A.H.L. (Harold) Vigurs was the president of our church from 1957-1970. He was also president of the SNU between 1943-1948. He was the member of The Fourteen Group that was formed in 1947 so that leaders of three spiritualist organisations could come together and discuss areas of common interest. This is a quote from Harold Vigurs during one of the symposiums on ‘Spiritualism and religion’.
” I see Spiritualism as a body of experimental discovery to teach man something about himself. The voice of authority from both east and west has told us that man is spirit. I have little doubt that that is true and that those who can accept it can become initiates and discover something about themselves.
In this age, authority is unacceptable unless it is capable of being demonstrated at the moment: individual experience has to replace authority. The chief merit of Spiritualism is that it introduces you to experimental data that can bring home to you firstly the knowledge of survival (a word I dislike because it is limited), and the fact that there is one life.
On this physical level the limitation is our 5 senses, but Spiritualism teaches us that consciousness is not limited to these and it breaks down mental limitations of our understanding to prepare us for a larger concept of what the human psyche is. I affirm that it is when we are capable of the inevitable consequences of what he is, for he has reached that degree of wisdom where he replaces narrowness and selfishness by a wider vision of life. What he does is inevitable; he cannot be false to himself.
To me, religion is linked with the vision of the “what is” in man and Spiritualism provides that experimental data which will enable the student who is studying life (and particularly his own expression of it) to lift himself to a higher level of understanding. That is why I think that Spiritualism is the key to the religion of the new age. I should be loath to lay down much instruction or dicta on what we conceive to be the idea of Spiritualism in the realm of religion. There are so many channels for the enlargement of life that I would not like to prescribe what they should be.”
