The Guiding Star to a Higher Spiritual Condition

THE GUIDING STAR:

TO A HIGHER SPIRITUAL CONDITION

SEQUEL NUMBER TWO TO "RENDING THE VAIL"

Produced in the same way and by means of the same combined mediumship by:
W. W. ABER (PHENOMENAL) J. H. NIXON (MENTAL)

Copyrighted 1905
BY PHILIP NADIG

THE GUIDING STAR

EVOLUTIONARY IMMORTALITY TRIUMPHING AS THE MISSING LINK OF EVOLUTION,
OR
EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY

That is: Evolution of Immortalized Sentient Beings and of an appropriate realm of spirit for their habitation, the end that NATURE had in view from the beginning of "swirling fire-mist into planetary form."

An open letter, in two parts, dictated by the STAR CIRCLE OF SPIRITS FOR CONSIDERATION OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, SPECULATIVE THOUGHT, METAPHYSICS AND THEISM.

Part I of said letter being written by the SPIRIT WESLEY ABER, as amanuensis at séances 16, 17, I8, I9 and 25, and made the general introduction to this book. (Sec. I59)

Part II of said letter, written by the SPIRIT PROF. MICHAEL FARADAY, as amanuensis for said Star Circle, at séances 55, 57, 58, 62, 64 and 76, as the conclusion of the whole matter, and placed at close of this volume, and the SCIENTIST, PHILOSOPHER, METAPHYSICIAN, THEOLOGIAN AND PERSON OF SPECULATIVE THOUGHT are invited, first, to read carefully and to consider thoroughly, both parts of said open letter.

TO
Philip Nadig

OUR FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR, TO WHOSE UNSELFISHNESS WE ARE INDEBTED FOR MEANS TO PLACE THIS WORK BEFORE THE WORLD, THIS VOLUME IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED BY THE BAND OF SPIRITS INSTRUMENTAL IN ITS PRODUCTION.

DR. REED

EXPLANATORY

This publication being the third of a series: "Rending the Vail," "Beyond the Vail," and "The Guiding Star," it is presumed that the readers of this have read the two former, and will readily discern that the three books were produced in very nearly the same way; hence explanation given in the first and second books need not be repeated in this book, except to a limited extent; but the reader will find that he or she, is kept in connection with such similar, corroborative and explanatory matter as thought desirable by appropriate references, and a liberal use of the index of each book. For such purpose, the reader will readily observe that the three volumes are fairly well paragraphed, and the paragraphs of each consecutively numbered by the appropriate figures placed in the left margin at the beginning of the paragraph; and that frequently, paragraphs have subdivisions marked by letters of the alphabet, and that references are made to paragraphs, subdivisions and pages, by the appropriate symbols placed in parentheses.

For further convenience some abbreviations are used, such as R. V. for "Rending the Vail," B. V. for "Beyond the Vail," G. S. for "The Guiding Star," Par. for paragraph; and where page is meant, the word page is spelled in full. The vinculum — is sometimes used, denoting the elliptical words: From, to, inclusive.

Examples of references: (R. V. page 4) means: See page 4 of "Rending the Vail." But in the references, where paragraph is meant, only the number of the paragraph is used, as thus: (B. V. 36) signifying, see paragraph 36 of "Beyond the Vail."

There may be a few errors, both clerical and typographical, in references and indices: and it is true that neither references nor indices are at all full and complete, for the reason that so compactly did the spirits write and speak generally, that it would require a repetition of almost every sentence to make full index.

As to distinction between words of the secretary and those of spirits: Words, remarks, descriptions and observations of the secretary in this book, except headings and where directly specified, are set off by brackets and in solid type, while the words, sayings, typewritings and manuscripts of spirits are left clear of mark; and generally specified.

In the former books we tried to keep this distinction clear by quotation marks; but it seems that some readers fail to discern the distinction so made.

As to repetitions and cumulative evidences of authentication, some readers may criticise. In fact some objection to cumulative matter of facts contained in "Rending the Vail," have reached us even from London, Eng. "Too MUCH RECORD OF FACT!" Too much pains taken in verifying and authenticating the facts. Not every scientist would urge such objection; and while one person might do so, one hundred others are not satisfied without more and more, again and again.

For instance: As often as it is repeated in the two former books, that the writing, speaking, picture making were always done by some spirit in visible form while standing before and in sight and hearing of the whole circle, some persons, who say they have read these accounts, still ask us; "Why, could you see the specter? Could you hear it talk? Could you see it write? Could you see it while it was making a picture?"
A remark, further, concerning this matter may be pardoned by most minds. The observant reader will have noticed that while there seems much repetition of similar matter and phenomena, yet, no two occurrences are exactly alike; that there is continual variation of detail; that very generally, the different séances were not composed entirely of the same persons, as the records show, but that persons from widely separated homes were visitors, from time to time, and may be consulted as to authenticity of the phenomena. These visiting persons, to the number of nearly one hundred, have left their names and addresses, and consented that they may be used in authentication of phenomena recorded in this book in connection with their names—and these names may be found just preceding the index.

After having read this book,—all of it—the reader will do well to turn to the summary of the spirit Denton in his oration No. 51, pages 382 and 383 of "Rending the Vail," and to the syllogism of the spirit, Prof. Faraday.

Something historical of the mediumship for the production of these books, might be expected here; but, perhaps, we only need to say, now, that the band of spirits having charge of this work, finally succeeded in getting together and combining the phases of two mediums; one for materialization, and the other forgiving out mental aura for forms through which intellectual spirits could, more or less perfectly, express their own mentality for the benefit of human beings in the physical life.

THE GUIDING STAR
OPEN LETTER

PART I
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Written By the Spirit Wesley Aber

1.The apparent futility that has attended all efforts to prove the Immortality of man springs largely from the fact that a sense of Immortality is an achievement in morals, and not an inference drawn by logical processes from the nature of things. It is not a demonstration to, or by the reason, but a conviction gained through the spirit in the process of human life. All truth is an achievement. If you would have it at its full value, go win it. If there is any truth whose value lies in a moral process, it must be sought by that process. Other avenues will prove hard and uncertain, and will stop short of the goal. Eternal wisdom seems to say: "If you would find Immortal life, seek it in human life; look neither to the heavens nor the earth, but in your own heart as it fulfils the duty of present existence." You are not mere minds for seeing and hearing truth, but Beings, set in a real world to achieve it. This is the secret of creation. But if demonstration cannot yield a full sense of Immortality, it does not follow that discussion and evidence are without value. Mind is auxiliary to spirit, and intellectual conviction may help moral belief.

2. Doubts may be so heavy as to cease to be incentives, and become burdens. If you discover any hints of Immortality in the world, or in the nature of man, you must welcome them. If there are denials of it that lose their force under inspection, you must clear your minds of them: For so you shall be freer to work out the only demonstration that will satisfy you.

3. Whatever is here said upon this subject has for its end, not only demonstration, but a clearing and paving of the way to that demonstration, which only can be realized by personal experience. Or we might say, our object is to make an open and hospitable place for it in the domain of thought. This result would be nearly gained if it were understood how the idea of Immortality came into the world.

4. It cannot be linked with the early superstitions that sprang out of the childhood of the race with Fetichism and Polytheism and Image-worship; nor is it akin to the early thought that personified and dramatized the forces of nature, and so built up the great mythologies. These were the first rude efforts of man to find a cause for things, and to connect it with themselves in ways of worship and propitiation. But the idea of Immortality had no such Genesis. It is a late comer into the world. Men worshiped and propitiated long before they attained to a clear conception of a future life. A forecasting shadow of it may have hung over the early races; a voice not fully articulate may have uttered some syllable of it, and gained at last expression in theories of Metempsychosis and visions of Nirvana.

5. But the doctrine of personal Immortality belongs to a later age. It grew into the consciousness of the world with the growth of man, slowly and late, and marked in its advent the stage of human history when man began to recognize the dignity of his nature. It does not belong to the childhood of the race; nor can it be classed with the dreams and guesses in which ignorance sought refuge; nor with the superstitions through which men strove to ally themselves with nature and its powers. It belongs to them neither in its history nor in its nature. It came with the full consciousness of selfhood, and is the product of man's full and ripe thought. It is not only not allied with the early superstitions, but is the reversal of them. These, in their last analysis, confessed man's subjection to nature and its powers, and shaped themselves into forms of expiation and propitiation; they implied a low and feeble sense of his nature, and turned on his condition, rather than on his nature, in a sense of the external world, and not on a perception of himself.

6. The assertion of Immortality is an acknowledgment of nature's forces. This fact should not only separate it from the superstition, where, of late, there has been a tendency to rank it, but secure for it a large and generous place in the world of speculative thought. We should hesitate before we contradict the conviction of any age that wears these signs of development; nor should we treat lightly any lofty assertions that man may make of himself, especially, when those assertions link themselves with truths of well being and evident duty.

7. The idea of Immortality thus achieved, naturally allies itself to religion. For a high conception of humanity is, itself, religion. It built itself into formulations of Christianity, and became, also, its atmosphere, its main postulate, its acknowledged working factor and its ultimate hope. It is of one substance with Christianity, having the same conception of man; it runs along with every duty and doctrine, tallying at every point; it is the inspiration of the system; each names itself by one synonym—life. Lodged, thus, in the convictions of the civilized world, the doctrine of Immortality met with no serious resistance until it encountered modern science.

8. It may have been weakened and obscured in the feature of personality by pantheistic conceptions that have prevailed from time to time, but pantheism never will prevail in a hurtful degree so long as it stands face to face with the freedom of your Western civilization. A slight infusion of it is wholesome and necessary to correct an excessive doctrine of individualism, and to perfect the conception of God; and it has never gone far enough in its one line to impair the substantial validity of the doctrine of Immortality.

9. But when modern science, led by the principle of induction, transferred the thought of men from speculation to the physical world, and said: "Now get at facts, and find out what your six senses reveal to you," then, Immortality will no longer be under question, because science would find no place for it, Science, as such, deals only with gases, fluids and solids; with length, breadth and thickness. In such a domain, and amongst such phenomena, no hint, even, of future existence can be found; and science could only say: "I find no report of it."

10. We do not refer more to the scientific class than to a scientific habit of thought that diffused itself throughout society, and became general by that sure and gracious contagion through which men are led to think together, and move in battalions of thought—for so, only, can the powers of darkness be driven out. We do not, today, regret that science held itself so rigidly to its field and its principles of induction, that it refused to leap chasms, and to let in guesses for the sake of morals. If it held to its path somewhat narrowly, it still went safely and firmly, and left no gaps in the mighty argument it is framing; and will yet perfect. The severity, and even bigotry, that attended its early stages, even with its occasional apparent damage to morals, were the best preparation for the thoroughness of its future work. If its leaders, moved by the conviction that all truth is linked together, at times forsook the fields of the three dimensions, and spoke hastily of what might not lie beyond it, they are easily forgiven.

11. When scientists and metaphysicians are found in each other's camps, they are not to be regarded as intruders, even if they have not learned the password; but, rather, as visitors from another "corps of the grand army." The sappers and miners may undervalue the flying artillery, and the cavalry may gird at the builders of earth-works; but as the campaign goes on, each will come to recognize the value of the other; and perhaps, in some dark night of defeat when the forces of the common enemy are pressing them in the rear, they will welcome the skill of those who can throw a bridge across the fatal river in the front, to the unseen shore beyond.

12. But science has its phases and its progress. It held itself to its prescribed task of searching matter until it eluded its touch in the form of simple force, leaving it, so to speak, empty-handed. It has got a little deeper into the heavens with its lenses, and gone a little farther into matter with its retorts, but it has come no nearer to the nature of things than it was at the outset. You may cleave a rock once and have no proper explanation of it, but you know as little when you have cleaved it a thousand times and fused it in flame. In these researches of science many useful facts have been passed over to man, so that easier answers are given to the questions: What shall you eat and how shall you be clothed? What is the meaning of the world? Explain to me what sort of being you are, and how you came to be, what you are and for what end? Such are the questions that men are forever repeating to themselves, and casting upon the wise for possible answer.

13. When chemistry put the key of the physical universe into the hand of science, it was well enough to give up a century to the dazzling picture it revealed. A century of concentrated and universal gaze at the world, out of whose dust you are made; and whose forces play in the throbs of your hearts, is not too much; but after having sat so long before the brilliant play of elemental flames, and seen yourselves reduced to simple gas and force, under laws for whose strength adamant is no measure, you have become a little restive and taken up again the old questions. Now you have been shown of what you are made, physically, how you are put together, and how linked your actions to the invariable energy of the universe. But science has not explained you to yourselves, nor compassed you in its retort, nor measured you in its law of continuity. Hence, you still demand: "Explain to us consciousness, will, thought, desire, love, veneration."

14. Science in its early and usually narrow sense, could not respond to these demands. But it has enlarged its vocation under two impulses. It has pushed its researches, until it has reached verges, beyond which it cannot go. Yet it sees forces and phenomena that it cannot explain, nor even speak of, without using the nomenclature of metaphysics. In recent investigations they have adopted the word "spirit" into the scientific vocabulary.

15. Again, physical science has yielded to the necessity of allying itself with other sciences, finding itself on their borders.

16. Chemistry led up to biology; and this in turn to psychology; and this to sociology, history and religion; and so on to metaphysics, whose tools it had used with some disdain of their source.