Psychical Miscellanea: Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc. — John Shaqi
Psychical Miscellanea: Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc.Hill, J. Arthur (John Arthur)
Religion
Psychical Miscellanea: Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc.
Hill, J. Arthur (John Arthur)
Parapsychology
"Is there anything definite about death in the Bible? I believe there
is. I think if you follow me, you will find there are six things
revealed to us about life after death. The first is that the man is the
same man. Instead of death being the end of him, he is exactly the same
five minutes after death as five minutes before death, except having
gone through one more experience in life. In the second place the
character grows after death; there is progress. As it grows in life
so it grows after death. A third thing is, we have memory. 'Son,
remember', that is what was said to Dives in the other world. Memory for
places and people. We shall remember everything after death. And with
memory there will be recognition; we shall know one another. Husband and
wife, parents and children. Sixthly, we still take great interest in the
world we have left".
The good Bishop gets all this out of the Bible, and quite rightly. We
hope no heresy-hunter will accuse him of "selecting" his texts and
ignoring the hell-fire ones.
So far as earth-language can go, the foregoing represents the probable
truth regarding the after life. If we inquire for details, we shall
get nothing very satisfactory. If we ask a spirit concerning what he
does--how he occupies himself--he will either say he "cannot explain so
that you will understand" or will tell about living in houses, going
to lectures, teaching children, and the like. All this is obviously
symbolical. Any communications that a discarnate entity can send must,
to be intelligible to us, be in human earth-language; and this language
is based on sense-experience. After death, experience is different, for
we no longer have the same bodily senses--eyes, ears, etc.: consequently
no explanation of the nature of spiritual existence can be more than
approximately true; yet such expressions as living in houses, going to
lectures, and the like, may be as near the truth as earth-language can
get. If a bird tried to describe air-life to a fish, the best it could
do would be to say it is something like water-life, but there is more
light, more ease of movement, more detail, more things of interest
and beauty. Of the wonders of sound--skylark's song, human choruses,
instrumental symphonies--no idea could be conveyed to the fish. Probably
our friends in the next stage of existence have, in addition to the
experiences which they can partly describe, other experiences of which
they can give us absolutely no idea. They have been promoted. Their
interests and activities have become wider, their joys greater. Yet they
are the "same" souls, as the butterfly is the "same" as the chrysalis
from which it has arisen. But to know exactly what it feels like to be a
butterfly, the caterpillar and chrysalis have to wait Nature's time. So
must we.
PSYCHICAL RESEARCH: ITS METHOD, EVIDENCE, AND TENDENCY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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