Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 10, 1/7 by Estelle Roberts

CHAPTER TEN,
SPEAKING IN MANY TONGUES

I have often been asked about speech in the spirit world. Is there one common language, or is there a Babel of all the tongues we know on earth? This is a difficult question, one which nobody can claim to answer with certainty. There is a strong school of thought which believes that there is no language, since none is necessary.

This argument is based on the fact that thought is fundamental and common to both worlds. Speech, on the other hand, is essentially physical, while language is no more than a man-made device for transmitting thought through speech. It is therefore only in the physical realm that thought has to be translated into phonetic sounds. In the spirit world, a thought has only to be projected by one denizen to be perfectly understood by another.

I accept this as an interesting theory, but I believe it to be only partially correct. It is certainly true of advanced souls who have been in the spirit worlds for eons of time because, during their early essays at trance communications and the direct voice, there is ample evidence to show they have lost their facility for words.

Red Cloud has told us that he faced this problem when he returned to earth as a spiritual teacher. Through lack of use he had become unaccustomed to the slow and ponderous practice of speech. When he first spoke through me, his words were halted and stilted, the English of the foreign classroom.
But he quickly improved so that now he is capable of expressive and eloquent language or, when he is in jocular mood, the colloquial idiom of the present day. Yet he still retains certain characteristic pronunciations – “spurrit” for “spirit” is a notable example – which serve only to endear him more firmly in the hearts of his listeners.

It is in its application to more recent newcomers to spirit life that I do not agree with the theory that no language is spoken by them. I do not believe that those who have recently passed over immediately have the faculty of thought communication. I believe they continue to speak the language of their mother-tongue for a very long time after their passing, a view supported by the ease with which they revert to their native language when they communicate with their friends.

Through direct voice communications I have been instrumental in transmitting messages in a score of languages of which I have not the least knowledge, either as to the meaning of the words spoken, or of their pronunciation. When I demonstrate clairaudience I am able to repeat words I hear spoken in foreign languages that are completely unknown to me.

In the early days of my psychic career, these foreign sounds eluded me; they reached my ear, jumbled and incomprehensible. Try as I would, I could not separate them or reproduce them in any recognizable form.