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Silver Birch

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Post by zerdini Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:54 pm

Admin Note Zerdini removed his original piece on Silver Birch but what better way to introduce him except by the foreword from TEACHINGS OF SILVER BIRCH Edited by A. W. AUSTEN Foreword by Hannen Swaffer

FOREWORD By HANNEN SWAFFER SILVER BIRCH, as we call him, is not a Red Indian. Who he is, we do not know. We assume that he uses the name of the spirit through whose astral body he expresses himself, it being impossible for the high vibration of the spiritual realm to which he belongs to manifest except through some other instrument. He is the spirit guide of what is known as “HANNEN SWAFFER’S HOME CIRCLE.” “One day I will tell you who I am,” he told us recently. “I had to come in the form of a humble Indian to win your love and devotion, not by the use of any high-sounding name, and to prove myself by the truth of what I taught. That is the law. Once, he nearly gave himself away, for, in describing his mission, in the words used in his own story, printed on Page 17, he began: ‘.‘They said to me… I nearly used my real name then. Now Silver Birch came into my life soon after I became a Spiritualist in 1924. Ever since then, I have listened, for an hour and more at a time, to his teaching, his guidance and his counsel, and learned to love and respect him more than I love and respect any earthly being. He first functioned in an extraordinary way. A young man of eighteen, an Atheist who was making a study of Spiritualism, went mockingly to a circle in one of the poorest of London’s suburbs.
He laughed outright when, to use his own words, “Old women became Chinamen and all sorts of things,” only to be reproved by a medium who, in trance, said: “You will be doing this before long.” Although he went away incredulous and skeptical, he returned the next week to the circle and then, half—way through, apologized for having fallen asleep. “You have been in trance,” said someone sitting next to him. “Your guide gave his name and said that he has been training you for this for years and that, before long, you will be speaking on Spiritualist platforms.” Again, the young man laughed. In those days, Silver Birch spoke very few words of English, and those with a very crude accent. As the years passed, for he began to control his new-found medium often, his knowledge of our language so improved that bus simple eloquence flow often transcends that of any speaker to whom I have ever listened. ‘How do you know that the medium was in trance” I have been asked. On more than one occasion Silver Birch, speaking through his medium, has told us to stick a pin in the medium’s hand, and then to stick it in deeper. When coming out of trance, the medium has not remembered feeling anything. Nor has any mark been visible. “How do you know it does not come from the medium’s subconscious mind?” is another question. Well, in some ways, the two contradict each other. Silver Birch teaches Reincarnation. The medium himself turns down this theory and yet, in trance, confounds himself. Then another curious little thing is the fact that until, so that the guide’s words could be printed in Psychic News, a reporter started to take them down, the medium always remembered, just as he was going to sleep that night, what had been said while he was in trance.
This was because, when consenting to be a medium, he had extracted from Silver Birch a promise that he would know what had been said. Directly we started to record it, all this stopped. Now, the medium reads, next morning, the report of the sitting and is amazed at the beauty of the language that is uttered through his lips. Silver Birch is a teacher. He does not heal. He seldom gives evidential messages. Now and then, he apologizes for that, saying that he often regrets that he confined his mastery of the medium to teaching. Although he regards this teaching as all - important, he recognizes that the world needs evidence of Survival. During recent years, I have taken all sorts of people to hear Silver Birch talk - ministers of religion, journalists, and people from all parts of the world.

I have never heard from any one of them a word of criticism of anything he said. One person who took to him his theological difficulties found himself reduced to silence when, in simple words, Silver Birch explained what he calls “the Law”. “Write down the most difficult questions you can think of,” I had said to the minister, beforehand. He went along, eager to challenge one of those spirit guides he had heard so often condemned by men of his cloth. He came away confounded. Silver Birch had made difficult theology too simple for a theologian. Now my home circle, of whom Silver Birch is the guide, sits every Friday night. Regularly every week, Psychic News prints a verbatim record of what he says. It is given to our home circle not for our private use, but so that it can be broadcast right across the world. As a consequence, Silver Birch has more followers than any earthly preacher. They belong to every clime and to almost every race, and are people of all shades of color.

Yet, put down in cold print, Silver Birch’s words cannot do more than convey a little of the nobility of his character, the warmth of his friendship and the natural dignity of his utterance. Sometimes, they compel tears. We know that we are in the presence, however humbly he may speak, of a high, exalted spirit. He never reproves. He never finds fault. The Churches talk of Jesus of Nazareth, of whom they know little, and of whose existence they have no proof. Silver Birch talks of “The Nazarene”, as he calls him, as the highest of all the spiritual beings with whom he has contact, and, as Silver Birch has proved to us, after years of close association, that he could not lie, we know, if only because he says so, that the Jesus of the New Testament is still functioning, still engaged on that divine mission which once brought him to this earth, So, to us, the words, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” have a meaning which the Churches cannot explain. When, in the pages which follow, you read Silver Birch’s teaching, you must understand that it is all written down in the dark by a reporter who uses Braille notepaper, and who, expert stenographer though he is, is often tested severely to keep pace with the rapidity of Silver Birch’s speech. On no occasion has a single word to be altered. Silver Birch’s words flow in perfect English. Only the punctuation marks have to be put in, and even for these there is always a natural place which could not be mistaken. Silver Birch’s philosophy, as you will easily understand, is that of a Pantheist, a man who realizes that God is found in Nature itself, that there is an unalterable Law which governs everything, and that God is the Law. “You are within the Great Spirit,” says Silver Birch, “and the Great Spirit is within you.” So we learn we are all potential gods, part of the great creative principle which is everything.

Yet Silver Birch does not stop at unapplied philosophy. He forces home, always, the lesson that we are here to do a job. He sums up religion in the one word “Service,” and strives to teach us, clumsy instruments though we may be, that we are in this world so that we may make an end of war, abolish poverty and hasten the time when God’s bounty will be spread in all its lavishness among all the peoples of the world. “Our allegiance,” says Silver Birch, “is not to a Creed, not to a Book, not to a Church, but to the Great Spirit of Life and to His eternal natural laws.” So it is that the members of his circle, six in number, include three jews and three Gentiles, who find in Spiritualism no racial or creedal difference. Three were Agnostics and a fourth was a Wesleyan minister who, just before he joined our circle, had left Methodism because no longer could he accept its teachings. Sometimes, to vary the sittings, Silver Birch allows some other spirit to control his medium. So we have been visited by Northcliff, Galsworthy, Hall Caine, Gilbert Parker, Horace Greeley, Dick Sheppard, Abraham Lincoln and personal friends of the sitters. Still, all that is for another book. During my years of sitting with Silver Birch, I have never known him to forget anything, although we may do so. And never, by any syllable, does he depart from his self-chosen mission to instruct the children of men in a simpler and more beneficent way of life.


Last edited by zerdini on Thu May 31, 2012 7:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Post by zerdini Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:27 pm

Here is a tribute to this guide’s eloquence from the pen of Hannen Swaffer:

What is the final test of the genuineness of so-called trance addresses?

Is it the fact that apparently the medium goes to sleep and then speaks in a voice which often is a mixture of his own and someone else’s, one sounding as though one entity is using the vocal organs of another?

No, that is not the test. It proves nothing.

Scientists have sometimes noticed that during so-called control a medium’s pulse beats differently or his temperature perhaps changes. There are often, indeed, physiological changes which can be measured. Even that, though, is merely a proof of changes in bodily condition which might be explained away.

Now the most elaborate tests have been invented by doctors for the testing of trance. Some have accepted it. Some, to their own satisfaction at least, have explained it away.

In my own circle, Silver Birch has told us on more than one occasion to stick a pin in his medium or to pinch the medium’s flesh tightly. While he knew that we needed no further proof, he understood its value for sceptics outside.

On no occasion, on recovering consciousness, has the medium remembered being pricked with the pin. Nor has he felt any pain still remaining. Pinching has left no bruise; the pin pricks have left no marks.

Yet, if you were to gag the medium, tie him up, sit him on the fire, put him in a cage or boil him - there seems to be no limit as to what “psychical researchers” desire - none of it would prove that the words he spoke in trance were anything but something coming from the subconscious mind. The real test is the gradual building up of a personality other than the medium’s.

Now Silver Birch, who regularly controls his medium at my circle, is as real a person as any one of the sitters.

His nobility of character far transcends any previous conception I had. The remarkable combination of the deep philosophy of his mind and the simple utterance of his speech exceeds any human being’s powers of invention.

“I have a few simple truths to teach,” he said, “simple but important.” That is all. The way in which, week after week, he says the same thing in a different way amazes me who, as an old reporter, has had to listen all his life to parsons seeking every Sunday a new way of saying the same old thing.

They bore you.

Silver Birch illumines and inspires.

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Post by Admin Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:57 pm

Thanks Z
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Post by tmmw Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:55 am

Thanks for sharing that wonderful post about Silver Birch.

Lynn

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Post by obiwan Tue Feb 17, 2009 7:53 am

Very interesting Z. And very frustrating lol Smile

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Post by Admin Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:05 am

replacement material
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Post by Juniper Mon Jun 11, 2012 1:50 pm

I have always found it interesting to hear that spirit can act as an instrument for other spirit beings in a similar way that we ourselves do for our own guides.

I like Silver Birch, I have a lot of time for what he has to say.

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Post by Left Behind Tue Jun 12, 2012 3:39 am

The June issue of Two Worlds had an article on Silver Birch. He was quoted as saying that he is not a Red Indian but that he uses the Red Indian as a kind of transformer, since he is unable to reach our world directly.

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Post by petal34 Tue Jun 12, 2012 7:46 am

Left Behind wrote:The June issue of Two Worlds had an article on Silver Birch. He was quoted as saying that he is not a Red Indian but that he uses the Red Indian as a kind of transformer, since he is unable to reach our world directly.

Will verify that,Jim.
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Post by Juniper Tue Jun 12, 2012 1:22 pm

Left Behind wrote:The June issue of Two Worlds had an article on Silver Birch. He was quoted as saying that he is not a Red Indian but that he uses the Red Indian as a kind of transformer, since he is unable to reach our world directly.

Yes I have that edition. A good article.

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Post by Wes Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:22 pm

I don't see a contradiction as Silver Birch is talking about two stages of evolution, one at the point of death, and another further down the path.
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Post by Admin Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:21 am

Hmm Katy I think that if I had been in Spirit for a very long time I may be unable to create a human image of myself which would be recogniseable. Indeed it is my understanding that many of our guides present themselves more in a way that makes us the huma being be comfortable not as they were.

Thus we seem to have a plethora of Red Indian Guides far exceeding teh logical number there would be. Do we threfore look for a reasoned explanation....The Native American Indian was more in touch with Spirit or Nature, or acceot that it is possible that Spirit are using an image which is comfortable for us. I have heard some suggestions that are guides may appear in multiple guises.

We hit the imponderable about Guides real, imaginary ot a mental issue. Very few guides nominate who they really were so that we can check them out. I have rarely accepted any mediums version of who my guides are, one said I had Confucious with me, the guide and I adopted teh name Tao Seng, then I discovered this was a very real person by accident.

Working an open development circle I have had people convinced they have all kinds of guides. Numerically Jesus would come firs, then one of teh Archangels, maybe Grandma necxt down to wolves bears and totem poles.

An explanation of Spirit Guides to a non Spiritualist can either see you being regarded as a looney or just plain wrong because of course I have Jesus as my guide.

I even have one uide, who appears randomly at healing just as a radiant being of light the power is astonishing every so often the other healers saw him and told me I had an angel with me. Wondrful feeling, they turn up when they want to I have no control on that or when the French Doctor pops in and I suddenly see the organs inside the person receiving healing. Given I have no idea of what to do when I get that gory vision its a mixed blessing.

Once again, what are we actually dealing with, the spirit of the person not the physical body that has long gone. they cloak themselves with tehcrucial aspects of humanity when they draw near, just as your loved ones do when they enter the awareness of the medium.
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Post by Wes Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:13 am

KatyKing wrote:Personality either survives or it doesn't. The contradiction is quite clear.

Personality is an expression of our physical selves, it isn't a direct expression of our soul. It's forged by nature and nurture on the earth plane and will in time be shrugged off after physical death, as more efficient and authentic means of communication and expression are learnt. So in effect, personality does not survive physical death, it is only "remembered" and clung to until it is no longer needed. So in that context, there is no contradiction in Silver Birch's words.



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Post by Left Behind Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:35 am

So all these Spiritualist and NDE accounts of people who passed on hundreds of years ago. . . aging up to or back to their physical prime, remembering people they left behind, enjoying the same activities they enjoyed on earth. . . all these are incorrect?

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Post by Wes Fri Jun 15, 2012 3:15 am

Left Behind wrote:So all these Spiritualist and NDE accounts of people who passed on hundreds of years ago. . . aging up to or back to their physical prime, remembering people they left behind, enjoying the same activities they enjoyed on earth. . . all these are incorrect?

If I understand your question correctly, these are cases where those in spirit have projected a facsimile of their physical form & personality for the purpose of communicating with people on earth.
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Post by Admin Fri Jun 15, 2012 3:24 am

Hi Jim,

In honesty it will be interesting to see what exactly happens, you cannot be in Spirit and have a body like ours. Thats just energetic reality. Your atomic structure will change no dense slow moving body a high frequency vibration one.

To do mediumship they lower their vibrations and you try to raise yours. In the lowering of the vibrations they take on more of their original life energy. Hence they can help Clair Sentients feel the cause of their death and there symtoms. Sometimes its dereadful because as a medium you can't breath you speech slurs. They also can create an image of themselves by the use of their fenergy frequencty and communicate vocally.

The NDE experience is such that the loved ones gather round and project their chosen images and feelings to welcome you and the change you are going through. After that who really knows what life will be like, in some wasy you read about thinking and creating through energy.

The one certainty is that world will not be like this one and you will not have the same body. The light being that helps me is pure spirit, no attempt to suggest thay are some wonderful past surgeon.

Does this mean that you cannot seem to be as you were, I am sure you can you are Spirit, could life seem teh same of course as you make teh transmission. However, what would the point be in taking on a physical life if all you did was recreate this back in Spirit.

I believe through the common link of love and friendship those in Spirit do watch over ius. I have given messages with enough information for the recipeint to accept from great grandparents never met by the person. However there comes a point in the journey when the need and desire to communicate, to express your life in old ways will pass.

I suspect that is earlier for some than others, indeed if you are over there as a Plymouth Brethren, at first neither you and especially your loved ones in the physical will attempt to communicate.

To try and explain a world in Spirit in terms of our physical experience would be like us explaining the world now to someone from the crusades.
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Post by Wes Sat Jun 16, 2012 5:04 am

KK, could you give an example or two of Silver Birch canon that is "utter tosh" and a reference for your half caste comment? If, as you say, you don't want to appear to be anti Silver Birch, then providing some substance to your comments would help explain your position more clearly.

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Post by petal34 Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:43 am

Doesn't personality come through the genes we have inherited from our forebears?
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Post by Admin Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:44 pm

Yes there are burning questions with SB as there always will be with communications from trance, I personally am horrified at his jehovah's Witness like stance on blood transfusions and his anti position on organ transplants,. I feel these reflect more of Barbanells realities, we must remember that for years people from a Jewish background, even if as very reformed as he must have been, had very strict life taboos.

Now even the very best trance mediums can reflect their subconcious positions..

Despite this of all the trance work I see the SB, Estelle roberts and Stainton Mose work hold together best. However, I will always ask people to be discriminating with anything from trance.
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Post by Left Behind Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:28 pm

Wes wrote:
Left Behind wrote:So all these Spiritualist and NDE accounts of people who passed on hundreds of years ago. . . aging up to or back to their physical prime, remembering people they left behind, enjoying the same activities they enjoyed on earth. . . all these are incorrect?

If I understand your question correctly, these are cases where those in spirit have projected a facsimile of their physical form & personality for the purpose of communicating with people on earth.

No. But that introduces another topic.

I don't believe that there "are cases where those in spirit have projected a facsimile of their physical form and personality for the purpose of communicating with people on earth."

I do believe that the actual personalities of those in spirit communicate with people on earth. I believe that they enter spirit with precisely the same personalities they departed this life. I believe that these personalities are eternal. Yes, these personalities develop and modify over time. This should not be surprising. Is a man of 40 exactly the same person he was at 14? No, and we would hope not! But he is still the same person. Just as we will still be the same person after 10 0r 100 or 1,000 years in spirit that we are today on earth.

I am who I am. I have never been anyone else. I will never be anyone else.

Spiritualist and NDE accounts prove that we live on. We remember our lives on earth. We remember our loved ones we left behind. And we continue to live real lives, in real bodies, in a real world that's just as material as this one: only very different, and much better! Very Happy

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Post by Left Behind Sat Jun 16, 2012 11:13 pm

I offer it freely to anyone who wants to write and finance the printing of the leaflets. Very Happy

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Post by Wes Sun Jun 17, 2012 12:36 am

KatyKing wrote:Thank you Wes yourr question sent me to thr bookshelves. I really must have a lear out.
Half casre chidren on page 71 in B Anthology ed William Naylor ISBN 978 0 85384
in response to a Q SB calls them 'dvese circumstances' HTH...
Tosh too manifold to delineate. I have read every SB book in print. Not anonerous task as they are very slender volumes but not a task I' care to repeat so here' a nuggetof SB 'wisdom' plucked at random from the work to hand the SB Anthology and page 96 ff.....

I'm sorry KK but your response lacks too many details for me to see where your conclusions have come from. To quote two words "Adverse Circumstances" without revelaing the actual question it was in response to, or the entire answer, leaves me none the wiser as to what your point is, or was.

Your opinion on Natural Law appears to be that as you do not understand what it is, therefore it is nonsense. I don't understand it either, however I'm open minded and inquisitive enough to keep trying to fathom its meaning based on the many comments Silver Birch as made about it.

Silver Birch has never claimed to be a definitive source for spiritual knowledge and surely you would know that by how often he has said to his circle that if you don't believe anything he says then be free to reject it. Or that it's good to have an open mind, but not an empty one. In that regard he embodies the spiritualist ideal of embracing knowledge and reason in one's spiritual journey.

I do wonder of there is a subtext to what you are saying, and your implication that Silver Birch was a puppet expressing Swaffer's or Barbanell's beliefs does suggest you doubt his authenticity.



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Post by Wes Sun Jun 17, 2012 5:58 am

Admin wrote:Yes there are burning questions with SB as there always will be with communications from trance, I personally am horrified at his jehovah's Witness like stance on blood transfusions and his anti position on organ transplants,. I feel these reflect more of Barbanells realities, we must remember that for years people from a Jewish background, even if as very reformed as he must have been, had very strict life taboos.

Now even the very best trance mediums can reflect their subconcious positions..

Despite this of all the trance work I see the SB, Estelle roberts and Stainton Mose work hold together best. However, I will always ask people to be discriminating with anything from trance.

That is a concern as it doesn't appear to be taking into account the good intentions and compassion that lead to blood transfusions and organ transplants. Having lost a grandmother to a sudden and massive loss of blood, I can't see why anyone would willingly refuse either. It does make me wonder what information or knowledge Silver Birch was working from when he made that statement.
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Post by Wes Sun Jun 17, 2012 6:18 am

Left Behind wrote:
Wes wrote:
Left Behind wrote:So all these Spiritualist and NDE accounts of people who passed on hundreds of years ago. . . aging up to or back to their physical prime, remembering people they left behind, enjoying the same activities they enjoyed on earth. . . all these are incorrect?

If I understand your question correctly, these are cases where those in spirit have projected a facsimile of their physical form & personality for the purpose of communicating with people on earth.

No. But that introduces another topic.

I don't believe that there "are cases where those in spirit have projected a facsimile of their physical form and personality for the purpose of communicating with people on earth."

I do believe that the actual personalities of those in spirit communicate with people on earth. I believe that they enter spirit with precisely the same personalities they departed this life. I believe that these personalities are eternal. Yes, these personalities develop and modify over time. This should not be surprising. Is a man of 40 exactly the same person he was at 14? No, and we would hope not! But he is still the same person. Just as we will still be the same person after 10 0r 100 or 1,000 years in spirit that we are today on earth.

I am who I am. I have never been anyone else. I will never be anyone else.

Spiritualist and NDE accounts prove that we live on. We remember our lives on earth. We remember our loved ones we left behind. And we continue to live real lives, in real bodies, in a real world that's just as material as this one: only very different, and much better! Very Happy

Left Behind, there is a lot that I agree with there, where I would differ is that the personality we have on earth is an expression of that minute part of our soul that is able to manifest in our physical bodies. Once that body dies and we are reunited with that greater part of our soul, then that human personality is insignificant compared to our greater self-expression, and would only serve a purpose as long as you have ties to people on earth.

Personality is how we communicate with each other on earth, and is an expression of who we are, but it isn't an expression of what we are. What we are is a physical manifestation of spirit and how we show that is in our intentions and actions, which are independant of personality. Acts of love, compassion and healing are authentic expressions of that spark of spirit and are not influenced by personality. It's those acts that define ourselves as we move beyond this world, not what colour we like or if we're grumpy in the morning. Spiritual growth is about learning new things and letting go of things that no longer serve a purpose, and the human personality is one of those things that has a use-by date as we progress further and further into the infinite.
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Post by Wes Sun Jun 17, 2012 6:28 am

KatyKing wrote:Fair enough mate. You are entitled to your opinions. As I said earlier it's not an issue I choose to labour so chalk that up as a 'win' for you if that'll make you happy.

KK, One thing I meant to say earlier was that I agree with you wholeheartedly about being too attached to "old gospels" which is one of the problems with christians getting too attached to a book that in places addresses issues from two thousand years ago, and Moslems getting attached to a everything in book written about a thousand years ago. That attitude suggests that humans are going backwards and can't add to that wisdom in a contempory way. Your comments and Jim's have made me a bit more discerning in regards to Silver Birch's teachings (and anyone one else's for that matter) so you can chalk that up as a "win" for you Very Happy



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