Shakespeare's Revelations by Shakespeare's Spirit spells through my treasured humble clairaudient, Sarah [Sarah Taylor Shatford], medium through whom I―as spirit―have worked at words, the truth of life after so-called death.Â
Heed my words spelled with lips no longer foul and give to Him who gave His Son to teach all mortals life could not end here the same in Spirit as when his breath he ceased to draw.Â
We carry here the man we were.Â
Our longings―likes―some hatreds―as of yore.Â
We grasp a few facts, discern a few truths, most of these applying directly to ourselves and those who surround us.Â
We are in all our being exactly the same as when in the body―our intellect keener than before, for the chief attribute of spirit is mind, and our interests, for the most part, what they were in the body.Â
And I who wove my rhyme am he―the same―except for my soul's tears.Â
To all who yearn to know if still man lives without his bones, I say, COMPLETE.Â
He dies never.Â
His ashes are the remnants of his suit.Â
I have my whiskers still.
To those who love and read me still, I would a tithe I could return of your heart's wealth who speak these words to save your love unblemished when as souls, ay spirits, ye rise on high where is His Sacred, Holy, Pure, Almighty Hand, out of whose chalice ye were sent to praise His Holy Name.
Shakespeare dictates his first experiences after the change called death—
The world of life had passed away, and still he was alive.Â
The world of life was everywhere, and on every hand he saw those who had passed into spirit lands, speaking, walking, and doing all he had just been doing on the earth in his mortal frame, which now rested beneath the sod.Â
What had happened? he asked himself, and where was he anyhow that all these disembodied forms encircled about him in curious wonder at the new arrival―himself―and talked of his malady and his identity, his country, and all which so lately concerned him.
Did he realise what had happened at once, do you think?―or did he realise gradually that he had passed from his bodily form and become a spirit and was in the spirit's realm above and near the earth―in fact, so near, there was no difference that he could see except that he was naked―unclothed―as when he was born, while the others surrounding him wore all kinds of raiment of various materials, cuts and colours—a fantastical set as ever his eyes had seen while in their human sockets, he could tell you.
I had passed out in a little town in England on the River Avon, near a churchyard where my bones were laid to rest, of a fever caused through a long siege of revel with my friends who came to felicitate me on my good fortune of having succeeded in life to the uttermost in everything I had set out to do―except one thing, which they neither knew of, nor know of today, for all I know here, including rehabilitating myself in fortune's favour, as well as establishing myself in the good graces of my family at home, where this revel was held in their honour.Â
As my good friends, they were sharers in much of my misfortune, so why should they not now partake of that which the world called riches.Â
For myself, I was not a heavy drinker―in fact did not care for heavy liquors.Â
But the festival of reunion, as well as the good fellowship was at its height, and included these as usual.
Now when I say did not care for liquor, do not misunderstand me and blame my friends, for the malady, which caused my rapid transference to the world of spirit.Â
These are things, which must happen, and always do happen, either through the tides of fate―or the will of higher powers, for I am not able to state where I now am, which took me from my earthly habitation to the one I occupy.
You will say this is a spirit who could not have believed in a Supreme Being while on the earth, and who now doubts the existence of one.Â
In this, you are wrong.Â
If you will look through my works written through many different moods, you will find no statements therein on which to base such an assertion.Â
I pray you have patience and see for yourselves if this is the truth I speak.Â
Take my works and search them for an infidel's mark and tell me if the one who wrote them reverenced, worshipped, accredited to all his characters, the love and fear of a living Almighty, conscious, cognisant, all-prevailing Spirit, called God.
You will find Him in every drama at least, and so far as those other superlative love sonnets of mine concern the Creator of All that a creature holds sacred and lovely, I thanked God with every breath in those, for the worldly love I felt must be―could only be a part of such love as His own.Â
This I shall leave for further explanation at a future time.Â
You will understand how I reverence every beauty and wonder God made if you are a student of my earthly works.Â
For this, my first spiritual work―or rather work of mine for my own self done through mediumship in the spirit.
Now this cannot concern a large portion of humanity, for the reason a small percentage only believe in the possibility of spirit return.Â
When these read that I have found an instrument through whom I can not only write, but speak, they may interest a larger number to investigate the truth of mediumship and spirit communication.Â
At least, this is one hope of mine.Â
But the chief object, for which I am here writing is entirely one of self-expression and justification.Â
The laws, which govern the spirit are more and harder to override than all the laws of mortals―or all they could conceive.Â
This will be subject matter for another paper as well.
To have overcome these so far as to be able to write this paper alone is to have accomplished what William Shakespeare has never before been able to accomplish during the centuries since he passed into spirit.Â
That I have worked for this and nothing else would be practically the truth but I fear your interest might abate in the task of one so selfish.
To suffer with no surcease―to become an outcast for no cause―to have committed no crime, but one, and that against myself, and for this and its consequent evils, resulting from it to lose forever the chance of association with my kind in the spirit world―to be cognizant of my own shortcomings, sins, failures, and repentant more than mortals conceive repentance could mean, and yet to be assured of no Saviour's benign pardon―no mercy from God throughout all eternal aeons of time―immortal spirit that I am―this is to be an outcast in the spirit world where I am―where no one can help―or save and where none ever live if they can wander back to the earth to be with their own kindred souls who inhabit the earth in mortal bodies still unlettered in spirit, ignorant as babes as to all I write herein and therefore lambs of our bosoms and hopes of our souls!
Why―you ask―does this one permit you to write these words, knowing all you say, as she must have been told.Â
Because in her innocence, she harboured a spirit who inspired her to write her poems—all trustful, hopeful, good and fine—and when all her work was finished she learned who wrote the most of them―then refused to sign her name any longer when she heard the words at last spoken in the inner ear, instead of inspirationally, as before.Â
She now writes to my dictation just as an amanuensis would take articulate words from the lips of a living man.
When a spirit finds a medium through which they can work as while on earth, they are at once overjoyed and overcome with fear lest they lose them through some mortal idiosyncrasy―or loss of power either their own―or some intervening current spiritual―or magnetic―and to do the work I have longed to do―suffered to do―is my first aim through this one now writing.Â
When this is finished, it will be her ambition to go on and convince the material world of the truth of spirit return, and we may work together to reach a higher class of intelligence than most mediums are able to reach.
She is a rare instrument in my hands, subservient and highly strung.Â
In fact, so highly strung by me of late in opening the inner ear to hear this voice I now use, as to have been overwrought nervously by the shock of hearing spirit voices, having rested for a long period of time under doctors' and nurses' care.Â
She will now finish the paper I have begun.
You will see by this effort, plainly discernible to anyone of mediocre intelligence, she is carrying out my directions, and mine only.
When I―William Shakespeare―reached the spirit world, I gave little time to remorse―or weeping, as I have seen others, but set about to find my equals―or superiors in that land where I was a new arrival.
There seemed to be none of these on the exact spot where I had located, as it were, as it is hard to describe a spirit transition, and I conceived the plan of looking farther, seeking, indeed searching, for mine own.Â
Surely they were there—surely they would help me on my way where no spirit newly arrived can help themselves much, especially those who have been very ill and long suffered maladies, which consumed their spirit strength.
But my search was in vain until now.Â
Here am I nobody—not even a king's fool—with no chance to make myself heard by the earth folk whom I would serve and save through my sufferings—whom I always loved and still love.Â
And for whom I shall have written a soul's message, whether they partake of its counsel or not.Â
It rests with them.—SHAKESPEARE In SpiritÂ
