Theos-Talk Archives (July 2000 Message tt00028)

The following was sent by Dennis Kier <dennw3k@earthlink.net>
on June 2nd. It was intended for theos-talk, but didn't get
out. 

-- Eldon

At 06:11 PM 6/2/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Mr. Barker writes:
>
>> Consider another aspect of it. Supposing the reverse kind of
>> life had been led, and you have before you the life of a
>> materialist, a man who has lived in the animal nature, pursuing
>> the objects of the senses, living in his desires, the spiritual
>> nature given no attention to -- perhaps hardly wakened at all.
>> The center of gravity is in the animal soul. He must pass a long
>> period in the purgatorial regions, to the extent that he dies
>> with active, vigorous hatreds and passions and desires, and he
>> must suffer the unsatisfied longings which he can no longer
>> assuage in the after-death world. He will experience these as a
>> terrible nightmare, as a nightmare about which he is unable to do
>> anything about. A sufficient reason indeed for living an ethical
>> life here -- but still worse is to come, because it is just such
>> individuals who can be most easily attracted and drawn into the
>> mediumistic vortex of the spiritualistic seance. Earthly is that
>
>The stereotype that he conjures up suggests that he has never been to seance
>held at a spiritualist church in the '60s or later.
>
>His descriptions suggest the seances of the late 1800s, and the
>consciousness of the people of the 1800s. The manifestations of seances in
>general has evolved over time. In the time of HPB, there were lots of
>physical manifestations. By the late 1930s, that had almost dissapeared, and
>the philosophical teachings were appearing. By the mid '40s, the phenomena
>had gotten out of the dark rooms, and into church halls with the sunlight
>streaming in through the windows, no physical phenomena, and the mediums
>giving personal messages to the congregation, preceeded by a long
>philosophical lecture.
>
>Some of the high level seances were all lecture, and no personal messages,
>but with the same circle of teachers giving the same teachings that I
>identify with western esoteric Hermetic teachings.
>
>When I was in my '20s, I attended many of these, and have always used the
>teachings I heard there as a gauge to judge the authenticity of any new
>teaching that I come across.
>
>All of the dreary stereotype that Mr. Barker cites above, and below, is from
>another time, and another place, and is as outdated as the horse & buggy is
>for getting from place to place.
>
>The "SETH" seances are available on audio and video tapes, and do not fit in
>with Mr. Barker's fantacies at all. His notions on the spiritual and mental
>planes may be on track, but the surroundings that he clothes them in may
>have at one time been accurate, but is no longer so.
>
>> animal soul by nature, and earthly are the forces that attract to
>> the spiritualistic seance. And then that disincarnate animal --
>> almost devil -- seeks to satiate the animal passions, vicariously
>> as it were, through the human beings that he is brought into
>> contact with through the medium. Unfortunately many are the
>> cases of insanity, suicide, and obsession, that are caused by
>> such people. Not only do they damage the living, but through the
>> excesses that they commit they gradually build into themselves
>> worse and worse tendencies in that part of their nature than they
>> had actually done during earth life. So you get an ethical
>> implication there at once -- the condemnation as a practice of
>> getting in touch with these entities through the mediumistic
>> seance, and at the same time a tremendous incentive to leave
>> behind, to turn around from that kind of life while living on
>> earth, because after death it is too late. You cannot do
>> anything about it.
>
>I personally do not recommend people go to the spiritualistic churches, or
>participate in the seances, but that is because people get stuck at that
>spiritual level. Many times they cannot be persuaded to evolve further.
>
>But, of course, getting stuck at a fixed level is not limited to
>spiritualists.
>
>Some people get stuck in the late 1800s, and will not give credance to any
>teachings  that were written past the time that Mr. Judge wrote things. It
>is a matter of degree.


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