More Words of Wisdom from the Spirts of Swedenborg and Bacon

Dr. George T. Dexter, a New York physician, initially looked upon the so-called "spiritualism" mania that hit the world in 1848 as "a foolish delusion or an absolute, outrageous deception," but he felt compelled to investigate it.   Along with Judge John W. Edmonds, chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Dexter formed a circle to investigate mediums.    "I made arrangement with a friend to invite to my own house a medium of considerable powers, and thus to have an opportunity of careful investigation where I knew there could be no collusion, and the chances for deception would be very few," Dexter explained.  " Previous to this time, about the 10^th of September 1851, I had never witnessed any spiritual manifestation, and neither had any of the member of my family been present at a circle; both they and myself were entirely ignorant of the whole subject...For the first time, I heard the peculiar sounds called spirit-raps. I was not satisfied with the results of the sitting, though many mental questions were propounded and answered correctly."

During their second sitting, Dexter's nine-year-old daughter was suddenly seized by some unknown force, her arms flailing in all directions. "This effect of the magnetic influences was so sudden, so strange, so entirely unexpected by the child, that she became very much alarmed, and running to her mother, who was also deeply moved at this unlooked for manifestation, she said, while her voice trembled with fear, ‘Oh, mother! Take me away, take me away;' but her arms were forcibly wrested, as it were, from her mother's neck, and thrown violently up and down, and yet while they were so rapidly and forcibly moving in all directions, every fiber of the textures quivered as if trembling with palsy."

Then, Dexter's daughter began taking diction from the spirits.  "Her hand was made to write legibly and in bold, large letters, not in the least resembling her ordinary handwriting, full answers to all our questions, both mental and oral," Dexter continued the story.  "And what was yet more remarkable, she wrote rapidly and easily, and the style of the composition and the spelling far excelled what we know was the character of her original attempts at composition, or her spelling, previous to this time.  About one o'clock [my daughter] was ordered to leave the circle by the spirits - as being fatigued - and not immediately complying with the directions her chair was drawn from under her by some invisible agency, and she fell to the floor.  She arose to go to the next room, and as she was passing a sofa she was taken up bodily, by the same unseen force, and deposited upon it, as gently as if laid there by her parents. At this sitting, there were many correct answers given to questions, and of such a character as satisfied some individuals that the spirits of their friends were there."

As explained by Dexter in the prior blog entry, he soon was taken over by the spirits and began producing script in automatic writing, purportedly coming from the spirits of Emanuel Swedenborg and Lord Francis Bacon.  Here is more of what Swedenborg and Bacon had to saw through Dexter's hand. 

Death:  "Eye hath not beheld, human heart hath not conceived, the truths that death will unfold.  Oh! When the last pulse is fluttering, when the heart's throb is almost past, when gasping and struggling in the pangs of expiring mortality, then, then will your spirit-eye behold the gates of immortality opening before you, and your soul catch a glimpse of the gorgeous beauties of death." Bacon

Life's struggles: "Life is forever - and forever must that life struggle.  Forever must the desire for good be paramount to the demands of evil.  Were it not so, there would be no progression.  Why it is so, we shall learn when we stand in the celestial spheres, gods in wisdom and in perfection.  But as the spheres are above, so must be our spirit flight, soaring on the wings of divine love, and wafted by the breezes of earnest and truthful desires.  Thus, when we have triumphed over the influences of matter, we become the causes which govern and control it; or, indeed, the instrument by which the divine laws are executed."  Swedenborg

Transitioning:  "...when awakening from the sleep of death, and opening his eyes to the world into which his spirit was ushered, how strange his thoughts, how marvelous the sensations which rush through his brain with lightning rapidity.  To you, who have some conception of spirit life, the ideas I have suggested will not seem so strange.  The spirit-bond which connected it to matter is severed, the link of life is broken, the spirit freed is disengaging itself from its earthly trammels.  There lies the body stretched in death.  How unlike the spirit which is floating over it, still unconscious, still unable to think, but just born into the life of the spheres.  As it floats over the body which was so lately its abiding place, there come to it, drawn by their affections or by their duties, spirits possessing form and shape, beautiful beyond thought.  They support this spirit-child until it recovers its consciousness, and then with the impress of the last life-thought still vibrating on its brain, with emotions of its heart still unsubdued by death, with its whole nature palpitating, and even suffering at the thought of the separation from loved, aye! Fondly-loved friends, wife or children, this new spirit meet the new impressions and scenes which surround it.  Its agonized mind writhing with death, and with all its nature struggling within its internal, it opens its eyes to the unspeakable glories of a new world."

Swedenborg

The spheres of the afterlife:  "The idea of spheres is but imperfectly understood, and the statements on that subject received and recognized as true, are so but in part, as spirits know but little of spaced beyond the sphere they occupy.  Spirits, after leaving the body, are conducted to localities adapted to the capacities and the conditions of their minds, in reference to education, society, and progress.  Thus, a highly educated mind - one familiar with all the knowledge of the schools, of strong desires to understand the laws of nature, and of an affinity with the purity and attributes of the Creator - is conducted to a globe or planet adapted by its locality and formation to develop the properties of his mind to an approach nearer to the plane where the Spirit of God is most manifest in all its power and glory." Bacon

Low-level spirits:  "I do not imagine the moral condition of the spirits of the lower spheres differ materially from the moral condition of the unprogressive man in your world.  They may, it is true, have moments when their spirits yearn for the brighter spheres, beyond their dark plane, when conscious of its birthright, the soul awakens to a sense of its own degradation, and realizes its true situation; but they live and act as unprogressive man does, daily performing their accustomed round of malicious action, and carrying out the designs of their blunted perceptions; and it is not till some event, out of the ordinary occurrences of life arouses them completely, and opens their understanding to the reception of truth, that they begin to progress. There is so little difference in the whole action of spirit-life from your life, except that one step forward has been made. (I do not refer to the higher spheres, of course), that the correspondence is almost exact.  Their remorses, when made sensible of their wickedness, must be more keenly felt than by man. Here they can have the tangible evidence of truth, of the beauty of holiness.  With you, much of course must be appreciatory." Swedenborg

Devious spirits: "...they misdirect, bewilder, confuse, make false statements of the nature of these manifestations, and would willingly create doubt; for these spirits are allowed to mix with other spirits whose duties bring them to earth, and thus they are enabled to make false statements regarding them.  In short, they delight in inculcating error, as they did in receiving it and learning it when on earth."  Swedenborg

Orthodox beliefs of heaven:  "There are spirits who imagine that heaven can only exist where they are.  They are not wicked.  They are good; but they suppose, from a kind of vanity, that the place where they are must be holy ground, from the ideas which they learned in life, and which it will take many, many years to eradicate." Bacon

Afterlife laws: "The effect of the laws operating on our organization is almost precisely the same as the laws operating on yours.  We are divested, it is true, of the grosser particles of your nature, and we are spared all the evils which that organization induces, yet we do not live here by any special administration of the power of God, neither is the spirit-world conducted by miracle.  We act and live, we work, we toil, we develop just as you do on earth, only the internal, which is the essence of the everlasting principle of god himself (as it emanated from him) expands in a greater ratio than does the body.  Take no statements, therefore, that are not based on laws satisfactory to your judgment, and depend upon it, that when any revelation is made, having the garment of marvelousness wrapped about it, that either it is a compound of the medium's imagination, or it emanates from some spirit whose veracity is to be doubted."  Swedenborg

Christ's mission:  "Christ found a world buried in ignorance. No true ideas had been given of their destiny; and not until he dispelled the darkness which shrouded his whole moral nature did man make the effort to understand his true relationship to himself, the world, or to God.  Looking back to Christ, we see the light which has been poured through the vista of years till it has now illuminated the whole civilized world, flickering as a spark, and scarcely afford a ray to guide the benighted footsteps of man." Bacon

On seeing Christ:  "Christ I never saw.  The very faculties of his nature, which enabled him to progress so much on earth, have so materially advanced his passage through the spheres that he has far outstripped the rest of his race.  Christ, in the development of all the high, noble, and good characteristics of his nature, became perfect even as God is perfect, and he now dwells in those happy spheres where God is made manifest in all the mighty effects of his being...Thus, I believe Christ is with God, where I shall see him, and so shall you, when thousands and tens of thousands of years shall have passed away; when divested of sin, when pure as the morning star, your spirit shall wend its way through the eternal glories of the celestial spheres."   Bacon

Mohammed: "He was impressed, and there are many truths in his writings.  If they were divested of their admixture with materiality, or earth's materiality, they would shadow forth many scenes of the spheres here."  Bacon