Glimpses of the Next State 18+

📗 When he wrote a small book titled The Cosmos and the Creeds, William Usborne Moore, a retired British navy officer who had command of six surveying vessels before his retirement, attacked the teachings of the churches and expressed doubt as to the reality of a future life. "At the time I thought that such immortality as man possessed lay in the influence his actions, words, or writings had upon those who were his contemporaries, or who came after him; but that he himself, as an individual conscious entity, disappeared forever, not to be recognized again," he wrote eight years later in Glimpses of the Next State, published 100 years ago this year. Soon after the first book was published, Moore began to have misgivings about his agnosticism, as he had not investigated sources of evidence outside the narrow confines of the churches. Once he began investigating mediums late 1904, his views changed. "To be brief, I found that the deeper I went into the study of spiritism the more apparent it became that, whether he wished it or not, man's individuality was not extinguished at death," Moore, who went by his middle name, explained. "I read books, visited clairvoyants, and attended séances for materialization. Through all I was constantly reminded of the existence of a near and dear relative, older than myself, who passed away thirty-seven years ago in the prime of her life. Her continued reappearances could only lead me to one conclusion: I was being guided t...