Silver Birch

Silver Birch is a high level spirit teacher who transmitted information through the trance medium Maurice Barbanell (1902-1981). He came through to a group which met monthly in the home of London author and drama critic Hannen Swaffer for over forty years.

He claimed to have been a spokesperson for a collective of higher spirits: “There is a vast concourse, all with wills perfectly attuned, with minds in harmony, with souls all at one. They use me, even as I use this instrument, to tell your world the truths that have been buried for too long but which are now being restored and given their rightful place in the lives of thousands of men and women”.

mac wrote:Doubtless Jon Donnis will say that SB's medium, Maurice Barbanell, was as big a fraud as all other mediums are and always have been and that the many communications, the uplifting teachings, the questions and answers sessions so eloquently delivered, were just figments of Maurice Barbanell's own imagination.

mac wrote:So everything we 'believers' consider to be Silver Birch's words, ideas, were actually Maurice Barbanell's all along, eh?   :wink:   Ah well.  Bash on.  It'll all be alright for us all in the end, one way or the other. 

I wonder how frustrating it must be to be unable to prove to us 'believers' that we are wrong to 'believe' what we do - that we survive death and live on elsewhere in another form?   More frustrating - I'd guess - than our being unable to help others enjoy the spiritual comfort we enjoy, I imagine.

JDBP wrote:

mac wrote:Doubtless Jon Donnis will say that SB's medium, Maurice Barbanell, was as big a fraud as all other mediums are and always have been and that the many communications, the uplifting teachings, the questions and answers sessions so eloquently delivered, were just figments of Maurice Barbanell's own imagination.

JDBP wrote:Not sure what he would say, but personally, I would say that clearly they are all frauds.
But dont you find it interesting the kind of characters they invent to be these spiritual knowledge bases.
Never a dead scientist, never a dead mathematician.

Never someone who could actually explain their continued existence in a way that could be understand by physics and help the living scientists understand the physics of their existence.

Just look at things logically, even from the position of a believer. Where are all the dead scientists? Where are all the dead particle physicists?
Where is Houdini? The one person you would expect could escape the bonds of the afterlife.

Instead we either get ridiculous foreign characters that are thousands of years old, yet bizarrely speak and understand modern English.
Or we get impossible to trace characters that despite having no real world job or knowledge, are suddenly experts in the afterlife. And thirdly we get mediums who have died and come back.

Notice how Colin Fry has not come back? Or Sylvia Browne etc.

Seriously, just look at the claims of spiritualists, and ask yourself why they never bring back someone who is more intelligent or knowledgeable about a real life subject than they are. Thats why we never get dead particle physicists, thats why Einstein doesn't come through, hell you could go back to the legendary ancient Greeks, like Aristotle and so on. They never come back.

Be objective, and ask yourself why these people dont come through, even if you are 100% believer, surely you must be suspicious?

Lets say its all real, and I dunno, lets say David Thompson suddenly got in contact with famous dead physicist Hannes Alfven, (google him), an incredible important person in history, a Nobel prize winner too. So real pedigree here.
Now David Thompson announces publicly that he has made contact with Hannes, and that he is inviting any world renound physicist in the world to join him in a seance, whereby they can ask questions to Hannes, the kind of question that only a physicist could answer, in other words not something David could do a bit of googling on, or even read a few books.

You could bring a Swedish physicist, lets make it harder to cheat, they can ask their questions in Swedish. If David was the real deal, he would be able to answer ANY question they asked, and answer fluently and instantly in Swedish as Hannes spoke through him.

There is not a skeptic on the planet who could deny that as proof.

Yet this NEVER EVER happens.
Never!

WHY? Believers ask yourself why this never happens. Now someone will throw the athiest/skeptic argument at me. Ok fine, there is plenty of dead scientists who believed in God, an afterlife etc, I am always shown these people as evidence that smart people believe. So lets bring one of these dead people back.

I just want one believer to THINK logically, and if that is impossible, then answer me why this has never happened.

Yoichiro Nambu died just last year, Nobel Prize winner. His knowledge on the field is almost upto date with all other physicists, NO MEDIUM ON THE PLANET could fake being him, or bringing him through. Ask and answer physics questions in Japanese! In perfect native tongue!

NO ONE CAN FAKE THAT!

Instead why get 2000 year old dead ethiopeans, or native americans who bizarrely can speak modern English despite the fact they would have never have learned it, or they would have hated the white man, so they would never want to speak to them, and many of them were cannibals too! Yet suddenly they are the experts on the afterlife!

When you say these things out loud, can you understand why skeptics mock you so much, why we laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And then you try to patronise us skeptics by making out we just dismiss such things without thought.

WE HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT IT A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN YOU!!
That is why we mock it!

JDBP wrote:So come on Mac, answer my questions, or admit that these people are clearly and obviously frauds.
Remember it only takes one medium to prove mediumship, and it is insanely easy to do, and to a level that no skeptic can deny.

JDBP wrote:Rudolf Haag, died just 6 months ago, let a medium bring him through, and then answer questions in German about algebraic formulation of axiomatic quantum field theory.

A medium does that successfully, and I am a 100% believer.

This is what us skeptics mean when we ask for proof, something that just cant be faked.

JDBP wrote:

mac wrote:So everything we 'believers' consider to be Silver Birch's words, ideas, were actually Maurice Barbanell's all along, eh?      Ah well.  Bash on.  It'll all be alright for us all in the end, one way or the other. 

Of course it was Maurice Barbanells ideas, who else could it be? Maybe one of the other mediums they were associated with came up with bits.

But the fact you ignore every single one of my points tells a much bigger story.

I wonder how frustrating it must be to be unable to prove to us 'believers' that we are wrong to 'believe' what we do - that we survive death and live on elsewhere in another form?   More frustrating - I'd guess - than our being unable to help others enjoy the spiritual comfort we enjoy, I imagine.

JDBP wrote:It is not frustrating that i am unable to prove to believers you are wrong, because I have done that exact thing many many times.
What is frustrating is when people like yourself ignore really important points that I make, that blow you entire belief system out of the water, using the simplest of logic.

JDBP wrote:What is frustrating is when I do exactly what you tell me to do, bring on intelligent discussion, ask questions, and I am ignored and you resort to ridiculous nonsense whereby you post smilie faces as if you are in possession of some special knowledge that you cant tell me.

JDBP wrote:I do what you want, I ask questions, I make intelligent points, I break things down in a logical and critical manner, and I am ignored.
And You wonder why I get frustrated and resort to just mocking you, and taking the piss.

JDBP wrote:I did what you asked, and you reacted in the way you always do, by burying your head in the sand.

JDBP wrote:So next time I am rude, next time I call you stupid, dont ask me why, dont say "why are you rude instead of asking questions".

JDBP wrote:Because I have tried many many times to engage you in an intelligent logical discussion. I spend time writing down IN DETAIL long posts giving you something to really think about, and instead if get a 2 sentence reply dismissing every single logical point I bring up.

NOW you understand why I get frustrated with believers, i do EVERYTHING you ask me to do, and the sheer ignorance and blind nature just cant be broken down.

Oh well, I did what you said, you failed, so back to taking the piss, as clearly you cant deal with someone who rips you to shreds with simple logical arguments.

JDBP wrote: we either get ridiculous foreign characters that are thousands of years old, yet bizarrely speak and understand modern English.

Whiskers wrote:

JDBP wrote: we either get ridiculous foreign characters that are thousands of years old, yet bizarrely speak and understand modern English.

This is something I have questioned before.  Just like Gary Mannion and his Abraham.

On the face of it, Gary seems like a pretty normal twentysomething. He likes bling and his ex-girlfriend is a pole dancer. We tried to keep an open mind throughout this hour-long film, but it was hard to not to find Gary's claims laughable. One of the most amusing scenes comes as he supposedly goes into a trance so that Abraham can communicate with Onono directly.
Assuming the accent and demeanour of a member of the royal family, circa 1932, Gary/Abraham proceeds to discuss his abilities in a series of buttock-clenching clichés ("great leaders are not chose [sic] because of their ability to lead, but because of their ability to be led."). And Abraham may be an ancient prophet, but his grasp of the English language leaves something to be desired. He talks about not "deterring" from the path ahead, for example... we think he means "deviating". [   ] ............

Direct Voice Develops

Hannen Swaffer's Home Circle.
By Maurice Barbanell

My first contact with Hannen Swaffer’s home circle was in 1932, when I attended as a visitor on the same night that Frank Decker, the American physical medium, was invited to attend. That was a big night for me, because White Shadow asked me to join the circle, and for all of us, because it was Decker’s visit that paved the way to our own development of the direct voice.

Some psychic gifts seem, to some extent, “infectious”. There must, of course, be the psychic power latent, but sometimes a fillip is given to its development by contact with a medium possessing the same gift. Dennis Bradley “caught” the direct voice from Valiantine; we “caught” it from Decker.

We had both the direct voice and materialization phenomena that night, Decker’s mediumship, of course, being responsible. We were sitting quietly in the darkness when suddenly Decker’s guide, White Eagle, gave his “war cry”. It was so loud and sudden we all nearly jumped out of our skins and the wires of the piano vibrated. Later, Patsy, another of Decker’s guides, shouted out, “Good night.” I felt a materialized hand laid upon mine and, at the same time, Decker said he saw clairvoyantly the word “Test”. He wondered what it meant. White Shadow explained that White Eagle intended the materialized hand to be a test for “the man who writes for the paper”. He could not speak, as he was not controlling the medium, so he had caused the word to be seen clairvoyantly.

At this sitting, Decker told us that we had latent the power for developing direct voice mediumship. We asked White Shadow about it and he agreed and encouraged us to try to develop it. ‘With his permission, we started sitting with trumpets on the floor in the centre of the circle. Within eight months, we heard the direct voice independently of the trumpet. Then, six weeks after Decker visited us again, the trumpet was used and longer talks in the direct voice were possible.

When I joined the circle, we had two good trance mediums, used by White Shadow and Silver Birch. Gradually, as the physical phenomena developed, Silver Birch took the place of White Shadow as the teacher, while the other medium was used more and more for direct voice. Both spirits, though they claimed to be simple “savages” - later communications have convinced us that they are really highly evolved spirits, using the astral bodies of the Indians as “mediums” - were most eloquent. Their language would put any earthly orator to shame. But, as White Shadow’s medium could be used better as the “focal point” of the direct voice, Silver Birch became the teacher.

It was explained to us that all the sitters and their guides had been carefully chosen by the spirit people. For over two years they had been working for a perfect circle, one in which all the sitters and all the guideswould blend in harmony. At last they were satisfied they had got it. Each sitter brought some necessary power for the phenomena; each guide and spirit helper had some special task. Gradually the sitters would develop their mediumistic gifts. Each had some special work in front of him. The guides took us into their confidence, told us what they had to do and encouraged us to question them about their work. Their descriptions were supplemented by those who could see the spirits at work. We began to learn psychic laws and cooperation reached a fine point.

For weeks before we heard the direct voice we saw the trumpet moved in graceful motions in all directions. The guides told us the voice was nearly ready. “We have had rehearsals,” they said. “We can make the voices all right, but we cannot make them heard in your world.” On that first night, we heard just a few words. The guide spoke from the floor, from near the ceiling, from positions all over the circle, but mostly from the floor. He said it was easier to speak from there. The voice did not come through the trumpet, though this was moved with perfect control. Each sitter was gently touched by the trumpet, in the order we asked, and one of us felt a materialized hand.

The guides had never used the vocal cords of the medium, even in trance.  They said there was healing power in her voice and if they used her cords that property might be impaired. They used vocal cords of their own construction. When Anny Ahlers, the actress, controlled the medium a few weeks after her death, she complained that it was very difficult because White Shadow would not let her use the medium’s vocal cords.

The materialization phenomena grew as the direct voice developed. The father of White Shadow’s medium was able to materialize his hands
sufficiently to make, for evidence, the loud clicking noise peculiar to his habit during earth life, and strum on the wall in his accustomed manner. The favourite dog of one of the sitters was sometimes materialized and we heard its tail wagging against the leg of a chair. A pet cat scratched at the carpet and a bird which the medium had taken into shelter when she found it injured used to materialize and fly about the room. Often ornaments were moved from a high mantelshelf and were found after the sitting in the middle of the circle. ‘We often felt materialized hands.

One of the guides must have been huge - he told us that on the earth he was over seven feet tall, which was corroborated by the medium’s clairvoyant vision - for I would sometimes feel both my ankles grasped in one large hand. We heard the heavy tread of the guides going about the room and one of them, for our amusement, repeated a dance he used on earth, chanting while he did it an Indian tune which was always played for that particular dance.

At one sitting I shook hands with my “dead” sister, who passed on at the age of seven about twelve years before. I had been told that she acted as my guide, and I had had various messages from her, but this was the first occasion on which she had spoken directly to me. She controlled White Shadow’s medium in trance and spoke so quietly we could hardly hear what she said. She asked me to stretch out my hand towards the medium and she grasped it with her own - one she had manufactured out of ectoplasm.

She told us that trance control was very difficult as White Shadow would not allow the vocal cords to be used. Usually, cords were made of ectoplasm for the spirits’ use, but in her case, she told us, a different system had been specially arranged. By some method of using compressed air - we would not have understood, she said, even if she were able to explain it exhaustively - she was able to make her voice heard without using any vocal cords.

At this sitting, one of the guides explained to us that the circle was formed as much for the “dead” as for the living. Many in the spirit world, it was said, are held back by their desire to communicate with their friends on this side of the veil. Until they are able to do this, their advance is impeded. We were also told something of the difficulties experienced by the guides. Before any new phenomenon was introduced, consideration had to be given to the mental reactions of the sitters, for on that depended to a large extent the psychic power that was available.

Frank Decker sat with us again in 1933 - about nine months after his first visit - and a few weeks later our own trumpet was used for the direct voice. When Decker was there, one of the guides was speaking to us through a trance medium and we were surprised suddenly to hear Patsy, Decker’s newspaper-boy guide, announce himself in the direct voice. Later on, Patsy sang two songs, White Eagle, another of Decker’s guides, spoke to us and White Shadow had a talk with his medium. This was the first time she had heard White Shadow speak, as always before she was in trance when he manifested. We saw wonderful control of the trumpet at this sitting, Patsy taking it all round the circle at lightning speed. The whizzing trumpet came so near to us that we felt a distinct breeze as it went by, but no one was touched by it.

Then, a few weeks later, after Decker had gone back to America and we had no outside help, we experienced our first voice through our own trumpet. It had taken three years of constant sittings to reach this stage and that voice gave us all a thrill. Only one word was spoken. The spirit merely announced her name - it was Lottie, Hannen Swaffer’s “dead” sister-in-law - but it showed that our own direct voice phenomena had started. At the next sitting, a guide said two or three words to his medium. The next time there were seven voices, and so it went on, gradually improving until we were able to hold long, sustained conversations directly with those living in another world, hearing their own voices speaking to us and giving us evidence of their continued existence.

At first the voices were weak, though each was distinctive, and the “personality” spread even to the movements of the trumpet. In many cases, we were able to tell who was about to speak by the way in which the trumpet was moved. One guide always traced in the air the letter “S”, the initial of his name. Another always made peculiar movements which suggested the name by which he was known. One spirit, the father of White Shadow’s medium, always tapped the trumpet with his fingers before speaking, recalling an earthly habit as a means of identification. Each of the regular communicators had a special way of introducing himself before the voice was heard.

In the early stages of the direct-voice phenomena, White Shadow’s medium was in trance. The communicating spirits seemed to get additional power from her for, after leaving the floor, the trumpet would always move towards her before a voice was heard. Later, she was sometimes able to hear the voices while she remained out of trance.

Within the first month of hearing our first voice, we had talks with four of the guides of the circle, the father and sister of White Shadow’s medium, the mother, father and brother of the medium’s husband, Hannen Swaffer’s sister- in-law, my sister, Hall Caine, Gilbert Parker and Lord Northcliffe, Swaffer’s former “Chief” in the newspaper world.

A.W. Austen

“Our work is to give that which has a purpose, significance, so that, while it demonstrates the existence of Law, it also enables comfort to be given and knowledge to be spread.  Our work is not only to reveal the existence of laws beyond the physical but to reveal truths of the spirit.  We have a gigantic system of misrepresentation to oppose.  We have to undo the world of centuries.  We have to destroy the superstructure of falsity that has been built upon the foundations of creeds.  We are striving always to teach the children of matter how to be free and how to bask in the sunlight of spiritual truth..”

Candlelight.kk wrote:Silver Birch comments on why teachers choose to communicate with humans on earth and their struggle against the “falsities” of misunderstood ideas in religion:

“Our work is to give that which has a purpose, significance, so that, while it demonstrates the existence of Law, it also enables comfort to be given and knowledge to be spread.  Our work is not only to reveal the existence of laws beyond the physical but to reveal truths of the spirit.  We have a gigantic system of misrepresentation to oppose.  We have to undo the world of centuries.  We have to destroy the superstructure of falsity that has been built upon the foundations of creeds.  We are striving always to teach the children of matter how to be free and how to bask in the sunlight of spiritual truth..”

Read more ........  The Search For Life After Death

mac wrote:Not sure where I was after following the link above - is that Jenn's blog on Wordpress?

Candlelight.kk wrote:

mac wrote:Not sure where I was after following the link above - is that Jenn's blog on Wordpress?

Yes, mac.
Here is the home link:    [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Candlelight.kk wrote:

mac wrote:Not sure where I was after following the link above - is that Jenn's blog on Wordpress?

Yes, mac.
Here is the home link:    [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

How do we distinguish ourselves from those who derive their spirituality based on faith or personal development alone?

Evidential Spirituality

I have decided to coin the title “Evidential Spiritualist” and “Evidential Spirituality” to create a real distinction for what I, and many others, practice to distinguish ourselves from faith-based spiritualism, or spiritualists who follow the religion of spiritualism.

So with any new term, we need a definition:

Evidential Spirituality-

The practice of defining spiritual, philosophical, or religious beliefs through study and content analysis of supernatural, paranormal or spiritual experiences of the self or others, scientific evidence and research, or veridical observations relating to the survival hypothesis including, but not limited to; near-death experiences, death-bed visions, after-death communications, mediumship and channeling demonstrations, the philosophy of duality and the study of consciousness, instrumental transcommunication, past-life/pre-birth memories, and certain hypotheses in quantum physics.

Misty wrote:I like Jenns Wordpress Blog.  I particularly like what she writes here -
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

How do we distinguish ourselves from those who derive their spirituality based on faith or personal development alone?

Evidential Spirituality

I have decided to coin the title “Evidential Spiritualist” and “Evidential Spirituality” to create a real distinction for what I, an many others, practice to distinguish ourselves from faith-based spiritualism, or spiritualists who follow the religion of spiritualism.

So with any new term, we need a definition:

Evidential Spirituality-

The practice of defining spiritual, philosophical, or religious beliefs through study and content analysis of supernatural, paranormal or spiritual experiences of the self or others, scientific evidence and research, or veridical observations relating to the survival hypothesis including, but not limited to; near-death experiences, death-bed visions, after-death communications, mediumship and channeling demonstrations, the philosophy of duality and the study of consciousness, instrumental transcommunication, past-life/pre-birth memories, and certain hypotheses in quantum physics.

Misty wrote:This matches how I feel about the subject.  And I believe I am right in thinking it matches the philosophy of this forum (lal) also.

Misty wrote:How I read it anyway.  lal has taught me the importance of research, how not to just accept everything just on face value, to question and research everything and to compare other opinions and views.

Silver Birch gave his teachings through a medium named Maurice Barbanell.
Barbanell was the founder and editor of the weekly Spiritualist newspaper, Psychic News, and for half a century devoted his life to spreading spiritual knowledge through its columns and those of other publications with which he was associated.
In his own obituary, which he wrote before his passing at the age of 79 on 17^th July 1981, he revealed that he was told by Estelle Roberts’ Red Cloud — a spirit guide for whom he had the greatest admiration and affection — that in a previous incarnation he had made a promise to reincarnate and devote his life to spreading Spiritualism. Though he had no conscious knowledge of that life or promise, events certainly conspired to make it possible.

mac wrote:One of the best loved teachers and guides.

Mat Barns wrote:

mac wrote:One of the best loved teachers and guides.

Better than Sparrow?  

QUOTE="mac, post: 47606, member: 1820"]For everyone's information, I had checked with Sparow that it was OK to link and quote. 

SparRow
A.......alforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=10902 of which no validation has occurred that HE (not SHE) is an incarnated ET being, THE VOICE OF THE ASCELEOTT(YI).