The Life Beyond the Veil Volume I: The Lowlands of Heaven - George Owen, Kenroy Hunter, Geoff Cutler (best novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

an authentic communication from the world beyond. No

man can say what the limits of its influence will be, or how far-reaching an effect it may have upon the minds and lives of the men and women by whom it will be read.

 

But one thing is certain. A manuscript of such a character, coming from such a source, demands the most careful study—so tremendous are the claims made for these revelations, so rich in human interest is the actual narrative, so undoubted is Mr. Vale Owen’s sincerity.

G.V.O.

 

 

 

 

“What Manner of Man is he?”

 

The Rev. G. Vale Owen is a typical clergyman of the Church of England, devoted to his parish and completely absorbed in his work.

 

Nothing was further from his thoughts, a few years ago, than that he should be made a medium for “spirit” communications.

 

His career has been uneventful. Born in Birmingham in 1869, and educated at the Midland Institute and Queen’s College in that city, he was ordained by the Bishop of Liverpool to the curacy of Seaforth in 1893; then was curate successively of Fairfield, 1895, and of Matthew’s, Scotland Road, 1897—both of Liverpool.

 

It was in 1900 that he went to Orford, Warrington, as curate-in-charge.

 

Orford Church was built in 1908, when a new parish was formed and he became the first vicar. His vicarage was built so recently as 1915.

 

Though he feared that the quietude of his life in his parish would be disturbed, Mr. Vale Owen felt that the importance of the revelations which were sent through him did not permit him to follow his own wishes and withhold his name, and regarding himself as only an instrument for the transmission of the messages, he refused to accept any money payment for the publication of the scripts, great as had been the labour they had thrown upon him.

 

Though his personality was much discussed on the first appearance of the messages, that circumstance did not affect his absorption in the work of his parish. He felt that that parish was peculiarly his own, since his was the only church in the village, and he had become intimately bound up with every family in it during his twenty years’ service.

 

Villagers speak of him as “G.V.O.”—an abbreviation of his name which in itself is a sign of affection. One of them recounted an incident typical of the means by which he has won and retained their close friendship.

 

“Coming home late one night,” he said, “I was startled to see a tall, dark figure dash past me at a run. It was our Vicar. I learnt afterwards that one of his young parishioners, who was ill, had become restless through pain, and had asked that Mr. Owen should come and talk to her and pray at her bedside. Her brother had at once cycled to the vicarage, and Mr. Owen, who had retired for

the night, had dressed at top speed and hurried to the house.

 

“He is always available at any hour, and such is his influence that invalids belonging to all denominations ask for him. Can you wonder why he is a welcome guest in every house?”

 

When Mr. Vale Owen went first to Orford his congregation worshipped in a large room of the village schoolroom. He told them they were “getting their religion too cheaply” and did not appreciate it enough. Then, obtaining donations from prosperous friends of the village, he called the parishioners together and organized a system of weekly collections, to which every family subscribed according to its means. In this way he succeeded in getting a church bat and an excellent organ installed.

 

When the War came, about 200 Orford men served in the Forces. All of them regarded “G.V.O.” as their chief “home pal” and wrote to him regularly of their adventures. All were “his lads,” and he always wrote encouraging them to “play the game.”

 

In appearance, the Rev. G. Vale Owen is tall, spare, and a little bent.

 

One might at first judge him to be the shy recluse. But

his deeply-lined face lights up readily with a smile and, most unassuming and approachable of men, he has a genius for friendship. There is no trace of the aloofness of the dreamer in his relations with anyone with whom he comes in contact.

 

He is above all practical. The building of his new church at a time which many thought premature, is one of the standing evidences of that quality.

 

To know him is to realize that he is a fitting instrument indeed to receive such communications as are set forth in these pages. His life has been one of strenuous endeavour to help his fellows to understand the reality of sacred things, to lighten their hearts and strengthen their courage; his first thought and his last have been for others. But G.V.O.’s point of view may perhaps best be shown by the following illustration.

 

Amongst many thousands of letters received at the vicarage at Orford during the early days of the publication of the script in The Weekly Dispatch was this:

 

“Rev. Sir,—Pray for the writer of this note who is in great trouble concerning a little child who is afflicted. I have read about you and I feel you must be very near to God, and if you were to say, ‘Dear Father, help your child,’ He would hear. Please do not fail to pray. The Lord

understands. This is a cry for help from a mother’s aching heart. God bless you.”

 

Mr. Vale Owen’s comment in speaking of this to a friend was:

 

“…And yet The Weekly Dispatch says I am receiving no payment.”

 

It was in this spirit that the Vicar of Orford gave permission for these communications to be placed before the world. He hoped that by so doing he would be instrumental in bringing light into many dark places, strengthening the faith of the people and doing his humble duty to those fair angel friends, who, as he himself often remarked, “have been so gentle and patient with me during those precious hours I spent at their bidding in the vestry of the little Parish Church at Orford.”

 

H. W. ENGHOLM.

 

LONDON.

 

May, 1920.

 

General Notes

 

 

 

 

How the Messages Came

 

IN the typewritten copies of the original manuscript, Mr. Vale Owen gave a description of how it came about that he acted as amanuensis for his mother and the spirit beings who in turn took her place at the sittings in the vestry of the church at Orford.

 

He said:

 

“There is an opinion abroad that the clergy are very credulous beings. But our training in the exercise of the critical faculty places us among the most hard-to-convince when any new truth is in question. It took a quarter of a century to convince me—ten years that spirit communication was a fact, and fifteen that the fact was legitimate and good.

 

“From the moment I had taken this decision, the answer began to appear. First my wife developed the power of automatic writing. Then through her I received requests that I would sit quietly, pencil in hand, and take down any thoughts which seem to come into my mind projected there by some external personality and not consequent on the

exercise of my own mentality. Reluctance lasted a long time, but at last I felt that friends were at hand who wished very earnestly to speak with me. They did not overrule or compel my will in any way—that would have settled the matter at once, so far as I was concerned—but their wishes were made ever more plain.

 

“I felt at last that I ought to give them an opportunity, for I was impressed with the feeling that the influence was a good one, so, at last, very doubtfully I decided to sit in my cassock in the vestry after Evensong.

 

“The first four or five messages wandered aimlessly from one subject to another. But gradually the sentences began to take consecutive form, and at last I got some which were understandable. From that time, development kept pace with practice. When the whole series of messages was finished I reckoned up and found that the speed had been maintained at an average rate of twenty-four words a minute. On two occasions only had I any idea what subject was to be treated. That was when the message had obviously been left uncompleted. At other times I had fully expected a certain subject to be taken, but on taking up my pencil the stream of thought went off in an altogether different direction.

 

“G. V. O.”

 

How the Communicators Operated on the Other Side

 

It is particularly interesting to note the explanations given by his mother and others of their methods of impressing the mind of Mr. Vale Owen with the words they wished his hand to write. We select the following illustrative passages, which, however, do not appear in this, the first, volume of communications.

 

It transpired from a later script that when Mr. Vale Owen’s mother was communicating, the girl Kathleen, mentioned below, acted for her on the other side as an amanuensis, and controlled the actual writing down of the messages for all the communicators. In the case of Mr. Vale Owen’s mother the difficulties of getting through antique words and expressions that were not modern did not, of course, arise in her case, but there seems no doubt from the character of many of her messages that she was not alone in giving them.

 

(Extract from a later script.)

 

“Only in part are we able to make in anywise clear to you the method we are employing in this particular case. And that we will so far as we be able.

 

“First, then, here we stand a group tonight of seven—

 

sometimes more, at others less. We have already broadly settled what we will say to you, but leave the precise wording till we sight you and sense your disposition of mind.

 

“Then, we take our stand a little distance away lest our influence, the emanations of our several minds, reach you in detail, and not as one stream but as many, and so confuse you. But from the little distance at which we stand they merge and mingle, and are focused into one, so that by the time our thoughts reach you there is unity and not multiplicity of diction.

 

“When you sometimes hesitate, doubtful of a word or phrase, that is when our thoughts, mingling in one, are not quite perfected into the special word required. You pause: and, continuing their blending together, our thoughts at last assume unity, and then you get our idea and at once continue on your way. You have noticed this, doubtless?”

 

“Yes, but I did not know the cause.”1

 

“No. Well, now, to continue. We think our thoughts to you, and sometimes they are in such words as are too antique, as you say, for you to grasp them readily. This is remedied by filtering them through a more modern instrument, and it is of this we now would speak. “That instrument is your little friend Kathleen,2 who is good

enough to come between you and us, and so render our thoughts available for you. This in more ways than one.

 

“First, because she is nearer to you in status than we, — who, having been longer here, have become somewhat removed from Earth. She is of more recent transplanting, and not yet so far away that when she speaks you cannot hear.

 

“For a like reason also she comes between. That is, by the words that form her present store. She can still think in her old tongue of Earth, and it is more modern than our own—though we like it not so well, since it seems to us more composite and less precise.

 

“But we must not find fault with what is still beautiful. We have, no doubt, still our prejudices and insularity; when we come down here we cannot but take on anew some of those traits we once had but gradually have cast aside.

 

“The little lady Kathleen is nearer you than we in these respects, and the stream of our impelling we direct on you through her for