Theosophical Society,
Wrexham,
Volunteers form up at the Police Station
Theosophy and the Great
War
Spiritualism and Theosophy
SCIENTIFICALLY
EXAMINED AND CAREFULLY DESCRIBED
BY
C. W.
LEADBEATER
The
slaughter of World War 1 (1914 -18) lead to an upsurge in interest in Spritualism and the Occult in general which lasted through
the 1920s. This piece written in 1928 cites many of examples of communication
between soldiers killed in the War and their loved ones.
Chapter I
SPIRITUALISTIC PHENOMENA
A quarter of a century ago I wrote a book called The Other Side of Death,
in which I described the condition of the next world, quoting many illustrative
stories. This book has been out of print for some years, so I have just issued
a new edition, much enlarged and brought up to date. Some of its chapters deal
with spiritualism; in them I recount many of my own experiences, and offer my
readers such explanation of the phenomena as has been suggested to me by my
forty-five years' study of Theosophy. I am now publishing these chapters
separately as a smaller book, hoping that it may be of interest to my
spiritualistic brethren, and may perhaps even help a little towards bringing
about a better understanding between the two camps of Theosophists and
Spiritualists, who have so much in common that they surely ought to co-operate
and never to waste their time in disputation.
THE PHENOMENA NATURAL
The investigation of the phenomena which take place at
spiritualistic seances is one of the lines along
which information with regard to man's survival after death might have been obtained.
Just as many of the facts so clearly stated for us by Theosophy might have been
deduced from careful observation and comparison of the records of apparitions,
so also many of them might have been inferred from equally careful examination
and comparison of the accounts given in spiritualistic literature. They were
not so inferred, however, except by the spiritualists themselves, and not
usually clearly expressed as a coherent system even by them. But just as, now
that we know the facts from Theosophical sources, we can see how all the
various types of apparitions fall into place and are explained by them, so we
may also see how spiritualistic manifestations can be classified and
comprehended by means of the same knowledge.
It has always seemed to me that our spiritualistic friends ought to
welcome the Theosophical system, for much of the difficulty which they find in
obtaining acceptance for their phenomena arises from the belief that their
claims are in opposition to science, and not in harmony with any reasonable
scheme. This idea is an entirely mistaken one, yet spiritualism does little to
dispel it; it continues (quite rightly) to insist upon its facts, but does not
usually attempt to harmonize them with science. There is, it seems to me, rather
a tendency to cry: "How marvellous! how wonderful! how beautiful!"
and to be lost in admiration and awe, instead of realizing how entirely
natural it all is, and more beautiful because it is so natural. For all that is
really natural is beautiful; it is only we, reduced to pessimism by our own
corruption of and interference with Nature's methods, who fall back in doubt,
and say hesitatingly that certain things are too good, too beautiful to be
true - not yet understanding that it is precisely because a thing is good and
beautiful that it must also be true, and that a far more accurate expression
would be: "It is too good not to be true". For God is Truth, and He
is good.
How theosophy explains them
The Theosophical explanation as to the planes of nature, and the
existence of many varieties of more finely subdivided matter, with their
appropriate forces playing through them, at once opens the way to a
comprehension of many of the phenomena of the seance-room.
When we further come to understand the possession by man of vehicles
corresponding to each of these planes, in each of which he has new and extended
powers, much that was before difficult becomes clear as noonday. I have written
fully of these capacities in my little book on Clairvoyance, so I need not
repeat that account here. It will be sufficient to remark that when we grasp
their nature we see at once how it is possible for the dead man, if he is so
disposed, to find a passage in a closed book, to read a letter inside a locked
box, to see and report what is happening at any distance, or to read the
thoughts of any person, present or absent.
All that the dead man does along any of these lines can be done
with equal facility by the living man who has developed his latent powers of
astral vision, and we thus realize that for a man residing in and functioning
through an astral body, these actions which to us appear phenomenal and
marvellous must bear a different aspect, for to him they are simply his
ordinary everyday methods of procedure. The man who has not studied such
matters is unused to these manifestations, and cannot comprehend how they are
produced; he feels toward them just as a savage might towards our use of the
electric light or the telephone. But the intelligent and cultured man is familiar
to some extent with the mechanism in each of these cases, and so he regards the
results obtained no longer as magical, but as natural; he looks upon the matter
in an entirely different light.
A classification
By the light of Theosophical knowledge of the astral plane and its
possibilities, then, we may proceed to attempt some sort of classification of
the phenomena of the seance-room. Perhaps we shall
find it easiest to arrange them according to the powers employed in their
production, and in this way they fall readily into five divisions:
Those which involve simply the use of the medium's body -
trance-speaking, automatic writing, drawing or painting, and personation; and sometimes the working of the planchette.
Those which are dependent upon the possession of the ordinary
astral sight, such as the finding of a passage in a closed book, the reading of
writing enclosed within a locked box, the answering of mental questions, or the
finding of something or some person that is missing.
Those which involve partial materialization - usually not carried
to the point of visibility. Under this head would come raps, the tilting or
turning of tables, the moving and floating of objects, slate-writing, or any
kind of writing or drawing done directly by the hand of the dead man, and not
through the agency of the medium; the touches by the hand of the dead, or the
sound of their voices - "the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a
voice that is still," for which the poet yearned. Almost all of the minor
activities of the seance come in under this head, for
to it we must assign the playing of various musical instruments, the winding up
and floating about of the musical box, and even the cold wind which is so
constant a phenomenon in the earlier stages of the sittings. Probably the
working of the planchette or the message-board called
the "ouija" usually comes under this
category.
Those miscellaneous activities which demand a somewhat greater
knowledge of the laws of astral physics, such as the precipitation of writing
or of a picture, the intentional production of the various kinds of lights, the
duplication of objects, their apport from a distance
or their production in a closed room, the passage of matter through matter, or
the handling or the production of fire.
Visible materialization.
I propose to take up each of these classes, and endeavour
to illustrate and explain them as far as I can, drawing examples sometimes from
recognized books upon the subject, and sometimes from my own experience. I
spent much time during a good many years in patient investigation of
spiritualism, and there is scarcely a phenomenon of any sort of which I read in
the books which I have not repeatedly seen under test conditions, so that this
is a subject upon which I feel myself able to speak with a certain amount of
confidence. It may perhaps be useful for me, as an introduction to our detailed
consideration of the subject, to describe how I came to make my first feeble
experiments along this line.
Chapter II
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
the silk hat experiment
The first time that, so far as I can recollect, I ever heard
spiritualism mentioned was in connection with the seances
held by Mr. D. D. Home with the Emperor Napoleon III. The statements made with
reference to those seemed to me at that time quite incredible, and when reading
the account of them aloud to my mother one evening I expressed strong doubts as
to whether the description could possibly be accurate. The article ended, however,
with the remark that anyone who felt unable to credit the story might readily
convince himself of its possibility by bringing together a few of his friends,
and inducing them to sit quietly round a small table either in darkness or in
dim light, with the palms of their hands resting lightly upon the surface of
the table. It was stated that a still easier plan was to place an ordinary silk
hat upon the table brim upwards, and let two or three people rest their hands
lightly upon the brim. It was asserted that the hat or table would presently
begin to turn, and in this way the existence of a force not under the control
of any one present would be demonstrated.
This sounded fairly simple, and my mother suggested that, as it was
just growing dusk and the time seemed appropriate, we should make the experiment
forthwith. Accordingly I took a small round table with a central leg, the
normal vocation of which was to support a flower-pot containing a great arum
lily. I brought in my own silk hat from the stand in the hall and placed it on
the table, and we put our hands upon its brim as prescribed. The only person
present besides my mother and myself was a small boy of twelve, who, as we
afterwards discovered, was a powerful physical medium; but I knew nothing about
mediums then. I do not think that any of us expected any result whatever, and I
know that I was immensely surprised when the hat gave a gentle but decided
half-turn on the polished surface of the table.
Each of us thought the other must have moved it unconsciously, but
it soon settled that question for us, for it twirled and gyrated so vigorously
that it was difficult for us to keep our hands upon it. At my suggestion we
raised our hands; the hat came up under them, as though attached to them, and
remained suspended a couple of inches from the table for a few moments before
falling back upon it. This new development astonished me still more, and I endeavoured to obtain the same result again. For a few minutes
the hat declined to respond, but when at last it did come up as before, it
brought the table with it! Here was my own familiar silk bat, which I had never
before suspected of any occult qualities, suspending itself mysteriously in air
from the tips of our fingers, and, not content with that defiance of the laws
of gravity on its own account, attaching a table to its crown and lifting that
also! I looked down to the feet of the table; they were about six inches from
the carpet, and no human foot was touching them or near them! I passed my own
foot underneath, but there was certainly nothing there - nothing physically perceptible,
at any rate.
Of course when the hat first moved it had crossed my mind that the
small boy must somehow be playing a trick upon us; but in the first place he
obviously was not doing so, and in the second he could not possibly have
produced this result unobserved. After about two minutes the table dropped
away from the hat, and almost immediately the latter fell back to its companion,
but the experiment was repeated several times at intervals of a few minutes.
Then the table began to rock violently, and threw the hat off - a plain hint
to us, if any of us had known enough to take it. But none of us had any idea of
what to do next, though we were keenly interested in these extraordinary
movements. I was not myself thinking of the phenomenon in the least as a
manifestation from the dead, but only as the discovery of some strange new
force.
I spoke of these curious
occurrences next day to some friends, and found one among them who had once or
twice seen something of the sort, and was familiar with the rudiments of
spiritualistic procedure. I promptly invited him to join us on the following
evening, and to assist in our experiments. The same phenomena were reproduced,
but this time, by our friend's aid, we asked questions and found that the table
would tilt intelligently in response to them. The communicating entity, however,
could not have been a man of any great knowledge, for nothing of any
importance was said, either then or afterwards, and the manifestations were
always rather of the nature of horse-play. Their most remarkable feature was
the enormous physical strength displayed on several occasions. Heavy furniture
was frequently dashed violently about, and sometimes considerably damaged, yet
none of us was really hurt. Once, later on, an especially sceptical
friend had the end of a heavy brass fender dropped upon his foot, but I think
he distinctly brought it upon himself by his impolite remarks!
violent demonstrations
The silk hat was ruined at
the second seance, so thereafter we placed our hands
directly upon the table - or at least we commenced by doing so, for after a few
minutes it was usually waltzing about so wildly that we could only occasionally
touch it. At the third sitting (if that term be not a misnomer as applied to an
evening spent mainly in jumping about to avoid the charges of various articles
of furniture) our little table suffered considerably. During a moment of
comparative rest, when we were able to keep our hands on it, we beard a curious
whirring sound underneath it, and some small object fell to the floor. Picking
it up we found it to be a screw, and wondered where the "spirits" had
obtained such a thing, and why they had brought it. Twice more the same whirring
sound was heard, and two more screws were presented to us, but even yet we did
not realize what was being done.
Suddenly we were startled
by what I can only describe as an exceedingly heavy kick on the under side of
the table, which dashed it upwards against our hands and all but threw us over.
The effect precisely resembled that of a vigorous kick from a heavy boot, and
it was repeated three or four times in rapid succession until the top of the
table was broken away from the leg. The leg waltzed off by itself, while the
top fell to the floor, but by no means to lie quiet there. If a coin be set
spinning with the thumb and fingers upon a smooth surface it displays a
peculiar wobbling rotation just as it is in the act of settling down to rest.
That was exactly the motion of this table upon the floor, and two strong men,
kneeling upon it, and exerting all their force to hold it down, were unable to
do so, but were thrown off apparently with the utmost ease.
As we were holding it as
nearly down upon the carpet as we could, the same prodigious kicks came
underneath it as before, so that whoever kicked could evidently do so through
the carpet and the floor of the room without the slightest hindrance. It was
only after the performance was over, and we came to examine our table, that we
understood what had happened. The entity who was playing with us had apparently
wished to separate the top of the table from the lower part, and had somehow
contrived to extract three of the screws as though with a screw-driver; but the
fourth had been rusted in and could not be removed-hence apparently the kicks
which broke it out and accomplished the separation.
This exhibition of
prodigious strength at a seance is by no means
unusual. In describing one which took place on
"Then - probably
intensified by the darkness - commenced a demonstration exhibiting more
physical force than I had ever before witnessed. I do not believe that the
strongest man living could, without a handle fixed to pull by, have jerked the
table with anything like the violence with which it was now, as it seemed,
driven from side to side. We all felt it to be a power, a single stroke from
which would have killed any one of us on the spot." (The Debatable Land,
p. .)
evidence of unknown power
These phenomena, which
thus came so unexpectedly into my life, would no doubt have been despised as
frivolous by the veteran spiritualist, but to me they were exceedingly
interesting. They took place in my own house, they were entirely unconnected
with any professional medium, and they were incontrovertibly free from any
suspicion of trickery. Consequently here were certain indubitable facts,
absolutely new to me, and needing investigation. I had no knowledge then that
there was a considerable literature upon the subject, and I was not expecting
from this study any proof of the life after death. So far, I had had evidence
only of the existence of some unseen intelligence, capable of wielding enormous
power of a kind quite different from any recognized by science. But it was
precisely that power which interested me, and I was anxious to discover whether
there was any method by which it could be utilized for the general benefit.
We never advanced much
further in these home investigations. My mother feared the destruction of her
furniture, and in deference to her objections we simply suspended operations
when the forces became too boisterous, resuming our sitting only when things
quieted down. We had no raps, and no direct voices; any communications which
came were always given by the tilting or rising of the table. The entity
concerned seemed willing enough to give tests along its own peculiar lines. For
example, it occurred to us one evening to ask whether the table could rise in
the air without our hands resting upon it; it promptly responded that it could
and would, so we all drew back hastily, and watched that table rise till its
feet were about a yard from the ground, while it was entirely out of the reach
of every member of the party. It remained suspended for perhaps a minute or
rather more, and then sank gently to the carpet.
lights
Lights of various kinds
frequently appeared, but usually they gave us the impression not so much of
being intentionally shown as of manifesting incidentally in the course of
other phenomena. They were of three varieties: (a) little sparkling lights like
those of fireflies, which used to play over and about our hands, while they
rested on the table; (b) large pale luminous bodies, several inches in diameter
and often crescent-shaped; (c) a vivid flash resembling lightning, which on one
occasion crossed the room and struck and overthrew a large plant in a pot,
leaving upon it distinct marks of scorching, much as I suppose lightning might
have done. The first and third varieties gave us the impression of being
electrical, while the second appeared to be rather phosphorescent in nature.
Nothing occurred that we could definitely call materialization, though dark
bodies of some sort occasionally passed between us. These phenomena usually
took place by firelight, though on one occasion we obtained a few much modified
manifestations in full daylight. The room appeared to become charged with some
kind of force, as though with electricity; for at least an hour after the seance was closed the furniture continued to creak
mysteriously, and the table on several occasions moved out two or three feet
from its corner after its flowerpot had been replaced upon it.
The messages were quite a
subordinate feature, and it seemed difficult for the entity, whatever it may
have been, to curb its exuberant spirits long enough to go through the tedious
process of spelling out a message by tilts. We made many attempts to obtain
definite information in this way, but met with no success. It always gave us
the impression of being in a condition of wild rollicking enjoyment, too much
excited to be patient or coherent. Frequently the table would dance vigorously
and untiringly, keeping time with any music that we played or sang. Its
favorite tune appeared to be the well-known spiritualistic hymn, "Shall we
gather at the river?" and if at any time the power seemed deficient or the
manifestations lethargic, we had only to sing that air to rouse it at once into
a condition of the wildest enthusiasm and agility. Sometimes it was decidedly
mischievous, and when it could be induced to deliver a message it was by no
means always consistent or truthful. It appeared to be capable of annoyance;
certainly on one occasion when I denounced one of its statements as false, the
table leaped straight at me, and would apparently have struck me severely in the
face, if I had not caught it on its way. Even so, as I held it in the air, it
made violent efforts to get at me, and had to be dragged away forcibly by my
friends, just as though it had been an infuriated animal. But in a few moments
its strength or its passion seemed to give out, and it was harmless once more.
Prominent in my memory is
one occasion on which the forces engaged in these demonstrations actually drove
us out of the room. From the beginning of the seance
the control of the proceedings was taken entirely out of our hands. Chairs
rushed about like living creatures, a heavy sofa swung out from its place by
the wall into the middle of the floor, and a tall piano, of the obsolete type
which used to be called an upright grand, leaned over me at a dangerous angle.
Trying to save it from a heavy fall, I braced myself against it and called one
of my friends to assist me. He struck a match and lit a candle, which he placed
on a table, hoping that the light would check the manifestations. The table, however,
gave a kind of leap which threw the candle on to the floor and extinguished it,
and at once pandemonium reigned all round us, heavy articles of furniture
crashing together.
It was manifest that our
lives were in danger, so, holding back the piano with all my strength, I
shouted to my friend to open the door. After frenzied efforts he succeeded in
tearing it open, I sprang back from the toppling piano, and we all fled
ignominiously into the hall. The door banged behind us, and for a minute or more
the crashes inside continued; then silence ensued. After five minutes or so we
opened the door and entered with lights, and found all the massive furniture
piled in a vast heap in the middle of the room - some of it badly broken, of
course; and yet on the whole there was far less damage than one would have
expected from the tremendous noise made. After this demonstration my mother
banished us and our experiments to an outhouse!
professional mediums
Stimulated by these
experiences, I began to make further enquiries, and soon found that there were
books and periodicals devoted to this subject, and that I might carry my
investigations much further by coming into connection with regular mediums. I
attended a large number of public seances, and saw many
interesting things at them, but the most remarkable and satisfactory results, I
soon found, were obtainable only when the circles were small and harmonious. I
therefore frequently had private seances, and often
invited mediums to my own house, where I could be perfectly certain that there
existed no machinery by means of which trickery could be practiced. In this way
I soon acquired a good deal of experience, and was able to satisfy myself
beyond all doubt that some at least of the manifestations were due to the
action of those whom we call the dead.
I found mediums of all
sorts, good, bad and indifferent. There were some who were earnest and
enthusiastic, and honestly anxious to aid the enquirer to understand the
phenomena. Others were incredibly ignorant and illiterate, though probably
honest enough; others again impressed me as sanctimonious, oleaginous and
untrustworthy. A little experience, however, soon taught me upon whom I could
depend, and I restricted my experiments accordingly. I pursued them for a good
many years, and during that time saw many strange things - many which would
probably be deemed incredible by those unfamiliar with these studies, if I
should endeavour to describe them. Such of them as
aptly illustrate our various classes I may perhaps cite as we go on; but to
give the whole of those experiences would need a much larger book than this.
Let us turn now to our
classification.
Chapter III
UTILIZATION OF THE MEDIUM'S
BODY
what mediumship
is
It seems obvious that the
easiest course for a dead man who wishes to communicate with the physical plane
is to utilize a physical body, if he is able to find one which it is within his
power to manage. This method does not involve the learning of unfamiliar and
difficult processes, as materialization does; he simply enters into the body
provided for him and uses it precisely as he was in the habit of using his own.
One of the characteristics of a medium is that his principles are readily
separable, arid therefore he is able and usually willing thus to yield up his
body for the temporary use of another when required. Such resignation of his
vehicle may be either partial or total; that is to say, the medium may retain
his consciousness as usual, and yet permit his hand to be employed by another
for the purposes of automatic writing; or in some cases his vocal organs may
also be thus employed by another while he is still in possession of his body,
and understands fully what is being said. On the other hand he may retire from
his body just as he would do in deep sleep, allowing the dead man to enter and
make the fullest possible use of the deserted tenement. In this latter case the
medium himself is quite unconscious of all that is said or done; or at least,
if he is able to observe to some extent by means of his astral senses, he does
not usually retain any recollection of it when he resumes control of his
physical brain.
trance-speaking
A certain type of
spiritualism - one which has a large number of adherents - is almost entirely
occupied with this phase of mediumship. There are
many groups to whom spiritualism is a religion, and they attend a Sunday
evening meeting and listen to a trance-address just as people of other
denominations go to church and hear a sermon. Nor does the average
trance-address in any way differ from the average sermon in intellectual
ability; its tone is commonly vaguer, though somewhat more charitable; but its
exhortations follow the same general lines. Broadly speaking, there is never
anything new in either of them, and they both continue to offer us the advice
which our copy-book headings used to give us at school - "Be good and you
will be happy," "Evil communications corrupt good manners," and
so on. But the reason that these maxims are eternally repeated is simply that
they are eternally true; and if people who pay no attention to them when they
find them in a copy-book will believe them and act upon them when they are
spoken by a dead man or rapped out through a table, then it is emphatically
well that they should have their pabulum in the form in which they can
assimilate it.
Trance-speaking of the
ordinary type is naturally less convincing as a phenomenon than many others,
for it is undeniable that a slight acquaintance with the histrionic art would
enable a person of average intelligence to simulate the trance-condition and
deliver a mediocre sermon. I have heard some cases in which the change of voice
and manner was so entire as to be of itself convincing; I have seen cases where
speech in a language unknown to the medium, or reference to matters entirely
outside his knowledge, assured one of the genuineness of the phenomenon. But on
the other hand I have heard many a trance address in which all the vulgarities,
the solecisms in grammar and the hideous mispronunciations of an illiterate
medium were so closely reproduced that it was difficult indeed to believe that
the man was not shamming. Such cases as this last have no evidential value, yet
even in them I have learnt that it is well to be charitable, and to allow the
medium as far as possible the benefit of the doubt; for I know, first, that a
medium attracts round him dead men of his own type, not differing much from his
level of advancement or culture; and secondly, that any communication which
comes through a medium is inevitably coloured to a
large extent by that medium's personality, and might easily be expressed in his
style and by means of such language as he would normally use.
automatic writing
The same remarks apply in
the case of automatic writing. Sometimes the dead man controls the medium's
organism sufficiently to write clearly, characteristically, unmistakably; but
more often the handwriting is a compromise between his own and that of the medium,
and frequently it degenerates into an almost illegible scrawl. Here again I
have seen cases which carried their own proof on the face of them, either by
the language in which they were written or by internal evidence. Sometimes also
curious tricks are attempted which make any theory of fraud exceedingly
improbable. For example, I have seen a whole page of writing dashed off in a
few minutes, but written backward, so that one had to hold it before a mirror
in order to be able to read it. In another case, before a sitting with Mrs. Jencken (better known by her maiden-name of Kate Fox, as
the little girl who first discovered in
that raps would answer questions intelligently, and so founded modern
spiritualism), her little baby-in-arms, perhaps twelve months old, took a
pencil in its tiny hand and wrote - wrote firmly and rapidly a message
purporting to come from a dead man. What intelligence guided that baby hand I
am not prepared to say, but it certainly could not have been that of its
legitimate owner, and it was equally certainly not that of its mother, for she
held the child away from her while it wrote.
the private archangel
Frequently people who are
not mediums in any other sense of the word appear to be open to influence along
this line. A large number of persons are in the habit of receiving private
communications written through their own hands; and the vast majority of them
attach quite undue importance to them. Again and again I have been assured by
worthy ladies that the whole Theosophical teaching contained nothing new for
them, since it had all been previously revealed to them by their own special
private teacher, who was of course a person of entirely superhuman glory,
knowledge and power - an Archangel at least! When I come to investigate I
usually find the Archangel to be some worthy departed gentleman who has either
been taught, or has discovered for himself, some portion of the facts with
regard to astral life and evolution, and is deeply impressed with the idea that
if he can only make this known to the world at large it will necessarily effect
a radical change and reform in the entire life of humanity. So he seeks and
finds some impressible lady, and urges upon her the conviction that she is a
chosen vessel for the regeneration of mankind, that she has a mighty work to do
to which her life must be devoted, that future ages will bless her name, and so
on.
In all this the worthy
gentleman is usually quite serious; he has now realized a few of the elementary
facts of life, and he cannot but feel what a difference it would have made in
his conduct and his attitude if he had realized them while still on the
physical plane. He rightly concludes that if he could induce the whole world
really to believe this, a great change would ensue; but he forgets that
practically all that he has to say has been taught in the world for thousands
of years, and that while he was in earth-life he paid no more attention to it
than others are now likely to pay to his lucubrations.
It is the old story over again: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead".
Of course a little common
sense and a little acquaintance with the literature of this subject would save
these worthy ladies from their delusion of a mission from on high; but
self-conceit is subtle and deeply-rooted, and the idea of being specially
chosen out of all the world for a divine inspiration is, I suppose, pleasurable
to a certain type of people. Usually the communications are infinitely far from
"containing all the Theosophical teaching"; they contain perhaps a
few fragments of it, or more often a few nebulous generalizations tending somewhat
in the Theosophical direction.
Occasionally also the
instructor is a living man in the astral body - usually an Oriental; and in
that case it is perfectly natural that his information should have a
Theosophical flavour. It must be recollected that
Theosophy is in no sense new, but is the oldest teaching in the world, and that
the broad outlines of its system are perfectly well known everywhere outside of
the limits of the extraordinary cloud of ignorance on philosophical subjects
which Christianity appears to bring in its train. It is therefore small wonder
that any glimpse of a wider and more sensible theory should seem to have
something of Theosophy about it; but naturally it will rarely be found to have
either the precision or the fullness of the scheme as given to us by the
Masters of Wisdom through Their pupil Madame Blavatsky.
It appears to make the
process of writing through the hand of the medium even easier for the dead man
when that hand is rested upon the little board called planchette.
This form of manifestation, however, does not always belong to our present
category. Sometimes it seems that the hand of the medium moves the planchette, though it is not by his intelligence that it is
directed, for it often writes in languages or about matters of which he is
ignorant. But on other occasions it appears to move rather under his hand than
with it, suggesting that it is charged with the vital force from his hand,
just as the hat or the table was in the experiments previously described. In
that case the movement of the board would probably be directed by another
partially materialized hand, and so the phenomenon would belong to our third
class.
drawing or painting
The phenomenon of
automatic drawing or painting is of exactly the same nature as that of writing,
though it is not nearly so common, because the art of drawing is much less
widely diffused than is that of writing. Still it sometimes happens that a dead
man has a talent for rapid drawing, and can quickly produce a pretty little
landscape or a passable portrait through the hand of a readily-impressible
medium. There are certain mediums who make a speciality
of this obtaining of portraits of the dead, and they apparently find that it
pays them exceedingly well. I have myself seen passable work produced in this
way, though not equal to that done directly by the hand of the dead man, or by
precipitation. There are also cases in which such portraits are drawn by a
living person who is himself clairvoyant; but that is obviously not an example
of mediumship at all, and so does not come into our
present category.
It must be remembered that
for the production of a portrait of a dead person by any of these methods it is
not in the least necessary that he should be present, though of course he may
be. But when surviving friends come to a seance
expecting and earnestly hoping for a portrait of some dead man, their thought
of him, so strongly tinged with desire, makes an effective image of him in
astral matter, and this is naturally clearly visible to any other dead man, so
that the portrait can be drawn quite easily from it. It is, however, also true
that this same strong thought about the dead man is certain to attract his
attention, and he is therefore likely to come and see what is being done. So it
is always possible that he may be present, but the portrait is not proof of it.
personation
I am employing this term
in a technical sense which is well known to those who have studied these
phenomena. I am aware that it has also been employed to describe those cases in
which a dishonest medium has presented himself before his audience as a
"spirit-form", but I am dealing with occurrences of a type quite
different from that. All who have seen good examples of trance-speaking will
have noticed how the entire expression of the medium's face changes, and how
he adopts all kinds of little tricks of manner and speech, which are really
those of the man who is speaking through his organism.
There are instances in
which this process of change and adaptation goes much further than this - in
which a distinct temporary alteration actually takes place in the features of
the medium. Sometimes this change is only apparent and not real, the fact
being that the earnest effort of the ensouling
personality to express himself through the medium acts mesmerically
upon his friend, and deludes him into thinking that he really sees the features
of the dead man before him. When that is so the phenomenon is of course purely
subjective, and a photograph taken of the medium at that moment would show his
face just as it always is.
Sometimes, however, the
change is real and can be shown to be so by means of the camera. When this is
so, there are still two methods by which the effect may be produced. I have
seen at least one case of apparent change of feature in which what really took
place may best be described as the partial materialization of a mask; that is
to say, such parts of the medium's face as corresponded fairly well with that
to be represented were left untouched, whereas other parts which were entirely
unsuitable were covered with a thin mask of materialized matter which made
them up into an almost perfect imitation, though slightly larger than the
original. But I have also seen other cases in which the face to be represented
was much smaller than that of the medium, and the exact imitation secured
undoubtedly involved an alteration in the form of the medium's features. This
will naturally seem an absolute impossibility to one who has not made a special
study of these things, for the majority of us little recognize the extreme fluidity
and impermanence of the physical body, and have no conception how readily it
may be modified under certain conditions.
impressibility of the
physical body
There is plenty of
evidence to show this, though the circumstances which call into operation
forces capable of producing such a result are fortunately rare. In Isis
Unveiled, vol. i, p. , Madame Blavatsky gives us a
series of ghastly examples of the way in which the thought or feeling of a
mother can change the physical body of her unborn child. Cornelius Gemma tells of a child that was born with his forehead
wounded and running with blood, the result of his father's threats towards his
mother with a drawn sword which he directed towards her forehead. In Van Helmont's De Injectis Materialibus it is reported that the wife of a tailor at Mechlin saw a soldier's hand cut off in a quarrel, which so
impressed her that her child was born with only one hand, the other arm
bleeding. The wife of a merchant of Antwerp, seeing a soldier who had just lost
his arm, brought forth a daughter with one arm struck off and bleeding. Another
woman witnessed the beheading of thirteen men by order of the Duc d'Alva. In her case also the
child, quite perfect in other respects, was born without a head and with bleeding
neck.
The whole question of the
appearance of stigmata on the human body, which seems so thoroughly well
authenticated, is only another instance of the influence of mind upon physical
matter; for just as the mind of the mother acts upon the foetus,
so do the minds of various saints, or of women like Catherine Emmerich, act upon their own organism. On p. of The Night Side of Nature we find another
rather horrible example of the action of violent emotion upon the physical
body.
A letter from Moscow,
addressed to Dr. Kerner in consequence of reading the
account of the Nun of Dulmen, relates a still more
extraordinary case. At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack having
pursued a Frenchman into a cul de sac, an alley
without an outlet, there ensued a terrible conflict
between them, in which the latter was severely wounded. A person who had taken
refuge in this close, and could not get away, was so dreadfully frightened that
when he reached home there broke out on his body the very same wounds that the
Cossack had inflicted on his enemy.
We shall have to refer to
this question when dealing with materializations; but in the meantime, and as
far as personation is concerned, I can myself testify
that it is possible for the physical features of a medium to be completely
changed for a time into the exact resemblance of those of the dead man who is
speaking through him. This phenomenon is not common, so far as I have seen or
heard, and we may presume that the reason for its rarity is that ordinary
materialization would probably be easier to produce. The personation,
however, took place in full daylight on each occasion when I witnessed it;
whereas materialization is usually performed by artificial light, and there
must not be too much even of that, for reasons which will be explained when we
come to deal with that side of the question.
using force thbough the medium
Speaking, writing and
drawing are by no means the only actions performed through the body of the
medium. Sometimes it is used for more extensive and even violent activities. M.
Flammarion records a striking case of the kind (After
Death, p. ) in which the "spirit" took possession of the medium in
order to attempt to revenge himself. The case first appeared in Luce e Ombra (
Today I can speak of it in
the general interest of metaphysical research, omitting, however, the name of
the person chiefly concerned.
Seance
held on April , . - The following were present: Dr. Guiseppe Venzano, Ernesto Bozzano, the Cavaliere Carlo Perefcti, Signore
X-, Signora Guidetta Peretti,
and the medium L. P. The seance was begun at
From the beginning we
noted that the medium was troubled, for some unknown reason. The spirit-guide
Luigi, the medium's father, did not manifest himself, and L. P. gazed with
terror toward the left corner of the room. Shortly afterward he freed himself
from his "spirit-controls", rose to his feet, and began a singularly
realistic and impressive struggle against some invisible enemy. Soon he uttered
cries of terror, drew back, threw himself to the floor, gazed toward the corner
as though terrified, then fled to the other corner of the room, shouting:
"Back! Go away. No, I don't want to. Help me! Save me!" Not knowing
what to do, the witnesses of these scenes concentrated their thoughts with
intensity upon Luigi, the spirit-guide, and called upon him to aid. The
expedient proved effective, for little by little the medium grew calmer, gazed
with less anxiety toward the corner of the apartment; then his eyes took on the
expression of someone who looks at a distant spectacle, then a spectacle still
more distant. At last he gave vent to a long sigh of relief and murmured:
"He's gone! What a bestial face!"
Soon afterwards, the
spirit-guide Luigi manifested himself. Expressing himself through the medium,
he told us that in the room in which the seance was
being held there was a spirit of the basest nature, against which it was
impossible for him to struggle; that the intruder bore an implacable hatred for
one of the persons of the group. Then the medium exclaimed in a frightened
voice: "There he is again! I can't defend you any longer. Stop the
..."
It is certain that Luigi
wished to say, "stop the seance", but it
was already too late. The evil spirit had taken possession of our medium. He
shouted; his eyes shot glances of fury; his hands, lifted as though to seize
something, moved like the claws of a wild beast, eager to clutch his prey. And
the prey was Signore X-, at whom the medium's furious looks were cast. A
rattling and a sort of concentrated roaring issued from our medium's
foam-covered lips, and suddenly these words burst from him: "I've found
you again at last, you coward! I was a Royal Marine. Don't you remember the
quarrel in
These distracted words
were uttered as the hands of the medium, L. P., seized the victim's throat, and
tightened on it like steel pincers. It was a fearful sight. The whole of Signore
X-'s tongue hung from his wide-open mouth, his eyes bulged. We had gone to the
unfortunate man's assistance. Uniting our efforts with all the energy which
this desperate situation lent us, we succeeded, after a terrible hand-to-hand
struggle, in freeing him from the desperate grip. At once we pulled him away,
and thrust him outside, locking the door. We barred the medium's access to the
door; exasperated, he tried to break through this barrier and run after his
enemy. He roared like a tiger. It took all four of us to hold him. At last, he
suffered a total collapse and sank down upon the floor.
On the following day we
prepared to clear up this affair - to seek information which might enable us to
confirm what "the
The words uttered by the
furious spirit served me as a means for arriving at the truth. He had said,
"I was a Royal Marine". And I knew vaguely that Signore X- had,
himself, in his youth, been an officer of marines; that he had witnessed the
battle of Lissa, and that after resigning his
commission he had devoted himself to commercial enterprises. With these facts
as a basis, I proceeded to ask a retired vice-admiral for other details; he,
too, had fought at Lissa. As for Dr. Venzano, he questioned a relative of Signore X-, with whom
the latter had broken off all relations years before. Between us we gathered
separate bits of information which tallied amazingly, and which, brought
together, led us to these conclusions:
Signore X- had indeed
served with the Royal Marines. One day, being upon a battle-ship on a training
cruise, he had landed for some hours at
Those are the facts; it
follows from them that the disturbing spirit had not lied. He had exactly
stated his rank as a Royal Italian Marine. He had remembered that Signore X-
had killed him. He had, moreover - and this was a particularly remarkable
statement-indicated the place where he had died, the setting for the drama,
A painstaking enquiry
confirmed the authenticity of all this. By what hypothesis could one explain occurrences
so strikingly in agreement - those which were revealed to us at the seance of April , , and those
which had taken place in
Chapter IV
CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPIRITUALISM
clairvoyant faculties
Many of the phenomena
commonly displayed at a spiritualistic gathering are simply the manifestation
of the ordinary powers and faculties natural to the astral plane, such as are
possessed by every dead man. I have already explained in my little work on
Clairvoyance what these powers are, and any one who will take the trouble to
read that will see how clearly the possession of such senses accounts for the
faculty so often exhibited by the dead of reading a closed book or a sealed
letter, or describing the contents of a locked box. I have had repeated
evidence through many different mediums of the possession of this power;
sometimes the knowledge obtained by its means was given out through the
medium's body in trance-speaking, and at other times it was expressed directly by
the dead man, either in his own voice or by slate-writing.
These astral faculties
sometimes include a certain amount of prevision, though this is possessed in
varying degrees; and they also frequently give the power of psychometry
and of looking back to some extent into events of the past. The way in which
this is sometimes done is shown in the following story, given to us by Dr.
Lee, in his Glimpses of the Supernatural, vol. ii, p. .
the missing papers
A commercial firm at
The clerk went to the
bank, directed the cashier where to look for the money, and it was found; the
cashier afterwards remembering that in the hurry of business he had there
deposited it. A relation of mine saw this story in a newspaper at the time, and
wrote to the firm in question, the name of which was given, asking whether the
facts were as stated. He was told in reply that they were. The gentleman who
was applied to, having corrected one or two unimportant details in the above
narration, wrote on November , : "Your account is correct. I have the
answer of the firm to my enquiry at home now."
The description given does
not make it absolutely clear whether this was a case of clairvoyance on the
part of the medium, or of the use of ordinary faculty by a dead man; but since
the medium passed into a trance-condition the latter supposition seems the more
probable. The dead man could easily gather from the clerk's mind the earlier
part of his story, and thus put himself en rapport with the scene; and then by
following it to its close he was able to supply the information required. Here
is the authenticated record of another good example of such a case, in which
the power of thought-reading is much more prominently exhibited, since all the
questions were mental. It is extracted from the Report on Spiritualism, published
by Longman,
A lost will
A friend of mine was very anxious
to find the will of his grandmother, who had been dead forty years, but could
not even find the certificate of her death. I went with him to the Marshalls', and we had a seance;
we sat at a table, and soon the raps came; my friend then asked his questions
mentally; he went over the alphabet himself, or sometimes I did so, not knowing
the question. We were told (that) the will had been drawn by a man named
William Walter, who lived at Whitechapel; the name of
the street and the number of the house were given. We went to Whitechapel, found the man, and subsequently, through his
aid, obtained a copy of the draft; he was quite unknown to us, and had not
always lived in that locality, for he had once seen better days. The medium
could not possibly have known anything about the matter, and even if she had,
her knowledge would have been of no avail, as all the questions were mental.
As I have already said,
the faculty of clairvoyance is often possessed by living persons, as well as by
the dead. Even in this case, in which the information was communicated by means
of raps, it is still within the bounds of possibility that it may have been
acquired by the living and transmitted to the physical-plane consciousness by
this external means. There is an ever-increasing volume of testimony to the
fact of this clairvoyance; Dr. Geley has done
splendid service by giving much that is new and valuable in his recent work
Clairvoyance and Materialization. In his account of the clairvoyance of Mr. Ossowiecki, which includes many tests of his ability to
read sentences enclosed in sealed opaque envelopes, he tells us that this seer
has from time to time been able to discover articles which have been lost or
stolen. In contact with the loser he was able after brief concentration to say
where the object was lost, and sometimes also where it could be found.
the lost brooch
He gives the following
account of one such case which was sent to him by Mme Aline
de Glass, wife of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Poland. The account is also
attested by her brother, M. Arthur de Bondy:
warsaw,
wspolna,
July ,
Sir,
I have the honour to
inform you of an actual miracle that Mr. Ossowiecki
has worked here. I lost my brooch on Monday morning, June th.
In the afternoon of the same day I visited the wife of General Krieger, Mr. Ossowiecki's mother, with my brother, Mr. de Bondy, an engineer, who witnessed the event.
Mr. Ossowiecki came in, my brother
introduced me to his friend, and I said that I was delighted to make
acquaintance with one so gifted with occult powers. All
"I have lost my brooch today. Could you tell me anything about
it? But if you are tired or it is troublesome, do not put yourself out."
"On the contrary, madame, I will
tell you. The brooch is at your house in a box; it is a metal brooch, round,
with a stone in the middle. You wore it three days ago, and you value it."
"No," I said, "not that one." (He had given a
good description of a brooch kept in the same box with that which I had lost.)
Then he said:
"I am sorry not to have guessed right; I feel tired ... "
"Let us say no more about it."
"Oh no, madame, I will try to
concentrate. I should like to have some material thing that concerns the brooch
..."
"Sir, the brooch was fastened here, on this dress."
He placed his fingers on the place indicated, and after a few
seconds said: "Yes, I see it well. It is oval, of gold, very light, an
antique which is dear to you as a family souvenir; I could draw it, so clearly
do I see it. It has ears, as it were, and it is two parts interpenetrating,
like fingers clasped together . . ."
"What you say, sir, is most extraordinary. It could not be
better described. Miraculous."
He went on: "You lost it a long way from here." (This was
actually about two and a half miles.)
"Yes, in
"Yes," I said, "I went there today."
"Then," he said, "a poorly dressed man, with black
moustache, stoops down and picks it up. It will be very difficult to get it
back. Try an advertisement in the papers."
I was dazzled by the minute description, which left me no doubt
that he could see the ornament. I thanked him warmly for the rare pleasure of
meeting a real clairvoyant, and went home.
On the following evening my brother came to see me and exclaimed:
"What a miracle! Your brooch has been found. Mr. Ossowiecki telephones to me that you have only to go
tomorrow at about o'clock to Mme. Jacyna (Mr. Ossowiecki's sister),
and he will give it to you."
The next day, June th, I went with my
brother to the lady's house, where there was company. I asked to see Mr. Ossowiecki, and asked him: "Have you my brooch?"
I was much upset.
"Compose yourself, madame; we shall
see." And he handed me my brooch. It was a real miracle. I turned pale and
could not speak for a few minutes.
He told me the story very simply: "The day after our meeting I
went to the bank in the morning. In the vestibule I saw a man I remembered to
have met somewhere or other, and it struck me that this was the man whom I had
seen mentally to have picked up your brooch. I took his hand gently, and
said: 'Sir, yesterday you found a brooch
at the corner of Mokotowska and Koszykowa
Streets . . .' 'Yes,' he said, very much astonished. 'Where is it?' 'At home.
But how do you know?' I described the brooch and told him all that had taken
place. He turned pale and was much upset, like you, madame.
He brought me the brooch, saying that he had intended to advertise its finding.
That is the whole story."
I was much moved. I thanked Mr. Ossowiecki
warmly, not so much for the recovery of the brooch as for meeting such a
diviner, and having a small part in this miracle. Now this fine old brooch is
worn by me constantly and considered as a talisman. The incident has gone all
over
I am, Yours,
aline de glass,
née de Bondy
As an example of the test conditions under which Mr. Ossowiecki has done many readings, I may mention the case
of the letter which was written for the purpose by Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, which
we reproduce below from Clairvoyance and Materialization (p. ).
.
.
This letter was delivered to Dr. Geley,
who handed it unopened to the clairvoyant. His reading of this was not perfect,
but nevertheless striking and evidential. Dr. Geley
says:
"His description of the letter was, however, very precise: La
vie, la vie, la vie, . . . (three times). There are four or five lines, and
below them Sarah Bernhardt's signature, sloping upwards." That is correct,
but he might have seen her signature in some magazine article. He continued:
"La vie semble humble." He repeated
'humble' two or three times. "There is reference to humanity, but the word
'humanity' is not written. There is an idea conjoining life and humanity. Parcequ'il ? ? b??????? de haine.
Non, il n'y a pas 'haine'; il ? a seulement seulement . . . It is a
very difficult word of eight letters! There is an exclamation mark."
Then before opening the letter, which I had previously examined by
reflected, direct and transmitted light and found absolutely opaque, I wrote
down the following, which may be taken as Ossowiecki's
final answer: "La vie semble humble parcequ'il ? ? b??????? de haine,
(pas haine, mais un mot qui
n'est pas compris et qui est de huit lettres);
signature Sarah Bernhardt." The word éphémère
was not known to Ossowiecki, as he told us after the
letter had been opened. We asked several Poles who spoke French well if they
knew this word: they did not.
The fact that Mr. Ossowiecki does see the
actual form in some manner sometimes is confirmed by his vision on occasion of
drawings enclosed along with the letters. Judging by the third experiment of
September st, , at Prince Lubomirski's
(p. ), when the test letter contained four written items, and also the drawing
of a fish, the picture seemed to impress him more than the written portion of
the test, and he not only spoke about it, but said that he would draw it, which
he did, though he reversed the picture, putting the head on the left whereas in
the original it was on the right.
clairvoyant "readings"
This power of clairvoyance is also frequently displayed in a minor
way at the weekly meetings of which I have spoken. After the trance address is
over, the medium usually expresses her readiness to give descriptions, or
"readings", as they are often called, of the surroundings of various
members of the audience. Where the circle is a small one, something is said to
each of its members in turn; if there be a large number gathered together,
individuals are selected and called up for special attention.
I have heard striking fragments of private family history brought
out in this way - cases which bore every mark of genuineness; but in the
majority of such meetings as I have attended the descriptions were exceedingly
vague, and had a rather suspicious adaptability about them. The conversation
usually ran somewhat along these lines:
Medium (supposed to be entranced, but speaking with exactly her
normal contempt for aspirates and grammatical rules). "There's an old gent
with white 'air a-standin' be'ind
that lady in the corner."
Enthusiastic and Credulous Sitter.
"Lor! that must be my father!"
Medium. "Yes; he
smiles, he nods his 'ed, he's so pleased that you know him. I can see his white
beard regularly shaking, he's so glad."
Sitter. "Ain't it wonderful! But
father didn't have no beard before he passed over; p'raps
he's grown one since, or p'raps it's my uncle Jim; he
used to have a beard."
Medium. "Ah! yes, that's who it is; he nods his 'ed again, and
smiles; he wants to tell you 'ow 'appy
he is."
Sitter. "Well, now!
just to think of poor uncle Jim coming like this! Why, it's more than thirty
years ago he was drowned at sea, when I was quite a girl; 'an'some
young chap he was, too! not more than five-and-twenty, and to be drowned like
that!"
Medium. "Um!
yes-yes-ah! I see him more clearly now - yes, you're right. It's not a white
beard - it's the white undershirt what sailors wears - that's what it is!"
Chorus. "How lovely!
how wonderful! Ain't it beautiful to think they can
come back like this!"
I have heard just about that sort of conversation a score of times;
and it is naturally not calculated to produce a robust faith in that particular
medium. Yet perhaps through the same illiterate woman there would come on
another occasion some message about a matter of which she could by no
possibility have known anything - a message which she could never have evolved
from her sordid consciousness by any amount of clumsy guess-work.
A private test
I remember on one such occasion applying a little private test of
my own to a medium in a poor
It occurred to me to try whether she could see a thought-form, so
as a change from all these reverend white-haired spirits with flowing robes, I
set myself to project as strong a mental image as I could construct of two
chubby boys in Eton jackets, standing behind the chair of the member of the
circle who was next in order for examination. Sure enough, when that person's
turn came, the medium (or the dead man speaking through her, if there was one)
described my imaginary boys with tolerable accuracy, and represented them as
sons of the lady behind whom they stood. The latter denied this, explaining
that her sons were grown men, and the medium then suggested grandchildren,
which was also repudiated, so the mystery remained unsolved. But from the
incident I deduced two conclusions: First, that either the medium was genuinely
clairvoyant, or there really was a dead person speaking through her; and
secondly, that whoever was concerned had not yet sufficient discernment to distinguish
a thought-form materialized on the astral plane from a living astral body.
.
Chapter V
.
SOME RECENT TEST CASES
test conditions
The recent researches of many learned doctors, and other
investigators associated with the Societies for Psychical Research in different
countries, offer us increasing confirmation of the facts announced by the earlier
experimenters. The attitude of many of these distinguished explorers into the
domain of the occult inclines at the beginning towards scepticism
- a fact which renders their evidence all the more valuable, though it makes
the phenomena more difficult to obtain. It constitutes a positive mental
influence acting against the manifestation of unusual psychic powers - powers
which it is difficult enough to use, even under the most favourable
conditions. It is only fair to add, however, that such scepticism
is rarely a prejudice, but simply the scientific attitude which declines to
admit the existence of any facts which have not been carefully observed, or the
truth of any deductions which have not been studiously and impartially
considered.
The attitude and method adopted by Dr. Gustave
Geley, and described in his invaluable volume
Clairvoyance and Materialisation, is becoming more
and more popular among experimenters. He says that the best results for
scientific purposes are not to be obtained under conditions which cast
suspicion upon the medium, and that the end to be sought by observers is not to
protect themselves with absolute certainty at all times against any possible or
conceivable fraud, but to obtain phenomena so powerful and complex that they carry
their own proof and undeniable witness under the conditions demanded by the
control.
I may add that my own experience, extending over many years, fully
confirms what Dr. Geley has written. I have always
found it best to make friends with both the medium and the spirit-guide and to
discuss the manifestations frankly with them. Dr. Geley
continues:
If experimenters waste time on poor or elementary phenomena, they
will find the greatest difficulty in getting a control that will satisfy them
at all points. If they are wise enough to consider elementary phenomena, and
such minor frauds as they may suspect, both negligible; if they allow phenomena
to develop without checking them at the outset by untimely demands, they will
certainly obtain facts so various and important, also (sometimes) of such
beauty, that their conviction will be complete, unshakable, and conclusive (p.
).
MOTHER MARIUS AND THE CONVICT
In the comparatively recent general literature of spiritualism and
psychical research there are many cases which satisfy these conditions. There
are examples in which the accuracy of information communicated by these
methods, and previously entirely unknown to those who receive it, almost
certainly announces the actual presence of the entity who is claiming to
communicate. I will select one typical case from M. Flammarion's
book After Death (p. ), relating to the death of a
charwoman of
Every week I used to leave Nantes on Saturday evening and spend
Sunday on a farm in the very midst of the countryside. One Saturday I left as
usual - took leave of the proprietor, of my friends, and said goodbye to this
same charwoman, who was in excellent health. So, late on Saturday night, I
found myself in the country as usual, but I must explain that this time,
through exceptional circumstances, I was to remain there for the whole week.
The farm-house had two rooms; a kitchen and another room. On Thursday, at one
o'clock in the afternoon, I was talking in the other room with the young girl
of the house. There was no one in the kitchen. The doors and windows were
closed. We were talking, when both of us heard a noise in the kitchen, as
though the fire-tongs had fallen on to the hearthstone. Out of precaution,
thinking that the cat might be getting into the jars of milk, I went to see what
it was. There was nothing; everything was shut up. Scarcely had I come back
into the room when there was the same noise. I turned. Nothing! Since I had
already taken up spiritualism, I said to the young girl, laughing: "It's a
spirit, perhaps" - attaching no importance to my words. However, I then
had the idea of using a little round table, with which we had already
experimented, and we waited, both of us sitting at it, our hands upon it.
Almost immediately we got a communication through rapping, according to the
usual alphabetic code. "Is this a spirit?" - "Yes" -
"You lived on earth?" - "Yes" - "You knew me?" -
"Yes" - "What was your name?" - "Keryado". At this odd name (I did not remember
the charwoman's family name) I was about to leave the table, thinking that the
reply was pointless, when the young girl said to me: "That is the family
name of the charwoman in the café". "That is true," I answered,
and then I began a series of questions. I was unwilling to believe that she was
dead, having left her in perfect health only five days before. I asked her for
details, and learned that she had been taken ill at eight o'clock on Tuesday
evening, that she had been carried to her home, and that she had died at eleven
o'clock, of a haemorrhage ... On Saturday when I
returned to Nantes, as soon as I got out of the train, I went to the café, and
there, to my stupefaction, they gave me confirmation of this woman's death,
and of all the details she had given me.
Unquestionably also there are other cases in which only telepathy
is at work. Professor Ernest Wood relates an example, which was told to him by
his father, who used to investigate these things. On the occasion in question
the medium, who was a personal friend also, said that he saw standing behind
his visitor the "spirit" of a man dressed in convict garb. He
described him in detail, saying that he was looking through prison bars, and
adding that he thought the spirit wished to communicate. But the fact of the
matter was that, a short time before, the enquirer had been to see the
exhibition at the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal, in which was shown one
of the old Botany Bay convict ships fitted up realistically with wax-work
figures. He had stood for some time looking at one of these, and wondering what
the unfortunate convicts must have felt, and though the incident had passed
from his mind and been forgotten, that was the figure of which the medium gave
him a description.
Perhaps the first great mistake which many people make in thinking
about these things is to assume that one law governs all the cases, and
therefore that they are either all due to discarnate intelligences, or are all
caused by some form of simple or complicated telepathy. There is a variety of
causes for the phenomena produced during psychical research investigations,
some of them being due to ideas in the mind of the medium or of the sitters,
others to discarnate intelligences, others to thought-forms casually present or
magnetically attracted, and others again to the psychometric influence of
objects which may be near.
the pearl tie-pin case
Another good example of successful communication from the other
side of death, which has been called the pearl tie-pin case, is given in Sir
William Barrett's On the Threshold of the Unseen, as follows:
Miss C., the sitter, had a cousin, an officer with our army in
France, who was killed in battle a month previously to the sitting; this she
knew. One day, after the name of her cousin had been unexpectedly spelt out on the
ouija board, and her name given in answer to her
query "Do you know who I am?", the following
message came:
"Tell mother to give my pearl tie-pin to the girl I was to
marry. I think she ought to have it." When asked what was the name and
address of the lady, both were given; the name spelt out included the full
Christian and surname, the latter being very unusual and quite unknown to both
sitters. The address given in London was either wrong or taken down
incorrectly, as a letter sent there was returned, and the whole message was
thought to be fictitious.
Six months later, however, it was discovered that the officer had
been engaged, shortly before he left for the front, to the lady whose name had
been given; he had, however, told no one of this. Neither his cousin nor any of
his own family in
Both the ladies have signed a document which they sent to me,
affirming the accuracy of the above statement. The message was recorded at the
time, and not written from memory after verification had been obtained. Here
there could be no explanation of the facts by subliminal memory, or telepathy
from the living, or collusion, and the evidence points unmistakably to a
message from the deceased officer.
the bird's-nesting case
Another striking case appeared in The Harbinger of Light for
February, . A
Will you convey my love to father and mother, and my brothers?
Thank God they have not gone to the war. Tell my dear mother not to hold any
fanciful ideas of me, or to believe every so-called message she may receive.
Tell her I owe her all that is best in me, for she is brave and good, and I
would do anything possible to smooth her path in life. Tell her one particular
thing that will assure her of my presence - tell her that on the day when she
prevented me from going out bird's-nesting, and took so much trouble to instruct
us in the right, I decided always to try to do what was right. Tell her the
recollection of the anecdote she told us always haunted me. Tell her I have not
gone to any restful spiritual home yet, and probably will not till the war
ends. Tell her I cannot be a shirker in the body or out of it, but having been
trained with many good comrades to do my duty, I try to do it still, and if I
were permitted I could tell you so much we do to help those still fighting -
much that is sanctioned and assisted, too, by others higher than ourselves, but
I dare not say. Tell mother that I was quite suddenly shot out of the body, and
felt no pain whatever, and thanks to the insight I received through my parents,
and you, and others, I simply folded my arms and had a good look at my body,
and thought: "Well, is that all?" I could not wrench myself away from
the body immediately, and accompanied it when carried off by stretcher-bearers
to the dressing-station, because the body was not quite dead, but I felt no pain.
How long it was before I lost the consciousness of my material body I cannot
say, but the freedom I now feel, and the active part I am taking in what
occupied me so much before death is my duty, and it seems natural and right.
Besides, Mr. A.-, there are many pledges my comrades and I made to each other
in the face of death, which are sacred, and must be kept, if possible. But I
cannot stop now. Goodbye, Mr. A.-, goodbye. I am so delighted to have spoken to
you. Tell father and mother they need have no regrets, and that my present
activities are more valuable than when I was in the flesh, and quite as
natural. They will know it is the right and proper course till time changes
affairs. Goodbye.
The father writes that the bird's-nesting incident was known only
to the boy and his mother; some years before when he had spoken of going on
such an expedition his mother had earnestly told him how cruel it was to break
down the home so care-fully prepared by the parents for their young, and
illustrated her lesson with the idea of some great giant coming and ruthlessly
smashing up her home and destroying her children.
This case is also interesting for its simple and straightforward
account of the soldier's experiences and feelings when he found himself outside
his body.
cross references
When one portion of a message is given to one medium and another
portion to another, at a distance from or unknown to the first, so that the two
portions fit together and make a rational whole, we have what is called a
cross-reference. A well known instance of this is the Kildare-street Club case,
published in The International Psychic Gazette, and reprinted in Mr.
Carrington's Psychical Phenomena and the War (p. ). The account of the incident
was furnished by Count Hamon, as follows:
On Monday, May , , I attended in a private house a seance at which Mrs. Harris was the medium. There were
present on this occasion, amongst several others whose names I am not
authorized to mention, Miss Scatcherd, Mrs.
Dixon-Hartland, and Dr. Hector Munro.
After many convincing conversations with spirits by means of the
"direct voice" had occurred, a spirit visitor came and said very
distinctly: "I want to send a message to my father."
"Who are you?", we asked.
The spirit replied: "I am an officer recently killed at the
front in Flanders; my name is . . ." We could not hear the name very
distinctly, so after some repeated efforts to get it, we said: "Well,
leave the name alone for the moment and try to give us the message."
Speaking very slowly at first, the spirit said, "My father
lives near Dublin; you will find him at the well-known club there."
A gentleman present asked: "Which club do you mean?"
The spirit replied: "The Kildare-street Club; you know it
well, and you also know my father."
As no one had caught the name of the father exactly right, the
gentleman referred to said: "I know the Kildare-street Club very well, but
I do not think I know your father; but give us the message."
Continuing, the spirit went on: "My father is always worrying
and unhappy about me; he can't seem to get ?ver it. I
want some one to tell him that I came here tonight to get this through as a
test message to him, to tell him not to worry about me, as I am all right, and
glad to have gone through it, and I want him not to worry and be unhappy any
more."
After a slight pause he continued, "My father also goes to
mediums in Dublin, and I try to give him messages through them, but I want this
sent on to him as a test message."
We again asked him to try to give us the name, and we got one part
- the Christian name - very distinctly, but the surname was always so slurred
that we were unable to catch it clearly, and after many efforts had to give it
up. But before we did so, I promised that I would do all I could to send on his
message.
The next morning I wrote a letter to the name I thought it had
sounded like, addressing it to the Kildare-street Club. In about a week this
letter was returned to me through the Post Office marked "Name not known".
I was considerably worried as to what I should do next, until the
thought came to me that I should write to the secretary of the Club, simply
saying that I was anxious to find the gentleman who, I believed, was a member
of his club, whose son had recently been killed in Flanders; that the name was
something like so-and-so, and that I had a message to give him about his son.
Now comes the strangest part of this strange story. In a few days I
received a letter from the gentleman in question, saying that the secretary had
sent him my letter, and adding: "I have had a message from my son who was
recently killed in Flanders, saying he had sent me a message through a medium
in London, that he had difficulty in getting the name and address through but
he wanted to give me a test." The father added: "If you understand
this I hope you will send me his message."
the deer IN the Bois
One of the most strikingly successful instances of cross
correspondence is published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical
Research, vol. viii, p. , it being a translation from a paper read at a meeting
of the French Society for Psychical Research by Dr. Geley,
M. Camille Flammarion being in the chair. In this
case the operating entity composed a little story, dictated the major portion
of it to a medium at Wimereux, near Bordeaux,
omitting only three sentences, which were dictated separately but at the same
time to a medium in Paris. The lady in Paris declared that she could see the
spirit operators, the chief of whom gave his name as Roudolphe,
in the form of lights, and that one of these lights came and went rapidly. Her
three sentences were:
"As well behaved as the pupils in a convent for well-trained
young ladies"
"Their large sweet eyes are used to watching the passing"
"The modern lady of fashion whose eyes."
The following day the post brought to Paris the main part of the
story which had been written in Wimereux the previous
evening. Roudolphe first explained the idea of his
experiment, and then wrote as follows:
Have you sometimes met, dear friend, as you walked in the thickets,
the deer that live and roam through the leafy branches, at times . . . (here
the automatist noted a pause in the writing) ... at times the flock, jumping
and frightened, so graceful and fascinating? Have you ever asked yourself what
those pretty animals were thinking, and what they would become later? Far be it
from me to draw their horoscope (which would after all be of no interest to
them), but it seems to me that their mentality must be very different from that
which animates the deer of the forest . . . (another pause) . . . strange
vehicles running without the aid of an animal's legs, and in those carriages or
along the more or less frequented paths, they have contemplated women with
elongated eyes like their own, delicate and stylish women. Who can ever tell us
if . . . (another pause) . . . become so unnaturally large under the dash of
the pencil, is not a doe of the forest in the throes of retrospective
recollection?
Dear friend, I have had some trouble because Miss R. tried to
understand - but trust I have succeeded with this childish story. Affectionate
good night. roudolphe.
We will leave it to the reader to put the two portions together and
see how perfectly they fit. Dr. Geley remarks that
both mediums were ignorant of the meaning and intention of the sentences they
were writing, and that they both acted as machines worked by the single
direction of an independent intelligence.
the fiR-tRee test
In New Evidences in Psychical Research, by Mr. J. A. Hill, a
lengthy account is given of the efforts at cross correspondence between various
mediums. From that source I will take one case, that of the fir-trees:
On August , , Mrs. Verral's script had
some Latin, of which the following is a translation: "Sign with the seal. The fir-tree that
has been already planted in the garden gives its own portent." This script
was signed with a scrawl and three drawings representing a sword, a suspended
bugle and a pair of scissors.
On the same day Mrs. Forbes's script purporting to come from her
son (who had been killed in the South African War) said that he was looking for
a sensitive who wrote automatically, in order that he might obtain
corroboration for her own writing. This script was apparently produced earlier
in the day than Mrs. Verrall's script above
mentioned.
The interest of the incident lies in the fact that a suspended
bugle surmounted by a crown was the badge of Talbot Forbes's regiment. Further,
Mrs. Forbes has in her garden four or five small fir-trees grown from seed sent
her from abroad by her son; these she calls Talbot's trees. These facts were
totally unknown to Mrs. Verrall. As bearing on the
question of chance coincidence, it is to be remarked that on no other occasion
has a bugle appeared in Mrs. Verrall's script, nor
has there been any other allusion to a planted fir-tree (p. ).
Sir Oliver Lodge has expressed a favourable
opinion of the evidential value of a number of cross-correspondences between
Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Verrall.
Many of these tests came from a soi-disant Frederick Myers. Sir Oliver said
that the scholarship in some cases singularly corresponds with that of F. W. H.
Myers when living, and surpasses the unaided information of any of the
receivers. Mr. J. A. Hill, on p. of the
book above-mentioned, adds:
Some of the communications are strikingly appropriate to and
characteristic of Mr. Myers, in many subtle ways; and this psychological kind
of evidence, made up of many strokes, some bold, some faint, but all tending to
bring out the lineaments of this one personality - this psychological evidence,
I say, even apart from anything else, is as impressive as isolated correct
facts about the communicator's past life, which is the kind of evidence most
sought for hitherto. And, adding to this evidence the cross-correspondences,
which are also in some instances of characteristic kind - e.g., the anagrams characteristic
of Dr. Hodgson, and the Dante, Tennyson, and Browning incidents suggestive of
Mr. Myers, there results a body of recent evidence stronger perhaps than
anything that has previously been published by qualified investigators, in
favour of communication from disembodied human beings.
Referring to the telepathic theory as to the cause of these and
similar occurrences, Mr. Hill writes (p. ):
If telepathy from the living is to explain all, we shall have to
believe that it can occur in a very definite and continuous way between people
who do not know each other, as in the earlier script of Mrs. Holland and in
some of the trance-speech of Mrs. Thompson. We shall also have to assume a very
complicated system of telepathic cross-firing among the automatists concerned,
the cross-firing, moreover, occurring at subliminal depths, leaving the normal
personalities quite ignorant of all this remarkable activity. I confess that I
am unable to accept this. To quote Mr. Lang . . . "there is a point at
which the explanations of common sense arouse scepticism".
And I do not think that a telepathic theory of this extended kind can be called
an explanation of common sense. If it were presented on its own merits, and not
as a refuge from "spirits", it would be described, by common-sense
people, as a piece of uncommon nonsense.
the Two drowned sailors
What amounts practically to a cross-reference, though it was
apparently not intentional, is related by Mr. W. Britton Harvey, Editor of The
Harbinger of Light, Melbourne, in his booklet They All Come Back! One evening
in a circle in his home the intelligence controlling the medium gave his name
as Walter Robinson, and stated that Fred Field was with him, and added that
they had both been drowned at sea. Mr. Harvey had known a Walter Robinson, and
had learnt that he had been drowned, but he had never even heard of Fred Field.
More than a year later an acquaintance happened to tell Mr. Harvey
that some years before, in a sitting with a Melbourne medium, he had been
greeted by Walter Robinson and Fred Field, who declared they had been drowned.
I will complete the story in Mr. Harvey's own words:
"I knew Walter and Fred well," continued my informant,
"but I had never heard of their deaths. They were shipmates of mine at one
time, and it was not for nine months after they had purported to speak to me
that I found out that they had been drowned." I then learnt for the first
time that this casual acquaintance used to live a few miles from the town in
which I resided in the Old Country. At that time he went to sea, and that was
how he got to know Walter Robinson and Fred Field. I had not mentioned either
of these names to him previously. In fact, this was the first chat we had had
together, and this will account for my not knowing before that he once resided
so close to me in England (p. ).
the book tests
In the Rev. Charles Drayton
Thomas put forth a book entitled Some New Evidence for Human Survival. In this
he opens up on a large scale a method of investigation but slightly touched
upon hitherto, in the form of book and newspaper tests. These tests are stated
to come from his father, the Rev. John Drayton Thomas (who died some years ago)
acting through Mrs. Leonard, with the assistance of a control who calls herself
Feda.
The general method of book-tests, of which some hundreds are
related, is for the "spirit" to go into Mr. Thomas's library (some
distance from the house where the sittings are held), select a book, observe
some ideas on a certain page or pages in that book, and then announce them.
Several of these observations are written down on one occasion; they are
afterwards verified, and have been found to be for the most part correct.
The operators have apparently certain difficulties in seeing the
actual print of the book, but in some manner not easy to comprehend they can
grasp the idea involved in the printed words. They cannot apparently see the
numbers printed on the pages, but they can count the pages from the beginning
of the printed matter, and so indicate exactly those to which they wish to
refer. Some of the tests are taken from books on the shelves, but others with
equal success were performed with books belonging to other people, made up into
carefully sealed parcels, the contents of which were quite unknown to the
experimenters until the parcels were opened in order to verify the test
messages.
I will give two typical examples of book-tests from the many
recorded by Mr. Thomas, which range variously over description, humour, topics of the day, philosophy and religion.
In your study, close to the door, the lowest shelf, take the sixth
book from the left, and page ; three-quarters down is a word conveying the
meaning of falling back or stumbling.
Rather more than half-way down the page was the following sentence:
... to whom a crucified Messiah was an insuperable stumbling-block.
Very low down on the page he seemed to get something about great
noise, not a sharp, thin sound, but a heavy one, more of a roaring noise.
Close to the bottom of this page was the sentence:
I chanced to come that time along the coast, and heard the guns for
two or three days and nights successively, (pp. -.)
Mr. Drayton Thomas says that these book-tests were given, so it was
claimed by the "spirit friends," not so much as a proof of identity,
as illustrating the ability of a spirit to obtain information unknown to the
sitter or medium, and yet capable of easy verification.
In Chapter XII Mr. Thomas gives a series of book-tests which were
communicated for Lady Glenconnor, who has also
herself written about them in The Earthen Vessel. The messages were transmitted
from the late Hon. Edward Wyndham Tennant through the same medium, the late
Rev. John Drayton Thomas and Feda communicating. This
time they used the books in the libraries at Lady Glenconnor's
house in Scotland, at her town house, and also at Wilsford
Manor.
Summing up the results of two years' work the author finds that out
of book tests spontaneously given were good,
indefinite, and apparent failures
(p. ).
A test by madame blavatsky
Before closing this subject of book-tests, let me recount one such
example also from the record of Madame Blavatsky. Her life was full of
incidents showing remarkable powers in many directions; of these one may read
especially in The Occult World and Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky,
by A. P. Sinnett, and in Old Diary Leaves, by Col. H. S. Olcott. Mr. G. Baseden Butt has recently written a careful and thoughtful
account of her life in his volume entitled Madame Blavatsky. From that I take
the following "test" related by Countess Wachtmeister
(p. ):
An experience related by the Countess Wachtmeister
cannot be explained save on the assumption that the Masters really exist and
were able to communicate with her. In the autumn of ,
before she had met Madame Blavatsky, and before she knew that she was likely to
meet her, the Countess was making preparations to leave her home in
"Master says you have a book for me of which I am much in
need."
The Countess Wachtmeister denied that any
books were with her, but Madame Blavatsky bade her think again, as Master said
that her visitor had been told in Sweden to bring a book on the Tarot and the
Kabbalah. "Then," adds the Countess, "I recollected the circumstances
I have related above. From the time I had placed the volume in the bottom of my
box it had been out of my sight and out of my mind. Now, when I hurried to the
bedroom, unlocked the trunk, and dived to the bottom, I found it in the same
corner I had left it when packing the box in Sweden, undisturbed from that
moment to this. But that was not all. When I returned to the dining-room with
it in my hand, Madame Blavatsky made a gesture and cried: 'Stay, do not open it
yet. Now turn to page ten, and on the sixth line you will find the words . . .'
And she quoted a passage.
I opened the book, which, let it be remembered, was no printed
volume of which there might be a copy in H. P. B.'s
possession, but a manuscript album in which, as I have said, had been written
notes and excerpts by a friend of mine for my own use, yet on the page and at
the line she had indicated I found the very words she had uttered.
When I handed her the book I ventured to ask her why she wanted it.
'O,' she replied, 'for The Secret Doctrine.' "
Surely this incident establishes at one and the same time the
existence of the Masters and the reality of Madame Blavatsky's power of
clairvoyance.
the newspaper tests
Satisfactory as the book-tests are, what are known as the newspaper-tests
are still more effective. These messages, instead of relating to books existing
in libraries, in closed parcels or even in locked iron boxes, refer to
tomorrow's paper. Various newspapers were used, but chiefly the London Times,
and the communications related therefore to what had not yet been printed;
enquiries at the office of the paper resulted in the information that at the
time of the sitting the type-matter had not yet been assembled, and probably
some of it had not even been set up. Respecting these tests Mr. Thomas says
also:
It is important to realize that a copy of these notes was made the
same evening, and posted in London so that it would be delivered early the
following morning. It was sent to the Secretary of the Society of Psychical
Research in accordance with my invariable custom, a practice adopted many
months previously, when I realized that the tests from the papers of the day
after the sitting were becoming a regular feature of conversations with my
father through Mrs. Leonard and Feda. (p. .)
There is generally a certain vagueness about these tests, as in the
book-tests, but that the communicating intelligences do make a connection
between words in the newspaper and names or facts familiar to the enquirers is
certain. For example, they say (p. ) "On page , column , near the top,
there is the name of a minister with whom your father was friendly at
Leek." The name Perks was found in the place indicated, and he had known a
minister of that name at Leek.
There are many carious approximations in these tests. For example,
it was announced that in a certain column, one-quarter down, would appear Mr.
Thomas' father's name, his own, his mother's, and that of an aunt. In the
position indicated the names John and Charles appeared. These were correct, but
instead of Emily and Sarah (the names of an aunt and Mr. Thomas' mother) were
the words Emile Sauret! Similarly in the place stated
to contain the maiden name of the mother "or one very like it" was
the word Dorothea, while her name was Dore.
Notwithstanding this vagueness these messages do present a valuable
addition to the evidence for the existence of intelligence beyond that of the
sitters, and this record is especially useful because Mr. Thomas sent his tests
to the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research before the newspapers
were printed.
In twelve such sittings, containing
tests, Mr. Thomas finds that there were
successes, inconclusive items,
and failures, and in another set of
trials there were successes out of tests (p. ). Many tests were also received for
persons other than the sitters, and relating to facts entirely unknown to them.
the source of the messages
In studying the probable source of these messages, Mr. Drayton Thomas
feels assured that they do come from his deceased father, for all his sittings
abound in references to his doings and surroundings which would normally be
unknown to Mrs. Leonard, also with references to his father's earth-life, and
besides "they include a wide range of elusive touches which are unproducible in cold print, but in which I see my father's
personality ringing true to that which I knew so well during his life on
earth" (p. ). We must, of course, consider that the medium of Feda might read his mind, but as to this he says: "Up
to the present all my experiments with Feda have
failed to find in her any trace of ability to explore my thought or reproduce
my memories; the evidence all points the other way." (p. .)
He mentions also that it is a curious experience, after having
received correct references through pages of books scattered about his library
to hear the control struggling to spell out a name which he himself knows to be
that which is required for completing some explicit description, and to find
that such efforts usually fail to pass beyond the initial letter of the
required name, and that his own concentration upon the name appears to make
things not one whit easier. He concludes: "That my father links his former
memories with matter discovered in preparation for the morrow's press is the
only explanation logically fitting with the facts." (p. .)
As to the views of the "spirits" themselves upon the way
in which they obtain the newspaper tests, Mr. Thomas received the following
communication:
These tests have been devised by others in a more advanced sphere
than mine, and I have caught their ideas. This may be done even when we do not
realize whence the thought originates, much as when minds on earth receive
inspiration. We can visit these higher helpers, and, even when away from them,
may be very conscious of their assistance. I am not yet aware exactly how one
obtains these tests, and have wondered whether the higher guides exert some
influence whereby a suitable advertisement comes into position on the
convenient date; I have thought of this, but do not know. These tests will be
better than the book-tests, because more definite, and their object will be to
prove that we can obtain information from other quarters than the mind or surroundings
of the sitter; it will be useless to invoke "the subconscious mind"
as an explanation here. I was taken to the Times office, and did not find the
way there by myself; helpers are plentiful when we are engaged on work of this
kind. (p. .)
In another communication given later, in reply to the question:
"Do you now understand what it actually is that you operate upon at the
Times office?"' the father said:
It is still a puzzle. On one occasion I thought I saw the complete
page set up; it certainly appeared to be so, and I noticed certain items in it
which I believe proved correct. But on returning to the office a little while
after - for I frequently go twice to make sure of the tests - I found that the
page was not yet set up, and this astonished me and was most perplexing. (p. .)
In other communications the deceased clergyman speculates variously
upon the possible methods by which future events may be known, but apparently
in that world as in this the mystery of time is not yet solved.
. Chapter
VI
.
PARTIAL MATERIALIZATION
varieties op materialization
All the most interesting phenomena of the seance
room are connected in some way or other with materialization - that is to say,
with the building of physical matter round some astral form, in order that
through it the ego inhabiting that astral form may be able to produce results
upon the physical plane. But of this materialization there are three varieties.
Let me here quote a passage from my own little book upon The Astral Plane, p. :
The habitues of seances
will no doubt have noticed that materializations are of three kinds: First,
those which are tangible but not visible; second, those which are visible but
not tangible; and third, those which are both visible and tangible. To the
first kind, which is much the most common, belong the invisible spirit hands
which so frequently stroke the faces of the sitters or carry small objects
about the room, and the vocal organs from which the "direct voice"
proceeds. In this case an order of matter is being used which can neither
reflect nor obstruct light, but is capable under certain conditions of setting up
vibrations in the atmosphere which affect us as sound. A variation of this
class is that kind of partial materialization which, though incapable of
reflecting any light that we can see, is yet able to affect some of the
ultra-violet rays, and can therefore make a more or less definite impression
upon the camera, and so provide us with what are known as "spirit
photographs."
When there is not sufficient power available to produce a perfect materialization
we sometimes get the vaporous-looking form which constitutes our second class,
and in such a case the "spirits" usually warn their sitters that the
forms which appear must not be touched. In the rarer case of a full
materialization there is sufficient power to hold together, at least for a few
moments, a form which can be both seen and touched.
Nearly all the phenomena coming under this third subdivision of
ours are effected by means of the first of these types of materialization, for
the hands which cause the raps or tilts, which move objects about the room or
raise them from the ground, are not usually visible, though to be able to act
thus upon physical matter they must themselves be physical. Occasionally, but
comparatively rarely, they may be seen at their work, thus explaining to us how
that work is done in the far more numerous instances in which the mechanism is
invisible to us. Such a case is given to us by Sir William Crookes,
F.R.S., in his interesting book Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, p.
:
A luminous hand
I was sitting next to the medium, Miss Fox, the only other persons
present being my wife and a lady relative, and I was holding the medium's two
hands in one of mine, whilst her feet were resting on my feet. Paper was on the
table before us, and my disengaged hand was holding a pencil. A luminous hand
came down, from the upper part of the room, and after hovering near me for a
few seconds, took the pencil from my hand, rapidly wrote on a sheet of paper,
threw the pencil down, and then rose up over our heads, gradually fading into
darkness.
The raps and the tilts are too well known to need description, but
cases in which heavy objects are raised and suspended without the contact of
visible hands are somewhat less commonly seen, so it may perhaps be well to
cite one or two of them. In the book just quoted, on p. , Sir William Crookes tells us:
On five separate occasions, a heavy dining-table rose between a few
inches and a foot and a half off the floor, under special circumstances, which
rendered trickery impossible. On another occasion a heavy table rose from the
floor in full light, while I was holding the medium's hands and feet. On
another occasion the table rose from the floor, not only when no person was touching
it, but under conditions which I had prearranged so as to assure unquestionable
proof of the fact.
It will be seen, therefore, that the similar experience of my own,
which I have described a few pages back, is by no means unique. Mr. Robert Dale
Owen, in his Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, p. , gives a
remarkable case of similar nature:
Cases of levitation
In the dining-room of a French nobleman, the Count d'Ourches, residing near Paris, I saw, on the first day of
October, , in broad daylight, at the close of déjèuner
à la fourchette, a
dining-table seating seven persons, with fruit and wine on it, rise and settle
down, as already described, while all the guests were standing round it, and
not one of them touching it at all. All present saw the same thing. Mr. Kyd, son of the late General Kyd,
of the British army, and his lady told me (in Paris, in April, ) that in
December of the year , during an evening visit to a friend, who resided at
No. Rue de la Ferme
des Mathurins, at Paris, Mrs. Kyd,
seated in an armchair, suddenly felt it move, as if someone had laid hold of it
from beneath. Then slowly and gradually it rose into the air, and remained
there suspended for the space of about thirty seconds, the lady's feet being
four or five feet from the ground; then it settled down gently and gradually,
so that there was no shock when it reached the carpet. No one was touching the
chair when it rose, nor did anyone approach it while in the air, except Mr. Kyd, who, fearing an accident, advanced and touched Mrs. Kyd. The room was at the time brightly lighted, as a French
salon usually is; and of the eight or nine persons present all saw the same
thing in the same way. I took notes of the above, as Mr. and Mrs. Kyd narrated to me the occurrence; and they kindly
permitted, as a voucher for its truth, the use of their names.
People have not infrequently been lifted in this way in their
chairs, though rarely, I fancy, to the height of five feet. Sir William Crookes saw several instances of the same phenomenon, and
thus describes them in his Researches, p. .
On one occasion I witnessed a chair, with a lady sitting in it,
rise several inches from the ground. On another occasion, to avoid the
suspicion of this being in some way performed by herself, the lady knelt on the
chair in such a manner that its four feet were visible to us. It then rose
about three inches, remaining suspended for about ten seconds, and then slowly
descended. Another time two children, on separate occasions, rose from the floor
with their chairs, in full daylight, under (to me) the most satisfactory
conditions; for I was kneeling and keeping close watch upon the feet of the
chair, and observing that no one might touch them.
The most striking cases of levitation which I have witnessed have
been with Mr. Home. On three separate occasions have I seen him raised
completely from the floor of the room. Once sitting in an easy chair, once
kneeling on his chair, and once standing up. On each occasion I had full
opportunity of watching the occurrence as it was taking place.
There are at least a hundred recorded instances of Mr. Home's
rising from the ground, in the presence of as many separate persons, and I have
heard from the lips of the three witnesses to the most striking occurrence of
this kind - the Earl of Dunraven, Lord Lindsay and
Captain C. Wynne - their own most minute accounts of what took place. To reject
the recorded evidence on this subject is to reject all human testimony
whatever; for no fact in sacred or profane history is supported by a stronger
array of proofs.
Colonel Olcott, in his People from the Other World, also mentions
having heard this account from the lips of one of the witnesses. He gives us, too,
some striking instances of levitation upon the part of the Eddy brothers.
I have myself on three occasions been present when the medium,
seated in a heavy armchair, was lifted clear over our heads as we sat round the
table, and placed in the centre of it. On two of these occasions I was myself
holding one of the medium's hands, and continued to hold it during his aerial
excursion, while a trustworthy friend held the other. Although this took place
in darkness, we were certain that no one from the physical plane lifted that
chair; though as a matter of fact we did not need that assurance, for there was
no one in the room at all capable of such a feat of herculean
strength. The moment that the medium and his big chair were safely landed on
the table, raps called for a light by the prearranged signal, so that we might
see what had been done, our dead friends being evidently rather proud of their
achievement.
lifted ?? the CEiling
I myself was once lifted at a seance in
rather an unusual way - at least I have not heard of any other case exactly
similar. It was at one of the earliest of the public seances
which I attended, and many people entirely unknown to me were present. Some
ladies on the opposite side of the table cried out that a hand was patting and
caressing them, but this in absolute darkness did not seem to be entirely
convincing; so that when their exclamations of delight and gratitude to the
"dear spirit" were becoming a little monotonous I asked quietly:
"Will the spirit be so kind as to come across and touch me?" I had
hardly expected any response, but the "spirit" took me promptly at
my word; my hand was instantly seized in a strong grasp, and pulled upwards so
that I was compelled to rise from my chair. Even when I stood upright, the upward
pull still continued, so I hastily stepped on to the seat of my chair. Still
the steady irresistible pull, and a moment later I was hanging in the air by
one hand, and still ascending. My knuckles touched the smooth, cold surface of
the plastered ceiling - the room was a lofty one -and then, apparently through
the ceiling, another hand patted mine softly, and I felt myself sinking.
Directly afterwards my feet touched the chair, and only then the firm grasp
loosened, giving me a final hearty hand-shake as it left me. I climbed down
from my chair, convinced that "the clasp of a vanished hand" might
sometimes be a fairly strong one.
When I told this story to sceptics
afterwards I was always met with one of two explanations. First, that there was
a trap-door in that ceiling, and that some mechanical device was employed;
secondly, that the medium was standing on the table in the darkness, and
lifted me himself. To the first suggestion I reply that the ceiling was plain,
smooth, whitewashed plaster, with never a crack in it, for I climbed again upon
my chair in full light afterwards to examine it; and though it was some
distance beyond my reach, it would have been utterly impossible to miss seeing
a crack if one had been there. Besides, my request could not have been
foreseen, and arrangements made to grant it in so striking a manner. As to the
second hypothesis, the medium was a small, spare man, and I weigh over thirteen
stone; perhaps the sceptic who suggests this will
himself stand upon the edge of a circular dining-table with one central
support, and then with one hand lift a much heavier man than himself straight
up above his own head, holding him suspended merely by one of his hands all the
while.
?RU? levitation
The probabilities are that all the cases of lifting which I have
quoted or described were performed by materialized hands, just as in this last
experience of my own. There is quite another method of levitation which is
occasionally practiced in Oriental countries - a much more occult and scientific
method, dependent for its success upon the knowledge and use of a power of
repulsion which balances the action of gravitation. I have also seen that, and
indeed every student of practical magic is familiar with its employment; but it
does not seem to me at all probable that this power was called into requisition
in any of the above cases.
Gravitation is in fact a force of a magnetic nature, and may be
reversed and changed into repulsion, just as ordinary magnetism can be. Such a
reversal of this peculiar type of magnetism can be produced at will by one who
has learnt its secret, but it has also frequently been produced unintentionally
by ecstatics of various types. It is related, for
example, both of St. Teresa and of St. Joseph of Cupertino that they were often
thus levitated while engaged in meditation. But I fancy that those who are
levitated at a spiritualistic seance are generally
simply upborne by the materialized hands of the dead.
These same materialized hands manage all the smaller business of
the seance; they wind up the perennial musical box
and wave it over the heads of the sitters; they play (sometimes quite sweetly)
upon that curious kind of miniature zither which is usually euphoniously termed
"fairy bells"; they sprinkle water or perfume sometimes; they bring
flowers and fruits and even lumps of sugar, which I have known them deftly to
insert into the mouths of their friends.
It is usually they also that are employed in slate-writing, though
this may sometimes be managed still more rapidly by means of precipitation, to
which we shall make reference presently. But generally the fragment of pencil
enclosed between the slates is guided by a hand, of which only just the tiny
points sufficient to grasp it are materialized.
A slate-wRiting seance
One well-known medium in London used to carry this slate-writing to
a high degree of perfection some fifty years ago. It was the finest possible
performance to which to take the bigoted sceptic, who
boasted that nothing ever happened or would happen while he was present. One
made an appointment with the medium for, say, eleven o'clock on a bright summer
morning; one took the sceptic into a stationer's shop
on the way and made him buy two ordinary school slates, put a tiny crumb of
slate-pencil between them (or sometimes two or three fragments of different
colours) and then have them packed up in brown paper and strongly tied. One
then purchased a stick of the best sealing wax and requested the sceptic to seal the string with his own seal in as many
places as he wished - the more the better - and on no account whatever to allow
that parcel to go out of his hands.
Then we proceeded to the medium's house and commenced the seance, cautioning the sceptic to
sit upon his parcel in order to make sure that no one tampered with his slates.
The medium commenced operations with slates of his own, which were always
lying upon the table for examination before the seance
began; and the sceptic had usually elaborate theories
about these, as to how messages had already been written upon them, and washed
out with alcohol so that they would presently reappear; or else that of course
they would presently be dropped out of sight and others substituted for them by
sleight-of-hand. It was best as a rule to let him talk, and take no notice,
knowing that one could afford to bide one's time.
The medium usually held a single slate pressed with one hand
against the under surface of the table - a little plain wooden table with no
drawers, and obviously no contrivance of any sort about it - not even a cloth
upon it. Under these conditions answers were written to any simple question, or
any sentence dictated was faithfully taken down. Here the sceptic
usually interposed by requesting that a sentence might be written in Sanskrit
or Chinese or the Cherokee dialect, and was hugely triumphant if the
controlling "spirit" confessed that he did not happen to know these
languages. Occasionally he fetched somebody who did know them, and then the sceptic was somewhat staggered, though he still clung to
the idea that somehow or other the whole thing was a fraud.
Presently, however, when the seance got
into full swing, one insinuatingly asked the directing entities whether they
could write upon our own slates; and though I have once or twice been told that
they feared the power was not sufficient, in three cases out of four the reply
was in the affirmative. Then one turned to the sceptic
and requested him to produce his parcel, asking him to examine the seals so as
to be perfectly certain that it had not been touched. He was then courteously
requested to hold the sealed parcel in his own hands above the table, the
medium perhaps taking hold of one corner of it, or perhaps merely laying his
hand lightly upon it. Then the sceptic was further
requested to formulate a mental question, but on no account to give any
indication as to its nature. He did this, and it was generally an interesting
study to watch the expression of his face when he heard the sound of rapid
writing going on in the parcel between his hands. In a few moments three quick
taps signified that the message was finished, and the medium removed his hand,
gravely asking the sceptic to examine his seals and
make sure that they were intact.
He then cut his parcel open, and found the inside surfaces of his
new slates covered with fine writing on the subject of his mental question.
Usually for the time he was speechless, and went home to think it over; but by
the end of the week he had generally made up his mind that we had been in some
inexplicable way deceived or hallucinated, and that "of course we did not
really see what we thought we saw." Nevertheless it was a hard nut to
crack, and his frequent references later to "that clever but ridiculous
performance" showed that it remained in his mind, and had perhaps done him
more good than he was willing to own.
The answers given in this way sometimes displayed considerable
intelligence and knowledge. It appeared to me, however, that they were often
considerably modified by decided opinions on the part of the questioner -
whether from a friendly desire to please him, or because the ideas were largely
a reflection of those in his own mind, there was not sufficient evidence to
show. For example, I remember myself receiving a perfectly definite statement
regarding the existence of certain persons in whom I was deeply interested; the
communicating entity not only positively asserted this existence, but adopted towards them precisely my own
attitude. Yet I afterwards discovered that only a week previously what
professed to be the same entity had, in writing answers for another person,
totally denied that any such personages existed at all! It may have been that
here we had to deal with two entirely different communicating entities, one
masquerading for some reason or other under the name and title of the other;
but it is at least significant that in each case the opinion expressed agreed
precisely with that of the questioner. On the other hand, I am bound to admit
that in many cases the answers given were not at all what any of us expected,
and contained information which could by no possibility have been known to any
of those present.
It is not difficult to see why this slate-writing should be one of
the easiest forms of conveying a message, and indeed the only kind of writing
that can readily be performed in full daylight. For the fact is that it never
is performed in daylight, even though the surrounding conditions are so
absolutely satisfactory to us. Between the two slates or between the slate and
the table there is always the darkness which makes materialization easy. When a
physical body is slowly grown and built together in the ordinary way, when it
is thoroughly permeated by the vital principle and definitely energized by the
spirit, it becomes a relatively permanent organism, and can withstand the
impact of vibrations from without, within certain limits.
We must remember that materialization is a mere imitation of this -
a mere concourse of fortuitous atoms, temporarily put together in opposition to
the ordinary laws and arrangements of nature. It therefore needs to be
constantly held together with care and difficulty, and any violent vibration
striking it from without readily breaks it up. It must also be remembered that
the matter employed in materialization is almost all withdrawn from the body of
the medium, and is therefore subject to a strong attraction which is constantly
drawing it back to him. The strong and rapid vibrations of ordinary light will
therefore dissolve a materialization almost instantaneously, except under
exceptional circumstances.
It can be maintained for some time in presence of a faint light,
such as that given by gas turned low, or by what is called a "luminous
slate", which is usually a piece of wood or cardboard coated with luminous
paint, and exposed to the sun during the day, so that at night it may give out
a faint phosphorescent radiance. It is, however, among the resources of the
astral plane to produce a soft light the effect of which seems to be far less
violent; and in this it is sometimes possible for the hand which writes to
maintain its corporeal existence for a considerable period, as is evidenced by
the following extract from a description of a seance
held with Kate Fox by Mr. Livermore on August , .
an hour's writing
The cards became the center of a circle of light a foot in
diameter. Carefully watching this phenomenon, I saw the hand holding my pencil
over one of the cards. This hand moved quietly across from left to light, and
when one line was finished, moved back to commence another. At first it was a
perfectly shaped hand, afterwards it became a dark substance, smaller than the
human hand, but still apparently holding the pencil, the writing going on at
intervals, and the whole remaining visible for nearly an hour. I can conceive
of no better evidence for the reality of spirit-writing. Every possible
precaution against deception had been taken. I held both hands of the medium
throughout the whole time. I have the cards still, minutely written on both
sides; the sentiments there expressed being of the most elevated character,
pure and spiritual. (The Debatable Land, p. .)
This account gives us an example of the difficulty, even under
these exceptionally favourable conditions, of
maintaining a materialization for so long a period. It seems to have been
impossible to preserve the shape of the hand, but something visible which could
still hold and guide the pencil was somehow kept together until the necessary
work was finished.
It seems probable that the working of the little board called planchette is sometimes accomplished by means of a partial
materialization, for I have seen cases in which it distinctly moved underneath
the fingers which were resting upon it, and was in no way moved by them. When
it is clearly the hand which moves the board, this phenomenon of course belongs
to our first class, in which the body of the medium is utilized, though that
medium may be entirely unconscious of what is being done.
direct painting
I have also seen some good specimens of painting which were
probably executed in the same manner as the writing above described. I say
probably, because as they were executed in darkness, it is impossible to be
absolutely sure; they may have been precipitations, although as that is a more
difficult process, I do not think that it is likely to have been employed.
There have been mediums who have made a specialty of this production of
pictures, and it is certainly a very pleasing exhibition of astral power. I
have twice seen a little landscape, perhaps eight inches by five, produced in
total darkness on a marked piece of paper in from fifteen to twenty minutes.
The execution was fair, the colours were natural and harmonious, and some of
the paint was still wet when the lights were turned up. I am perfectly sure
that the sheet of paper employed was in each case that which I brought with me.
In one instance, just before the lights were turned down, I tore a curiously
jagged fragment off one of the corners of the piece and kept it in my own
possession until the picture was completed, and found when the lights were
turned up that it fitted exactly into the tear in the sheet upon which the
landscape was drawn.
On neither of these occasions was the landscape one which I
recognized, though at the house of the same medium I have seen well-executed
paintings of scenes with which I was familiar, which I was told had been
produced in exactly the same manner. In both of these cases a box of
water-colours, a palette and brushes were provided, and after the seance they bore signs of having been used. I have also on
another occasion, and with a different medium, seen a much larger drawing in coloured chalks produced in darkness in even less time, but
in this case the execution, though bold and dashing, was certainly crude and
erratic. The subject in this case was a lady's head, and the likeness was
recognizable, though not flattering. On all these occasions it was absolutely
certain that the medium was in no way concerned in the production of the
pictures, his hands being held during the whole time, and the outline of his
form being sufficiently visible in two of the cases to prevent him from moving
without instant detection.
musical performances
A man who has attained facility during life in the management of
any kind of instrument does not lose his power when he drops his physical body.
I have heard both a violin and a flute played fairly well by invisible hands,
when there was light enough to see that the instruments were not being touched
by any of the persons present in the physical body. I have also many times seen
a concertina played in the same way, sometimes while I myself held the other
end of the instrument. Many times also a piano has been played in my presence
by invisible hands, and it seemed to make no difference whether the lid
enclosing the keyboard was open or shut. Sometimes, before beginning to play,
the dead man would dash back the lid, and then we could see the keys depressed
as the playing went on precisely as though we ourselves had been operating upon
the instrument. If during the performance we closed the piano, the playing
usually went on just as if it had remained open. On two occasions I have heard
the wires of a piano played without moving the keys, just as the strings of a
harp might be.
Another instance of a man who after death retained his power to
operate a machine to which he had been accustomed during life is given by Sir
William Crookes on p.
of his book. The operator was not exactly using his instrument, but he
undoubtedly showed that he still possessed the power to do so, had the
instrument been there. The story is as follows:
the telegRaph opeRatoR
During a seance with Mr. Home, a small
lath, which I have before mentioned, moved across the table to me, in the
light, and delivered a message to me by tapping my hand; I repeating the
alphabet, and the lath tapping me at the right letters. The other end of the
lath was resting on the table, some distance from Mr. Home's hands.
The taps were so sharp and clear, and the lath was evidently so
well under control of the invisible power which was governing its movements,
that I said: "Can the intelligence governing the motion of this lath
change the character of the movements, and give me a telegraphic message
through the Morse alphabet by taps on my hand?" (I have every reason to
believe that the Morse code was quite unknown to any other person present, and
it was only imperfectly known to me.) Immediately I said this, the character of
the taps changed, and the message was continued in the way I had requested. The
letters were given too rapidly for me to do more than catch a word here and
there, and consequently I lost the message; but I heard sufficient to convince
me that there was a good Morse operator at the other end of the line, wherever
that might be.
the direct voice
In the case of the flute above mentioned it is obvious that the
performer must have materialized not only finger-tips to press the keys, but
also a mouth with which to blow. It is by no means uncommon at a seance for the dead man to construct vocal organs
sufficiently to produce intelligible sound, though this appears to be (as
indeed one would naturally suppose) a much more difficult feat than the production
of a hand. Often the construction of such organs seems to be imperfect, and the
resulting voice is a hoarse whistling whisper. I think almost invariably the
first attempts of an unaccustomed ghost to materialize a voice go no further
than the softest of whispers; but on the other hand the "spirit
guide" of a regular medium, having practiced the art of materializing
organs and speaking through them many hundreds of times, often possesses a
perfectly natural and characteristic voice.
All those who have been in the habit of attending the seances of certain well-known mediums during the last
half-century must be familiar with the round, sonorous voice of the director
who elects to be known by the name of "John King", and the hearty,
friendly manner in which he greets those whom he has come to know and trust. I
well remember an occasion when, having invited a medium down to my cottage in
the country, we were walking together across a wheat-field, and a well-known
"spirit-voice" joined in our conversation in the most natural way in
the world, just exactly as if a third person had been walking with us.
I am quite aware that the ordinary explanation of a
"spirit-voice" is that it is an effort of ventriloquism on the part of
the medium, but when one recognizes the voice as one well known in earth-life
that explanation seems a trifle unsatisfactory. Also it seems to me to fail to
account for the fact that on one occasion, at a seance
in my own house, the unseen performers treated us to a song in which all four
parts were distinctly audible, two of them being taken by very good female
voices - and that although the medium was of the male sex (and in a deep trance
anyhow) and none but men (trusted friends of my own) were physically present in
the room.
Under this head of partial materialization we must also include
what are sometimes called "spirit photographs"; for whatever can be
photographed must of course be physical matter, capable of reflecting some of
the rays of light which can act upon the sensitized plate of the camera. It
does not at all follow that it need be composed of matter visible to us, for
the camera is sensitive to a large range of actinic ultra-violet rays which
produce no impression whatever upon our eyes as at present constituted.
I know enough of photography to realize how easily a so-called
"spirit-photograph" could be produced by trickery, but I also know
that there are a great many which were as a matter of fact not so produced. I
have seen a large number of those which were taken under test conditions for
Mr. W. T. Stead when he was investigating this curious form of mediumship, and I have also been favoured
with a sight of several of those taken by and for our late Vice-President, Mr.
A. P. Sinnett.
interesting photographs
.
A good typical case of this photography of the partially materialized
dead was related to me by a veteran army officer. It seems that he had lost (as
we usually call it) three daughters by death, within a comparatively short
space of time. One day in a large city, hundreds of miles from home, he saw an
advertisement of a photographer who professed to be able to produce portraits
of the dead, so he turned into his studio then and there, and asked to be
taken. He gave no indication of what he expected, or indeed that he expected
anything at all beyond his own portrait; and he asserts that it was absolutely
impossible that he could have been, in any way known to the photographer. Yet
when he called for the portraits three floating faces appeared grouped about
his own, fainter than his, but unmistakably recognizable. He showed me the
photograph, and also the portraits of his daughters taken during their physical
life; they were unquestionably the same young ladies as those in the picture
taken after their death.
In Photographing the Invisible Dr. James Coates gives us a number
of examples of photographs on which appear psychic "extras," as they
are sometimes called. Many of these were produced under conditions which
precluded any sort of preparation of the plates, and were developed in the
presence of reliable witnesses. A curious example on the photograph of a
Chinese man is recounted by Mr. Edward Wyllie, a well-known American
"spirit-photographer". (pp. -.)
I had been giving tests to some gentlemen in Los Angeles in
connection with the Psychic Research Society. Some were convinced of the fact
of psychic photography, and others were not. It was suggested by one member it
would be a good thing if I could obtain "extras" on the plate of
someone wholly ignorant of both the subject and of spiritualism. Then it could
not be said that their knowledge or attitude had anything to do with the
results. It was not easy to get someone with the qualifications desired. When
one day "Charlie," a Chinese laundryman, called for my clothes, it
struck me to ask him: "Charlie, like to have your picture taken?"
"No," he replied. "No likee
that." He knew that I was a photographer, but had a dislike, I think, to
photography, as most Chinese have. I tried to persuade him after he had called
two or three times. I showed him that there could be no harm in it, and I would
take a "glass" (as negatives are called) for nothing, and print him some
nice pictures of himself. Charlie wanted to go home and change his clothes, but
I knew it would not do to let him slip, and got him to sit. He was very much
scared. I made his mind easy and asked him to come in a few days, and I would
give him the pictures. When I developed the negative there were two
"extras "on it - a Chinese boy and some Chinese writing. When Charlie
came round I showed him the print, and he said: "That my boy; where you catchee him? "I asked him if
it was not one of his cousins in the city. He said, "No, that my boy. He not here; where you catchee him?"
I asked him where his boy was, and he said, "That my boy. He's in China.
Not seen him for three years."
Charlie would not believe that I had not by some magic got his
"boy here". Charlie then brought other Chinamen - friends of his own
- to see the picture, and they all recognised the
youngster. Charlie did not know that his son was dead. As far as he knew, he
was alive and well.
Mr. Wyllie also had remarkable success in obtaining the same sort
of psychic impressions upon photographs of letters and locks of hair. Dr.
Coates relates (p. et seq.) that before Mr. Wyllie was induced to visit
Among the experimenters were Mrs. A. S.
Hunter, widow of Dr. Archibald Hunter of
Here we have an identified portrait of a lady, taken by a stranger
six thousand miles away, wholly ignorant of Mr. Auld or ourselves. I had not
written this medium (Mr. Wyllie) till the th of
March, , nearly two months after this picture was obtained, and of its
existence none in Rothesay were aware till . . .
nearly fourteen months afterwards. Truly truth is stranger than fiction.
Later Mr. Wyllie visited Dr. and Mrs. Coates in Scotland, and took
many "spirit" photographs there. When he was packing up his things
preparatory to taking his departure Mrs. Coates (who was herself psychic) had a
sudden impulse to ask for a sitting. Mr. Wyllie had packed away his favourite camera, but there were still in the room a Kodak
camera and some plates purchased locally, that is, in Rothesay.
One of the plates was exposed on Mrs. Coates, and when developed showed also a
good likeness of her grandmother (p. ),
That Mr. Wyllie's "extras" could be produced under test
conditions was proved by the report of a test committee, appointed by the
Glasgow Association of Spiritualists. They stipulated that they should provide
the camera and plates; the former belonged to one of the committee, the latter,
eight in number, were bought at the nearest chemist's twenty minutes before the
meeting, and were put into slides in the chemist's dark room. After the plates
were exposed they were immediately placed in the camera bag and taken away by
the committee and developed. Under these test conditions several of the plates
showed psychic impressions. (pp. -.)
Chapter VII
THE MANIPULATION OF PSYCHIC RODS
the goligher circle
In three valuable little books - The Reality of Psychic Phenomena
(), Experiments in Psychical Science (), and Psychic Structures () - the late
Mr. W. J. Crawford, D.Sc., of Belfast, Ireland, has given us a carefully
classified account of a long series of investigations into the telekinetic
phenomena of the Goligher Circle, his studies having
been carried on especially from the mechanical point of view. The circle is so
called because it is composed of the principal medium, Miss Kathleen Goligher, and other members of her family, namely her three
sisters, brother, father and brother-in-law, with only occasional visitors.
recording the sounds
It is characteristic of Dr. Crawford's methods that at the very
beginning of his research he should seek to convince himself and the rest of
the circle that they were merely subjects of hallucinatory sense-images induced
by the peculiar conditions of the seance-room. This
he did by taking a number of phonograph records. He explained to the invisible
operators, with whom he was in communication by means of raps, that he was
about to make a record, and requested them to give as complete a selection as
possible of the various sounds which they had been producing in the circle, and
all within the space of time permitted by the revolutions of the recording
cylinder. About this he says:
I then asked the operators if all was ready, and on their replying
by three raps in the affirmative I called out, "Start". Immediately a
thunderous blow resounded on the floor and I started the machine. Half a dozen
sledgehammer blows, varieties of double and treble knocks, and shufflings like sand-paper rubbing the floor were given in
succession; the hand-bell was lifted and rung; the legs of the table were
raised and knocked on the floor; the sound of wood being apparently sawn was
heard; and so on. They kept up this terrific noise until I called out,
"Stop"; when, at the word, perfect silence reigned. We then tried the
record, and found that most of the noises had been recorded; but the bell,
owing to its being rung too far away, was almost inaudible. I therefore
suggested to the operators that they should ring the bell right in the middle
of the circle and as near the trumpet of the phonograph as possible, and I
promised not to upset their conditions of equilibrium by attempting to touch
it. Accordingly, during the taking of the next record the bell was rung within
an inch or two of my hand, and so close to the trumpet that it accidently touched it and knocked it off the instrument.
This partly spoiled the record.
In all, three good records and the partly spoiled one were taken,
and these show beyond dispute, as was anticipated, that the sounds are ordinary
objective sounds. (R. P. P., pp. -.)
weighing the medium
Further on in the same book Dr. Crawford records a number of
experiments in which he weighed the medium before and during the levitation of
the table or stool placed in the center of the circle of the sitters, it being
never in contact with any portion of the body or dress of the medium or any
other sitter. His conclusions as to this are given as follows:
(a) When the
table is steadily levitated, a weight is added to the medium very nearly equal
to the weight of the table.
(b) The seat
of the reaction would therefore appear to be chiefly the medium herself.
(c) Taking an
average over the six cases, the increased weight on the medium seems to be
about per cent less than the weight of
the levitated table. (pp. -.)
Wishing then to discover if any of the weight of the steadily
levitated table was added to other members of the circle, he asked Mr. Morrison
(the brother-in-law) to sit on the chair on the weighing machine which had
previously been occupied by the medium, while she sat on an ordinary chair in
the circle. When the table was levitated, Mr. Morrison's weight rose two
ounces. As this might have been due to other causes, Dr. Crawford balanced the
steelyard of the weighing machine and then, asked the operators to jerk the
table up and down in the air. While it was moving, the steelyard went up and
down lightly against the stops, in synchronism with the movement of the table.
After a number of such experiments he drew the conclusion that when the table
is steadily levitated the reaction falls upon the body of the medium to the
extent of at least %, and that a small proportion is distributed over the
bodies of the other sitters. Thus:
As Admiral Moore suggests, when a table is steadily levitated the
effect is precisely the same as it would be if the medium lifted it herself
with her hands, aided by a very slight assistance from the members constituting
the circle - say, the help that could be given by a force applied by one finger
each. (p. .)
the lines oF force
Dr. Crawford goes on to relate that in the course of many
investigations, when he and others sought to press down the levitated table
they encountered an elastic resistance, but to their surprise, when they tried
to push the table towards the medium they found a perfectly rigid or solid
resistance. Whenever a visitor undertook to try to prevent the table from
rising, it did so nevertheless; first the two legs nearest to the medium rose,
as though the table were being tilted at the inclination most suitable for a
projection from the medium to gain the shortest and most powerful grasp. As
this occurred wherever the visitor might be standing (though it must be
understood that he was in no case permitted to do so directly between the
medium and the table) it would seem that there is a projection in the direction
suggested by the diagram reproduced herewith. (Fig. , p. .)
Further experiments with a compression spring-balance under the
table, when the operators were requested to levitate the table in their usual
manner, gave the result, to take one example, that the vertical reaction for
the seance table weighing/ lb, was greater than lb, and showed that there was also a
horizontal pressure against the balance and away from the medium, amounting to
about lb. (p. ). A stool weighing / lb
when levitated above a drawing board weighing / lb resting upon a compression
spring-balance, registered a downward force of about lb. In this class of experiments it is
evident that in the total we have pressing upon the drawing-board the weight of
the stool plus that of the pillar of psychic matter which is supporting it. In
the earlier type of experiment mentioned above, we have evidently a cantilever
support from the medium, not resting on the floor. The full researches into
these matters showed Dr. Crawford that in most cases the cantilever form was
used when it would not inconvenience the medium by tending to overbalance her.
(p. .)
Dr. Crawford next invented a very delicate
"contact-maker". Two pieces of cardboard (c) and wood (w) were hinged
together as shown in the diagram (Fig. , p. ). Two small strips of clock-spring
(ss) were attached to these, and to an electric bell
circuit, so that when any pressure was exerted upon the wood and cardboard
sides so as to bring the two strips into contact the bell would ring. The
instrument was so delicate that heavy breathing upon it was sufficient to
cause contact. With this instrument Dr. Crawford explored the field under the
levitated table and near to the medium, and thus found the situation of the
stress-lines of the force from the medium to the table, as in both cases the
bell rang at certain points and the levitation was then interrupted in some
degree. On this he writes as follows:
I have some reason to believe that the establishing of these
stress-lines (the links) is for the operators a difficult process, and that
once formed they remain more or less in situ for the duration of the seance. I think they may be likened to tunnels somewhat
laboriously cut through resisting material. Their basis seems to be physical,
for I have actually felt the motion of material particles near the ankles (and
proceeding outwards from them) of the medium (the stress-lines seem to commence
sometimes at the wrists and ankles of my medium), and I have noticed during the
rapping that when my hand interferes with the particle flow - which seems to
correspond with a stress-line - the rapping has ceased for quite a long time
and could seemingly only be restarted with difficulty. In other words, the
path had been obliterated. I do not think the particles of matter (for such I
am assuming them to be) are the cause of the pressure which lifts the table. I
think they are the connecting links which allow the psychic pressure to be
transmitted, much in the manner that a wire is a path which enables electricity
to flow. (pp. -).
feeling the substance
In Experiment (p. ) Dr.
Crawford describes what this substance feels like to the touch. He says:
I felt no sense of pressure whatever, but I did feel a clammy,
cold, almost oily sensation - in fact, an indescribable sensation, as though
the air there were mixed with particles of dead and disagreeable matter.
Perhaps the best word to describe the feeling is "reptilian". I have
felt the same substance often - and I think it is a substance - in the vicinity
of the medium, but there it has appeared to me to be moving outwards from her.
Once felt, the experimenter always recognizes it again. This was the only
occasion on which I have felt it under the levitated table, though perhaps it
is always there, but not usually in such an intense form. Its presence under
the table and also in the vicinity of the medium shows that it has something
to do with the levitation; and in short I think there can be little doubt that
it is actual matter temporarily taken from the medium's body and put back at
the end of the seance, and that it is the basic
principle underlying the transmission of psychic force.
The above-mentioned test was made with his hand under the table
near the top while it was levitated. When he moved his hand to and fro among
the psychic stuff the table soon dropped. On page he also mentions that he has often felt the same
cold, clammy, reptile-like sensation near the ankles of the medium when rapping
was taking place close to her feet at the commencement of a seance,
though he would never experiment in this way at an important sitting, because
he found that it interrupted the flow of matter and put a stop to the phenomena
for the time being.
The sensation would lead him to believe that the same quality of
matter is present during rapping as under the levitated table, and he noticed
that in the former case it is in motion in the direction from the body of the
medium outwards; this, he says, can easily be observed by the spore-like
sensation as of soft particles moving gently against the hand. He adds that
during levitation of the table he never actually interrupted the line of stress
from the medium to the table with his hand, but he sometimes placed delicate
pressure-recording apparatus in that line, which showed that there was some
mechanical pressure close to the body of the medium and acting outwards from
her towards the levitated table. In every case the placing of the apparatus in
that line soon caused the table to drop.
In Psychic Structures (p. ) he adds that he distinctly felt a cold
breeze issuing from the neighbourhood of the medium's
ankles and the region just above her shoes, which appeared to be caused by
material particles of a cold, disagreeable, spore-like matter. As his
investigations proceeded he came to know quite certainly that what he was
really doing was to cut across the part of the structure which was not heavily
materialized, as is the end with which its work is done.
Sometimes Dr. Crawford did come in contact with the end of a rod.
On some occasions the operators held the end of a rod stationary in the air
while he pressed against it and kicked it, and found it "softish but very dense". He says (Psychic Structures,
p. ) that during one of the tests, when he was poking about the floor in the
medium's neighbourhood with a wooden rod, he accidently came against the end of a psychic rod which
happened to be out an inch or two up in the air. In the same place he mentions
that the suckers on the ends of the rods can often be heard slipping over the
wood, when they are presumably being forced off or are taking new grips. He
mentions (p. ) an occasion when the table suddenly dropped about six inches in
the air and simultaneously there was heard a swishing noise.
A visitor to the Circle, Mr. Arthur Hunter, also describes what he
himself felt, as follows:
Towards the end of the seance I asked the
"operators" (having first obtained the permission of the leader of
the circle) if they could place the end of the structure in one of my hands. On
the reply "Yes" I went inside the circle, lay down on my right side
on the floor alongside the table, and placed my gloved right hand between the
two nearest legs of the table. Almost immediately I felt the impact of a nearly
circular rod-like body about inches in
diameter on the palm of my hand, which was held palm upwards. (The back of my
hand was towards the floor and at a distance of about in. from it.) This circular rod-like body was
flat at the end, i.e., as if the rod were sawn across. It maintained a steady
pressure evenly distributed over the area of impact, and was soft but firm to
the sense of touch. I estimate the magnitude of pressure at from to oz.
Without being requested to do so, the "operators" moved this rod-like
structure until I felt the clearly defined edges of the circular blunt end.
This was accompanied by a sensation of roughness, as though the edge were
serrated, such a feeling, I believe, as would be given by a substance similar
to very fine emery paper, (pp. -.)
In addition to this feeling, he had occasionally had fitful
glimpses of the psychic matter in the ordinary red light of the seance room, but in
Dr. Crawford made a discovery which enabled the form to be much more
easily seen. A sheet of cardboard about one foot square was covered with
luminous paint, exposed to sunlight for some hours and then placed on the floor
within the circle. In the dark seance-room such
luminous sheets shone quite strongly. While the medium had her feet and ankles
locked in a box the operators were asked to bring out the structure and hold it
over the phosphorescent sheet. In a short time a curved body somewhat
resembling the toe of a boot advanced into the light. The operators modified it
into many shapes, while Dr. Crawford watched the changes. The end portion would
contract and gradually lengthen until a pointed shape was produced, and then
that would sometimes curl round into a hook, twisting and untwisting before his
eyes. It could also spread out sideways until it resembled a mushroom or a
cabbage. The flexibility, he says, was marvellous. (pp. -).
the cantilevers
Following upon a great number and variety of experiments Dr.
Crawford put forward his cantilever theory for levitation of light tables,
based upon the fact that () during steady levitation with no apparatus or other
impedimenta below the table, the weight of the table is practically added to
that of the medium; () the medium is under stress, the muscles of her arms from
wrist to shoulder being rigid, and other parts of the body being similarly
affected, though to a less degree, and () there is no reaction on the floor
under the table. The idea that the force employed is in the form of a
cantilever issuing direct to the table from the body of the medium is also
supported by the facts that vertical pressure meets with elastic resistance,
while pressure towards the medium meets with solid resistance. His summation of
the theory, after considering all mechanical evidence, and after conversing on
the subject with the operators by means of raps, was that:
The cantilever arm gets under the table - probably a more or less
straight arm in this case, as there is little stress. Whatever the physical
composition of the substratum of the end of the arm may be, it has the power
to take an adhesive grip on certain substances, such as wood, with which it
comes into contact. The broad columnar end of the arm grips adhesively the
under surface of the table. (R.P.P., p. ).
On page (R. P. P.) this
theory is confirmed by a lady clairvoyant who happened to be present at some of
the experiments. She said that she saw under the table, close to the under
surface and extending down a little way, a whitish vapoury
substance which increased in density when the table was levitated. She was able
to call out that a movement was about to occur before it actually took place,
by noticing the increase of density and opacity. She explained that the column
did not reach to the floor, but that a band of it came from the medium and was
continuous with that under the table, and also that there were very thin bands,
like ribbons, coming from all the other sitters as well, and joining it. She
also saw various "spirit forms" and "spirit hands"
manipulating the psychic material.
But the culmination of proof arrived when Dr. Crawford succeeded in
taking photographs of the structure. Quite a number of photographs of matter
thus issuing from the medium and forming these structures have been published
in Psychic Structures. The first of these faces page , and shows the general
form of the structure as above described, and the fact that it is connected not
only with the medium but also with other sitters,
In Experiments in Psychical Science (p. ) Dr. Crawford recounts how
he obtained from the operators a description of the dimensions and shape of a
normal levitating cantilever. They said that the top of the columnar part of
the cantilever is spread out into a broad flat surface of area approximating
to the under surface of the table, that the vertical and horizontal sections
are about inches in diameter, the latter
being or
inches above the floor, and that just before entering the body of the
medium the rod widens out to a diameter of about inches. Dr. Crawford drew the figure which we
reproduce herewith (Fig. , E.P.S., p. ) to show these facts.
It was found in certain experiments (E.P.S., p. ), that when the
levitated table was heavily weighted the medium's body swung gently forward,
and she said that she felt herself being urged forward, though she was not
conscious of any mechanical pressure. When she swung strongly forward the table
dropped. Dr. Crawford then told her to hold on with her hands to the arms of
the chair, while he placed an additional weight on the table, increasing the
whole to nearly lbs. "When the
table levitated the medium's chair tilted forward on its two front legs and the
table dropped.
All this was further confirmation of the cantilever method. The
operators explained (p. ) that they prefer to work with a cantilever, for when
they rest the structure on the floor, as is necessary in some kinds of
demonstration, it is badly strained and much energy is required to maintain its
rigidity. So for all moderate weights, that is up to about lbs. a true cantilever is employed, but for
greater and variable forces they use a supported structure.
The question arose (E.P.S., p. ) as to how the ends of rods and
cantilevers could be acting at their junction with the medium's body, for
certainly a structure several feet long and supporting or
lbs. weight at its end, if it were a rigid bar, would cause serious
pressure, and indeed injury. Dr. Crawford thinks that the explanation is to be
found in the different condition of the matter. He speaks of X-matter, which
can transmit through itself direct and shear stresses, but cannot transmit them
from itself to ordinary matter. Then he posits Y-matter, a modified form of the
former, which is what is usually called materialized substance. Then he says:
The Y-matter at the free end of, say, the psychic cantilever,
grips the wood of the under-surface of the table, which is then levitated.
Weight of table is transmitted to this Y-matter, and from the latter to the
X-matter of the body of structure. The mechanical stress is transmitted along
the X-matter right into the body of the medium. At the place where the structure
enters the body of the medium, no stress of any kind is transmitted to her
flesh, because, at this particular place, we have X-matter and ordinary
physical matter in juxtaposition, and stress cannot be directly transmitted
from the former to the latter. Within the interstices of the medium's body the
X-matter of the psychic structure probably ramifies, and each ramification at
its extremity becomes Y-matter, and this Y-matter is attached to various
interior portions of the medium's body, which thus finally and indirectly take
the weight of the table, (p. .)
the raps
Similar observations and methods of weighing showed that the weight
of the medium began to diminish just before light raps were heard. Soon
afterwards the weight began to decrease in successive fluxes of to
lbs. When a loud blow was given the weight would diminish as much
as lbs., and then in the course of six
or seven seconds it would come nearly back to what it was before. Numerous
observations led to the following conclusions:
From various parts of the body of the medium psychic semi-flexible
rods are projected, the end portions of which, being struck sharply on the
floor, table, chair, or other body, cause the sharp sounds known generally as
raps.
These rods have apparently all the characteristics of solid bodies;
they are more or less flexible, and can be varied in length and diameter.
Several of the smaller rods, or one of the largest size, may project from the
medium at any one time. Each one, especially near its extremity, is more or
less rigid, and the rigidity can be varied within limits depending upon
conditions of light, the psychic energy available, and so forth. The rigidity
is probably ultimately brought about by some kind of molecular action
concerning which we are as yet perfectly ignorant - the kind of action that
produces the same effect on the cantilever. (p. , R. P. P.)
In Experiments in Psychical Science (p. ), the operators' own
account as to how the raps are produced in two ways is given as follows:
Soft raps, bounding-ball imitation, etc. - by beating the side of
the rod on the floor, as one uses a stick for beating a carpet.
Hard raps-by beating the rod on the floor more or less axially.
Dr. Crawford says that while he was obtaining this explanation the
operators illustrated the various styles of raps under consideration by
actually rapping on the floor. When he asked them what were the approximate
dimensions of a rod used to give a fairly hard blow, they gave a sample blow on
the floor and told him that the rod used was about inches in diameter and of uniform thickness
until just before entering the body of the medium, where it increased to
about inches. They also said that the
same rod could be used to make a variety of raps: light taps, as though a lead
pencil were striking the floor, the bouncing ball imitations, and also hard
blows.
type writing
The Reality of Psychic Phenomena (p. ) describes an experimental
attempt at typewriting, on a very old Bar-Lock machine. The keys were struck
lightly and rapidly as though a pair of hands was playing over them, but they
became jammed as though several had been struck simultaneously. Dr. Crawford
then explained to the operators that they must strike each key separately and
allow time for its return before striking another. The advice was followed by
the operators, who, however, succeeding in writing only the following:
mbx: gcsq'
Dr. Crawford remarks that the experiment is chiefly interesting as
showing that the keys can be struck with just the force necessary to produce
the correct result. He adds that the letters on the keys were in some cases
much worn, so that perhaps the operators found some difficulty in reading them.
A more successful attempt at typewriting was made at one of the sittings
of Mr. Franek Kluski, and
is recorded in Dr. Greley's book Clairvoyance and
Materialization (p. ). The seance was one of those
intended for the production of paraffin moulds of materialized hands, of which
we will give an account in a later chapter. Splashing was heard in the paraffin
and the hands were seen by Mr. Broniewski and Prince Lubomirski above the tank, and at the same time a
typewriter which was on the table, fully illuminated by red light, began to
write. The keys were operated quickly, as by a skilful typist. There was no one
near the machine, but the persons holding Mr. Kluski's
hands observed that the reaction was upon him, for they twitched during the
writing. The typed words were: "Je suis le sourire de 'équilibre; mon poème d'amour et
de vie emplit les siècles."
impressions in clay
A large number of Dr. Crawford's experiments were performed by
requesting the operators to press the ends of rods into basins or trays of clay
or other substance which would take the mould, which were placed under the
table. Although the ankles of the medium were securely fastened in various
ways, and the feet and legs of the other sitters were also tied so that they
could not get within in. of the clay,
quite frequently, at first somewhat to the surprise of the investigators, many
of the impressions were found to be lined with what resembled stocking marks,
while others seemed similar to impressions which might be made with the sole of
boot or shoe. All these were examined most carefully, the conclusion being that
the forms which resembled the marks of the sole of a shoe could not possibly
have been so made, but were due to the elastic distortion of the ends of
psychic rods, which have the following peculiarities:
When the free end of the psychic rod is flat it can press on
material substances and grip them by adhesion.
The gripping action is a true suction, being due to a difference of
air pressure, the air being squeezed out from the space between the flat end of
the rod and the body which it is contacting.
In order to produce this suction effect, the end of the rod is
covered with what appears to be a thin, pliable skin. As a matter of fact the
end of one of these large flat-ended rods often feels soft and plasm-like to the touch. The very finely divided,
crater-like appearance of most of the suction marks also shows decisively that
the suction end of such rods must possess a soft, pliable surface. (P.S., pp.
-.)
The concave impressions varied in size from the mark one could make
with one's little finger to a size of
or sq. in., but the largest was
less than half the size of the largest flat marks. Their peculiarity was that
most of them had the imprint of stocking fabric. This was the usual effect, but
on request to the operator they could also be made quite smooth (p. ). The
impression is, however, altogether sharper than anything that can actually be
made with a stockinged foot, for in the latter case
there is a dull, blunt outline owing to the foot behind the stocking exerting a
squeezing effect, no matter how lightly it may be applied. But the psychic
impression has little raised edges projecting upwards from the impression left
by each thread.
The reason why this impression should appear is given as follows.
The actual psychic structure is covered by a film which is formed against the
medium's feet out of psychic matter oozing round about the little holes in the
fabric of her stockings. It is at first in a semi-liquid state, and it collects
and partly sets on the outer covering of the stocking, and being of a
glutinous, fibrous nature, it takes almost the exact form of the stocking
fabric. It is pulled off the stocking by the operators and then built round the
end of the psychic rod. The large flat impressions, which involve heavy pulls
and pushes, have this surface further thickened and strengthened by the application
of additional materialized matter, which wholly or partly covers the impression
of the stocking (pp. -).
transportation of clay
It was soon observed that some of the clay was carried back when
the material returned to the medium, and streaks were found upon and within her
shoes and stockings, and on the floor between the medium and the bowl of clay.
In a few cases, when a sitter felt that he or she had been touched by the rod,
marks were also found upon them. All this led Dr. Crawford to try to discover
where the structures emerged from the medium. On page he says that the floor all round the medium's
shoes was covered with patches of clay, but where her feet rested on the floor
it was clean, which proved that they could not have moved. The clay had been
deposited on the edge of the sole of the shoes and in the slight clear space
between the edge of the sole and the floor, but had not been able to penetrate
where the sole was in actual contact with the floor. It was apparent that the
material had then moved up the shoe and gone into it through the lace-holes and
over the top, and there were generally particles of clay on the flat of the
shoes inside, wherever parts of the foot of the medium were not pressing
tightly on the leather. It had also been noticed that there were sometimes
peculiar rustling noises in the neighbourhood of the
medium's feet and ankles just prior to the phenomena, and that these were
probably due to psychic stuff being sent in fluxes down the material of the
stocking. There were also slight flapping noises on the floor as the material
was brought out and placed there (p. ).
the path op the teleplasm
These observations led Dr. Crawford to experiment extensively with
various powders and colouring matters, in order to
trace the path of the material. These investigations are recorded at length in
Psychic Structures. I will here give only one or two examples. The following is
an account of experiment Z (p. ):
The medium had her feet on a specially modified electrical
apparatus. She had her feet in the seance shoes and
wore white stockings. The operators could be heard working away at the legs of
the medium. After about twenty minutes they said they wished to deliver a
message. This was taken by means of the alphabet and was to the effect that the
white colour of the medium's stockings was affecting the plasma, and that it
would be necessary for her to change into black ones. This was done, and
phenomena soon commenced. A dish containing flour was placed well beyond the
reach of the medium on the floor, and the operators pushed their psychic
structures into it. At the end of the seance the
shoes and stockings were examined.
Result: Only the right shoe and stocking were affected by the
flour. On this stocking there was a large flour-mark right across the interior
side, just above the shoe, and there were marks and smudges on the stocking
below the level of the shoe to the sole. The magnifying glass showed that the
whole sole was covered with flour particles from end to end, and there were
particles at the toes.
There was flour all up the front and over the laces of the right
shoe, as though the plasma had retreated along the floor, up the front of the
shoe to the ankle of the medium on the interior side, and then down between the
stocking and the shoes to the sole of the foot. Also there were small particles
of flour right to the top of the stocking.
In experiment CC gold paint was used:
Medium had on shoes treated with gold paint, as in the previous seance. At the end many gold particles were found on one
stocking along the sole to the heel and up over the heel. Also many particles
were found on the stocking fabric to the very top of the stocking. A close
inspection showed that there was a regular stream of gold particles right up
both stockings to the top, this stream being most prominent about the region of
the knees.
Dr. Crawford's conclusions from these experiments are given on
pages - as follows:
The data given above concerning the movement of powdered
substances, such as carmine or flour, from the interior of the shoes of the
medium up the sides of her shoes and up her stockings can only lead to one conclusion.
The plasma must get into the medium's shoes in some manner or other. It either
originates in her feet and makes its way to the outside by coming up between
her shoes and her stockings, or it goes into her shoes first, accomplishes some
process there, and then comes out again. It usually issues round the sides of
the shoes, up from the middle of the sole of the foot, where the contact
between shoe and stocking is slight, although usually there is also a
considerable movement up the back of the heel. As I have already indicated,
this outward and inward movement of the plasma occurs even if the medium's feet
are laced up in long boots.
In many of the experiments already described, as well as a
well-defined carmine path from the feet, there were visible distinct traces of
carmine up the stockings as far as the knees, and even up to the top of the
stockings. Usually these carmine paths were thickest and most plainly visible
round about the ball of the calves at the back, and usually there was more carmine
on the stockings between the legs than on the outside. The question then arose
as to whether there was a flow of plasma from the medium's body down the legs,
as well as the flow from the feet upwards, or, indeed, whether the whole of
the plasma did not come from the trunk of the medium, flow down the legs and
then, in some peculiar manner and for some particular reason connected with the
building up of the psychic structures, enter her shoes and fill up the space
between stockings and leather. For, after all, it has to be remembered that
our feet and legs are only pieces of apparatus to enable us to move about,
analogous to the wheels of a cart, and that the great centres of nervous energy
and reproductive activity are within the body proper.
Further experiments were performed in order to discover whether the
plasma issues from the lower part of the trunk as well as returns by it. The
following is one such experiment, with the investigator's conclusions:
A little slightly damp carmine was carefully rubbed on the inside
of the legs of the knickers some inches up, and the medium put the knickers on
very carefully. At the end of the seance it was found
that the carmine had traced paths right down the legs of the knickers, had
spread out round the embroidery at the edge, had gone on the stockings, made
paths right down the stockings, mostly along the ball of the leg, and had even
gone into the shoes, which were clean ones.
Therefore it is certain that plasma issues from the trunk as well
as returns thereby.
The quantity of plasma must be considerable, for the carmine had
spread round the medium's legs right to the posterior, and in between the legs
to the base of the backbone; i.e. the plasma had at one time or another during
the seance occupied practically all the space which
did not make close contact with her chair. This result suggests that during
interruptions in phenomena, or when light is temporarily lit during a seance, the plasma conceals itself round about the top of
the medium's legs under her clothing, and does not necessarily all return to
her body. If it always went back into her body, a considerable time would have
to elapse between each burst of phenomena, but this does not usually occur. So
long as the plasma is away from the temporary disturbing influence, such as
rays of light, the purpose of the operators is served (pp.-).
the photographs
At last came the time when it became possible to take photographs.
This could only be done after a careful study of the effect of the phenomena upon
the medium. Dr. Crawford had observed (p. ) that when the medium was sitting on
her chair in the ordinary way, and he placed his hands upon her haunches, and
the development of psychic action was going on, parts of the flesh seemed to
cave in. Then, as the psychic material came back, little round lumps could be
felt filling in on the back of the thighs and on the interior of the thighs.
For about a year Dr. Crawford took one photograph each seance night, in the hope that he might ultimately obtain
success. The operators had informed him by raps that he might finally expect
this, though he had to take care to prevent injury to the medium, as it was
necessary gradually to work her up to withstand the shock of the flashlight
upon the plasma. He found that the pulse of the medium, which was at the beginning, rose to just before the flash (while the operators
were endeavouring to exteriorize a psychic structure
fit to be photographed) and then went back to normal gradually, Observation
showed that generally during all kinds of phenomena the pulse of the medium
rose, the palms of the hands became a little moist and the fingers cool, but
neither temperature nor respiration seemed to be affected to any degree. (p. ).
Ultimately, as we have already said, he succeeded in his
photography. As Dr. Crawford puts it:
After innumerable attempts, however, very small patches of plasma
were obtained in full view between the medium's ankles. As time went on these
increased in size and variety until great quantities of this psychic material
could be exteriorized and photographed. Then the operators began to manipulate
it in various ways, building it up into columns, or forming it into single or
double arms, moulding it into the different shapes
with which I had been long familiar in a general way from previous investigation.
Not only did they do this, but they showed unmistakably, by means of set
photographs, from what part of the medium's body the plasma issued, and by
means of ingenious arrangements devised by themselves brought out many of its
properties. (p. ).
the direct voice
Dr. Crawford also describes, in Experiments in Psychical Science,
his experiments in direct voice phenomena in his own house with a medium known
as Mrs. Z. He sat her upon a weighing machine with the weight balanced, while
two trumpets were placed upright on the floor within the circle. After about
fifteen minutes the lever of the machine fell lightly on the bottom stop, which
indicated that her weight was decreasing, and he found that this decrease
amounted to about / lbs. Then suddenly a voice called out from somewhere near
the roof within the circle "Weigh me" and a trumpet dropped to the
floor, while the medium's weight immediately returned to its original value.
Fifteen minutes later the same thing happened again, the same words were heard,
a trumpet dropped and the same weight was recorded.
Although these phenomena took place in the dark, and the weighing
was merely felt by Dr. Crawford, it was quite impossible for the medium to have
done anything but sit quite still. She weighed nearly stone, and her slightest movement would have
been detected, while her lifting anything would have increased, not decreased
the weight. Dr. Crawford asked the control if he had been weighing her or the
trumpet, but she did not seem to know.
In a later experiment (p. ) Dr. Crawford arranged to record the
direct voice on a phonographic cylinder. He asked the control to bring the
mouth of the trumpet up to the horn of the phonograph, and when she said that
she was ready, requested her to begin to speak as soon as she heard the buzzing
of the machine. Dr. Crawford then says:
The cylinder had made only a few revolutions when the control
commenced to sing a song into the horn. This song was three verses in length,
and at the end of each verse she interjected remarks such as "How's
that?" etc. I told her to sing a little louder, and during the third verse
she sang quite loudly.
I plainly felt the movement of the air just at the mouth of the
phonograph horn as the song was being sung, which would seem to indicate that
the end of the trumpet was moving to and fro at the spot. Moreover, the
control's voice emanated from a position just at the mouth of the horn. I did
not attempt to touch the trumpet, as I knew from experience that if I did so it
would be likely to drop. If an end of the trumpet was thus at the mouth of the
phonograph horn as it appeared to be, the nearest distance of the other end of
the trumpet from the medium must have been well over four feet. At the
conclusion of the song, and after I had stopped the instrument, I asked the
sitters on either side of the medium if they still had hold of her hands, and
they replied in the affirmative. These sitters afterwards told me that during
the taking of the record the medium's hands were vibrating rapidly, as though
they were under great nervous stress. (pp. -).
As to these records, Dr. Crawford says that there is in them
internal evidence that the voice must have been speaking close to the horn of
the phonograph and not from some distance away. He adds that it is well known
among people who are continually making records that if the voice speaks too
close into the horn a kind of tinny, metallic sound is produced, which
phonographic manufacturers call "blasting". In several places in the
two records of the control's voice this "blasting" is heard,
indicating that the voice must have been very close to, if not within, the horn
of the phonograph.
Chapter VIII
MISCELLANEOUS PHENOMENA
precipitation
I have already mentioned in connection with the phenomenal
production of paintings or writings that there is another method by which this
may be done, more rapid and efficient, but requiring greater knowledge of the
possibilities of the astral plane. This method is usually described as
precipitation, and broadly speaking its modus operandi is as follows: The man
wishing to write or paint takes a sheet of paper, forms a clear mental image of
the writing or the picture, distinct down to the minutest detail, and then by
ah effort of will objectifies that image and throws it upon the paper, so that
the whole picture or the whole sheet of writing appears instantaneously. It
will be seen at once that this demands far greater power and fuller command of
resources than is likely to be possessed by the ordinary man, either before or
after his death; but just as those who have been trained along that line are
capable of producing such a result while still in the physical body, so there
are a few among the dead who have learnt how such powers may be exercised.
I have seen cases in which the writing was precipitated not all at
once but by degrees, so that it appeared upon the paper in successive words,
just as it would have done if written in the ordinary way, except that this
process was much more rapid than any writing could ever be. In the same way I
have seen a picture form itself slowly, beginning at one side and passing
steadily across to the other, the effect being just as though a sheet of paper
which had concealed it was slowly drawn off from an already existing picture.
Some persons in performing this feat require to have their
materials provided for them; that is to say, if they have to write a letter,
the writing material - ink or coloured chalk - must
be by their side, or if they have to precipitate a picture the colours must be
there either in powder or already moistened. In this case the operator simply
disintegrates as much of the material as he requires, and transfers it to the
surface of his paper. A more accomplished performer, however, can gather
together such material as he needs from the surrounding ether; that is to say,
he is practically able to create his materials, and so can sometimes produce
results which cannot readily be imitated by any means at our disposal upon the
physical plane.
In Photographing the Invisible (pp. -), Dr. J. Coates quotes an
experience, recounted by Vice-Admiral W. Usborne
Moore, relating to the precipitation of a portrait, which presents a good
example of the process often employed:
The next day a portrait was precipitated on to a Steinbach canvas
within two feet of me. The Bangs sisters each held one side of the canvas,
which was put up against the window, while I sat between them and watched the
face and form gradually appear. A few minutes after they began to appear, the
psychics (apparently under impression) lowered the canvas toward me until it
touched my breast. Mary Bangs then got a message by Morse alphabet on the
table: "Your wife is more accustomed to see me in the other aspect."
Up went the canvas again, and I saw the profile and bust, but turned round in
the opposite direction; instead of the face looking to the right, it was
looking to the left. The portrait then proceeded apace, until all the details
were filled in, and in twenty-five minutes it was practically finished. Beyond
a little deepening of the colour, and touches here and there by the invisible
artist, the picture is the same now as when we arose from the table. The
precipitated portrait is very much like a photograph of the person, taken
thirty-five years ago (shortly before death), that I had in my pocket during
the sitting, which the Bangs, of course, had never seen. The expression of the
face, however, is far more ethereal and satisfied than in the photograph.
These instances are but two out of many manifestations I witnessed
at the Bangs sisters' house.
The Admiral refers as follows to a full-length portrait which he
obtained in the same way:
On this occasion the canvases arrived from the shop wet, and we had
to wait half an hour for them to dry. The next day I went to the shop and
complained. The woman who attended said: "The boy who brought your order
said you wanted stretched canvases. When he came to take them away, we found he
wanted the paper as well, so we put it on at once, and of course they left the
shop wet." I relate this little incident for the benefit of those who
vainly imagine that the phenomenon of precipitation may be due to normal
causes.
Mr. G. Subba Rau, editor of the West Coast Spectator,
They asked me to pick out any two canvas stretchers that lay
against the wall, adding that I might bring my own stretchers if I liked. I
took out two which were very clean and set them on the table against the glass
window. I sat opposite, and the two sisters on either side. Gradually I saw a
cloudy appearance on the canvas; in a few moments it cleared into a bright
face, the eyes formed themselves and opened rather suddenly, and I beheld what
seemed a copy of my wife's face in the photograph. The figure on the canvas
faded away once or twice, to reappear with clearer outline; and round the
shoulder was formed a loose white robe. The whole seemed a remarkable enlargement
of the face in the photograph. The photograph had been taken some three or four
years before her death, and it was noteworthy that the merely accidental
details that entered into it should now appear on the canvas. For instance, the
nose ornament already referred to, she had not usually worn. Some ornaments
were clumsily reproduced. One that she had always worn, which was not
distinctly visible in the photograph, was omitted on the canvas. I pointed out
these blemishes, and as the result, when I saw the portrait next day, all the
ornaments had disappeared. I was satisfied that the portrait had been precipitated
by some supernormal agency. As soon as the portrait was finished, I touched a
corner of the canvas with my finger, and greyish
substance came off. The portrait is still in my possession, and it looks as
fresh as ever. It was all done in twenty-five minutes.
The same volume contains several chapters dealing with
psychographs, especially written messages impressed on photographic plates
which have never been exposed. For example, the Ven.
Archdeacon Colley, Rector of Stockton, delivered an Easter sermon on Sunday
evening, rd April, , in the parish church. This sermon was found written on a
half-plate which had been sealed up in a light-proof packet, and held between
the hands of six persons for thirty-nine seconds only. Under these circumstances words were written in eighty-four lines
within the small compass of the half-plate. The Archdeacon says (p. ):
The smallness of the copper-plate-like writing readers it
impossible to be reproduced by any engraving; while at times, with our greatly
esteemed unpaid mediums in various circles, the writing on our usual
quarter-plates is so microscopic, that to enable us to read it a higher power
lens is necessary; and the character of the calligraphy in English, archaic
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, French, Arabic, varies continually in our
several separate, devotional, and private gatherings, in places from
twenty-four to seventy-seven miles apart.
Proofs of the Truth of Spiritualism, by the Rev. Prof. G. Henslow, also contains illustrations and descriptions of
many remarkable psychographs (pp. et
seq.)
The next point for our consideration is the question of what are
called "spirit lights," that is to say the different varieties of illumination
which are produced at a seance by the non-physical
participators therein. Sir William Crookes gives a
comprehensive catalogue of these on p.
of his book before quoted:
various kinds of lights
Under the strictest test conditions I have seen a solid
self-luminous body, the size and nearly the shape of a turkey's egg, float
noiselessly about the room, at one time higher than any one present could reach
standing on tip-toe, and then gently descend to the floor. It was visible for
more than ten minutes; and before it faded away it struck the table three
times, with a sound like that of a hard solid body. During this time the medium
was lying back, apparently insensible, in an easy chair.
I have seen luminous points of light darting about and settling on
the heads of different persons; I have had questions answered by the flashing
of a bright light a desired number of times in front of my face. I have seen
sparks of light rising from the table to the ceiling, and again falling upon
the table, striking it with an audible sound. I have had an alphabetic
communication given by a luminous cloud floating upwards to a picture. Under
the strictest test conditions, I have more than once had a solid,
self-luminous, crystalline body placed in my hand by a hand which did not
belong to any person in the room. In the light, I have seen a luminous cloud
hover over a heliotrope on a side-table, break a sprig off, and carry the sprig
to a lady; and on some occasions I have seen a similar luminous cloud visibly condense
to the form of a hand, and carry small objects about.
I have already described the three varieties of lights which showed
themselves to me during my preliminary home experiments without a recognized
medium; and though I have seen many such lights since, they have been almost
all of the same general character as those. On several occasions, however, I
have seen a light much brighter than any of those, apparently of an electrical
character, capable of fully lighting up the room, and in one case of blinding
brilliance. This latter manifestation is rare at a seance,
as, for reasons previously described, it would break up any partial
materializations which might be necessary for the production of other
phenomena.
Another interesting power at the command of experimenters on the
astral plane is that of disintegration and of reintegration, to which we have
already referred when speaking of precipitation. This is simply the process of
reducing any object to an impalpable powder - in fact, into an etheric or even
atomic condition. This may be brought about by the action of extremely rapid
vibration, which overcomes the cohesion of the molecules of the object. A still
higher rate of vibration, perhaps of a somewhat different type, will further
separate these molecules into their constituent atoms. A body thus reduced to
the etheric or atomic condition can be moved with great rapidity from one place
to another; and the moment that the force which had been exerted to bring it
into that condition is withdrawn, it will at once resume its original state.
How foRm Is retained
To answer an obvious objection which will at once occur to the mind
of the reader I may be allowed to quote once more a few sentences from The
Astral Plane.
Students often at first find it difficult to understand how in such
an experiment the shape of the article can be preserved. It has been remarked
that if any metallic object - say, for example, a key - be melted and raised to
a vaporous state by heat, when the heat is withdrawn it will certainly return
to the solid state, but it will no longer be a key, but merely a lump of metal.
The point is well taken, though as a matter of fact the apparent analogy does
not hold good. The elemental essence which informs the key would be dissipated
by the alteration in its condition - not that the essence itself can be
affected by the action of heat, but that when its temporary body is destroyed
(as a solid) it pours back into the great reservoir of such essence, much as
the higher principles of a man, though entirely unaffected by heat or cold, are
yet forced out of a physical body when it is destroyed by fire.
Consequently, when what had been the key cooled down into the solid
condition again, the elemental essence (of the "earth" or solid
class) which poured back into it would not be in any way the same as that which
it contained before, and there would be no reason why the same shape should be
retained. But a man who disintegrated a key for the purpose of removing it by
astral currents from one place to another would be careful to hold the same
elemental essence in exactly the same shape until the transfer was completed,
and then when his will-force was removed it would act as a mould into which the
solidifying particles would now, or rather round which they would be
re-aggregated. Thus, unless the operator's power of concentration failed, the
shape would be accurately preserved.
It is in this way that objects are sometimes brought almost
instantaneously from great distances at spiritualistic seances,
and it is obvious that when disintegrated they could be passed with perfect
ease through any solid substance, such, for example, as the wall of a house or
the side of a locked box, so that what is commonly called "the passage of
matter through matter" is seen, when properly understood, to be as simple
as the passage of water through a sieve, or of a gas through a liquid in some
chemical experiment.
Since it is possible by an alteration of vibrations to change
matter from the solid to the etheric condition, it will be comprehended that it
is also possible to reverse the process and to bring etheric matter into the
solid state. As the one process explains the phenomenon of disintegration, so
does the other that of materialization; and just as in the former case a
continued effort of will is necessary to prevent the object from resuming its
original state, so in exactly the same way in the latter phenomenon a continued
effort is necessary to prevent the materialized matter from relapsing into the
etheric condition.
OBJECTS BROUGHT FROM A DISTANCE
The apport of objects from some other
room, or sometimes from a far greater distance, is one of the most favourite methods by which the dead men managing a seance elect to manifest their especially astral powers.
Sir William Crookes, on p. of the book which I have so often quoted,
tells us how at a seance with Miss Kate Fox the
controlling entities announced that "they were going to bring something to
show their power," and then brought into the room a small hand-bell from
the library, the door between being carefully locked, and the key in Sir
William's pocket.
I have myself frequently had all sorts of small objects brought to
me from a distance - flowers and fruit being among the most common. In some
cases tropical flowers and fruit, obviously perfectly fresh, have been thus
presented to me in England. When interrogated as to whence these things came,
the controlling entities have always most emphatically asserted that they were
not permitted to steal any person's property in this way, but had to search for
their flowers and fruits where they grew wild. I have had a rare fern and a
rare orchid brought to me in this way - thrown down upon the table with the
fresh earth still clinging to their roots. I was able to plant both of them
afterwards in my garden, where they took root and grew in the most natural
manner.
The best stories that I know of the bringing of plants to a seance are contained in Madame d'Espérance's
book Shadowland. The first is quoted from p. . (It
should be premised that "Yolande" is the
name given to a materialized "spirit" who took a prominent part in
all the seances of Madame d'Espérance.)
Yolande crossed the
room to where Mr. Reimers (a gentleman well known
throughout Europe as a prominent spiritualist) sat, and beckoned him to go
nearer the cabinet and witness some preparations she was about to make. Here it
is as well to say that on previous occasions when Yolande
had produced flowers for us, she had given us to understand that sand and
water were necessary for the purpose; consequently a supply of fine clean white
sand and plenty of water were kept in readiness for possible contingencies.
When Yolande, accompanied by Mr. Reimers,
came to the centre of the circle, she signified her wish for sand and water,
and, making Mr. R. kneel down on the floor beside her, she directed him to pour
sand into the water-carafe, which he did until it was about half full. Then he
was instructed to pour in water. This was done, and then by her direction he
shook it well and handed it back to her.
Yolande, after
scrutinizing it carefully, placed it on the floor, covering it lightly with the
drapery which she took from her shoulders. She then retired to the cabinet,
from which she returned once or twice at short intervals, as though to see how
it was getting on.
In the meantime Mr. Armstrong had carried away, the superfluous
water and sand, leaving the carafe standing in the middle of the floor covered
by the thin veil, which, however, did not in the least conceal its shape, the
ring or top edge being especially visible.
We were directed by raps on the floor to sing, in order to
harmonize our thoughts, and to take off the edge, as it were, of the curiosity
we were all more or less feeling.
While we were singing we observed the drapery to be rising from the
rim of the carafe. This was perfectly patent to every one of the twenty
witnesses watching it closely.
Yolande came out
again from the cabinet and regarded it anxiously. She appeared to examine it
carefully, and partially supported the drapery as though afraid of its crushing
some tender object underneath. Finally she raised it altogether, exposing to
our astonished gaze a perfect plant, of what appeared to be a kind of laurel.
Yolande raised the
carafe, in which the plant seemed to have firmly grown; its roots, visible
through the glass being closely packed in the sand.
She regarded it with evident pride and pleasure, and, carrying it
in both her hands, crossed the room and presented it to Mr. Oxley, one of the
strangers who were present - the Mr. Oxley who is so well known by his
philosophical writings on spiritual subjects, and the pyramids of
He received the carafe with the plant, and Yolande
retired as though she had completed her task. After examining the plant Mr.
Oxley, for convenience sake, placed it on the floor beside him, there being no
table near at hand. Many questions were asked and curiosity ran high. The plant
resembled a large-leafed laurel with dark glossy leaves, but without any
blossom. No one present recognized the plant or could assign it to any known
species.
We were called to order by raps, and were told not to discuss the
matter, but to sing something and then be quiet. We obeyed the command, and
after singing, more raps told us to examine the plant anew, which we were
delighted to do. To our great surprise we then observed that a large circular
head of bloom, forming a flower fully five inches in diameter, had opened
itself, while standing on the floor at Mr. Oxley's feet.
The flower was of a beautiful orange-pink colour, or perhaps I
might say that salmon-colour would be a nearer description, for I have never seen
the same tints, and it is difficult to describe shades of colour in words.
The head was composed of some hundred and fifty four-star corollas
projecting considerably from the stem. The plant was twenty-two inches in
height, having a thick woody stem which filled the neck of the water-carafe. It
had twenty-nine leaves, averaging from two to two and a half inches in breadth,
and seven and a half inches at their greatest length. Each leaf was smooth and
glossy, resembling at the first glance the laurel which we had first supposed
it to be. The fibrous roots appeared to be growing naturally in the sand.
We afterwards photographed the plant in the water-bottle, from
which, by the way, it was found impossible to remove it, the neck being much
too small to allow the roots to pass; indeed, the comparatively slender stem
entirely filled the orifice.
The name, we learnt, was Ixora Crocata, and the plant a native of
How did the plant come there? Did it grow in the bottle? Had it
been brought from
These were questions which we put to one another without result. We
received no satisfactory explanation. Yolande either
could not or would not tell us. As far as we could judge - and the opinion of a
professional gardener corroborated our own - the plant had evidently some years
of growth.
We could see where other leaves had grown and fallen off, and
wound-marks which seemed to have healed and grown over long ago. But there was
every evidence to show that the plant had grown in the sand in the bottle, as
the roots were naturally wound around the inner surface of the glass, all the fibres perfect and unbroken as though they had germinated
on the spot and had apparently never been disturbed. It had not been thrust
into the bottle, for the simple reason that it was impossible to pass the large
fibrous roots and lower part of the stem through the neck of the bottle, which
had to be broken to take out the plant.
Mr. Oxley, in his account, which was afterwards published, says:
I had the plant photographed next morning, and afterwards brought
it home and placed it in my conservatory under the gardener's care. It lived
for three months, when it shrivelled up. I kept the
leaves, giving most of them away except the flower and the three top-leaves
which the gardener cut off when he took charge of the plant; these I have yet
preserved under glass, but they show no signs of dematerializing as yet.
Previous to the creation or materialization of this wonderful plant, the Ixora Crocata, Yolande brought me a rose with a short stem not more than
an inch long, which I put into my bosom. Feeling something was transpiring, I
drew it out and found there were two roses. I then replaced them, and
withdrawing them at the conclusion of the meeting, to my astonishment the stem
had elongated to seven inches, with three full-blown roses and a bud upon it,
with several thorns. These I brought home and kept till they faded, the leaves
dropped off and the stem dried up, a proof of their materiality and actuality.
We gather from further statements that this interesting present was
made to Mr. Oxley in fulfilment of a promise, for it
seems that he was making a collection of plants in order to demonstrate some
theory, for which he needed a specimen of this particular kind, but had been
unable to obtain it by any ordinary method. The remarkable point about the
arrival of this plant is its gradual appearance. It is not brought as a whole
and thrown down upon the table, as my fern was, but it is seen to be slowly
increasing under the drapery, precisely as though it were really growing at a
most abnormal rate; and even after it has been presented to Mr. Oxley it still
continues this apparent growth, for it develops a flower during the singing.
It seems, however, evident that this apparent growth is not really
anything of the kind, since the plant is seen on examination to be clearly
several years old; so we are driven to the conclusion that the plant was, as
it were, brought over in sections and built up gradually. If a living plant can
be dematerialized and put together again without damaging it permanently, it
may just as easily be taken to pieces bit by bit as pulverized at one blow by a
mightier effort of will; indeed, one can see that the former might be the
simpler process, demanding less expenditure of force. It may quite conceivably
not have been within the power of those who were assisting Yolande
to bring the entire vegetable at one fell swoop, and it may therefore have been
absolutely necessary to make several journeys for it. It would appear that they
first arranged the roots in the sand, disposing them with care exactly as they
had naturally grown, and then gradually added the rest of the plant, bringing
the flower over later with dramatic effect as the crowning glory of the
experiment.
It may be that the apparently rapid growth of the mango-tree in the
celebrated Indian feat of magic is managed in this same manner, by successive
acts of disintegration and reintegration, instead of by enormously hastening
the ordinary processes of development, as is usually suggested. Clearly, as the
author remarks, it could not have been thrust into the bottle, but particle by
particle had been carefully arranged in the proper place among the damp sand.
The operation must have been difficult and delicate, and we can hardly wonder
that Yolande regarded the eventual result with
considerable pride.
Mr. Oxley seems to have regarded the plant as a temporary
materialization, and expected that it would disappear in due course; but it is
quite evident that it was definitely a case of apport,
and that the gift was intended to remain, as indeed it did until its death -
which, however, may quite possibly have been accelerated by its abrupt removal
from warmer climes to the inclement latitude of England. The photograph taken
of the plant in the bottle is reproduced as one of the illustrations in the
book from which this account is extracted. It seems clear that the rose to
which Mr. Oxley refers must also have been brought piecemeal in the same way,
since it would obviously be impossible for a cut flower to grow in the way
which he describes.
In the same book, at p. , we find an account of a still more
wonderful achievement of the same nature on the part of Yolande.
In this case there is the additional and interesting complication that the
plant was only borrowed, and had to be returned.
Yolande, with the
assistance of Mr. Aksakof, had mixed sand and loam in
the flower-pot, and she had covered it with her veil, as she had done in the
case of the water-bottle in
The white drapery was seen to rise slowly but steadily, widening
out as it grew higher and higher. Yolande stood by
and manipulated the gossamer-like covering till it reached a height far above
her head, when she carefully removed it, disclosing a tall plant bowed with a
mass of heavy blossom, which emitted the strong sweet scent of which I had
complained.
Notes were taken of its size, and it was found to be seven feet in
length from root to point, or about a foot and a half taller than myself. Even
when bent by the weight of the eleven large blossoms it bore, it was taller
than I. The flowers were very perfect, measuring eight inches in diameter; five
were fully blown, three were just opening and three in bud, all without spot or
blemish, and damp with dew. It was most lovely, but somehow the scent of lilies
since that evening has always made me feel faint.
Yolande seemed very
pleased with her success and told us that if we wanted to photograph the lily
we were to do so, as she must take it away again. She stood beside it and Mr. Boutlerof photographed it and her twice.
The plant was a Lilium auratum, the golden-rayed lily of
A curious feature of the account is that the materialized figure Yolande became anxious about the affair because, having
apparently borrowed this giant lily, she found herself unable to return it at
the proper time. The available power seems to have been exhausted in the effort
of bringing it, so that when she tried to take it back again she failed. She
appears to have been much distressed at her inability to keep her promise, and
begged that every care might be taken of the plant. Her physical friends did
all that they could for it, but it seems (and no wonder) to have languished
somewhat. The weather, too, proved unfavourable for
her purposes, and it was nearly a week before she finally succeeded in
restoring it to its original owner, whoever he may have been. One would like to
hear the other side of this story - the surprise and regret at the mysterious
disappearance from somebody's garden or conservatory of so magnificent a
specimen, and their equal but much pleasanter astonishment over its
inexplicable reappearance a week later, when probably all hope of tracing the
thieves had been abandoned!
The question of the influence of weather on the production of
psychic phenomena is one of considerable interest. It is evident that
electrical disturbances of any sort present difficulties in the way of attempts
at either materialization or disintegration, presumably for the same reason
that bright light renders them almost impossible - the destructive effect of
strong vibration. It is quite conceivable that while the air was full of strong
electrical vibrations Yolande may have found it
impossible safely to carry her disintegrated vegetable matter from one place to
another, lest it should be so shaken up and disarranged that restoration to its
original form might become difficult or impracticable.
In many cases of the apport of objects
from a distance the fourth-dimensional method is obviously easiest, though in
these efforts of Yolande's it would seem from the
gradual growth of the plant that it was not employed. But there are many
instances of which it offers the neatest and readiest explanation. There are
nearly always several ways in which almost any phenomenon can be produced, and
it is often not easy to determine merely from a written account which of them
was actually employed in a given case.
Another instance either of the passage of matter through matter, or
of the employment of fourth-dimensional power, is given when a solid iron ring
too small to go over the hand is passed on to one's wrist. This has three times
been done to me, and in each case I had to trust to our dead friends for its
removal, since it would have been quite impossible to get it off by any
physical means except filing. I have also again and again had the back of a
chair hung over my arm while I was grasping the hand of the medium. Once I
watched that process in a moderately good light, and though the phenomenon was
quickly performed it yet seemed to me that I saw part of the back of the chair
fade into a sort of mist as it approached my arm. But in a moment it had passed
round or through my arm and was again solid as ever.
A much rarer phenomenon at a seance, so
far as my experience goes, is that of reduplication. When it does occur, this
is produced simply by forming a perfect mental image of the object to be
copied, and then gathering about it the necessary astral and physical matter.
For this purpose it is needful that every particle, interior as well as
exterior, of the object to be duplicated should be held accurately in view
simultaneously, and consequently the phenomenon is one which requires considerable
power of concentration to perform. Persons unable to extract the matter
required directly from the surrounding ether have sometimes taken it from the
material of the original article, which in this case would be correspondingly
reduced in weight.
A fieRy test
Another striking but not very common feat displayed occasionally at
a seance is that of handling fire unharmed. On one
occasion at a seance in
I hesitated for a moment, perhaps not unnaturally, but an impatient
movement on the part of the dead man decided me. I felt that he probably knew
what he was about, that this was perhaps a unique opportunity, and that if it
burnt me I could drop it before much harm was done. So I held out my hand and
the glowing mass was promptly deposited in my palm. I can testify that I felt not
even the slightest warmth from it, though when the dead man immediately took a
sheet of paper from the mantelpiece and applied it to the coal, the paper
blazed up in a moment. I held this lump of coal for a minute and a half, when,
as it was rapidly growing dull, he motioned to me to throw it back into the
fire. Not the slightest mark or redness remained upon my hand - nothing but a
little ash - nor was there any smell of burning.
Now how was this done? I could not in the least understand at the
time, and could get no intelligible theory out of the presiding entities. I
know now from later occult studies that the thinnest layer of etheric substance
can be so manipulated as to make it absolutely impervious to heat, and I assume
that probably my hand was for the moment covered with such a layer, since that
is perhaps the easiest way of producing the result. Be that as it may, I can
certify that the event occurred exactly as described.
It is within the resources of the astral plane to produce fire as well
as to counteract its effect. I have seen this done only once myself, and then
as a special "test" to prove that spontaneous combustion was a
possibility, but from the accounts given by Mr. Morell
Theobald in Spirit Workers in the Home Circle it
would appear that with him the phenomenon was quite ordinary. The deceased
members of his household seem to have taken almost as great a part in its work
as the living members did, and to light the family fires spontaneously was one
of the least of their achievements. Their action in this respect is said to
have been paralleled on several occasions in
the production of fire
My own experience in this line was at a seance
in
I infer, since heat is after all simply a certain rate of
vibration, that it is only necessary for the astral entities to set up and
maintain that particular rate of vibration, and combustion must ensue; and this
is most probably what was done. An obvious alternative would be to introduce
fourth-dimensionally a tiny fragment of already glowing matter, (such as
tinder, for example) and then blow upon it until it burst into flame; or again,
chemical combinations which would produce combustion could easily be
introduced. There are plenty of stories told in
Chapter IX
VISIBLE MATERIALIZATIONS
intangible forms
We must consider now materializations of our second and third types
- those which are visible, but not tangible, and in many cases manifestly
diaphanous; and the full materializations, which seem in all respects
indistinguishable for the time from persons still in the physical body. The
second type is not uncommon, and though such materializations usually avoid
coming within reach of the sitters I was on one occasion especially asked by a
direct voice to pass my hand gently through a form of this nature. I can only
say that my sense of touch detected absolutely nothing, though a distinctly
visible, but semi-transparent form stood in front of me, smiling at my futile
efforts. When I closed my eyes, I could not tell whether my hand was inside or
outside the body which looked so perfect and so living. Forms of this nature
are probably easier to construct than the more solid kind, for I have once or
twice had startling evidence that one which appeared entirely solid was in
reality so only in part. A hand which is strong enough to give a vigorous grasp
is often joined to an arm which does not exist as far as the sense of touch is
concerned, though appearing to the eye just as solid as the hand. Materializations
of this second type are described by Sir William Crookes
as follows, at p. of his Researches.
In the dusk of the evening during a seance
with Mr. Home at my house, the curtains of the window about eight feet from Mr.
Home were seen to move. A dark, shadowy, semi-transparent form like that of a
man was then seen by all present standing near the window, waving the curtain
with his hand. As we looked the form faded away and the curtain ceased to move.
The following is a still more striking instance. As in the former case Mr. Home
was the medium. A phantom form came from a corner of the room, took an
accordion in his hand, and then glided about the room placing the instrument.
The form was visible to all present for many minutes, Mr. Home also being seen at
the same time. Coming rather close to a lady who was sitting apart from the
rest of the company, she gave a slight cry, upon which it vanished.
mattes from the medium
When materialization is performed for any reason by a living person
thoroughly trained in the resources of the astral plane - one of the pupils of
an Adept, for instance - he condenses the surrounding ether into the solid
form, and builds in that way so much of a body as may be necessary without in
any way interfering with any one else. But at a seance
this is not usually done, and the simpler expedient is adopted of withdrawing a
large amount of matter from the body of the medium. This matter may under favourable conditions be seen pouring out from his side in
great wreaths of mist; in Mr. W. Eglinton's
remarkable book, 'Twixt Two Worlds, there will be found three interesting
illustrations showing successive stages of the development of this mist, from
its first faint appearance until the entranced medium is almost entirely hidden
by wreaths like those of thick, heavy smoke.
This mist rapidly condenses into a form - sometimes apparently into
an exact double of the medium in the first place. I remember at a seance with the well-known medium, Mr. Cecil Husk, after a
period of silent waiting, a brilliant light suddenly blazed out, showing
everything in the room quite clearly. The medium was crushed together in his
chair - shrunk into himself in a most extraordinary way, apparently in a deep
trance, and breathing stertorously; but just in front
of him stood an exact duplicate of himself, alert and living, holding out in
front of him in the palm of his hand an egg-shaped body, which was the source
of the brilliant light. He stood thus for a few moments, and then in an instant
the light went out, and the form addressed us in the well-known tones of one of
the regular "guides" - showing how entirely he built himself out of
the substance of the medium.
There is no sort of doubt that it is not only etheric matter which
is thus temporarily withdrawn from the medium's body, but also often dense
solid and liquid matter, however difficult it may be for us to realize the
possibility of such a transference. I have myself seen cases in which this
phenomenon undoubtedly took place, and was evidenced by a considerable loss of
weight in the medium's physical body, and also by a most curious and ghastly
appearance of having shrivelled up and shrunk
together, so that his tiny wizened-face was disappearing into the collar of his
coat as he sat. The "guides" directing a seance
rarely allow their medium to be seen when he is in this condition, and wisely,
for it is indeed a terrible and unwholesome sight, so uncanny, so utterly
inhuman that it would inevitably seriously frighten any nervous person.
In that manual of materializations, People from the Other World (p.
), Colonel Olcott describes the manner in which he carefully weighed the
materialized form which called itself Honto. At his
first attempt this Red Indian girl weighed eighty-eight pounds, but at the
Colonel's request she promptly reduced herself to fifty-eight pounds, and then
again increased to sixty-five, all within ten minutes, and without changing her
dress. Nearly all this mass of physical matter must have been withdrawn from
the body of the medium, who must consequently have lost proportionately.
On p. of the same book the
Colonel tells us how he tested in the same way the materialized form of Katie
Brink, who weighed at first seventy-seven pounds, and then reduced herself to
fifty-nine and fifty-two, without affecting her outward appearance in any way.
In this case we are confronted with the astonishing phenomenon of the total
disappearance of the medium during the materialization, though the Colonel had
secured her with sewing cotton, sealed with his own seal, in a peculiar and
ingenious way which would absolutely prevent her from leaving her chair in any
ordinary way without breaking the cotton. Nevertheless, when he was permitted
during the seance to enter the cabinet, that chair was
empty; and there was not only nothing to be seen, but also nothing to be felt,
when he passed his hands all round the chair. Yet when the seance
was over, the medium was found seated as before, half-fainting and utterly
exhausted, but with cotton and seal intact! Most wonderful, truly; yet not
unique; see Un Cas de Dématerialisation,
by M. A. Aksakow.
This matter does not always flow out through the side only;
sometimes it appears to ooze out from the whole surface of the body, drawn out
by the powerful attraction or suction set up by the guides. Its flowing forth
is thus described by Madame E. d'Espérance:
Then began a strange sensation, which I had sometimes felt at
séances. Frequently I have heard it described by others as of cobwebs being
passed over the face, but to me, who watched it curiously, it seemed that I
could feel fine threads being drawn out of the pores of my skin. Shadowland (p. ).
madame d'espérance
Many mediums have written autobiographies, but I have met with none
which impressed me so favourably as this of Madame d'Espérance. It is not only that it has about it an
attractive ring of earnestness and truthfulness, but that the author seems far
more closely and intelligently observant than most mediums have been, and more
anxious to understand the real nature of the phenomena which occur in her
presence.
She takes a rational view of her abnormal faculty, and sets herself
to study it with an earnest and loyal desire to arrive at the truth about it
all. While heartily admiring the lady's courage and determination, one cannot
but regret that it did not fall in her way to study Theosophical literature,
which would have told her in the beginning every detail that she has slowly and
in many cases painfully discovered, at the cost of much unnecessary suffering
and anxiety. Her book begins with the pathetic story of a much-misunderstood
childhood, and goes on to describe the years of mental struggle during which
the medium slowly freed herself from the trammels of the narrowest orthodoxy. When
her mediumship was fully developed it certainly seems
to have been of a wonderful and varied character, and some of the instances
given might well appear incredible to any one ignorant of the subject. I have
myself, however, seen phenomena of the same nature as all those which she
describes, and consequently I find no difficulty in admitting the possibility
of all the strange occurrences which she relates.
She realizes strongly and describes forcefully the exceedingly
intimate relation which exists between the medium and the body materialized out
of his vehicles. We are so entirely accustomed to identify ourselves with our
bodies that it is a new and uncanny and almost a horrible sensation to find the
body going through vivid and extraordinary experiences in which nevertheless
its true owner has no part whatever. On p.
of her book above quoted she gives us a realistic description of the
strangely unnatural situation in which a materializing medium must so often be
placed; and I think that no one can read it without understanding how
thoroughly undesirable, how utterly unhealthy on all planes and from all points
of view such an experience must be.
"anna oR
I?"
Now comes another figure, shorter, slenderer, and with outstretched
arms. Somebody rises up at the far end of the circle and comes forward, and the
two are clasped in each other's arms. Then inarticulate cries of "Anna! O Anna! My child! My loved
one!"
Then somebody else gets up and puts her arms round the figure; then
sobs, cries, and blessings get mixed up. I feel my body swayed to and fro, and
all gets dark before my eyes. I feel somebody's arms around me, although I sit
on my chair alone. I feel somebody's heart beating against my breast. I feel
that something is happening. No one is near me except the two children. No one
is taking any notice of me. All eyes and thoughts seem concentrated on the
white slender figure standing there with the arms of the two black-robed women
around it.
It must be my own heart I feel beating so distinctly. Yet those
arms round me? Surely never did I feel a touch so plainly. I begin to wonder
which is I. Am I the white figure, or am I that on the chair? Are they my hands
round the old lady's neck, or are these mine that are lying on the knees of me,
or on the knees of the figure, if it be not I, on the chair?
Certainly they are my lips that are being kissed. It is my face
that is wet with the tears which these good women are shedding so plentifully.
Yet how can it be? It is a horrible feeling, thus losing hold of one's
identity. I long to put out one of these hands that are lying so helplessly,
and touch some one just to know if I am myself or only a dream - if "Anna" be I, and I am lost, as it
were, in her identity.
I feel the old Lady's trembling arms, the kisses, the tears, the
blessings and caresses of the sister, and I wonder in the agony of suspense and
bewilderment, how long can it last? How long will there be two of us? Which
will it be in the end? Shall I be "Anna" or "Anna" be I?
Then I feel two little hands slip themselves into my nerveless
hands, and they give me a fresh hold of myself, as it were, and with a feeling
of exultation I find I am myself, and that little Jonte,
tired of being hidden behind the three figures, feels lonely and grasps my
hands for company and comfort.
How glad I am of the touch, even from the hand of a child! My
doubts as to who I am are gone. While I am feeling thus the white figure of
"Anna" disappears in the cabinet, and the two ladies return to their
seats, excited and tearful, but overcome with happiness.
There was a great deal more to happen that night, but somehow I
felt weak and indifferent to all around me, and not inclined to be interested
in what occurred. Strange and remarkable incidents took place, but for the
moment my life seemed dragged out of me and I longed for solitude and rest.
This feeling of lassitude and of having the life dragged out of
them is naturally terribly common among mediums. Sir William Crookes remarks on p.
of his Researches:
After witnessing the painful state of nervous and bodily
prostration in which some of these experiments have left Mr. Home - after
seeing him lying in an almost fainting condition on the floor, pale and
speechless - I could scarcely doubt that the evolution of psychic force is
accompanied by a corresponding drain on vital force.
This entirely agrees with my own experience; I have frequently seen
a medium absolutely prostrate after a seance, and I
fear that many of them fancy themselves compelled to resort to alcoholic stimulants
in order to recover from the terrible drain upon their strength. So much of
their vitality necessarily goes into the materialized form, and the disturbance
to the system is so serious, that after the seance is
over, they are in a condition closely resembling the shock which follows a
surgical operation. And no wonder; for that would indeed be a terrible surgical
operation which removed forty to eighty pounds of matter from the body, and
then restored it again.
On the curious connection between the medium and the materialized
form, Madame d'Espérance writes as follows as to the
relation between herself and Yolande:
an intimate Relation
There seemed to exist a strange link between us. I could do nothing
to ensure her appearance amongst us. She came and went, so far as I am aware,
entirely independent of my will, but when she had come, she was, I found,
dependent on me for her brief material existence. I seemed to lose, not my
individuality, but my strength and power of exertion, and though I did not then
know it, a great portion of my material substance. I felt that in some way I
was changed, but the effort to think logically in some mysterious way affected Yolande, and made her weak. (Shadowland,
p. .)
The medium is conscious of her own individuality in the background
all the time; but any attempt to assert it, or to think connectedly,
immediately weakens the form, or brings it back to the cabinet. And this is
natural, for to think logically means to set up chemical action - to produce
oxidation of the phosphorus of the brain; whereas it is only under conditions
of perfect passivity in the physical vehicle that so much matter can be spared
from it without danger to life. As a matter of fact, there is always a
possibility of such danger; and in case of sudden shock or disturbance it may
come terribly near realization. It is for that reason that the attempt of the
ignorant and boastful sceptic to seize the
"spirit form" is so criminal as well as so brainless an action; and
the person whose colossal stupidity leads him to commit such an atrocity runs a
serious risk of occupying the position of defendant in a trial for murder.
Beings at that level of intelligence ought not to be permitted to take part in
experiments of a delicate nature. What harm may be done by this dangerous
variety of the genus blockhead is shown by the following extract from the
experiences of Madame d'Espérance, given upon p. of her book:
A scandalous outrage
I do not know how long the seance had
proceeded, but I knew that Yolande had taken her
pitcher on her shoulder and was outside the cabinet. What actually occurred I
had to learn afterwards. All I knew was a horrible excruciating sensation of
being doubled up and squeezed together, as I can imagine a hollow guttapercha doll would feel, if it had sensation, when
violently embraced by its baby owner. A sense of terror and agonizing pain came
over me, as though I were losing hold of life and was falling into some fearful
abyss, yet knowing nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, except the echo of
a scream which I heard as at a distance. I felt I was sinking down, I knew not
where. I tried to save myself, to grasp at something, but missed it; and then
came a blank from which I awakened with a shuddering horror and sense of being
bruised to death.
My senses seemed to have been scattered to the winds, and only
little by little could I gather them sufficiently together to understand in a
slight degree what had happened. Yolande had been
seized, and the man who had seized her declared it was I.
This is what I was told. The statement was so extraordinary that
if it had not been for my utter prostration I could have laughed, but I was
unable to think or even move. I felt as though very little life remained in me,
and that little was a torment. The haemorrhage of the
lungs, which my residence in the south of
No wonder that the "guides" take every precaution in
their power to save their medium from such brutality. Even they themselves may
suffer through the temporary vehicle which they have assumed, trusting
themselves to the honour and good-feeling of those who are present on the
physical plane. Mr. R. D. Owen, in The Debatable Land (p. ), thus refers to
this matter:
Two highly intelligent friends of
mine, now deceased, Dr. A. D. Wilson and Professor James Mapes,
both formerly of
I do not know whether the "spirit" would suffer in such a
case as this, though it certainly does when a materialized form is struck or
wounded. For that reason a sword constantly waved round a man who is haunted is
supposed to be a protection (and indeed often really is so, as has been seen in
some of the narratives previously quoted), and the sword was also an important
part of the outfit of the mediaeval magician.
No physical weapon could affect the astral body in the slightest
degree; a sword might be passed through it again and again without the owner
being even aware of it; but as soon as there is any materialization (and
wherever physical phenomena occur there must be some materialization, however
little) physical weapons may act through it upon the astral body and produce
sensation, much as was the case with the more permanent physical body during
life. But undoubtedly the medium may be seriously injured by any unauthorized
interference with the materialized form, as is seen by Madame d'Espérance's story.
I most heartily endorse the sentiments expressed above by Mr. Owen,
and I have always been governed by them in my own investigations. There are
some persons who enter upon an enquiry of this kind with the fixed conviction
that they are going to be deceived, and (with some idea that they can obviate a
result so humbling to their self-conceit) they endeavour
to invent all kinds of complicated contrivances, which they think will render
fraud impossible. It is quite true that in many cases phenomena do not take
place under the conditions which they prescribe, for naturally the dead man is
not especially disposed to go out of his way to take a great deal of trouble
for a person who meets him from the beginning with unfounded suspicion
expressed in terms of egregious self-confidence. Often also the conditions
prescribed by the ignoramus are really such as to render phenomena impossible.
Dr. Alfred R. Wallace once very truly remarked:
Scientific men almost invariably assume that, in this enquiry, they
should be permitted at the very outset to impose conditions; and if under such
conditions nothing happens, they consider it a proof of imposture or delusion.
But they well know that in all other branches of research, Nature, not they,
determines the essential conditions without a compliance with which no
experiment will succeed. These conditions have to be learnt by a patient
questioning of Nature, and they are different for each branch of science. How
much more may they be expected to differ in an enquiry which deals with subtle
forces, of the nature of which the physicist is wholly and absolutely ignorant!
In just the same way, a man might easily render electrical
experiments impossible, if he chose to regard the insulating arrangements as
suspicious, and insisted upon seeing the same results produced when the wires
were uninsulated; and then, when it was gently explained
to him that insulation was a necessary condition, he might raise the same old
parrot-cry of fraud, and declare that these pretended electrical marvels could
never be worked under his conditions! Instances of the extent to which folly
and cruelty can go in this direction are given with full illustrations in
Colonel Olcott's People from the Other World (pp. -).
I have myself always adopted the plan of giving the dead man credit
for honest intention until I saw evidence to the contrary; I have allowed him
to arrange his own conditions, and to show exactly what he chose, endeavouring first of all to establish friendly relations;
and I have invariably found that as soon as he gained confidence in me, be
would gladly describe the limits of his power, so far as he knew them, and
would frequently himself suggest tests of various kinds to show to others the
genuineness of the phenomena.
Attempts have been made to cheat me on several occasions; and when I
saw this to be the action of the medium, I held my peace, but troubled that
medium no further. On the other hand, I have also seen cases of deceit where I
felt convinced that the medium's intentions were perfectly honest, and that the
deception lay entirely with the unseen actors in the drama. I have known the
medium's physical body, when in a condition of trance, to be wrapped up in
materialized gauzy drapery, and passed off as "a spirit form" -
apparently for no other reason than to save the operators the trouble of
producing a genuine materialization, or possibly because in some way or other
the power to produce the real manifestation was lacking. In this case the
medium, on hearing what had happened after recovery from his trance, protested
most earnestly and with every appearance of real sincerity that he had had no
conception of what was being done; and, having many times before seen
unmistakably genuine manifestations through him, I believed him. Exactly the
same story was told to me by a well-known medium with regard to an
"exposure" of him which was triumphantly trumpeted abroad in many
newspapers; and it is at least perfectly possible that the statement may have
been equally true in that case also. My experience therefore warrants me in
saying that even when a clear case of fraud is discovered, it is not always
safe to blame the medium for it. On the other hand, I have known a medium come
to give a seance with half-a-yard of muslin hanging
out of her pocket, and I have recognized the aforesaid muslin appearing as
spirit drapery at a later stage of the proceedings - in its original form, I
mean, for even in cases of genuine materialization of drapery it is frequently
formed from the material of the clothes of the medium. Once more we may turn to
Madame d'Espérance for an instance showing this to be
the case.
"spiRit" drapery
It was at one of those seances in
Something of the kind had happened once before in
There are various types of this materialized drapery - some quite
coarse and some exceedingly fine - finer indeed than even the production of
Eastern looms. Sometimes the manifesting entity will encourage a favoured sitter to feel this drapery or even to cut a piece
from it. I have had such pieces given to me on several occasions; some of them
lasted for years, and appear to be permanent, while others faded away in the
course of an hour or so, and one within ten minutes. Though light and filmy
white drapery seems to be the regular fashion among materialized forms, I have
also seen them show themselves in the ordinary garb of civilization, and
sometimes in a uniform or some special dress characteristic of their position
during life.
materialization in full view
The following very good account of the materialization and
dematerialization of a form is given in Shadowland
(p. ), and was written by a member who had frequently formed part of that
circle:
First a filmy, cloudy patch of something white is observed on the
floor in front of the cabinet. It then gradually expands, visibly extending
itself as if it were an animated patch of muslin, lying fold upon fold, on the
floor, until extending about two and a half by three feet and having a depth of
a few inches - perhaps six or more. Presently it begins to rise slowly in or
near the centre, as if a human head were underneath it, while the cloudy film
on the floor begins to look more like muslin falling into folds about the
portion so mysteriously rising. By the time it has attained two or more feet,
it looks as if a child were under it and moving its arms about in all
directions as if manipulating something underneath.
It continues rising, oftentimes sinking somewhat to rise again
higher than before, until it attains a height of about five feet, when its form
can be seen as if arranging the folds of drapery about its figure.
Presently the arms rise considerably above the head and open
outwards through a mass of cloud-like spirit drapery, and Yolande
stands before us unveiled, graceful and beautiful, nearly five feet in height,
having a turban-like head dress, from beneath which her long black hair hangs
over her shoulders and down her back.
Her body-dress, of Eastern form, displays every limb and contour of
the body, while the superfluous white veil-like drapery is wrapped round her
for convenience, or thrown down on the carpet out of the way till required
again.
All this occupies from ten to fifteen minutes to accomplish.
When she disappears or dematerializes it is as follows. Stepping
forward to show herself and be identified by any strangers then present, she
slowly and deliberately opens out the veil-like superfluous drapery; expanding
it, she places it over her head, and spreads it round her like a great bridal
veil, and then immediately but slowly sinks down, becoming less bulky as she
collapses, dematerializing her body beneath the cloud-like drapery until it has
little or no resemblance to Yolande. Then she further
collapses until she has no resemblance to human form, and more rapidly sinks
down to fifteen or twelve inches. Then suddenly the form falls into a heaped
patch of drapery - literally Yolande's left-off
clothing, which slowly but visibly melts into nothingness.
The dematerializing of Yolande's body
occupies from two to five minutes, while the disappearance of the drapery
occupies from half a minute to two minutes. On one occasion, however, she did
not dematerialize this drapery or veil, but left the whole lying on the carpet
in a heap, until another spirit came out of the cabinet to look at it for a
moment, as if moralizing on poor Yolande's disappearance.
This taller spirit also disappeared and was replaced by the little, brisk,
vivacious child-form of Ninia, the Spanish girl, who
likewise came to look at Yolande's remains; and,
curiously picking up the loft-off garments, proceeded to wrap them round her
own little body, which was already well clothed with drapery.
I have myself seen both these processes, almost exactly as
described above. In my case the form was that of an unusually tall man, and he
did not begin by forming drapery, but appeared as a patch of cloudy light on
the floor, which rose and increased until it looked somewhat like the stump of
a tree. It grew on until it was a vague pillar of cloud towering above our
heads, and then gradually condensed into a definite and well-known form, which
stepped forward, shook me warmly by the hand, and spoke in a full clear voice,
exactly as any other friend might have done. After talking to us for about five
minutes and answering several questions, he again shook hands with us and
announced that he must go. Bidding us good-bye, he immediately became
indistinct in outline, and relapsed into the pillar of cloud, which sank down
fairly rapidly into the small cloudy mass of light upon the floor, which then
flickered and vanished.
I have seen three materialized forms together - one of them an Arab
six inches taller than the medium, another a European of ordinary medium
height, and the third a little girl of dark complexion, claiming to be a Red
Indian - while the medium was securely locked up inside a wire cage of his own
invention, which was secured by two keys (both in my pocket) and a letter-lock
which could only be operated from the outside. Later in the same evening we
were requested to unlock this cage, and the two forms first described brought
out the entranced medium between them, one supporting him by each arm. We were
allowed to touch both the medium and the materialized forms, and were much
struck to find the latter distinctly firmer and more definite than the former.
They did not in this case return him to his cage, but laid him upon a sofa in
full view of us all, cautioned us that he would be exceedingly exhausted when
he woke, and then incontinently vanished into thin air before our eyes. All
this took place in a dim light, the two gas-jets in the room being both turned
very low, but there was all the time quite sufficient illumination to enable
us to recognize clearly the features both of the medium and of our dead
visitors, and to follow their movements with absolute certainty.
It is only when the conditions are favourable
that one may hope to find the materialized forms able to move about the room as
freely as in the cases above described. More generally the materialized form is
strictly confined to the immediate neighbourhood of
the medium, and is subject to an attraction which is constantly drawing it back
to the body from which it came, so that if kept away from the medium too long
the figure collapses, and the matter which composed it, returning to the
etheric condition, rushes back instantly to its source. It is excessively
dangerous to the medium's health, or even to his life, to prevent this return
in any way; and it was no doubt precisely this that caused such terrible
suffering in the case of poor Madame d'Espérance,
above quoted. It would seem from her own account as though the majority of her
etheric matter, and probably a great deal of the denser also, was with Yolande rather than in the cabinet; and since the form of Yolande was so unwarrantably detained it is probable that
what was left in her body would rush into Yolande's,
and so it would in one sense be true that she was found outside the cabinet and
in the hands of the ignorant vulgarian who had seized
the materialized form. All this makes it increasingly obvious that no one who
has not sufficient education to comprehend a little of the conditions ought
ever to be permitted to take part in a seance.
Another reason for great care in the selection of sitters is that
in the case of materialization matter is borrowed to some extent from all of
them as well as from the medium. There is no doubt, therefore, a considerable
intermixture of such matter, and undesirable qualities or vices of any kind in
any one of the sitters are distinctly liable to react upon the others, and most
of all upon the medium, who is almost certain to be the most sensitive person
present - from whom, in any case, the heaviest contribution will be drawn. Yet
again we may obtain an example of this from Madame d'Espérance's
invaluable book. On p. she writes:
evil effect of tobacco
From the very beginning of our experiments in this line I had
always more or less suffered from nausea and vomiting after a seance for materialization, and I had grown to accept this
as a natural consequence and not to be avoided. This had always been the case,
except when surrounded only by the members of our home circle or children.
During the course of seances for photography this
unpleasantness increased so much that I was usually prostrate for a day, or
sometimes two, after a sitting, and, as the symptoms were those of nicotine
poisoning, experiments were made and it was discovered that none of these uncomfortable
sensations were felt when seances were held with
non-smokers. Again, when sick persons were in the circle, I invariably found
myself feeling more or less unwell afterwards. With persons accustomed to the
use of alcohol the discomfort was almost as marked as with smokers.
These seances were to me fruitful in many
respects; I learned that many habits, which are common to the generality of
mankind and sanctioned by custom, are deleterious to the results of a seance, or, at any rate, to the health of a medium.
A "guide" who has been working for some years, and has
learnt to know fairly well the possibilities of the plane, has often
interesting phenomena connected with materialization which he is willing to
exhibit to special friends when the power is strong. One such exhibition was
sometimes given by him who calls himself
"John King" many years ago, and may perhaps be given by him
still. He would sometimes take one of the painted luminous slates and lay his
hand upon it. A fine, strong, muscular, well-shaped hand it was, and its
outline of course stood forth perfectly distinctly against the faintly luminous
background. Then as we watched it, he would cause that hand to diminish visibly
until it was a miniature about the size of a small baby's hand, though still
perfect in its resemblance to his own. Then slowly and steadily under our eyes
it would grow again until it became gigantic, and covered the whole slate, and
would finally return by degrees to its normal size. Now of course this
manifestation might easily have been a mere case of mesmeric influence if only
one person had seen it; but since every one in the circle saw precisely the
same, and there was nothing to indicate that any attempt at mesmerism was being
made, it seemed on the whole more probable that it was really an exhibition of
augmentation and diminution in the materialized hand - a result which could
readily be brought about by any one who understood how to manipulate the
matter.
A dead man's joke
Occasionally the materialization takes some other shape than the
human. One such case which I recollect vividly shows that our departed friends
by no means lose their sense of humour when they pass
over into astral life. At a certain seance we were
much annoyed by the presence of a man of the boastful sceptic
genus. He swaggered in the usual blatant way, and showed his entire ignorance
by every word he uttered in the loud, coarse voice which constantly reiterated
that he knew that all these things were nonsense, and that we might be sure
that nothing would happen so long as he was there.
This went on for some time as we sat round the table, and at last
the medium, who was a mild, inoffensive sort of man, quietly advised him to
moderate his tone, as on several occasions the "spirits" had been
known to treat rather roughly persons who talked in that manner. The sceptic, however, only became coarser and more offensive in
his remarks, defying any spirit that ever existed to frighten him, or even to
dare to show itself in his presence. We had now been sitting for a good while
in the darkness, and nothing whatever had happened beyond a few brief words
from one of the "guides" at the commencement of the seance, which had informed us that they were storing up
power. As the time passed on we all became somewhat wearied, and I at least
began to think that perhaps our sceptic really was so
inharmonious an influence that it would be impossible to obtain any good
results - wherein, however, it seems that I was wrong.
To make clear what did happen I must say a few words as to the room
in which the seance was being held. It was a tiny
apartment at the back of the house on the second floor, opening out of a much
larger front room by great folding-doors which reached up to the ceiling. We
were seated round a large circular table, so much out of proportion to the room
that the backs of our chairs were all but touching the walls and the big door
as we sat round it. There was another door in the corner of the room leading to
a flight of stairs; that was locked, the key being in the lock on the inside,
and the great doors were also secured by a bolt on our side. We sat, as I say,
with practically no manifestations for about three-quarters of an hour, and I
at least was heartily tired of the whole thing.
Suddenly in the adjoining room we heard extraordinarily ponderous
footsteps, as of some mighty giant; and even as we raised our heads to listen
the great doors burst violently open, crashing into the backs of the chairs on
that side, driving them and their occupants against the table, and so pushing
the table itself against those on the opposite side. A pale, rather ghastly
luminosity shone in through the opened door, and by its light we saw - we all
saw - an enormous elephant stepping straight in upon us, dashing the chairs together
with his stride! A gigantic elephant in a room of that size is not exactly a
pleasant neighbour; nobody stopped to think of the
impossibility of the thing - nobody waited to see what would happen next; the
great beast was on the top of us, as it were, and the man nearest to the back
door tore it open, and before we had time for a second thought we were all
rushing madly down those stairs.
A roar of Homeric laughter followed us, and in a moment we realized
the absurdity of the situation, and some of us ran back, and struck a light. No
one was there, and both the rooms were empty; there was no way out of either of
them but the doors which opened side by side upon the head of the stair, which
had been within our sight all the time; there was no place to which anybody
could have escaped, if any one could have been playing a trick upon us; not a
trace of an elephant, and nothing to show for our fright, except the bolt torn
off the folding-door with the force of the bursting open, and three broken
chairs to testify to the speed of our departure! We gathered again in our room,
and gave way (now it was over) to unrestrained mirth - all but our sceptic, who had rushed straight out of the house; and he
was so terrified that he would not even return into the hall below for his coat
and hat, and they had to be carried out into the street for him. I have never
seen him since, but I have sometimes wondered exactly how he explained to
himself afterwards the deception which he must have supposed to be practised upon him.
In this case the guides controlling the seance
evidently thought it desirable to administer a salutory
lesson; but this is rarely done, as it is not usually considered worth while to
waste so large an amount of energy over so unworthy an object as the conceited
and blatant sceptic. It is one of the rules of the
higher life that force should be economized, and employed only where there is
at least reasonable hope that good can be done. We have an instance of the
application of this rule in the life of our Great Exemplar, for is it not
recorded that when Christ visited His own country "He did not many mighty
works there because of their unbelief"?* His power could unquestionably
have broken down their obstinate scepticism; but it
is His Will to knock at the door of the human heart, not to force Himself upon
those who are as yet unready to profit by His ministrations.
__________
· Matthew, xiii, .
Chapter X
SOME RECENT MATERIALIZATION PHENOMENA
ectoplasms
It is only lately that scientific men have undertaken an enquiry
into the nature of the curious material produced at seances,
out of which visible and tangible phantoms are built. It has long been
understood in a general way by spiritualists that the visiting entities use
some sort of matter derived from the medium, and to some extent from the other
persons present, with which to densify their superphysical forms. Bat only comparatively recently has
it been realized that the material so employed comes not merely from the
etheric body, but even to a large extent from the tissues of the dense physical
body, and that it therefore has in some way impressed upon it the habit of the
organic structures from which it comes.
Apparently, then, the operating entities find it necessary to allow
that material to follow its own lines of growth in the production of forms as
it densifies, adapting these only so far as may be
absolutely necessary; the aim being, no doubt, to conserve energy as much as possible.
This physiological aspect of materialization phenomena has called forth much
scientific interest, and up to date we have the results of extensive research
upon it in several volumes, particularly in Dr. Geley's
Clairvoyance and Materialization and Baron von Schrenck-Notzing's
Phenomena of Materialization.
The substance in question appears to be of precisely the same
character from whatever medium it may come. It issues in an invisible form, which
may sometimes be felt as a wind. It then becomes vaporous, and finally
condenses into a white, grey or black material of various textures. This is
then moulded into human limbs and faces and sometimes
entire figures, apparently by unseen sources of intelligence. Sometimes,
however, the operating intelligences are seen by the medium or other
clairvoyant persons who may be present, and also other than human forms are
produced, as in the case of Mr. Kluski, about whom a
perfectly formed eagle has frequently been seen and even photographed. On
account of the plastic quality of this material and the fact that it can be moulded into forms at a little distance from the medium's
body, it goes by the name of teleplasm, and to the
forms made out of it Professor Richet gave the name
ectoplasms some years ago. Afterwards, some writers modified Professor Richet's nomenclature, and designated the substance itself
ectoplasm.
In the case of the famous medium Eusapia Palladino the first manifestation appeared in the form of a
cool wind issuing from her forehead, especially from an old wound on one side
of her head, and from other parts of the body. This wind would billow out the
curtains of the cabinet or the material of her dress, and within the protection
of the dark space behind them would proceed to densify
into a form, which might then emerge into some degree of light. The endeavours of later investigators have been to induce the
operating entities to perform the entire process in full view as far as
possible, for the sake of scientific research, and this no doubt accounts for
the fact that many of the materialized forms photographed in various stages of
growth are not as perfect as some of the earlier phenomena, such as the
appearance of Katie King through the mediurnship of
Florence Cook.
the phEnomEna of eUsapia
palladino
The following typical account of Madame Palladino's
work appears in Mr. Carrington's Eusapia Palladino and her Phenomena, p. :
After the medium had resumed her chair, we felt her head with our
hands, to see if the cold breeze was issuing from her forehead. We all clearly
perceived it with our hands, placed at a distance of about three inches from
the medium's head. F. held his hand over her mouth and nose, and we all did
likewise, holding our noses and mouths and refraining from breathing, and the
breeze was still distinctly perceptible. B. then held a small paper flag to the
medium's forehead - her nose and mouth, as well as our own, still being
covered. The flag blew out several times, and then out so forcibly that it
turned completely over and wrapped itself once round the flagstaff, to which it
was attached. The objective nature of this breeze was thus established - though
a thermometer held to her head failed to record any lowering of temperature.
A fair example of the phenomena produced by what was presumably a
condensation of this wind was given in the experiments made at
A footstool of common wood, which was inside the medium's cabinet,
shook and fell; the curtain also shook; behind it a hand grasped repeatedly the
extended hands of those present; shook them and caressed them. Suddenly, to the
surprise of all, a little closed hand, the arm covered with a dark sleeve,
showed itself in the full light, quite visibly; it was pink, plump and fresh.
"Surprise did not prevent our at once giving attention to the control of
the medium; her hands were firmly enclosed in those of the two watchful
doctors." A few minutes later a cold wind came from behind the curtain,
which suddenly opened as if it had been opened by two hands, a human head came
out, with a pale, haggard face, of sinister evil aspect. It lingered a moment
and then disappeared.
The wooden stool rose up in the air and seemed to want to leave the
cabinet, pushing aside the curtains. It was liberated from the curtains, then
it continued to ascend in an inclined position toward the circle. Several hands
stretched out, following the curious phenomenon, and lightly touched the
object.
The woman's small hand then reappeared near the curtain, seized one
of the feet of the footstool, and pushed it. Signor Mucchi
broke the chain, and, by a rapid action, seized the warm hand, which at once
seemed to dissolve and disappeared. Immediately observations were made to
ascertain if the medium's two hands were well controlled; such was found to be
the case. The footstool kept on rising, and passed over the heads of the sitters,
but at this moment the medium seemed in distress, and cried out: "It will
kill us! Catch it!" The hands that were following the movements of the
small piece of furniture then seized hold of it to withdraw it from this
perilous position, but an invisible force withdrew it to the centre of the
table, where it finally remained in repose.
At the close of the seance, the reporter
placed his hand on the deep scar which the medium has on the left side of her
head, and felt a strong, cold, continuous breeze issuing from it, like a human
breath. He subsequently felt the same cold breeze issuing, though less
strongly, from the tips of her fingers. (p. ).
In some cases a complete form appeared, as in the following record,
on page :
The medium rested her head against the shoulder of the controller
on the right; her hands were held in his; suddenly the curtain shook violently,
a cold wind passed out, then a human form covered by the thin material of the
curtain was visible against this light background. The head of a woman,
unstable and staggering, approached the face of the old man; she moved
tremblingly like an old woman; perhaps she kissed him; the old man encouraged
her; she withdrew, returned, seemed as if she was afraid to venture, then
advanced resolutely.
The telEplasm of eva
C.
One of the most successful materializing mediums of recent years is
the lady known as Eva C. More than a hundred scientific men, especially
physicians, have had an opportunity of observing her phenomena. Dr. Geley had two sittings a week with her for twelve months,
and has fully and carefully described the teleplasm
or ectoplasm. In a lecture given on the th of
January, , to the members of the Psychological Institute in the medical lecture
theatre of the College de France, in which Dr. Geley
discusses his observations with Eva C., he gave a description of the material
which has been summarized as follows. (Phenomena of Materialization, p. .)
A substance emanates from the body of the medium, it externalizes
itself, and is amorphous, or polymorphous, in the first instance. This
substance takes various forms, but, in general, it shows more or less composite
organs. We may distinguish () the substance as a substratum of materialization;
() its organized development. Its appearance is generally announced by the
presence of fluid, white and luminous flakes of a size ranging from that of a
pea to that of a five-franc piece, and distributed here and there over the
medium's black dress, principally on the left side.
This manifestation is a premonitory phenomenon, which sometimes
precedes the other phenomena by three quarters of an hour, or an hour.
Sometimes it is wanting, and it occasionally happens that no other
manifestation follows.
The substance itself emanates from the whole body of the medium,
but especially from the natural orifices and the extremities, from the top of
the head, from the breasts, and the tips of the fingers. The most usual origin,
which is most easily observed, is that from the mouth. We then see the substance
externalizing itself from the inner surface of the cheeks, from the gums, and
from the roof of the mouth.
The substance occurs in various forms, sometimes as ductile dough,
sometimes as a true protoplastic mass, sometimes in
the form of numerous thin threads, sometimes as cords of various thickness, or
in the form of narrow rigid rays, or as a broad band, as a membrane, as a
fabric, or as a woven material with indefinite and irregular outlines. The most
curious appearance is presented by a widely expanded membrane, provided with
fringes and rucks, and resembling in appearance a
net.
The amount of externalized matter varies within wide limits. In
some cases it completely envelops the medium as in a mantle. It may have three
different colours - white, black, or grey. The white colour is the most
frequent, perhaps because it is most easily observed. Sometimes the three
colours appear simultaneously. The visibility of the substance varies a great
deal, and it may slowly increase or decrease in succession. To the touch it
gives various impressions. Sometimes it is moist and cold, sometimes viscous
and sticky, more rarely dry and hard. The impression created depends on the
shape. It appears soft and slightly elastic when it is expanded, and hard,
knotty, or fibrous when it forms cords. Sometimes it produces the feeling of a
spider's web passing over the observer's hand. The threads are both rigid and
elastic.
The substance is mobile. Sometimes it moves slowly up or down,
across the medium, on her shoulders, on her breast, or on her knees, with a
creeping motion resembling a reptile.
Sometimes the movements are sudden and quick. The substance appears
and disappears like lightning and is extraordinarily sensitive. Its
sensitiveness is mixed up with the hyperaesthetic
sensibility of the medium. Every touch produces a painful reaction in the
medium. When the touch is moderately strong, or prolonged, the medium complains
of a pain comparable with the pain produced by a shock to the normal body.
The substance is sensitive to light. Strong light, especially when
sudden and unexpected, produces a painful disturbance in the subject. Yet
nothing is more variable than the action of light. In some cases, the phenomena
withstand full daylight. The magnesium flash-light acts like a sudden blow on
the medium, but it is withstood, and flash-light photographs can be taken.
The substance has an intrinsic and irresistible tendency towards
organization. It does not remain long in the primitive condition. It often
happens that the organization is so rapid that the primordial substance does
not appear at all. At other times one sees at the same time the amorphous
substance, and some forms or structures, more or less completely embedded in
it, e.g., a thumb suspended in a fringe of the substance. One even sees heads
and faces embedded in the material.
As to actual experiments, Dr. Geley gives
the following case from his note book:
A cord of white substance proceeds slowly from the mouth down to
Eva's knees, having the thickness of about two fingers. This band assumes the
most varied forms before our eyes. Sometimes it expands in the form of a membraneous fabric, with gaps and bulges. Sometimes it
contracts and folds up, subsequently expanding and stretching out again. Here
and there projections issue from the mass, a sort of pseudopods,
and these sometimes take, for a few seconds, the form of fingers, or the
elementary outline of a hand, subsequently returning back into the mass.
Finally, the cord contracts into itself, extending again on Eva's knees. Its
end rises in the air, leaves the medium, and approaches me. I then see that the
end condenses itself in the form of a knot or terminal bud, and this again
expands into a perfectly modelled hand. I touch this
hand; it feels quite normal. I feel the bones and the fingers with the nails.
This hand is then drawn back, becomes smaller, and vanishes at the end of the
cord. The latter makes a few further motions, contracts, and then returns into
the medium's mouth. (p. .)
Again:
A head suddenly appears about
inches from the head of the medium, above her and on her right side. It
is a human head of normal dimensions, well developed, and with the usual
relief. The top of the skull and the forehead are completely materialized. The
forehead is broad and high. The hair is short and thick, and of a chestnut or
black colour. Below the line of the eyebrows the design is vague, only the
forehead and skull appearing clearly. The head disappears for a moment behind
the curtain, and then reappears in the same condition, but the face,
imperfectly materialized, is covered with a white mask. I extend my hand, and
pass my fingers through the bushy hair, and touch the bones of the skull. The
next moment everything had disappeared. (p. .)
Speaking from the physiological point of view the doctor adds:
Both normal and supernormal physiology tend to establish the unity
of the organic substance. In our experiments we have observed, above all, that
a uniform amorphous substance externalizes itself from the medium's body, and
gives rise to the various ideoplastic forms. We have
seen how this uniform substance organized and transformed itself under our
eyes. We have seen a hand emerging from the mass of the substance; a white
mass developed into a face. We have seen how in a few moments the form of a
head was replaced by the shape of a hand. By the concurrent testimony of sight
and touch we have followed the transition of the amorphous unorganized
substance into an organically developed structure which had temporarily all the
attributes of life - a complete formation, so to speak, in flesh arid blood.
We have watched the disappearance of these formations as they sank
back into primitive substance, and have even observed how, in an instant, they were
absorbed into the body of the medium. In supranormal
physiology there are no different organic substrata for the various substances,
as, e.g., a bone substance, a muscular, visceral, or nervous substance; it is
simply then a single substance, the basis and substratum of organic life.
In normal physiology it is exactly the same, but it is not so
obvious. In some cases it appears quite clear that the phenomenon which takes
place in the black seance cabinet, takes place also,
as already mentioned, in the chrysalis of the insect. The dissolution of
tissues reduces a large proportion of the organs, and their various parts, to a
single substance, that substance which is destined to materialize the organs
and the various parts of the adult form. We, therefore, have the same
manifestation in both physiologies. (p. .)
But it is Baron von Schrenck-Notzing of
The teleplasm is rarely, if ever,
entirely separated from the medium, and though it possesses no organized
nerves, impressions made upon it by touch and by light appear in the medium's
consciousness as her own sensations. Incidentally, this proves that the nervous
system is not absolutely necessary for the communication of sensations to the brain.
Generally speaking, any pressure given to the substance, or any sudden and
powerful light, such as that from a pocket electric lamp, hurts the medium. The pain seems to appear in the body
of the medium in that part of the body from which the material was probably
drawn. The following example illustrates this to some extent.
Eva took my right hand in both her hands. This time the material
was thrown on my right hand and on her hands, completely enclosing our hands. I
then commenced to pull again and to draw the material outwards, proceeding as
tenderly as possible, in order not to hurt the medium. When I began to examine
the material, it had curled right round my hand. Suddenly Eva made a movement
with her hands, lying on my arm, and involuntarily pulled at the material held
by me. It obviously frightened and hurt her, for she screamed, and gave me
great anxiety. I tried to soothe her, but she complained of a strong nausea.
The nausea continued for about ten minutes (p. .)
At a later sitting (p. ) when a female head showed itself, the
Baron heard Eva speak at the same time, and request Madame Bisson
to cut a lock from the head. Madame Bisson took a
pair of scissors, and while under the careful observation of the Baron, cut off
a lock of hair about four inches long and gave it to him. The materialized
structure then suddenly disappeared in the direction of the medium, accompanied
by a scream from her. After the sitting a lock of the medium's hair was cut,
with her permission. While Eva's hair showed an entirely brunette character,
that taken from the small head (which represented a female form whom Eva called
Estelle) was blonde, and the fact that the two samples of hair were quite
different was further proved by the microphotographical
and chemical examinations made by experts (p. ).
SCIENTIFIC PRECAUTIONS
It should be mentioned that the scientists engaged in this research
work always made every possible examination of the medium as well as of the
place of meeting beforehand. As to this Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing
writes:
Not one of the observers during these four years has ever found on
the medium's body, or in the seance costumes anything
which could have been used for the fraudulent production of the phenomena. The
author was a witness to the thorough performance of this task on no less
than occasions. The honesty of the
medium is therefore not a probability, but a certainty placed beyond all
question. She has never introduced any objects into the cabinet with which she
could have fraudulently represented the teleplastic
products. The various seance rooms, in different
houses, had no secret passages or trap-doors, and were regularly examined, both
before and after every sitting. (p. .)
If many of the faces and forms which appear look to the casual observer
as though drawn upon and cut out of paper, and are even marked by lines as
though that paper, had been folded up, nevertheless it cannot be assumed that
paper figures were smuggled into the seances. Both
the rigidity of the searches and the control of the medium prevent not only
their being introduced, but also their being handled if introduced. The
examination of the photographs by experts, and their fruitless attempt to
produce similar effects with paper figures photographed under exactly the same
conditions, also show fraud to be impossible; and the exgurgitation
hypothesis, which has been proposed by some speculators, also stretches the
imagination too far from possible facts; besides, in some of the experiments
bilberry jam was given to Eva to eat shortly before the sitting, and this must
inevitably have coloured the entire contents of the
stomach (p. ).
the development of the forms
On the other hand, it does often appear that the intelligences operating
in the production of the forms have some difficulty in their materialization,
which they can overcome only by methods of production resembling those of the
artist and the sculptor on our own plane. For example, as to the experiment of
the th of September, , the Baron mentions (p. ) that
the head which appeared showed in several respects faults of drawing. Sometimes
the same phantom appears a number of times, with or without a considerable
interval. In such cases Baron von Schrenck-Notzing
finds that while there is the same head and dress, and position of the arms
crossed over the breast, there are a great number of small differences. He
concludes that the differences between the pictures taken of the same type but
on different evenings may be compared with the different poses of a person at a
photographer's, and that they are due principally to different positions of the
body, owing to displacement and changes in the external lines and the folds of
the dress. The differences, he adds, indicate mobility and variability of the
artistic will behind the scenes in the details and shades of the conception,
for the "elementary formative principle" never produces rigid and
unchangeable products, "but the
photographed emanations always indicate a mobile, soft material basis, which
is highly changeable and rapidly perishable." (p. .)
The same distinguished investigator had also a number of seances with a Polish medium, a girl of nineteen years,
named Stanislava P. (p. et seq.) From her he obtained phenomena very
similar to those presented by Eva C. In this series of investigations some
cinema pictures were taken - on one occasion as many as four hundred, and on
another three hundred and sixty (p. ). The films show the recession of the
material into the mouth of the medium, and one of them also shows the
broadening and narrowing of the mass of substance.
In Baron von Schrenck-Notzing devoted several months to demonstrations
of the reality of ectoplasm to members of the liberal professions, in this case
with a medium named Willy Schneider, an Austrian boy of . Through these
phenomena a large number of scientists became convinced of the reality of
materializations.
the clothing oF phantoms
The question is sometimes asked why the materialized forms of persons
who have been dead for a considerable time still present themselves in the
clothing which they used to wear. This is not always strictly the case, but it
is generally so even when the departed person may have changed his habit in the
astral world. One reason for this is that many of them would not be recognized
in their new condition, but it appears also that when they come within earth
influence their old earth condition closes in upon them, as it were, and
reproduces the old material forms. Through Mrs. Coates in trance (Photographing
the Invisible, p. ) the reply given to this question was :
When we think what we were like upon the earth, the ether condenses
around us and encloses us like an envelope. We are within those ether-like
substances which are drawn to us, and our thoughts of what we were like and
what we would be better known by, produce not only the clothing, but the
fashioning of our forms and features. It is here the spirit chemists step in.
They fashion according to their ability that ether substance quicker than
thought, and produce our earth features so that they may be recognized ... When
I was photographed ... at Los Angeles, that etherealized matter was attracted
or clung to me, taking on the features fashioned by my thoughts, which were, by
some sudden impulse or mysterious law, those of my last illness on earth.
A somewhat unusual modification of this process is recounted in Mr.
J. Arthur Hill's New Evidences in Psychical Research. At a sitting on Feb. th, , the medium Watson said that he saw in the room the
dead mother of one of the sitters. He described her as attired in a brown silk
dress, high in the neck, trimmed with white, and having a lined or watered
effect in its texture. He said that there was some history attached to this
dress, about which the sitter ought to enquire from her sister. On enquiry from
the lady mentioned they learned that the old lady had ordered a dress such as
that described, but it was delivered only the day before she died, and so was
never worn. Mr. Hill remarks that, if the supposition of fraud be dismissed,
this incident suggests :
Neither telepathy nor a rummaging among passive memories in a
cosmic reservoir, but rather the activity of a surviving mind, able to marshal
its earth-memories and to select from them for presentation to the medium such
details as will constitute the strongest possible evidence of identity. (p. .)
the wax glovEs
It would be difficult to imagine anything more effective in the way
of proof of the actual presence of solid materialized human forms than those
products which have become popularly known as the wax gloves. These are
paraffin wax moulds of various human members. Dr. Geley
gives us a full account of a number of seances in
which these were produced. (Clairvoyance and Materialization, pp. to .) The medium for these experiments was
Mr. Franek Kluski, of
We will, however, confine ourselves here to a brief account of the
wax moulds. In these sittings a tank of melted paraffin wax was set upon an
electric heater, the materialized entity was asked to plunge a hand or foot or
even part of the face into the paraffin several times. This action results in
the formation of a closely fitting envelope, which sets quite rapidly. When the
form dematerializes the glove or envelope remains, and if it be desired plaster
can afterwards be poured into the mould, giving a perfect cast of the hand or
other member upon which it had been formed. In one short series of sittings
nine moulds were produced, of which seven were all hands, one was a foot and
one a mouth and chin. The following is Dr. Geley's
account of the tenth experiment in this series:
Control was perfect - right hand held by Professor Richet and left by Count Potocki.
The controllers kept repeating "I am holding the right hand," or
"I am holding the left hand." After fifteen or twenty minutes
splashing was audible in the tank, and the hands operating, covered with warm
paraffin, touched those of the controllers. Before the experiment Professor Richet and I had added some blue colouring
matter to the paraffin, which then had a bluish tinge. This was done secretly,
to be an absolute proof that the moulds were made on the spot and not brought
ready-made into the laboratory by Franek or any other
person, and passed off on us by legerdemain. The operation lasted as before,
from one to two minutes.
Two admirable moulds resulted, of right and left hands of the size
of the hands of children five to seven years old. These were of bluish wax, the
same colour as that in the tank.
Weight of paraffin before experiment: kilograms
grams.
Weight of paraffin after the experiment: kilograms
grams.
Weight of the moulds: grams.
The difference is represented by a considerable quantity of wax
scattered on the floor, about grams near
the medium and also some far from him, / yards distant, in a place to which he
could not have gone, near the photographic apparatus. We did not scratch up
this last, which was adherent to the floor, for weighing, but there was a good
deal of it - about grams. Mr. Kluski had not been near that place either before or during
the experiment. There was also paraffin on the hands and clothes of the medium.
His hands had never been released from the hold of the controllers. (p. .)
The appearance of paraffin on Mr. Kluski's
hands and clothes reminds us of the same occurrences in Mr. Crawford's
experiments in the Goligher circle, already described
in Chapter VII. The moulds mentioned above show hands with fingers bent down,
and thumbs turned over them or over the palm of the hand, and in some cases two
hands are shown with fingers interlocked in various ways. For these and other
reasons it is quite certain that the wax moulds have been made upon human
members afterwards dematerialized.
In the second series of experiments conducted at
We had in this case a new and hitherto unpublished proof. We had
the great pleasure of seeing the hands dipped into the paraffin. They were
luminous, bearing points of light at the finger-tips. They passed slowly before
our eyes, dipped into the wax, moved in it for a few seconds, came out, still
luminous, and deposited the glove against the hand of one of us. (p. .)
Chapter XI
OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS SPIRITUALISM
much in common
"but," some spiritualists have said to me, "we
always thought that you Theosophists supposed all our phenomena to be the work
of elementals, or fairies, or devils or something of that sort!" No
Theosophist who knows anything about it has ever made any such foolish
assertion. What may have been said is that some part of the phenomena were
occasionally produced by agencies other than dead men or women; and that is
perfectly true. It has often seemed to me that there has frequently been a good
deal of entirely unnecessary mistrust and misconception between Theosophists
and spiritualists. Various spiritualistic organs have frequently abused
Theosophy in no measured terms, and there is no doubt that on our side also
both speakers and writers have often referred to spiritualism with much scorn,
but with little knowledge. But I hope that with more knowledge each of the
other we shall come to respect one another more as we understand one another
better, for we each have our part to fill in the great work of the future. It
would indeed be foolish of us to quarrel, for we have more in common with each
other than either of us has with any of the other shades of opinion.
points of agreement
We both hold strenuously to the great central idea of man as an immortal
and ever-progressive being; we both know that as is his life now, so shall it
be after he has cast aside this body, which is his only that he may learn
through it; we both hold the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man as
fundamental tenets; and we both know that the gains and rewards of this world
are but as dross compared with the glorious certainties of the higher life
beyond the grave. Let us stand side by side on this common platform, and let us
postpone the consideration of our points of difference until we have converted
the rest of the world to the belief in these points upon which we agree. Surely
that is wise policy, for these are the points of importance; and if the life is
lived in accordance with these all the rest will follow.
We have a magnificent system of philosophy; our spiritualistic
brother does not care for it. Well, if his thought does not run along that
line, why should we seek to force it upon him? Perhaps presently he will feel
the need of some such system; if he does, then there it is all ready for his
study. I believe that in due course I shall return to live again upon this
earth; herein some of my spiritualistic brothers agree with me, and some do
not; but, after all, what does that matter? To us this doctrine of reincarnation
is luminous and helpful, because it seems to explain so much for which
otherwise there is no solution; but if another man does not yet feel the need
of it, it is no part of our policy to try to force it upon him.
We hold the idea of continued progress after death by means of
further lives upon this earth, after the life on subtler planes is over; the
spiritualist prefers the idea of passing on to other and higher spheres
altogether. We both agree that there is a progress hereafter; let us live so as
to make the best use of this existence as a preparation for that, for if we do
that we shall surely come out successfully, whichever of us is right as to the
place of our future meeting. When all the world is living its highest in the
preparation for that life of progress, it will be time enough to begin to
argue about where it will be lived.
untrained observation of little value
As to the spiritualistic phenomena, we have no quarrel whatever
with them; we know well that they take place, and we know that they have had
great value as demonstrating the reality of superphysical
life to many a sceptical mind. There are many men who
seem constitutionally incapable of profiting by the experience of others; they
must go and see everything for themselves, not realizing that, even if they do
see, their untrained observations will be of little value. On this point Mr.
Fullerton has well said:
To ensure observations with any worth there must be long and
careful discipline; natural errors must through repeated experience be guarded
against, distinctions and qualifications and illusions be learned. This is true
of the physical plane; much more of the astral plane, where phenomena are so
different, conditions so unlike, misguidance so multiform. He who assumes that
his untutored observation for the first time of the contents and facts of the
astral world would better determine them than does the trained faculty of long
and accomplished students, presupposes really that he is an exception to
universal rule, superior to other men and of different mould. But what is this
save a form of vanity, a case of that strange delusion as to personal worth
which the smallest observation of human nature might have cured? It is akin to
the supposition that his first introduction to an unknown continent, he not
being a naturalist, a physicist, or a botanist, would be more conclusive in its
results than the protracted researches of scientists long familiar with the
region and mutually comparing their investigations. (The Proofs of Theosophy,
p. .)
If a man must see for himself, and is unable to rest upon the basis
of intellectual conviction, by all means let him attend the spiritualistic seance, and learn by experience, as so many others have
done. It is not a course that we should advise except to such a man as this,
because there are certain serious drawbacks to it from our point of view.
drawbacks
The greatest of these is one at which the sceptic
would laugh - the danger of believing too much! For if the sceptic
has determination and perseverance, he will assuredly be convinced sooner or
later; and when he is, it is quite likely that the pendulum will swing to the
other extreme, and that he will believe too much, instead of too little. He may
readily grow to regard all the words of the dead as gospel, all communications
which come through the tilts of a table as divinely inspired.
There is also another danger - that of being uncomfortably haunted.
Often there come to a seance most undesirable dead
people, men of depraved morals, seeking to gratify vicariously obscene lower
passions. And besides these, there are those dead men who are mad with fear,
who are clutching desperately at any and every opportunity to seize a physical
vehicle, to get back at any cost and by any means into touch with the lower
life which they have lost. The "guide" usually protects his medium
from such influences, and will not allow such a man to communicate; but he
cannot prevent him from attaching himself to other sitters and following them
home. The sceptic may think himself strong-minded and
non-sensitive, and therefore proof against any such possibility; some day he
may be unpleasantly undeceived as to this; but even if that be so, does he wish
to run the risk of bringing home an influence to his wife or his daughter? Of
course, I fully recognize that this is only a possibility - that a man might
attend a score of seances and encounter nothing of
this sort; yet these things have happened, and they are happening even now.
People driven to the verge of insanity by astral persecution have come to me
again and again; and in many cases it was at a seance
that they first encountered that ghostly companion. The strong can resist; but
who knows whether he is strong until he tries?
Resolution needed
When, however, this unfortunate thing has already happened to a
person - when he already feels himself haunted or obsessed - there is only one
thing to be done, and that is to set the mind steadily against it in determined
resistance. Realize firmly that the human will is stronger than any evil
influence, and that you have a right to your own individuality and the use of
your own organs - a right to choose your company astrally
as well as on the physical plane. Assert this right persistently, and all will
be well with you. Take resolutely to heart the common sense advice given by
Miss Freer, in her Essays in Psychical Research:
If you believe yourself obsessed, if planchette
swears, if your table-raps give lying messages, and you fall into trances at
unreasonable moments, drop the subject. Get a bicycle, or learn Hebrew, or go
on a walking tour, or weed the garden! If you are sane, you can do as you like
with your own mind; if you can not, consult the staff of Colney
Hatch! Want of self-restraint is either sin or disease.
possibility of decepTIon
Then there is always the possibility of deception - not so much of
deception by the medium, or by any one on the physical plane, as by entities
behind. I have known many cases in which such deceptions were well-intentioned;
but of course they remain deceptions nevertheless. It may happen that one dead
man personates another from the best of motives - it may be simply to comfort
surviving relations, by taking the place of one who does not care sufficiently,
or perhaps is ashamed to come. Sometimes one man will take the place of another
who has already passed on to the heaven-world and so is out of reach, in order
that his surviving relations may not feel themselves neglected or abandoned. In
such a case it is not for us to blame him; his action may be right or it may be
wrong, but that is a matter exclusively for his own conscience, and we are not
called upon to judge him. I simply note the fact that such cases occur.
It must be remembered that the man who has passed on into the
heaven-world has left behind him his astral corpse, which is at the stage of
decay of the shade or of the shell, according to the time which has elapsed
since he abandoned it. Obviously to utilize and revivify this will be the
easier way of personating him, and it is therefore the plan usually adopted.
It is not even in the least necessary that the communicating entity
should be human at all; many a joyous and obliging nature-spirit is proud to
have the opportunity of playing the part of a being belonging to a superior
evolution, and will continue assuring his delighted audience that he is
"so happy" as long as they like to listen to him.
The entity who poses at a seance as
Shakespeare or Julius Caesar, as Mary Queen of Scots or George Washington, is
usually of this class, though he is sometimes also a human being of low degree,
to whom it is a joy to strut even for a few minutes in such borrowed plumes, to
enjoy even for a single evening the respect due to a well-known name. Also, if
he has something to say which he considers useful or important, he thinks (and
quite rightly) that credulous mortals are more likely to pay attention to it if
it be attributed to some distinguished person. His motives are often
estimable, even though we cannot approve of his methods.
There is any amount of such personation
as this; it is one of the commonest facts which we encounter in our researches.
There is a book on Spiritualism, for example, by Judge Edmonds of the Supreme
Court of New York, which consists chiefly of communications purporting to come
from Swedenborg and Bacon, with occasional observations from Washington and
Charlemagne; but none of these great people seem to have risen at all to the
level of their earthly reputation, and their remarks do not, differ appreciably
from the deadly dullness of the ordinary trance-address, while many of their
statements are of course wildly inaccurate.
Another fine example is the list of signatures appended to the
prolegomena of The Spirits' Book, by Allan Kardec,
which is as follows: "John the Evangelist, St. Augustine, St. Vincent de
Paul, St. Louis, the Spirit of Truth, Socrates, Plato, Fenelon,
Franklin, Swedenborg, etc., etc." One wonders who is covered by the mystic
"etc., etc.," and whether the other names were all that the
communicating entity could think of at the moment!
All such extravagant pretensions as these are so obviously
ridiculous that they are easy of detection. But when the man personated is one
of ordinary type, it is quite another matter; so that at a seance,
unless the sitter is himself a trained clairvoyant of no mean order, he simply
cannot tell what it is that he sees, however much he may flatter himself that
his discernment is perfect. Let me quote once more what I wrote some years ago
in The Astral Plane, p. .
A manifesting "spirit" is often exactly what it professes
to be, but often also is nothing of the kind; and for the ordinary sitter there
is absolutely no means of distinguishing the true from the false, since the
extent to which a being having all the resources of the astral plane at his
command can delude a person on the physical plane is so great that no reliance
can be placed even on what seems the most convincing proof.
If something manifests which announces itself as a man's long-lost
brother, he can have no certainty that its claim is a just one. If it tells him
of some fact known only to that brother and to himself, he remains unconvinced,
for he knows that it might easily have read the information from his own mind,
or from his surroundings in the astral light. Even if it goes still further and
tells him something connected with his brother, of which he himself is unaware,
which he afterwards verifies, he still realizes that even this may have been
read from the astral records, or that what he sees before him may be only the
shade of his brother, and so possess his memory without in any way being
himself. It is not for one moment denied that important communications have
sometimes been made at seances by entities who in such
cases have been precisely what they said they were; all that is claimed is that
it is quite impossible for the ordinary person who visits a seance
ever to be certain that he is not being cruelly deceived in one or other of a
dozen different ways.
Once more, I know that these are possibilities only, and that in
the majority of cases the dead man gives his name honestly enough; but the
possibilities exist nevertheless, and often materialize themselves into
actualities.
harm to the medium
Another point is the harm which must to a greater or less extent be
done to the medium - not only the extreme physical prostration which I have
mentioned, leading sometimes to nervous break-down, and sometimes to excessive
use of stimulants in order to avoid that break-down - but also along moral
lines. Here I must protest emphatically against the ordinary type of paid seances to which anyone may come on payment of so much per
head. It places the unfortunate medium in an utterly false position, and
exposes him to a temptation to which no man ought ever intentionally to be
exposed. Anyone who knows anything at all about these phenomena knows that they
are erratic, that they are dependent upon many causes of which as yet he knows
only a few, and that therefore sometimes they can be had and sometimes they
cannot. This is the experience of every investigator. Miss Goodrich Freer
corroborates it in the preface to her Essays in Psychical Research, p. vi:
If I know anything, I know that psychic phenomena are not to be
commanded, be their origin what it may . . . He who ordains the services of
Angels as well as of men may send His messengers - but not, I think, to produce
poltergeist phenomena. The veil of the future may be lifted now and then - but
not, I take it, at the bidding of a guinea fee in
Now if the medium is in the position of having been paid beforehand
for their production, and then he finds that they will not come, what is he to
do to satisfy all these people who are sitting round him expecting their
money's worth? It is so easy to deceive them; they lend themselves to it so
readily; nay, it is often quite sufficient just to allow them to deceive
themselves. It is not fair to put any man in such a position as that; and if
the medium sometimes falls into cheating, it is surely not he alone who is to
blame.
haRm to the dead
Then there is the whole question of possible harm to the dead. I
have already admitted that the dead man sometimes wishes to communicate in
order to unburden his mind in some way, and when this is the case it is well
that he should have the opportunity of doing it. But these cases are
comparatively rare. If the dead want us they will seek to reach us; but we
should invariably let the movement come from their side - we should never seek
to draw them back. It may be said, perhaps:
"But is it not a natural desire on the part of a mother to see her
dead child again?" Surely it would be more natural for the mother to be
entirely unselfish, and to think first of what was best for the child, before
she considered her personal longings. In many cases communication with the
physical plane may do a man but little harm during the earliest stages of his
astral life; but it must always be remembered that in every case it intensifies
and prolongs his attachment to the lower levels of the plane - that it sets up
in him a habit of remaining closely in touch with the earth-life.
the place and woRk op spiRitualism
Yet, with all this, spiritualism has assuredly its place and its
work, and it has been of incalculable value to many thousands of men and women.
The Catholic Church and the Salvation Army are both sections of Christianity,
yet they appeal to widely different types of people, and those who are
attracted by one would have been little likely to come to the other. So each has
its place and its work to do for the broad idea of Christianity. In the same
way it seems to me that Theosophy and spiritualism have each their clientele.
Those who study the philosophy which we set before them would never have been
satisfied with the trance-speaking and the constantly repeated phenomena of the
spiritualistic seance; those who desire such
phenomena, and those who yearn after what good old Dr. Dee used to call "sermon-stuffe"
would never have been happy with us, while they find exactly what they want in
spiritualism. For among spiritualists, as among any other body of men, there
are several types. There are those who are chiefly interested in the
trance-speaking, who make this their religion and take their trance-address
followed by a clairvoyant reading of surroundings every Sunday evening, just as
mortals who are otherwise disposed go to church or to a Theosophical lecture.
Then there is the type whose interest is purely personal - whose one and only
idea in connection with the whole affair is the gratification of their private
and particular wish to see their own dead relations. There is another type who
honestly and unselfishly set themselves to the task of trying to help and
develop the degraded, the unevolved and the ignorant
among the dead; and there is no doubt that they really achieve a great deal of
good with that unpromising class of people. Others there are who are really
anxious to learn and understand scientifically the facts of the higher life;
and these people, while intensely delighted and interested for a time, usually
find presently that beyond a certain point they can get no further; and then
perhaps we can do something for them in Theosophy.
A question which is constantly asked is: "Why do not these
dead men who return to us with the knowledge of a higher plane teach us the
doctrine of reincarnation?" The answer is perfectly simple; first of all,
some of them do teach it. All spiritists of the
French
Still, even in spiritualism evidence of reincarnation occasionally
appears, as, for example, in Claude's Book, by L. Kelway-Bamber,
first published in , wherein the young British officer, communicating from the
astral plane, devotes a chapter to a description of the subject; and naturally
it is usually of that rapid type of reincarnation of which Monsieur Gabrielle Delanne collected so many examples in the address which he
delivered some years ago before one of the spiritualistic societies. Here, for
example, is a curious case, extracted from the pages of The Progressive Thinker
of December th, . It appears in the form of a letter
to the editor, signed with the initials S.O., and dated somewhat vaguely from
A story OF reincarnation
I offer my personal experience as an absolute fact - not as supporting
any theory. At the time I passed through the experience ( years ago), I knew
absolutely nothing of mediumship in any phase and
probably had never heard the word reincarnation. I was then sixteen years of
age and had been married one year.
The knowledge that I was to become a mother had just dawned upon
me, when in a vague way I became conscious of the almost constant presence of
an invisible personality. I seemed to know intuitively that my invisible
companion was a woman, and quite a number of years older than myself. By
degrees this presence grew stronger. In the third month after she first made
her presence felt, I could receive impressionally
long messages from her. She manifested the most solicitous care for my health
and general welfare, and as time wore on her voice became audible to me, and I
enjoyed many hours of conversation with her. She gave her name and nationality,
with many details of her personal history. She seemed anxious that I should
know and love her for herself, as she expressed it. She made continual efforts
to become visible to me, and towards the last succeeded. She was then as true a
companion to me as if she had been clothed in an embodiment of flesh. I had
merely to draw my curtains, shrouding the room in quiet tones, to have the
presence manifest, both to sight and hearing.
Two or three weeks before the birth of my baby she informed me that
the real purport of her presence was her intention to enter the new form at its
birth, in order to complete an earth-experience that had come to an untimely
end. I confess I had but a dim conception of her meaning, and was considerably
troubled over the matter.
On the night before my daughter's birth, I saw my companion for the
last time. She came to me and said: "Our time is at hand; be brave and all
will be well with us."
My daughter came, and in appearance was a perfect miniature of my
spirit friend, and totally unlike either family to which she belonged, and the
first remark of everyone on seeing her would be: "Why, she does not look like a baby at
all. She looks at least twenty years old."
I was greatly surprised some years later when I chanced to find in
an old work the story of the woman, whose name and history my spirit-friend
claimed as her own in her earth-life, and the fragments of her story, as she
had given them to me, were in accord with history, except some personal details
not likely to have been known to anyone else. All this experience I kept to
myself as a profound secret, for, young as I was, I realized what judgement the world would place upon the narrator of such a
story.
Once when my daughter was in her fifteenth year, the first name of
my spirit-friend happened to be mentioned in her presence. She turned to me
quickly with a look of surprise on her face and said: "Mamma, didn't my papa call me by this
name?" (Her father died when she was one year old.) I said: "No, dear, you were never called this
name." She replied: "Well, I surely remember it, and somebody
somewhere called me by it."
In conclusion I will add that in character my daughter is very much
like the historic character of the woman whose spirit said she would inhabit
the new form.
These are my facts. I offer no explanation; if they chance to fit
anybody's theory, so much the better for the theory. Theories usually need some
facts to prop them up; facts are independent and able to stand on their own
feet.
Madame d'Espérance, who seems to be in so
many respects in advance of the majority of mediums, appears to have been
taught not only reincarnation but much other Theosophical doctrine by one of
her dead friends, as is set forth in her book Shadowland.
Perhaps the most striking incident in that very interesting work is the
occasion on which the author leaves her body and is shown a remarkable symbolical
vision of her life; for in that one experience her eyes are opened to the
doctrine of cause arid effect, of evolution and reincarnation, and to the
absolute realization of the fundamental unity of all, however dimly and
imperfectly it may be expressed. For the law of cause and effect is involved in
the statement made by the spirit-friend as to the path of life: "It is the
road you have made; you have no other". Evolution is taught when she is
shown "that it is the same life which, circling for ever and ever through
form after form, dwelling in the rocks, the sand, the sea, in each blade of
grass, each tree, each flower, in all forms of animal existence, culminates in
man's intelligence and perception."
As to reincarnation she remarks :
I could see that the fact of the spirit first taking on itself the
form of man did not bring it to its utmost earthly perfection, for there are
many degrees of man. In the savage it widens its experience and finds a new
field for education, which being exhausted, another step is taken; and so step
by step, in an ever onward, progressive, expansive direction the spirit
develops, the decay of the forms which the spirit employs being only the
evidence that they have fulfilled their mission, and served the purpose for
which they were used. They return to their original elements, to be used again
and again as a means whereby the spirit can manifest itself, and obtain the
development it requires. (p ).
M. L. Chevreuil's book Proofs of the
Spirit World contains a chapter entitled "Previous Lives", in which
he vigorously supports the truth of reincarnation. He says:
The soul is an entity distinct from the body; it accompanies the
essential part of the human being in the course of the numerous incarnations
necessary to our evolution. From the time of Plato the majority of men have
lived in the knowledge of this truth, and tomorrow they will dwell in
scientific certainty that this ancient philosophy has not deceived them. (p. .)
He describes at considerable length some of the labours
of M. de Rochas upon the regression of memory. M. Chevreuil explains that every subject describes in the same
manner his or her going back to the past:
They are transported back to six months of age, two months, into
the body of the mother, where they take the position of the foetus;
the regression is continued and they are in space. A brief lethargy, and we are
present at a new scene, the death of an old person. It is the beginning of the
life which preceded the present incarnation, manifesting itself backwards, and
continuing back to a still older incarnation. (p. .)
Considering the mode of the "spirit's" coming to birth,
M. Chevreuil says that the vision described is always
the same, that before birth the subject sees himself in space in the form of a
ball or as a slightly luminous mist, and sees in the mother's womb the body in
which he is to be incarnated; all agree, he adds, that the spiritual body
enters little by little, and that the complete incorporation occurs at about
seven years of age.
reincarnations in
Rao Bahadur Shyam Sundar
Lal, C. I. E., a distinguished Minister of the
Within the Maharajah of Bharatpur's
extensive territory was found a boy of four years, Prabhu
by name, the son of a Brahman called Khairti, who
with childish prattle and laughter told with the greatest detail of his
supposed former existence. He gave his former name, the year of his other
birth, his personal appearance on his earlier visit to this earth, and
recounted events, such as famines, which had happened more than fifty years
before his last birth. He told of his former wife, his daughters and his sons,
giving their names and the money he received on their marriages, and described
his former home and neighbours.
The child, the savants vouch, had not been tutored and had no means
outside of himself to learn of these details, or to know anything of the
transmigration of souls. The neighbourhoods he
described were visited by the savants, with the child, and in nearly every
detail his statements were found to be correct, even to the names of his
supposed former children and wife. He had some difficulty in locating his
supposed former home, but this, it was claimed, may be accounted for by the
fact that it is now a mass of ruins and much different from what it had been.
A somewhat similar account, but coming this time from Japan,
appears in Lafcadio Hearn's Gleanings in Buddha
Fields, Chapter X, and is entitled "The Rebirth of Katsugoro".
Mr. Hearn cites it as a good illustration of the common ideas of the people of
Some time in the eleventh month of the past year, when Katsugoro was playing in the rice-field with his elder
sister, Fusa, he asked her, -
"Elder Sister, where did you come from before you were born
into our household?"
Fusa answered
him: -
"How can I know what happened to me before I was born?"
Katsugoro looked
surprised and exclaimed:
"Then you cannot remember anything that happened before you
were born?"
"Do you remember?" asked Fusa.
"Indeed I do," replied Katsugoro.
"I used to be the son of Kyubei San of Hodokubo, and my name was then Tozo
- do you not know all that?"
"Ah!" said Fusa, "I shall
tell father and mother about it."
But Katsugoro at once began to cry, and
said:
"Please do not tell! - it would not be good to tell father and
mother."
Fusa made answer,
after a little while :-
"Well, this time I shall not tell. But the next time that you
do anything naughty, then I will tell."
After that day whenever a dispute arose between the two, the sister
would threaten the brother, saying: "Very well, then - I shall tell that
thing to father and mother." At these words the boy would always yield to
his sister. This happened many times; and the parents one day overheard Fusa making her threat. Thinking Katsugoro
must have been doing something wrong, they desired to know what the matter was,
and Fusa, being questioned, told them the truth. Then
Genzo and his wife, and Tsuya,
the grandmother of Katsugoro, thought it a very
strange thing. They called Katsugoro, therefore; and
tried, first by coaxing, and then by threatening, to make him tell what he had
meant by those words.
After hesitation, Katsugoro said: -
"I will tell you everything. I used to be the son of Kyubei
San of Hodokubo, and the name of my mother then was
O-Shidzu San. When I was five years old, Kyubei San died; and there came in his place a man called Hanshiro San, who loved me very much. But in the following
year, when I was six years old, I died of smallpox. In the third year after
that I entered mother's honorable womb, and was born again."
The parents and the grandmother of the boy wondered greatly at
hearing this, and they decided to make all possible inquiry as to the man
called Hanshiro of Hodokubo.
But as they all had to work very hard every day to earn a living, and so could
spare but little time for any other matter, they could not at once carry out
their intention.
Now, Sei, the mother of Katsugoro, had nightly to suckle her little daughter Tsune, who was four years old; - and Katsugoro
therefore slept with his grandmother, Tsuya.
Sometimes he used to talk to her in bed; and one night when he was in a very
confiding mood, she persuaded him to tell her what happened at the time when he
had died. Then he said: - "Until I was four years old I used to remember
everything; but since then I have become more and more forgetful; and now I
forget many, many things. But I still remember that I died of smallpox; I
remember that I was put into a jar; I remember that I was buried on a hill.
There was a hole made in the ground; and the people let the jar drop into that
hole. It fell pon! I remember that sound well. Then
somehow I returned to the house, and I stopped on my own pillow there. In a
short time some old man - looking like a grandfather - came and took me away. I
do not know who or what he was. As I walked I went through empty air as if
flying. I remember it was neither night nor day as we went; it was always like
sunset-time. I did not feel either warm or cold or hungry. We went very far, I
think; but still I could hear always, faintly, the voices of people talking at
home; and the sound of the Nembutsu being said for
me. I remember also that when the people at home set offerings of hot rice-cake
before the household shrine, I inhaled the vapour of
the offerings. Grandmother, never forgot to offer warm food to the honorable
dead (Hotoke Same), and do not forget to give to
priests - I am sure it is very good to do these things ... After that, I only
remember that the old man led me by some roundabout way to this place - I remember
we passed the road beyond the village. Then we came here, and he pointed to
this house, and said to me: 'Now you
must be reborn, for it is three years since you died. You are to be reborn in
that house. The person who will become your grandmother is very kind; so it
will be well for you to be conceived and born there.' After saying this, the
old man went away. I remained a little time under the kaki-tree before the
entrance of this house. Then I was going to enter when I heard talking inside:
some one said that because father was now earning so little, mother would have
to go to service in Yedo. I thought, "I will not
go into that house"; and I stopped three days in the garden. On the third
day it was decided that, after all, mother would not have to go to Yedo. The same night I passed into the house through a
knot-hole in the sliding-shutters; - and after that I stayed for three days
beside the kitchen range. Then I entered mother's honorable womb ... I remember
that I was born without any pain at all. -Grandmother, you may tell this to
father and mother, but please never tell it to anybody else."
The grandmother told Genzo and his wife
what Katsugoro had related to her; and after that the
boy was not afraid to speak freely with his parents on the subject of his
former existence, and would often say to them: "I want to go to Hodokubo. Please let me make a visit to the tomb of Kyubei San." Genzo ... asked
his mother Tsuya, on the twentieth day of the first
month of this year, to take her grandson there.
Tsuya went with Katsugoro to Hodokubo; and when
they entered the village she pointed to the nearer dwellings, and asked the
boy, "Which house is it? - is it this house or that one?"
"No," answered Katsugoro, - "it is
further on - much further," - and he hurried before her. Reaching a
certain dwelling at last, he cried, "This is the house!" - and ran
in, without waiting for his grandmother. Tsuya
followed him in, and asked the people there what was the name of the owner of
the house. "Hanshiro," one of them
answered. She asked the name of Hanshiro's wife.
"Shidzu," was the reply. Then she asked
whether there had ever been a son called Tozo born in
that house. "Yes," was the answer; "but that boy died thirteen
years ago, when he was six years old."
Then for the first time Tsuya was
convinced that Katsugoro had spoken the truth; and
she could not help shedding tears. She related to the people of the house all
that Katsugoro had told her about his remembrance of
his former birth. Then Hanshiro and his wife wondered
greatly. They caressed Katsugoro and wept; and they
remarked that he was much handsomer now than he had been as Tozo
before dying at the age of six. In the meantime, Katsugoro
was looking all about; and seeing the roof of a tobacco shop opposite to the
house of Hanshiro, he pointed to it, and said:
"That used not to be there." And he also said, - "The tree
yonder used not to be there." All this was true. So from the minds of Hanshiro and his wife every doubt departed.
reincarnations in
Some interesting cases are mentioned by Mr. H. Fielding-Hall in his
charming book on
A friend of mine once put up for the night at a monastery far away
in the forest, near a small village. Talking in the evening round the fire, he
remarked that the monastery was very large and fine for so small a village; it
was built of the best and straightest teak, which must have been brought from
very far away; it must have taken a long time and a great deal of labour to
build.
In explanation he heard a curious story. It appeared that in the
old days there used to be only a bamboo and grass monastery there, such as most
jungle villages have; and the then monk was distressed at the smallness of his
abode and the little accommodation there was for his school (for a monastery is
always a school). So one rainy season he planted with great care a number of
teak seedlings round about, and he watered and cared for them.
"When they are grown up," he would say, "these
teak-trees shall provide timber for a new and proper building; and I myself
will return in another life, and with those trees I will build a monastery more
worthy than this."
Teak-trees take a hundred years to reach a mature size, and while
the trees were still but saplings the monk died and another monk taught in his
stead. And so it went on, and the years rolled by, and from time to time new
monasteries of bamboo were built-and rebuilt, and the teak-trees grew bigger
and bigger. But the village grew smaller, for the times were troubled, and the
village was far away in the forest. So it happened that at last the village
found itself without a monk at all; the last monk was dead, and no one came to
take his place.
It is a serious thing for a village to have no monk. To begin with,
there is no one to teach the lads to read and write and do arithmetic; and
there is no one to whom you can give offerings and thereby acquire merit, and
there is no one to preach to you and tell you of the sacred teaching. So the
village was in a bad way.
Then at last one evening, when the girls were all out at the well
drawing water, they were surprised by the arrival of a monk from the forest,
weary with a long journey, footsore and hungry. The villagers received him with
enthusiasm, and furnished up the old monastery in a hurry for him to sleep. But
the curious thing was that the monk seemed to know it all. He knew the
monastery and the path to it, and the ways about the village, and the names of
the hills and the streams. It seemed as though he must have lived there in the
village, and yet no one knew him or recognized his face, though he was but a
young man still, and there were villagers who had lived there for seventy
years. Next morning the monk came into the village with his begging-bowl, as monks
do, and collected his food for the day: and that evening, when the villagers
went to see him, he told them he was going to stay. He recalled to them the
monk who had planted the teak-trees, and how he had said that when the trees
were grown he would return.
"I," said the young monk, "am he who planted these
trees. Lo, they are grown up and I have returned, and now we will build a
monastery as I said."
When the villagers, doubting, questioned him, and old men came and
talked to him of traditions of long-past days, he answered as one who knew all.
He told them he had been born and educated far away in the South, and had grown
up not knowing who he had been; then he had entered a monastery, and in due
time became a Pongyi. The remembrance came to him, he
went on, in a dream of how he had planted the trees and had promised to return
to that village far away in the forest.
The very next day he had started, and travelled
day after day and week upon week, till at length he had arrived, as they saw.
So the villagers were convinced, and they set to work and cut down the great
boles, and built the monastery which my friend saw. And the monk lived there
all his life, and taught the children, and preached the marvellous teaching of
the great Buddha, till at length his time came again and he returned; for of
monks it is not said that they die, but that they return.....
About fifty years ago in a village called Okshitgon
were born two children, a boy and a girl. They were born on the same day in neighbouring houses, and they grew up together and played
together, and loved each other. In due course they married and started a
family, and maintained themselves by cultivating the fields about the village.
They were always known as devoted to each other, and they died as they had
lived - together. The same death took them on the same day; so they were buried
without the village and were forgotten, for the times were serious ... Okshitgon was in the midst of one of the most distressed
districts, and many of its people fled; and one of them, a man named Maung Kan, went with his young wife to the village of Kabyu and lived there.
Now, Maung Kan's wife had borne to him
twin sons. They were born at Okshitgon shortly before
their parents had to run away, and they were named, the first Maung Gyi (which means Brother
Big-fellow) and the second Maung Ngé
(which means Brother Little-fellow). These lads grew up at Kabyu,
and soon learnt to talk; and their parents were surprised to hear them calling
to each other at play, not as Maung Gyi and Maung Ngé,
but as Maung San Nyein and
Ma Gywin. The latter is a woman's name, and the
parents remembered that these were the names of the man and wife who had died
at Okshitgon about the time the children were born.
So the parents thought that the souls of the man and wife had
entered into the children, and they took them to Okshitgon
to try them. The children knew everything in Okshitgon;
they knew the roads, the houses and the people, and they recognized the clothes
they used to wear in the former life: there was no doubt about it. One of them,
the younger, remembered how she had borrowed two rupees once from a woman, Ma Thet, unknown to her husband, and left the debt unpaid. Ma Thet was still living, so they asked her, and she
recollected that it was true she had lent the money long ago....
Shortly afterwards I saw these two children. They were then just
over six years old. The elder, into whom the soul of the man entered, is a fat,
chubby little fellow, but the younger twin is smaller, and has a curious dreamy
look in his face, more like a girl than a boy. They told me much about their
former lives. After they died they said they lived for some time without a body
at all, wandering in the air and hiding in the trees. Then, after some months
they were born again as twin boys. "It used to be so clear," said the
elder boy, "I could remember everything; but it is getting duller and
duller, and I cannot now remember as I used to do."
Another little boy told me once that the way remembrance came to
him was by seeing the silk he used to wear made into curtains, which are given
to the monks and used as partitions in their monasteries, and as walls to
temporary erections made at festival times. He was taken when some three years
old to a feast at the making of the son of a wealthy merchant into a monk.
There he recognized in the curtain walling in part of the bamboo building his
old dress, and pointed it out at once.*
__________
· Op. cit., p. et seq.
Most of the examples of reincarnation given above are taken from
Oriental countries - not because the great law of rebirth is operative only in
those lands, but because for various reasons it is easier to trace its action
there. The law is universal, but the interval between lives differs widely. For
some it is a matter of many centuries; for others it may be only a few months,
or even days. With the Burmese, as we have just seen from Mr. Fielding Hall's
account, very short intervals seem to be the rule, and the Burman
evidently has also the peculiarity that he usually takes birth over and over
again in the same race before transferring himself to another. These two habits
of his are specially convenient for the student of reincarnation who, by
researches among that race, can readily convince himself of the truth of the
general principle before extending his inquiries into other fields where the
investigation is more difficult.
There is plenty of testimony available of quite another kind, for
there are a certain number of people who have a clear memory of at least some
of their own former births; and it is sometimes possible for those who have
lived simultaneously in the past to compare notes, and so obtain some sort of
verification of their recollections. I remember once, years ago, when I had
given a lecture upon reincarnation to an Indian audience, and asked at the
conclusion of it for questions on any point which I had not made quite clear, a
highly-cultured Indian gentleman rose, and with the utmost courtesy said:
"Sir, this theory of reincarnation is familiar to us from
childhood; we all of us begin by accepting it, and it is only when we grow up
and absorb your European culture that we come to doubt it. Have you any
objection to telling us how it happens that you, an Englishman, whose education
and surroundings must have been so entirely different, are able to speak to us
so convincingly and with such apparent certainty on this subject?"
I in my turn put a question to him: "Do you wish me to
rehearse for you the stock arguments which show so conclusively that
reincarnation is the only rational theory of life, the only hypothesis which
enables us to account in any degree equitably for the conditions which we see
around us? Or do you want me to unveil something of my own inner life, and give
you my real reason?"
He replied: "Sir, if I may venture to put so intimate, so
almost impertinent a question (though I assure you that it is not asked
impertinently) it is precisely that real inner reason that it would mean so much
to me to hear."
Seeing how genuine and how serious was his query, I answered him
openly: "Very well then," I said, "I speak definitely and
certainly about reincarnation because I know it to be a fact, because I can
clearly remember a large number of my own past births, and in the case of some
of them I have been able to satisfy myself by exterior evidence that my
recollection is accurate. But of course that, however satisfactory to me, is no
proof to you."
He thanked me heartily, assuring me that that was exactly what he
had wanted to hear.
Chapter XII
CONCLUSION
I have tried to describe the life on the other side of death just
as it is, just as it is seen to be by those who, taking part in it (as we all do
every night of our earthly lives) have unfolded within themselves the power to
remember clearly what they see and do, so that to them it is familiar, simple,
straightforward - part of their everyday existence. And I have gathered
together from many sources a large number of illustrative cases, a vast amount
of concurrent testimony to show you that the account I give is not a dream or
a hallucination, but a plain statement of the facts as commonly experienced.
For those who are able to accept this, all fear of death should be
eradicated, all grief for those whom we call the dead should automatically
cease. Yet so strong is this ingrained habit of mourning, so firmly implanted
within us is this hereditary, though baseless, sense of separation, that even those
who intellectually grasp the truth, who fully believe all that is written
herein, may at times find themselves slipping back under its influence into
that old and harmful attitude of
despondency, of longing, of never-fading regret.
So sad is this, so injurious both to the living and the dead, that
I feel it my duty to close this book with a final and urgent appeal to my
readers to raise themselves once and forever above the possibility of any such
relapse, to take their stand firmly in God's sunlight, and never for a moment
allow it to be obscured by man-made clouds of doubt or fear. To the man, then,
whose sky is dark because one whom he loves deeply has left this physical
world, I would address myself thus:
an earnest appeal
My brother, you have lost by death one whom you loved dearly - one
who perhaps was all the world to you; and so to you that world seems empty, and
life no longer worth the living. You feel that joy has left you for ever - that
existence can be for you henceforth nothing but hopeless sadness - naught but
one aching longing for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a
voice that is still". You are thinking chiefly of yourself and your
intolerable loss; but there is also another sorrow. Your grief is aggravated by
your uncertainty as to the present condition of your beloved; you feel that
he has gone you know not where. You hope earnestly that all is well with him,
but when you look upward all is void; when you cry, there is no answer. And so
despair and doubt overwhelm you, and make a cloud that hides from you the Sun
which never sets.
Your feeling is most natural; I who write understand it perfectly,
and my heart is full of sympathy for all those who are afflicted as you are.
But I hope that I can do more than sympathize; I hope that I can bring you help
and relief. Such help and relief have come to thousands who were in your sad
case. Why should they not come to you also?
You say: "How can there be relief or hope for me?"
There is the hope of relief for you because your sorrow is founded
on misapprehension; you are grieving for something which has not really
happened. When you understand the facts you will cease to grieve.
You answer: "My loss is a fact. How can you help me - unless,
indeed, you give me back my dead?"
I understand your feeling perfectly; yet bear with me for awhile,
and try to grasp three main propositions which I am about to put before you -
at first merely as broad statements, and then in convincing detail.
Your loss is only an apparent fact - apparent from your point of
view. I want to bring you to another view-point. Your suffering is the result
of a great delusion - of ignorance of Nature's law; let me help you on the road
towards knowledge by explaining a few simple truths which you can study further
at your leisure.
You need be under no uneasiness or uncertainty with regard to the
condition of your loved one, for the life after death is no longer a mystery.
The world beyond the grave exists under the same natural laws as this which we
know, and has been explored and examined with scientific accuracy.
You must not mourn, for your mourning does harm to your loved one.
If you can once open your mind to the truth, you will mourn no more.
Before you can understand your lost friend's condition you must
understand your own. Try to grasp the fact that you are an immortal being,
immortal because you are divine in essence - because you are a spark from God's
own Fire; that you lived for ages before you put on this vesture which you call
a body, and that you will live for ages after it has crumbled into dust.
"God made man to be an image of His own eternity." This is not a
guess or a pious belief, it is a definite scientific fact, capable of proof, as
you may see from the literature of the subject if you will take the trouble to
read it. What you have been considering as your life is in truth only one day
of your real life as a soul, and the same is true of your beloved; therefore,
he is not dead - it is only his body that is cast aside.
Yet you must not, therefore, think of him as a mere bodiless
breath, as in any way less himself than he was before. As
If that idea is by this time clear to you, let us advance another
step. It is not only at what you call death that you doff that overcoat of
dense matter; every night when you go to sleep you slip it off for awhile, and
roam about the world in your spiritual body - invisible as far as this dense
world is concerned, but clearly visible to those friends who happen to be
using their spiritual bodies at the same time. For each body sees only that
which is on its own level; your physical body sees only other physical bodies,
your spiritual body sees only other spiritual bodies. When you resume your
overcoat - that is to say, when you come back to your denser body. and wake up
(or down) to this lower world - it occasionally happens that you have some
recollection, though usually considerably distorted, of what you have seen
when you were away elsewhere; and then you call it a vivid dream. Sleep, then,
may be described as a kind of temporary death, the difference being that you do
not withdraw yourself so entirely from your overcoat as to be unable to resume
it. It follows that when you sleep, you enter the same condition as that into
which your beloved has passed. What that condition is I will now proceed to
explain.
Many theories have been current as to the life after death - most
of them based upon misunderstandings of ancient scriptures. At one time the
horrible dogma of what was called everlasting punishment was almost universally
accepted in Europe, though none but the hopelessly ignorant believe it now. It
was based upon a mistranslation of certain words attributed to Christ, and it
was maintained by the mediaeval monks as a convenient bogey with which to
frighten the ignorant masses into well-doing. As the world advanced in civilization,
men began to see that such a tenet was not only blasphemous, but ridiculous.
Modern religionists have, therefore, replaced it by somewhat saner suggestions;
but they are usually quite vague and far from the simplicity of the truth.
All the Churches have complicated their doctrines because they
insisted upon starting with an absurd and unfounded dogma of a cruel and angry
Deity who wished to injure His people. They import this dreadful idea from
primitive Judaism, instead of accepting the teaching of Christ that God is a
loving Father. People who have grasped the fundamental fact that God is Love,
and that His universe is governed by wise eternal laws, have begun to realize
that those laws must be obeyed in the world beyond the grave just as much as in
this. But even yet beliefs are vague. We are told of a far-away heaven, of a
day of judgement in the remote future, but little
information is given us as to what happens here and now. Those who teach do not
even pretend to have any personal experience of after-death conditions. They
tell us not what they themselves know, but only what they have heard from
others. How can that satisfy us?
The truth is that the day of blind belief is past; the era of
scientific knowledge is with us, and we can no longer accept ideas unsustained by reason and common-sense. There is no reason
why scientific methods should not be applied to the elucidation of problems
which in earlier days were left entirely to religion; indeed, such methods have
been applied by the Theosophical Society and the Society for Psychical
Research; and it is the result of those investigations, made in a scientific
spirit, that I wish to place before you now.
Let us consider the life which the dead are leading. In it there
are many and great variations, but at least it is almost always happier than
the earth-life. As an old scripture puts it: "The souls of the righteous
are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of
the unwise they seem to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their
going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace."* We must
disabuse ourselves of antiquated theories; the dead man does not leap suddenly
into an impossible heaven, nor does he fall into a still more impossible hell.
There is indeed no hell in the old wicked sense of the word; and there is no
hell anywhere in any sense except such as a man makes for himself. Try to
understand clearly that death makes no change in the man; he does not suddenly
become a great saint or angel, nor is he suddenly endowed with all the wisdom
of the ages; he is just the same man the day after his death as he was the day
before it, with the same emotions, the same disposition, the same intellectual
development. The only difference is that he has lost the physical body.
__________
Wisdom of Solomon, iii, .
In this spiritual world no money is necessary, food and shelter are
no longer needed, for its glory and its beauty are free to all its inhabitants
without money and without price. In its rarefied matter, in the spiritual body,
a man can move hither and thither as he will; if he loves the beauteous
landscape of forest and sea and sky, he may visit at his pleasure all earth's
fairest spots; if he loves art he may spend the whole of his time in the
contemplation of the masterpieces of all the greatest painters, and may himself
produce masterpieces by the exercise of the wonderful magic of his
thought-power; if he be a musician, he may pass from one to the other of the
world's chiefest orchestras, he may spend his time in
listening to the most celebrated performers, or with the willing aid of the
great Angels of music he may himself give forth such strains as are never heard
on earth.
Whatever has been his particular delight on earth - his hobby, as
we should say - he has now the fullest liberty to devote himself to it entirely
and to follow it out to the utmost, provided only that its enjoyment is that of
the intellect or of the higher emotions - that its gratification does not
necessitate the possession of a physical body. Thus it will be seen at once
that all rational and decent men are infinitely happier after death than before
it, for they have ample time not only for pleasure, but for really satisfactory
progress along the lines which interest them most.
Are there then none in that world who are unhappy? Yes, for that
life is necessarily a sequel to this, and the man is in every respect the same
man as he was before he left his body. If his enjoyments in this world were low
and coarse, he will find himself unable in that world to gratify his desires. A
drunkard will suffer from unquenchable thirst, having no longer a body through
which it can be assuaged; the glutton will miss the pleasures of the table; the
miser will no longer find gold for his gathering. The man who has yielded
himself during earth-life to unworthy passions will find them still gnawing at
his vitals. The sensualist still palpitates with cravings that can never now be
satisfied; the jealous man is still torn by his jealousy, all the more that he
can no longer interfere with the action of its object. Such people as these
unquestionably do suffer - but only such as these, only those whose
proclivities and passions have been coarse and physical in their nature. And
even they have their fate absolutely in their own hands. They have but to
conquer these inclinations, and they are at once free from the suffering which
such longings entail. Remember always that there is no such thing as
punishment; there is only the natural result of a definite cause; so that you
have only to remove the cause and the effect ceases - not always immediately,
but as soon as the energy of the cause is exhausted.
"Do the dead then see us?" it may be asked; "do they
hear what we say?" Undoubtedly they see us in the sense that they are
always conscious of our presence, that they know whether we are happy or
miserable; but they do not hear the words that we say, nor are they conscious
in detail of our physical actions. A moment's thought will show us what are the
limits of their power to see. They are inhabiting what we have called the
"spiritual body" - a body which exists in ourselves, and is, as far
as appearance goes, an exact duplicate of the physical body; but while we are
awake our consciousness is focussed exclusively in
the latter. We have already said that just as only physical matter appeals to
the physical body, so only the matter of the spiritual world is discernible by
that higher body. Therefore, what the dead man can see of us is only our
spiritual body, which, however, he has no difficulty in recognizing.
When we are what we call asleep, our consciousness is using that vehicle,
and so to the dead man we are awake; but when we transfer our consciousness to
the physical body, it seems to the dead man that we fall asleep, because though
he still sees us, we are no longer paying any attention to him to able to
communicate with him. When a living-friend falls asleep we are quite aware of
his presence, but for the moment we cannot communicate with him unless we
arouse him. Precisely similar is the condition of the living man (while he is
awake) in the eyes of the dead. Because we cannot usually remember in our
waking consciousness what we have seen during sleep, we are under the delusion
that we have lost our dead; but they are never under the delusion that they
have lost us, because they can see us all the time. To them the only difference
is that we are with them during the night and away from them during the day;
whereas, when they were on earth with us, exactly the reverse was the case.
All life is evolving, for evolution is God's law; and man grows
slowly and steadily along with the rest. What is commonly called man's life is,
in reality, only one day of his true and longer life. Just as in this ordinary
life man rises each morning, puts on his clothes, and goes forth to do his
daily work, and then when night descends he lays aside those clothes and takes
his rest, and then again on the following morning rises afresh to take up his
work at the point where he left it - just so when the man comes into the
physical life he puts upon him the vesture of the physical body, and when his
work-time is over he lays aside that vesture again in what you call death, and
passes into the more restful condition which I have described; and when that
rest is over he puts upon himself once more the garment of the body, and goes
forth yet again to begin a new day of physical life, taking up his evolution at
the point where he left it. And this long life of his lasts until he attains
that goal of divinity which God means him to attain.
One of the saddest cases of apparent loss is when a child passes
away from this physical world and its parents are left to watch its empty
place, to miss its loving prattle. What then happens to children in this
strange new spiritual world? Of all those who enter it, they are perhaps the
happiest and the most entirely and immediately at home. Remember that they do
not lose the parents, the brothers, the sisters, the playmates whom they love;
it is simply that they have them as companions during what we call the night
instead of the day; so that they have no feeling of loss or separation.
During our day they are never left alone, for there as here,
children gather together and play together - play in Elysian fields full of
rare delights. We know how here a child enjoys "making believe",
pretending to be this character or that in history - playing the principal
parts in all sorts of wonderful fairy stories or tales of adventure. In the
finer matter of that higher world thoughts take to themselves visible form, and
so the child who imagines himself a certain hero promptly takes on temporarily
the actual appearance of that hero. If he wishes for an enchanted castle, his
thought can build that enchanted castle. If he desires an army to command, at
once that army is there. And so among the dead the hosts of children are always
full of joy - indeed, often even riotously happy.
If you have been able to assimilate what I have already said, you
will now understand that, however natural it may be for us to feel sorrow at
the death of our relatives, that sorrow is an error and an evil, and we ought
to overcome it. There is no need to sorrow for them, for they have passed into
a far wider and happier life. If we sorrow for our own fancied separation from
them, we are, in the first place, weeping over an illusion, for in truth they are
not separated from us; and, secondly, we are acting selfishly, because we are
thinking more of our own apparent loss than of their great and real gain. We
must strive to be utterly unselfish, as indeed all love should be. We must
think of them and not of ourselves - not of what we wish or we feel, but solely
of what is best for them and most helpful to their progress.
If we mourn, if we yield to gloom and depression, we throw out from
ourselves a heavy cloud which darkens the sky for them. Their very affection
for us, their very sympathy for us, lay them open to this direful influence. We
can use the power which that affection gives us to help them instead of
hindering them, if we only will; but to do that requires courage and
self-sacrifice. We must forget ourselves utterly in our earnest and loving
desire to be of the greatest possible assistance to our dead. Every thought,
every feeling of ours influences them; let us then take care that there shall
be no thought which is not broad and helpful, ennobling and purifying.
If it is probable that they may be feeling some anxiety about us,
let us be persistently cheerful, that we may assure them that they have no need
to feel trouble on our account. If, during physical life, they have been
without detailed and accurate information as to the life after death, let us endeavour at once to assimilate such information
ourselves, and to pass it on in our nightly conversations with them. Since our
thoughts and feelings are so readily mirrored in theirs, let us see to it that
those thoughts and feelings are always elevating and encouraging. "If ye
know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."*
__________
Not only should we abstain from mourning; we should go further than
that; we should earnestly try to develop within ourselves positive joyousness.
It is the duty of every man to be happy, that he may radiate happiness on
others; and most especially is that true of those who have dear friends who
have recently passed over into the higher life. The best anodyne for sorrow is
active work for others; and that also is the surest way to peace and joy.
That great truth we can impress upon these friends of ours, if they
do not already know it; for the opportunities for helpful work are greater far in
the astral world than in the physical. Among the vast hosts of those whom we
call the dead there are many who are bewildered by their surroundings, many who
through erroneous religious teaching on earth are in a state of painful
uncertainty and even acute terror, many who are causing themselves unnecessary
suffering by perpetuating earthly desires and passions in that higher life
where there is no assuagement for them. What occupation can be nobler and
happier than to help these poor souls from darkness to light, to relieve their
sufferings, to explain these things that puzzle them, and to guide their feet
into the way of peace?
Into the splendid corps of Invisible Helpers who are ceaselessly
engaged in this benevolent activity we can introduce our newly-arrived friends,
thus assuring them of happy and useful work during the whole of their stay in
this wonderful astral world which God has provided for the training and
enjoyment of His people, even though it be but a stage on the way to that still
higher realm whose glories eye hath not seen, neither hath it entered into the
heart of man to conceive it.
Try to comprehend the unity of all; there is one God, and all are
one in Him. If we can but bring home to ourselves the unity of that Eternal
Love, there will be no more sorrow for us; for we shall realize, not for
ourselves alone, but also for those whom we love, that whether we live or die,
we are the Lord's, and that in Him we live and move and have our being, whether
it be in this world or in the world to come. The attitude of mourning is a
faithless attitude, an ignorant attitude. The more we know, the more fully we
shall trust, for we shall feel with utter certainty that we and our dead alike
are in the hands of perfect Power and perfect Wisdom, directed by perfect Love.
__________
All taint of grief and mourning we firmly lay aside,
Our seeming loss forgetting, since they are glorified.
We know they stand before us and love us as of old;
God grant we may not fail them, nor let our love grow cold!
With heart and soul we trust Thee; Thy love no tongue can tell;
Thou art the All-Commander, Who doest all things well.
peace to all beings
ODE TO THE LIVING DEAD
Loved ones! though our waking vision
Know your forms no more,
Earth's illusion shall not hold us;
Well we know your loves enfold us
Even as before.
Death? 'Tis but a stepping forward -
No divorce at all;
Swifter than of old the meeting,
Warmer, heartier the greeting
When you hear our call.
And at night, when softest slumber
Seals these earthly eyes,
Lo, a new day dawneth brightly;
From our fetters slipping lightly
To your world we rise;
There to work and there to wander
In the sweet old way -
Drink of upper springs and nether,
Learn what Love hath knit together
Standeth fast for
aye.
Praise and glory for this knowledge
To the One in Three;
For the sting from death is taken,
Nevermore are we forsaken
Through eternity.
D. W. M. Burn
------------------------------
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