Man’s Spiritual Evolution

Brother Bernard Gives An Address

Good evening friends.

It gives us great joy to come into your presence this eventide to leave with you one or two thoughts that may be of help to you in the coming days.

We come from the other side of life and I use the word "we", not because I am in any way royal, but because there is a group who work together, and it is the thoughts that come from the group that come to you via the medium.

You have come into a Spiritualist church, but what does Spiritualism mean to you? How much of it is taken into your everyday life? What difference has it made to you as you journey along Earth's pathway? Those of you who come here for the first time have probably come wondering what sort of an evening you will be having. Perhaps you have been reared in the tradition that Spiritualism is wrong and you come, almost against your will, trying to find something that you can criticize. Others of you have probably been interested in Spiritualism, and the other life, for years, and have been seeking to find something of the truth. There is nothing wrong with Spiritualism when you come down to basics.

Every religion in your world has always believed in an afterlife, and behind every religion be it Islam, Janism, Hinduism, Judaism or Christianity, is the thought of God, the thought of a Power, the thought of something that is greater than man.

When man first began his evolutionary path from the world of animals into the world of humans, he felt the need to have some religion in his life. In one of the oldest cities of your world, that dates in your calendar from twenty thousand B.C., even in that city there are representations of God. In a different form from the one you worship, but a reality to the people who lived there and who felt the need to worship.

Every time people have begun to think, every time man has begun to grope out of the darkness towards the light, he has acknowledged that there was a power greater than he. In the early days he looked for this power in the things that were around him, in the beauties of nature, the mountains, the trees, the rivers and the rocks. It did not matter what it was, he knew instinctively that there was something there that could not be put into ordinary language. Down through the centuries, as man has evolved, he has realized that there is a need within him, a need for religion of one sort or another. Over the centuries the Great Souls have come into your earth plane and have preached various gospels. Sometimes they were received joyfully, sometimes they were rejected by men. Sometimes the message that they came to give was forgotten, and at other times it was altered by the priests, or the leaders of the nations. But the Spirit of God, the Spirit that comes to Earth, the Spirit that brings man to a realization of his need for religion, that Spirit is even present today.

It is easy for you, as you live your lives upon Earth, to think that religion is just something to be kept for Sundays, or for your Circles. But what you have got to realize is that you are souls; you are spirits in a body. A body of matter; a body of Earth. A body that has come to the earth plane in order that it may grow, in order that it may develop. In order that it may learn certain lessons. Have you ever thought that the spirit within you, being eternal, means not only do you go on living when you have finished with your body but you were living before you came into that body! You are on a pilgrimage, a journey, and within each one of you there is a spark of God, a part of the Great Spirit, and that part has chosen to manifest in an Earth body in order that it may have experiences through life.

Many of you, looking back upon your life on Earth, will see how you have been led into this particular Movement. When you look at your own religious history you will see how first one thing, and then another, led you on the pathway to Spirit. Made you realize something of the eternity of life, of love, the continuity, the work that your soul has to do.

When you come to the end of your days on Earth it is only your body that dies; that is left behind. Your spirit will go on, taking with it the lessons that have been learned during your journey through life.

Sometimes you find yourself saying "why should this happen to me!" Why should I have more difficulties than somebody else?" You look around and see neighbors who are succeeding in places where you have failed, and you begin to envy them. Their new car, their new furniture, their holidays abroad, and you look at your own life and you think to yourself "why?". But that is the question every one on Earth has got to answer for themselves!

Before you came to Earth you looked at the circumstances that there were. You knew what particular lessons you needed to learn for your soul to develop and so you chose a set of circumstances that would fit what you needed. You chose your parents, you chose your family, you chose the time at which you came to the Earth, and you also chose the time at which you will leave it.

There are many questions that you will find yourself asking as you go through life. Why should there be children born maimed and deformed? Why should there be so many abortions? Why should there be so much misery upon the earth plane and why should there be such hooliganism and vulgarity? Why! It is because Earth is a school; a school in which you have to learn lessons, some of them easy, some of them uplifting. Some of them boring and some of them rather sad; but they all go up to make life.

We do not want you to shut yourselves away from the experiences of Earth, even though you may know something about Spirit. Perhaps you develop as a Medium and can contact Spirit yourself. Perhaps you read of the Eternal Verities in the many books that there are. But you also have to live your lives on Earth. You have to undertake the responsibilities that Earth brings and if you have more difficulties than someone else, if your path is rougher than another persons, if you find it more difficult to achieve your ends than someone else, then rejoice because it means that your spirit has progressed to the stage where you can deal with obstacles that would stop someone else.

Treat life as an adventure, and each experience that comes along, as something that you have to do. Something that you have to pass through, and, by coping with it to the best of your ability, you will find that you are developing your character; you are building your home in the next world. You are preparing yourself for the next stage of your existence.

You send your children to school in order that they may learn. You would not think much of a school that only gave it's pupils easy lessons. You want your child to be stretched to the limit of its ability. You want the child to have opportunities in order to learn, in order to grow, in order to acquire character, in order to learn through life.

So it is with each one of you. It is as though you are in a school of Earth, and the lessons of that school are the difficulties that you face in your daily lives.

We come to you because we love you. That is an easy word to say is it not? Just a very short four letter word: love. And yet it encompasses so much. It is love that will enable you to live your life to the full. It is love that will give you the courage to deal with the difficulties that you will meet. Love is the only thing that will overcome some of the evils in your world. Love for your fellow men and women, love for your neighbors, love for those people who hate you, who despise you. Love for the wrong doers, those who commit the crimes that horrify you when you read about them. It is only love that will help to develop those souls, and remember, even if they receive no punishment in this world, they will when they get to the other side of life. There they will realize what they have done! Then they will be punished indeed. Punished in mind by themselves!

There is no judgment seat on the other side of life. There is no bench; no judge. The only person who will judge you will be yourself. And it is when you look back upon your life on Earth, when you begin to sort out the good and the bad, when you realize the times when you failed, but also realize the times when you succeeded. When you see the misery that you caused and the happiness that you gave. You, yourself, will be the judge of what you have done. Of whether it be good or ill, whether the final result will justify your journey on Earth, or whether it will be necessary for you to come again in order to learn what you omitted to do this time.

Each one of you, being an immortal soul, will live on. And not only live on but will progress because you are on a journey that will eventually lead you to God; to union with the Great Power. We cannot tell you when that will be. We who have gone beyond the grave of Earth and have just walked down the path a little further than you. We can see, in some form, the shadows that hang over Earth. But we also see the lights that are kindled when souls are beginning to seek God. When the good deeds are done for one and another. When the prayers are sent out; prayers for the whole of your world.

Every man woman and child upon Earth is on this pathway, and the end result will depend upon how you deal with your life on Earth. Remember you can contact Spirit through prayer. You can receive help from your guides, from your loved ones, those who are termed your guardian angels, your helpers. You will not be told what to do or how to do it. You will have the circumstances shown to you in such a way that you have to make the choice. You have to appeal to what is within you; to that part of God which is in your soul. The ancients would have called it your conscience. You may use that term if you like. But whatever it is, it is a link with God, a link with Spirit.

We ask you, as you journey through life, to send your thoughts out in love to all your fellow men and women, and that love will kindle a light which will shine as a beacon upon their pathway through Earth.

Goodnight and God bless you all.

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