What does it mean to know God personally?

 

No one can cast God out, and be either good—or happy.

You do not mean to tell me there is a personal God?

Yes, I do—

God is within every person who ever lives—or ever will live, and a person is a personality, is he not?

Consequently, there is a personal God—

Each person possesses Him—or Her—or It—

God possesses the person—

They are one and the same.

How about the Devil—

The Master of Hell?

I tell you, my friends, there is a great big devil, with hoofs and horns, and a forked tail, and all that—

He is the master of hell, as sure as you live—

He is a person, too, tempting every person who lives—or ever will live—

His ways are dark—

He goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour—

He is personal, for every person can make a devil of himself if he does not take heed to his steps and listen to the voice of good—or God.

I hope I have proved that there is a God—a Devil—a Hell—

They are all personal—

Within a person.

What gives you peace of mind?

However minute are the instructions you leave for the management of your affairs after death, should you be able to look back to the earth, you will find that someone has mismanaged them.

So expect just that—take it as a matter of course, and learn to say—

What difference does it make?

Learn to feel that the past is past—

That the future alone has possibilities for you, and that the sooner you leave other persons to manage your discarded earthly affairs, the better it will be for your own tranquility.

Be prepared to let go.

That is the first point I wish to make.

What is the speed of human thoughts?

The mind of a spirit that is highly developed is attuned to a speed of thought that is many times as rapid as that of the human mind—to a speed of thought that cannot be recorded by the human mind in its ordinary—or normal state.

To make a spiritual communication between the living and the dead possible, the mind of the living must be stimulated to an increased activity, and the communication to be received must be slowed down until a state of vibratory correspondence exists between the sending and the receiving mind.

Fragments of Spiritual Knowledge Pertaining to the Spiritual World,

What are God's laws of nature?

I consider the Laws of Nature, as the will of Deity, the wisdom and intelligence displayed around me, as His Mind, and all is one inseparable unity. 

I recognise nothing superior—or external to Nature—nothing above—or controlling this unity, but within dwells perfection of principle, working forever, with indefatigable energy.

—The Sage

How do you gain spiritual knowledge?

You must turn your attention to the purer, to the harmonial and sincere spiritual, and put confidence and faith in your immortal disembodied friends, for they possess power to assist you.

Let there be light, and there was light.

Faith, confidence and sincerity will assist you in developing this spiritual knowledge.

Everything that lives in the flesh—or has a material origin is perishable.

The pressure of the electric forces eventually consumes everything material.

Therefore, you must learn to realise that it is vain folly to lay up stores for your material glory.

It is only by doing good to others that you can lay up rich stores for material fame and spiritual glory.

Doing good to to others, forgetful of self-aggrandisement, doing it as a labour of love, and a spiritual glory follows.

They who strive to assist each other will find when they enter spirit life that they have many times helped a dear and near one in spirit, many times an own spirit offspring, sister—or brother, possibly a father—or mother.

Ye know not whence ye come nor whither ye go, but let the spirit of truth abide with you forever.

As the spirit develops and outgrows the material desires, it becomes more sympathetic, more harmonious, and more Godlike.

The highly cultivated and intellectual are more charitable and more sympathetic with their fellow beings.

They see through a clearer light and comprehend through a purer sense.

Through progression, they learn to realise that they, too, in one period of life, stood on the lower planes of material experiences, and that through repeated changes with advantages in spirit they were drawn higher.

Exertion of the faculties, with power of will, will assist largely in outgrowing material conditions.

―B. H. In Spirit

What is inextinguishable?

Truth is inextinguishable.

What is the spirit world?

Does the spiritual world exist?

Does the spiritual world exist?

 

If when I woke to life here, I had found myself floating about the clouds, clad in muslin, and with a pair of wings, I should have realised the fact sooner.

It our narrow, set and orthodox beliefs that are puzzled by the reality—

The ordinaryliness of the spirit world.

I feel quite tired sometimes of explaining to (wo)men that they are dead!

They wake up feeling so much the same—

Some go about for days, and even months, believing they are dreaming.

What they find difficult to understand apparently is the very little change between life in the physical body, and in the spiritual.

I often laugh when I hear them complain they cannot believe in solid things, like houses and gardens, in the spirit world.

—Spirit Claude

What is the pre existence of the soul?

Is the doctrine of pre-existence true?

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, used 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

What does Matthew 25-40 really mean?

Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 

—Matthew 25:40

Does your energy affect others?

Make time for yourself, choose your friends carefully, and spend time with people who energise you.

Who is the one true God?

There is no God here save the One True God, and Christ who is His manifestation. 

An idolator, in spirit, asks if he might see Christ.

Shortly after this, Christ manifested Himself in dim light to him and to others who had newly arrived in the world of spirits because at this stage, they could not have endured a full exhibition of His glory, for His glory is so surpassing that even the angels look on Him with difficulties, and cover their faces with their wings (Isaiah vi.2).

When He does reveal Himself to anyone, He takes into account the particular stage of progress to which that soul has attained, so He appears dimly―or in the fuller light of His glory that the sight of Him may be endured.

Bathed in the rays of His life-giving light, and with the waves of His love, which constantly flow out from Him, flowing over all, all error is washed away.