What We Know of the Next World
What We Know of the Next World is an article written by Lady Conan Doyle published in the Sunday Dispatch on 25 january 1931.
What We Know of the Next World
LADY CONAN DOYLE.
By LADY CONAN DOYLE.
Humanity has a right to know where it is going to when this strata of its evolution is finished.
The time far that knowledge is now when the world so badly needs new inspiration to prevent it from sinking into the quagmire of materialism and unrest.
Christ indicated it a little when on the earth He said: "In my Father's house are many mansions" — the dear and wonderful homes that our people on the "other side" describe to us with no much pleasure.
People say sometimes that as the next world is such a happy place, and life there is so full and human and splendid, might that knowledge not be an incentive to some to commit suicide in order to leave their grey earth existence? No, a thousand times no!
A Spiritualist realises that by such an action a man would not go to the next higher sphere, but to a lower and a much greyer one than this earth.
In the case of illness, when a person is not responsible for his actions, then an all-loving Father understands and forgives, just as a tender mother would, but when it is the case of a man who has not behaved fairly in life, cheated and swindled perhaps, and thinks he will elude the punishment that he sees coming by committing suicide, he will find that there is no bluffing Providence, that he has to foot the bill for his actions and has made the bill much heavier by his deed.
Everyone is captain of his life's ship. We cannot leave our craft because we see bad seas ahead. We have got to take it into the port that God has ordained for us.
People say, too, that it is wrong to "call back the dead." It is not a question of calling them back. All we do is to provide facilities for them to come and communicate with us if they wish. They have told as all the world over that they could not communicate unless it was God's wish. We are following out the injunction of St. Paul when he said, "Test the Spirits, whether they be of God."
SOBBING SPIRIT.
Of the two most miserable spirit people to whom I have ever spoken one was a relative of my husband's, a splendid young man killed in the War, whose face we had clearly seen materialise in our home.
He was happy and requested us to ask his mother to come and talk to him. He was so longing and eager. When we told her about it she replied, "It was a devil." Her son a devil!
At a seance shortly afterwards he communicated again, and as we told him that we had asked his mother to come he broke in, sobbing out, "I know, I know. She said my voice was that of a devil!" I pray I may never hear a spirit sob like that again.
The other miserable soul was a man who had used his influence against this God-given knowledge being given to a soul-famished world, and in order to eradicate the harm he had done he now comes back to prove the truth of it and to express his bitter regret.
I know men of position and some well-known people who are well aware of these truths and could do much to aid in bringing this God-sent knowledge to the world which needs it so badly, if they were not moral cowards. They have the comfort of the knowledge, but they hug it to themselves and sit on the fence until it will be a popular and fashionable cult.
Too late then, my friends, for you to get any blessing and happiness from it. Your hearts will only be filled with disgust at your cowardly worldliness.
BARNACLED BRAINS.
The public must not be misled when writers and scientists rant and jeer at Spiritualism. That type of man laughed at the Darwinian theory laughed at the first railway, at flying, at telephones, at wireless, at every step forward in human knowledge.
He is the brake on progress, the jester at spirit communication.
After all, the world still houses the barnacled brains as well as the "open to reason" and wise ones.
The scientist's opinion about Spiritualism, if he has not been scientific — if he has not sat with a dozen accredited mediums, and studied the records of other investigators who give reasons for their belief — is not worth more than the opinion of the first foolish man in the street.
Everyone can prove our knowledge to be true for himself. That is where our strength lies.
One must approach this subject in all humility as one would any other new science and build on one's results, and taking, as a basis for one's own investigation, the word of clever and honourable men who have studied the subject for years and testified to the truth of it.
When attending a seance one must go to it with a feeling, I might say, of reverence, in order to get in touch with those in a higher vibration of life.
If you approach the sitting sceptically, your own mind half made up to expect fraud, the vibrations created by each thoughts must necessarily ruin any chance of clear communication. The finest electric currents are elephantine, we are told by those on the other side, compared with the vibrations between spirit and matter.
To feel the touch, as it were, of a vanished hand across the valley of the shadow of death and to hear a dear voice that was still, what could be more sacred and soul-stirring? How alien, how horrible, in so sacred an experience, to have the jaunty "know-all," the grey materialistic personality, treading on such almost holy ground, at a seance! Those are the people who make a seance a dead failure by their hopeless vibration; and then they blame the medium. As well to blame the telephone when a foolish message is sent.
It is when one thinks of the broken-hearted and those whose lives are all empty and lonely and hard — such a struggle all the time with so few of life's joys — that one longs so for humanity to have this knowledge of what awaits them just a little way ahead of the rough, hurtful road of life.
THE OTHER SPHERE.
If only they could see that glorious vista, could know of all the happiness and love which awaits them in that land of fulfilled ideals, what heart and courage it would give them to carry on! What joy would soon creep into their weary hearts!
To know that when they pass to the other side of the little valley called Death they will find their beloved ones just the same, but with all earth pain and life's shadows removed from their dear faces; to know that love and sympathy will be the keynote of life there; and everyone so full of splendid activity and interest in their busy and happy lives. That is the next stage of existence for all those who try to learn life's lessons — to be kind, unselfish and true.
Our knowledge gives us definite information of the conditions of life in the lower and higher spheres. All other religions talk vaguely of going into glory, etc. They know nothing more. We know the condition of the various spheres through which we shall progress and what are the steps in our souls' development to perfection.
All evolution is gradual. God made it so. The next sphere is a wonderfully human world where we go on developing every gift that is in us. The same personality carries on, only tuned in on another vibration of life — the etheric.
EVIDENCE.
How do we know these facts? I believe I am right in saying that it only takes three witnesses to hang a man, such testimony being considered solid evidence. Well, our evidence has come from thousands and thousands of those on the other side through thousands of mediums all over the world, all knowing nothing of each other.
If anything is ever going to be considered evidential, then the testimony of thousands is the most that humanity will ever get.
There are so many roads to Heaven. The road of Spiritualism is illuminated by the light of a wonderful knowledge, a glorious light which shows at the end of the road, instead of the mysterious dread terror of a darkening spectre called "death"; that this dread terror is in reality only a little gateway leading into a world where the tired, sad, lonely traveller will find all that means happiness to his still human heart. All that is best, that he most longs for, he will discover beyond that gateway — a vision like a golden dream — which will prove to be Life Immortal.
[World copyright.]
