This month I had the privilege of interviewing Minister Arthur Plumpton, long-standing member of the SNUi and Vice chair of its Committee. Arthur has done a lot of courses for which he holds awards. He has, a DSNU administration,DSNU healing, DSNU speaking and is also an Officiant of the SNU.
Minister Arthur Plumpton also has a weekly class in Philosophy at 9:30 AM UK time.

 

What can you tell me about your development within the SNU?

Well, fundamentally you recognize you have a sensitivity and then you start to develop it. In my case it was more a matter of thinking about what facilities there are to develop; I started in a local church, which is something that is novel to those of you outside of the UK because you don’t have it. I did that for several months, so I thought I was getting somewhere. In those days I had heard about the Arthur Findlay College and made up my mind to go and have a look and then turned back from there because it was interesting and positive.
And then…

I just carried on the pathway, you know you go to bigger and better things as you always do as success breeds success and you were able to do these sort of things. It wasn’t just a myth and it seemed to be working. I continued down the pathway till, as I moved around in my job we (Arthur and his late wife) went from being a student to leading a development circle, and just carried on from there.

Okay, and did you do anything within the SNU, church or otherwise?

I joined the local church and worked my way up as I got on the Committee and I got on the District Committee. On the District Committee I met people like Jean Bassett and Brenda Lawrence and their respective halves, and then we as a group with my late wife, we got together. Particularly Brenda and Jean were very keen on getting, what was then the East London District and the West London District, come together on a week at Stansted. But unlike up to that point most weeks in Stansted were if you like almost holidays with the mediumship thrown in whereas that particular group and we had some brilliant minds there, said well no, this is not going to be a holiday, this is going to be a working period. And so we set up every hour if you like as teaching of one form or another, we had teaching in two different meeting places so that students had to make a choice. We had people like Gordon Higginson down on the week along with many other excellent lecturers of the day. I met some very interesting and very positive spiritualists through working with them and web did London week for I cannot remember how many years we did it now. But we had actually moved away from the London area to the West Midlands where I became Education Officer of the West Midlands, and that is where I meet David Bruton.
David and I worked together at the local church and we were in the thrills of building a new church. We saw all the aspects of church life: the political scene, the fundraising scene, the mediumship scene.
But before we moved down to Elmsworth, we were in the West Midlands near Worcester where I was running the introductory Healing course, E17, and I was the course organizer for that, we had something like 200 students and I split it up in North and South and lost both parts, I just about burnt myself out trying to keep all these students going with tutors, but at the same time I was also on the Education Committee which is now combined with the Exponents Committee in the Education and Exponents Committee, and I was organizing National Final Assessment Boards or National Boards as they were called in those days. So most weekends I was traveling and doing assessments of people from CSNU, as in those days PAS did not exist, through to DSNU. So that was a busy time in my life.

 

What can you tell me about the SNUi?

The SNUi was a brain child of somebody called Vi Kipling, she had been working on getting the Union, which you must admit was a bit more conservative than it is today, and getting them to understand that the way forward was online. She had been petitioning the NEC for some time, she was actually also the chairperson of the Education Committee at the time. As she held that responsibility, she knew what she was talking about. Of course Vi Kipling has written a wonderful book ‘Myths and Misconceptions of Spiritualism’ for which she received her FSNU. It is pretty much a standard text for people who want to stay on track. Because it debunks a lot of the old concepts of mediumship. She was a straightforward person, I mean, I met Vi back in the late seventies, early eighties, I think when she was just an ordinary person. She always claimed she was an ordinary person. My late wife’s actually on the Education Committee with Vi for a number of years and so it was just another inroad to into understanding the operation of education and where they were hoping to go. But Vi as I say had an interest in teaching online and did so for many years under a totally different organization because the NEC were not budging at that time. But eventually she got it through the NEC and it became formally structured in 2009. Shortly after it was formed, the then chairperson, Sean Wilson, asked me ‘Would I join the Committee, would I join the SNUi first of all, and then shortly after the Committee. So early on in 2009 I became a member and on the Committee of the SNUi and I have been ever since, apart from a short interlude of a few years. It is something special as you are well aware.

 

It is special for a number of reasons:

 

It does not require you to be a convinced Spiritualist or a declared Spiritualist, it only requires you to pay your subscription ( £25for non-SNU members and £10 for Individual Members of the SNU). And that allows us to approach the world in general because we are not just talking to Spiritualists, we are talking to anybody who has a spiritual leaning. They could be Buddhist, Jewish, they could be Christian for that matter. But nevertheless they are there and they have a spiritual leaning. And that is what we want, and I think what we want to continue to do because it is only through reaching the general public that we are going to actually gently, gently persuade them there is something in Spiritualism. Most spiritualists accept the Seven Principles unless you are a Christian Spiritualist, in which case you got 10; but we don’t go down that road because we disagree with them on something which is very fundamental and that is it either carries ‘atonement’ versus ‘Personal Responsibility’. And we are not prepared to sacrifice our concepts. But we still invite people of all nationalities to join us on SNUi because we believe we have something specialty offer. I still maintain that that is the case and I think it is important to recognize that we should through the SNUi be serving the world and not just those who declare themselves as Spiritualists.

 

How do you see the SNUi fit or not fit within the structure of the SNU?

It certainly fits within the structure because we are a branch of the Union, there is no question about that and I don’t see any conflict at all in that. What we need to ensure is that we have the freedom because of our unique chart or set of values in order to exercise discretion in presenting things which are of a spiritual nature.

 

You also have a philosophy class on the SNUi. What would you say is the importance of Spiritualist philosophy not only in general, but for developing mediums in particular?

Well, the whole concept of philosophy has to a large extent been put on the back burner for the last 20 or more years. Mediumship has taken front of stage. This is a bit of a problem. Whilst we accept that mediumship is that which something of phenomena which attracts people into Spiritualism and if you like the acceptance there is a life after death. What it doesn’t necessarily do is to explain the significance of what life after life now actually means. So many go to see a clairvoyant whether it is a church demonstration or a public demonstration, whether it is a meeting of 5 people or 305 people, they are looking in the main if you like for a message from the relations, friends to help them with their life and very often of course that means: ‘When am I going to inherit’, ‘When am I going to meet the man of my life’, etcetera. And that completely runs against the philosophy of what spirit are trying to communicate  to us.

Yes, they will help us in our life, but it is our life to lead and this is the essential function which must always be there. Many mediums still hold that in every spiritual contact there should be a spiritual message, I am not talking about the physical message like: Look at the brakes of your car, I feel there is something wrong, I am talking about the meaning of life and why they want to come and help. It is a problem whilst mediumship takes central stage and it can be a hard task to displace it with something as boring and fascinating as philosophy.
So you call philosophy boring?

Of course it is boring, it is reality. Mediumship on the platform is exciting! I am hearing a message from somebody who is dead, that is exciting! Reality is boring.
But to hear from the spirit in terms of the information which Silver Birch passed across as only one example of many.People go to sleep reading Silver Birch because they are not attuned to what we are actually selling, which is ‘the philosophy of life’.

 

What is your favorite source of spiritualist philosophy that you know of?

Silver Birch is a good standard there is no question about that. But I also would draw your attention to the works of Minister Barry Oates who is a modern thinker as he says himself. He is somebody who is more interested in the philosophy than the mediumship, the phenomena of Spiritualism and so he is very much on the ball. If you two look at other people who have been presenting spiritual stuff, you can go to Debra Skelton and her book ‘Echoes Teachings from the Past, Wisdom for the Present’, which is a compilation of many of the interesting works of the pioneers over the last 100 years. There is a lot of stuff out there if you are prepared to go look for it. Some of the old philosophers like Leigh, he has got some excellent and interesting stuff, if you are prepared to dust off the covers and get the books and read them.

 

What is your favorite quote of spiritual philosophy at this moment?

I was quite fascinated by the quotation which it carries at the back of the little book by Barry Oates. I think it is something we all ought to bear in mind because it says a lot in a few short words:

 

“Let there be Peace on Earth
and let it begin with me”

 

We all know the song or the anthem if you like from which it comes, but the intent is quite fascinating. We recognize  there is not peace, therefore we are asking for peace. We are only concerned about the Earth and he is not talking about human beings, but he is talking about the Earth, so its includes all the animal Kingdom. So that is your target and then you say ‘and let it begin with me’. Well, it comes back to clause 5 in the agreement with God, Personal Responsibility, and so you cannot get away from it. Peace in the Brotherhood of Man, Peace is what the spirit world wants, Peace is what the spirit world is communicating what idc you like that which is God is trying to put out is Peace. If you listen to all there near-death experiences when they meet which is of God they say, what they all come back with is Love. This overwhelming feeling of Love.

So we have our First Principle and our Second Principle, our Third Principle and our Fourth Principle, our Fifth P{principle and if you like  the fact that we are not at peace is a consequence of the Sixth and the Seventh Principle. So it is all wrapped up in one simple statement:

 

“Let there be Peace on Earth 

And let it begin with me”

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