I would like to begin by quoting from seventeenth century Quakers on their views of life and the afterlife. So let’s immerse ourselves in the seventeenth century Quaker world for a few minutes. These quotations all come from a talk given by David Britton (a historian, a QFAS member, who has done much research on early Quakerism), entitled  “Early Quakers and the question of immortality”. A shortened version has also appeared as an articlewhich is in the QFAS Anthology, “The Not Unfamiliar Country”,  and the quotes are also available as a handout.

Beginning with George Fox and  the story of Margaret Rous and her child. – ‘Hearing that Margaret Rous’ child was sick I went to see it, and as I stood by it considering its condition, I felt the Lord’s power go through it, and the word was, the Lord’s power was come to raise it up or fetch it away, and so I came away fresh in the Lord’s power and satisfied in myself. And the next day the mother came to the town and desired me to go with her to see it, and through her tenderness I went, though I was satisfied in myself. And so I saw the child was full of the power of the Lord, and it rested upon it and rested in it. And at night it died, and afterwards the spirit of the child appeared to me, and there was a mighty substance of glorious life in that child, and I bid her mother be content, for it was well.’

George Fox’s mother died in 1674, when Fox was in Worcester gaol, and was prevented from visiting her. When the letter about her death reached him, he was grieved, but wrote – ‘When my spirit had gotten through I saw her in the resurrection and the life, everlastingly with me, and father in the flesh also.’ (Book of Miracles)

Here is Fox’s Epistle concerning Josiah Cole ‘…and Friends sate about him, and healed him, and I went to him, and healed him, and he was full of the power of the Lord, and his seed and Life, that was over all; and so in that he departed away in the arms of Friends, as he sate on the side of his bed, and had a very easy passage through the Life in which he remaines’

Here is part of Fox’s Testimony to George Watt. ‘And, as Christ saith, He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live … in this belief, and in this Life, is our dear brother George Watt; I do see him and feel him’.

And here is another Testimony, this time to Edward Burroughs. ‘Dear Edward Burroughs fell asleep on the 14th day of the 12th month 1662, who is with the Lord forever. And that which I eternally loved in him never dies, but lives forever, and so cannot be separated from him.’

These passages and many others in Fox’s writings indicate a state that is perhaps best described as having a foot in both worlds. His confidence in a heavenly world seems complete.

Margaret Fell’s similar confidence is shown in several places in her writings, but in none more impressively than her Testimony to her second husband, George Fox, on his death in 1691. (She outlived him by 11 years). Here she said:

 “It has pleased God to take away my dear husband out of this evil troublesome world, who was not a man thereof, being chosen out of it, and had his life and being in another region ….. so I am now to give my account and testimony for my dear husband, whom the Lord has taken unto His blessed kingdom and glory ….. Now he has finished his course and his testimony, and is entered into his eternal rest and felicity.”

In her “Pastoral Letter to certain Friends” she writes: “the Spirit of the Saints in light savours the eternal life in all, and loves it in all, and sees and feels it in all.”, and she goes on to say: “…. And so here is the resting place that you must all meet in where the true fellowship is one with another, which all the Saints in light was gathered into since the beginning, and all meets here from Eternity to Eternity…”.

And here is a passage from her 1656 “Epistle to Friends” –

 “Therefore, if you love your Soul, which is immortal, abide in the Light and live the Light and walk in the Light, where the Fellowship and the Unity is.”

Here is a passage from the Testimony of her children to Margaret Fell after her death in 1702:

 “And the blessed God of Heaven and Earth preserved her in a good understanding to the last ….. and we believe she is inheriting a HeavenlyMansion, prepared by the Lord Jesus Christ, for all His faithful followers.”

Even more telling is the Testimony of George Whitehead, in that it clearly reveals the early Quaker understanding of the relation between eternal life on earth and eternal life in heaven:

“She retained a sincere and constant love to all faithful Friends and brethren to the end, which was a true evidence of her being passed from death to life, while here and her portion in eternal life and felicity in the heavenly kingdom…”

In support of this there is a passage from Thomas Camm’s Testimony to her:

 “… and now she is rewarded with the full fruition of eternal life and Peace with her God.”

David Britton also came upon a Pendle Hill Pamphlet by Lucy McIver “A Song of Death, Our Spiritual Birth: A Quaker Way of Dying”, and made a selection for the Anthology. Here is an extract:

“Thus, for seventeenth Friends, as the dying struggled against the pain of illness, surrendering to the natural flow of life and death, their ministry was a testimony to their humility and their love of God. Those in attendance would share in that numinous moment, praying in the silence, entering into the collective experience. This spiritual practice was traditionally honoured and seen as a time of indisputable ministry by the community of family and Friends.  As Hugh Barbour writes:

‘A devout Quaker (lived) every day as if it were the last. Death was the climax to life: the period just before the end was supposed to reveal either the righteous prevailing and triumphant, or the wicked filled with fear and repenting. The dying person, neither fully part of this world nor yet joined to the next, could speak to those around with an authority possessed by no ordinary person. An entire household gathered in the death chamber to hear the final words of exhortation. Many visitors, including young children, would gather around the dying individual who, in her closest relationship to God, would preach to them.’ ”

And a last quote, for now, from the seventeenth century. And this is William Penn’s counsel to his son, Springette, who died at age 21. Before his illness Springette had desired to travel in the ministry with this father. Penn addressed his son’s grief of letting go of this hope by saying:

“My dear child, if it please the Lord to raise thee, I am satisfied it will be so; and if not, then in as much as it is thy fervent desire in the Lord, he will look upon thee just as if thou didst live to serve him, and thy comfort will be the same. So, either way, it will be well; for if thou shouldst not live, I do verily believe thou wilt have the recompense of thy good desires, without the temptations and troubles that would attend if long life were granted to thee.”

And Springette surrendered his desire and replied to his father: “My eye looks another way, where the truest pleasure is … All is mercy, dear father; everything is mercy.”

Fast forward to the early 21st century. Talk among Friends is very different now. It isn’t just the language – which has obviously changed in three centuries. It is what Friends talk ABOUT. And there is very little said about things which are “other worldly”.

In spite of the fact that we sit in Meeting and presumably enter a dimension which is different from everyday consciousness, we rarely speak about our experiences in great detail. At least that is my experience.

We don’t talk about heaven or an afterlife, and we don’t talk about contact with people who have passed into that heaven or afterlife. Do most of us believe anymore that such a world exists? Letters to “The Friend” indicate a range of opinion.

I grew up in a Quaker family. My parents had a simple faith: unquestioning though sorely tested at times. They prayed privately each day to their “heavenly father”. And my father would pray to his heavenly father in meeting. He would kneel and the Meeting would stand. He was one of the last Friends that I knew of to do that.

My parents believed that family and friends who had died were in heaven and that we would all be together again one day. It was very comforting, but from my point of view there was a lack of detail. I wanted to know much more about what it was like. I didn’t find anyone who could tell me. And although I’m aware of guidance in my life I’m not given to having any sort of direct revelation or contact with the spiritual world, so I’m very interested in what other people experience.

So, I’ve always enquired and it’s been a big part of my life to do this. By the time the late 60s and 70s arrived with New Age thinking around I was much happier. And in 1976 I married Martin who was also on a similar quest. We began to discover in earnest; to read and discuss and go to conferences.

One place we discovered was the Arthur Findlay College of the National Spiritualist Union at Stansted Hall. It’s only 12 miles from where I still live. (Not a Trades Union for Spiritualists but the union of groups of spiritualists).

I was hesitant about Spiritualism and quite nervous about going there as I know some people are nervous about going to their first Quaker meeting. But we found the people very welcoming and we started going to Sunday evening services. Then Martin was asked to be the relief organist and for several years we attended fairly regularly.

There would be spiritual philosophy (rather like a short sermon), hymns and then a demonstration of mediumship. And it was very high quality mediumship which, of course, sadly is not always the case. We were impressed. The people we met seemed to have integrity and a dedication to their work. But we didn’t talk to many Quaker friends about going there.

On the other hand, through the Spiritualists and in other ways we felt we were gradually coming to understand more and more about the spiritual world which interpenetrates our material world, and of the importance of contact. And it seemed as if our Quaker faith was enhanced and enriched by this knowledge.

Because of the difficulty of communicating this to Friends I reached a point where I felt I had to speak my truth. In 1997, with great trepidation, I spoke to Essex and Suffolk General Meeting about my experiences, as part of a session on Death and Dying, and this gradually led to writing a booklet which I called: “Continuing Life: the evidence for survival through mediumship”. This was in the late 1990s.

About the same time Rosalind Smith who I knew through Friends’ Fellowship of Healing, was writing a booklet called “Quakers and the Spiritual/Psychic Dimension”. Her booklet was in circulation about 6 months after mine.

Well, the responses to these 2 booklets which were reviewed in “The Friend” and “Towards Wholeness” (FFH journal) were very interesting indeed. I had many letters from Quakers who were in sympathy with my point of view. Many felt that it should be possible to discuss spiritual/psychic matters within the Society but that it tended to produce a sort of glazed look and phrases such as “it is not given to us to know”. What I hadn’t quite realised, I suppose because I am not very psychic myself, was that many Friends were having their own experiences which they wanted to talk about in Meeting and among their circle of Quaker F/friends. These were extremely important experiences in their lives. One Friend at least was on the point of leaving the Society because he felt blocked in this way.

6 of us met in the summer of 2000 over a weekend to see if there was a way forward. Rosalind Smith, David Hodges, Beryl Spence, Joanna Harris and Martin and myself. We formed the nucleus of a group which became the Quaker Afterlife Studies Group. At this point we knew of about 50 Friends who were interested. As the number grew, a couple of years later, the name was changed to Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies –and last year the Fellowship became a Listed Special Interest Group of the Society of Friends.

There are continuing and quite heated arguments over the name. Many Friends would be happier with something like Quaker Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies. They feel not so much an interest in the afterlife, as an interest in the experiences they are having in the here and now.

At that first weekend we made various decisions.

1. To hold two conferences in 2001, a day conference in London and a residential one at Claridge House. This pattern has continued each year since.

2. To put together an anthology of Quaker experience, which we did.

We were aware of the vast amount of literature on the subject and David Hodges started by putting together a reading list and finished by producing a book: “Do We Survive Death? A descriptive bibliography and discussion on the evidence supporting survival.”  This is a unique Quaker contribution to the subject. While David was collecting material we were amazed at the number of books and writers that Friends were telling us about. Everyone seemed to have their own, usually different, favourite author. And there are so many areas to cover. Everything from NDEs which more and more people are having, to research into reincarnation through hypnotic regression.  And so many different viewpoints into what it all means. New names and titles were arriving with David or with me every day which somehow had to be incorporated. It was a daunting task but the outcome is very successful thanks to David’s perseverance.

Over the years articles have appeared in “The Friend” and “Friends’ Quarterly”.
In an article “Life after Death: What is the Evidence?” published in January 2006, David Hodges outlines the various strands of evidence. In one part, he talks about the research into survival conducted with mediums in the late 19c and early 20c by scientists such as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge and Prof Charles Richet. And he says:

“… most of those who undertook such serious research accepted that the only realistic explanation for these phenomena was that the human soul survived death.”

  To return to the early days of QALSG

At the first conference, which was a residential one, we were extremely anxious to “get it right” and we didn’t know quite what Friends would be wanting or expecting. The result was that there was too much information from the speakers. We asked for evaluation forms to be filled in and it became clear that those who had come had mainly wanted to talk to other people – to hear of the experience of others and to share their own, also to express their doubts, fears, reservations, scepticism.

So an important part of all the conferences since has been meeting in small groups which I am proposing that we do later on when we’ve had a period of worship together.

I’d just like to finish with another quotation from a seventeenth century Friend and then two short extracts from NDEs experienced by 20c Friends and included in the Anthology

Richard Hubberthorne was a seventeenth century Friend, who travelled in the ministry with  Francis Howgill and John Camm, when near his death said:

“This night or tomorrow night
  I shall depart hence …
Do not seek to hold me
For it is too strait for me;                    (‘strait’ meaning narrow)
And out of this straitness I must go,
For I am wound into largeness….”  

From Pendle Hill Pamphlet 340 by Lucy McIver – A Quaker Way of Dying.

“I don’t remember any tunnel of light or reunions but I was definitely on the other side. I was walking beside a calm river in beautiful countryside. (Is this the still waters and green pastures of Psalm 23?) In the wonderful, changeless light I felt immersed in love, joy and peace and united with all creation. That feeling remains.” (Emma Gleadall)

“The communication happened all at once and spontaneously like an “ah-ha” experience. Like a sudden insight – a Gestalt. However, paradoxically, there seemed all the time in the world so that I felt I understood about eternity and infinity. I was very happy lingering there and taking it all in – eager to absorb all that I was learning (yet not being striving or ambitious, as I usually am with learning.) It was relaxed and peaceful so I could just let it sweep over me and through me.

It was not like receiving intellectual knowledge but more like being enveloped in Love. I was in the presence of Love, and Love was doing the communicating. A huge-Abundance was being retriggered in me. I knew it was all about my becoming the Love that I had always been (but had forgotten) and about my being able to manifest the Compassion that is my true nature (but of which I had been unaware).”
(Elizabeth A. Angas)

A quotation I’m very fond of, and the origin is not quite certain but it may come from one of the Rowntree family:

“We are not so much human beings on a spiritual journey as spiritual beings on a human journey.”