Mediumship

An Address from Brother Bernard

Recorded in the Cowley Road Church, Oxford, June 1987

Good evening friends.

It is with joy that we come into your midst once again to leave with you one or two thoughts that might be of help to you in the coming days.

We want to speak to you tonight about Mediumship, about the gifts of the Spirit, about the work that you have come to Earth to do and the way in which you should do it. Many of you may sit in a Circle from time to time, perhaps you sit week by week and it may be that as you sit there you seem to receive nothing from the World of Spirit and so you are tempted to drop out, you think what is the use of my coming week by week when I never receive anything from Spirit. We want to tell you of the importance of what you are doing.

When you gather in your weekly Circle, whether you hear, see or feel things from Spirit or whether you are just sitting meditating, you are sending out love, you are sending out light, light that reaches out into the Spirit World. When souls pass over from this world into the next they don't suddenly become saints. You have been taught in your orthodox churches that though a mans sins be black yet, if he believes in Jesus, he can be made as white as snow. What a foolish idea! If you have lived a life upon Earth full of selfishness, if you have never considered other people, if you have never done your best to give help how can you expect to suddenly believe in Jesus and become as a saint?

When you come over to our side of life you come over with the character that you were when you were on the Earth, you bring with you the same ideas, the same thoughts, the same misunderstandings, and you begin to learn. As you learn while you go through life on the earth plane so you learn when you come to Spirit. There are numerous souls who, when they get to our side of life, do not realise that they have passed on, or, if they do know it, then they think that they will just stay in a state of limbo until the last day of judgement. So there are souls wandering on the other side of life trying to reach back to Earth, not understanding why it is that people will not see them or speak to them, in some sort of nightmare. It is those souls that you reach when you sit week by week in your Circle.

When a group of people get together to think of Spirit then they kindle a light which shines onto the other side of life and sometimes those wandering souls can see that light. They do not see the Spirit light, they do not feel the Spirit power but they can see your Earth light and coming towards it often your Guides are able to show them the Spirit light and direct them along the way. That is a very important piece of work.

Mediumship does not merely consist of standing on a platform and speaking, it does not consist of giving messages from the other side of life. It can permeate the whole of your being, mediumship which is showing the love of God, showing the love of Spirit, showing love to all the people that you meet.

When we were here once before we told you that it did not matter what particular job you did for Spirit, whether you welcomed people at the door, or gave out the hymn books, whether you arranged the flowers, played the organ, took the chair or did the washing up, cleaned the church, whatever it is it is a form of mediumship, showing your love, your love for Spirit, your love for your fellow men and women.

That is the most important thing in your life upon Earth, to show that love, to demonstrate it, not just to the people that you feel friendly towards, not just to the kindred spirits that you meet while you are on the earth plane but showing love to the awkward customers, to the people who rub you up the wrong way, to those who are so materialistic that they cannot see what you can gain from knowing about Spirit, those who ridicule you for going to church, those who would do their best to do you down. There are so many different people upon the earth plane and your job as Spiritualists is to look for the spirit within them, to realise that they have God within them in the same way as you have God within you. It may be hidden, it may be overlaid by layers of selfishness, by love of materialism, by greed, hatred, or envy but that spark of God is still within every soul upon Earth.

As you go through life look for the good in people, not the bad. If you cannot speak good of anyone do not say anything. It is so easy for you on the earth plane to repeat things that you hear to someone's disadvantage. The whole time you are trying to improve your material state. There is nothing wrong with that; the things of Earth are there for you to partake of, for you to enjoy, for you to use and there is no harm in trying to make the best of what you have got upon Earth. What is wrong is when you put the material things in the forefront of your lives, when you dismiss the Spiritual as being unimportant, when you set your whole mind upon making progress in this world, progress of a material kind.

Remember you are dual personalities. You are a body and a mind which is of Earth, a body that has inherited certain characteristics from your forbears, a mind that has been trained from childhood, that has been educated, that is open to everything that occurs in your world, but you are also a spirit, a soul, an eternal being that is just functioning for a short while in a body of Earth.

We often liken being on the earth plane as wearing an overall and being put into a room where there are tools for you to work with, the tools of the circumstances of your lives and it is up to each one of you to use the circumstances that surround you in order to develop the love of God, the love of Spirit, the love of your fellow men and women.

At the present time your Earth is not a very pleasant place to live in. As we come down from our side of life it is as though we are going through mud to reach you and yet all over the world there are sparks of light, light that comes from your church services. Whatever religion a person belongs to does not matter. What is important is that they live up to what they believe in, to what they profess, that they realise that God is beyond everything and is in everything.

You are Christians because you were born in a country that has Christianity as its religion, or is supposed to have Christianity as its religion. It does not matter what colour or creed a man is, if he belongs to a religious organisation, if he has any idea of God, whatever form it is, then he is on the pathway of progress.

So much that goes on in your world is devoted to materialism, is devoted to making money, to getting a better standard of living and so on, but if the effort that is put into material progress could be put into spiritual progress then you would find that a lot of the troubles that beset your world would begin to be lifted. Of course there are individuals who help, who do what they can.

When a disaster strikes then people up and down your country, throughout your western world will respond but we don't want an effort made just when there is a big disaster. We want the love that you generate to be sent out the whole time to all those in the third world, to all those souls who do not have your privileges, your opportunities. We want you to realise that love is the most important thing in your world and that love you should have within your souls for all in your world and in the Spirit World.

So we come back to our first topic, sit in your circles, sit in your groups, go to your church, send out your thoughts of love to those in the darkness on the other side of life and you will be working for God, better than any medium, better than any person limited to Earth. Remember you are divine, you have God within you It is your duty while you are on the earth plane to see that that spark of divinity grows, that it sheds a light and that light shines out into your world and into ours.

Goodnight my friends and God bless you all.