'QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS' by Silver Birch (published 1998)

45. Spirit form: what shape do we take in the spirit world?

"You won't be a ghost, spectre or phantom. You won't be headless. You won't have your head under your arm. You won't have clanking chains. You will be a real individual with a body, and features which enable you to be recognised by others. You will have all the senses which enable you to recognise others. You will have the entire spiritual apparatus which is necessary for you to function on our world.
You will have form, you will have shape, you will have individuality. What you will not have are any of the physical organs, but you will have correspondingly all the spiritual equipment necessary for you to function in our world." (ibid p.32.)

46. A spirit view of God: We are told that God knows when a sparrow falls. How is it possible for God to know all that ...... "That which is called God is the natural Law of the universe. The Great Spirit is within everything. Everything is the Great Spirit. Because the soul knows itself, the Great spirit knows the soul. Because the sparrow is the Great Spirit, the Great Spirit knows the sparrow. Because the Great Spirit is the trembling leaf, the trembling leaf is the Great Spirit. Throughout the whole of your world and mine, throughout the universe, even in worlds which are not yet known to you, the laws of the Great spirit reign supreme. Nothing happens outside those laws; therefore, all is known because all comes within the compass of natural law, which is the Great Spirit." (ibid p.33).

47. Does a soul ever sink so low that it is extinguished altogether?

"NO. It may reach a stage where the spark of the Great Spirit within it is but a small flicker, but the light never goes out, for the link which binds it to the Great Spirit is a link forged in eternity. No soul descends so low that it cannot rise. No soul is so high that it cannot descend to help the lowest." (ibid p.41)

48. When a person dies, what likeness do they retain? Could a husband be unrecognizable to a wife who passed on twenty or thirty years after? Could he progress so much that he was out of the orbit of his wife?

"YOU do not change your identity. You do not change your individuality; you do not change your consciousness. You grow in spiritual grace and stature, but you are the same individual that you were before - with your perceptions heightened, your faculties deepened. But, except for the disappearance of blemishes, defects and injuries, you are recognisable as you were on earth. You do not change your form, for all that is spiritual still requires a mode of manifestation, a body, a vehicle, an instrument through which the spirit must register itself. And that has always existed, that finer, more rarefied, more delicate body, while you were on earth." (ibid p.109-10).

49. Believing. You said so many people arrive in the spirit world with false teaching. In St. John's Gospel it says believing is the important part.

"NO. Everyone will live after what you call death, not because of believing in a creed, a doctrine or a dogma, but because it is an unalterable natural law. It has nothing to do with religion. It is a law equal to the law of cause and effect." (ibid p.111)

50. PREMONITIONS: "As to the premonitions, these occur because individuals momentarily remove themselves from their usual three dimensional and are able to experience, however fleetingly, time as it exists in its own sphere. What you must try to realise is that time is an eternal present. It is your earthly relationship to time that determines what you call past and future. If you escape the three dimensional barriers and get in touch with time as it really is, then you are aware of what is the future, to you at the present time..."

51. ASTRAL TRAVEL: "It happens very simply that the real you leaves your body and is able to travel vast distances, sometimes into our world, and sometimes into the further reaches of your world. Actually every one of you travels astrally when you go to sleep."

52. Earthly life's purpose: " The whole object of earthly life is to have a variety of experiences that will fit the spirit for the next stage beyond earth when you have to pass into our world. that is why you come to earth in the first place. Earth is the training ground, the school where the spirit learns its lessons which will provide its equipment for the life beyond earth .... "

53. FEAR: Perfect love casteth out fear. Knowledge dispels fear, for fear is born of ignorance. Where there is love and trust and knowledge, there fear cannot reign. An evolved spirit cannot be afraid at any time, because he knows that there is no experience that can come to him in any phase of life that he cannot master, for he is the Great Spirit. Fear creates its own prison for the soul.You must learn to rise above fear and not allow its vibrations to hinder you, so have perfect faith and confidence and trust, to know that you can stand on your own feet and say: "I am the Great Spirit and the wind of circumstance cannot shake me. I will rise triumphant over every difficulty because of the infinite power which is within my soul" You have power over every circumstance..." (ibid p.150).

54. "Those who are ready to be awakened out of their materialistic sleep will come into your orbit, or you can go to them and try to plant the seed of the spirit. If you fail, shed a silent tear - not for yourself, but for them. They have had the opportunity and alas they have not taken it. But here and there the seed will fall into the ground that is receptive. And it will begin to grow, to flower and to burgeon into beauty and grace because it is the seed of divinity. Then the soul is beginning to come into its own. ......... The whole purpose of earthly life is that man should live on all aspects of being, physically, mentally and spiritually, and until these three are functioning he is not fulfilling himself ..." (ibid p.155).

55. Hypnotic regression - evidence of past life or spirit control? "IT can be sometimes, in what is called regression, that a contact is made with a previous physical existence, but it is not always the case that this occurs. The mind's potential is so vast that none in your world has fathomed all its recesses. It is creative, it has subconscious desires, it can lend itself to temporary spirit possession. All these factors have to be taken into account. There can be what you call astral projection and the impingement of a series of events which are recorded in the hypnotic trance. This does not mean that the subject is necessarily expressing a past reincarnation." (ibid p.160-161)

56. Infant Prodigies: There are three kinds. Some are incarnated souls with a memory of past experiences to help. Others are mediums subject to spirit influence, albeit unconsciously, and therefore receptacles of much learning, wisdom, knowledge and truth from our world. The others are geniuses who are advanced guards of evolution. (ibid p.161).