Larry Taylor:

This séance was recorded on the 19th of December 1959, Medium Leslie Flint. The communicator, Frédéric Chopin, describes his passing and the conditions he found himself in.

​

Woods / Greene:

[Good afternoon]

 

Chopin:

I do not know if it is really afternoon or morning. Time is always a most complicated thing for us to be certain about. When we come into your Earth conditions we are always inclined to be puzzled about certain things. Time is always a problem. We don’t know sometimes. It is very difficult to say whether it is Tuesday or Monday, you know. We don’t know. It is only from your mind, or from your calendar, and then we are confused sometimes. But that is unimportant. But anyway, I wish you the good morning.

 

Greene:

How do you do?

 

Woods:

Good morning.​

 

Chopin:

I am most interested in everything that you are trying to do, you know. You are most - how you say - ambitious to propagate this truth, you know. You have made these machine recordings, you call them. It is very interesting. It is a magnificent thing, I think. I only wish it were possible in my day for this to be so, uh, we have these instruments. But then, of course, it was different. We had got nothing like this, no. It is a long time ago now.

​

Greene:

May I have your name please?

 

Chopin:

My name is Chopin.

 

Greene:

Oh, Chopin!

 

Woods:

Chopin, oh!

 

Chopin:

Frédéric Chopin.

 

Greene:

Oh, how lovely.

 

Chopin:

What a great thing it would be to have had this for making recording of music, huh? It would have been a tremendous asset, you know. Just imagine, oh! Now, of course, you have everything. Science has made marvellous discoveries. Oh! Your world has changed beyond all recognition. People have such benefits today.

 

Often we hear people in your world complaining about modern age, but it has so many blessings. Oh, so many blessings. It is true that in some respects you have many things which cause alarm and concern, and can, oh, make you feel very unhappy, but there are many compensations.

​

Greene:

Please, will you tell us all about yourself?

And the usual question we ask is how you passed over, and how you found yourself, and what you’re doing now?

 

Chopin:

Ah, you have for me the questions...how I pass...how I pass over...pass over? You mean how I died?

 

Greene:

Yes.

​

Chopin:

Oh, I was very surprised. I probably had very little - how you say - knowledge. Well, I did not have any knowledge really. I had no particular religion. I suppose really I was Catholic, but...not a very good one, I’m afraid. I was a very bad Catholic. I did not have any strong ideas about anything. When I come here it was a surprise for me. I meet so many friends: people that I have known years ago; friends that I had known when I was quite a little boy - all there. I only remember I was very ill, lying on my bed.

 

My friends - some of my friends - were with me, and gradually everything seemed to go further and further away from me, until everything seemed still. No longer did I hear voices. No longer did I know or be conscious of anything. It was as if I was drifting, drifting away and away from everything. Nothing seemed real anymore. The things that had been real, no longer seemed real to me.

 

And then I begin to see light, as if there was an enormous light. First it was like a little tiny glimmer, then it became brighter and brighter and brighter. And I begin to hear sounds, and it was music. It begin to swell up and up and become louder. And it was as if there was a whole...whole orchestra. Magnificent! And I tried to hear - how you say - I tried to hear what this melody was. There seemed to be a theme which fascinate me. And I could not know, I did not recognise. It was not music I had been accustomed to at all. It was beyond my comprehension. It was different: much more magnificent than anything I ever hear.

 

And then it seemed as if I suddenly became conscious of being in a magnificent building. It was a tremendous place and the whole auditorium, the whole place, seemed to be full of people. And there was magnificent colour. The whole place seemed to be suffused with magnificent colour and yet it was transparent. I could see through this colour, and yet I seemed as if I was breathing it in, as if all this colour was enveloping me, and it was becoming, as it were, alive.

 

I don’t know how to explain this. It was all tremendous. It was…ah...it was living matter, and yet there was such beauty, and it was all…harmony there. It was difficult, impossible to describe.

 

And I see this magnificent building, alive with colour and vibration and music. And gradually I see individuals out of the mass of people. Some I had known. Some who had been very close to me in my youth, my people. Oh, it was wonderful! And then the music stopped and the colour began to become more - how you say - more definite, because before it had been so soft and so…wonderful.

 

And then the colours seemed to merge and become a beautiful colour of - I don’t know how to say, but it was like blue, but it was a different blue to anything I have ever seen. Instead of being many colours, it seemed to all change and it was all a perfect blue, and everything seemed to be reflected in this light.

 

And people began to come towards me, and I felt myself surrounded by love and warmth and harmony. And many individuals I had known greeted me and welcomed me. And they show me gradually I don’t know how they do this - but they gradually were able to illuminate my mind, I suppose, that I could see beyond the walls of this building. It seems as if I move with them now in one mass from this building.

 

The walls seemed to disappear and I was in a magnificent sort of...place, which was like the grounds of a magnificent...house. But I could see in the distance a wonderful house; beautiful, with turrets and beautiful colours, and a beautiful lake in front of this house. It reminded me a little of Versailles. The fountains and the birds and the animals. I saw some deer. And along a big avenue of trees I seemed to be going, with all these people round me, as if…and all the time I feel as if I were going somewhere, as if I were going to be received. I don’t know, but that was what the impression - that I was being transported to this building.

 

And I remember as I come to it there were many steps. And I thought to myself, 'how strange', you know. 'Oh, what a lot of steps to climb', you know. And I don’t remember touching the foot...the foot touching the step at all. It was as if I was transported one by one, and yet there was no effort needed. That was one of the things that most impressed me: I feel as if nothing was an effort anymore, whereas previously when I was on Earth, everything I had to do was such an effort. It was terrible. I could not do very much, for a long time. I had to rest.

 

But here I feel so light, so different, so full of vitality; nothing was an effort. And yet in the...my mind as I saw these enormous steps, you know, I think, 'Oh, what a lot of steps to climb.' It was still, I suppose, my mentality of my Earth…there. But I begin to realise that no longer was I affected by disease or trouble with my body. It was a different body, but I had not seen it, but I felt that it was different.

 

And I was anxious to see what I look like. Strange how one should think these things, but I think, 'Ah, I feel different. I have no effort no more. I wonder if I look different.' And at this stage I begin to realise that a great change had come over me. And as I get to these stairs, I go up and up this staircase - how you say - steps. And I come to a big building I had seen in the distance. In front of me there was a big courtyard with a big, enormous - how you say - arch and I go through this.

 

And I go forward into this building and it was enormous, with high vaulted roof.

And the floor was like - how you say - was like beautiful stone, but highly polished, and many colour. And there were beautiful pictures everywhere, of people. And I look as I go along here. It was as if I was being directed and yet no one was showing me the way; but I seem to know which way I had to go. And as I go along this big room, this gallery, I see these pictures, and I thought, 'This person, I think I know.' And I recognise various people on these pictures, um, who have been pass over a long time, you know, and I think, 'That is strange'.

 

I still did not fully realise everything that had happened to me. Anyway, I go along and along, and eventually I come to a very big room, and I see many people, and at the end of this room there was like a dais, you know, or a rostrum you say - steps - little - and a magnificent figure of a man. And he was dressed in beautiful garments: gold and purple cloak. And his hair was beautiful. It was jet black and very wavy and cut short to the shoulder. And he had beautiful brown eyes; large and luminous. And I felt I was in the presence of someone very important, very wonderful person.

 

And I approached this, and I felt as if I was being received, as though one might be by a Pope or something. And this person come forward and greet me and welcome me and tell me that I have been brought to the sphere of music, and that he was to be my - how you say – host; that he was welcoming me on behalf of all the peoples, and that I would be shown around and be introduced to various people, and would be shown my home, and which would be in the grounds of this magnificent place.

And there I would continue to make music and to study. It was as if I was being initiated into a big society, which of course in a way it was. It was a society of artists and musicians. I met all great people: Michelangelo... Oh, so many people that have been great: Cellini... many people...

​

Greene:

Go on, this is awfully interesting.

 

Woods:

Very interesting, yes.

​

Chopin:

You know, it is extraordinary: we don’t know anything about ourselves when we are on Earth. We are very dim - how you say - very...perhaps in some ways it is important that we are not allowed to know too much. Perhaps it is wise. You know, I meet peoples on this side that were associate with me when I was on Earth in previous incarnation.

 

I remember a long time ago when I was on Earth I used to discuss the possibility of reincarnation. It was not a popular theory. It was not something that was considered important; people did not discuss this. People I knew were religious or not religious, they either accepted Christianity completely as they had been taught it or they had little or no religion, unless they were Mohammedan or Jew or something. But, um, there were groups in Paris, you know, that were very interested in all these 'isms' and all these occult things.

 

And I was interested to some extent, but I did not have much time to develop into it, you know. I do not know much about it but my friends in Paris used to discuss these things. But now I know that all of us are not new souls. We like, perhaps, sometimes to think that we are new souls.

 

We like to think that...well, that we are born and then we die and that we live again in a higher sphere and we are with God. It is always very simplified. But life is much more difficult, in a sense, and more complex, which I think makes it much more interesting. We have been often, many times before on Earth.

 

I discover I have lived many times, different ways. You see my life, like so many people, has been a progression from stage to stage, from sphere to sphere and sometimes it has been necessary to return to Earth to gain more knowledge or to do some special work, you know, or to meet certain people to help them in their development.

 

We don't know how much we contribute one to another. It is all very important to realise that we do not live alone. We live by each other and for each other and of each other. We are all of the same spirit, though in different bodies and we are all contributing something, one to another. In my life, my last incarnation, I contribute a lot in music, but in other lives I have contributed in other ways. I cannot tell you all this now, but I know that the older a soul is, the more progressed they have become.

 

And it is essential that we learn by experiences, and that the Earth world is a school in which it is essential that we learn and also contribute to other people's learning and sometimes we are sent back as teachers.

 

And now I have finished with the Earth - that is from the point of view of inhabiting a physical body - I still keep up the link because I feel that I can be of service. I try also to help various musicians in your world who are struggling, who are striving, who have ability, who I think perhaps can be great - in as much that they can contribute a great deal to life, to the beauty of life.

 

And also, of course, we try in music to, to, to, to suggest and to give some impressions and ideas, which perhaps could not be put in words. You know, music can sometimes say more to a person than words.

 

Religion is something, which is something that is deep within oneself. There are many things that you cannot put into words, you cannot describe, you cannot read about; people don’t know how to write about it. True religion is something that comes from the soul and from the inner man, which cannot be described or analysed. It is something that you do, that you express. It is that part of you that is divine, that is God, that is eternal, that cannot be destroyed, that is ever-living through all humanity, through all time.

 

This is true religion. This is true realisation. This is true development of the soul and understanding of it. It is not something that some people think that you can put in a book, and that is the beginning and the end, and nothing existed before or afterwards. That is ignorance that make people say these things.

 

True religion, true understanding of religion, true realisation of oneself, true realisation of one’s oneness with the Divine and the purpose and the plan - all these things are beyond space and time, beyond books, beyond the things that man can say in words. These are things which, in themselves, are deeply hidden within, but can be expressed with time and experience. And we cannot do it all in one life or one age.

 

Greene:

Mmm. The present-day music must give you a nasty shock sometimes, doesn't it?

​

Chopin:

Well, some of it I do not like, and some I do not dislike. I think there are many here and there who are trying to suggest... who are trying to reproduce things which are probably, and in many cases, very much a... a product of their age.

You know, music changes. Although there are a limited number of notes, it is amazing what one can do with them. And one can reproduce many sounds and many experiences of the inner soul and one can reproduce also much of the condition of a life, or the experience of a life, or of an age.

 

I do not like most of your modern music, but nevertheless I respect some who are sincere and are endeavouring to reproduce something that they feel intensely, which will represent to them their time and age.

 

But of course, true music, real music, great music, is something that is beyond your world. It springs from the spiritual aspect of man: the realisation of the greatness and the oneness with God. Great music is something that is really born in the spirit and is reproduced, perhaps very badly, in your world. The great geniuses of music, whether it be of one age or another, they are what you would call, reproducing certain aspects of the higher self in sound: the aspiration of man.

 

You were going to say, Monsieur, something?

 

Woods:

Yes, is your music much different to the Earth music? Is it much more advanced?

 

Chopin:

Oh, of course it is much different. For instance, we have many instruments which you do not possess. Also, on the higher planes, on the very highly evolved planes, we can create music without instruments, by the mere effort of thought... thought being creative here.

 

A great musician, for instance, can complete and achieve a whole work without the use of an instrument at all. He can, as it were, in himself, create all the sounds from himself and in consequence those who are attuned in to his thoughts and himself, as it were, will hear the reproduction of that which the composer has created.

 

You see you have become, quite naturally - because you live in a material world and it is difficult for you to grasp otherwise - you have become accustomed to everything having to be material. You must have a shovel to dig a hole. You must have a violin to play a violin concerto. But the whole point is, that these instruments are, in themselves, mechanical. They are things that have been built and contrived by man to create certain things or for certain purposes.

 

Here, we realise that thought is so predominant and so strong, that when you know how to use it and how to control it and how to make it, as it were, something which is very fundamental and real and powerful; you can create sound, for instance, without the aid of an instrument. You can create it from within yourself. You can vibrate the harmony and the atmosphere. You can create music without instruments.

​

Greene:

How wonderful!

 

Chopin:

After all, you... you think before you speak. Your thought is there before the word, before the sound. And here, our thoughts are such that they can be received by those who are in harmony with us, on our vibration. After all, you can close your eyes and there is darkness, and yet you can see pictures. You can reconstruct or construct things in your own imaginings. What is imagination? No-one has answered the question 'what is imagination?' It is a reality often.

 

That which you imagine is oft-times more real than that which you are conscious of. Man, in your world, in some ways, though he has advanced in many ways tremendously, he is still very ignorant of the power of the spirit and the power that is deeply hidden within.

 

It has been said to you, 'knock and it shall be opened to you.' But few people bother to knock. They are content with that which has been given to them. Often those who are most anxious to see and to know are the most ignorant, because they will not realise the power that is within themselves. They are content, in many cases, to accept that which has been taught them or that which they have learnt and they do not seek for themselves. They do not 'knock'. There are many in your world who are very sincere, very kind, very good people, very honest, very happy people, but they are very childish!

 

Greene:

Mmm. You may think this rather a silly question, but what was your impression of a piano when you first played one over on the other side?

 

Chopin:

My impression of a piano when I first played it here… that I was at home, I suppose, because without a piano I was a lost person. But when I find a piano here and I could play, I was happy.

 

Greene:

Was it different, though? Did it feel different?

​

Chopin:

Well, no, it seemed exactly the same. But at the same time it seemed to have a richer, more beautiful tone and it did not seem so restricted or limited as it did when on Earth.

 

But of course, this was all done in the early stages of my coming here, to make me feel happy, to make me feel at home. But gradually, as I began to realise the possibilities and capabilities here, then I began to emerge, you might say, and become more able to do greater things.

 

You see, we limit ourselves by our lack of knowledge. But as we gain knowledge, we become less limited and that which we strive to do becomes more possible and in consequence becomes much greater. Oh, it is wonderful! Do you not realise how wonderful it is, this world, where there are no limitations, only the limitations that we set ourselves? Nothing is - nothing is impossible.

 

Everything that is good is possible and we become greater because of our strivings for it. Your world is restricted, but only restricted because man has made it so. In his ignorance he does not see, he does not realise the capabilities, the possibilities in your world. He limits himself by material thinking and action in consequence. But there is no limit to what man can achieve, if he will seek deeply and certainly and surely for that which comes from the spirit.

 

The power of the spirit can overcome all things, as you know, through the miracles of Jesus and other great souls. These things which seem restricting are not so. There is nothing impossible if man has faith: faith in the creator and faith in the power that he gives us. I am very happy to be able to come here to speak with you...

​

[Recording degrades here]

 

Chopin:

...I would like very much again to come.

 

Woods:

May I ask you a question?

 

Chopin:

Yes, Monsieur.

 

Woods:

When I play...I love playing a piano but then I can’t play a note. But I love to pick out tunes and things. But, anyway, I never play if anyone's there because I know they’ll laugh at my playing, but I thoroughly enjoy making up some sort of my own music at the piano. Or I love to sit in a park - I know people laugh at me for doing it - and I listen to a sound, and putting the sound into music, into some sort of a... just music, forgetting the noise. Now, am I actually making music in that direction?

 

Chopin:

Indirectly, yes. But you see, like all things, to achieve, it means effort, it means training. In your world you must be trained to play the piano: you must know the piano, what it is capable of...and your fingers must be accustomed to be supple and so on.

 

But you see, within yourself, obviously, there is the inborn desire to be creative, to, to, to create and to play, and when you come here, away from the confine and limitation of the flesh, then you no doubt will create, and you will make music. Because you are limited in your world, through lack of experience and because as a child you were not trained, all these things are limiting.

 

But you know, even so, in spite of all these limitations, it is still not improbable or impossible for a person who has never touched a piano - had no experience - providing they have that faith, they can be used and they can be controlled and in such a way they could play the piano like a master. You see, although these material aspects are important, they are not necessarily always the drawback that sometimes people think.

 

Nothing is impossible and if one has faith, then one can be used. But it would not be quite the same, perhaps, as being of your own self. You see, there is this form of mediumship - which you say - a medium can be controlled and used, which often he may be. You may be controlled in some way to play a piano, but it would still not would be of your own. You see what I mean?

​

Woods:

Yes.

 

Chopin:

But when you come here, if you have this desire and I see that you have, no doubt you will become musical, more musical, and be able to play. But you will have - still have to go through the various phases. There is no certain, quick road - how you say - to success. Everything must be done gradually. Everything must be earned, you know. We must suffer to earn.

Anyway, I must go, because the power weakens. But it has been joy for me to come to you. I wish you a happy Noël. Au revoir. God bless you, Madame et Monsieur.

 

Greene:

Goodbye. Thank you.

 

Woods:

Thank you very much.

 

Mickey:

Bye-bye!