Chapter IX: Trance, Possession, and Ecstasy (2)

I need scarcely say that this suggests incipient possession. There were occasional analogous instances in the early trances of Mrs. Piper, when Phinuit was the controlling influence (see _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 98, Professor Barrett Wendell's account; and vol. xiii. p. 384). Other points of similarity between the accounts of the entranced Adèle and the utterances of Phinuit will be apparent to the student of the records.

The next case to be considered, and so far one of the most important, is that of D. D. Home.

The study of such records as are available of Home's psychical phenomena leaves me with the conviction that,--apart altogether from the telekinetic phenomena with which they were associated,--his trance-utterances belong to the same natural order as those, for instance, of Mr. Moses and Mrs. Piper. There are, however, important differences between these cases,--differences which should be of special instruction to us in endeavouring to comprehend the possession that completely excludes the subliminal self, and to appreciate the difficulty of obtaining this complete possession.

Thus in Home's case the subliminal self seems, throughout the longest series of séances of which we have a record, to have been the spirit chiefly controlling him during the trance and acting as intermediary for other spirits, who occasionally, however, took complete possession.

In Mrs. Piper's case, as we shall see, the subliminal self is very little in direct evidence; its manifestations form a fleeting interlude between her waking state and her possession by a discarnate spirit. In Mr. Moses' case, the subliminal self was rarely in direct evidence at all when he was entranced; but we infer from these other cases that it was probably dominant at some stage of his trance, even if at other times it was excluded or became completely dormant.

And if, in Home's case, as there seems reason to suppose, the subliminal self may have participated with discarnate spirits in the production of telekinetic phenomena, as well as in the communication of tests of personal identity, it is not improbable that the subliminal self of Mr. Moses may also have been actively concerned in both these classes of phenomena.

But, although I attribute much value to what evidence exists in the case of Home, it cannot but be deplored that the inestimable chance for experiment and record which this case afforded was almost entirely thrown away by the scientific world. Unfortunately the record is especially inadequate in reference to Home's trances and the evidence for the personal identity of the communicating spirits. His name is known to the world chiefly in connection with the telekinetic phenomena which are said to have occurred in his presence, and the best accounts of which we owe to Sir William Crookes. It is not my intention, as I have already explained, to deal with these, but it must be understood that they form an integral part of the manifestations in this case, as in the case of Stainton Moses. For detailed accounts of them the reader should consult the history of Home's life and experiences.[208]

To the history of William Stainton Moses I now turn. Here the evidence for the telekinetic phenomena is comparatively slight, since they occurred almost exclusively in the presence of a small group of intimate personal friends, and were never scrutinised and examined by outside witnesses as were Home's manifestations. On the other hand, we have detailed records of Mr. Moses' whole series of experiences, while in the case of Home, as I have said, the record is very imperfect. As to the telekinetic phenomena, Mr. Moses himself regarded them as a mere means to an end, in accordance with the view urged on him by his "controls,"--that they were intended as proofs of the power and authority of these latter, while the real message lay in the religious teaching imparted to him.

It was on May 9th, 1874, that Edmund Gurney and I met Stainton Moses for the first time, through the kindness of Mrs. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lady Mount-Temple), who knew that we had become interested in "psychical" problems, and wished to introduce us to a man of honour who had recently experienced phenomena, due wholly to some gift of his own, which had profoundly changed his conception of life.

Here was a man of University education, of manifest sanity and probity, who vouched to us for a series of phenomena,--occurring to himself, and with no doubtful or venal aid,--which seemed at least to prove, in confusedly intermingled form, three main theses unknown to Science. These were (1) the existence in the human spirit of hidden powers of insight and of communication; (2) the personal survival and near presence of the departed; and (3) interference, due to unknown agencies, with the ponderable world. He spoke frankly and fully; he showed his note-books; he referred us to his friends; he inspired a belief which was at once sufficient, and which is still sufficient, to prompt to action.

The experiences which Stainton Moses had undergone had changed his views, but not his character. He was already set in the mould of the hard-working, conscientious, dogmatic clergyman, with a strong desire to do good, and a strong belief in preaching as the best way to do it. For himself the essential part of what I have called his "message" lay in the actual words automatically uttered or written,--not in the accompanying phenomena which really gave their uniqueness and importance to the automatic processes. In a book called _Spirit Teachings_ he collected what he regarded as the real fruits of those years of mysterious listening in the vestibule of a world unknown.

My original impressions as regards Mr. Moses were strengthened by the opportunity which I had of examining his unpublished MSS. after his death on September 5th, 1892. These consist of thirty-one note-books--twenty-four of automatic script, four of records of physical phenomena, and three of retrospect and summary. In addition to these, the material available for a knowledge of Mr. Moses' experiences consists of his own printed works, and the written and printed statements of witnesses to his phenomena.

Of this available material a detailed account will be found in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. ix. pp. 245-352, and vol. xi. pp. 24-113, together with a brief record of Mr. Moses' life.

With the even tenor of this straightforward and reputable life was inwoven a chain of mysteries which, as I think, in what way soever they be explained, make it one of the most extraordinary which our century has seen. For its true history lies in that series of physical manifestations which began in 1872 and lasted for some eight years, and that series of automatic writings and trance-utterances which began in 1873, received a record for some ten years, and did not, as is believed, cease altogether until the earthly end was near.

These two series were intimately connected; the physical phenomena being avowedly designed to give authority to the speeches and writings which professed to emanate from the same source. There is no ground for separating the two groups, except the obvious one that the automatic phenomena are less difficult of credence than the physical; but, for reasons already stated, it has seemed to me desirable to exclude the latter from detailed treatment in this work. They included the apparent production of such phenomena as intelligent raps, movements of objects untouched, levitation, disappearance and reappearance of objects, passage of matter through matter, direct writing, sounds supernormally made on instruments, direct sounds, scents, lights, objects materialised, hands materialised (touched or seen). Mr. Moses was sometimes, but not always, entranced while these physical phenomena were occurring. Sometimes he was entranced and the trance-utterance purported to be that of a discarnate spirit. At other times, especially when alone, he wrote automatically, retaining his own ordinary consciousness meanwhile, and carrying on lengthy discussions with the "spirit influence" controlling his hand and answering his questions, etc. As a general rule the same alleged spirits both manifested themselves by raps, etc., at Mr. Moses' sittings with his friends, and also wrote through his hand when he was alone. In this, as in other respects, Mr. Moses' two series of writings--when alone and in company--were concordant, and, so to say, complementary;--explanations being given by the writing of what had happened at the séances. When "direct writing" was given at the séances the handwriting of each alleged spirit was the same as that which the same spirit was in the habit of employing in the automatic script. The claim to individuality was thus in all cases decisively made.

Now the personages thus claiming to appear may be divided roughly into three classes:--

A.--First and most important are a group of persons recently deceased, and sometimes manifesting themselves at the séances before their decease was known through any ordinary channel to any of the persons present. These spirits in many instances give tests of identity, mentioning facts connected with their earth-lives which are afterwards found to be correct.

B.--Next comes a group of personages belonging to generations more remote, and generally of some distinction in their day. Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus, may be taken as a type of these. Many of these also contribute facts as a proof of identity, which facts are sometimes more correct than the conscious or admitted knowledge of any of the sitters could supply. In such cases, however, the difficulty of proving identity is increased by the fact that most of the correct statements are readily accessible in print, and may conceivably have either been read and forgotten by Mr. Moses, or have become known to him by some kind of clairvoyance.

C.--A third group consists of spirits who give such names as Rector, Doctor, Theophilus, and, above all, Imperator. These from time to time reveal the names which they assert to have been theirs in earth-life. These concealed names are for the most part both more illustrious, and more remote, than the names in Class B,--and were withheld by Mr. Moses himself, who justly felt that the assumption of great names is likely to diminish rather than to increase the weight of the communication.

I now pass on to consider briefly the nature of the evidence that the alleged spirits were what they purported to be, as described, in the first place, in Mr. Moses' books of automatic writing. The contents of these books consist partly of messages tending to prove the identity of communicating spirits; partly of discussions or explanations of the physical phenomena; and partly of religious and moral disquisitions.

These automatic messages were almost wholly written by Mr. Moses' own hand, while he was in a normal waking state. The exceptions are of two kinds. (1) There is one long passage, alleged by Mr. Moses to have been written by himself while in a state of trance. (2) There are, here and there, a few words alleged to be in "direct writing";--written, that is to say, by invisible hands, but in Mr. Moses' presence; as several times described in the notes of séances where other persons were present.

Putting these exceptional instances aside, we find that the writings generally take the form of a dialogue, Mr. Moses proposing a question in his ordinary thick, black handwriting. An answer is then generally, though not always, given; written also by Mr. Moses, and with the same pen, but in some one of various scripts which differ more or less widely from his own. Mr. Moses' own description of the process, as given in the preface to _Spirit Teachings_, may be studied with advantage.

A prolonged study of the MS. books has revealed nothing inconsistent with this description. I have myself, of course, searched them carefully for any sign of confusion or alteration, but without finding any; and I have shown parts of them to various friends, who have seen no points of suspicion. It seems plain, moreover, that the various entries were made at or about the dates to which they are ascribed. They contain constant references to the séances which went on concurrently, and whose dates are independently known; and in the later books, records of some of these séances are interspersed in their due places amongst other matter. The MSS. contain also a number of allusions to other contemporaneous facts, many of which are independently known to myself.

I think, moreover, that no one who had studied these entries throughout would doubt the originally private and intimate character of many of them. The tone of the spirits towards Mr. Moses himself is habitually courteous and respectful. But occasionally they have some criticism which pierces to the quick, and which goes far to explain to me Mr. Moses' unwillingness to have the books fully inspected during his lifetime. He did, no doubt, contemplate their being at least read by friends after his death; and there are indications that there may have been a still more private book, now doubtless destroyed, to which messages of an intimate character were sometimes consigned.

Indeed, the questions at issue, as to these messages, refer not so much to their _genuineness_ as to their _authenticity_, in the proper sense of those words. That they were written down in good faith by Mr. Moses as proceeding from the personages whose names are signed to them, there can be little doubt. But as to whether they did really proceed from those personages or no there may in many cases be very great doubt;--a doubt which I, at least, shall be quite unable to remove. By the very conditions of the communication they cannot show commanding intellect, or teach entirely new truths, since their manifestations are _ex hypothesi_ limited by the capacity--not by the previous _knowledge_, but by the previous _capacity_--of the medium. And if they give facts not consciously known to the medium--facts however elaborate--it may, of course, be suggested that these facts have been _subliminally acquired_ by the medium through some unconscious passage of the eye over a printed page, or else that they are _clairvoyantly learnt_, without the agency of any but the medium's own mind, though acting in a supernormal fashion.

The case of Hélène Smith has shown us how far-reaching may be the faculties of hyperæsthesia and hypermnesia in the subliminal self; but in view of the then general ignorance of the scientific world on this subject, it is not surprising that both Mr. Moses and his friends absolutely rejected this explanation of his phenomena, and that the evidence appeared to them more conclusive than it possibly can to us. Whether or not the alleged spirits were concerned,--as may sometimes, of course, have been the case,--we can hardly avoid thinking that the subliminal self of the medium played at least a considerable part in the communications.

In two cases the announcement of a death was made to Mr. Moses, when the news was apparently not known to him by any normal means. One of these is the case of President Garfield (_Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xi. p. 100). The other (see my article in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xi. pp. 96 _et seq._) is in some ways the most remarkable of all, from the series of chances which have been needful in order to establish its veracity. Specially noticeable in this case is the resemblance of the handwriting of the script to that of the alleged control, a lady whose writing was almost certainly unknown to Mr. Moses. Both to the lady's son and to myself the resemblance appeared incontestable, and our opinion was confirmed by Dr. Hodgson, who was an expert in such matters.

And now we must briefly go through the points which make such messages as were received by Mr. Moses _primâ facie_ evidential, which indicate, that is to say, that they actually do come in some way from their alleged source. A brief recapitulation of the main stages of evidential quality in messages given by automatic writing or by trance-utterances is all that will be needed here.

(1) Evidentially lowest comes the class of messages which is by far the most common; messages, namely, in which, although some special identity may be claimed, all the facts given have been consciously known to the automatist. Here we may well suppose that his own personality alone is concerned, and that the messages have a _subliminal_, but not an _external_ source.

(2) Next above these come messages containing facts likely to be known to the alleged spirit, and not consciously known to the automatist; but which facts may nevertheless have some time been noted by the automatist, even unwittingly, and may have thus obtained lodgment in his subliminal memory.

(3) Next come facts which can be proved,--with such varying degrees of certainty as such negative proof allows,--never to have been in any way known to the automatist; but which nevertheless are easily to be found in books; so that they may have been learnt clairvoyantly by the automatist himself, or learnt and communicated to him by some mind other than that of the alleged spirit.

(4) Next come facts which can be proved, with similar varying degrees of certainty according to the circumstances, never to have been known to the automatist, or recorded in print; but which were known to the alleged spirit and can be verified by the memories of living persons.

(5) Above this again would come that class of _experimental_ messages, or posthumous letters, of which we have as yet very few good examples, where the departed person has before death arranged some special test--some fact or sentence known only to himself, which he is to transmit after death, if possible, as a token of his return.

(6) Thus much for the various kinds of verbal messages, which can be kept and analysed at leisure. We must now turn to evidence of a different and not precisely comparable kind. In point of fact it is not these inferences from written matter which have commonly been most efficacious in compelling the survivor's belief in the reality of the friend's return. Whether logically or no, it is not so much the written message that he trusts, but some phantom of face and voice that he knew so well. It is this familiar convincing presence,--[Greek: eikto de theskelon autô],--on which the percipient has always insisted, since Achilles strove in vain to embrace Patroclus' shade.

How far such a phantasm is in fact a proof of any real action on the part of the spirit thus recognised is a problem which has been dealt with already in Chapter VII. The upshot of our evidence to my mind is that although the apparition of a departed person cannot _per se_ rank as evidence of his presence, yet this is not a shape which purely hallucinatory phantasms seem often to assume; and if there be any corroborative evidence, as, for instance, writing which claims to come from the same person, the chance that he is really operative is considerable. In Mr. Moses' case almost all the figures which he saw brought with them some corroboration by writing, trance-utterance, gesture-messages (as where a figure makes signs of assent or dissent), or raps.

(7) And this brings us to a class largely represented in Mr. Moses' series, where writings professing to come from a certain spirit are supported by physical phenomena of which that spirit claims also to be the author. Whether such a line of proof can ever be made logically complete or no, one can imagine many cases where it would be practically convincing to almost all minds. Materialisations of hands, or direct writing in the script of the departed, have much of actual cogency; and these methods, with others like them, are employed by Mr. Moses' "controls" in their efforts to establish their own identities. Physical phenomena in themselves, however, carry no proof of an intelligence outside that of the sensitive himself, and, as I have said, may in many cases be a mere extension of his own ordinary muscular powers, and not due to any external agency at all.

If we confine ourselves to the verbal messages, we find that the cases most fully represented in the records of Mr. Moses are limited to the first three classes mentioned above, and those which come under the fourth class--verifiable facts of which there is no printed record and which it is practically certain that the medium could never have known--are comparatively few. This may partly be accounted for by the small number of sitters with Mr. Moses and the fact that they were his personal friends. The records of Mrs. Piper, on the other hand, to which we now turn, are especially rich in incidents that fall under the fourth heading, and the evidential value of the verbal messages in this case is, therefore, much greater than in the case of Mr. Moses. Whereas for Mr. Moses the identity of many of his communicators rested largely upon their being guaranteed by Imperator and his group of helpers,--in the case of Mrs. Piper the spirits of some recently-departed friends who have given much evidence of their identity appear to maintain the independent reality and guiding control over Mrs. Piper of these same intelligences--Imperator, Rector, Doctor, and others--that Mr. Moses claimed as ruling in his own experience.

The case of Mrs. Piper differs in two important respects from that of W. Stainton Moses or D. D. Home. In the first place no telekinetic phenomena have occurred in connection with her trance-manifestations; and in the second place her supraliminal self shows no traces of any supernormal faculty whatsoever. She presents an instance of automatism of the extreme type where the "possession" is not merely local or partial, but affects, so to say, the whole psychical area,--where the supraliminal self is for a time completely displaced, and the whole personality appears to suffer intermittent change. In other words, she passes into a trance, during which her organs of speech or writing are "controlled" by other personalities than the normal waking one. Occasionally, either just before or just after the trance, the subliminal self appears to take some control of the organism for a brief interval; but with this exception the personalities that speak or write during her trance claim to be discarnate spirits.

Mrs. Piper's trances may be divided into three stages: (1) Where the dominant controlling personality was known as "Dr. Phinuit" and used the vocal organs almost exclusively, communicating by _trance-utterance_, 1884-91.

(2) Where the communications were made chiefly by automatic writing in the trance under the supervision more particularly of the control known as "George Pelham," or "G. P.," although "Dr. Phinuit" usually communicated also by speech during this period, 1892-96.

(3) Where supervision is alleged to be exercised by Imperator, Doctor, Rector, and others already mentioned in connection with the experiences of Mr. Moses, and where the communications have been mainly by writing, but occasionally also by speech. This last stage, which began early in 1897, still continues, and the final outcome remains to be seen.

I proceed now to indicate in further detail the nature of the evidence and the character of the manifestations themselves, and begin by quoting from Dr. Hodgson (_Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 367-68) a brief statement of some of the historical facts of the case.

Mrs. Piper has been giving sittings for a period extending over
thirteen [now, 1901, seventeen] years. Very early in her trance
history she came under the attention of Professor James, who sent
many persons to her as strangers, in most cases making the
appointments himself, and in no case giving their names. She came
to some extent under my own supervision in 1887, and I also sent
many persons to her, in many cases accompanying them and recording
the statements made at their sittings, and taking all the care that
I could to prevent Mrs. Piper's obtaining any knowledge beforehand
of who the sitters were to be. In 1889-90 Mrs. Piper gave a series
of sittings in England under the supervision of Dr. Walter Leaf and
Mr. Myers and Professor Lodge, where also the most careful
precautions possible were taken to ensure that the sitters went as
strangers to Mrs. Piper. Further sittings were supervised by myself
in 1890-91 after Mrs. Piper's return to America. Many persons who
had sittings in the course of these earlier investigations were
convinced that they were actually receiving communications from
their "deceased" friends through Mrs. Piper's trance, but although
the special investigators were satisfied, from their study of the
trance-phenomena themselves and a careful analysis of the detailed
records of the sittings, that some supernormal power was involved,
there was no definite agreement as to their precise significance.
And to myself it seemed that any hypothesis that was offered
presented formidable difficulties in the way of its acceptance. In
the course of these earlier investigations the communications were
given almost entirely through the speech-utterance of the
trance-personality known as Phinuit, and even the best of them were
apt to include much matter that was irrelevant and unlike the
alleged communicators, while there were many indications that
Phinuit himself was far from being the kind of person in whom we
should be disposed to place implicit credence.

During the years 1892-96 inclusive, I exercised a yet closer
supervision of Mrs. Piper's trances than I had done in previous
years, continuing to take all the precautions that I could as
regards the introduction of persons as strangers. This period was
marked by a notable evolution in the quality of the trance results,
beginning early in 1892. The character of the manifestations
changed with the development of automatic writing in the trance,
and with what was alleged to be the continual rendering of active
assistance by the communicator whom I have called G. P. [George
Pelham]. As a result of this it appeared that communicators were
able to express their thoughts directly through the writing by Mrs.
Piper's hand, instead of conveying them more dimly and partially
through Phinuit as intermediary; and the advice and guidance which
they, apparently, received from G. P. enabled them to avoid much of
the confusion and irrelevancy so characteristic of the earlier
manifestations.

I do not propose here to discuss the hypothesis of fraud in this case, since it has been fully discussed by Dr. Hodgson, Professor William James, Professor Newbold of Pennsylvania University, Dr. Walter Leaf, and Sir Oliver Lodge.[209] I merely quote, as a summary of the argument, a few words of Professor James, from _The Psychological Review_, July, 1898, pp. 421-22:--

Dr. Hodgson considers that the hypothesis of fraud cannot be
seriously maintained. I agree with him absolutely. The medium has
been under observation, much of the time under close observation,
as to most of the conditions of her life, by a large number of
persons, eager, many of them, to pounce upon any suspicious
circumstance for [nearly] fifteen years. During that time, not only
has there not been one single suspicious circumstance remarked, but
not one suggestion has ever been made from any quarter which might
tend positively to explain how the medium, living the apparent life
she leads, could possibly collect information about so many sitters
by natural means. The scientist who is confident of "fraud" here,
must remember that in science as much as in common life a
hypothesis must receive some positive specification and
determination before it can be profitably discussed, and a fraud
which is no assigned kind of fraud, but simply "fraud" at large,
fraud _in abstracto_, can hardly be regarded as a specially
scientific explanation of concrete facts.

Unfortunately we have no contemporary records of what occurred during Mrs. Piper's earliest trances; nor practically any information as to the first manifestations of the Phinuit personality. It seems clear at least that the _name_ Phinuit was the result of suggestion at these earliest trances (see _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 46-58), and many may think it most probable that the Phinuit "control" was nothing more than a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper. But, according to the statements (for which there is of course no evidence) made by "Imperator," Phinuit was an "earth-bound" or inferior spirit, who had become confused and bewildered in his first attempts at communication, and had, as we say, "lost his consciousness of personal identity." That such an occurrence is not uncommon in this life is plain from the cases to which I have drawn attention in Chapter II. of this book, and we cannot prove it to be impossible that profound memory disturbances should be produced in an inexperienced discarnate spirit when first attempting to communicate with us through a material organism. Be that as it may, the Phinuit personality has not manifested either directly or indirectly since January 1897, when "Imperator" claimed the supervision of Mrs. Piper's trances.

There were various cases of alleged direct "control" by spirits other than Phinuit during the first stage of Mrs. Piper's trance history. But such cases were not usual, and on the whole, although there seemed to be abundant proof of some supernormal faculty which demanded at least the hypothesis of thought-transference from living persons both near and distant, and suggested occasionally some power of telæsthesia or perhaps even of premonition, yet the main question with which we are now concerned,--whether Mrs. Piper's organism was controlled, directly or indirectly, by discarnate spirits who could give satisfactory evidence of their identity,--remained undecided.

More important, as regards this question of personal identity, is the series of sittings which formed the second stage of Mrs. Piper's trance history, in the years 1892-96, (of which a detailed account is given in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 284-582, and vol. xiv. pp. 6-49), where the chief communicator or intermediary was G. P. This G. P., whose name (although, of course, well known to many persons) has been altered for publication into "George Pelham," was a young man of great ability, mainly occupied in literary pursuits. Although born an American citizen, he was a member of a noble English family. I never met him, but I have the good fortune to include a number of his friends among my own, and with several of these I have been privileged to hold intimate conversation on the nature of the communications which they received. I have thus heard of many significant utterances of G. P.'s, which are held too private for print; and I have myself been present at sittings where G. P. manifested. For the full discussion of the evidence tending to prove the identity of G. P., I refer my readers to the original report in the _Proceedings_ S.P.R. I quote here a general summary, given by Dr. Hodgson several years later, of the whole series of his manifestations. (From _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 328-330.)

On the first appearance of the communicating G. P. to Mr. Hart in
March 1892, he gave not only his own name and that of the sitter,
but also the names of several of their most intimate common
friends, and referred specifically to the most important private
matters connected with them. At the same sitting reference was made
to other incidents unknown to the sitters, such as the account of
Mrs. Pelham's taking the studs from the body of G. P. and giving
them to Mr. Pelham to be sent to Mr. Hart, and the reproduction of
a notable remembrance of a conversation which G. P. living had with
Katharine, the daughter of his most intimate friends, the Howards.
These were primary examples of two kinds of knowledge concerning
matters unknown to the sitters, of which various other instances
were afterwards given; knowledge of events connected with G. P.
which had occurred since his death, and knowledge of special
memories pertaining to the G. P. personality before death. A week
later, at the sitting of Mr. Vance, he made an appropriate inquiry
after the sitter's son, and in reply to inquiries rightly specified
that the sitter's son had been at college with him, and further
correctly gave a correct description of the sitter's summer home as
the place of a special visit. This, again, was paralleled by many
later instances where appropriate inquiries were made and
remembrances recalled concerning other personal friends of G. P.
Nearly two weeks later came his most intimate friends, the Howards,
and to these, using the voice directly, he showed such a fulness of
private remembrance and specific knowledge and characteristic
intellectual and emotional quality pertaining to G. P. that, though
they had previously taken no interest in any branch of psychical
research, they were unable to resist the conviction that they were
actually conversing with their old friend G. P. And this conviction
was strengthened by their later experiences. Not least important,
at that time, was his anxiety about the disposal of a certain book
and about certain specified letters which concern matters too
private for publication. He was particularly desirous of convincing
his father, who lived in Washington, that it was indeed G. P. who
was communicating, and he soon afterwards stated that his father
had taken his photograph to be copied, as was the case, though Mr.
Pelham had not informed even his wife of this fact. Later on he
reproduced a series of incidents, unknown to the sitters, in which
Mrs. Howard had been engaged in her own home. Later still, at a
sitting with his father and mother in New York, a further intimate
knowledge was shown of private family circumstances, and at the
following sitting, at which his father and mother were not present,
he gave the details of certain private actions which they had done
in the interim. At their sitting, and at various sittings of the
Howards, appropriate comments were made concerning different
articles presented which had belonged to G. P. living, or had been
familiar to him; he inquired after other personal articles which
were not presented at the sittings, and showed intimate and
detailed recollections of incidents in connection with them. In
points connected with the recognition of articles with their
related associations of a personal sort, the G. P. communicating,
so far as I know, has never failed. Nor has he failed in the
recognition of personal friends. I may say generally that out of a
large number of sitters who went as strangers to Mrs. Piper, the
communicating G. P. has picked out the friends of G. P. living,
precisely as the G. P. living might have been expected to do
[thirty cases of recognition out of at least one hundred and fifty
persons who have had sittings with Mrs. Piper since the first
appearance of G. P., and no case of false recognition], and has
exhibited memories in connection with these and other friends which
are such as would naturally be associated as part of the G. P.
personality, which certainly do not suggest in themselves that they
originate otherwise, and which are accompanied by the emotional
relations which were connected with such friends in the mind of G.
P. living. At one of his early communications G. P. expressly
undertook the task of rendering all the assistance in his power
towards establishing the continued existence of himself and other
communicators, in pursuance of a promise of which he himself
reminded me, made some two years or more before his death, that if
he died before me and found himself "still existing," he would
devote himself to prove the fact; and in the persistence of his
endeavour to overcome the difficulties in communicating as far as
possible, in his constant readiness to act as amanuensis at the
sittings, in the effect which he has produced by his counsels,--to
myself as investigator, and to numerous other sitters and
communicators,--he has, in so far as I can form a judgment in a
problem so complex and still presenting so much obscurity,
displayed all the keenness and pertinacity which were eminently
characteristic of G. P. living.

Finally the manifestations of this G. P. communicating have not
been of a fitful and spasmodic nature, they have exhibited the
marks of a continuous living and persistent personality,
manifesting itself through a course of years, and showing the same
characteristics of an independent intelligence whether friends of
G. P. were present at the sittings or not. I learned of various
cases where in my absence active assistance was rendered by G. P.
to sitters who had never previously heard of him, and from time to
time he would make brief pertinent reference to matters with which
G. P. living was acquainted, though I was not, and sometimes in
ways which indicated that he could to some extent see what was
happening in our world to persons in whose welfare G. P. living
would have been specially interested.

The sitter called Mr. Hart, to whom G. P. first manifested, died at Naples three years afterwards, and communicated, with the help of G. P., on the second day after his death. An account of his communications is given in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 353-57.

There are numerous instances in the reports in the _Proceedings_ (see vol. vi. pp. 647-50; vol. viii. pp. 15-26; vol. xiii., _passim_; and vol. xvi. pp. 131-3), of the giving of information unknown to the sitters and afterwards verified. A striking illustration of this occurred in the case of the lady called "Elisa Mannors," whose near relatives and friends concerned in the communications were known to myself. On the morning after the death of her uncle, called F. in the report, she described an incident in connection with the appearance of herself to her uncle on his death-bed. I quote Dr. Hodgson's account of this (_Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. p. 378, footnote).

The notice of his [F.'s] death was in a Boston morning paper, and I
happened to see it on my way to the sitting. The first writing of
the sitting came from Madame Elisa, without my expecting it. She
wrote clearly and strongly, explaining that F. was there with her,
but unable to speak directly, that she wished to give me an account
of how she had helped F. to reach her. She said that she had been
present at his death-bed, and had spoken to him, and she repeated
what she had said, an unusual form of expression, and indicated
that he had heard and recognised her. This was confirmed in detail
in the only way possible at that time, by a very intimate friend of
Madame Elisa and myself, and also of the nearest surviving relative
of F. I showed my friend the account of the sitting, and to this
friend, a day or two later, the relative, who was present at the
death-bed, stated spontaneously that F. when dying said that he saw
Madame Elisa who was speaking to him, and he repeated what she was
saying. The expression so repeated, which the relative quoted to my
friend, was that which I had received from Madame Elisa through
Mrs. Piper's trance, when the death-bed incident was of course
entirely unknown to me.

Rare are the "Peak in Darien" cases (see page 233), but cases like this are rarer still.

With regard to the last of the three periods of Mrs. Piper's trance-history, the only detailed published accounts are contained in Professor Hyslop's report of his sittings in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xvi.[210] But neither his records nor the manuscript records which I have seen contain any proof of the personal identity of the alleged spirits called "Imperator," "Doctor," "Rector," etc., or any proof of the identity of these intelligences with those claimed by Mr. Moses. (See _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 408-9.) Whether any such proof will be forthcoming in the future remains to be seen,--or indeed, whether proof or disproof for us at present is even possible.

We must now try to form some more definite idea--based not on preconceived theories but on our actual observation of trances--of the processes of possession.

Let us try to realise what kind of feat it is which we are expecting the disembodied spirit to achieve. Such language, I know, again suggests the medicine-man's wigwam rather than the study of the white philosopher. Yet can we feel sure that the process in our own minds which has (as we think) refined and spiritualised man's early conceptions of an unseen world has been based upon any observed facts?

In dealing with matters which lie outside human experience, our only clue is some attempt at _continuity_ with what we already know. We cannot, for instance, form independently a reliable conception of life in an unseen world. That conception has never yet been fairly faced from the standpoint of our modern ideas of continuity, conservation, evolution. The main notions that have been framed of such survival have been framed first by savages and then by _a priori_ philosophers.

The savage made his own picture first. And he at any rate dimly felt after a principle of continuity; although he applied it in the crudest fashion. Yet the happy hunting-ground and the faithful dog were conceptions not more arbitrary and unscientific than that eternal and unimaginable worship _in vacuo_ which more accredited teachers have proclaimed. And, passing on to modern philosophic conceptions, one may say that where the savage assumed _too little_ difference between the material and the spiritual world the philosopher has assumed _too much_. He has regarded the gulf as too unbridgeable; he has taken for granted too clean a sweep of earthly modes of thought. Trying to shake off time, space, and definite form, he has attempted to transport himself too magically to what may be in reality an immensely distant goal.

What, then, is to be our conception of identity prolonged beyond the tomb? In earth-life the actual body, in itself but a subordinate element in our thought of our friend, did yet by its physical continuity override as a symbol of identity all lapses of memory, all changes of the character within. Yet it was memory and character,--the stored impressions upon which he reacted, and his specific mode of reaction,--which made our veritable friend. How much of memory, how much of character, must he preserve for our recognition?

Do we ask that either he or we should remember always, or should remember all? Do we ask that his memory should be expanded into omniscience and his character elevated into divinity? And, whatever heights he may attain, do we demand that he should reveal to us? Are the limitations of our material world no barrier to him?

It is safest to fall back for the present upon the few points which these communications do seem to indicate. The spirit, then, is holding converse with a living man, located in a certain place at a certain moment, and animated by certain thoughts and emotions. The spirit (to which I must give a neuter pronoun for greater clearness) in some cases can find and follow the man as it pleases. It is therefore in some way cognizant of space, although not conditioned by space. Its mastery of space may perhaps bear somewhat the same relation to our eyesight as our eyesight bears to the gropings of the blind. Similarly, the spirit appears to be partly cognizant of our _time_, although not wholly conditioned thereby. It is apt to see as _present_ both certain things which appear to us as past and certain things which appear to us as future.

Once more, the spirit is at least partly conscious of the thought and emotions of its earthly friend, so far as directed towards itself; and this not only when the friend is in the presence of the sensitive, but also (as G. P. has repeatedly shown) when the friend is at home and living his ordinary life.

Lastly, it seems as though the spirit had some occasional glimpses of material fact upon the earth (as the contents of drawers and the like), not manifestly proceeding through any living mind. I do not, however, recall any clear evidence of a spirit's perception of material facts which provably have never been known to any incarnate mind whatever.

Accepting this, then, for argument's sake, as the normal condition of a spirit in reference to human things, what process must it attempt if it wishes to communicate with living men? That it _will_ wish to communicate seems probable enough, if it retains not only memory of the loves of earth, but actual fresh consciousness of loving emotion directed towards it after death.

Seeking then for some open avenue, it discerns something which corresponds (in G. P.'s phrase) to a _light_--a glimmer of translucency in the confused darkness of our material world. This "light" indicates a _sensitive_--a human organism so constituted that a spirit can temporarily _inform_ or _control_ it, not necessarily interrupting the stream of the sensitive's ordinary consciousness; perhaps using a hand only, or perhaps, as in Mrs. Piper's case, using voice as well as hand, and occupying all the sensitive's channels of self-manifestation. The difficulties which must be inherent in such an act of control are thus described by Dr. Hodgson:--

"If, indeed, each one of us is a 'spirit' that survives the death of the fleshly organism, there are certain suppositions that I think we may not unreasonably make concerning the ability of the discarnate 'spirit' to communicate with those yet incarnate. Even under the best of conditions for communication--which I am supposing for the nonce to be possible--it may well be that the aptitude for communicating clearly may be as rare as the gifts that make a great artist, or a great mathematician, or a great philosopher. Again, it may well be that, owing to the change connected with death itself, the 'spirit' may at first be much confused, and such confusion may last for a long time; and even after the 'spirit' has become accustomed to its new environment, it is not an unreasonable supposition that if it came into some such relation to another living human organism as it once maintained with its own former organism, it would find itself confused by that relation. The state might be like that of awaking from a prolonged period of unconsciousness into strange surroundings. If my own ordinary body could be preserved in its present state, and I could absent myself from it for days or months or years, and continue my existence under another set of conditions altogether, and if I could then return to my own body, it might well be that I should be very confused and incoherent at first in my manifestations by means of it. How much more would this be the case were I to return to _another_ human body. I might be troubled with various forms of aphasia and agraphia, might be particularly liable to failures of inhibition, might find the conditions oppressive and exhausting, and my state of mind would probably be of an automatic and dreamlike character. Now, the communicators through Mrs. Piper's trance exhibit precisely the kind of confusion and incoherence which it seems to me we have some reason _a priori_ to expect if they are actually what they claim to be."

At the outset of this chapter I compared the phenomena of possession with those of alternating personalities, of dreams, and of somnambulism. Now it seems probable that the thesis of multiplex personality--namely, that no known current of man's consciousness exhausts his whole consciousness, and no known self-manifestation expresses man's whole potential being--may hold good both for embodied and for unembodied men, and this would lead us to expect that the manifestations of the departed,--through the sensory automatisms dealt with in Chapter VII., and the motor automatisms considered in Chapter VIII., up to the completer form of possession illustrated in the present chapter,--would resemble those fugitive and unstable communications between widely different strata of personality of which embodied minds offer us examples. G. P. himself appears to be well aware of the dreamlike character of the communications, which, indeed, his own style often exemplifies. Thus he wrote on February 15th, 1894:--

"Remember we share and always shall have our friends in the dream-life, _i.e._ your life so to speak, which will attract us for ever and ever, and so long as we have any friends _sleeping_ in the material world; you to us are more like as we understand sleep, you look shut up as one in prison, and in order for us to get into communication with you, we have to enter into your sphere, as one like yourself, asleep. This is just why we make mistakes, as you call them, or get confused and muddled."

Yet even this very difficulty and fragmentariness of communication ought in the end to be for us full of an instruction of its own. We are here actually witnessing the central mystery of human life, unrolling itself under novel conditions, and open to closer observation than ever before. We are seeing a mind use a brain. The human brain is in its last analysis an arrangement of matter expressly adapted to being acted upon by a spirit; but so long as the accustomed spirit acts upon it the working is generally too smooth to allow us a glimpse of the mechanism. _Now_, however, we can watch an unaccustomed spirit, new to the instrument, installing itself and feeling its way. The lessons thus learnt are likely to be more penetrating than any which mere morbid interruptions of the accustomed spirit's work can teach us. In aphasia, for instance, we can watch with instruction special difficulties of utterance, supervening on special injuries to the brain. But in _possession_ we perceive the controlling spirit actually engaged in overcoming somewhat similar difficulties--writing or uttering the wrong word, and then getting hold of the right one--and sometimes even finding power to explain to us something of the minute verbal mechanism (so to term it) through whose blocking or dislocation the mistake has arisen.

And we may hope, indeed, that as our investigations proceed, and as we on this side of the fateful gulf, and the discarnate spirits on the other, learn more of the conditions necessary for perfect control of the brain and nervous system of intermediaries,--the communications will grow fuller and more coherent, and reach a higher level of unitary consciousness.

Among the cases of trance discussed in this chapter, we have found intimately interwoven with the phenomena of possession many instances of its correlative,--ecstasy. Mrs. Piper's fragmentary utterances and visions during her passage from trance to waking life,--utterances and visions that fade away and leave no remembrance in her waking self; Stainton Moses' occasional visions, his journeys in the "spirit world" which he recorded on returning to his ordinary consciousness; Home's entrancement and converse with the various controls whose messages he gave;--all these suggest actual excursions of the incarnate spirit from its organism. The theoretical importance of these spiritual excursions is, of course, very great. It is, indeed, so great that most men will hesitate to accept a thesis which carries us straight into the inmost sanctuary of mysticism; which preaches "a precursory entrance into the most holy place, as by divine transportation."

Yet I think that this belief, although extreme, is not, at the point to which our evidence has carried us, in any real way improbable. To put the matter briefly, if a spirit from outside can enter the organism, the spirit from inside can go out, can change its centre of perception and action, in a way less complete and irrevocable than the change of death. Ecstasy would thus be simply the complementary or correlative aspect of spirit-control. Such a change need not be a _spatial_ change, any more than there need be any _spatial_ change for the spirit which invades the deserted organism. Nay, further: if the incarnate spirit can in this manner change its centre of perception in response (so to say) to a discarnate spirit's invasion of the organism, there is no obvious reason why it should not do so on other occasions as well. We are already familiar with "travelling clairvoyance," a spirit's change of centre of perception among the scenes of the material world. May there not be an extension of travelling clairvoyance to the spiritual world? a spontaneous transfer of the centre of perception into that region from whence discarnate spirits seem now to be able, on their side, to communicate with growing freedom?

The conception of _ecstasy_--at once in its most literal and in its most lofty sense--has thus developed itself, almost insensibly, from several concurrent lines of actual modern evidence. It must still, of course, be long before we can at all adequately separate,--I can hardly say the objective from the subjective element in the experience, for we have got beyond the region where the meaning of those words is clear,--but the element in the experience which is recognised and responded to by spirits other than the ecstatic's, from the element which belongs to his own spirit alone.

In the meantime, however, the fact that this kind of communion of ecstasy has been, in preliminary fashion, rendered probable is of the highest importance for our whole inquiry. We thus come directly into relation with the highest form which the various religions known to men have assumed in the past.