for nearly half a century, more than any other person in the world to edu-cate us in the need for planning and for a wise development of social services which, not long ago, were merely the degrading Poor Law."

　Soon afterwards, when the well-known journalist put his blunt question, "What do you think you are facing when you die?" Shaw answered: “Oh, when I die, I go. I never did, and I do not believe in individual survival. I do not think anybody could believe in it and realise what it means.” Swaffer explained to him: “But it wouldn't be the same G.B.S. always. He would evolve. He would progress. Eventually, gradually losing his earthly personality, he would become merged more and more in the great spirit of Creation."

　Shaw did not deny this, but after detailing his views on what he called the life force he admitted, “I am talking about something I know nothing about!" While delivering his theories on the life force he told Swaffer, “You may regard me as an incarnation of anyone you like; but that is not individual survival.”

　Hannen Swaffer's brilliant interview with Bernard Shaw created a sensation. Spiritualists, in particular, were interested in Shaw's views on Survival. It was arranged to submit to Silver Birch some questions arising out of the Shaw interview. Here are the questions put to the guide, and his replies:

　What is facing a man like Shaw when he passes over into your world?

　What is facing him is a new experience that will delight the mind of one whose penetrating capacity has already been re-vealed in many ways. Apart from the initial shock that comes with the realisation that lifeーindividual, conscious lifeーdoes not end with death, there is afterwards a wonderful awakening of all faculties of the mind and spirit, as it realises the infinite variety of experience awaiting it.

　It rejoices when it begins to understand the amount of wisdom, knowledge, learning, truth and all the appreciation of the higher forms of artistic attainment that become open to it. The joys of a liberated mind freed from the enslavement of the physical body which begins to find itself, to become aware of itself, and to taste the supernal joys of a larger existence without any of the tram-mels of the flesh, this is a theme that requires the knowledge of the greatest craftsman to explain.

　For no matter in what direction the questing mind will seek, whether it be in the realms of science, philosophy, art, morality, knowledge of any kind, there awaits it, not only the inspiration of all the ages, but the wisdom of all enlightened souls who are ready personally to instruct those who are able to receive the new knowledge.

　What awaits him is a joyous spiritual adventure of which he will never tire. First there will be the personal links, the reunion of old friends and those beyond, then there will be the quickening unfoldment of an alert spirit as it seeks to stimulate its growth by all the wonders of a world where there are no physical limitations.

　When Shaw was talking with Swaffer, he was admitting his failureーwhat he thinks is his failure. He said: “I feel that I do not count for very much. You and I, we do the same thing; we go on telling people a lot of things. That is very nice; but nothing ever happens."

　Truth is all-important. As truth spreads, error flees, and the mists and shadows caused by ignorance and superstition begin to fade away. All over your world there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, who are held in bondage by the ignorance which is a gloom in their lives.

　Throughout all the ages the power of the spirit in one form or another has touched those whom you call the pioneers, the re-formers, the martyrs, the teachers, those who are the advance guard of every century, and these have held aloft the shining prize of truth.

　And because they have had some vision, because they have been touched by a power that transcends all the forces known in the material world, they have shed a lustre on their generation; they have enabled beings to pierce that veil of darkness which sur-rounds their lives; they have taught those who are willing how to strike off the fetters that chain them.

　They have enabled some souls to be released from their prison-house of darkness; gloom has been dissipated in some lives. As a result, gradually, very gradually, the forces of en-lightenment have grown all over the world and the forces of ignorance have receded.

　Now, all over your world, man is on the march; he has tasted liberty in one form or another; liberty of the body, liberty of the mind, liberty of the spirit. All who have helped to rescue man from the forces which have chained him to prejudice, super-stition or ignorance are shining lights in the long procession of man's pageant through history.

　Only in moments of tiredness and despair does the soul feel that it has failed; in moments of exaltation it realises it has come into its own and shed a ray that has helped others to climb towards the eternal light.

　How would you explain this theory of the life force about which Shaw and others talk so much?

　Yes, there is a life force, of that there is no doubt. Life exists because there is a power which gives it energy, which is its dynamic. What that force is, none in your world can say. It is beyond examination by all instruments of science; it is beyond all chemical analysis; it is beyond all material investigation.

　There is death, as you see it, and there is life. We understand quite simply that spirit is life, and life is spirit. The material world is but the shadow caused by the eternal light of the spirit. The material world is the shell; the reality is the spirit.

　The spirit is that which gave life where there was unconscious-ness; the spirit is that which enables you to be aware of yourself: the spirit is that breath, that divine breath, that was breathed into man, and he became a living, conscious being.

　It is the spirit which makes man divine, which raises him from his ancestral slime; it is the spirit which distinguishes him from the beasts of the field; it is the spirit in him which enables him to render acts of service to his fellows; it is the spirit in him which makes him altruistic and unselfish; it is the spirit in him which inspires him always to reach out to the highest of which he is capable; it is the spirit within him which whispers when he will listen. You are not material, you are divine, part of the power which guides and directs the whole of the universe and all that it contains.

　In man, this cosmic spirit, this life force, is individual. Man is an individuality, a spark of the divine fire; man is an integral part of the infinite intelligence that some call God, and I, the Great Spirit of life. The grave cannot touch the spirit; the fires of cremation cannot extinguish the spirit; there is nothing in the whole wide universe that spells extinction to an infinite spirit.

　So by virtue of the natural law, the law which I did not make, the law which has always existed and always will exist, man, through the act of death, which is but the act of dissolution, discards the physical body through which he has manifested, steps out of it and begins to express himself in the final body of ether, or the spiritーcall it what name you will—which has been slowly preparing itself for this consummation.

　Death does not say farewell to man as an individual; death heightens his individuality; death is one more rung in the ladder of his individual evolution; and he emerges from death as an individual, with his consciousness intact, with his memory in no way impaired, with all the faculties of mind and spirit ready to give him a larger service, because they are freed from the limita-tions of a physical body with its cramping, restricting, five poor senses.