Here is an article written by Gordon Higginson in 1989. Many of the issues he discusses remain as relevant today 30 years later. Here is the article in full.
WE ARE THE SONS OF GOD BY GORDON HIGGINSON
During the past few years, there has been a tremendous revival of interest in Spiritualism. The Press has published thousands of columns on our subject, some of it favourable, much of it adverse. Publicity meetings have drawn capacity crowds, and many of those attending, especially the young, have become interested enough to commence attending their local Spiritualist church. There is a tremendous spirit of enquiry among the youth of today’s world, a genuine seeking after spiritual truths and knowledge.
This is surely our great opportunity to make the world sit up and take notice of our teachings and make the masses realise that Spiritualists are not mere ghost-hunters, but persons of a new kind of spiritual leadership and knowledge. I believe the time has come for true Spiritualists to come to the forefront – to stand and be counted. Our mission is to spiritualise the world, to turn the attention of the world inwards to the immortality of the soul.
One of the most significant features of today’s world is the marked decline of organised religion. The vast majority of people today have no allegiance to any religion and while Spiritualism attracts thinkers it does not retain them. Too many relics of the Christian orthodoxy have gradually crept in to supersede. Today there is too much crude symbolism, too much commercialisation and an appalling lack of knowledge and understanding of mediumship and the teachings of Modern Spiritualism as laid down by Andrew Jackson Davis in his book “The Harmonial Philosophy”.
I believe the real need of today’s world is a spiritual one – a need which only pure Spiritualism can provide. No-one will deny that there is an underlying seething discontent among the people of the world. The violence, the bitterness, the riots, drug addiction, alcoholism and the unnecessary loss of physical life, appal the conscience of all who care. Is all this a cry from the souls of people caught up in a net of despair?
Spiritualists who have as their First Principle “The Fatherhood of God” and the second “The Brotherhood of Man” should care, should be involved, should be taking action, and should be receiving guidance and leadership from our advisers in the spirit world. Have we strayed so far from our spiritual destiny that we are blind to the need of today’s people? Has Spiritualism become psychism? Are we interested only in messages? Are we so dazzled by the limelight and footlights of psychic superstars that we have failed to see the spiritual losses behind?
Pure Spiritualism teaches that men and women are spiritual beings, in that in the innermost depths of all of us, lies the spark of the Divine; and it is in the realisation of this truth that we shall find our greatest encouragement, our greatest power. The realisation of our divinity raises us above our past selves and our past weaknesses.
All the sins of selfishness, greed, ferocity, vice, jealousy and revenge belong to our lower self and must be outgrown and conquered by the might and influence of that divinity with which we are all endowed. Man is divine; he may be unconscious of his spiritual powers, because the finite cannot grasp the infinite. But man, through all eternity, will be the very same self-hood that he was on earth, only ever increasingly conscious of his own greatness and oneness with the Almighty.
If we become more conscious of our divine nature and our inherent relationship to each other, we should be able to tap great sources of spiritual strength and realise them into our physical environment. Once we learn to achieve this, our Second Principle, The Brotherhood of Man, would no longer be mere “word-mongering” but a realisable objective.
”Ye are Gods” in very truth, but how few know it, how few strive to live up to that knowledge. May that Great Spirit whence we proceeded help us more fully to realise that we are in very deed “The Sons of God.”
Source: Psychic News Yearbook 1989-90