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The tragedy of your world is, that so few people are concerned with the things that really matter. Everyone finds time and makes opportunity, if possible, for the most mundane, most miserable of material things.

The average person I quite understand has many problems to contend with. Yours is a complicated and difficult life. Your world gives many... [pause] problems and the average person no matter who he or she may be will devote all their effort and time to striving to overcome obstacles. Indeed, man has a nature that enables him no matter what the setbacks [audio fades 1:51] to keep on striving and struggling. But all this is invariably of the material [background/distortion 2:00] and there are so few who are prepared to make any effort whatsoever in regard to the things that are of the spirit.

...of public opinion and affection, the more they think you must be something of a crank. [Laughter] If you happen to say that you are interested in Spiritualism or that you’re convinced of survival, they say 'oh yes, such a clever brain you know, such a remarkable man, but you know of course he’s gone a little bit off his head [coughing] in his old age.'

A number of people who have never said it to my face but implied it in various ways, in magazines and in papers and indeed, on a few odd occasions in my audience, who suggested that perhaps I’d been writing so much fiction for so long that I’d created something from my own brain in regard to this subject.

You know people are extraordinary. If you give them what they want they like you very much. But if you give them something that they don’t want or think they don’t want or something which is... ...foreign [Coughing/Banging] to their nature or to their upbringing and background or if you tell them something that is against the accepted beliefs, whether it is in religion or in politic or whatever it is that goes against the grain, they think, 'oh well poor old thing. He’s a dear old thing he’s contributed a great deal in his own way, but now, of course, he is getting on a bit, and he has gone a little bit soft.'

But they still think it’s not me. You know that if I were to come through, if it were possible and write a new book or perhaps some new adventures of Sherlock Holmes and though they were published, people wouldn’t believe that I had come through and I had given them out.

So very few are concerned with discovering the possibility that, that is within each and every one. They’re, they're all concerned, well the vast majority are concerned, and not only...which of course is natural that they should be interested in personal evidence, this must come before one can have conviction - but so many of them are more concerned with material things; that their dear ones and relations and friends and so on, should be able to solve all their little material problems and worries and anxieties. And always they are saying to their friends on this side, 'now what should I do about this' and 'can you advise me about that' and always it's to do with their mundane material existences.

In a...in a sense, I have sympathy for this. But at the same time, it seems to me the tragedy of Spiritualism that there are so few who are...who are concerned with spiritual truth, who are concerned with spiritual knowledge, who are concerned with allowing this tremendous truth to revitalise them and make them new again.

In a sense, there is so much that we would like to discuss, so much that we would like to talk about. So much that we feel is vital and important is held back, because of these souls who are brought onto a low level of consciousness - or should I say a low level of communication - because of the thought forces and the conditions which are built up with the sitters and even the mediums themselves fall onto that low level, of merely being there to answer the material problems and questions of the average, so called, enquirer.

When we go into the churches and the societies, and we hear the repetition of the mundane and the material, where it should be so vitalising and so full of vitality and life of the spirit - how few churches now, it seems, have mediums or instruments who, as it were, can be taken over by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be controlled and used and speak the words of the spirit.

So many seem to be on the low vibration. A vibration not very far removed from their own. There is so much astral communication. There is so much communication of a low order. There is so much that is said and done which is at variance with the truths of spirit, as we understand and we know it.

Though the books of which we speak may have some truth - for in all things, there is truth, but often it is obscured by time and ignorance and indeed by the very thoughts and deeds of men - but behind all this is the seed of truth which, if you give it time and opportunity, will germinate and will flower.

You know, the sad thing is when we see your world, when we see the unhappiness and when we see the misery of your world, when we see innumerable peoples who suffer, often unnecessarily - because much of your sickness and illness and disease is brought about by man himself by his wrong thinking, by his wrong living.

You know there are many things which cause us a great deal of unhappiness and I think one of the things that causes us most unhappiness is, that man is so intolerant. That man himself is so inclined to be self-seeking and concerned so rarely with others. Until you can sink yourself in true service and in love, you cannot hope to make any change within yourself. You cannot hope to rise above the ordinary and mundane and material conditions of life in which you find yourself.

Until man sees within himself, the possibilities and every man has great possibility. For every man is a spirit and every man has the opportunity to develop the spiritual powers that lie dormant within him.

Everyone has the same opportunity. I know there are many people who will say, 'oh well this man has a much better background or this man has a better opportunity, because of this or that. Or this man has so much more money and so on', but all these things when analysed, all fall back to the mundane and the material. And I would go so far as to say that those who seem to have oft times the biggest obstacles, are the ones who oft times, have the biggest opportunities.

Because until you have suffered, until you have sometimes at least felt the need for the things of the spirit, you cannot understand nor appreciate them. And it is true to say that oft times, those whose tasks are many and whose path is harder, oft times they have, through their very sufferings, greater opportunity to reach through the sensitivity of things to the realities of the spirit. Because these things of which I speak are invariably revealed more to those who, by suffering and complication and difficulty of life, have become sensitised to truth.

Because you cannot find truth if you live and only expect from life all that is good as the world sees it - for if you are to see the good as the spirit sees it, then truly you must have learnt through suffering and have become so sensitised to other people's sufferings and have such feelings within yourself, that you yourself have made yourself more ready to receive.

All the great teachers, all the great prophets, all the great great seers, all the men of great wisdom, spiritual wisdom - were men who suffered. No one who wants to do the work of the spirit must ever think that the road and the path is going to be easy.

It will not be. In the material sense often, it will be most difficult, most complex and indeed truth, although in fundamental aspect is, by its very nature, simple - nevertheless it has its complexities, because the human mind cannot necessarily grasp things too well, too easily.

But I do say this, that any man or woman who sincerely seeks truth [pause] will find it. [pause] I know there will be some who will criticise when they listen to this. There will be some who will make excuses. There will be some that will say, 'oh well, how do we know it is him?' There will be some who will say, 'oh of course you know he had a cleft mouth, and that does not sound like his voice' - but, if they are intelligent they will know damn well I haven't got a cleft mouth over here.