4. PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS
Leaving for a moment the larger argument as to the
lines of this revelation and the broad proofs of its
validity, there are some smaller points which have
forced themselves upon my attention during the
consideration of the subject. This home of our dead
seems to be very near to us — so near that we
continually, as they tell us, visit them in our sleep.
Much of that quiet resignation which we have all
observed in people who have lost those whom they
loved — people who would in our previous opinion have
been driven mad by such loss — is due to the fact that
they have seen their dead, and that although the
switch-off is complete and they can recall nothing
whatever of the spirit experience in sleep, the
soothing result of it is still carried on by the
subconscious self. The switch-off is, as I say,
complete, but sometimes for some reason it is hung up
for
a fraction of a second, and it is at such
moments that the dreamer comes back from his dream
"trailing clouds of glory." From this also come all
those prophetic dreams many of which are well attested.
I have had a recent personal experience of one which
has not yet perhaps entirely justified itself but is
even now remarkable. Upon April 4th of last year,
1917, I awoke with a feeling that some communication
had been made to me of which I had only carried back
one word which was ringing in my head. That word was
"Piave." To the best of my belief I had never heard
the word before. As it sounded like the name of a
place I went into my study the moment I had dressed and
I looked up the index of my Atlas. There was "Piave"
sure enough, and I noted that it was a river in Italy
some forty miles behind the front line, which at that
time was victoriously advancing. I could imagine few
more unlikely things than that the war should roll back
to the Piave, and I could not think how any military
event of consequence could arise there, but none the
less I was so impressed that I
drew up a statement
that some such event would occur there, and I had it
signed by my secretary and witnessed by my wife with
the date, April 4th, attached. It is a matter of
history how six months later the whole Italian line
fell back, how it abandoned successive positions upon
rivers, and how it stuck upon this stream which was
said by military critics to be strategically almost
untenable. If nothing more should occur (I write upon
February 20th, 1918), the reference to the name has
been fully justified, presuming that some friend in the
beyond was forecasting the coming events of the war. I
have still a hope, however, that more was meant, and
that some crowning victory of the Allies at this spot
may justify still further the strange way in which the
name was conveyed to my mind.
People may well cry out against this theory of
sleep on the grounds that all the grotesque, monstrous
and objectionable dreams which plague us cannot
possibly come from a high source. On this point I have
a very definite theory, which may perhaps be worthy of
discussion. I consider
that there are two forms of
dreams, and only two, the experiences of the released
spirit, and the confused action of the lower faculties
which remain in the body when the spirit is absent.
The former is rare and beautiful, for the memory of it
fails us. The latter are common and varied, but
usually fantastic or ignoble. By noting what is absent
in the lower dreams one can tell what the missing
qualities are, and so judge what part of us goes to
make up the spirit. Thus in these dreams humour is
wanting, since we see things which strike us afterwards
as ludicrous, and are not amused. The sense of
proportion and of judgment and of aspiration is all
gone. In short, the higher is palpably gone, and the
lower, the sense of fear, of sensual impression, of
self-preservation, is functioning all the more vividly
because it is relieved from the higher control.
The limitations of the powers of spirits is a
subject which is brought home to one in these studies.
People say, "If they exist why don't they do this or
that!" The answer usually is that they can't. They
appear
to have very fixed limitations like our own.
This seemed to be very clearly brought out in the
cross-correspondence experiments where several writing
mediums were operating at a distance quite
independently of each other, and the object was to get
agreement which was beyond the reach of coincidence.
The spirits seem to know exactly what they impress upon
the minds of the living, but they do not know how far
they carry their instruction out. Their touch with us
is intermittent. Thus, in the cross-correspondence
experiments we continually have them asking, "Did you
get that?" or "Was it all right?" Sometimes they have
partial cognisance of what is done, as where Myers
says: "I saw the circle, but was not sure about the
triangle." It is everywhere apparent that their
spirits, even the spirits of those who, like Myers and
Hodgson, were in specially close touch with psychic
subjects, and knew all that could be done, were in
difficulties when they desired to get cognisance of a
material thing, such as a written document. Only, I
should imagine, by partly materialising themselves
could they do so, and they may not have had the
power of self-materialization. This consideration
throws some light upon the famous case, so often used
by our opponents, where Myers failed to give some word
or phrase which had been left behind in a sealed box.
Apparently he could not see this document from his
present position, and if his memory failed him he would
be very likely to go wrong about it.
Many mistakes may, I think, be explained in this
fashion. It has been asserted from the other side, and
the assertion seems to me reasonable, that when they
speak of their own conditions they are speaking of what
they know and can readily and surely discuss; but that
when we insist (as we must sometimes insist) upon
earthly tests, it drags them back to another plane of
things, and puts them in a position which is far more
difficult, and liable to error.
Another point which is capable of being used
against us is this: The spirits have the greatest
difficulty in getting names through to us, and it is
this which makes many of their communications so vague
and
unsatisfactory. They will talk all round a
thing, and yet never get the name which would clinch
the matter. There is an example of the point in a
recent communication in
Light, which describes how
a young officer, recently dead, endeavoured to get a
message through the direct voice method of Mrs.
Susannah Harris to his father. He could not get his
name through. He was able, however, to make it clear
that his father was a member of the Kildare Street Club
in Dublin. Inquiry found the father, and it was then
learned that the father had already received an
independent message in Dublin to say that an inquiry
was coming through from London. I do not know if the
earth name is a merely ephemeral thing, quite
disconnected from the personality, and perhaps the very
first thing to be thrown aside. That is, of course,
possible. Or it may be that some law regulates our
intercourse from the other side by which it shall not
be too direct, and shall leave something to our own
intelligence.
This idea, that there is some law which makes an
indirect speech more easy than a
direct one, is
greatly borne out by the cross-correspondences, where
circumlocution continually takes the place of
assertion. Thus, in the St. Paul correspondence, which
is treated in the July pamphlet of the S.P.R., the idea
of St. Paul was to be conveyed from one automatic
writer to two others, both of whom were at a distance,
one of them in India. Dr. Hodgson was the spirit who
professed to preside over this experiment. You would
think that the simple words "St. Paul" occurring in the
other scripts would be all-sufficient. But no; he
proceeds to make all sorts of indirect allusions, to
talk all round St. Paul in each of the scripts, and to
make five quotations from St. Paul's writings. This is
beyond coincidence, and quite convincing, but none the
less it illustrates the curious way in which they go
round instead of going straight. If one could imagine
some wise angel on the other side saying, "Now, don't
make it too easy for these people. Make them use their
own brains a little. They will become mere automatons
if we do everything for them" — if we could imagine
that, it would just cover the case.
Whatever the
explanation, it is a noteworthy fact.
There is another point about spirit communications
which is worth noting. This is their uncertainty
wherever any time element comes in. Their estimate of
time is almost invariably wrong. Earth time is
probably a different idea to spirit time, and hence the
confusion. We had the advantage, as I have stated, of
the presence of a lady in our household who developed
writing mediumship. She was in close touch with three
brothers, all of whom had been killed in the war. This
lady, conveying messages from her brothers, was hardly
ever entirely wrong upon facts, and hardly ever right
about time. There was one notable exception, however,
which in itself is suggestive. Although her prophecies
as to public events were weeks or even months out, she
in one case foretold the arrival of a telegram from
Africa to the day. Now the telegram had already been
sent, but was delayed, so that the inference seems to
be that she could foretell a course of events which had
actually been set in motion, and calculate how long
they would take
to reach their end. On the other
hand, I am bound to admit that she confidently
prophesied the escape of her fourth brother, who was a
prisoner in Germany, and that this was duly fulfilled.
On the whole I preserve an open mind upon the powers
and limitations of prophecy.
But apart from all these limitations we have,
unhappily, to deal with absolute coldblooded lying on
the part of wicked or mischievous intelligences.
Everyone who has investigated the matter has, I
suppose, met with examples of wilful deception, which
occasionally are mixed up with good and true
communications. It was of such messages, no doubt,
that the Apostle wrote when he said: "Beloved,
believe, not every spirit, but try the spirits whether
they are of God." These words can only mean that the
early Christians not only practised Spiritualism as we
understand it, but also that they were faced by the
same difficulties. There is nothing more puzzling than
the fact that one may get a long connected description
with every detail given, and that it may prove to be
entirely a concoction. However, we must
bear in
mind that if one case comes absolutely correct, it
atones for many failures, just as if you had one
telegram correct you would know that there was a line
and a communicator, however much they broke down
afterwards. But it must be admitted that it is very
discomposing and makes one sceptical of messages until
they are tested. Of a kin with these false influences
are all the Miltons who cannot scan, and Shelleys who
cannot rhyme, and Shakespeares who cannot think, and
all the other absurd impersonations which make our
cause ridiculous. They are, I think, deliberate
frauds, either from this side or from the other, but to
say that they invalidate the whole subject is as
senseless as to invalidate our own world because we
encounter some unpleasant people.
One thing I can truly say, and that is, that in
spite of false messages, I have never in all these
years known a blasphemous, an unkind, or an obscene
message. Such incidents must be of very exceptional
nature. I think also that, so far as allegations
concerning insanity, obsession, and so forth go, they
are entirely imaginary. Asylum statistics
do not
bear out such assertions, and mediums live to as good
an average age as anyone else. I think, however, that
the cult of the seance may be very much overdone. When
once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the
phenomena the physical seance has done its work, and
the man or woman who spends his or her life in running
from seance to seance is in danger of becoming a mere
sensation hunter. Here, as in other cults, the form is
in danger of eclipsing the real thing, and in pursuit
of physical proofs one may forget that the real object
of all these things is, as I have tried to point out,
to give us assurance in the future and spiritual
strength in the present, to attain a due perception of
the passing nature of matter and the all-importance of
that which is immaterial.
The conclusion, then, of my long search after
truth, is that in spite of occasional fraud, which
Spiritualists deplore, and in spite of wild imaginings,
which they discourage, there remains a great solid core
in this movement which is infinitely nearer to positive
proof than any other religious development
with
which I am acquainted. As I have shown, it would
appear to be a rediscovery rather than an absolutely
new thing, but the result in this material age is the
same. The days are surely passing when the mature and
considered opinions of such men as Crookes, Wallace,
Flammarion, Chas. Richet, Lodge, Barrett, Lombroso,
Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant Ballantyne, W. T.
Stead, Judge Edmunds, Admiral Usborne Moore, the late
Archdeacon Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other
witnesses, can be dismissed with the empty "All rot" or
"Nauseating drivel" formulae. As Mr. Arthur Hill has
well said, we have reached a point where further proof
is superfluous, and where the weight of disproof lies
upon those who deny. The very people who clamour for
proofs have as a rule never taken the trouble to
examine the copious proofs which already exist. Each
seems to think that the whole subject should begin
de novo because he has asked for information. The
method of our opponents is to fasten upon the latest
man who has stated the case — at the present instant it
happens
to be Sir Oliver Lodge — and then to deal
with him as if he had come forward with some new
opinions which rested entirely upon his own assertion,
with no reference to the corroboration of so many
independent workers before him. This is not an honest
method of criticism, for in every case the agreement of
witnesses is the very root of conviction. But as a
matter of fact, there are many single witnesses upon
whom this case could rest. If, for example, our only
knowledge of unknown forces depended upon the
researches of Dr. Crawford of Belfast, who places his
amateur medium in a weighing chair with her feet from
the ground, and has been able to register a difference
of weight of many pounds, corresponding with the
physical phenomena produced, a result which he has
tested and recorded in a true scientific spirit of
caution, I do not see how it could be shaken. The
phenomena are and have long been firmly established for
every open mind. One feels that the stage of
investigation is passed, and that of religious
construction is overdue.
For are we to satisfy ourselves by observing
phenomena with no attention to what the phenomena mean,
as a group of savages might stare at a wireless
installation with no appreciation of the messages
coming through it, or are we resolutely to set
ourselves to define these subtle and elusive utterances
from beyond, and to construct from them a religious
scheme, which will be founded upon human reason on this
side and upon spirit inspiration upon the other? These
phenomena have passed through the stage of being a
parlour game; they are now emerging from that of a
debatable scientific novelty; and they are, or should
be, taking shape as the foundations of a definite
system of religious thought, in some ways confirmatory
of ancient systems, in some ways entirely new. The
evidence upon which this system rests is so enormous
that it would take a very considerable library to
contain it, and the witnesses are not shadowy people
living in the dim past and inaccessible to our cross-examination, but are our own contemporaries, men of
character and intellect whom all must respect. The
situation may, as it seems to me, be summed up in a
simple
alternative. The one supposition is that
there has been an outbreak of lunacy extending over two
generations of mankind, and two great continents — a
lunacy which assails men or women who are otherwise
eminently sane. The alternative supposition is that in
recent years there has come to us from divine sources a
new revelation which constitutes by far the greatest
religious event since the death of Christ (for the
Reformation was a re-arrangement of the old, not a
revelation of the new), a revelation which alters the
whole aspect of death and the fate of man. Between
these two suppositions there is no solid position.
Theories of fraud or of delusion will not meet the
evidence. It is absolute lunacy or it is a revolution
in religious thought, a revolution which gives us as
by-products an utter fearlessness of death, and an
immense consolation when those who are dear to us pass
behind the veil.
I should like to add a few practical words to those
who know the truth of what I say. We have here an
enormous new development, the greatest in the history
of mankind. How are we to use it? We are bound in
honour, I think, to state our own belief,
especially to those who are in trouble. Having stated
it, we should not force it, but leave the rest to
higher wisdom than our own. We wish to subvert no
religion. We wish only to bring back the material-minded — to take them out of their cramped valley and
put them on the ridge, whence they can breathe purer
air and see other valleys and other ridges beyond.
Religions are mostly petrified and decayed, overgrown
with forms and choked with mysteries. We can prove
that there is no need for this. All that is essential
is both very simple and very sure.
The clear call for our help comes from those who
have had a loss and who yearn to re-establish
connection. This also can be overdone. If your boy
were in Australia, you would not expect him to
continually stop his work and write long letters at all
seasons. Having got in touch, be moderate in your
demands. Do not be satisfied with any evidence short
of the best, but having got that, you can, it seems to
me, wait for that short period when we shall all be re-united. I am in touch at present with thirteen
mothers
who are in correspondence with their dead
sons. In each case, the husband, where he is alive, is
agreed as to the evidence. In only one case so far as
I know was the parent acquainted with psychic matters
before the war.
Several of these cases have peculiarities of their
own. In two of them the figures of the dead lads have
appeared beside the mothers in a photograph. In one
case the first message to the mother came through a
stranger to whom the correct address of the mother was
given. The communication afterwards became direct. In
another case the method of sending messages was to give
references to particular pages and lines of books in
distant libraries, the whole conveying a message. The
procedure was to weed out all fear of telepathy.
Verily there is no possible way by which a truth can be
proved by which this truth has not been proved.
How are you to act? There is the difficulty.
There are true men and there are frauds. You have to
work warily. So far as professional mediums go, you
will not
find it difficult to get recommendations.
Even with the best you may draw entirely blank. The
conditions are very elusive. And yet some get the
result at once. We cannot lay down laws, because the
law works from the other side as well as this. Nearly
every woman is an undeveloped medium. Let her try her
own powers of automatic writing. There again, what is
done must be done with every precaution against self-deception, and in a reverent and prayerful mood. But
if you are earnest, you will win through somehow, for
someone else is probably trying on the other side.
Some people discountenance communication upon the
ground that it is hindering the advance of the
departed. There is not a tittle of evidence for this.
The assertions of the spirits are entirely to the
contrary and they declare that they are helped and
strengthened by the touch with those whom they love. I
know few more moving passages in their simple boyish
eloquence than those in which Raymond describes the
feelings of the dead boys who want to get messages back
to their people and find that ignorance
and
prejudice are a perpetual bar. "It is hard to think
your sons are dead, but such a lot of people do think
so. It is revolting to hear the boys tell you how no
one speaks of them ever. It hurts me through and
through."
Above all read the literature of this subject. It
has been far too much neglected, not only by the
material world but by believers. Soak yourself with
this grand truth. Make yourself familiar with the
overpowering evidence. Get away from the phenomenal
side and learn the lofty teaching from such beautiful
books as After Death or from Stainton Moses'
Spirit Teachings. There is a whole library of such
literature, of unequal value but of a high average.
Broaden and spiritualize your thoughts. Show the
results in your lives. Unselfishness, that is the
keynote to progress. Realise not as a belief or a
faith, but as a fact which is as tangible as the
streets of London, that we are moving on soon to
another life, that all will be very happy there, and
that the only possible way in which that happiness can
be marred or deferred is by
folly and selfishness
in these few fleeting years.
It must be repeated that while the new revelation
may seem destructive to those who hold Christian dogmas
with extreme rigidity, it has quite the opposite effect
upon the mind which, like so many modern minds, had
come to look upon the whole Christian scheme as a huge
delusion. It is shown clearly that the old revelation
has so many resemblances, defaced by time and mangled
by man's mishandling and materialism, but still
denoting the same general scheme, that undoubtedly both
have come from the same source. The accepted ideas of
life after death, of higher and lower spirits, of
comparative happiness depending upon our own conduct,
of chastening by pain, of guardian spirits, of high
teachers, of an infinite central power, of circles
above circles approaching nearer to His presence — all
of these conceptions appear once more and are confirmed
by many witnesses. It is only the claims of
infallibility and of monopoly, the bigotry and pedantry
of theologians, and the man-made rituals which take the
life out of the
God-given thoughts — it is only
this which has defaced the truth.
I cannot end this little book better than by using
words more eloquent than any which I could write, a
splendid sample of English style as well as of English
thought. They are from the pen of that considerable
thinker and poet, Mr. Gerald Massey, and were written
many years ago.
"Spiritualism has been for me, in common
with many others, such a lifting of the mental
horizon and letting-in of the heavens — such a
formation of faith into facts, that I can only
compare life without it to sailing on board
ship with hatches battened down and being kept
a prisoner, living by the light of a candle,
and then suddenly, on some splendid starry
night, allowed to go on deck for the first time
to see the stupendous mechanism of the heavens
all aglow with the glory of God."
