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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Father Robert Benson speaks out against the fable
of Satan: "The Church has led people widely astray."
No devil could “masquerade as an angel of light!
There is no such masquerading here, I do assure you.
Nowhere in the spirit world is it possible for any
person to assume one scintilla of light which is
not completely and absolutely his own.”
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The testimony of Father Robert Benson:
It is the belief of the Church to which I belonged when I was on Earth that Adam and Eve were immortal in their earthly bodies, that the process known as physical was as yet unknown. These two individuals, that were so constituted that they were living, as it were in two worlds at once. They were, in fact, partly of the spirit world and partly of the earth world.
It was the sin of these supposed first parents the Father of the universe to invent the death physical body. He cast them out of Paradise, condemned them to ‘death,’ and that ‘death’ became communicable like some pestilent disease, to all future generation of mankind. The whole fabrication of the history of the creation of man and his subsequent disaster is a gross insult to the Infinite Mind.
The complexity of Church doctrines and creeds that have their origin or basis in the fable of our first parents a totally inadequate attempt to explain what the early churchmen were completely unable to explain.
The Christian civilization of the earth world dates the commencement of its history at about two thousand years ago of earthly time. Two thousand years: they are but a grain of sand, one single grain of sand, in a whole vast desert of time. What was happening on Earth before those two thousand years commenced?
The Earth, you are taught to, believe, was mostly in a state of paganism, where the people worshipped a multiplicity of gods, and changed their gods as their fancy led them. The great Father had, in fact, more or less abandoned his earthly children for countless millions of years, and He only, at last, bethought Him to send ‘salvation’ to earth two thousand years ago, after eons and eons of time had passed by in neglect. Such, in effect, is what you are asked to believe, as we, of the spirit world, see it.
The devil, of course, appears in this story of the first man and woman. It is he who caused their downfall. One might ask: who is this mysterious devil who, ever since his first great achievement in the Garden of Eden, has spent its time and energies ‘wandering through the world for the ruin of souls’?
On a former occasion I spoke to you about this seemingly ever-present gentleman. After hearing so much about him when I was incarnate, one of the early questions that I asked concerned the existence—or otherwise—of Satan. Did such a person really exist? I was told that there was no truth whatever in the story that somewhere in the lowest realms there was a Prince of Evil whose sole object was to place himself in direct opposition to the Father of all good, and whose function was to lure souls into the commission of base deeds that would encompass their eternal damnation.
That, I was assured, was all sheer nonsense. If one were to traverse the dark realms and make a really comprehensive survey of those regions, one might, after careful elimination, find one or more souls who were considerably lower in the scale of evil than their fellows. Conceivably, one might even find one who was so debased that those in evil light feel inclined to regard him as something of a leader in evil ways.
That there is one who is indisputably the Prince of Evil—no, he simply does not exist. Every inch of the dark realms has been surveyed by beings of the highest realms, and they have so far failed to discover this personage. Not that they set out for that purpose! The knowledge that all such high beings possess tells them that there is no such person as the devil. But in the sense that all evil people in the realms of darkness can be called devils, then there are many devils.
The devil is supposed to take upon him many disguises. In the story of the Garden of Eden he became serpent. At the present day upon earth, the Church claims that the devil manifests himself by masquerading as an ‘angel of light’ in the ‘séance chamber,’ where he carries on his fell work of luring souls to their doom. In such cases, then, the devil has even, on occasion, claimed to have been a former priest of the Church!
We can afford to smile at such stupidity. But we are also saddened by it. Living in the spirit world, as all the beauties and marvels, all the joys and delights, and the heaven-sent opportunities of doing good and useful work ever around us, we can see the profound darkness of so much of what we called religious thought when we lived on the earth-plane. We can recall how strenuously we upheld some doctrine or another as being vitally important to the soul’s ‘salvation’ only to find, when we came to live for all time in the spirit world that such doctrine counts for nothing literally nothing. It shows itself for what it is completely meaningless. It becomes disintegrated by the great truths that are before us here. Such, for example, is soon to be discovered in the story of our supposed first parents and the story of original sin. It is as impossible to find Adam and Eve, or their equivalent, in the spirit world, as it is impossible to find the devil, and for the same reason.…
Mercy is a quality, which can only be practiced upon earth, and we merit a rich reward for our showing that splendid quality during our earthly lives. But as soon as we pass into the spirit world, mercy ceases. Justice takes its place, and justice is the operation of the law of cause and effect. It is a justice which is incorruptible, infallible, impartial, unfailing. There is no evading it; it must exert itself upon all persons alike, of whatever nation, creed color, age or sex.
Blessed are they that seek justice, for they shall have their fill. Many seek justice upon earth, and fall to obtain it. Here in the spirit world they receive their fill. The measure is full and brimming over, I do assure you. Those who have denied giving that justice when on earth, they, too will have justice. They will experience what real justice can be. Jesus knew this when he spoke those words. He saw the injustice that was about him in the part of the world in which he lived, and he knew where strict justice was eventually to be found—in the spirit world.
But he also knew that mercy does not come from God but from man to fellow man. It is the theologians who have built up this singular conception of the Father. It is they who have transmogrified the Great Father into a stern and awful judge.
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and all his angels. Here in the gospel we are supposed to have the very words with which God will condemn the transgressor. In the spirit world, it fills us with unspeakable horror to contemplate upon the enormity of any person authoritatively teaching others that the Father of us all could utter words of such fearful condemnation. And these words are put into the mouth of Jesus, although it must be conceded that, at long last, honest doubts are creeping into the minds of churchmen on earth that so much that Jesus is reputed to have said was, in good truth, never spoken by him at all.
Assuredly this evil sentence upon the transgressor must be placed first upon the list of utterances that were never made by Jesus. Indeed, he could not have given voice to such downright, unblushing falsehood. For there is not one atom of truth in it. Nor is there any truth whatever in any statement appearing in the New Testament wherein it is specifically asserted that man shall be condemned for all eternity, no matter how great may be the enormity of his sins.
There is no awful Judgment Day, whether it be alleged to take place immediately upon man’s passing into the spirit world or at some later and unspecified time. I have said this to you before. At the risk of being tiresome, I cannot refrain from repeating it.
The dread of Judgment Day or of being summoned before the High Court of Heaven to be judged and sentenced—either or both of these outrageous beliefs have cast a blight upon the whole earth world for hundreds of earthly years. It has filled many, many estimable souls with the uttermost despondency. Many others with sensitive minds have passed their earthly lives in a state of spiritual terror because of that dread day that is supposed to await them at the close of their earthly lives.
It is part of my work in the spirit world to be at hand when people are making their entrance into these lands as residents, so that I speak from first-hand experience when I tell you of the abject terror that consumes so many poor souls when their moment of transition has come. Instead of the winter of their earthly lives passing gently into the glorious fresh, fragrant spring of their new life in these lands, they arrive here with that terror full upon them. Such beliefs are relics of pure paganism, but this wicked fiction has been kept up and disseminated by the Churches of earth as a measure of inspiring fear into the hearts of their ‘faithful.’ As a former priest of the Church, I regret deeply and earnestly, that I ever gave tongue to such misguided teaching. And there are hosts of others like me.
Man has been branded by the theologians as something so evil; so much accent has been laid upon ‘sinful man,’ and the Father of the universe is alleged to be so stern and awful (always the Great Dread Judge), that there is little wonder that man upon the earth-plane turns with some hope, forlorn though it may be, to the mercy that might be given to him.
The most that the average man can do upon earth is to hope for the best, to hope that perhaps things may not be so terrible for him in the afterlife as he has been led to believe. He has no certainty of it, and the Church would say that he has no right to assume anything, but he can sometimes think quietly. And out of those quiet thoughts he may derive some measure of spiritual insight; he may receive a little inspiration from some unseen friend of the spirit world—and leave the theologians and official spiritual teachers to their incomprehensible creeds and dogmas and their spiritual presumption.
For no one is more presumptuous than the Theologian, who, knowing little or nothing of the truth of spiritual matters, professes to know a great deal.
Fear is the strongest weapon, the deadliest weapon, in the theological armory. For hundreds of years Orthodoxy has wielded this weapon to inspire fear in the hearts of mankind—by the supposed dire penalties which it will be their misfortune to suffer when they pass to the ‘next world’ if they should have misbehaved themselves on earth. The worst sentence of all is to be condemned to hell for all eternity where the ‘sinner’ will remain forever in strange fires that burn but never consume.
But let it not be assumed that there is not a day of reckoning for all mankind. Most assuredly there is. And that moment first presents itself immediately when we have cast off the physical body in ‘death.’ Thence forward, every day—to use earthly terms—every moment of the day becomes our time of reckoning. We judge ourselves as we go along in life in the spirit world. We do not hold a formal court of inquiry into our actions as we proceed in our life, but the inevitable law of cause and effect, being ever operative, provides us with the very essence of progression. We ourselves provide the cause: we thus set the law in motion. And the law produces the effect. That is how we progress in the spirit world. There is none to judge us but ourselves, and we can be stern and unrelenting to ourselves! …
The acts and thoughts of our earthly lives are registered within us, and thus our life’s history is indelibly recorded within our never-failing memories. In order to understand this you must first of all know one simple fact of spiritual knowledge. It is this: spirituality means light the absence of spirituality means darkness. I am not speaking figuratively, but literally. The light is real light, just as you have on earth in the noonday of summer, and is not some spiritual ‘experience.’ The darkness is Stygian, the complete absence of light, and it can be blacker even than the darkness of the darkest midnight of a bleak and bitter winter on earth, or of some deep tenebrous dungeon below the ground. The individuals who live in these two contrasting states of light and darkness exactly match their surroundings of brightness and gloom in their own persons. Their bodies and their very raiment will correspond minutely with their habitation. In the bright realms, wherein it is my happy fortune to live, our clothing and our physical frames are as full of light as are our surroundings. The same state of things exists in the greater and more exalted realms above us to a degree that is indescribable in ordinary earthly terms. In addition, the very countenances of the elevated beings that inhabit those realms have taken upon their lineaments the high spirituality of their realms.
In the dark realms, the reverse takes place. The denizens are hideous in form and feature, distorted sometimes out of all resemblance to their once human appearance. Indeed, when they were upon earth they may have been elegant in form and handsome in feature, but are now reduced to their true status. Their attire may be filthy rags, a mere mockery of clothing. They may present such a revolting spectacle that one would naturally recoil from contact with them. The base deeds of their lives have reacted upon them, both in body and mind. They possess no perceptible glimmer of light themselves, and their habitation is similarly devoid of light. You will see my meaning when I repeat that spirituality means light, the absence of spirituality means darkness.
You will also observe the monumental stupidity of Orthodoxy when, in its blindness, it pontifically pronounces that when we of the spirit world return to earth to speak with our friends there, we are nothing but devils of hell masquerading as angels of light! There is no such masquerading here, I do assure you, my good friend.
Nowhere in the spirit world is it possible for any person, of whatever description, to assume one scintilla of light which is not completely and absolutely his own. No person can endow another with light, temporarily or permanently. The light, which emanates from us, is the result of the working of the law of cause and effect—which is justice.
Another question, which may come to your mind, is this: how does each person go, automatically, as it seems to the exact place he has earned for himself? Who decides the matter?
To answer the last question first: no one decides the matter for any person; the person decides it for himself. He goes automatically to his right abode because that is the abode for which he is exactly fitted. He is attuned to that abode in a manner, which I will explain to you, for the same reason there is no fear of an individual over-stepping or escaping from the dark realms if so be it he has condemned himself to those regions. The reason is this: the kind of life which every soul leads upon earth reacts directly upon his spiritual counterpart; in other words, a person’s spirit body will possess just that degree of light which is resultant from his life on earth.
If his life has been bad in every sense, then his spirit body will possess little or no light. The sphere to which he goes in the spirit world will possess exactly the same degree of light as the spirit body itself, no more, no less. The two coincide perfectly; they are attuned.
We might draw a simple analogy from the oceans of the earth world. The sea, as you must know, is comprised of water of various densities in which myriads of creatures are living, segregated according to the different densities. They are fitted for the particular pressure of water by their physical construction. If, broadly speaking, creatures occupying water of one density attempted to enter that of another density, they would bring destruction upon themselves if they penetrated far enough. They would be forewarned of any encroachment or deviation from their rightful sphere by acute discomfort or suffering…
There will be some, perhaps many, who will affirm that not only am I a devil, but that I am the very Prince of Darkness himself. Let them think so if it gives them an satisfaction. There are others, far, far greater than I am who have been regarded as demons from the realms of darkness, so that therein I find myself in good company! …
Jesus was the great exemplar of communication between our two worlds, yours and mine. He showed that with proper development and under proper auspices it is indisputably right for the two worlds to hold a normal converse through the exercise of psychic faculties in a normal rational way. Jesus, among others, pointed the way for all mankind to follow, but Orthodoxy will have none of it.
Communication with the spirit world is devilish and damnable, and no good can come of it. The whole thing reeks of hell, and if it does not drive a person mad, he will merely escape that to roast in hell for all eternity. None but evil spirits come back to earth, and they do so for the purpose of dragging down to their own filthy level those who are foolish or misguided enough to dabble in such pernicious practices. It is all necromancy; a calling-up of the dead. The good spirit will not come. If any claim to be a good spirit, it is a devil masquerading as an angel of light. What unutterable puerile nonsense! And what colossal ignorance! …
As we see things in their clear light in the spirit world, we regard the Church on earth - and by Church I mean all those religious bodies who nominate themselves Christian - we regard the Church upon earth not as a help to man in his spiritual progression, but as a downright and deliberate hindrance. The Church is blocking the way to the diffusion of spiritual truth and knowledge throughout the earth world. It is no help to man in his journey through his earthly life, though seemingly it may be…
Man on earth should have no fear for his spiritual future. He should be able to live his good life upon earth in complete happiness of mind, and in complete freedom from fear for his future in the spirit world. We are not devils, though there are plenty of evil people in the spirit world, but it is not the spirit world that has made them evil. It is the earth world that has sent them here in that state. The clergy of the Church, or some of them, consider us as devils.
There are clergymen still upon earth who fully qualify for that designation themselves, but that is not to say that all ministers of religion are devils. The same stupid cry of devils was put up in the time of Jesus and in the same connection. Let people forget the devils and think of other folk in the spirit world who are eager and waiting to speak to them…
What arrant nonsense! Poor blind man upon earth. The Church has led him astray, widely astray. It prays hard for the setting up of the kingdom of God upon earth; it professes to know so much, in the presumption of its assumed authority, about spiritual matters, and is perfectly content to go on in the same fruitless manner, fondly imagining that large congregations are a splendid sign of man's returning to God, satisfied to go on preaching the same useless doctrines which have no relation whatever to the truth, providing no solution to any of the earth’s difficulties, powerless to right any wrong, and in many cases thoroughly indifferent to, or condoning, many wrong of divers sorts, completely ignorant of one little item of sound information concerning a man's condition after he has 'died.'
The Church professes to have the spiritual care of man in its hands, and knows next to nothing about the matter at all. And that great and illustrious soul, whom the earth knows as Jesus, sees from his exalted estate the havoc that has been wrought in the simple, direct, forthright teachings, the proclamation of which ultimately cost him his earthly life. He sees himself elevated into that deific position which never, for a single fraction of a second, did he imagine would be his in the minds of the people of earth.
He knows that he tried so hard to show people how they could make the earth into a gloriously happy place, to show people how the power of the Greatest Mind could be brought to earth through His benign representatives of the spirit world. He tried so diligently to show that if man would but listen to the voices from the spirit world all would be right with the earth, and that there would ensue a regime of happiness and repose for all men upon earth, the regime of the Father of the universe Himself, spreading right from its great source to the uttermost bounds of the earth. And all this would be accomplished through God's 'angels of light', whom an ignorant section of the earth call devils. God sends his ministers to earth, and the Church, which claims for itself as belonging to God, calls them emissaries of Satan! …
It is even believed by doctors of the Church that the kingdom of God, when fully established, will witness the complete overthrow of Satan, and sin will thus be banished from the earth. Such beliefs as these are childishly crude. I freely confess that once I believed these things myself when I was incarnate, and taught them. But those days are passed, and I am now a happy resident of the spirit world where we can see the precise value of so much that we embraced as religious beliefs before we came to dwell in these lands.
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