Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death Part 21

"Then why get up?" "Because I can get into that house." "How, if it is shut up?" "I see the proprietor standing under the lamp-post this side of the bridge, with another man." "You have been dreaming." "No, I have been wide awake; but dreaming or waking, I mean to try." I started with the firm conviction that I should find the individual in question. Sure enough there he was under the lamp-post, talking to a friend. I asked him if he was going home.

(I knew him very well.) He said he was, so I told him I was going to see a patient, and would accompany him. I was positively ashamed to explain matters; it seemed so absurd that I knew he would not believe me. On arriving at the house I said, "Now I am here, I will drop in and see my patient." On entering the room I found the maid giving her a tumbler of strong grog. The case was clear; it was as I suspected--delirium from drink. The next day I delicately spoke to the husband about it. He denied it, and in the afternoon I received a note requesting me not to repeat the visits. Three weeks ago I was recounting the story and mentioned the name. A lady present said: "That is the name of the clergyman in my parish, at B., and his wife is in a lunatic asylum from drink!"

In conversation with Gurney, the narrator explained that the vision--though giving an impression of externality and seen, as he believes, with open eyes--was not definably located in s.p.a.ce. He had never encountered the proprietor in the spot where he saw him, and it was not a likely thing that he should be standing talking in the streets at so late an hour.

In this case we cannot consider either the drunken patient or the indifferent proprietor as in any sense the _agent_. Somehow or other the physician's own persistent wish to get some such opportunity induced a collaboration of his subliminal with his supraliminal self, akin to the inspirations of genius. Genius, however, operates within ordinary sensory limits; while in this physician's case the subliminal self exercised its farthest-reaching supernormal powers.

With this again may be compared a case in _Phantasms of the Living_ (vol. ii. p. 368), where a dreamer seems to himself to be present in the Thames Tunnel during a fatal accident, which did in fact occur during that night. Here again the drowned workman--who was quite unknown to the distant dreamer--can hardly be called an _agent_; yet it may have been the excitement surrounding his death which attracted the dreamer's spirit to that scene, as a conflagration might attract a waking night-wanderer.

There are, on the other hand, a good many cases where a scene thus discerned in a flash is one of special interest to the percipient, although no one in the scene may have actually wished to transfer it to him.

A case again of a somewhat different type is the sudden waking vision of Mr. Gottschalk,[118] who sees in a circle of light the chalked hands and ruffled wrists of Mr. Courtenay Thorpe--a well-known actor--who was opening a letter of Mr. Gottschalk's in that costume at the time.

Trivial in itself, this incident ill.u.s.trates an interesting cla.s.s of cases, where a picture very much like a crystal-vision suddenly appears on a wall or even in the air with no apparent background.

I know one or two persons who have had in their lives one single round or oval hallucinatory picture of this kind, of which no interpretation was apparent,--a curious indication of some subliminal predisposition towards this somewhat elaborate form of message.

Somewhat like Mr. Gottschalk's projection of his picture upon a background of dark air is the experience of Mrs. Taunton.[119] In this case the phantasm was perfectly external; yet it certainly did not hold to the real objects around the same relation as a figure of flesh and blood would have held; it was in a peculiar way transparent. Gurney regards this transparency as indicating _imperfect externalisation_ of the hallucinatory image.

My own phrase, "imperfect _co-ordination_ of inner with outward vision,"

comes to much the same thing, and seems specially applicable to Mrs.

Taunton's words: "The appearance was not transparent or filmy, but perfectly solid-looking; _and yet I could somehow see the orchestra, not through, but behind it_." There are a few cases where the percipient seems to see a hallucinatory figure _behind_ him, out of the range of optical vision.[120] There is of course no reason why this should not be so,--even if a part of s.p.a.ce external to the percipient's brain should be actually affected.

Mr. Searle's case also is very interesting.[121] Here Mrs. Searle faints when visiting a house a few miles from Mr. Searle's chambers in the Temple. At or about the same time, he sees as though in a looking-gla.s.s, upon a window opposite him, his wife's head and face, white and bloodless.

Gurney suggests that this was a transference from Mrs. Searle's mind simply of "the _idea_ of fainting," which then worked itself out into perception in an appropriate fashion.

Was it thus? Or did Mr. Searle in the Temple see with inner vision his wife's head as she lay back faint and pallid in Gloucester Gardens? Our nearest a.n.a.logy here is plainly crystal-vision; and crystal-visions, as we have observed, point both ways. Sometimes the picture in the crystal is conspicuously symbolical; sometimes it seems a transcript of an actual distant scene.

There are two further problems which occur as we deal with each cla.s.s of cases in turn,--the problem of time-relations and the problem of spirit-agency. Can an incident be said to be seen clairvoyantly if it is seen some hours after it occurred? Ought we to say that a scene is clairvoyantly visited, or that it is spiritually shown, if it represents a still chamber of death,[122] where no emotion is any longer stirring; but to which the freed spirit might desire to attract the friend's attention and sympathy?

Such problems cannot at present be solved; nor, as I have said, can any one cla.s.s of these psychical interchanges be clearly demarcated from other cla.s.ses. Recognising this, we must explain the central characteristics of each group in turn, and show at what points that group appears to merge into the next.

And now we come to that cla.s.s of cases where B invades A, and A perceives the invasion; but B retains no memory of it in supraliminal life. From one point of view, as will be seen, this is just the reverse of the cla.s.s last discussed--where the invader remembered an invasion which the invaded person (when there was one) did not perceive.

We have already discussed some cases of this sort which seemed to be _psychorrhagic_--to have occurred without will or purpose on the part of the invader. What we must now do is to collect cases where there may probably have been some real projection of will or desire on the invader's part, leading to the projection of his phantasm in a manner recognisable by the distant friend whom he thus invades--yet without subsequent memory of his own. These cases will be intermediate between the _psychorrhagic_ cases already described and the _experimental_ cases on which we shall presently enter.

In the case of Canon Warburton--in Chapter IV.--the person undergoing the accident did recollect having had a vivid thought of his brother at the moment;--while his brother on the other hand was startled from a slight doze by the vision of the scene of danger as then taking place;--the steep stairs and the falling figure. This is an acute crisis, much resembling impending death by drowning, etc.; and the apparition may be construed either way--either as a scene clairvoyantly discerned by Canon Warburton, owing, as I say, to a spasmodic tightening of his psychical link with his brother, or as a sudden _invasion_ on that brother's part, whose very rapidity perhaps helped to prevent his remembering it.

The case given in Appendix VI. E is interesting, both evidentially and from its intrinsic character. The narrative, printed in _Phantasms of the Living_, on the authority of one only of the witnesses concerned, led to the discovery of the _second_ witness--whom we had no other means of finding--and has been amply corroborated by her independent account.

The case stands about midway between psychorrhagic cases and intentional self-projections, and is clearly of the nature of an _invasion_, since the phantasm was seen by a stranger as well as by the friend, and seemed to both to be moving about the room. The figure, that is to say, was adapted to the percipient's environment.

Cases of this general character, both visual and auditory, occupy a great part of _Phantasms of the Living_, and others have been frequently quoted in the S.P.R. _Journal_ during recent years.[123]

Of still greater interest is the cla.s.s which comes next in order in my ascending scale of apparent _intensity_; the cases, namely, where there is recollection on both sides, so that the experience is _reciprocal_.[124] These deserve study, for it is by noting under what circ.u.mstances these spontaneously reciprocal cases occur that we have the best chance of learning how to produce them experimentally. It will be seen that there have been various degrees of tension of thought on the agent's part.

And here comes in a small but important group--the group of what I may call death-compacts prematurely fulfilled. We shall see in the next chapter that the exchange of a solemn promise between two friends to appear to one another, if possible, after death is far from being a useless piece of sentiment. Such posthumous appearances, it is true, may be in most cases impossible, but nevertheless there is real ground to believe that the previous tension of the will in that direction makes it more likely that the longed-for meeting shall be accomplished. If so, this is a kind of _experiment_, and an experiment which all can make.

Now we have two or three cases where this compact has been made, and where an apparition has followed--but before and not after the agent's death--at the moment, that is to say, of some dangerous accident, when the sufferer was perhaps all but drowned, or was stunned, or otherwise insensible.[125]

Lastly, the lessons of these spontaneous apparitions have been confirmed and widened by actual experiment. It is plain that just as we are not confined to noting small spontaneous telepathic transferences when they occur, but can also endeavour to reproduce them by experiment, so also we can endeavour to reproduce experimentally these more advanced telepathic phenomena of the invasion of the presence of the percipient by the agent. It is to be hoped, indeed, that such experiment may become one of the most important features of our inquiry. The type of the experiment is somewhat as follows. The intending agent endeavours by an effort at self-concentration, made either in waking hours or just before sleep, to render himself perceptible to a given person at a distance, who, of course, must have no reason to expect a phantasmal visit at that hour. Independent records must be made on each side, of all attempts made, and of all phantoms seen. The evidential point is, of course, the coincidence between the _attempt_ and the _phantom_, whether or not the agent can afterwards remember his own success.[126]

Now the _experimental_ element here is obviously very incomplete. It consists in little more than in a concentrated desire to produce an effect which one can never explain, and seldom fully remember. I have seen no evidence to show that any one can claim to be an adept in such matters--has learned a method of thus appearing at will.[127] We are acting in the dark. Yet nevertheless the mere fact that on some few occasions this strong desire has actually been followed by a result of this extremely interesting kind is one of the most encouraging phenomena in our whole research. The successes indeed have borne a higher proportion to the failures than I should have ventured to hope. But nowhere is there more need of persistent and careful experimentation;--nowhere, I may add, have emotions quite alien from Science--mere groundless fears of seeing anything unusual--interfered with more disastrous effect. Such fears, one hopes, will pa.s.s away, and the friend's visible image will be recognised as a welcome proof of the link that binds the two spirits together.

The case which I quote in Appendix VI. F ill.u.s.trates both the essential harmlessness--nay, naturalness--of such an experiment, and the causeless fear which it may engender even in rational and serious minds.

In these experimental apparitions, which form, as it were, the _spolia opima_ of the collector, we naturally wish to know all that we can about each detail in the experience. Two important points are the _amount of effort_ made by the experimenter, and the degree of his _consciousness of success_. The amount of effort in Mr. S. H. B.'s case (for instance) seems to have been great; and this is encouraging, since what we want is to be a.s.sured that the tension of will has really some power. It seems to act in much the same way as a therapeutic suggestion from the conscious self; one can never make sure that any given self-suggestion will "take"; but, on the whole, the stronger the self-suggestions, the better the result. It is therefore quite in accordance with a.n.a.logy that a suggestion from without, given to a hypnotised person, should be the most promising way of inducing these self-projections. It should be strongly impressed on hypnotised subjects that they can and must temporarily "leave the body," as they call it, and manifest themselves to distant persons--the consent, of course, of both parties to the experiment having been previously secured.

Of this type were Dr. Backman's experiments with his subject "Alma,"[128] and although that series of efforts was prematurely broken off, it was full of promise. There were some slight indications that Alma's clairvoyant excursions were sometimes perceptible to persons in the scenes psychically invaded; and there was considerable and growing evidence to her own retention in subsequent memory of some details of those distant scenes.

By all a.n.a.logy, indeed, that subsequent memory should be an eminently _educable_ thing. The carrying over of recollections from one stratum of personality into another--as hypnotic experiment shows us--is largely a matter of patient suggestion. It would be very desirable to hypnotise the person who had succeeded in producing an experimental apparition, of Mr. S. H. B.'s type, and to see if he could then recall the psychical excursion. Hypnotic states should be far more carefully utilised in connection with all these forms of self-projection.

In these self-projections we have before us, I do not say the most useful, but the most extraordinary achievement of the human will. What can lie further outside any known capacity than the power to cause a semblance of oneself to appear at a distance? What can be a more _central_ action--more manifestly the outcome of whatsoever is deepest and most unitary in man's whole being? Here, indeed, begins the justification of the conception expressed at the beginning of this chapter;--that we should now see the subliminal self no longer as a mere chain of eddies or backwaters, in some way secluded from the main stream of man's being, but rather as itself the central and potent current, the most truly identifiable with the man himself. Other achievements have their manifest limit; where is the limit here? The spirit has shown itself in part dissociated from the organism; to what point may its dissociation go? It has shown some independence, some intelligence, some permanence. To what degree of intelligence, independence, permanence, may it conceivably attain? Of all vital phenomena, I say, this is the most significant; this self-projection is the one definite act which it seems as though a man might perform equally well before and after bodily death.

CHAPTER VII

PHANTASMS OF THE DEAD

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??ta? ??a ?????? ?p?? ??a????? pe??? e?a???.

...???, t??a p??? ????dap??

???a? ??? p???? pa?ae?ea?;

--PINDAR

The course of our argument has gradually conducted us to a point of capital importance. A profound and central question, approached in irregular fashion from time to time in previous chapters, must now be directly faced. From the actions and perceptions of spirits still in the flesh, and concerned with one another, we must pa.s.s on to inquire into the actions of spirits no longer in the flesh, and into the forms of perception with which men still in the flesh respond to that unfamiliar and mysterious agency.

There need, I hope, be no real break here in my previous line of argument. The subliminal self, which we have already traced through various phases of growing sensitivity, growing independence of organic bonds, will now be studied as sensitive to yet remoter influences;--as maintaining an independent existence even when the organism is destroyed. Our subject will divide itself conveniently under three main heads. _First_, it will be well to discuss briefly the nature of the evidence to man's survival of death which may theoretically be obtainable, and its possible connections with evidence set forth in previous chapters. _Secondly_,--and this must form the bulk of the present chapter,--we need a cla.s.sified exposition of the main evidence to survival thus far obtained;--so far, that is to say, as sensory automatism--audition or apparition--is concerned; for motor automatism--automatic writing and trance-utterance--must be left for later discussion. _Thirdly_, there will be need of some consideration of the meaning of this evidence as a whole, and of its implications alike for the scientific and for the ethical future of mankind. Much more, indeed, of discussion (as well as of evidence) than I can furnish will be needed before this great conception can be realised or argued from with the scientific thoroughness due to its position among fundamental cosmical laws. Considering how familiar the notion--the vague shadowy notion--of "immortality" has always been, it is strange indeed that so little should have been done in these modern days to grasp or to criticise it;--so little, one might almost say, since the _Phaedo_ of Plato.

Beginning, then, with the inquiry as to what kind of evidence ought to be demanded for human survival, we are met first by the bluff statement which is still often uttered even by intelligent men, that _no_ evidence would convince them of such a fact; "neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."

Extravagant as such a profession sounds, it has a meaning which we shall do well to note. These resolute antagonists mean that no new evidence can carry conviction to them unless it be _continuous_ with old evidence; and that they cannot conceive that evidence to a world of spirit can possibly be continuous with evidence based upon our experience of a world of matter. I agree with this demand for continuity; and I agree also that the claims usually advanced for a spiritual world have not only made no attempt at continuity with known fact, but have even ostentatiously thrown such continuity to the winds.

The popular mind has expressly desired something startling, something outside Law and above Nature. It has loved, if not a _Credo quia absurdum_, at least a _Credo quia non probatum_. But the inevitable retribution is a deep insecurity in the conviction thus attained.

Unsupported by the general fabric of knowledge, the act of faith seems to shrink into the background as that great fabric stands and grows.

I can hardly too often repeat that my object in these pages is of a quite opposite character. Believing that all cognisable Mind is as continuous as all cognisable Matter, my ideal would be to attempt for the realm of mind what the spectroscope and the law of gravitation have effected for the realm of matter, and to carry that known cosmic uniformity of substance and interaction upwards among the essences and operations of an unknown spiritual world. And in order to explore these unreachable alt.i.tudes I would not ask to stand with the theologian on the summit of a "cloud-capt tower," but rather on plain earth at the measured base of a trigonometrical survey.

If we would measure such a base, the jungle must be cleared to begin with. Let us move for a while among first definitions; trying to make clear to ourselves what kind of thing it is that we are endeavouring to trace or discover. In popular parlance, we are looking out for _ghosts_.

What connotation, then, are we to give to the word "ghost"--a word which has embodied so many unfounded theories and causeless fears? It would be more satisfactory, in the present state of our knowledge, simply to collect facts without offering speculative comment. But it seems safer to begin by briefly pointing out the manifest errors of the traditional view; since that tradition, if left unnoticed, would remain lodged in the background even of many minds which have never really accepted it.

Briefly, then, the popular view regards a "ghost" as a _deceased person permitted by Providence to hold communication with survivors_. And this short definition contains, I think, at least three unwarrantable a.s.sumptions.

In the first place, such words as _permission_ and _Providence_ are simply neither more nor less applicable to this phenomenon than to any other. We conceive that all phenomena alike take place in accordance with the laws of the universe, and consequently by permission of the Supreme Power in the universe. Undoubtedly the phenomena with which we are dealing are in this sense permitted to occur. But there is no _a priori_ reason whatever for a.s.suming that they are permitted in any especial sense of their own, or that they form exceptions to law, instead of being exemplifications of law. Nor is there any _a posteriori_ reason for supposing any such inference to be deducible from a study of the phenomena themselves. If we attempt to find in these phenomena any poetical justice or manifest adaptation to human cravings, we shall be just as much disappointed as if we endeavoured to find a similar satisfaction in the ordinary course of terrene history.

In the second place, we have no warrant for the a.s.sumption that the phantom seen, even though it be somehow _caused_ by a deceased person, _is_ that deceased person, in any ordinary sense of the word. Instead of appealing to the crude a.n.a.logy of the living friend who, when he has walked into the room, _is_ in the room, we shall find for the ghost a much closer parallel in those hallucinatory figures or phantasms which living persons can sometimes project at a distance.