Monsignor Benson’s earth life

Robert Hugh Benson has provided the most detailed account of life in the Spirit World. During his earth life he was a clergyman in both the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, and his father held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury. He was also well known as the author of several novels one of which The Necromancers caused him some anguish when he arrived in Spirit.

This is a summary of what that book is about ‘Following the death of his fiancée, Laurie Baxter becomes consumed by an obsession with the supernatural. Attempting to reach his deceased bride, he attends rituals and séances, delving ever deeper into the dark embrace of the occult. But instead of reconnecting with his lost love, Laurie is brought into contact with forces far more sinister. Written by a Catholic priest, The Necromancers is a chilling warning against dabbling in the dark arts’.

Monsignor Benson also wrote a pamphlet defending the Catholic Church’s warnings about the dangers of Spiritualism. It concluded ‘this is not the road to truth, but to deception and error. While admitting the existence of evil spirits, and the possibility of their manifesting themselves to souls still incarnate on earth, (the Church) points out the extraordinary dangers that menace those who attempt…to penetrate regions closed by the hand of God’. Strangely Benson in Spirit never makes any reference to this pamphlet which is a passionate condemnation of attempting to commune with disincarnate spirits.

Monsignor Benson died at the relatively young age of 42 in 1914. He was met on his deathbed by a deceased former clergyman colleague and transported to his new home in the Spirit World. Benson soon realised the fundamentally erroneous nature of the views he held about the afterlife whilst on earth, and was filled with remorse about the misinformation he had propagated during his time as a priest. He sought permission to communicate with the Earth World to put the record straight. After several decades his wish was granted and his first book Life In The World Unseen appeared towards the end of the war, channelled by the medium Anthony Borgia who was a personal friend of Benson during the later years of his earth life.

Here is Monsignor Benson’s account of his earth life and transition into the Spirit World:-

‘During my earthly life I was a clergyman of the orthodox church, but I was not entirely ignorant of the presence around me of an invisible world over which, so it appeared to me, my church had no jurisdiction whatever. My own psychic faculties were not very powerful, but at least they were strong enough for me to disbelieve what my church most emphatically taught in this connexion, namely, that such manifestations as I was permitted to see were all the work of 'the devil'. Now here I could perceive no evidence at all of diabolic intervention.

While I was still upon earth I tried to steer an even course between the little knowledge I had managed to glean of psychic matters concerning the 'after life' and the church's teachings. In my mind the church's teachings weighed more heavily in the scales than did my scanty knowledge of psychic things, but I was fully prepared to find conditions totally different from the 'hereafter' as sketchily touched upon by the church. I had the great authority—at least, I thought it to be great—of the church behind me in whatever religious matters I spoke upon publicly in my preaching; I had no authority behind me in my psychic experiences. Indeed, those to whom I related these experiences at once pronounced me as being tempted by 'the devil'!

When I first came to these lands and discovered the truth, I was troubled in mind by one book which I had written on earth, and which, unfortunately for me, could not now be unwritten. What was to be done? The thought came to me that if I might return to earth and speak the truth as I now knew it to be, I could counteract the unfairness and inaccuracies which I had set down, for the book dealt with this very subject of communicating with the spirit world.

There was, however, one slight demur that we encountered, and that came from my earthly amanuensis (Anthony Borgia). It was in his opinion, a most unpropitious time in which to contemplate such a design. War had been let loose upon the world, people's minds were inevitably diverted to matters of a thoroughly material nature, and altogether (in his opinion, but not in ours!) the outlook was gloomy and the chances of success problematical. We were soon able to dispose of that, however, because we were sure of our ground’.