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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Reincarnation On Trial

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RCC Monsignor Priest, Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914)

Editor’s note: We met Father Benson in “afterlife-evidence item #20". He offers just about the most descriptive report available concerning daily life in Summerland.

And in the course of his testimonies, he often makes reference to the eternal, the permanent nature of existence there -- even for plants and animals. I’ve made a collection of many these, reproduced below. All of them, by way of implication, instruct us on the fraudulence surrounding the reincarnation doctrine.

Footnote: See the “Summerland” page for extensive general quotations from “Life In the World Unseen” and its sequel.

I had had the chance of observing with the physical eyes the struggles that take place as the spirit seeks to free itself for ever from the flesh.

All these flowers were living and breathing, and they were, so my friend informed me, incorruptible.

It was simply that each tree was growing under perfect conditions, free from the storms of wind that bend and twist the young branches, and free from the inroads of insect life and many other causes of the misshapenness of earthly trees. As with the flowers, so with the trees. They live forever incorruptible, clothed always in their full array of leaves of every shade of green, and forever pouring out life to all those who approach near them.

In place of hundreds killed in battles in ancient times, the slain [or war] are now counted in hundreds of thousands. Every one of those souls has finished with his earthly life—though not with the consequences of it—and, in so many cases, the earth world has finished with him too. The individual may survive as a memory to those whom he has left behind him; his physical presence is gone. But his spirit presence is unalterably with us.

I have already mentioned that when I was first introduced to my spirit home, I observed that it was the same as my earth home, but with a difference. As I entered the doorway I saw at once the several changes that had been brought about… While standing within its walls I was fully aware of its permanence as compared with what I had left behind me… it was a permanence … [as] long as I wished it to be so. It was more than a mere house; it was a spiritual haven, an abode of peace, where the usual domestic cares and responsibilities were wholly absent.

The whole place, which was empty when Edwin had first brought us in, now contained many people, some strolling about, and others, like us, seated contentedly on the grass. We were in a delightful spot, with the trees and flowers and pleasant people all about us, and never have I experienced such a feeling of real, genuine enjoyment as came upon me at this moment. I was in perfect health and perfect happiness, seated with two of the most delightful companions, Edwin and Ruth; unrestricted by time or weather, or even the bare thought of them; unhampered by every limitation that is common to our old incarnate life.

I could feel a down pouring of new energy, which coursed through my whole being. I could feel myself becoming, as it were, lighter, with the last traces of the old earth conditions being driven away forever.

When we gazed at the portraits of so many men and women whose names had worldwide fame, whether they lived in distant times or in the present day, it gave Ruth and me a strange feeling to think that we were now inhabitants of the same world as they, and that they, like ourselves, were very much alive, and not mere historic figures in the chronicles of the earth world… The happiness of all the students whom we saw, itself spread happiness to all who beheld it, for there is no limit to their endeavors when that bugbear of earthly life— fleeting time—and all the petty vexations of the mundane existence have been abandoned forever.

I was staggered at my own Ignorance, and Ruth felt the same. However, Edwin reassured me by telling us that we must not let the sight of so much knowledge frighten us, as we have the whole of eternity before us! It was a comforting reminder, and strange to say, a fact that one is inclined to overlook. It takes time to shake off finally that feeling of impermanence, of transience, that is so closely associated with the earth life.

some small bird would be sure to perch upon our fingers. They seemed to know us, to know that any harm coming to them was an utter impossibility. They did not require to make a constant search for food nor exercise a perpetual vigilance against what on earth would be their natural enemies. They were, like ourselves, part of the eternal world of spirit, enjoying in their way, as we do in ours, their eternal life. Their very existence there was just another of those thousands of things that are given to us for our delight.

These are two extremes of thought—the theorists and the partisans of the ‘closed door’. Both schools receive some severe shocks when they enter spirit lands to live for all time. Individuals with strange theories find those theories demolished

Indeed, I doubt if anyone fairly new to spirit life could possibly hazard a guess as to his relative geographical position! Of course, there are scores upon scores of people who never bother their heads about such things. They have severed all connection with the earth world, and they have done with it for all time. They know positively that they are alive and in the spirit world, but as to the exact position of that world in the universe, they have no intention of troubling themselves.

To find oneself suddenly transformed into a permanent inhabitant of the spirit world is, at first, an overwhelming experience. However much one may have read about the condition of life in the world of spirit, there still remain an almost illimitable number of surprises in store for every soul.

Edwin admitted that he took some convincing, but his friend was infinitely patient with him. The instant that he was assured that he was really and truly and permanently in the world of spirit, his heart knew no greater joy, and he proceeded to do what I afterwards did in company with Ruth—travel through the lands of the new life with the luxurious freedom of body and mind that is of the very essence of spirit life in these realms.

When once she [Ruth] had fully realized the significance of her new life, and that all eternity lay before her in which to sample the marvels of this land, she was able to restrain her excitement, and, as she said, ‘take things a little more quietly’.

It involves nothing more, in fact, but the plain act of undergoing the ‘death’ of the physical body, and the operation of the same laws that govern us all, whether infants or aged—just the casting off of the physical body, and entering, for all time, the world of spirit.

What, then, becomes of people who occupied such a position as I have just mentioned? They will discover, immediately they are fully aware of their new state, that they have left their earthly avocation behind forever. They will see that the spirit world does not offer the same or similar work for them.

The people of the earth world may think it strange to walk through these realms and mingle with persons who lived on the earth-plane hundreds—and, in some cases, thousands—of years ago. A meeting of the past, as it were, with the eternal present. But it is not strange to us here.

You have, we will further suppose, left behind you a friend for whom you had—and still have—warm affection, and you wonder when he will be coming to reside permanently in the spirit world.

No trouble is spared. We have infinity of time, a vast amount of patience, together with the services of a multitude of people always available. There is no bungling, there are no mistakes; nothing is left to chance.

.And exactly like you, Roger he passed into these beautiful lands, and was cared for immediately, just as we try to do for all the human souls who come to us. That small bird, so very inconsiderable on earth, and the action of my two friends, equally inconsiderable, have not been lost. Their affection for that tiny atom of life has preserved that life for all time. At present he is part of the “household of a mutual old friend, who already has other bird and animal friends of his own. They’re a merry family, and we’ll take along to see him—and them. Don’t you think he is a rather handsome fellow?’ ‘I do.'

‘Did I understand you to say that a master-musician wrote the piece specially for you?’ ‘That is perfectly correct, Roger. Another surprise? It shouldn’t be, you know, because, if you come to think of it, all those famous composers who have died, must be somewhere, mustn’t they?’ ‘Yes, of course; that’s rummy—I never thought of that.’ ‘Ah,’ I remarked, ‘I suppose that’s because most folk regard musical composers as being only half human, if even that. That’s why so many of them were half-starved when they lived on earth. When they left it, the people suddenly remembered them, and put up statues and monuments to them, and their works suddenly became very valuable. Things are a trifle better now on earth, and a composer need not actually starve, but if he has written some really good things they will be much more valuable after he’s dead. At the present moment, the earthly geniuses are notable by their absence. The real geniuses are all here.

‘The most one could say, Roger, in answer to your question as to the age of the spirit world, is that it existed before the earth world. That we know from high sources. Well, then, if the earth first came into being between three thousand and five thousand million years ago, as it has been computed, then that figure may convey something to your mind. I’m rather afraid it won’t. It doesn’t to me.’ ‘Nor to me,’ said Ruth. ‘Just so. All it can do is to suggest a gargantuan number of years. If the spirit world were in existence so long ago as that—and we have every assurance that it was—then there are existing people in these lands, somewhere, who can claim at least that gigantic number of years as their age."

The following is channeled information via the mediumship of William W. Aber, the Psychic Research Society, as reported in “The Rending Of The Veil” (1898), compiled by J.H. Nixon. Testimonies were offered by numerous spirit-persons by means of full-form visible materialization. Spirit William Denton communicates:

"I hope the idea of reincarnation will be dismissed as an error that holds the soul to Earth rather than a means whereby you can be freed from the conditions of earthly ignorance… The fact is that all spiritual beings that have ever lived in the form are still existent as thinking beings in the spirit world... Think no longer that the soul of man cannot escape a ceaseless round of transmigrations ere it can be absolved, for it needs no other incarnation than its first to become capable of existence in spirit life.”

Editor’s note: Father Benson, in his writings, too, affirms that all who have ever lived on the Earth are somewhere to be found in the spirit world. And notice, as well, the concept of reincarnation makes people more earthbound not spiritually progressed.