Michael Cocks, Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr |344|

Hi Michael and thanks for coming online! For the other readers: Yes, the Greek words are one way to authenticate the Stephen material. For me, not having been part of the Stephen circle itself and coming quite recently to the material (about ten years ago), I actually find the Greek stuff less persuasive than the content of the communications themselves. I guess I tend to 'authenticate' channelled works by how they 'feel' internally: specifically, do they seem to be communicating a spirit of love and openness and is what they say compatible with reason and with my previous beliefs.

In the transcripts I've read, Stephen asks his listeners several times to check what he says and not necessarily take it all on trust. I've seen similar warnings in other channelled works that I respect and I think it's sound advice. My personal take on this is twofold: one, that mediumship can be a 'noisy channel' and that the medium might pick up multiple communicators, and some ideas might not come through correctly. And two, there may be deceptive or confused spirits out there - just as there are deceptive and confused politicians and bloggers and newscasters all over the Internet - who can 'parrot' nice-sounding phrases they've heard from better sources, but themselves may not even understand the material they're quoting, or may be deliberately trying to just get power over others.

So I guess I tend to 'authenticate' channelled works at a fairly fine-grained level - much the same as I do any human writer. Just because I trust something on one page or in one book doesn't necessarily mean I'll trust everything ever written by that person. I try to keep these works a little at 'arms length' - because there often seems to be quite a strong 'energy' behind the words in a channelled work and sometimes the strength of that energy worries me a bit. Eg some of these works feel quite 'compelling', in an odd way, and I'm not always sure that I want to be compelled, even if it's true.

But my impression is that, on the whole, Stephen mostly seems to come across like a nice person and one who has a philosophy of life that I like, and a lot of what he says, and it seems to cross-reference with a few other channelled communicators and NDE experiencers and practicing psychics in a way that - to me - cross-authenticates some of them. At least in the sense that I can say 'this appears to be a coherent philosophy shared by multiple people that's quite unique and yet seems to provide a useful way of looking at the world - and one that doesn't seem to separate me from others'.

(I've not studied, eg, Ramtha or Seth. But so far I've looked at: Stephen, A Course in Miracles, 'Love Without End' by Glenda Green, 'Emmanuel' by Pat Rodegast... also an early 1900s communicator I think nicknamed 'Zodiac', who claimed to be one of Jesus' minor disciples, and is similar to Stephen - I'll try to locate the book. The common features are a strong emphasis on love and forgiveness - radical forgiveness, in fact - and the idea that 'there is a plan behind the universe that we don't have to make happen')

And of course I look at the result in people's lives. And in my case I can say that Michael has been a good friend to me and the impact of his association with Stephen seems to have been, on the whole, positive.

Regards, Nate

 

No I certainly dont regret it. It was before I got to be talking to Stephen, and I was experiencing a deep urge to drop defences to whatever God might be, in an environment where others were wanting to do the same, and to do this without references to holy books, religious teachings and doctrines. Members "received" spiritual guidance and "check-received" with each other. I had already been doing this for some years previously, where I would type questioons to 'God" and listen for answers giving references usually to books I hadnt read. I accumulated several volumes of such questions and answers, and had been accepted as a DD candidate making a study of the phenomenon... but then the conversations with Stephen began.
Subud was just what I needed at that time. After I left Subud leader Bapak I think from Jakarta, wished Subud ti be more Moslem, and I might not have liked that. But my experience was great

 

By the way, we should add Stephen to this list maybe! (Though getting anything past the Wikipedia censors is quite hard, if it doesn't meet arbitrary standards of "notability". Probably better to maintain our own list somewhere.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_channelled_texts

Regards, Nate

 

Oh, here's Zodiac! Not a book but online. I feel that he's very similar to Stephen in the content of his messages. The medium was Winifred Moyes, from 1921-1957.

http://christianspiritualism.org/articles/winifredmoyes.htm
http://christianspiritualism.org/articles/zodiacbig2.htm

In 1921, in an "upper room" in the South of London, a Heavenly Messenger manifested through the mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes. It was soon realised that this communicator, who called himself Zodiac was able to give a teaching of great wisdom, and without any doubt was inspired by the Love vibration of the Christ. The Messages were taken down by Miss Dorrie Moyes, and reproduced in typewritten and duplicated form by Mr. Ralph Goddard. Other spoke through the same medium, and gradually the Zodiac Circle, held every Sunday evening, became known to hundreds of people, who received the Scripts by private circulation. By 1928, some 600 copies were mimeographed each week and distributed to eager readers, who passed them on to others.​

..

The earthly name of Zodiac has not been disclosed, but he has always described himself as "a humble servant of the Master". He chose the name Zodiac in order to lift up our thoughts from the earth to the heavens. Zodiac has revealed that he was the unnamed scribe, mentioned in St. Mark's Gospel (12, 28-34), who asked Jesus: Which is the first commandment of all?" The answer which was given expresses the essence of religion: Thou shalt love God with all thy being, and thy neighbour as thyself.

Zodiac was a teacher in the Temple at Jerusalem. He came of a long line of teachers, and was of the House of Abraham. His duty was to expound the Scriptures and to define the Law - "that intricate and so often misconstrued Law which ruled the lives and thoughts of the people". In his address, given at the Zodiac Circle in March 1925 (published under the title "Zodiac's Life on Earth"), he states:

"Experienced though I might have been regarding the Word of God - of the Lord Jehovah, there were times when, in sadness of spirit, I asked myself whether I should ever see God - whether indeed such a One existed. The Voice of God had been lost in an incredible amount of furniture, of embellishment, of misrepresentation, which had come from the minds of those who were appointed to teach.

"I want you to try and get some conception of the effect of traditional thought, of theories, of dogma and doctrine, which had been handed down from generation to generation. The Word had been added to and suffocated by the trappings which man, in his pride, thought necessary to support the Truth as given by God.

"Then, out of the night of complicated thinking, out of the greyness of the dissatisfaction which was within, out of my blunted life I stepped - for Christ came! Christ came and brought me the Light which never fades, brought me the Love which no words can tell. I watched Him. I studied Him. I was used to judging human nature in all its forms; and as I watched I marvelled, and as I listened - how I loved!

"This is the whole explanation of my mission upon earth - the Mission which has been entrusted to me: - I saw Christ and He made me free. When Christ came into my life it seemed to me that never before had I lived, had I thought, had I seen, had I heard. My life grew strangely impersonal - yes! I want you to understand that once the Truth had been made my own, the details of life, or what it had to offer, or what it took away, were as nothing to me - nothing to those who loved Him as He only could be loved".

Zodiac's own partisanship of the new Prophet, who was attracting so much attention, was regarded a s a serious crime by the Chief Priests and Elders; moreover, he had openly belittled to time honoured custom of burnt offerings and sacrifices. The result was inevitable! No longer was he a venerated teacher in the Temple; his symbols of office were torn from him, and he was turned into the streets as an outcast.

Zodiac joined the disciples. He witnessed with them the Crucifixion which followed soon afterwards, and was also among those who saw the Risen Christ. After the Ascension, the little company - the first Christian Missionaries - divided up, going to different parts of the country, travelling long distances on foot in order to spread Christ's Gospel of Love. Sometimes they were received kindly, but more often the spies sent out from the Temple at Jerusalem had reached the hamlets and villages before their arrival, and they were greeted with stoning and beating and driven away. Zodiac has said that death came near them so many times that when he was slain he did not know that the physical end had come: -

"When those who hated me had done their worst - and in the times of long ago the beatings were severe, and there were forms of torture hidden from your consciousness now - then God's Will came to pass and the great transition took place for me. But I knew so little of the great Life of Spirit, I knew so little, but something within told me that I should be with Christ, and nothing else mattered, nothing else held me at all. And when I awakened, there was the Master, and the greatest crisis of my life found me upon my knees with gratitude pouring from my heart; for my eyes were opened, and I saw the sunshine of a future of work for Him".​

I think Zodiac and Stephen share a lot in common in their philosophy and teachings. But there's another communicator also claiming to be one of Jesus' disciples who I have in a paper book, again very similar in content and character. Also from that early-1900s Christian Spiritualism scene I think. I'll add it when I can locate it.

Winifred Moyes and (Thomas Ashman and others) is one of the reasons why I feel there is a considerable overlap between Christian Spiritualism and Pentecostalism - both movements began around the same time, the mid-19th through early 20th century - but sadly they've become bitterly divided. Pentecostalism ended up getting lots of money and political power and also decided that while speaking in tongues and healing were "good", trance channelling and automatic writing were "evil". An arbitrary distinction, I think, but one that's a very real mental barrier to many church members today.

Anyway, I mention Zodiac to show that Stephen, far from being an anomaly, fits neatly into a pre-existing "community of discourse" which should be much better known than it is (because the Christian Spiritualist community sort of imploded after the 1950s). Stephen is just one more dot in a line that's been being drawn from at least the mid-1800s.


Regards, Nate

 

The starting point for Stephen is the fact that we participants in one indivisible whole. And I think it was you that made such excellent Scripture quotes affirming this. We can read St John's gospel in this light Jn.17 " they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us" Stephen's prayer was, Lord, let me forget that I am me, let me know that I am with thee, let me not separate myself from thee, because I am me."
The more we transcend selfishness, the more we are conscious of the interdependence of All That Is, the more we will experience the Love that undergirds all. The material world is a comparatively illusionary projection of the Eternal, of which we are all citizens. Here on earth we have guidance towards love through pain. What I have written I believe to be true from the holistic point of view. From the sensory-physical point of view we will of course strive to make this a better world.

 

Whitte Crow Books, is one of many publishing firms offering accounts of encounters between people in spirit amd those in flesh. I recommend Michael Tymn's wonderful blog on the subject. (One can also read my blog there, largely on Stephen.) Apart from Stephen, I have experienced a few such communications myself. Then of course are the Near Death Experiences. An academic friend of mine had an NDE where he experienced joyful reunion not only with family members in Spirit, but with several deceased former students

 

I've checked my library and the other book I have that I found (I thought) similar to Stephen in content was by a medium named Frances Bird. It was part of a four-book set published in 1988 by "Lane Center Publishing", but the tone of the writing is archaic and seems to be early 19th century. There are no dates listed in the flyleaf. The communications were by automatic writing but the communicator was anonymous. There is a preface from Walter Franklin Prince of the American Society for Psychical Research. Since Prince died in 1934, the original book must have been before then - however there's a mention made of 'the war, in progress at that time' which suggests to me that it was written during the First World War, 1914-1918, which I believe was quite a hot-spot for mediumship and particularly automatic writing. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Franklin_Prince

I find very little information online about either Frances Bird or this book set, other than Amazon/Google entries for the 1988 printing itself - eg https://www.amazon.com/Laws-Kingdom-Vol-Frances-Bird/dp/1557687013 other than an entry in this book: "Channeling" by John Klimo, North Atlantic Books, 1988: https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=VCQkXCphnEgC&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frances Bird: Although the automatic writings of Oakland, California resident Frances Bird were accomplished at the time of her retirement many years ago, they were only brought to public light in 1988 with the publication of an 1120-page, four-volume set of material comprising one of the most comprehensive and interesting bodies of channeled material ever to come through one person... Much of the pristine style and quiet, steady integrity of the material remind us of The Course in Miracles, said to be communications from Jesus channelled by Helen Schucman​

So it's not just me that feels a connection between Bird's work and ACIM (and I've already mentioned that feel a connection between ACIM and Stephen). I really hope someone at the ASPR has a copy of the text of Bird's four-volume set because it only seemed to have the one 1988 printing in paper form and I'd love to see it online - I only have the last volume, 'The New Dispensation'. It seems almost completely unknown otherwise and it would be a great pity if this work were to vanish. The preface claims a copy was stored in the ASPR archives, but the ASPR's website does not list Frances Bird anywhere.

An interesting thing is that Walter Franklin Prince was actually in the 'conservative' faction of the ASPR which objected to 'credulous spiritualism' in the mid-1920s, and set up the Boston SPR in protest. And yet (sometime in the 1920s, I assume, right when this split was happening) he liked Bird's writings, which are entirely about the reality of life after death and spirit communication! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_for_Psychical_Research

I could quote some excerpts if anyone is interested, though perhaps it's getting a bit offtopic for this thread.

Regards, Nate

 

I have to confess that this sort of thing is quite vexing to me. I grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian sect and am still trying integrate what I have discovered over the last decade or so into my life. Stuff like this brings me full circle. I have no problem with the concept of Christ as an enlightened being, who quite possibly was far ahead of his time. But when spirits start appearing from the pages of the Gospels, identifying with a particular scribe and treating the Resurrection and Ascension as historical fact; then I have a problem.

Biblically, the point of Jesus' death and resurrection to pay for the sins of mankind. To me, this entails accepting the Creation account and the Fall to a large degree and believing in the God of the OT. This makes no sense whatsoever with what we know about the history of the earth as well as what what NDEs, etc tell us about the nature of God and the afterlife. What kind of cobbled up theology are these spirits peddling?

 

I'm not familiar enough with the specific case you are referring to, to know if this applies ... but sometimes spirits have to speak in a language their listeners understand. If they said something that was grossly offensive, their listeners would reject everything they said and the spirits would not be able to accomplish anything by communicating with them. So sometimes the spirits use the framework their listeners believe in and try to use those concepts to explain and justify new ideas.

Unfortunately this can create confusion and seeming contradictions, but if you compared a high school textbook on Newtonian mechanics to a college textbook on relativity, you would also find contradictions. Just because they deliver a different message to different audiences doesn't mean there is something nefarious going on.

 

I

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply something nefarious was going on. Still, I'm not sure I agree with your assessment. I think most people who delve into this topic are open to new ideas. Strict literalists are are going to reject most of this initially anyway. Further, its not grossly offensive to lift out well known scientific tenets such as evolution, or to point out that a literal reading of the Bible is unsubstantiated. Neither did this stop Seth from pushing some rather bizarre ideas about Jesus and the crucifixion.

I also think its a little unfair with the comparison of Newton and relativity. Newton was accurate, insofar as he could be. To say the Jesus rose from the grave, and knowing he didn't, is another thing.

I'm not trying to be pedantic. I just think this subject gets glossed over.

 

That’s mostly how I see it. While life there sounds fantastic, common advice from spirit is essentially to, “stay there and use your time wisely”. In the physical, where input from the external environment is much more limited (often referred to as “the veil”), the opportunity for change and learning is great. Unresolved personal problems (spiritual, I suppose) are much harder to resolve there. Because of this, we can greatly improve our intellectual and spiritual environment there by way of smaller changes here.

I think everyone receives ideas from an external source more often than we care to admit and this source is responsible for extraordinary advances in our art and culture. Spirit is capable of influencing others in the physical for a variety of reasons, some selfish, but my understanding is that most are helpful, especially where help is requested. The word “influencing” is important here because “causing” is apparently not an option, at least until the receiving individual desires something more than influence. Anyway, I think that simply being aware that it’s possible to be influenced goes a long way toward receiving that kind of help should you want it.

 

I'm not sure that all of this quite follows. I mean I know that 'believing any part of the Bible requires accepting all of this very narrow and particular set of beliefs' is what fundamentalist churches TEACH, but I think they're not quite correct on that. I grew up in a very strict fundamentalist Evangelical-Pentecostal church myself - but also with a mother who had personally experienced NDEs and had a somewhat different perspective on theology - so I think I understand where you're coming from.

For what it's worth, my take on Christianity is this:

1. I believe Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person.

2. I believe miracles of physical healing happen - I have a brother who sees them happen quite regularly in Pentecostal meetings that he leads. He himself is clear that he doesn't control them happening, but sometimes gets a mental impression that one is about to happen. I have no clue what the physical mechanism of healing is, but it seems clear to me that there is one and they can be either slow or very fast and dramatic. The dramatic ones are rare but can occur.

3. I believe communication between deceased human people and the living is possible. There seems to be a huge amount of evidence that it occurs, via mechanisms including dreams, automatic writing, full trance channelling, and sometimes apparitions or vision.

3. The Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Lazarus seem to fall into category 2: a particularly dramatic physical healing. Given the existence of 2, it doesn't strike me as impossible. The resurrection of Jesus seems to be more something like 3, since there seems to be an emphasis (by both the Gospel writers and even Paul later) that the 'resurrection body is a spiritual body', which makes it seem like a kind of mass apparition that went on for about a month or so. If we take the Gospel accounts at face value, while it seems like people could touch Jesus' body and he could eat, he could also appear and disappear and walk through walls, so it seems like it wasn't quite a physical body as we understand it. Again, if we take as granted the testimony from spirit communicators that a spiritual world exists and it's somehow 'more real' than our physical world, this doesn't seem surprising - just unique. The Gospel accounts may be distorted, but *similar* things have been reported, so it just seems like a matter of degree, not kind.

4. The whole thing about Jesus being 'the son of God' and 'the sacrificial lamb' and 'dying for our sins'... may or may not be the best way of understanding what his life and teaching was about. I think if we think about Jesus as just being a particularly enlightened person - ie, someone whose spiritual sense 'fully switched on' every moment of his life, in the way that say NDE experiencers or advanced meditators report feeling for just one moment and which can transform their entire life - I think some of this snaps into focus a bit more. At least it does for me.

It seems that in the spiritual realms there's much more of a sense of every moment being 'planned' by some cosmic agency, a desire to do good, and all of human life being shared. If Jesus was intensely spiritually aware, he would presumably have these feelings very strongly. At this level of spiritual experience or 'activation' I think just being in mental contact with other people who were struggling would count as 'suffering for our sins' - in the same way that, eg, a parent holding a sick child will intensely feel distressed by the suffering of the child. His particular experience while dying might have amplified this sense of connection with the human race, or it might just be that dying *is* the price paid for living as a human, and Jesus as an advanced spirit simply wished to be fully human.

I do believe that Jesus taught that his disciples should do what he did, which means that he didn't consider himself unapproachably unique (in the way that fundamentalists often do); rather that he was living and demonstrating some more general principle that's available to all humanity. If that's true, I think the idea of 'sacrifice' and 'suffering for others' sins' must be a general principle that anyone who engages in a life of love and service to others must experience. It sounds horrible and awful but it does have a kind of logic to it. If we reach out in a spirit of love beyond our own lives into the lives of others, at some point we must exceed our comfort zone, and at some point we will suffer pain or loss that we simply have to 'forgive' (in the sense of 'releasing a debt' - not requiring payment for).

Certainly there was nothing particularly special about being crucified in 1st century Palestine - it was a common Roman punishment for criminals AND rebels. To many of the Jewish insurgents and nationalists - as with Islamic rebels today - being crucified by an occupying military would have been seen as an *honour*, as dying for one's country, and this ideal of 'heroic death' informs a lot of the rather masochistic way the Gospels are written. Even the Greeks and Romans had that idea, that a true man should demonstrate it by dying messily for his ideals, in a way that perhaps we don't today. I think the difference with Jesus' death was that he wasn't a MILITARY rebel. To the extent that Jesus was special it may have been in that he *didn't* count himself special. and was simply open to God or loving spiritual energy at all times.

I feel that Jesus and 'the Cross' are actually opposite poles from one another. Crucifixion was a human invention and although Jesus suffered this, he didn't create it. I think he was a gentle person and a healer. I don't think he is responsible for a lot of the pain that various churches have unleashed in his name. In fact I think many churches cause him deep grief.

For me personally, I feel like A Course In Miracles has a very good chance of being a communication from the actual Jesus of Nazareth. I could be wrong. It's just that it has a particular 'resonance' with me that I find hard to describe. There's a simplicity about its message that I find very powerful but also, to me, lines up with the parts of the Gospel that seem closest to the direct teaching of Jesus: eg the Sermon on the Mount and the Gospel of John. The Jesus of ACIM is very clear that we ALL have a direct connection with God (who is neither male nor female, in fact is wider than 'all that is', but is apparently best understood by us as LOVE) and that Jesus is simply a 'fully awakened human' who is available to provide spiritual help if we ask for it. I could see how the Jesus of ACIM could actually be a teacher who could unite the world's religions - and also could be attacked by religious people as a heretic for being too universal and too accepting. The teaching of ACIM Jesus seems to have a lot in common with Buddhism, for instance - but seems to combine elements of Buddhist and Jewish thought in a way that could unite both.

I agree that a lot of the churches seem to spend far too much energy focusing on 'the specialness of Jesus' and using faith tests and creeds to divide people into 'saved and 'unsaved' tribes - rather than what Jesus (as described in the Gospels) TAUGHT, which seems to be the opposite of that.

This is a reason why I'm interested in NDEs and afterlife communications, because I think they can help balance the traditional religious perspective which has very often become far too narrow, and misinterpreted even the texts that have been handed down.

Regards, Nate

 

Thank you for answering my questions Michael, I will look up White Crow books and your blog.

I was talking to a friend on the phone and mentioned your Skeptiko interview, she said that your name rang a bell, and rang later to say that she had 'Into the Wider Dream' on her bookshelf so another little synchronicity.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

 

Conspiracy theories abound and each one looks amazingly realistic until one views the subsequent rebuttals. At the end of the day, it seems to be a case of which evidence do you prefer? You have, however forced me onto an interesting line of research. I need to look more into this.

Here are a few interesting points:

 

It may take time. I'm using a library computer at the moment and have no sound but I will get around to it.

https://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html

http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/699466/Jesus-DID-exist-and-this-is-the-REAL-story

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/did-jesus-exist/

 

There isn't really enough detail in that short piece but I understand you being a little agnostic about it having looked at various sides. I think it might help if I can read Josephus work direct or at least the passages in question to get an idea of context. I just sense some bias in some of the interpretations and I wonder what the consensus view is.