Mediumship.

Views on mediumship vary from those who will not accept that any communication with departed mortals is possible, to those who believe all they read. It is as well to understand the mechanism, the sources of potential error, and the right way to discern Truth - which applies to any truth, not just channeled messages.

Now that mediums like John Edward are gaining such widespread visibility, it may be sensible to comment on JE. JE has described how he receives information in his book - One Last Time. He says it is symbolic, and took him a long time to master this unique language. It seems to be a combination of some words received as thoughts, and mainly pictures. If you watch his show, or read his book, you will realise that he is never too sure what anything means. He uses the "mortal relative" to help him home in on what is being communicated.

This is certainly not how our mediums receive information. James Padgett received by automatic writing. These are complete written messages. They are often received as fast as can be written, and sometimes the medium has very little idea what is being written. They are somewhat hard to read, as there is no punctuation - the pen does not leave the paper to punctuate. In essence the spirit has sufficient control over the pen, that enables it to write. We are told that the information nevertheless did go through Padgett's mind. Other mediums on this site receive by thought impression. These impressions are then committed to paper. While this may appear to be less accurate, we are told this is not necessarily the case. One reason is that the spirit is still present while thoughts are committed to paper, and helps with this aspect. Nevertheless one such medium often expresses great frustration in achieving the clarity of thought that he had in his mind, subsequently on paper. Some of our mediums receive in a light trance, and speak the message, which is tape recorded.

JE naturally receives his information from a vast number of different spirits, almost all of which he will not contact again. This is certainly not to be taken as a criticism of JE, but I have chosen to comment on his style, because many people will have had the opportunity to see him in action. And folks might think our mediums work the same way. In the case of our mediums it is not generally the case that they receive from many different spirits, and a period of developing rapport is often required. This generally means that our mediums improve as time goes by. Nevertheless they can enter periods when they have great difficulty connecting, and they are always encouraged to develop greater spirituality by fervent prayer. It should be apparent that there is a significant difference between our mediums and JE. In fact, one well known medium, Linda Williamson, has even suggested that those like our "mediums" should be called channelers, and all others mediums. It does seem to us that there should be two different words, to describe these very different types of reception.

The earliest study of mediumship was carried out about 150 years ago, by Allan Kardec in a work entitled The Spirits Book, and another The Mediums Book. These remain masterful works, but subject to the same potential errors we describe here. They are recommended works if your interest extends to many different types of mediumship, and many excellent explanations of spiritual phenomena.

There are a number of sources of potential error.

• Firstly the medium can unwittingly insert his/her thoughts, as the mortal's brain can interfere with the reception of the message, because of their current beliefs. This is a major cause of poor reception of advanced spiritual knowledge.
• Secondly, the spirit can be deceptive - i.e. deliberately deceptive.
• Thirdly the spirit can be honest but lack the knowledge - possibly without knowing that this is the case.
• Fourthly, the mortal can lack the spiritual development to receive the spiritual knowledge. This is quite different to inserting his own beliefs, and is a very significant communication block.
• Finally of course, are these messages as displayed here the originals, without editing to the extent that the original meaning is lost?

All of these issues are addressed in our messages and set out below. Every single one of us who has found these messages has gone through a similar process to decide if these really are Truth. I think it would be fair to say that there are few, if any groups with the knowledge we now possess about the conditions required to receive high level spiritual messages accurately.

We have in 2001 received confirmation of some subtle errors in Padgett's mediumship - warning indeed of the difficulty, indeed almost impossibility of receiving without error. In the case of Padgett, it appears the angels were unwilling to correct his error regarding soul mates, primarily because the error was in their view not significant, and secondly because they thought it would upset him! It is certain that information about these errors could not have been communicated without the fundamental groundwork done by Padgett and Samuels, leading to a formidable spiritual framework on which current mediums have been able to build.

For how long have spirits communicated:

Controlling deceptive spirits:

It is sometimes suggested to us that these messages might be the work of "demons" in the disguise of angels. We really wonder how folks can seriously suggest that a set of messages that exhort us to pray directly to God to obtain His love can be seen as coming from "demons". It is frankly, even more ridiculous than when Jesus was accused of using the power of Satan to cast out devils. Dark Spirits cannot "disguise" their appearance to other spirits, although it is true they can disguise their appearance to those mortals that have spiritual sight. Padgett was surrounded by a band of Celestial angels at all times, and they controlled who was allowed to communicate. In point of fact, James Padgett spent one day a week helping dark spirits, so he was quite familiar with their ways. As always, by their deeds you will know them.

The mechanism for mediumship:

Identifying Truth:

Originals of the messages.

The Padgett messages all exist as originals, because the mechanism was automatic writing, and the original hand written pages have been carefully stored. These are in the process of being scanned, for the express purpose of confirming the degree of accuracy of the printed versions. There are however two schools of thought here, and this has lead to division amongst the followers of these messages. Some prefer to read messages where the grammar has been improved, and very minor structural changes made. Others absolutely reject this approach. As it is, one set of printed messages is very close to the originals, ("True Gospel revealed anew by Jesus") while another set ("Angelic Revelations of Divine Truth") has been "cleaned up" and an estimate of the question posed by Padgett, which has not been recorded, has been added in brackets to aid the reader's comprehension.

If you study the copy of the original shown on this link, you will understand that automatic writing is not that easy to transcribe accurately, as it contains no punctuation. Breaks in sentences are not obvious. However the style of the handwriting is unique, as is the signature of the spirit who wrote.

Why Padgett?

A commentary on mediumship:

What does science say?

Well until very recently we could not point to very much. Unfortunately it seems no scientist was even prepared to prove that mediumship is false. They just wouldn't get involved, or could not get funding. But now Den Radin has stepped into the gap. See his book described here. Perhaps we will get a lot more research now that one has had a go. So hopefully we will shortly be able to list other articles. Of course this pioneering work does not establish anything more than the fact that some people are able to obtain information in a manner that science cannot explain. But at least the statistics show that this is the case. It does not prove that mediumship is 100% accurate. And, as we well know, it never will.

Author	Title	Date of Message
Gary E Swartz	The Afterlife Experiments
Gary E Swartz	The Afterlife Experiments
Dean Radin	Entangled Minds