YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Q. Will there always be another chance for everybody?

A. Of course! If there were not a second chance, then the universe would not be ruled by divine love and justice. If the story of man ended with the earthly grave, then the world would be full of mistakes, full of people who have never had compensation or even retribution for the life they have lived. The great glory of the knowledge we strive to bring to your world is that life does not end with death, that all who have suffered, that all who have failed, are provided with an opportunity of self-redemption, that the tears of frustration are wiped away in the knowledge of what can be achieved, that all who have desired to enrich their world and failed can add their lustre to mankind's growth.

　Life goes on, and in doing so it provides everybody with another chance to express their innate gifts, the gifts that were denied a manifestation on earth; and conversely it provides the means of remedial discipline for those who have foolishly strutted and imagined that they had been able to escape the natural laws that ruled over all. There is no greater justice than divine justice. None cheats it, none thwarts it, all come within the realm of its ordinance. In that knowledge, the kindly and the decent have nothing to fear, it is only those who have been selfish who need be afraid.

Q. How does an avowed materialist fare when he passes over?

A. Your world for too long has been deluded with the idea that the ones who call themselves religious possess a spiritual advantage over their fellows. That is not axiomatic. You are not the spiritual superior of your fellow because you believe in certain theological doctrines. The only test which is applied is the test of daily life. Your spiritual nature is exactly what you have made it to be, and there are many materialists and atheists and rationalists and agnostics who are the spiritual superiors of thousands who think that they are amongst the elect because they have bowed the knee in homage to the Great Spirit and accept certain doctrines. The test is not what you believe, but what you have done, otherwise there would be a complete mockery of divine justice.

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Q. What is the function of prayer?

A. If we draw a distinction between selfish requests and true prayer, then we will get an understanding of how the true prayer operates. Obviously selfish requests cannot be called prayers because they have no real value. No one in realms beyond your earth is interested in purely selfish requests that want more possessions, more money or more houses. These will not add one iota to your spiritual nature or increase your mental development.

　But there is the true prayer which springs from the soul; the prayer which in itself is a spiritual exercise; the prayer which seeks illumination on the soul's path; the prayer which desires to obtain a closer fusion with the power that is behind all life. In this kind of prayer you have what is the equivalent to a spiritual introspection, for, aware of your shortcomings and imperfections, you are automatically releasing some of the latent energy within yourself and enabling your prayer to have its answer, because you are creating the potency by which the prayer can be fulfilled.

　Sometimes I have said that the best answer to many prayers is to disregard them completely, for if the requests were conceded the individuals would be far worse off. But real prayer, that emanates from the soul, that desires greater knowledge, greater understanding, greater strength, that prayer automatically attracts its response. It creates a vibration, and along that vibration can travel the help that is required for the soul who has reached a stage of evolution when he or she is ready for the next step on the path. When a prayer is made in danger you would auto-matically attract a blanketing power that can protect you and bring those who are your guardians, not only those who are tied to you by links of blood but others who are attracted by love. They can shield you, as many have found, because they have been helped in times of danger.

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Q. Do spirit doctors know the cure for cancer?

A. There is no specific cure in the sense that there is one remedy that will cure every type of cancer, because they do not all owe their origin to the same cause. Some are physical, some are mental and some are spiritual in their origin. It is not possible to treat them all alike. You must try to understand the way we work. It is not done by saying, "Your world has a problem, here is the answer." Your world must earn the answer. But if you wrong living in your world, if you have the needless cruelty to which helpless animals are subjected, if you have not earned the right to be cured, then no one can give you a cure.

　What is done is twofold. Where patently sincere and devoted individuals are working along truly spiritual lines, they are helped automatically because they attract wiser beings who were in their field and who desire to help them. The other method is by the outpouring of spirit power in healing which produces results when the sufferer is ready to receive them. All healing from our world is accomplished through spirit power. It is not a magic wand that can be waved. That power is attracted to the soul of the sufferer. Therefore it cannot induce a response until that soul is touched. There is no magnetic link until the soul is open. If it is closed in, it cannot make any contact. It also depends on other factors, too. It depends on what is the cause of the disease. It depends on the purpose for which that soul is incarnated. It depends whether a choice has been made beforehand to express itself through a certain type of bodily mechanism. It is not a simple question.

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Q. Is reincarnation true?

A. This is a very vexed question because always there are differences of opinion in our world amongst those who know, and those who do not know. There are those who are just as emphatic in rejecting the idea of reincarnation as there are those equally emphatic in favouring it because of their experience. I am among the last category because it is something I have experienced. But, as always, it is a confusing question because, as you have heard me say so many times, it is not the same facet of the individuality that reincarnates.

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Q. Do spirit laws work in the same way in your world as they do in this?

A. No, they do not work in the same way because ours is a graded life in which the people who have reached the same stage of evolution occupy the same plane of existence. Thus they do not have the comparisons of earth where you have on one plane contrasting experiences. In our world every-one is on the plane to which they have evolved. We can-not have an undeveloped and a highly developed soul in the same sphere of existence. On one surface in your world you meet, day by day, people of differing mental and spiritual attainment. But that is not so in our world, unless we choose to indulge in missionary work and go, com-paratively speaking, to lower spheres. Otherwise we meet with our own spiritual equals. When we have evolved, we go on to the next spiritual level. Thus there is not in one sphere the comparisons of existence.

　In any case we have no darkness and light, we have no shadows. Those who have reached the attainment where they live in the light of the spirit have the understanding of what the light is, otherwise they could not be there. Those who have not attained that stage are still in the astral belt where they have the illusion of light and dark. As you unfold greater still, you do not require that comparison. You will have a truer understanding of realities and will know the face of truth for what it is.

　When you can get the "wholeness" of a flower revealed to you, because you have the spiritual gaze, that gives an appreciation of floral beauty you could not have in your world because we see the "inside" and the "outside" of everything that exists. There is an infinite variation of colour that you do not have in your world. There are varieties of hues and there is spiritual depth which is the reality of substance that cannot be understood with material perception. We are not subject to the gravitational pull of earth and there is eternal light for us. As your soul unfolds,

beauty unfolds for it. Ours is a creative world, self-created by those who dwell in it.

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Q. What is your view of present trends in Spiritualism?

A. The tide ebbs and flows. There are periods of activity and there are periods of stillness. You cannot maintain any movement by one outburst of energy. On the surface it would seem that so much progress has been made, that tremendous victories have been gained, but, against that, there are millions of people who are completely ignorant of the truths of the spirit. As I have always told you, what you call Spiritualism is only a name. To me, it is the natural law in operation. I am concerned with the spreading of knowledge so that ignorance may be vanquished. I applaud any effort by the individual, or a group, to spread that knowledge.

　From what has been revealed to me, I know that the overall plan must succeed. Spirit truth has come to stay in your world. It may be that there are occasional ebbs. It may be that there are periods of enthusiasm and, at other times, indifference. It may be that some grow weary in the task. But this is only a very small part of a large picture. The emphasis in your world is on healing. That is deliberate, not accidental. It is making its mark in a manner that is designed to awaken the consciousness of those who very largely should be bound to realise that spirit power is the reason for their cures, their improvements, their ameliora-tion.

　I am never pessimistic with regard to the truths of the spirit. I am always optimistic, because I know the power which is behind us. I rest content in what I have seen. I know that people in your world can hinder, retard or delay, but they cannot stop the advance of spirit truths. That is all that matters. It is part of a tremendous plan. It does not matter what the clergyman says, what the doctor says, or what the scientist says. They have no power to prevent spirit truths from being made known more and more as time goes on in your world.

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Q. Do they not make mistakes in the spirit world?

A. Yes! The astral planes are very much like your world. People who live there are very much at a similar stage of development to the average person in your world. They are neither angels nor demons. They are just the ordinary sort of people, not too high, not too low. They make mis-takes due to faulty judgments, lack of wisdom, mistakes due to rancour not having been extirpated, to hatred and selfishness, the mistakes that come from imperfection.

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Q. How can the Creator be all-loving when He has made nature red in tooth and claw?

A. Finite wisdom cannot comprehend infinite wisdom. You cannot answer the problems of universal activity by view-ing them only through physical eyes, or by attempting to understand them with your limited mentalities, limited because you can see only a small fragment of a very large picture. It is, of course, true that in one aspect some animals are predatory and that when they require food they have to be "red in tooth and claw". But it is only a very small part of the story because there is a principle of harmony and co-operation at work in the animal world as there is in the human world. It is seen when the opportunity is provided for this law of co-operation to outwork itself.

　There is also the aspect that man has a responsibility, a great responsibility, towards what is regarded as a lower form of creation, because animals and humans are part of life equally with the tree, the fruit, the flower, the vegetable, the bird. All life moves forward together, or backward together. Thus, if man displays the divine qualities of love, mercy and compassion, then the wolf can lie down with the lamb.

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Q. Does every human being have a spirit guide?

A. From the moment of conception, and even before that, there is attached to the incarnating soul someone who volunteers to act as his guardian. "He has given His angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in Thy ways" is a literal truth. The guardian will maintain to the best of his or her ability the function assumed until the time comes for you to cross the border. The task becomes easier when you are aware of the guardianship; it becomes difficult when you are unaware of it. There is only one guide, but many helpers. The guardian angel knows before he assumes his task what lies ahead of himーand he does not have a free choice in the matter either. Not everyone can say I will be the guardian to this or that person. Ours is a very organised world.

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Q. Is there any retribution on earth for acts we do?

A. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The law does not always fulfil itself in your world. It does fulfil itself, because it must fulfil itself. Effect and cause cannot be divorced from one another. The time element depends upon the nature of the cause that will produce the effect. Thus there are actions which will produce their reactions whilst you are in your world, but the spiritual results are mechanical in their after-math. If one does another harm, that harm is registered on the spirit of the doer. Thus his soul is poor by the degree of harm that he has done. Whether that will be shown in his physical life, I do not know. It depends upon the circum-stances, but it is measured on his spiritual life which is the eternal life.

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Q. How would you explain death to a child?

A. If the child has the ability to understand what is being said, of course, I would say that death is the opening of a door into a larger life, just as the cage is opened to allow the bird to be free. 

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Q. When a small child is stricken with a painful, incurable disease wherein lies the cause? And is this just?

A. You will not solve spiritual problems with material measurements. You cannot judge eternity by the portion of it that you experience in your very short earthly life. You cannot comprehend divine justice, which is ruled by infinite laws, when you see only one infinitesimal frag-ment of life at work. How can the lesser comprehend the greater? How can the drop of water judge the ocean? How can the fragment explain the whole?

　The universe is ruled by wondrous laws to which I pay constant tribute, for they were conceived by perfect wisdom. They make no mistakes. Sometimes it will seem to you that there is injustice because you only know part of the story. When you see the whole of the story you will change your opinion. You cannot, whilst in earthly life, with its short span, understand infinity.

　You cannot know anything of compensation or retribu-tion. You have no means of appreciating the vast richness, beauty and wonder of a spirit life which has no means of offering you any comparisons with what you already know. How then can it be explained to those whose judgments must be limited, whose vision must be restricted, what the other side of the picture is? If you have children born because the physical apparatus is constructed by the parents, then surely it must be apparent that whatever is in the physical make-up of the parents must go into the child's structure. Thus the sins of the parents are visited on the children.

　But the child is, by virtue of its birth, a part of the Great Spirit. It has a divine heritage, a latent infinite divinity that can outweigh all physical disadvantages. Matter is not superior to spirit; matter is the servant; spirit is the master. Spiritual growth is a slow but certain process. Spiritual perception and understanding can come only when the soul is ready. To some the truths that we have to preach must fall on deaf ears. It was always so. When the soul is touched, it will be ready to appreciate truths that are waiting for it. You cannot place yourself in the position of the Great Spirit pronouncing judgment.

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Q. Is the development of psychic faculties the next step in man's evolutionary progress?

　You must appreciate that man is not an animal confined to five avenues for his sole contacts with the universe. These five windows allow him to know only a small part of universal activity. They limit him to that which can be registered in terms of matter. Man is more than matter, man is mind and spirit, and there are vibrations that belong to the mental and spiritual life. In addition, there are vibra-tions which belong to the superphysical life, the life that is beyond the earthly world. Man can register the vibrations of this life in which he lives, and the vibrations of that larger life which one day will be his eternal habitat.

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Q. Is it possible for you to locate any particular individual in your world?

A. It can be done by those who are skilled in the per-formance of these tasks. You must appreciate that the indivi-duals in our world fall into two categories, those who desire to return and those who do not desire to return. Amongst those who desire to return, it is quite easy to establish con-tact with your world, provided there is a suitable instru-ment. Those who do not desire to return can be easily located, but there is nothing that we can do to compel them to return.

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Q. What is the use of man's earthly experience, bearing in mind it is so limited in comparison with eternity?

A. Eternity is the sum total of an infinite number of ex-periences. In eternity, every experience, every action, word and thought plays its part, however small it may be. Eternity is the result of all these accumulated experiences, and if one is lacking then there is not a complete balance. In a vast orchestra of two or three hundred players the man who sounds the triangle, regarded perhaps as the most insignificant instrumentalist, has an important part to play, for if when his time comes he strikes the wrong note, or if he fails to add his sound to the volume, then the whole symphony would be distorted. You realise that. So it is with your earthly lives. It is part, and an essential part, of the training of the soul, and your soul will register indelibly for ever the marks of that training.