Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 14, 8/8 by Estelle Roberts

Take his view about free will, for instance. He insists that a man has complete freedom of will, this only being limited by state of mind to which he has risen, and that illumination as to what is right and which is wrong may come to him at any time. One is glad to have his support for our own intuition of the freedom of will, though psychologists mostly take the view that this freedom is very limited, and some are even now still wedded to the doctrines of strict determinism.

One very frequent criticism about these matters is that nothing of any importance comes through from so called guides. Now it seems to me that Red Cloud can, and does, discuss matters of importance that transcend the intelligence and abilities of his medium. He endeavours to convey to us ideas of conditions in the beyond,

that of timelessness, for instance, which it is not possible perhaps for us to conceive. But at the same time he gives us the wealth of information about such matters as the nature and make-up of our personalities, and of other states of existence that we can at least grasp in some measure.

Professor Richet complains that no new idea in science has ever come through from the beyond. But surely it may be possible that science, as known to us which all philosophers agree is only an abstraction from reality, does not apply in the same way over there.

Perhaps I am putting it rather crudely, but it may be as difficult for these super-physical beings to impart much of their knowledge to us as it is in our own world to convey to a person born blind any appreciation of the sense of sight.

In any case it behoves us to try and snatch at any fragments of other-world knowledge that such guides as Red Cloud may succeed in conveying to us. Such other-world knowledge, according to Red Cloud, was possessed by civilizations long since buried in oblivion.

One is tempted to speculate that, if once again acquired, it might enormously widen, and possibly transform, our present scientific outlook, and we might begin to have some ideas as to our own place in the scheme of things. The study of transcendental problems is usually considered to lie solely in the province of theology and philosophy,

but the one is so often weighed down by dogmas and the other by wordy obscurantism, that a direct method, such as we possess in physical investigations and communion with a being like Red Cloud, affords a welcome avenue of approach to the solution of some of those mysteries of life and death and the hereafter that have so long puzzled humanity.