The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of C
Charles
Webster Leadbeater
(1858
– 1934)
Spiritualism and Theosophy
C
First Published 1928
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
Robert Dale Owen
remarks:
“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; © 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 1847 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. 368, 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
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. 384 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
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. 100) 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 5, . — 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
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
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, 7
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 6th. 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
The next day, June 7th,
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
all the more celebrated. He is besieged by people who
come to consult him on
lost property, on men missing during the war, etc. And
this modest and
extraordinary man devotes much time and trouble to them with good
grace and
complete disinterestedness. He is a true diviner, who does
much good by his
gift without any personal reward. I ask pardon for so long
an account, which I
wished to make as exact as possible,
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.
55).
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 у
а
bеаисоир
de haine. Non, il n’y a pas ‘haine’; il у 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
у а
bеаисоир
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 21st, 1921, at Prince Lubomirski’s
(p. 39), 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. 25).
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. 21), relating to the death of a charwoman of
Every week I used to
leave
“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
“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
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. 284). The account of the incident was
furnished by Count Hamon, as follows:
On
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
Speaking very slowly
at first, the spirit said, “My father lives near
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 оver 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
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. 413, 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
“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
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
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. 172).
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. 204 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. 203):
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
“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. 15).
the book tests
In 1922 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 149;
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. 15-.)
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
Summing up the results
of two years’ work the author finds that out of 209 book tests spontaneously
given 147 were good, 26 indefinite, and 36 apparent failures (p. 98).
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. 153):
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 1885, 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
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.’ ”
Secret
Doctrine Text Version 7.5MB
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
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. 131) “On page 1, column 2, 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 104 tests, Mr. Thomas finds that there were 73 successes,
12 inconclusive items, and 19 failures, and in another set of trials there were
51 successes out of 53 tests (p. 153). 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. 190). 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. 118:
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. 93:
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. 89, 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. 74, 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, 1858, 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, 1859) that in December of the year 1857, during an
evening visit to a friend, who resided at No. 28 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 то
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.
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
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 18,
.
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. 95 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. 167-.)
I had been giving tests to
some gentlemen in
“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
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. 197 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
Later Mr. Wyllie visited Dr.
and Mrs. Coates in
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. 223),
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.
253-.)
Chapter VII
THE
MANIPULATION OF
PSYCHIC RODS
the goligher circle
In three valuable
little books — The Reality of Psychic Phenomena (1916), Experiments in
Psychical Science (1919), and Psychic Structures (1921) — 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. 30-.)
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 3 per cent less than the weight of the levitated table.
(pp. 44-.)
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 95%, 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.
4, 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 weighing103/8 lb,
was greater than 28 lb, and showed that there was also a horizontal pressure
against the balance and away from the medium, amounting to about 5 lb. (p.
120). A stool weighing 23/4 lb when levitated above a drawing board weighing
51/2 lb resting upon a compression spring-balance, registered a downward force
of about 24 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 © and wood (w)
were hinged together as shown in the diagram (Fig. 22, p. 139). 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. 140-1).
feeling the substance
In Experiment 65 (p.
145) 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 225 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. 61) 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. 31)
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. 32) 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 2 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 5 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 4 to 6 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. 21-.)
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 1919 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. 111-3).
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 (1) 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; (2) 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
(3) 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.
167).
On page 230 (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 10, 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. 14) 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 4
inches in diameter, the latter being 3 or 4 inches above the floor, and that just
before entering the body of the medium the rod widens out to a diameter of about
7 inches. Dr. Crawford drew the figure which we reproduce herewith (Fig. 6, E.P.S., p. 15) to show these facts.
It was found in
certain experiments (E.P.S., p. 31), 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 48 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. 33) 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 80 lbs. a true cantilever is employed, but for greater and
variable forces they use a supported structure.
The question arose
(E.P.S., p. 117) 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 30 or 40 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 2 to 5 lbs. When a loud blow was given the weight would
diminish as much as 20 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. 193, R. P. P.)
In Experiments in
Psychical Science (p. 16), 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 2 inches in diameter and of uniform
thickness until just before entering the body of the medium, where it increased
to about 3 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. 201) 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. 269). 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 1’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 18 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.
39-.)
The concave
impressions varied in size from the mark one could make with one’s little
finger to a size of 4 or 5 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. 53). 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. 56-7).
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 71 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. 81).
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. 128):
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 133-4 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.136-7).
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. 146) 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
84 at the beginning, rose to 120 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. 143).
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. 148).
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 21/2 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 20 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. 184) 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. 184-5).
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. 301-3), 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,
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. 187 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. 91 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. 97 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
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 Egypt.
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. 326, 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. 94 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. 243), 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. 487 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. 229).
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. 345 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. 41 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. 298
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. 273), thus refers to this matter:
Two highly intelligent friends
of mine, now deceased, Dr. A. D. Wilson and Professor James Mapes, both
formerly of New York, each on one occasion firmly grasped what seemed a
luminous hand. In both cases the result was the same. What was laid hold of
melted entirely away — so each told me — in his grasp. I have had communications
to the effect that the spirit thus manifesting its presence suffers when this
is done, and that a spirit would have great reluctance in appearing, in bodily
form, to any one whom it could not trust to refrain
from interference with the phenomena, except by its express permission. In my experiments
I have always governed myself accordingly, and I ascribe my success in part to
this continence.
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. 36-40).
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 Christiania that a sitter “abstracted” a piece of drapery which
clothed one of the spirit-forms. Later I discovered that a large square piece
of material was missing from my skirt, partly cut, partly torn out. My dress
was of a heavy dark woollen material. The “abstracted” piece of drapery was
found to be of the same shape as that missing from my skirt, but several times
larger, and white in colour, the texture fine and thin as gossamer.
Something of the kind
had happened once before in England, when some one had begged the little Ninia
for a piece of her abundant clothing. She complied, unwillingly, it seemed, and
the reason for her unwillingness was explained when, after the seance, I found
a hole in a new dress which I had put on for the first time. This being nearly
black, I had attributed the mishap more to an accident on the part of Ninia
than to any psychological cause. Now that it happened a second time, I began to
understand that it was no accident, and that my dress, or the clothing of the
persons in the seance, was the foundation of, or the stores from which the
dazzling raiment of the spirit form was drawn. (Shadowland, p. .)
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. 254), 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. 307 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. 205:
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. 90).
In some cases a
complete form appeared, as in the following record, on page 96:
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
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 (1)
the substance as a substratum of materialization; (2) 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
30 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. 131)
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. 133).
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 180 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.
206).
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 same distinguished
investigator had also a number of seances with a Polish medium, a girl of
nineteen years, named Stanislava P. (p. 251 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. 258). 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 1922 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. 208)
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
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. 221 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: 3 kilograms 920 grams.
Weight of paraffin
after the experiment: 3 kilograms 800 grams.
Weight of the moulds:
50 grams.
The difference is
represented by a considerable quantity of wax scattered on the floor, about 15
grams near the medium and also some far from him, 31/2 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 25 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
Dr. Geley says:
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 1918, 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 13th, .
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 (28 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 376).
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,
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. 291
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
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
History
of the Theosophical Society
Theosophical Society Cardiff
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The Theosophical Society,