Evolution of Spiritualism

A further extract from Al Batten's talk at the ISF Congress in 2006:

"So as a start, this will give you a little bit of the background to move on to the next phase of our discussion; the philosophy and the man responsible for bringing it to us. And that man is Andrew Jackson Davis; a very special man who, when all is said and done, is the main reason we’re gathered here in this auditorium today. His body of work is so significant that it can safely be said that there has been nothing written about the philosophy of Spiritualism since his time, nor has any information been received about it, even from the Spirit World, that wasn’t first written about or commented on by him. He gave a meaning to all the things which followed and he is the benchmark around which all other opinion and debate gathers. He also popularized the movement to the extent that he has been called our John the Baptist. Yet strangely enough you rarely hear his name mentioned here in the UK nor in America for that matter, we don’t talk about him a lot; he’s not seriously discussed or celebrated so we are going to talk a bit about him this afternoon.

Andrew Jackson Davis was born on August 11, 1826 in a small village in New York State in the Hudson Valley just a little north of New York City. His parents were poor in the most abject sense of the word, we call it dirt poor; his mother was a devout Christian, very superstitious and surprisingly clairvoyant, and his father was an uneducated shoemaker who was an alcoholic. He didn’t receive much of an education and wasn’t encouraged to do so, in fact, his total schooling amounted to about five months. So you can understand that he really didn’t start off well: and he was clumsy, his father said “he didn’t have enough gumption to make a whistle”, his teacher called him a “blockhead” and his sisters called him a “dummy”. He was so unsure of himself and so introspective that he thought that the only thing he was really suited for and had any real capability for, was doing “nothing”. How wrong they were, for this young man was to be the recipient a very special gift. It all started as a young boy, about 10, when he began to dabble in hypnotism, and this strange gift started to appear. It was found that when he became hypnotized he actually went into a trance and demonstrated surprising powers of clairvoyance yet he couldn’t remember a thing afterwards. And when he was in this trance condition he could see objects placed in other rooms or hidden in other locations. While blindfolded, he could read the title of a book place in the closet of an adjoining room or a message written on a piece of paper hidden in someone’s pocket. In fact he became quite curiousity; people came from miles around to see him. He also developed an unusual sensitivity that allowed him to see the human body in a transparent condition, visualize all the organs and then diagnose and prescribe remedies to medical disorders; we call it medical or x-ray clairvoyance, a very rare gift.

In 1844 at the age of 17, he had an experience that changed his life. On the night of March 6th he was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange voice which said to him “Arise, dress thyself and follow me”. Now he had heard this voice in his head many times before but could never understand what is was all about or where it came from. He eventually would come to know it intimately. Then a mysterious power overtook him; he dressed, ran out into the street in what was apparently an altered state of mind and here he had his first vision of spirit, a vision of a valley filled with sheep with a host of Spirit looking down on it. Then he continued the journey with some unknown force seeming to thrust him through time and space. He claimed to have travelled throughout that night to a place about 40 miles away where he had another vision of that strange new world and significantly he claimed to have met the spirits of two historical figures who were to play a very important part in his later development; a Greek physician by the name of Galen who had lived in the second century, and secondly the great Swedish Seer and Philosopher, Emanuel Swedenborg who had lived from 1688-1772. And it was during this encounter that they taught our young man a very important lesson which became his life’s motto and eventually a mantra for all Spiritualists, “Under All Circumstances Keep and Even Mind” It was an event of legendary proportions, but as with all legends it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction; was this experience a vision, was it an actual levitation, or did he walk the 40 miles in a trance condition? No one knows, not even Davis was sure what happened. Later in his life when he had a chance to reflect on it he determined that it was a mental clairvoyant experience rather than a physical journey but, regardless, it was the defining moment of his life; the effect on him was tremendous and he totally redirected his life’s focus eventually leading to the career that he became so famous for and, significantly, Galen and Swedenborg where with him throughout it all.

I would like to go back to that journey for a moment because it’s interesting to note the reference to Swedenborg because 100 years earlier he had clairvoyant experiences very similar to Davis; he too had visited the Spirit World and documented his experiences. In fact, much of the teaching that comes from Davis is so similar in style and content to Swedenborg’s that some sceptics were convinced that Davis received his philosophy directly from Swedenborg while in the trance condition. But I would like to clarify that point because Davis always claimed his revelations were not received or dictated from spirit and were not the product of any form of mediumship; they were the direct result of his own mental and clairvoyant perceptions while in trance. There are also two other significant differences; Swedenborg held that he was appointed by Divine Providence and his revelations were infallible, his way or the highway, whereas Davis always held that no revelation is infallible and this is very significant when we talk about Spiritualism; no revelation is infallible. In the final analysis you have to figure it out for yourself. The second is that Swedenborg was highly educated whereas Davis was not educated at all, and that makes his philosophy all the more interesting. My personal hypothesis is that, while the information may not have come from Swedenborg perhaps, because of his influence on Davis he may have provided the window through which Davis was able to enter this other world.

It was also during this period that, while he was in this state of attunement, he started to experience some startling revelations and they were becoming more spiritual. His trance conditions were also starting to change and not too much later they would merge with his normal faculties, he no longer required the hypnosis and he was able move to the other world at will. He actually claimed that they weren’t really trance states because he always retained his consciousness and control, and could turn it off and on at will. And it was not clairvoyance; it was an attunement of the mind and a spiritual development to which anyone could progress if they put their mind to it.

But let us continue with the journey; it was a couple of years later in New York, as I have already mentioned, that this young man entered this Superior Condition and visited the Spiritual Universe and, in a sense, went back to the beginning of time, to the dawn of the Universe, and started that journey which led to a startling conclusion and the revelation of the Spirit World. It was an amazing process that laid the groundwork for Spiritualism to unfold.

It was categorically the founding philosophy of Spiritualism. It’s so complex and detailed that, considering his age and education, you might think it was a gigantic hoax. But the whole process was witnessed by a host of independent observers; in fact there were three official witnesses, 23 secondary witnesses and 267 occasional witnesses, many of whom were hostile, but all of them confirmed that there was no indication of fraud.

The first two parts are the most significant and I would like to talk about them a bit. The third part is a social commentary more relevant to the time in which it was written and is very closely related to the Utopian movement of the 18th century, although it does have some relevancy to our times in its collective approach to labour and the influence of mega corporations of today’s world. It’s like Marxism without the revolution.
The first part, The Principles of Nature, explores the nature of the mind and matter and the principles and laws which govern them. In fact, it is his philosophy on which we base our interpretation of Natural Law.

He observed that in the beginning everything could be placed into two categories called Matter and Motion and that everything else evolved from these two conditions. We were therefore introduced to the first and primary principle of nature which is “the law of eternal or perpetual motion” and from this flows all the other principles or laws. The law of Eternal Motion which produces the law of Eternal Progression directly through the laws of Cause and Effect, the law of Attraction, and the Law of Reproduction, which themselves are governed by the laws of Eternal Justice, Universal Goodness, and Universal Truth. I suppose it is the nature of Spiritualists, but some have added a whole range of new laws to suit our own purposes and justify their practices. When we are inclined to change the unchangeable we should remember the three creations of the imperfection of man: a God after his own image, a devil after his own interest, and a system of practices after his own prejudices. What we must also remember is that Divine or Natural Law is immutable and unchangeable and not subject to any other purpose than the harmony of the Universe.

And these laws are with us for a useful purpose; to Davis everything had to be practical and have a use, and the use of these laws is to create harmony and govern the order of progression. And through progression, the grand sum and total of all these laws is that Matter produces its ultimate the Mind and the Mind produces its corresponding principle, the Spirit. And it is the nature of Spirit to progress in knowledge and understanding relative to the Original Cause, of which all other things are the Effects. Knowledge by its nature corresponds to Truth: and Truth represents light, peace and happiness which are the ultimate goal of our progression. And he established the fact that the purpose of life in this world and the next, is all about progression.

He also learned that all material objects have a duality in that all things consist of an inner and an outer part. The outer side was the material part which was simply the body for the spiritual inner part which he termed as the true realty. Each side was an entity unto itself yet inseparable from each other. The mental or spiritual side is just as real as the material side and is in fact the superior realty. It’s much like the realty of a butterfly emerging from an inert cocoon. His conclusion is that all movement, all life, all growth originates in the spiritual side and the material side is simply a supporting mechanism.

The second part, Her Divine Revelations, I think is the most important part of this remarkable work. It’s a far reaching philosophical examination of the uses of the principles and laws which govern the whole system of nature. It details the origins of the universe and the solar systems in terms that today’s astronomers can relate to. It gives a detailed geological account on the makeup of our earth and how it was formed, gas by gas and layer by layer, and in such detailed terms that it astounded the scientific community. He also explained the process of natural evolution a dozen years before Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was published, and even revealed the presence of the planet Neptune before its scientific discovery.

A strong case could be made that he even touched on the concept of DNA. From a religious perspective he examined Christianity and provided an historical account of how the Christian Bible was developed in an amazing amount of detail. And he very subtly and perhaps cunningly supported the biblical version of the world being created in 6 days, the only difference being that his days were 2 billion years long not 24 hours. And, remarkably, he finishes off this section with that astounding revelation of the existence of the spirit world. He gives a detailed description of it and goes on to teach the continued existence of the spirit after death. He explains the nature of death, the relationship of the spiritual world to the natural world and even goes into detail about the manner of life in the spirit world.

Let’s listen to one eloquent passage and how he describes it; “And a holy quietness pervades over the whole spirit world. There is happiness of the most inexpressible character, and ecstasies and exultations, and glorifications are continually ascending. There is so much purity and holiness that my mind is scarcely capable of withstanding its moving influence, such as would instantly annihilate all speech. Yet I now have a strength which I have not before known”

And he actually talks about what the soul or spirit is.....

He states that the “Eternal Law of Motion” produces progressive development in all things that everything is in a process of continually evolving, shedding forms and assuming new forms; you could compare the concept to a grand chemical laboratory where everything is constantly being developed and purified. We’ve talked about the fact that all things have a duality of substance, ie, that everything is composed of an outer part which is the material part and an inner part which is the spiritual part. You could compare it to a sunflower; you plant a seed and it germinates, you get a stem, then leaves, and eventually a beautiful flower unfolds, in essence the material aspect of the flower. Then a dying process takes place, but within that process is regeneration, a new seed is formed, a new form which is the spiritual side of the flower; the part that continues to evolve.

Everything has this duality; trees, dirt, rocks, water, everything, including human beings. Humans though, he says, have an extension of this duality; there is a trinity in our makeup; I call it “The Trinity of the Soul.” We have three components to our whole self; we have a material body which is our flesh and bones and organs, all simple material substances; and this material body is simply a vessel which houses our spiritual body which constitutes our sensations and senses, our feelings, sight, hearing and taste. This in turn houses our Spirit which is our mind, our thought processes, our intelligence and this is the real us, that inner part that is in a continual state of progression. And when our material body has served its purpose and goes through the process we call death, it’s the spiritual body and the Spirit, the Soul which graduates on to the Spirit World. They leave the material body through the centre of the intellect in the form of an intense bright light and transfigures into the etheric form of spirit and the progression continues.

He explains that this change is not as dramatic as you might think, once the Soul recognizes that there has been a change. It’s simply a change of circumstances; all the characteristics of the person are relatively intact; there are same likes and dislikes, the same interests, the same psychological imperfections. What does change is that the physical imperfections disappear for we have left the world of the material, the first indication of a progression.