White Feather on reincarnation through
the trance mediumship of Robert Goodwin
We’ve all heard (or made) the complaint that today’s mediumship is not up to the standard of the past, and nowhere is that trend more apparent than in the area of philosophical trance communication.
The teaching that came from guides such as Silver Birch, Red Cloud and White Eagle is loved and revered by Spiritualists around the world, but which guide today can speak with a similar combination of gentle authority and great knowledge? I’ve listened to scores of trance addresses but none has impressed me as much as one delivered recently at Stourbridge church by White Feather through the mediumship of Robert Goodwin (pictured).
It’s on the always controversial topic of reincarnation, and we reproduce the first part of it here, with the kind permission of Robert Goodwin. Part 2 will follow in our next issue. S.F.
Can you feel that stillness? Can you hear that silence? Silence speaks volumes – speaks of you. Speaks of the power that you generate and that has been built here. The power of the spirit.
As I greet you all I welcome the opportunity to work again within that power as I link through this instrument, set forth like an arrow fired from the bow of the creator into your heart, but only to wound with love and the tenderness of compassion. But as I speak to you tonight I question what would you have me say. A few crumbs or a feast? A droplet or an ocean? A few notes or a symphony? A letter or an encyclopaedia?
One thing is certain: I can only speak to you of that which I know to be the truth. The laws of the Great Spirit prohibit me from lying to you, not that I would entertain such a notion. But always I am empowered to deliver the truth as I understand it because it is the truth which is the liberator of souls.
It is truth that I always say will set you free from the little prison in which you have temporarily placed yourselves like birds in a cage. I hope I am permitted to open the door and that you will not remain there, but allow your understanding to fly and take you to the heavens and to some greater, more lofty sphere of understanding. In this way I will have served my purpose and the power of the Great Spirit will have done its work.
Whenever the mind seeks answers it should never be afraid to address any subject. Whether that subject is considered controversial, out of bounds or restricted in any way, should not be a bar to an enquiring mind. I know that within your Spiritualism there are certain opinions, some of which are divided, upon certain topics – there is almost a defiance to discuss them. When someone says one should not discuss or question something, to me it is a good reason to do so. And that is why I want to return to the core teaching that I have sought to impart over the years of working through this instrument.
I speak to you on reincarnation. To understand reincarnation is to have to understand perhaps the very nature of life itself, of which you are an integral part.
Make no mistake, you are part of the Great Spirit, you are the Great Spirit. You have within you the latent divinity of all that the Great Spirit is. That tiny spark, that small seedling, waiting to burst into life.
But, of course, you do not commence that journey of journeys at the zenith. You have to begin your journey in a more humble manner, so that portion of consciousness is sent skimming across the waters of life so that it may settle in one form or another.
Recognise that in your truest sense you, as part of the Great Spirit, are formless, the Great Spirit is formless, and comes into form in order to gain expression and to enable that facet of itself to become fully aware, fully cognisant, to know what it is and its relationship with its greater self.
There is an old saying, you know, that the spirit sleeps within the earth, stirs within the vegetables, dreams within the animal and wakens within the man. There is, I think, a great truth in that. And you come from all of these forms in degree, in order that you can be aware and awaken the divinity which is inherent in you. It is not you who have been the bird or the fish, the ape or any other creature or any other form, but the power of the spirit that animates you, the power of the spirit that comes through.
And when that power, that spirit reaches mankind, it is individualised. It becomes, if you like, a creature that has a soul, and that soul, that individuality, is never lost. You do not return to any state other than individual. You may come through successive forms, successive vehicles, male and female, different colour skin, different personality, different gender, different culture, but always that individual status will be retained. So you come time and time again, not that you are compelled to by any authority other than that which resides within you, because it is you as individuals who make the choice to return.
You know, I am often asked: “Why is it that I have to return? I don’t want to come back.” There are certain things you don’t like. Don’t like pain. Don’t like suffering. You like everything to be
a bed of roses. That is human nature. But if you look back on your lives, you will recognise
it is in the time of struggle, the time of pain and suffering, that the soul comes into its own.
Somehow, the very act that causes the pain also releases the soul into a new freedom and helps it to acquire the sensitivity of compassion, awareness and understanding that perhaps it would not have had, had it not endured suffering. And if you look at the index of any soul – however evolved, however enlightened it may be – you will find that within that index, within that context of the volume of all their life, every life they have ever lived, you will see that there is the negative and the positive, the light and the dark, the black and the white, the freedom and the captivity, the pain and the joy. All of these are reflected, mirrored in that consciousness, the states of being through which that soul has passed.
And of course one cannot speak of reincarnation without also understanding the laws that pertain, the karmic law that works hand in glove. If you look at the operation of the law, you will see it is perfect in every way. It cannot be cheated, it cannot be abrogated, it cannot be transversed, it can only be fulfilled.
Because you are imperfect – and that is no criticism since we are all imperfect, myself included – you come into form and, try as you might, you make errors, stumble and fall. You create obstacles and difficulties for yourself, which are necessary for your growth, your expansion, your quickening. By necessity you create situations through your relationships with others, and with life itself, that have to be out-worked. Like the many links in a chain, every cause has an effect and within each effect there is another cause, and so it goes on. If you think this can be done in one lifetime you are a better man than I am, because I know of no soul who has accomplished this enlightenment in one lifetime, even though ultimately it is already within the self.
You may say to me, “Well, this is all very well, but I know of teachers who do not accept this concept, who speak as though it were foreign to them. They have no idea or understanding or belief or acceptance of reincarnation.” I have never said that it is for everyone’s understanding at the moment they reach my world, because quite clearly there are some in my world (I have spoken to them myself, and you may find this somewhat humorous) who will argue as the day is long that there is no such thing as reincarnation.
Difficult to believe, but of course you do not become aware of every facet of the diamond when you pass into my world. You still retain your personality, the one that you have now, the one that is here in this temple, the one that is listening to me, the one that you think of as ‘yourself’. That is retained after death and proven to you when your loved ones come back to you through the evidence given by mediumship and display their character, personality and all that they ever were.
But I say to you that over time there comes a dawning, an awareness, if you like, of the need to out-work a particular karmic debt, to return again to the realms of matter and to once again enter in to a material world, this time with a different personality, a different form, starting over again but carrying through and bringing again through the qualities, the understanding, the lesson that has been learned from a past life.
