You Can Speak With Your Dead Shaw Desmond

THE "DIRECT VOICE"

What would you and I regard as definite proof that a man or woman
has survived death ?
I think by him or her appearing and speaking to us.
That is the most direct proof. A hundred others are known to
psychical investigators- -that is to scientists who devote their
lives to investigation of the afterlife. Many such exist today.
Before I come to a consideration of the body, soul and spirit of
which each one of us is composed and of the facts behind them, I
will give a series of personal communications with those who
have "died" into the Afterlife.
Perhaps because it lies closest to my heart as father, I will begin
with the first talk I ever had with my little dead son Jan, who had
passed out in his eleventh year. There was something strangely
luminous about this child, with a smile of understanding which made
many love him, a quality which showed itself in our talks after his
death.
On 10th March, 1933, Jan's voice was heard by me and others at the
house of a friend. The first words were : "I want my father."
He then made a statement of a most intimate, personal kind. I,
intensely sceptical of many sides of "communication" with the dead,
was convinced by this statement that it was, indeed, my boy speaking
and that there was no impersonation. Nobody else in that room, so
far as I am aware, could possibly have known of the personal trouble
and of its rectification which he then conveyed.
The voice was what is known as the "direct voice." That is to say,
not the voice of a medium, but the boy's own voice coming out of the
air.
On the 5th of May of the same year, he sent messages to his mother
and sister. There stands a note in my records, made, as always,
immediately after the experience : "I have never used his name or
given any evidence at these seances."
None of those present knew anything about Jan--not even his name or
that of his sister, which is a rare and difficult Gaelic name which
Jan himself gave me correctly on 10th October of the same year.
On this occasion, when Lady Segrave and others were present, he gave
me once more peculiarly convincing, evidence, impossible to anyone
there, of certain physical and mental changes he had undergone.
In the following December, I had extraordinary proof of the reality
of "Jan" as my own boy. Speaking with absolute clearness, he placed
a speaking trumpet on my knee, so that the others might not hear our
conversation, which was very private. Bending down, I whispered into
it, his voice also coming to me from it in a whisper.
In this talk, he covered difficult psychological details of his own
life as of the lives of his mother and sister. His mother was at the
time undergoing a special cure, and this he discussed with close
knowledge. Also her differences of mental attitude to certain
questions.
A point of evidence, remarkable, was my misunderstanding him when he
spoke of what I thought was his ability with the speaking trumpet.
He at once corrected me and told me he was actually speaking of
something which had happened to his voice since he had passed over--
something, again, of which nobody present could have known. Also he
poked gentle fun at one of my weaknesses.
It was at this meeting that I used his name for the first time. Yet
he had given me his name correctly long before.
My last meeting with him was on 24th September, 1940, but we have
met from time to time through the years. Nor do I think of him
as "dead," but as living and ever present.
Now what were the conditions under which I heard my boy's voice?
Were they "test" conditions?
I here make the definite statement after many years of psychic
research, that in its very nature no conditions can ever be
absolutely watertight. The real "test" is that you know the bona
fides of those present, that they have invariably proved
trustworthy, and that the physical conditions, generally, are fraud-
proof.
I have met and sometimes spoken with my boy under many varieties of
conditions, with different mediums and in different places.
The supreme test of all "communication" with the so-called dead is
that the evidence is self-veridical; that, in fact, what comes
through is unknown to any present, and that it persistently tallies.
These conditions were complied with in my communications with Jan.
Sir Oliver Lodge found the same in his talks with his son Raymond.
Of all proofs of survival, what is called the "Direct Voice" is the
most compelling.
This is the actual voice of the "dead" man or woman coming out of
the air and not speaking through a medium, although the presence of
a medium is usually necessary. Its existence is now admitted by such
notable men of science as Sir Oliver Lodge, past President of the
British Association; by Professors Ernest Bozzano and Gildo Passini,
and by Dr. Robin J. Tillyard and many other professors of different
countries. Literally scores of distinguished laymen vouch for it.
Many American scientists, including Dr. Tillyard, have heard the
direct voice in the "Margery and Walter" experiments, and some of
them, including Dr. Tillyard, declare it to be genuine. Hundreds of
men and women, distinguished and other, have heard the famous guide,
Red Cloud, speak in this voice under the mediumship of Mrs. Estelle
Roberts, a lady of probity.
I have heard it on scores of occasions, and in many languages,
sometimes in good light, and even with several voices speaking at
the same time. Messages have been delivered by the spirits of the so-
called dead to large audiences in London by this voice, and soon we
are to have public lectures delivered, literally, "out of the air."
To deny the existence of this voice would be the same as denying the
existence of the voice of any human being who may speak to you
tomorrow. One ventures to think that only ignorance or contumacy,
and the sometimes intense "reluctance to life" of certain types of
scientist, can account for such denial.
I have in my records of the "Voice" the names of men and women
widely known who have spoken to me before witnesses, from the Other
Side of Death. Amongst these are Sir Henry Segrave, once leading
authority on internal combustion engines and world champion in motor-
boat speed records ; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the thinker and
novelist; William T. Stead, doyen of journalists; Dennis Neilson-
Terry, the actor, and Rudolf Valentino, the film star. I have also
spoken, about their writings, to names internationally famous. These
last were intensely veridical, as it would have been quite
impossible for the mediums present, without pretence to literary
knowledge, to have discussed such recondite subjects.
From a mass of Direct Voice notes recorded at the time, and covering
the seven years from early in 1933, I select one or two.
Many of us have heard Sir Henry Segrave speak with his wife upon
intimate subjects known only to both. As his spirit-form left the
room he would come up to me and speak to me in his friendly but
reserved way, one of and talks taking place on 2nd June, 1933.
One of the most popular playwrights of our time, who wrote a fine
reincarnation play which has been seen by thousands, and whose wife
wishes his name suppressed, spoke to me upon many occasions.
The first time was n 5th May,1933, soon after his death, before some
twenty people, including Lady Segrave.
The strikingly evidential part of this talk was his referring to
himself by the special name by which I knew him. I also spoke with a
friend of his on the Other Side, he using the direct voice, upon 6th
and 20th October of the same year about this playwright's plays and
his changed views of my own books. Nobody present could possibly
have taken part in this discussion.
Perhaps one of the best bits of evidence in the Direct Voice was
when the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came through before twenty-
three people to ask to speak with me. I, always sceptical and
careful, asked the spirit to prove that he really was Conan Doyle by
telling me where he and I had last met. This was correctly given. We
had met by accident in a doorway in Victoria Street, Westminster,
where we had separately run for shelter from a shower. He then sent
messages to his wife and his son Denis.
Sir Henry Segrave also spoke with me on this occasion.
It gives us all to think when we find men of the scientific standing
of Dr. William Brown, M.A., M.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.P., one of the most
advanced psychologists of our day, declaring in a London lecture :
"Nevertheless, I think I range myself with our President . . . in
claiming for the evidence that has been brought forward by the
Society for Psychical Research during the last fifty years that it
is sufficient to make survival of bodily death, scientifically
speaking, extremely probable."
But one has only to watch the evolution of great scientists like
Professors Jeans and Eddington, the astronomers, or of Dr. Alexis
Carrel, author of Man the Unknown and winner of the Nobel Prize, to
see the inexorable trend to a spiritual view of matter. Or, if we
observe the later developments of the mathematicians and the
physicists, from Einstein to that most remarkable of scientists, J.
W. Dunne, with his An Experiment with Time, which has been described
as "one of the most important books of this age," we find how
implacably, in the world of science, matter is becoming
dematerialised, and how spiritual interpretation is taking the place
of the now old-fashioned materialist science. Dunne, indeed, claims
to have found irrefutable proof of human immortality.
Professor Charles Richet, the psycho-physiologist , after a lifetime
of experiment, had to Professor Ernesto Bozzano to confess himself
driven against his will to belief in the world of survived spirits
as explanation of the phenomena he had encountered in his laboratory.
Speaking personally, I would go so far as to say that the reading of
such purely scientific treatises as Sir William Bragg's The Universe
of Light will convince that under natural law, at least, there is
nothing inherently scientifically impossible in man surviving death
in ghostly form.
For many years I have set out the case for survival both in book and
on platform. I can truthfully say that never once have statements of
the above kind been effectively challenged. The fact being that the
case for our passing into another world which is as real as this, is
a case now resting upon evidence as clear and persistent as that of
any other fact of science.
We speak with our dead. We see our dead.
The greatest scientists of all time insist upon this. Look at some
of the names : Lodge and Crookes and Lombroso, Alfred Russel Wallace
and Camille Flammarion. Professors Bozzano, Morselli and Passini of
Italy. Professors William James, Larkin and Hyslop of America. Many
of these believers in survival base their belief partly upon the
direct voice which they have heard.
And I, writing these words to you, the reader, also insist with them
that you can be as absolutely assured that you survive the death of
the physical body as that you now, for the time, live in that body
today.
In that belief you will have behind you every great religious
teacher from the Gautama Buddha to Jesus. You will have nearly all
the greater philosophers from Plato downwards. Almost every poet
will be with you. Death is the universal superstition.
There is no death.
You Can Speak With Your Dead Shaw Desmond

Hi All,

I have reread this wonderful article and have a question.

Perhaps one of the best bits of evidence in the Direct Voice was
when the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came through before twenty-
three people to ask to speak with me. I, always sceptical and
careful, asked the spirit to prove that he really was Conan Doyle by
telling me where he and I had last met. This was correctly given. We
had met by accident in a doorway in Victoria Street, Westminster,
where we had separately run for shelter from a shower.

My question is this: Do the spirits that speak through the medium have the ability to "psychically" read the aura of the sitters to give false proof of who they are? By faking their personalities and personal facts that were known to the sitter? If this is possible would the proof that Mr. Desmond said was "the best bit of evidence" truly not be solid proof after all?

Thank you,
Lynn

tmmw wrote:

My question is this: Do the spirits that speak through the medium have the ability to "psychically" read the aura of the sitters to give false proof of who they are? By faking their personalities and personal facts that were known to the sitter? If this is possible would the proof that Mr. Desmond said was "the best bit of evidence" truly not be solid proof after all?

Thank you,
Lynn

Hi Lynn,

Hmm although I realise that the medium himself could pick it up psychically, I am not sure if the spirit coming through would use psychic means. This one is an interesting case and I doubt Spirit would use such a trick if it had finally got through. The difficulty here is we have little knowlege of whether the Medium was aware that the writer knew Conan Doyle, so I think we are unable to eradicate the former case the Medium using psychic means. This is especially as the sitter proposed a specific question and was probably thinking of the answer.

If a Spirit coming through is prepared to play such a game then we are in significant difficulty with all mediumship because on a superficial basis they could cover all eventualities, even a voice you may remember. I think the genuine record we have tends to suggest this is unlikely, however, mischevious contact may still be possible.

Any other ideas out there folks.

Cheers

Jim

The medium in question was Estelle Roberts.

Shaw Desmond, Maurice Barbanell, Hannen Swaffer and Constance Treloar were the founder members of Estelle's Direct voice Circle as instructed by her guide, Red Cloud.

I have never heard of spirits reading someone's aura, mediums certainly - the problems inherent would be overwhelming. It is difficult enough to get a coherent sentence across never mind reading a person's aura at the same time.

Z

Hi Jim and Z,

Thanks for the responses to my question. I certainly see that a medium with such a high integrity as Estelle Roberts and the high reputations of the sitters would without doubt have constantly keept checks and balances in place during all sittings to prevent any mischievous contact.

I have little understanding of the mechanics of mediumship. With the little light that Z has shed about the difficulty that spirit communicating has while trying to formulate a coherent sentence it is understandable how it is unlikely they would be able to use extra energy to read a persons aura at the same time. If even at all.

Actually it would be very discouraging if there was a possibility for this to happen and as Jim said would cause significant difficulty with all mediumship,

Thanks again for your thoughts.
Lynn

Gday,sometimes my guide answers questions before the sitter asks,or will talk on a subject that may be of great interest to the sitter,to me hes just yappin,but to the sitters it seems to touch home.A sitter also misplaced some work keys,the guide explained where they could be found,he was right.
How does this work Z?Its not like he reads them,its like he already knows if that makes sense.ib

I may be totally off the point here but I understand that spirits (apologies is I am using the word inappropriately) communicate mind to mind with each other. Assuming that is the case is it not possible that it is easier for a spirit to listen to what our mind is "saying" than our words? If so it doesn't seem to me odd that they might answer the unspoken question.

Hi IB and Paul,

You both bring up very good points and something truly worth pondering. I look forward to hearing what Z and others comments are.

Take care,
Lynn

Hi Z,

That was a good point, anyway I don't believe anyone in a proper circle would come through and act in such a manner. As to their knowing, well its clear they do and can be very helpful. Maybe in this case, as ever, it is the words, knowledge and advice that they give that leads us to judgement. (or the memories, voice or in full materialisation all aspects)

In that respect it is also what leads us to question the words of apparent spirit entities that just repeat current news, do not quite sound as claimed and give wrong advice. The burning question is what is then involved is it a mischevious spirit, a lower level spirit which is pretending to higher knowledge or the alter ego/multiple personality of the supposed "medium".

Jim

The burning question is what is then involved is it a mischevious spirit, a lower level spirit which is pretending to higher knowledge or the alter ego/multiple personality of the supposed "medium".

In my view, it is more likely to be a mixture of all three.

Z

Hi Z,

Clearly the problems here are highlighted by the VZ/DT Curious Case issue. With the claims on Aspirin and the cure for cancer, Downs Syndrome and AIDS, we have to look at David Thompson's William Charles Cadwell, despite Victor Zammits protestations we know he did not exist as he claims nor does Timothy Booth and we must always ask who and what are David Thompsons guides ( especially the aggressive surgeon Dr Slavinsky when there are so many problems with Daid Thompsons Psychic Surgery). So what is it a childhood friend, an alter ego, a mutiple personality, a personating spirit or a low level spirit. I really do not know, it cannot be a high level entity to make such basic errors surely?

Cheers

Jim