My Judgment on Survival
My Judgment on Survival is an article written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in the Sunday Dispatch on 23 march 1930.
My Judgment on Survival
"A Change of Heart and Insight is the Vital Need of the World."
The world wants proof and knowledge of life after death. Only the Spiritualists are in a position to give this proof. They have pierced the veil.
They have a long array of famous names and multitude, of common-sense people in every land to vouch for this.
Once we get into touch with the higher intelligences in the Beyond we have a sanction for those great changes which we urge — changes which will do away with the complexity and mystery and get down to the spiritual simplicity which Jesus taught and which reveals the essential need of putting life on a spiritual basis.
Through the service of Spiritualism, founded upon reasonable psychic research, we arrive at a firm religious foundation, a sure base upon which to build real religion.
A FOUNDATION.
Spiritualism is essentially a religion of knowledge, and not of faith.
- It believes in a cosmic Christ, by which I mean that God has sent chosen messengers to all races, not merely to one.
In it there is eternal hope for everyone; there is eternal fear for no one. In the religion of the future the real place where worship will be held, where the essentials of everything will be found, will be the home.
Man and woman will be priest and priestess in their own household, and in the future, instead of one Sunday in the week, there will be 365 Sundays in the year so far as spiritual communion is concerned.
That is what the world of to-day is making towards — a real, intimate religion, a religion of knowledge in touch with spiritual forces outside oneself all the time.
- The churches will be merely meeting-places where one gains knowledge end compares experiences.
This conception of religion has made great strides during recent years.
EVERYDAY LIFE.
Seven years ago I would not have believed we could have progressed so far as we have done. To-day such intellectual men as the late Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, many scientists in all lands, and not least among them the renowned Edison, now in his eightieth year, have recorded belief in life after death and power of communication.
The coming of Spiritualism has widened the horizon of mankind and made it possible for a world brotherhood to function on the simple basis of a common spiritual life expressing itself in men of all nations and every colour.
Logically, this would mean assured success for the League of Nations if its international vision were broadened and clarified by this spiritual conception of humanity.
In fact, most of the evils of the world, especially the late war, are due entirely to materialism, and the only way out for all peoples is by the knowledge which Spiritualism reveals and its practical application to the everyday life of the world.
A change of heart and insight is the vital need of the post-war world. A living Spiritualism is the life and new hope for mankind.
Its simple principles can be grasped easily by the humblest among men and women; by men of education, in art, science, and philosophy it is capable of infinite study, illumination, and research.
As the root principle of religion it reveals and expresses the spiritual oneness of mankind.
Its followers can give a faithful affirmative answer to the most searching question of life: "Do you believe that the spirit survives death and that it has power to communicate back?"
- But there must be no monopoly of this knowledge. It is for all creeds and for all races.
If we are going to tack on this belief to any sectarian creed, then we in the West will go back to the hopeless morass which we have in Christianity and in which the spirit of Christ is lost.
ALL NEEDS.
There is no reason why we should not have Anglican Spiritualists, Unitarian Spiritualists, Moslem and Hindoo Spiritualists. There are already many Jewish Spiritualists.
It is only by keeping our foundations broad that we can assure that the movement be world wide.
By insisting upon the ultimate supremacy of moral and spiritual values in life, as against the purely selfish materialistic view of human endeavour. Spiritualism has given a clarion call to men and women in all religions to the higher, diviner purpose of their existence, not only in supplying to the world a new, idealistic, spiritual philosophy, but also in supplying, what is more convincing to the millions who have grown cynical of the clerics' theological quagmire, practical proof and verified knowledge of man's spirit and its continued existence after death.
Personally, I believe that Spiritualism supplies all that man needs, and here again, its services to mankind is equally distributed, for it deals with the fundamentals of life, spirit and spiritual existence, and not the capricious happenings of the merely physical.
UNIFYING FORCE.
Once mankind gets to think of itself as countless spirits with bodies (not bodies with spirits), it will revolutionise every outlook upon life.
In "The New Revelation" I wrote: "If this is distinct from religion, I must confess I do not understand the distinction."
- To me it is religion — the very essence of it. But that does not mean that it will crystallise into a new religion.
Personally, I trust that it will not do so. Rather would I see it a great unifying force, the one provable thing connected with all religion. Christian and non-Christian, forming the solid basis upon which each raises, if it needs must raise, that separate system which appeals to various types of mind.
It is the only spiritual truth common to all. It backs faith with practical, provable knowledge that man lives, and that his personality can be identified beyond the grave.
