Excerpts from Chapters of Experience

 
Douglas and Eira Conacher married in London in 1937.  Eira wrote:

My husband and I did not meet until rather late in life.  Douglas was fifty-eight, a confirmed bachelor; I was thirty-nine, and deeply involved in my work as Art Mistress in a school in Surrey.  However, on August 12, 1937, a few months after what seemed a chance meeting, we were married.  This was during the period of uneasy peace before the Second World War descended upon us all.

In 1958 her husband's passing was a crisis in Eira's life that motivated a quest for spiritual knowledge.  She began sitting with mediums and in 1959: "I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Leslie Flint . . . and to be invited to his evening circles."  Eira found herself able to converse with her husband again while attending the Direct Voice seances conducted by Flint with the participation of his loyal 'control' known as 'Mickey.'  She learned about reincarnation, spiritual aspects of mortal existence and the nature of life beyond our earthly sphere.

The first of two books of transcripts compiled from tape recordings of these sessions is Chapters of Experience (1973).  This article presents excerpts from the book.  Eira's own words are identified with the word 'Self' in the transcripts of the Direct Voice seance tape recordings.  The Douglas Conacher Collection of Leslie Flint Recordings are available for listening without charge at wholejoy.com.

 

 Frontispiece photograph: "Mrs. Conacher at a private sitting with Leslie Flint (Photo by Bram Rogers)"

Douglas (Direct Voice):

  

I suppose it is quite natural and human to assume, as it seems on the surface, that birth is the beginning of life.  But at the same time there is no evidence that man can bring forward to support this claim.  Birth may be the dawning of a new experience, a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new opportunity of life under different circumstances, but it is not necessarily the beginning.  In fact we know that it is not.

Birth is merely consciousness being reawakened or reborn into certain circumstances and conditions of life.  What is is, before or after so-called death.  Death is the greatest illusion of all.  So many people assume that after death there is nothing—oblivion; and they assume that before life begins on earth, before birth, there is oblivion.  Nothing could be more untrue.  Life is constant and continuous; it has no beginning, and no end.  It is as if there were episodes in which you were conscious.

Yet there are, to some extent without full realisation, many aspects of life which man cannot bring to his consciousness, which are just as real, just as vital, just as important as any earthly life.  There are conditions of life before birth just as the same as there are conditions of life after birth, and one physical material existence is not necessarily the be-all and the end-all; indeed, it is only one of innumerable lives.

The earth-world is a training ground.  It has been a training ground for untold centuries.  Millions upon millions of centuries have passed and man is still learning and has often to come back and learn more, and make good, and progress.

. . . Well, my dear, how do you like your new home?

Self: It will be very pleasant when I get used to living in one room.

Douglas: I have a feeling you may yet have another move.

Self: Did you get that from my mind?

Douglas: Possibly.  I am constantly with you, and know what you are thinking most of the time.  I have been looking forward tremendously to this.  Is there something you would particularly like me to discuss today?

Self: Some time ago you said you would like to talk about reincarnation again.

Douglas: That is such an enormous subject that it would take many sessions.  I think the most important thing to realise in regard to reincarnation is the fact that it is something which is not necessarily essential in every instance; in other words, not everyone incarnates again, although many do—in fact, the vast majority.  But, of course, we have to go back centuries upon centuries and realise that there are many souls who have incarnated on several occasions, and now do not feel the need to incarnate again.

One has to accept the fact that in one life on earth one can only hope to skim the surface of experience, and it is often necessary to re-enter to earth-world to live a new life in a new body, as a new being.  Sometimes it is essential to experience certain happenings which can only be experienced under conditions which are quite different to those when you were on earth before.  Then again, I think we should remember that there are individuals who choose to return to do a special work.  Most of the great teachers and prophets of old were very Old Souls who chose to return to do a certain work in a certain age, to set an example and show the path for others who might follow.

Self: Many people cannot accept reincarnation.

Douglas: Although it may sound rather odd, I don't think it really matters.  There are bound to be people with differing views and different strata of experience; and, of course, there are many people to whom reincarnation is repugnant, and who, in many instances, will not have the need to reincarnate, will not want to reincarnate.  There are so many souls on earth who have experienced a great deal in previous lives of which, more likely than not, they remember little or nothing at all, and in a way that is a good thing.


Self: Have we really been together in former lives?

Douglas (emphatically): Oh, we have had several Egyptian incarnations; one in Ancient China; one to my knowledge in ancient Rome; and also we were to some extent influential in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in bringing into being a new realisation of the teachings of Christ, but this was very difficult because it was an age when orthodoxy was very powerful.  We did have an interpretation and a realisation of the Christian Faith which we tried to instill and impress, and bring into being, but it was, of course, very difficult.  You know, at one time we had a link with Holland.


Self: When do you learn about these incarnations?

Douglas: It comes very gradually and, there again, it rather depends on each individual as to how anxious they are to assimilate knowledge and experience, and how much they desire to know regarding themselves and the past.  Obviously, on first coming over here one is so full of the excitement of this life—making new friends, meeting old acquaintances and relations, and so on—that one does not think too seriously about oneself in the sense of one's past lives, even assuming that one knows anything about the possibility of past lives.


We are all the product of experiences, not only of ourselves, but also of others, because we can never live by ourselves.  On earth we like to think we are a self-contained unit, but we are not.  We are the product of all sorts of minds, all sorts of influences, all sorts of experiences, and it would be impossible to assimilate everything in one body in one life.  Therefore we have had many many lives in which we have been male and female, and in which perhaps we have only been a child who died at an early age.  It is so important to realise that it is only when you have had innumerable experiences that you can really begin to see yourself as a fully-fledged individual.

I was a priest in the temples of Karnak and was initiated in my very early youth, and this must go back to 3000-4000 years before Christ.  This is what I have been told, not what I can remember from experience, so I can only repeat it as such because so far I have not got a clear picture of it.  I don't know if you can understand this, but I must try to put it as best I can—I was a legitimate son of one of the Pharaohs.  The Pharaohs had many concubines.

In the early Egyptian time of which I speak, communication was a very important part of the temple ceremony.  Not of a public ceremony; I am talking now about a private and very personal one.  It was a kind of séance in which children—strangely enough young boys—were used as mediums.

[In ancient Rome, where I had another experience at a later time] I was a person of high standing in the armies of Rome.  At the time of which I speak in Rome—after I had retired because I was too old for soldiering—I had a very beautiful villa built which became our home, and at that time you were my wife and we had five children.


It is important to realise that although you and I will be together when we are here, it will be on a much higher mental and spiritual plane.  And in consequence of your coming, you will be introduced to and come to know of many people long associated with us, and you will begin to visualize things more clearly and appreciate things more completely.  You will become part of this great whole, because, as I have said before, all spirit is one spirit, and although we are individuals inasmuch as we have individual personality and character—which is an accumulation of centuries of learning and experience—we are nevertheless all part of the other.

. . . we all are part of the great brotherhood of man; we are all part of the great plan; we are all part of the God-spirit.


We had an incarnation in Italy during what was termed the Renaissance.

Self: Can you tell me about that?

Douglas: Yes, I was a priest again.  I seem to always have been seeking and searching for religious experience.  I was a priest from about the age of eighteen and, as far as I can gather, I lived to be a very old man, over eighty.


You married a very rich man and you had many children, and died comparatively young—in your thirties.  Your name was Hèléna in that period, and my name was Rodrigo.


You must try to see things in this way—[over here] you are living in a world which is a thought-world, a world created fundamentally by thought-forces.  This applies even to nature itself and many of the things which nature supplies.  Indeed one could go back, if one were able, in time itself to the creation.  Anything created—anything that is—is a state of consciousness, a state of realization which is solidified with man.  Man has grown into the world and the world has grown with man.  Surely the whole thing is a state of mind.  Take away the state of mind, and man would cease to exist.


As you rise in mental stature, mental understanding, mental appreciation, as you progress with a wider vision and a wider realisation of things, so the limitations of each world in which you may exist recede, and are less important.  As you go ahead, your eyes are open to newer worlds, newer conditions, newer sets of vibrations.  In other words, you are what you are because of your consciousness of the things which man through countless ages has brought into being.

Self: Some people think we are coming to the end of an age.

Douglas: Well, life is always coming towards the end of an age and starting a new one.  In a sense that is true enough, but I am not one of those people who think the earth-world is going to come to an end.

What is going to happen—and I am sure I am right in this—is that beings from other worlds, or other planets, are going to make themselves known very soon.  In other words, they are going to come in such a way to earth, that man will realize to the full the living reality of peoples on other other planets.

People assume that the past has happened, the present is happening, and the future is not yet.  But actually, of course, the future is already there in embryo, it is already beginning to move, it is already taking shape.  One day I will try to explain this.  What has happened and what is happening at this moment is already forming what is to happen in the near future.

Self: Your various incarnations interest me.  Can you remember as far back as that one in Ancient China?

Douglas: That I must admit is a long time ago.  The Chinese dynasty of which we were participants is so remote in time, and such an early one.  Looking back, as far as I have been able to gather it must have been our earliest incarnation.  There may have been others earlier, but if so I have no recollection of them.  Although I have been told that we had an incarnation on what is today termed Atlantis.  But I have no recollection or remembrance of it whatsoever.


There are many instances when people on the verge of burial have been found to be still alive.  This is not a miracle.  This is something to do with natural law, that until the cord between the spirit and the physical body is completely broken, until the spirit is freed from the auric emanation of the body, until it has completely broken away, there is always the possibility that the individual is not fully dead in the sense of being dead to the material body and dead to the material world.  That is why it is never a good thing for burial or cremation to take place too suddenly; at least four or five days should elapse.


I had a female incarnation in France in the eighteenth century.  Evidently on this occasion I was a person of some position and wealth.  I suppose it was important that I should learn certain lessons because I was very much caught up in the French Revolution, although I was fortunate enough to escape the consequences of revolution.  In other words, I was not guillotined.  I was able to get away into Austria on the very verge of the catastrophe.

. . . although there are many, many instances of people coming together again and again through rebirth under different circumstances and in different times, one must never place too much importance on the physical or material aspects.  What is important is the spiritual progression that is made by those individuals over time itself.

This business of time is always a problem.  One must always realise that to a great extent it is an illusion.  Of course it is very important and vital on earth, just as the physical body is important and one must care for it, just as many of the things that may happen are vital and important even though they sometimes seem trivial.  Indeed one might almost say that  some of the things that happen to one on earth which seem to be on the surface the most trivial are sometimes the most important, and those things which sometimes seem most important are the most trivial.

We must remember that if we are to achieve anything, or we are to advance as spiritual beings, we must experience all manner of things.  We cannot live and experience and progress by only knowing good; we must also know bad.  We must almost certainly make mistakes.

The fundamental cause of all the untold tragedies of life—the wars, the disputes, and the unhappiness that ensues—is that man is self-centred, not only individually, but nationally.  This is another great mistake.  There should not be this national spirit, this competitive element; there should not be this feeling that our nation is the nation and all others are inferior.


. . . we are part of that oneness by which we are encompassed and brought into being.


Self: Returning to incarnations, dear, do we ever incarnate on other planets?

Douglas: There are certain planets which are really worlds of spirit; these are inhabited by people who once lived on earth who have been released from their physical bodies, released from their physical condition of earth, and have entered into a new life in what you term the planets.  People on your side assume that there could not be any life as you know it on the planets, but, of course, that is quite wrong; many of the planets are inhabited.

Self: Where are you in relation to the planets?

Douglas: Well if you want me to give a geographical area, that is impossible.  The point is that all our worlds, all the spirit worlds, are planets.  I do not know quite what some people assume about our world, but of course we are in worlds such as yours, but of a higher order.  And since, apart from anything else, they are far removed from earth and earthly thought and earthly conditions, and not subject to the same laws of nature, there are great differences.  These planets of which I speak are our worlds, and they are real worlds in which we live and have our being, in which we live a more rarified and a more purified life.

When two people who on earth are ideally suited in every sense come here, they will be together.  But this does not mean that they will emerge, and become one in the sense that some people assume.  They still remain individual spirits; they still retain their own outlook and thought and ideas.  Although they may have great similarity with each other, they still do not lose identity; they may be, in a way, like two halves joined together forming a perfect whole, but that is in a wider sense, not in a sense of losing one's individuality and personality or one's spiritual shape.

It would be true to say that when we are living in our own environment over here, we are happy.  But when we are conscious, as we must be if we are to progress at all, of the great needs of humanity—not necessarily only in your world but also on the lower spheres of life on our side, where people are certainly very undeveloped to say the least—then, of course, we cannot be fully happy in our own happiness.

The greatest obstacle to true progress is to have a closed mind or to have a narrow outlook, whether in a religious or any other sense.

Self: What is your conception of God?

Douglas: God is a force, a vital, living power that is dynamic, and within every human soul.

Self: Are you going to tell me about another incarnation?

Douglas: Yes, I hope to be able to do so.  This is where we come, again, to the process of thought control.  It is getting on to a certain wavelength or vibration which could be in association with that particular incarnation and receiving back, as it were, past memory and thought which could make it possible to give you instances and experiences from it.


When we get this understanding of group-souls, when we understand what it means, we come back to reincarnation again again because vast numbers of people who have lived in previous ages are part of the same group-souls going through certain experiences essential to them—not only individually, but also as groups.  They are part of this tremendous whole.

There is no reason why the whole of the earth-world could not be changed in such a way that it could truly be a heaven upon earth.  There is so much that man could accomplish, so much that he could discover, so many blessings that he could bring to humanity by his research and scientific approach.  Man is given intelligence and the opportunity to develop.  But so much that is discovered is not used as it should be—it is brought on to a low material level and used quite often, I regret to say, to the detriment of man.

. . . we feel that the inspiration and message of spiritual that we bring could change the whole world; we could bring evolution of a high degree to man, so that the earth-world would truly be a stepping-stone in the best sense.  There would never be any need, then, for incarnations, and eventually your world would become a part of our world; whereas as it is now, it is a separated existence which it was never intended to be.