January 8th, 1917.
Received by:James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Samuel P. Shannon:
Let me tell you that you and the Doctor need someone to look after you in your mental qualities, as you are the most gullible men that I have heard talk for a long time. I have heard what you just said in reference to your experiences in connection with these writings and the efforts made by spirits to convince you that your communications were from the higher spirits, even the spirits of the Celestial heavens, and I feel sorry that you should be so weak as to believe all these false and flattering things that have been said to you. So as I am a spirit who knows and loves only the truth, and do not desire to see anyone deceived, I feel it my duty to tell you that you have had only deceiving spirits write you, who take great delight in making you believe that you have received communications that have not been equaled by the writings that any other medium in all the wide world has received.
Of course, you have received some wonderful truths and some beautiful sayings, but they are merely the efforts of spirits who think that they know all of the truth of the spirit world. And I advise you to let these things go from your mind and listen only to spirits who are honest and who know of what they write.
I am one of those who are capable to tell you the truths that exist in our spirit world and that are only necessary for mortals to know. Much has been written you about the Divine Love and its effect upon the souls of men, making them, as it were, very Gods; and I want to say that the only Divine Love is the pure love that exists in the hearts of spirits who have been purified of sin, and had their intellects developed in the highest degree. So my friends, give up this belief in the Divine Love, and put all your efforts to the cultivation of your minds.
And there is another kind of love that you have been told of, and in the belief in which you have had great satisfaction, and expectations created of coming into a wonderful and ecstatic happiness when you shall come into the spirit world, and that is the soulmate love. How foolish to believe in any such love. Our soulmates are our acquirements of knowledge, and not female spirits. The women here are very much like they are on earth, and they love one male for a while and then get tired and seek another. I thank God that they have never been able to fool me! I see so much of the treachery of these female spirits that I shun them, and as a consequence, they call me the woman-hater, and so I am, and I do not regret it.
My companions are only spirits like myself, having a friendship for one another, but no such thing as what they call love, especially soulmate love.
Sometime, before many years, you will come to the spirit world, and I beg that you will let me warn you before you come, to put no faith in what is told you about this soulmate love, and if you will listen to and take my advice, you will be saved much unhappiness.
I write thus as a friend and well-wisher, and you must believe that I am wholly impartial and honest in what I say to you. I live in the Second Sphere, where there are many intellectual spirits who find much happiness and satisfaction in the development of their minds, and are not troubled by the women, or the ghost of what is called the Divine Love.
Occasionally I see some spirits who claim to have the Divine Love, and some who claim to have soulmates, but I pay no attention to them, and consider them fanatics and deceived spirits. Well, they are different in appearance from us. They seem to be much brighter and, as they claim, happier; but this is due only to the fact that they are frivolous, that is, they never give any consideration to the investigation of the important things of this spirit world, and flitter about from sphere to sphere as if they had nothing else to do than find amusement and pleasure in their joy rides, as I have heard some of you mortals express it.
Yes, they don’t seem to be confined to any sphere, and that is something that I don’t quite understand, for we who are so much more substantial and work so hard to learn the truths, cannot pass into the higher sphere. This I don’t understand, and neither do my associates. But it may be that these spirits that I speak of are of such little importance that the guardians of the higher spheres do not pay any attention to them. At least, they are never stopped in their moving from our sphere to the higher ones.
Well, I will consider what you suggest, and as you say, it can do no harm, and as I can spare time enough to make the inquiry of one of these spirits, I think that I will do so, merely to learn what their idea is of the reason that they have such freedom of movement and we have not.
I see the Indian who is acting as your guide and he to an extent is another one of these foolish spirits. He says that I am a wonderful spirit in my own mind and that if I continue to develop in my opinion of my own importance and greatness I will soon be sitting on the right hand of God. He seems serious, but I do not know whether to think that he is really impressed by my appearance and intellectual greatness, or whether he is saying what he does, ironically. But I suppose he is serious, for being an Indian he cannot have much intellectual development and must be impressed by my superior qualities.
Well, my friend, I am glad that I could write you tonight and do you the friendly turn that I have, for I am a lover of humanity and wish to do all the good that I can to my fellow man.
I must stop now, as a spirit who says she is your soulmate, comes to me and says that I have been indulged enough, and, of course, wishing to get away from her, as from all other females, I must leave; but you must think of what I have written.
Your friend,
Samuel P. Shannon,
a one-time scientist of England.