Explanations About ‘God’ From Extensively Documented Channeling Case Chronologies (Blog Series Article 3)
.png "Channeled Explanations About ‘God’ — ‘Silver Birch’ Through Maurice Barbanell (1902-1981)")
Maurice Barbanell is shown alongside an illustration by AI language model Grok 4.
Founder/editor of the British newspaper Psychic News, Maurice Barbanell was among the journalists chronicling the phenomena associated with Spiritualism during the 20th Century after the Spiritualist Movement took shape during the mid-1800s. Psychic News commenced publication in 1932 and he later published books documenting a variety of manifestations sometimes equated with the ‘supernatural’ or categorized as ‘paranormal’/’unexplained phenomena’; however, Maurice commented in This Is Spiritualism (1959): “I do not use the word ‘supernatural,’ for I do not believe there is anything greater than natural law. All happenings, psychic or otherwise, are due to the operation of universal laws.”
Barbanell publicly revealed himself as the trance medium for the spirit guide ‘Silver Birch’ in 1957. He made this announcement in his own publication, the British Spiritualist newspaper The Two Worlds. The name of the communicator from the ‘Other Side’ who spoke through Barbanell while entranced was explained to be a pseudonym that had been chosen by the entity. The Maurice Barbanell / ‘Silver Birch’ channeling case chronology is profiled in previous blog articles: “Maurice Barbanell: Journalist for the Power of the Spirit”, “Channeling ‘Silver Birch’ (In Comparison with Other Cases)”, “The Mediumship of Mr. Barbanell”, “Life and the Afterlife Explained from the Other Side” and “Perspectives of War from the Other Side”.
Trance channeling session transcript excerpts featured in this article are from the four books identified.
Six videos of ‘Silver Birch’ speaking through Maurice Barbanell are available at @stefenski/videos.
Channeled Oration Transcript Excerpts From Teachings of Silver Birch (1938)
Q: Who or what is the Great Spirit? Is it love — the spirit or feeling of love in everything?
Silver Birch: The Great Spirit is the natural Law of the universe. The Great Spirit is the creative force behind all life, whether registered in the plane of matter or in the plane of spirit. The Great Spirit is perfect love and perfect wisdom. The Great Spirit pervades all the universe, whether it is that tiny portion known to you or that larger part which, as yet, has not been revealed to earthly gaze.
The Great Spirit fills all life. The Great Spirit is within all beings. The Great Spirit is within all laws. The Great Spirit is the Great Spirit. He is Life. He is Love. He is everything. How can we, who are but the servants, describe the Master? How can we, whose conceptions are puny, describe that which is of immeasurable magnitude?
Q: We are told that God knows when a sparrow falls. How is it possible for God to know of all that happens to all the vast population of the world, not to mention the countless millions who have passed on?
Silver Birch: That which is called God is the natural Law of the universe. The Great Spirit is within everything. Everything is the Great Spirit. Because the soul knows itself, the Great Spirit knows the soul. Because the sparrow is the Great Spirit, the Great Spirit knows the sparrow. Because the Great Spirit is in the trembling leaf, the trembling leaf is the Great Spirit.
Q: You say the Great Spirit is in everything, the source of all things — hate and love, wisdom and folly. It seems to follow that the man who does wrong is acting within the laws of the Great Spirit as much as the man who does right; those who preach the gospel of war and hate as much as those who preach peace and love. No one, in fact can transgress the laws of God because everything is part of those laws. Can you answer this difficulty?
Silver Birch: There is perfection and there is imperfection, but imperfection contains within itself the seeds of perfection, for perfection comes from imperfection. Perfection does not come from perfection, but from imperfection.
Life is evolution, it is progress, a striving upward, a development, unfolding, extension, reaching out. What you call good or bad are but stages in the road of life, lines of progress. They are not the end. You judge with an imperfect understanding. You say thus far is good, thus far is bad. That is only your idea. When you are not in relation to these events, you judge them differently. But the Great Spirit is within all things.
Q: Then is the Great Spirit responsible for earthquakes?
Silver Birch: The Great Spirit is the Law — the Law that controls all things. The Law governs all things. There is nothing in the universe which is outside the Law.
I know that earthquakes and storms and lightning puzzle the brains of those in your world, but they are all part of the universe. The universe is evolving. even as those who dwell in it are evolving. The world of matter is far from perfect yet — and it will not reach perfection. It will evolve higher and higher.
Q: Does that mean that the Great Spirit is evolving?
Silver Birch: No, the Great Spirit is the Law and the Law is perfect. But that part of the Great Spirit that is expressed is your world is subject to the evolution of that world as far as its expression is concerned. Remember that your world is evolving, and these things are the signs of its evolution. Your world was born in fire and tempest and is gradually evolving towards perfection.
You cannot say that the Great Spirit is responsible for the beauty of the sunset and the sunrise, for the myriads of glittering stars in the firmament, for all the delightful songs of birds, and then they say that the Great Spirit is not responsible for the storm and the lightning, the thunder and the rain. They are all part of the great law of the Great Spirit.
In that sense, you might argue that the Great Spirit is responsible for those who are depraved, for those who are so unenlightened that they render harm to their brothers in your world.
But to each one of you there is given that amount of free will which, as you evolve, you learn to exercise. The higher you evolve in the spiritual scale, the greater can you exercise your free will. You are your own limitation, but, because you are part of the Great Spirit, you can conquer all the difficulties and obstacles in your world.
Spirit is superior to matter. Spirit is the king and matter is the servant. Spirit reins supreme. It is the essence out of which all life is made, for spirit is life and life is spirit.
Q: Is there a Great Spirit apart from His universe?
Silver Birch: No, the universe is but the reflection of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is the system.
Can a fly understand the world? Can the fish realize what the life of the bird is? Can a dog reason like a man? Can the stars understand the sky? Can you understand the Great Spirit, Who is greater than all your minds?
But you can try to learn to express your soul, so that, when no words pass your lips and in the silence of your own soul, your spirit reaches out for communion with the Great Spirit. Then you know that He and you are one. It is not possible to express that in language, but it is expressed in the silence of the soul within you and within every soul in the universe.
Q: Does spirit need contact with the world of matter in order to gain conscious individuality?
Silver Birch: Yes. In order to gain consciousness it must incarnate through matter and have the experience of matter. It evolves from matter into spirit. That means that in association with a body of matter enables it to express itself as an individual working through the personality of the physical. Spirit becomes aware of itself after it has incarnated into matter.
Q: If so, is the Great Spirit gaining experience through us?
Silver Birch: No. Your evolution cannot affect that which is already perfect.
Q: But we are all parts of the Great Spirit. Does not the evolution of a part affect the whole?
Silver Birch: It only affects that part which is manifesting through you, which in itself is perfect, but it is not perfect in its expression through each one of you. In itself, spirit is perfect. It is the primary substance of the universe. It is the breath of life. In its expression through you it is imperfect because you are imperfect. As you evolve, more of the perfection can express itself through you. You are not evolving the spirit, but you are evolving the bodies through which the spirit can express itself.
Q: Are the bodies through which the spirit expresses itself made of matter in varying forms?
Silver Birch: Yes. The Law is perfect. The Law as it is expressed through you is not perfect because you are imperfect, and so the perfect Law cannot operate through you. But as you become more and more perfect, so more of the Law can operate through you. Imagine you have a mirror and a light. The mirror reflects the light, but if the mirror is very poor it cannot reflect all the light. As you make the mirror more perfect, it can reflect more of the light.
Everything is constantly working itself out in fuller expression. Have I not told you that life is like gold that has to be extracted painfully from the ore, which has to be crushed and purified? Who is to say that the ore is bad but the gold is good?
Q: But surely we all have ideas of what is good and what is evil?
Silver Birch: These are but the expressions of the moment. They express the stage which has been reached in evolution. When the soul has evolved higher, it will leave them behind. They are but the imperfections caused by a perfect law seeking to express itself through instruments which have deviated from the path. That is why I embrace them all.
Q: Does that mean that God, in the beginning, was not good?
Silver Birch: I know nothing of beginnings. I know nothing of endings. I only know the Great Spirit always has been and always will be. His laws are perfect in their operation. Do you not see that you may have perfect light but, if you strive to reflect it through badly polished mirrors, it does not emerge as perfect? But you cannot say the light is imperfect, that it is evil. It is only that the soul is not yet ready to express the perfection that is within itself. That which your world calls evil is only imperfection, imperfectly expressing the Great Spirit through it.
Channeled Oration Transcript Excerpts From Silver Birch Anthology (1955)
Your world thinks it solves its problems by the shedding of blood. But no problem was ever solved in that way, for bloodshed is needless and leads nowhere. Why cannot they use the reason which the Great Spirit has given them? Why do they think that their only solution must be to kill as many as possible, that the one who is the greatest killer is accounted the victor? It is a strange world you live in.
Your world needs our message, the message of the spirit, the realisation of spirit truths, the knowledge that there are spiritual laws and guidance both from above and from within, so that in its perplexity it may know where to find comfort and guidance and help.
The authority of Churches, of books, of creeds, all these are waning. They are gradually being discarded. But the authority of spiritual truths abides forever. When I return to your world I see the confusion and the chaos, and I realise they could be dissipated if the clear light of the spirit were allowed to penetrate, if, instead of just a chink, there could be a strong illuminating ray.
Why do they prefer the darkness when they could have the light? Why do they prefer ignorance when they could have knowledge? Why do they prefer superstition when they could have wisdom? Why do they prefer the dead bones of a creed when they could have the living truth of the spirit? Why do they prefer the dust of theology when they could have the waters of spiritual wisdom?
When you have been in bondage for a long time, there is a tendency in the newly-found freedom that you will not listen to any guidance that comes to you. You say: ‘I have had enough of all this. I have had years of doubt and perplexity. Now that I have discarded it I do not any longer wish to be associated with what is called religion.
We demand nothing that is contrary to your intelligence. We preach nothing that you can say is untrue, that is undignified, that is ignoble, that debases mankind. We seek to reveal that which will elevate the whole human race and give it a true conception of its position in life and in the universe, its relationship to the Great White Spirit and an understanding of its kinship with other members of the vast human family in your world.
I, like many others, have come nearer to the vibrations of the earth to help to push forward that great new world which waits just round the corner.
There are three great problems in the world of matter. One is ignorance, another is sorrow, and the third is poverty. These three things you will always have until knowledge of the spirit is joined with politics and the children of earth think and live as the new knowledge shows them.
Channeled Oration Transcript Excerpts From Philosophy of Silver Birch (1969)
It is sad that people do not appreciate the truths of the spirit until they have been reduced almost to the last stage of despair, when all seems hopeless. This is because far too many base their existence on a complete negation of reality. They think nothing else matters but the world of matter.
Somewhere the soul has to come into its own, to find itself, to become aware of itself, so that innate divinity can begin to be expressed. All this is part of the divine law of compensation. The greater the suffering, the greater the knowledge that comes as a result.
The Great Spirit is the greatest accountant in the universe. The books of life are always balanced, the adjustments are always made.
I did not make the natural laws, I only know how they work. This is cause and effect. No one can intervene between cause and effect. There are no accidents, no chances, there is only natural law in operation.
They preach in some religions that you can be absolved from your responsibility, but it cannot be done. None but the sinner can expiate the sin. You cannot, by the recitation of any phrase, or any words which you describe as sacred, give absolution and eliminate the effect of a cause.
The sad tragedy of your world is the millions completely ignorant of any spiritual truths. Even many, who regard themselves as religious and attend places of worship, have no contact with spiritual reality. So they are dead spiritually to all the richness and beauty, to the exultation that life can offer to those who live on more than one plane of being.
They are unaware of their earthly purpose, they have no knowledge of what it is they have to achieve before they leave it. Their values are wrong, as are their priorities, their perspective is out of focus, their standards are false. Their laws are sterile and barren, they do not fulfill themselves and they have lost their way. They live in a constant maze and cannot find the path out of it.
What is important is that man should become aware of his true self and of the access he can have to the source of all being. He should know that the Great Spirit is not inaccessible, remote, far off, unreachable, but is within himself and that he has a spiritual armoury, a strength, a reserve, a potency on which he can call in times of difficulty and crisis.
In our world, what you are determines what you do. It is your spirit that is the dominant reality. There are no masks, no disguises, no subterfuges, no cheats. There is nothing hidden; all is known.
You have never seen me. You do not know me except as a voice speaking to you through the body. But let me assure you that I am a very real person with the ability to feel, to know and to love.
This is the real world, not yours. You will not understand the reality until you have left your earthly planet.
Channeled Oration Transcript Excerpts From The Silver Birch Book of Questions & Answers (1998)
There is no personal God apart from the one [individual] human beings have created [each for oneself]; there is no personal Devil apart from the one that human beings have created. There is no golden heaven, no fiery hell. These are the imaginings of those whose views are limited. The Great Spirit is the law. Know that, and you have learned life’s greatest secret, for once you realise the world is governed by unchangeable, unbreakable, immutable, omnipotent law, you know that justice is done and none can be forgotten in the great scheme of creation.
I have a great reverence for Jesus, the Nazarene, a wondrous example of what the power of the spirit could achieve when divinity assumes human form and gives to those available simple but profound teaching that love is a power that solves all problems when people allow themselves to be animated by it.
Q: Would it be possible by automatic writing or some other means to tell us exactly what Jesus said?
Silver Birch: I don’t know. The difficulty is that no one recorded the utterances of the Nazarene at the time and so memory would have to play its part. His main teaching was the gospel of love. “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” “Do good to those who hurt you.” Love is the highest expression of the spirit. Love is what the Great Spirit has to offer. Love is what we offer you.
The object of the Nazarene’s mission was to demonstrate spiritual reality. If the Nazarene were to appear in your world today and to repeat what he said 2,000 years ago, I doubt if anyone would listen.
Q: How can the Creator be all loving when He has made nature red in tooth and claw?
Silver Birch: Finite wisdom cannot comprehend infinite wisdom. You cannot answer the problems of universal activity by viewing them only through physical eyes, or by attempting to understand them with your limited mentalities, limited because you can see only a small fragment of a very large picture. It is, of course, true that in one aspect some animals are predatory and that when they require food they have to be “red in tooth and claw.” But it is only a very small part of the story because there is a principle of harmony and co-operation at work in the animal world as there is in the human world. It is seen when the opportunity is provided for this law of co-operation to outwork itself. There is also the aspect that man has a responsibility, a great responsibility, towards what is regarded as a lower form of creation, because animals and humans are part of life equally with the tree, the fruit, the flower, the vegetable, the bird . . . Thus, if man displays the divine qualities of love, mercy and compassion, then the wolf can lie down with the lamb.
Q: Are Christ and Cosmic Christ, two aspects of the same existence?
Silver Birch: You are allowing names to bother you. There is the man Jesus, whose surname was not Christ, and there is what is called the Christ power, the power of the spirit. If you differentiate between the man and the power that animated Him you have the clearest picture of all.
Q: Does a soul ever sink so low that it is extinguished altogether?
Silver Birch: No. It may reach a stage where the spark of the Great Spirit within it is but a small flicker, but the light never goes out, for the link which binds it to the Great Spirit is a link forged in eternity. No soul descends so low that it cannot rise. No soul is so high that it cannot descend to help the lowest.
Q: Does the individual lose his or her individuality after passing through the various spheres, eventually merging with the Great Spirit, and then being redistributed in various forms through material and other substances?
Silver Birch: I know of none which has yet reached a stage so perfect that he can be merged into perfection. The more you perfect yourself, the more you find still to be perfected, for you are allowing more of your consciousness to be revealed. Because your consciousness is part of the Great Spirit it is infinite, always stretching out to reach infinity. We know nothing of ultimate perfection.
Q: In that case [earthquakes], thousands of innocent victims have to suffer because of the earth’s evolution. Is that just?
Silver Birch: I do not see that what you call death is a disaster. To me, it is the great hour of freedom for the soul.
Q: Do you mean that all the people killed in earthquakes are at that particular stage where they are ready for death?
Silver Birch: Yes, but they are there because of what has happened in their past lives in your world.
Q: How would you interpret the words “the love of the Great Spirit” and “to love our neighbors as ourselves”?
Silver Birch: I would interpret both very simply, by saying — live a life of service, forgetting self, try to help wherever you can to raise those who are fallen, drive out all iniquity, and by your own life prove that you are worthy of your divine heritage.
The motive is the all-important qualification. If patriotism means only love of one’s country and the people who dwell in it, and there is no wish to extend that love to other countries and other people, then that is a form of selfishness.
The supreme guiding principle is love which expresses itself in service, compassion, humility, tolerance and co-operation, seeking harmony wherever it can. Love is the greatest power in the universe.
Q: I get very depressed with dogmas and organised religion. Yet I find some goodness in the church. Silver Birch: Let us begin at the beginning. Your church, like every other church, temple, synagogue and chapel, owes its existence to the fact that in days gone by the power of the spirit descended in your world. It was accompanied by what are called signs and wonders and sometimes miracles. The power of the spirit came as a challenge to the beliefs, the doctrines, the dogmas of that day. The power of the spirit gave evidence of its divine origin in that its beneficence was demonstrated in healing the sick, in giving guidance and in stressing the fundamental principles of life that matter is a shell and spirit the reality. But alas, the pages of your history show that all such outpourings lasted for only a short while.
Gradually the theologians took control and the mind of man devised teachings which replaced revelations that were divine. Sterility superseded revelation. Again and again there have been some outpourings of the spirit accompanied by signs and wonders and what were believed miracles. And the process was constantly repeated.
Q: Would you define what you mean by religious tolerance? Cannot your teachings be called dogmatic and intolerant, that the universe is controlled by natural law, that this law is perfect and immutable.
Silver Birch: I have never made any claim to infallibility. I am a human being like you, expressing truths which should appeal to your reason. There is no implicit threat that if you reject them you will be subject to any punishment. All we say is that this is truth and we have found it. We offer it to you for your examination. If it measures up to that strict examination accept it; if not, reject it. How else shall we win, with offers of reward or punishment? No, we must win by love, by common sense and by finding that we can meet on common ground.
Those who are ready to be awakened out of their materialistic sleep will come into your orbit, or you can go to them and try to plant the seed of the spirit. If you fail, shed a silent tear — not for yourself, but for them. They have had the opportunity and alas they have not taken it. But here and there the seed will fall into the ground that is receptive. And it will begin to grow, to flower and to burgeon into beauty and grace because it is the seed of divinity. Then the soul is beginning to come into its own.
We are all channels of the Great Spirit. It is a privilege to serve. There is no religion higher than service. Service is the true coin of the spirit. It is noble to serve. To serve is to enrich the lives of others and your own. To serve is to bring comfort to those who think there is nothing left for them in your world.
It is in service that we find inner peace, tranquility and repose. It is in service that we obtain steadfastness that enables us to have complete confidence in the overruling power, to strive to get closer and closer to the Great Spirit.
The Great Spirit, with infinite wisdom and love, has created earthly children and given them some free will. The Great Spirit has also arranged the whole of their minds, spirits and bodies so that they can unfold the divinity that lies within them which, in full flower, can provide infallible signposts as to how individuals should live. The Great Spirit could have created all the earthly children as marionettes, puppets, whose actions would be strictly regulated with no power of choice, no freedom. But you cannot have free will without, at the same time, the responsibilities of your actions. If you have the choice to do good, you also have the choice to do evil. Good and evil are opposite sides of the same coin. So are love and hate, light and dark, storm and peace. This is a polarity. Yours is the choice as to which it should be. So you must come back to the motive and ask: “Why do people wage war? What is it that they seek to share in common? Or is it to gain domination over others?” You must answer these questions. It is your world. You can make it a paradise or a hell because you have the means and the choice to do so.
This symbolic artwork has been included in previous blog articles.
Q: I cannot — a single person cannot — do that.
A: Your world is made up of an aggregate of single units. The more single units are determined to abolish greed and rapacity and cruelty and despotism, the more they are likely to succeed as their numbers grow. Your responsibility is your life, your actions, your words, your thoughts. Nobody will ask you to pay the price or to receive the reward for what others have done. That is the law. There will be for a long time, outbreaks of war somewhere because man has not learned a simple truth. All are part of one spiritual family. Though you may destroy bodies you cannot destroy spirits. We are not responsible for man’s inhumanity to man. This is cause and effect in operation.
Always there will be offered, as you are ready, a vast richness of the spirit which cannot tarnish, fade, or ever be lost once you have acquired it. These are the prizes for you to earn, the development of your own soul, the strengthening of your own character, so that you are worthy of the light in which you dwell.
*
Previous Articles In This Series
