This article was published in Psychic World, July 1999

The Rise and Fall of the Spiritualist Movement

by Michael Roll

At the beginning of this century the word spiritualist, with a small "s", was used by all those who wanted to make it very clear that they were opposite to a materialist and any form of organised religion. These free thinking people who accepted survival after death as a stone-cold, scientific fact had no power-structure or any rules and regulations.

What the spiritualists and their mediums were saying was a million times more hopeful arid exciting than the materialists arguments that death is the end of everything, and the Christian dogma of having to rest in peace in the ground waiting for a mythical Judgement Day. Understandably the materialists and religionists flocked in droves towards the scientific, secular (non religious) case for us all having two bodies, one that dies and one that survives. When Spiritualism was officially made into another one-god religion, with a capital "S", after. the Second World War, with rules and regulations, this immediately stopped every materialist doing a u-turn and becoming a spiritualist. This also excommunicated every single spiritualist like my mother who had made a careful study of Arthur Findlay's scholarship :

"On The Edge of the Etheric", "The Rock of Truth", "The Psychic Stream" and his masterpiece "The Curse of Ignorance".

"We have a choice of two paths, one is the Secular way (non religious) and the other is the Theological (religious); one is the Democratic and the other the Despotic; one is the sane and the other the insane."

The spiritualists lost their power-base by becoming yet another one-god religion. They can now only attract a tiny percentage of the population who still connect survival after death with religious beliefs, and do not mind entering a place called a church and being instructed to take part in a religious service with prayers, worship and hymns; listening to a minister of religion very often reading from the bible under the sign of a cross the symbol of the greatest killing machine and suppressors of knowledge the world has ever witnessed; the very antithesis of everything that the philosopher Jesus stood for.

Those of us who follow the great survivalist philosophers Jesus, Thomas Paine and Arthur Findlay are deeply grateful to the Spiritualist publications for giving us an outlet for the past ten years. We have used the Psychic News, Two Worlds and Psychic World together with Spiritualist meeting places from Scotland to Cornwall to give Arthur Findlay lectures. However, thanks to modern methods of communication we are now hitting millions in one go. I can tell by the feedback that nothing can now stop people all over the world finding out that survival after death is not just an airy fairy belief, but a rational, scientific fact, just as definite as the world being round and not flat.

Very shortly now Arthur Findlay's army will have to make a break from their friends in the religion of Spiritualism. We have all our outlets already in place - the national press, radio, television and all the university physical science departments, and yes, even the department of Psychology when they start to use the Greek word correctly; "psyche" meaning soul. My last great dream is that the university departments of philosophy will one day come to their senses and allow their students access to, the suppressed work of the two greatest philosophers our planet has ever produced - Thomas Paine the most valuable Englishman ever and Arthur Findlay, the most valuable Scotsman ever. Perhaps the Spiritualists will restore the notice to The Arthur Findlay College that said it was dedicated to scientific advancement.

It is not surprising that Thomas Paine started his thinking revolution in 1774 at Lewes in Sussex. Burning people who try to think for themselves at the stake in the main street sets up the law of cause and effect - reverberations down through the ages. Good must always triumph over evil in the end or there is not perfect justice in the universe. If there is not perfect justice then we are completely wasting our time fighting for freedom and may as well pack in right away.

The Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Pamphlet by Michael Roll

The Curse of Ignorance by Arthur Findlay (1947), published in two volumes, and details of some of Findlay's other works.

This is the true history of mankind, totally different to the pack of lies taught in a country where the Church and state are established. This passage sums up just how badly the British people have been deceived:

"Such, however, is still [the Church's] influence that this book, which tells the story of the past honestly and fearlessly, will be kept out of our schools and universities by the authorities, and consequently, only in later life will those with enquiring minds discover the truth."

Findlay finishes with a call to the people of the world to throw off the shackles of priestcraft, to make a choice between two paths:

"One is the Secular way (non religious) and the other is the Theological (religious); one is the Democratic and the other the Despotic; one is the sane and the other the insane."

The Most Valuable Englishman Ever - Michael Roll's article about Thomas Paine (1736-1809)
This outstanding tribute to Thomas Paine - "The Most Valuable Englishman Ever" - is taken from Arthur Findlay's suppressed history of humanity, "The Curse of Ignorance".

Thomas Paine links