Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research by Michael Sage (cat reading book TXT) 📖

is since they died they are generally unable to say. In their communications again, they often relate as occurring in the present actions that have taken place long ago. I have said already that George Pelham has often been asked to go and see what certain absent persons are doing and to return and report it; he has generally been successful, but he has sometimes made the curious mistake of taking the past for the present. Here is an illustration. He is told to go and see what Mrs Howard, absent at the time, was doing; he returns and reports. Dr Hodgson writes to ask Mrs Howard what she was doing at the time of the sitting, and hears from her in reply that she did none of the things reported on the day of the sitting, but that she had done them all in the course of the afternoon and evening of the preceding day.[69] It seems likely that George Pelham had read the thoughts of Mrs Howard, and in his inability to appreciate time had taken the past for the present.

The same sort of thing seems to occur in the case of space. Phinuit, to oblige Professor Newbold, goes to find Stainton Moses. Phinuit says that he inhabits a great sphere, and that Stainton Moses lives in a very distant part of this sphere. But in spite of this he brings him back almost at once. When the medium is presented with objects likely to attract the so-called spirits with whom the sitters are anxious to communicate, these spirits for the most part arrive at once, no matter where they may have died; John Hart, who died at Naples, communicates two days afterwards at Boston. But it is hardly to be presumed that the spirits are there waiting for us. If their appearance can be hastened or delayed by sympathy or antipathy, on the other hand what we call distance seems not to disturb them in the least; and yet we are perpetually finding in the communications such phrases as, "Every day I am getting further from you," "Now I am very far away from you." But such phrases are probably not to be interpreted literally. The spirits go further from us as they make progress in the spiritual world and doubtless also as the things of this world occupy less and less place in their recollections.

The spirits see us but they do not see our bodies, since they do not perceive matter. They see the spirit within us but it appears to them more or less obscure, as long as it is within the body. "It is by the spiritual part of your being that I see you," says George Pelham, "that I am able to follow you and to tell you from time to time what you are doing."

And what do they think of our life upon earth? Here is a quotation from George Pelham which will tell us:[70] "Remember we 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."

Professor Hyslop had a sister who died as a very young child; she sends a short message to her brother saying that he dreams while she lives and that she sends him her love.

Our life then would seem to be but a sleep accompanied by dreams which are sometimes terrible nightmares. If this be so we can but hope for dawn and waking, and wish soon to hear the crowing of the cock which will put to flight the phantoms of the night. Happy should we be if we had a certainty that it would be so!

This reminds me of a fine passage in a Spanish poet, which I cannot refrain from quoting: "To live is to dream; experience teaches that man dreams what he is till the moment of awakening. The king dreams that he is a king and passes his days in the error, giving orders and disposing of life and property. The rich man dreams the wealth that is the cause of his anxiety; the poor man dreams the poverty and need from which he suffers. I too dream that I am here laden with chains, and in by-gone days I dreamt that I was happy. Our dreams are but dreams within a dream."

So our world may be compared with the cave of which Plato speaks in the Seventh Book of the Republic . In the conversation between Dr Hodgson and George Pelham, when George Pelham promised that if he were the first to die and if he found that he had another life he would do all that he could to prove its existence, they referred to the old Platonic myth. In the communications of the so-called George Pelham allusion was made to the allegory, and that justifies me in briefly recalling it.

Plato imagines prisoners who from their birth have been enchained in a dark cave in such a way that they are not able either to move or to turn their heads, and can only look straight in front of them. Behind and above the captives a great fire burns, and between the fire and the captives men pass to and fro carrying in their hands vessels, statues, images of animals and plants, and many other objects. The shadows of these men and of the objects that they carry are thrown upon that wall of the cavern which is opposite to the captives, who thus know nothing of the external world but these shadows which they take to be realities, and they spend their time discussing the shadows, naming them and classifying them.

One of the captives is carried off from the gloomy place and transported into the external world. At first the light dazzles him and he can distinguish nothing. But by degrees, as time goes on, his sight adapts itself to its surroundings and he learns to look upon the stars and moon, and the sun itself. When he has been brought back into the cave and again sits beside his companions, he takes part in their discussions and tries to make them understand that what they take for realities are only shadows. But they, confident in the results of their lengthy reflections on the subject, laugh him to scorn. The same thing would happen to a soul which had dwelt for a time in the world of spirit and had been brought back into the world of matter.

When Plato's captive is brought back into the cave, his eyes, no longer used to half-darkness, can distinguish nothing for some time; if he is questioned about the shadows of the passing objects he does not see them, and his answers are full of confusion. Perhaps something like this happens to the discarnate spirits who try to manifest themselves to us by borrowing the organism of a medium. Such at least is the suggestion of George Pelham; in that way he would explain the incoherence, the confusion, the false statements made by many of the communicating spirits:[71] "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 so to put it. I am not less intelligent now. But there are many difficulties. I am far clearer on all points than I was, shut up in the body. 'Don't view me with a critic's eye, but pass my imperfections by.'"

George Pelham also tells us how we may summon the spirits of those with whom we desire to communicate. The thoughts of his friends reach him; if he is to come and make himself manifest his friends must think of him. He adds that, so far from the communications being injurious to the communicating spirits or the sitters, they are positively to be desired.

On one occasion Dr Hodgson asked what became of the medium during the trance.[72]

George Pelham. - "She passes out as your ethereal goes out when you sleep."

Dr Hodgson. - "Well, do you see that there is a conflict, because the brain substance is, so to speak, saturated with her tendencies of thought?"

George Pelham. - "No, not that, but the solid substance called brain - it is difficult to control it simply because it is material; her mind leaves the brain empty as it were, and I myself, or other spiritual mind or thought, take the empty brain, and there is where and when the conflict arises."

All this is very unintelligible in the present condition of our knowledge. But here is another passage even less intelligible and one which in its naïveté almost suggests that the speaker is playing with us. George Pelham says to his friend James Howard at the first sitting at which James Howard was present:[73] "Your voice, Jim, I can distinguish with your accent and articulation, but it sounds like a big brass drum. Mine would sound to you like the faintest whisper."

J. Howard. - "Our conversation, then, is something like telephoning?"

George Pelham. - "Yes."

J. Howard. - "By long-distance telephone."

George Pelham laughs.

Understand who may! Are these only analogies? One does not know what to think. Another difficult thing to understand is the "weakness" which the spirits complain that they feel, especially towards the end of the sittings. George Pelham actually says that we must not demand from spirits just what they have not got, namely, strength. If the spirits mean that the medium's "light" grows weak and no longer provides them with the unknown something that they require in order to communicate, why do they not express themselves more clearly?

It will perhaps be thought that I have dwelt a little too long on what I have called the philosophy of George Pelham. I have thought it best to do so, and there is no harm done so long as I leave it to my readers to believe as much as they like.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. p. 301.

[64] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiv. p. 18.

[65] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xvi. p. 315.

[66] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. p. 301.

[67] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiv. p. 36.

[68] In another sitting W. S. Moses says that, as he held this view very strongly in life, he felt sure that he had been told it by his spirit-guides.

[69] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. pp. 305, 306.

[70] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. p. 362.

[71] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. pp. 362, 363.

[72] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. p. 434.

[73] Proc. of S.P.R. , vol. xiii. p. 301.


CHAPTER XII

William Stainton Moses - What George Pelham thinks of him - How Imperator and his assistants have replaced Phinuit.


For those of my readers who are unacquainted with spiritualist literature, and in order to facilitate the understanding of what follows, I must give a short sketch of the life of the English medium, William Stainton Moses. He was born in 1839, and died in 1892. He studied at Oxford, and was then curate at Maughold, near Ramsey, in the Isle of Man. His great kindness made him beloved by all his parishioners there. When an epidemic of smallpox drove even the doctors away, he remained