Is the doctrine of pre-existence true?

Is the doctrine of pre-existence or the idea that man always existed as a conscious individual being true?

I believe it is true. If I doubted that I had existed as a conscious, individualised intelligence throughout all past eternity, I should have no hope for the future.

Does the controlling influence have any knowledge of a life previous to that which he experienced while in the body here?

Absolute, perfect and clear.

Does the theory of progression carry with it as a natural sequence the idea of a starting-point or a beginning?

No; by no means. Because you live under a law of infinite progress, you are not to suppose that there was a time when you were beyond the limits of that law. No; I do not believe that the soul ever had any starting point. I believe it has always existed, else I could have no hope that it would always exist.

—Spirit Lewis Howard

Can departed friends sever the silver cord that binds us to our material body if the spirit inhabiting that body desires it and the spirit-friends are anxious or willing to grant that desire? We believe they can. Are we right or wrong?

You are certainly right in your belief, for if the spirit was possessed of that power while in the body, it certainly possesses it after leaving the body.

In the Banner of 22 September 1866, the controlling spirit, in answer to certain questions uses the following language— 

This is a truth—a great and mighty truth—that you are all changing places. That you die is proof of it; that you live again beyond the tomb is another proof of it; that—as ages shall again roll on—you will again inhabit human forms is still further proof of it.

Does the controlling spirit mean that spirits after being separated from their earthly tenement will again occupy a human body as they did before the dissolution? And if so will those bodies be subject to decay as were the former ones? The above message of the intelligence is not clear and a little explanation and further information is solicited.

There is much evidence that the spirit returns to earth again and becomes reincarnated in a human body. The soul finds expression alone through organised form and if it expresses itself on earth, it must express itself according to its laws. As the human form is the highest in existence and the form through which the soul can best express itself, we believe that the souls of those who have gone beyond this world will return again at some far-off future period to live again through human life, and that human life, we believe, will be in a different condition, yet it will be organised life in human form. We do not wonder that many souls shudder in contemplating this theory since many have tasted the sorrows of time but if they would pause and consider that they are in the hands of an infinite law that will guide them to whichever place it will—whether or not they will it—they would cease to mourn over what is best for them—over what all their mourning will not change. All life, we are told, moves on by distinct degrees, and it moves in cycles. It is rounded into being by passing through the various experiences of human and intellectual life. If this is true, do we have any guarantee against returning again to earth? Able minds contend that we have none and your speaker himself believes that there is much soundness in the theory.

—Spirits Arthur Fuller and G. A. Redman

Flower arrangement | Adrian Feint, November 1947 | Max Dupain | State Library of New South Wales