by Anthony Borgia

The spirit communicator of this book was known on earth as Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, a son of Edward White Benson, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was at the height of his renown, both as preacher and author, when I first met him many years ago.

After he had passed from this life, I many times wondered as to his welfare. Through a spirit friend I was told that he was well and prospering, and that in time I should hear from him directly.

Such eventually proved to be the case, and there commenced a series of scripts given by him, the first of which, “Life in the World Unseen”, gave an account in some detail of his actual passing. He recounted how, at the close of his earthly life, he was met by a former colleague named Edwin, and taken by him to the spirit world, where his home awaited him, a counterpart of his house on earth. After a brief rest he commenced his explorations, under Edwin’s guidance, of the land of his new life. During the course of their rambles they met a young girl of great charm, named Ruth, also a newcomer to the spirit world, who joined them, and the three have been together ever since, closely associated in work and pleasure.

In the scripts that  followed, Monsignor dealt with an extensive variety of subjects in connexion with the spirit world, not the least among them being his “theology”, which underwent a wholesale and drastic revision.

His principal occupation has been to meet people at their dissolution, and conduct them into the spirit world. Working with him in this are his friends, Edwin and Ruth.

[After a tour of a beautiful inner city home and] as we strolled along, it was easy to see that Roger [a former pastor of earth] was fairly deep in thought, no doubt pondering what he had seen both in the house and in the garden of our friend.

At length he spoke. “What astonishes me, is that all this is unknown to the world. How all this can be going on without somebody knowing about it, is more than I can understand.”

“By the world, you mean the earth, Roger. No, all this is not entirely unknown to the earth people. Some of them are aware of it, but by comparison with the earth’s millions, only a very few.”

“And how do they know?”

“Because they have been told, friend Roger. We have told them. I don’t mean Ruth and I, though we have done our microscopic share in the work. But the telling has been going on for years. The earth has never been left high and dry, without someone to tell them about all this. Latterly, the flow of revelation has increased, but you must remember that one of the greatest ecclesiastical establishments on earth has long ago decreed that all revelation ceased when the last of the apostles passed from the earth. Since then – silence. Do you think that sounds at all likely from what you have seen, so far, of the way things are done here?”

“No; I do not.”

“Yet, that is the fact. Others believe that to know, or even try to know, anything about the ‘after-life’ is against Holy Writ. So there is another ‘dead-end’. ‘We are not meant to know. If we were we should have been told’ – that’s what those folk say. Yet they have been told – officially; and in the very book that they say is against this knowledge. Strange, isn’t it? Those people read that book piously – perhaps too piously – and fail to perceive that it is crammed, literally crammed with psychic lore of every kind. They will swallow whole accounts of it, but because those phenomena still happen, now, they will have nothing to do with them. If it was right in those far-off days – and it was – then it must be right now – which it is. Officially, of course, there is silence.”

“Wouldn’t you think it to be in the interests of any religion to know, or at least to try to find out?”

“Yes, Roger; that’s what you would think. The position on earth is roughly this. Of the two principal Churches, one says decisively, dogmatically, that anyone is a fool who denies the existence of psychic phenomena of all kinds, but with equal insistence says that the cause of them is none other than the devil himself, or some of his satellites. Isn’t the whole notion too utterly preposterous for words?”

“It is, but can’t something be done about it?”

Ruth and I smiled at the healthy, vigorous enthusiasm of our young friend.

“Roger, dear,” said Ruth, “your feelings do you great credit. We both know exactly how you feel. Monsignor and I had the same experience. We should have liked to have taken people’s silly heads and banged them together, and tried to knock some sense into them, but we were restrained – by wiser minds than ours.”

“Now,” I said, “let me tell you what happened with the other important Church I mentioned. That Church held a inquiry into the whole subject of spirit communication with the earth, ordered by no less a functionary than the Archbishop himself. They investigated very thoroughly and deliberated very carefully, and compiled a report of their findings. The majority were in favor, and declared that spirit communication did in fact exist. Splendid. Now, Roger, if you are fond of a joke – we know you are – get ready to laugh loudly: the whole report was officially suppressed.

“Peculiar, isn’t it, how people do not want to know about us and the life we are living here? Of course there are very naughty people who say that if that report had been against, it would have been published with a flourish of trumpets to help it on. I haven’t told you the actual sequel yet. The Archbishop who ordered the inquiry and then ordered the report to be suppressed, has since come to live here himself.

“It’s a difficult job, my Roger, to try to undo some things we wish we had never done. That good prelate has all my sympathy, for I too left behind me things which I had rather left undone. By great good fortune I have been enabled to put them right; not entirely right, you must understand, but sufficiently so to make very little difference. And where I spoke with vigor when I was on earth, I have since spoken with extra double-strength vigor to make up for it. I can feel now in my mind a great calm and contentment that were lacking before. When we get home I will show you a volume that was the cause of the earthly trouble many years ago. It was terrible stuff !”

Ruth laughed. “Don’t get overheated, my dear,” she said, “there are much worse things on earth than that old book – and more foolish!”

“Both those Churches take a peculiar interest in this world – a religious interest, of course. Neither knows what precisely to expect in the way of an after-life. An after-life there must be, naturally, but they can suggest nothing that does not imply some description of an essentially religious life. In effect, it means that the earth life is the real material life, and that the after-life is conducted upon holy lines of some sort. Certainly the whole atmosphere will be pious, and totally unlike what man has been accustomed to on earth. They are right in the latter; this life is totally unlike the earth life, but not in the way they mean.

“What’s to be the end of it all, then? Will the Churches eventually find the truth? That is a large question. As they are at present constituted, nothing could be done. They are perfectly contented as they are. The first of the two I mentioned claims to be the one true Church, and infallible. There would not seem to be much hope there. The second Church possesses no authority whatever. Within broad limits – very broad ones – its members can think and believe what they like. The bishops have little or no authority over their clergy in matters of ‘faith’. There are some ministers who wholeheartedly support the spirit world as it really is, because they have spiritual knowledge derived directly from us. Even if this particular Church pronounced in our favor officially, it by no means follows that the clergy and the laity would do the same thing. There are some who have this knowledge, and uphold the Church as well – with all its strange doctrines. In that they are trying to face both ways at once. But when they come here, they must eventually face only one way.

“You can see, Roger, what difficulties are in the way when it comes to official acknowledgment of the true manner of life in the spirit world. That is why the truth is in the hands of unofficial folk. You see what a lecture your simple proposition has brought upon you!”

Ruth suggested that we sit down for a while. We found a spot beneath a tree upon slightly rising ground, where we could see in the distance a glittering expanse of water.

“Doesn’t it seem an awful pity, Roger,” said Ruth, “that so many millions of people on earth should know nothing about this lovely land? And doesn’t it seem outrageous that officially they should be ‘warned off’ from knowing anything, and for the most silly, stupid reasons? What harm, what possible harm could there be in knowing all about us and the life we live? One would think we are absolute outcasts, or peculiar people it were better not to have anything to do with. It makes me furious.”

“Now, don’t you get overheated, my dear,” I said. “This wholesale ignorance isn’t a new thing. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. That’s the real trouble. It’s been going on too long, so that people have got into the one way of thinking – mostly the religious or theological way. You know, Roger, it’s not so very surprising that hundreds of people, when they arrive here and find out the truth, go about like a ‘mighty wind’, and want to go back to earth to shout the truth at last to the folk they’ve left behind them. Some of them actually do go back, but the result is dismal – on both sides. Their voices cannot be heard – that is, heard in the very place where they want them to be.

“Take yourself, my boy. Ruth and I could lead you to a little spot on earth where we could make ourselves known among old friends. We could introduce you to them, and ask if they would convey a message for you to your people at your old home. Very well. What would happen next? Remember your relations would be complete strangers to our friends, and presumably your people know nothing about communication between the two worlds, or if they know, do not believe it can be done. What do you suppose would be the result when our friends presented themselves at your parents’ house, and said they had a message from their Roger? You know best what would happen, because you know them. As a matter of interest, Roger, what would happen?”

The boy thought a moment. “They would be civil, at least,” he said, “but a bit grim. Probably think your friends cranks, if not altogether mad.”

“They don’t look like cranks, Roger; so they might be able to escape that. But mad – yes, perhaps; though they don’t give any evident or unmistakable signs of that either. What next?”

“They might think it in shockingly bad taste.”

“Ah, that would be difficult to overcome. Bad taste that our friends should intrude upon their bereavement, and so on. Then what?”

“I rather fancy your friends would be shown the front door. After that, they would discuss it between themselves, and go off to see their vicar. He would listen civilly, and tell them he had heard about such things, but that they were far better left alone.”

“That’s about it, Roger. The same old story all over again, and one we have to recount, and keep on recounting, to people as they arrive here in their thousands, and want to go back to earth to speak.

“The chief trouble with the Churches is that they cannot make the truth about this world fit in with their theology. They don’t realize that they are going about things the wrong way: they must make their theology fit the truth, and that means a wholesale clearance of everything that does not accord with it. At present they prefer the shadow to the substance; they prefer creeds and doctrines and dogmas. They are not realists – far from it.

“Let us put the matter plainly, even crudely, if you wish it. Here are three of us, human beings who once lived on earth. We have passed through the experience of dying, and now we are seated in the spirit world upon some delightfully soft turf beneath a beautiful tree, with all the lovely countryside round about us, and reaching for miles away into the distance. It is all unquestionably real and solid. It is no ‘spiritual experience’ in the religious sense, but an ‘everyday’ experience of a very ordinary nature. We are here – all three of us – because, by virtue of man’s spiritual heritage, it is our right to be here, and not because of what we believed on earth, or through the merits of any particular Church to which we belonged. Ruth will tell you herself that she gave up going to church altogether. Yet she is here with us, and she will tell you she was an awful heathen in the eyes of her Church. Another Church would call her a heretic and a schismatic, and doomed to who-knows-what terrible place for her sins.

“As for myself, I was a priest of the Church, and should have known better – but didn’t. You, Roger, are young, but I believe you did not become exactly a pillar of your Church. Now between us, and strictly from the theological point of view, you two should not be here at all, if this place is reserved for folk like me. If my theology, and all the doctrines and dogmas I rigorously upheld and preached about, have brought me to this particular region of the spirit world, then you two have no business to be here at all. You can’t say, theologically speaking, that either of you is the least fitted to be in my company, for you, Ruth, on your own terrible confession, were no church goer all latterly in your earth life, and you, Roger, were only halfhearted in it. It’s extremely difficult for me to adjudicate between you, and settle who is the worse sinner. You’re both pretty bad, it would seem, and I have no business to be in your company, or you have no business to be in mine. But the stubborn fact is that you are here, and so am I.

“What is the conclusion? There’s only one: that something is wrong somewhere with all the theology. The theology doesn’t fit the facts.

“Let’s go further. When you were on earth, Roger, did you go about your daily life in a ‘pious’ frame of mind – it sounds like a silly question to ask, but did you?”

“No, Monsignor; I certainly did not.”

“Of course, you didn’t; no rationally constituted person does. One may have pleasant thoughts, kindly thoughts, and do pleasant, kindly actions, but that is not going about and behaving in a ‘pious’ manner, and generally being sanctimonious and altogether objectionable. Now, how do you feel about things at this present moment? Any different?”

“Not a particle.”

“And so, if a bulletin were issued it might read like this:

“No change has been reported in Roger’s condition other than his now feeling perfectly fit in bodily health. He is in the most cheerful spirits (as well as being with them), and is at this moment thoroughly enjoying himself – if his face is any indication of the state of his mind. He is pleased to inform all theologians that he does not feel the least particle ‘pious’ or ‘holy’, and is most thankful that he feels like himself and nobody else. Would you subscribe to that declaration, my lad?”

“I would, indeed, Monsignor. I wouldn’t swap this back for the old earth.”

“Exchange, Roger, exchange. You must understand that ‘swap’ is a word that would never be used by a disembodied entity; that you would be expected to speak the most perfect language, entirely free from all slang and vulgarisms, and that everything you say must be profound in nature and weighty in substance. That’s how we are expected to behave by most of the earth people – the uninstructed ones. Now the great point is that there are no evident signs of piety or holiness, or even of religiosity to be seen here, nor do we go about quoting in scripture or other uplifting texts to one another, and behaving in a thoroughly unnatural manner.

“In brief: we are not living in a religious institution or a religious world as a whole, but in a sane, sensible world, of incomparable beauty, where we can work and play, as we wish, and laugh to our heart’s content, and where, moreover – and this is vitally important – where we can be ourselves, and not be as others on earth would mistakenly have us to be.

“Isn’t it odd that when I had plenty of pulpits at my disposal to preach from, I had nothing much to say – as I see it now? And now I have a great deal to say, I have no pulpit.”

Excerpt from More About Life In The World Unseen