Faith

Sitter (After mirth noises heard): Welcome friend you’re nearly through.

Spirit June): I know. (Laughter)

Sitters: Good evening June.

Spirit: I was just introducing my friend to my other friend.

I have someone with me tonight, but she will not be talking to you. For one thing she is a bit foreign… she comes from North of the Border, and you can imagine how she talks. (Mirth)  But we make a joke of that because what with her Scottish accent and well, mine, it’s really another language between the two of us. (Note: June is Cockney).

Sitter (K): What is your friend’s name June?

Spirit: Jeannie.

Sitter: Well good evening Jeannie and welcome to the circle.

Spirit: Jeannie hopes one day to do what I am doing… having a friend that I can communicate with, so she has come to just see how we get on.

Sitter: Good.

Spirit: With this subject tonight I’m wandering a bit, but it is one that has been under discussion with many, and I’d like to pass on what I learnt from it.

Now going back to Bill… do you all remember Bill?

Sitter: Very well.

Spirit: Bill used to talk about “Having Faith”. You had to have ‘faith’. Well that didn’t go down too well with me. I thought, “What is this thing called ‘Faith’?” and I was about to ask him, when he left us as you know. And it came up recently with a group of people who understand things, and talk to all of us (I suppose you’d call them tutors, or teachers), and they were saying, “What is Faith?” Well I felt a bit silly because I didn’t know, and they went on to explain that in the Christian church you were told, “Always to have faith!”, and with many of the other religions you were told, “You must believe!”, which is another way of saying, “Have faith”.

But I wondered just how you can believe, when you don’t know what you are believing in?  So they went on to explain it, and to me it was a logical explanation. How is that for a sentence?

Sitter (J): Very good. (Mirth)

Spirit: Jeannie’s looking at me with awe. (Laughter)

At any rate, what it amounts to is over a period of time, you people have been handed a great deal of knowledge. Some of it has probably stuck, and some of it you have rejected. Understandable. But faith is listening to what people say… whether they are spirit in my part of the universe, or on earth. Listen, pull it to pieces and don’t accept it, until you yourself are convinced, that for you, at this present time - it is right! And this applies too to everything we tell you, and to everyday happenings. You must criticize all, and accept only when for you, they are right! And where the faith comes into it - is in having faith in you. You have worked it out, sensibly, you have accepted and rejected, and perhaps in your own way added to it.

You read books, some of them are very old, and there are wise words written down. You read present day books, some of them have very wise words and others are, I think your expression is, “Ho Hum”. You don’t accept them. Well this is understandable and when you’ve built up that book for yourself, of what you feel and believe at this time, to be right, then you have faith in yourself, because you are part of God as you know. You have to accept the (I don’t know how to put this quite); you have to accept the rights and the wrongs of your decision, when you join us. I think this is mentioned in your ‘Principles’ that you go by, but until someone else proves you wrong, or praises you for what you have accepted, you must have faith in yourself. Because it is people like you who become… now I’m not saying ‘you’ as individuals here, but human beings, who are souls, who develop into our teachers.

One of the great teachers whom you have heard much about was Jesus, he was a very human being just like you, but through thinking things out for himself, and trying to pass it on to other people, he became a great teacher. Unfortunately the church teaches that he will come back, but think for yourself…if Jesus came back and taught as he taught in those times, 2000 years ago, he would not be accepted.

People have become more educated, they think for themselves, and this applies to primitive people too because pressure is put on them from advancing souls. The good and bad are still there, the basis of his teaching is still there, “Love one another”. But if he started going around saying that, and telling you to turn the other cheek… well the world could be at great disadvantage because we have got to accept, that there is good and bad in the world, and it is by questioning everything and everyone, that we advance ourselves.

And that was explained to us as have faith by all means… have faith in the great teachers, but remember they were teaching of a different period of time. You have got to develop your thinking…

Note: At this point Joyce the medium began uncontrolled coughing [arising from recent ‘flu] and we faintly heard June say, “Goodbye”, as Joyce came out of trance.