One such work is the book Spirit Teachings by William Stainton Moses, which can be read online here. William Stainton Moses was a highly regarded figure of the nineteenth century, very respected for his scholarship and character. The book Spirit Teachings consists mainly of words that William said he produced through what is called automatic writing. In automatic writing, a person will typically put a pen next to some paper, and then go into a kind of trance state. The person's hand will write, but the person may state he had no knowledge of what was being written. The person may claim that some spirit temporarily took control of his hand, and that what was written on the paper was the product of that spirit's mind, not his own mind.
In the book William Stainton Moses gives us writings that he identifies as coming from a mysterious personality called Imperator. William Stainton Moses claims that he has merely received the teachings of this Imperator individual through automatic writing. The teachings of Imperator often conflict with ideas previously held by William Stainton Moses.
Here from page 190 to 191 is an example of the sophisticated writing found in the book, teachings attributed to this Imperator source:
"You do not imagine God as an omnipotent, omnipresent man, living in a place where His throne is surrounded by a throng who do nought else but worship and adore, as men would worship were they to see God amongst them on earth. Such a heaven is but a baseless dream. Into spirit-life spirit alone can enter. You know that you have outgrown the fable of the bodily translation of a material frame somewhere into the skies, there to live as it had lived on earth, in the society of a God who was human in all respects save that He was superhuman, in a heaven which was borrowed from the images of a vision which typified under a symbol spiritual truth to John the Seer.... A translation will await each good and true man, but not of his human flesh and bones. His glorified spirit shall rise from the dead and worn-out shroud of flesh that has served its purpose, to a brighter life than man has pictured, in a brighter heaven than human seer has ever imaged."
There follow on page 191-192 a passage from this Imperator source which some will regard as being of high philosophical sophistication:
"Moreover, man has fancied that each revelation of God enshrines permanent truth of universal application, of literal and exact accuracy. He did not see that man is taught by us as man teaches his own children; and accurate definitions of abstract truth do not suit the comprehension of a child. With all the literalness of a child, he accepts the very words of revelation as mathematically and logically accurate, and builds upon them a number of theories, absurd in their nature, and conflicting among themselves. The child accepts the parent's word unhesitatingly, and quotes it as law. It is only later that he learns that he was being taught in parables. Man has dealt with Revelation in the same way. He has assumed literal exactness where there is only Oriental imagery, and mathematical accuracy where he has only a very fallible and frequently legendary record. So he has perpetuated ignorant ideas about a jealous God, and a fiery hell, and a heaven in the skies where the elect are gathered, and a physical resurrection, and a universal assize, and such notions, which belong to the age of childhood and are outgrown by the developed man. The man should put aside the notions of the child, and soar to higher knowledge.
But in place of that legendary belief, primitive superstitions, ignorant fancies, are perpetuated. The hyperbolical visions of an imaginative people are taken for hard fact ; and a medley of fancy, folly, and truth is jumbled together, which no reflecting mind on an advanced plane of knowledge can continue to accept as matter of belief. Faith is the cord that has bound together this incoherent mass. We cut that cord, and bid you use your reason to try that which has been received and held by faith alone. You will find much in the mass that is of human invention, dating from the infancy of man's mind. You will reject much that is both cumbersome and profitless. But you will find a residue that commends itself to reason, is attested by your own experience, and is derived from God. You will gather hints of what the good God destines for his creatures."
The words I have quoted are not untypical at all, but are representative of the literary skill with which this Imperator "spirit personality" typically speaks in the book.
On page 209 we have this remarkable testimony from William Stainton Moses:
"From this time forward repeated evidence of individuality perpetuated after bodily death was brought home to me. I do not interrupt the course of the teachings to detail them. Some were written communications, in which peculiarities of handwriting, spelling, and diction were accurately reproduced. Some were verbal communications made through my own guide. Some were laboriously rapped out in the circle. Some were corroborated by my clairvoyant vision. The ways used to convey the information were various, but all agreed in one particular. The facts given were invariably literally and exactly true. In most cases they related to persons not known to us except by name, sometimes not even by so much as that. In other cases they related to friends and acquaintances. This course of evidence continued for a long time ; and collaterally I developed a power of clairvoyant vision which rapidly increased, until I was able to see and converse at length with my invisible friends. The inner faculties seemed to be opened, so that the information given received new confirmation from my clairvoyant sight. This power eventually developed to a very high degree. I had a number of extremely vivid visions in which my spirit appeared to act independently of the body. During some of them I was conscious of living and acting among scenes not of this earth ; in others dramatic tableaux were enacted before me, the object evidently being to represent some spiritual truth or teaching to me. In two cases only was I able to satisfy myself by collateral evidence of the reality of my vision. I was in deep trance during each occasion, and could not distinguish between the subjective impressions of a dream and the real occurrence of what I so vividly saw before me, save that I could confirm in these two cases what I saw and heard in vision by what I afterwards discovered from external sources. The scene in these cases was real, and I do not doubt that it was so in all."
Charlton Templeman Speer claims to have witnessed a variety of paranormal phenomena at seances of William Stainton Moses, a 19th-century figure greatly admired for his scholarship and moral character. One thing he claims to have witnessed is something resembling teleportation. He states this:
"The passage of matter through matter was sometimes strikingly demonstrated by the bringing of various articles from other rooms, though the doors were closed and bolted. Photographs, picture-frames, books, and other objects were frequently so brought, both from rooms on the same floor and from those above. How they came through the closed doors I cannot say, except by some process of de-materialisation, but come they certainly did, apparently none the worse for the process, whatever it might have been."
Besides also describing numerous inexplicable scents and mysterious music, Speer tells us that orbs were seen rising up from the ground and apparently passing through a heavy table. We read this:
"These lights were of two different kinds— objective and subjective. The former usually resembled small illuminated globes, which shone brightly and steadily, often moved rapidly about the room, and were visible to all the sitters. A curious fact in connection with these lights always struck me, viz., that looking on to the top of the table one could see a light slowly ascending from the floor, and to all appearance passing out through the top of the table — the table itself apparently not affording any obstacle to one’s view of the light."
The preface is by Josiah Brigham, who tells us Joseph D. Stiles is a printer of "common education," seemingly someone without the intellectual or educational background to have produced the lofty writings that came from his pen. Brigham tells of an event that led him to believe some paranormal agency was occurring. Brigham says this:
"My first acquaintance with Mr. Stiles was in June of 1854. He came to my house to hold a circle in the evening, and a number of personal friends were present by invitation. On seating ourselves around the table, the medium was soon influenced to make a prayer, and, immediately after the prayer, was influenced to write, and the very first communication written out by him there was one purporting to be from a brother of mine, who died in 1818, which commenced as follows :
'Dear brother Josiah : I am very glad, after the lapse of many years, to be able to communicate to you. I am glad that you feel an interest in the cause of Spiritualism, for it is a beautiful theory, which, when you can believe with sincerity, cannot but help to smooth the declivity of life. It is doubly sweet to me to communicate to you, because I do it under the roof where my spirit took its flight from the things of earth. * * * *
Winslow Brigham.'
This last sentence struck me very forcibly ; for truly it was in the house where I now live, and in which I then lived, that my brother died ; and this fact was wholly unknown to the medium, as was also the fact that I ever had a brother by that name."
In that 1859 book on pages 318 to 319 we read this:
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