The New Revelation

The bestselling author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries delves into the roots of his Spiritualist beliefs.

After finishing his medical education in 1882, Arthur Conan Doyle considered himself a staunch materialist in regards to our personal destiny. But his subsequent research into Spiritualism led to his amazement that a great number of people—whose names were foremost in science—believed that the spirit was independent of the body and could survive it. Then, as the New York Times describes, “The deaths of his oldest son, Kingsley (in 1918), his brother (the following year) and two nephews (shortly after the war) led him to embrace Spiritualism with all his heart, convinced it was a ‘New Revelation’ delivered by God to console the bereaved.”

This treatise is a summation of Doyle’s research and views, from his first forays into Spiritualism through mediums, seances, and his membership in the Psychical Research Society. He explores communication through automatic writing dictated by the dead, trance utterances, and direct voices. Also included are chapters on what has been proven to happen after death and the underpinnings of psychic law in Christianity. Doyle concludes with the assertion that divine sources have given to us a new revelation which alters the whole aspect of death and the fate of humanity. And it is not a revelation to be ignored.