Mrs Fearon:
They’re coming to it a bit, aren’t they?

Michael:

Yes, very slowly. But did it ever come from within the Church? Oh no. It came from without the Church. And now the church is beginning to realise there might be something in it and they might be, in consequence, be able to make good use of it or bring people back into the Church. But their motives are ulterior, in my opinion, not good.

They want to get people back into the Church, they want to make the Church powerful again. And so, they realise that, that which has been going on outside the Church - people have found truth outside the Church - they might be able to bring it into the Church. But what about those who are still outside, and because of their freedom of thought and will, have been able to make progress with this great truth.

It is because the people outside the Church have been free of the shackles of the Church, that they have made spiritual progress. And the churches, in consequence, have lost a great deal. But now the Church is getting frightened. It wants to drag them back and you’ll find that ‘ere long if it is brought back into the Church, to some degree, that they’ll try and strangle it and make it impossible for people to be outside the Church.

The Church has always wanted to strangle people outside, wanted to keep things to itself. I have no time, patience or interest in the Church.

Mrs Fearon:

No? It’s difficult. It’s a terribly difficult subject down here Mike. You see, you get a sort of fair view of it, you know, from above…

Michael:

Well I’m sorry if I sound vehement about it.

Mrs Fearon:

No I don’t - I’m not…

Michael:

But I’m not sorry in a sense, because I know that freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom in so many different forms, exist much more outside the Church than within it.

​

Mrs Fearon:

Yes.

Michael:

The Church wants you to go its way, in its narrow little confines. And if you accept and believe as the Church would have you believe, you are alright when you come here - which believe me is a lot of hooey !

We’ve got a lot of the people who had this narrow concept of life and religion, if you like to use the term, through the Church, found things vastly different when they came here. In fact, they were hampered in their progress because of the narrow beliefs that they’d got.

In fact, some people coming here, believing that they were really God’s elect and they were the chosen ones, still exist over here in a certain sphere, believing that they are the only person who - persons who still exist in this world. They are blind to any other form of life or advancement. They are so narrowed in their outlook, that they really and genuinely think that they are the only ones who have been ‘reborn’ as they term it - and even they are waiting to come back on Earth in a physical shape…

Mrs Fearon:

Are they really?

Michael:

…waiting for the resurrection of the body. All these false teachings that the Church has given over the centuries has done untold harm to untold millions of people and separated families and individuals. Believe me, the Church has much to answer for and I have little or no interest for it whatsoever. And all this recent probing that is going on into this truth, although I know there are sincere people in it, at the same time I feel the outcome will not be good.

Mrs Fearon:

Mike…

Michael:

While Spiritualism is free, it has chance to breathe and make progress and individuals can feel and think and accept what they can accept by their development of mind and of spirit, freely and make progress. But once it is brought into the confines of the Church, with all its rigmarole, with all its superstition, with all its nonsense, it will stifle it again.

​

Mrs Fearon:

Mike, when you first crossed over, what did you feel like about it? This didn’t come to you straight away did it?

Michael:

It didn’t come to me straight away, no. But fortunately, I wasn’t hide-bound and creed-bound and priest-bound, like so many were. I was able to think clearly and I was able to make progress, because of the freedom of my thought. And I was able to contact many souls who had made spiritual advancement and they were able to help me in so many ways, and I was able to come back to you very soon afterwards.

Mrs Fearon:

Yes.

Michael:

And I noticed that when you needed help it wasn’t the Church that gave it to you.

Mrs Fearon:

My dear, it’s jolly difficult to get help isn’t it? Especially in the world as it is.

Michael:

We come to break down the barriers that lie between men. To break down the barriers that man has created by racial intolerance and hatred, by creed and by dogma. We come down that we might, in some measure, bring all peoples together - as one family, under one God. We have a purpose and a mission.

We are not interested in powers and principalities. We are not interested in churches and in creeds and in dogmas. We are not interested in all the things that hold man to Earth. We are interested in the things that make them free, that make them well and happy in spirit and in mind and in body.

We come that we might, in some measure, make your world a better place to live in for the people that follow after you - that they be born free in their mind to live and to love and to learn and to understand the things that are of God. We have great purpose in coming Mother…

We are not interested in the Church, we are not interested in institutions, as such. We are interested only in individuals; collectively and individually. We come to break down all the barriers that time and man has, in his ignorance, created. We know that we can do great things. But we know that we only do it when man’s mind is freed from the shackles that bind him to the Earth.

And in my opinion, creed and dogma are two of the most difficult things to rid them of. And that’s one of our courses that we have to take - to break down the stronghold of the Church. And the Church’s foundation is still strong, even though it’s toppling. We know that there is no strength in the Church, because there has never been true Spirituality in it.

Mrs Fearon:

I agree with you Mike. I get more help from you than from anybody. You know I thought perhaps, you know, it was my fault?

​

Michael:

No. I know that there’s only one way to salvation, and that is by man’s own desire for goodness within himself to be made manifest upon the Earth. That man himself, within himself, has great strength - great strength of character, great strength of spirit. And that if he would look into himself and bring forth that which he finds, as Jesus did, nothing is impossible.

The Church will not do that for you. An individual must do it for himself, but we can show the way and we can give great help and aid to those who seek and strive. Once a man begins to seek and strive within himself for greater things, then we can help him greatly.

I know that there’s much that we have to do. Sometimes it seems almost impossible to us to do it, but we can and we shall do it. For that which we are doing is not only our work, it is greater than ourselves, because we are but instruments of God. We do the work of God and we do it freely, we have no axe to grind. We do it because we love humanity, because we want to prevent humanity making the mistakes it has made over many years of the past. We want the truth to shine forth and make men free.

Mrs Fearon:

You’ve helped me a lot.

Michael:

We have a great purpose in coming, believe me.

Mrs Fearon:

I’m sure you have. It’s a pity more people can’t hear it.

Woods:

[unintelligible]…Mike, what happens to the people that are so bound to creeds and dogmas when they pass to the other side. The first passing - when they arrive?

​

Michael:

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious. I mean, the point is, a man, immediately after death, is no different to what he was five minutes before. That is, in regard to his outlook and his character and his personality and so on. And therefore a person who has very strong religious convictions still holds them, very strongly, when he comes here. But he begins to realise that he’s rather like a ‘fish out of water’ and he begins to realise that a lot of his old ideas and teachings and creeds and so on, just don’t apply, they don’t fit. They just are not, shall we say, natural here.

Because the first thing he realises is, that everything here is normal, everything here is natural. People are, in themselves, very much the same as they were on Earth, but without all the heaviness, if I can use such an expression, of the material life, without all the old ideas which kept them back in their mental and spiritual progress. He begins to realise that many of the old ideas he had are purely man’s material conception of a heaven and of God.

He begins to realise that life here is a normal and natural thing, that all around him is great beauty - in many, many forms - and that he himself is exactly himself, as he was. But much that he held fast to and which he thought would, shall we say, make for himself a heaven because of his beliefs, he finds is not necessarily so. That many, many phases of life exist and that he himself must adjust himself to his condition in which he finds himself - and of course there are always those who will meet him; friends and relations, people he’s known and loved and who still love him.

And they will talk to him and endeavour to make him realise that he has to rid himself of much that he thought was true when on Earth, and make himself, as it were, mentally free, to be able to adjust himself to his new form of existence. I mean, so many people have such a hazy idea of what life is like or could be like, on this side. And those who have very orthodox, strong views - Christian, if you like - they really do believe that they are elected, as it were, for a phase of life which is far superior to any other. Which of course is not so.

Because man is a complex creature, in so many different ways and so many shapes and forms, and there is no person who is so good and no person who is so bad - in all there are redeeming features. And because you believe in certain tenets, doesn’t make you a better person. What makes a person better is; the things that they have done, the thoughts and the actions and the things that have helped to make that person a character or an individual.

Just because you believe in a certain something doesn’t save you, doesn’t make you a supreme being, doesn’t make you worthy, shall we say, to become one of God’s elect. Every man must find for himself his own path and progress and, of course, it goes through many phases and many states of existence and takes generations of time. The Earth life is merely a short phase in one’s existence and it is important that one should have to go through it and learn all that one can. But the reason that one comes into the Earth is not for what you can can take out of it, but rather what you can put into it.

From within yourself the spirit which is there, which can guide and can give you strength and give you the path, the illumination, as it were, is so often hidden. In fact, in 99 cases of 100 or more it’s hidden. Because man is taught, when on Earth, to develop his material powers, his brain, how to earn a living in different ways and so many things he is taught. But he is never taught the things of the spirit. You see, he may go to a Sunday school and then graduate into a church, but what does it teach him? It teaches him the most narrow of all conceptions of the spirit.

It doesn’t give him spiritual freedom, it doesn’t give him a path to tread that will really enlighten his path and make it one of usefulness, as I see it. Unless a religion is completely free, a belief is completely free from within oneself, where one can, sort of, expand and grow and not be held down, shackled down by creed and a dogma, which holds no weight, in time and in truth, then you see, there’s no use. Life is entirely up to the individual.

I know that, to a certain extent, a person’s life is affected by conditions around him, by relations and friends and business and so many things affect a man, and make it impossible sometimes for him to do the things he’d like to do. But nevertheless, man has, to a great extent, free will, in which he can do the things which are within his conscience. And every man has a conscience and the point is, that one’s conscience can be one’s guide.

I don’t say it can always be entirely a safe guide, because even there, consciences differ according to the individual - what is evil to one man may not necessarily be evil to another. But the point is, that there is a path that all can tread, within which, one can do so much, that will not only help oneself to progress spiritually and mentally, but to help those around and about you. As Jesus said, ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ - how many people do that, even among so-called professing Christians?

The point is, there is no greatness in power, there is no greatness in even tradition - although some people would like you to have it so. The point is, that power comes from humility, from kindliness, from sympathy, from love, from sharing all that you have with others. I don’t mean by that just merely mercenary and material things. The thing which help man to grow are the things which are purely and wholly of the spirit.

Every man has within himself the spirit of God. To bring that out Jesus said that you should within yourself. And it is true, that within yourself you find all that you need. For as you begin to understand that you have within yourself that power of God, so you begin to grow and expand and become, as it were, more wholly of God. There are no limits that are set to man, if he will follow the right path and seek to develop the spirit within himself.

The Church - I know we get back to the Church with unfailing regularity - but the point is, the Church does not encourage man to develop the powers of the spirit. In fact it discourages him, because if you were to go to a church and you were to declare that you had seen this or experienced that, the first thing they’d think was that you were a little bit peculiar in the head, to say the least of it. But clergy, who should know most, know so little.

Their task is to heal the sick, their task is to comfort those who mourn, with knowledge, not with just platitudes and ‘well, it might be this or might be that’ and if she or he has believed in the tenets of the Church and so on, that all is well. I mean the whole point is, the Church is blind - has been blind for centuries, untold centuries. It just doesn’t express the things that are - as I see it - of God, in the complete real sense that they should. They have a little truth that they’ve swamped with so much that is of materialistic conception.

Life is, to a great extent, on both sides, what you yourself have made it and man is no more or no less than what he has become through his own experience. And man can be great or he can be very, very low in the scale of things. The Church could be such a leader in these things - well it isn’t, that’s the tragedy. I know I must sound - and I must admit I am - very prejudiced, because I have seen, only too well, the results of two wars.

Although the first one I did nothing, I’ve seen the results, in as much that I’ve met many here who passed over through the first war and, of course, many of my friends in the second war. And I know only too well that the Church could have done so much, but it did nothing, because it is only concerned with its own material power and aggrandisement.

And this new search into this truth which the Church is making, though there are good people in it and sincere ones, nevertheless I feel - and I know I’m right in saying - will lead nowhere. Certainly the Church will strangle it if it can, as it’s strangled everything of real advancement.

​

Woods:

Yes I agree with you Mike.

Mrs Fearon:

Mmm…

Michael:

Can you imagine a bishop or an archbishop standing down, shall we say, in place of a medium who has the power to bring through some great soul from this side, who would give an oration that would put the archbishop into shame? Do you think an archbishop would, for instance, demean himself, in his own estimation, to stand aside and allow an ordinary person who was not of the Church, uneducated as that may be, to stand in the pulpit and give an oration which would shame the archbishop?

The archbishops and all those who hold sway, are concerned more with their own personal affairs. Besides, there’s so much that one could go into which, probably there’s no point at the moment in doing. But I have little or no faith in the Church, it’s failed generations, untold generations of souls and it’ll go on failing them, until gradually it will disappear.

Mrs Fearon:

And then what?

Michael:

Then, by that time, this truth will have made such tremendous progress, that minds will be free of dogmas and creeds and man will know for himself - in various shapes and forms and ways. And also, although I have little patience in a sense, with…with science, in as much that often, the things that science brings forth are for destruction, rather than for construction - yet nevertheless, even scientists will turn more and more to this truth.

And from it they will be able to learn much and they will be helped and guided. And if we find - as I think we shall - the individuals whom we are seeking, we shall perfect an instrument in the years to come, which will make possible communication between our world and yours - in such a way there can be no scepticism. Which will, in itself, be such a revolutionary thing, that it will forever break down the power of the Church.

Mrs Fearon:

Mmm…

Michael:

Follow the teachings of Jesus. Follow his example. It is the greatest and the most glorious example in the whole of human history…and at the same time, do not allow the Church to make you accept its interpretation of a mythical Jesus wrapped in mystery. Jesus was humble, but the Church would make him so great that he would be unapproachable by you. Jesus did not want to set up a religion. Jesus didn’t come to form a religion. Jesus came to show the path that man might follow it. But the Church, to a great extent, has hidden that path from the eyes…and the minds…of the people.

​

Mrs Fearon:

Yes, I feel sure you’re right.

Woods:

Yes, I do.

Michael:

I must go.

Mrs Fearon:

Well dearie…

Michael:

I haven’t said one tenth of what I wanted to say…

Mrs Fearon:

Well we’ll give you another chance.

Michael:

…and what I have said I have not said perhaps as well as I might. And if I have sounded just a little bit, well, prejudiced I suppose, it isn’t 

really prejudice.

Mrs Fearon:

No.

Michael:

It’s only that I and untold millions of souls here who suffered, for the last few years through war - which could have been prevented - if the Church, to a certain extent, had made some attempt to play its part. Instead of praising, if they had condemned, much might been of avoided. I do not trust the Church, because it has always failed humanity in its hour of need.

Woods:

Mike. I’d like to ask something before you go Mike.

Michael:

Yes Mr Woods.

Woods:

We’re coming up next Monday…

Michael:

Yes.

Woods:

…at 11:00am

Michael:

Yes.

Woods:

I was wondering if you could…[unintelligible]…the things you’d like to ask him…if you would be kind enough to come through?

Michael:

You’d like me to come would you?

​

Woods:

Yes I would…

Michael:

Well I promise you I will come. I’ll do my utmost to be present and anything I can do to help I really will, you know.

Woods:

Thank you very much.

Michael:

Well Mummy I must go, but all my love and God bless

Mrs Fearon:

God bless you dear.

Michael:

And goodbye Mr Woods and thanks for all your…

Mrs Fearon:

You’re dead right. I know.

Michael:

Yes, but I suppose we must try to be a little bit more forbearing to the Church, but I find it very difficult, believe me. Because I know so 

much unhappiness, so much misery could have been prevented, if the Church used its strength - which it has, to a certain extent, still got - to prevent war.

Mrs Fearon:

I quite agree Mike.

Michael:

But when they bless the soldiers, when they bless the flags, when they bless the ships, when they bless the guns - and when they ask God for help in their wars - how can you respect them?

Mrs Fearon:

I didn’t go inside a church Michael. I couldn’t.

Michael:

Well I must go. Goodbye.

Mrs Fearon:

Goodbye and God bless you.

Mickey:

Goodbye!

Woods:

Goodbye Mickey.

Mickey:

Well Mike, he can’t stand churches. Bye bye!

Woods:

Goodbye Mickey.

Mrs Fearon:

Goodbye Mickey.

Flint:

He’s always had a very strong aversion to the Church hasn’t he?

Woods:

Well I can’t blame him. I have a brother-in-law who is bishop of Bury St Edmunds...

Flint:

Mmm…

Woods:

[unintelligible]

Mrs Fearon:

Is he the Bishop of Bury St Edmunds then?

Woods:

Yes.