(6) Response To Stimuli Spiritually Controlled

(A) Ideation Inspired By Spirits

We enter in this section 6 upon a group of phenomena of great interest and importance, but not of a type on which objective evidence can easily be forthcoming.

The belief that unseen powers inspire men - not merely by prompting their hands to automatic writing, but by "putting thoughts into their hearts" - is one of the most deeply-rooted, the most widespread, and the most encouraging to which the higher races of man have clung. It is strongly insisted upon by Mr. Moses' guides; and will be found repeated in various forms in his book, "Spirit Teachings." What are held as inspirations of this type, however, deal mainly with religious and moral conceptions, or if unknown and verifiable earthly facts are included, they are usually such as might with equal plausibility be deemed to arise from the thinker's subliminal self. The strong assertions made by spirits who show themselves able to operate powerfully in other ways may fairly, I think, be taken as carrying weight. They represent the fusion of the spirit's thought with the man's as sometimes becoming indescribably close and intimate. When we have compared the inspirations of a man's own "genius" to subliminal uprushes, or eruptions from a volcano, we might better compare the combination of spiritual and human thought to one of those cases where crystals of two totally different substances have developed within the space bounded by the same planes; and, intergrown as they are and interpenetrant, still testify by the optical characters of their minutest parts that here is no congeries of fragments, but two crystals made inextricably one.

(B) Motor Automatism Spiritually Controlled; Possession

I have spoken of the difficulty of proving or tracing spiritual influence so long as its manifestations are purely intra-cerebral, are confined to infusing into the mind of the sensitive ideas which he cannot distinguish from his own.

But, as we know, there are various methods by which the authorship of certain ideas can be claimed by the inspiring intelligence. A distinctive mark can be affixed to them by the mode of their promulgation - by giving them expression concurrently with the expression of the sensitive's normal thoughts, or even while the sensitive's ordinary personality is plunged in trance. In the one case there may be automatic writing while the sensitive is reading or talking on other matters. In the other case there may be "trance-utterances" - replies to questions, or long addresses, given while the medium is unaware of what is going on around him, and of the words which issue from his lips. In each case, of course, the proof of spirit-influence depends not merely on the manner of the message, but on the facts which it contains, or on the supernormal phenomena with which it is in other ways associated. There is no need here to re-discuss these automatisms at length. They form, as the reader will see, a large part of Mr. Moses' phenomena, and almost the whole of those discussed in Mrs. Piper's case; and indeed in their various forms they supply the bulk of the evidence to the very existence of spirit control, which physical movements by themselves could never demonstrate.

One addition to previous descriptions, however, must be made, if we are to realise the extent to which these automatisms may be carried. The control may be pushed beyond the point at which our analyses of evidence generally stop. Consider, for instance, the scene (948 A), where Mr. Moses is entranced by the spirit of a suicide. Here we have evidential writing and utterance, - agitated words uttered in a trance, - rude drawings made. But we have also more than this. We have an apparent possession; a temporary occupation of the medium's whole personality by the spirit which is finding utterance through him. This possession is not, indeed, a matter of evidence in the same sense that messages containing facts unknown to the writer may be evidence of external control. Yet we can hardly dissociate the two parts of the phenomenon; and if in such a case as this we believe that the message really came from the suicide, we shall probably feel also that the distress, the agitation, the bewilderment, which did not leave the medium for many hours, were due also to the influence or possession of the same unhappy soul.

The possibility of being thus dominated by some unwelcome spirit was naturally regarded by Mr. Moses with fear and dislike. His guides admitted it as a real, but not as an alarming, danger. Such spiritual infections, they said in effect, take root only in a congenial soil. The healthy spirit can repel their attack, much as the healthy organism destroys the germs which are perpetually seeking lodgment within it.

(C) Extension Of Will-Power Into The Spiritual World; Prayer

The next heading in the scheme of subliminally guided faculty for which we are now seeking parallels under spirit-control includes will-power extended beyond the organism, and affecting telepathically other incarnate minds. The parallel to this would be some influence exerted by incarnate men upon disembodied spirits. The exercise of such an influence must necessarily be almost impossible to prove; nor is it at first easy to imagine in what way it could plausibly be represented as taking place. At this point in our argument, however, we have become familiar with conceptions which, when looked at from both sides, do apparently imply some reciprocal action between spirits and incarnate men. But what further I have to say of prayer has been said in the final chapter of this book. And as to the last heading in my "Scheme of Vital Faculty," namely, "Modifications of Spiritual Personality," the reader who studies its projected headings will see at once how needful their discussion will some day be, and how far we are as yet from being able to undertake it. That must be the task of a later age.

My own discussion, already so highly speculative, could hardly be pressed further without overstepping the limits of all legitimate speculation.

926 B. The following are references to the chief accounts of tele-kinetic phenomena in the Proceedings S.P.R.:-

"On some Physical Phenomena, commonly called Spiritualistic, witnessed by the Author," by Professor W. F. Barrett (vol. iv. p. 25).

"Notes of Seances with D. D. Home," by William Crookes (vol. vi. p. 98).

"On Alleged Movements of Objects, without contact, occurring not in the presence of a paid Medium," by F. W. H. Myers (vol. vii. p. 146, and P- 383)-

"The Experiences of W. Stainton Moses," by F. W. H. Myers (vol. ix. p. 245, and vol. xi. p. 24).

"Poltergeists," by Frank Podmore (vol. xii. p. 45).

"The Fire Walk," by Andrew Lang (vol. xv. p. 2). This gives instances of an alleged capacity on the part of certain persons under certain circumstances of resistance to the normal effects of fire on the human organism. The phenomenon, if genuine, is not exactly tele-kinetic, but may rather be regarded as an extended form of motor automatism. Some mediums, especially D. D. Home, are said to have had the same power.

Other works dealing with telekinetic phenomena to which I may refer the reader are:-

Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1871).

Les Tables Tournantes, par le Comte Ag. de Gasparin (Paris: Cal-mann Levy; 4th edition, 1889). A pamphlet describing some of de Gas-parin's experiments was published by Professor Thury under the title of Les Tables Tournantes, considerees au point de vue de la question de physique generale qui s'y rattache (Geneva, 1885). This is now out of print and rare. It contains various cases of movements obtained without contact, by seemingly careful observers.

Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations, by Robert Hare, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania (New York, 1855).

Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, by William Crookes; reprinted from The Quarterly Journal of Science (London: J. Burns, 1874).

Animismus und Spiritismus, von Alexander N. Aksakoff. 2 vols.

(Leipzig: Oswald Mutze, 1890.) An account of this book, which deals chiefly with the theoretical side of the subject, in opposition to the views of von Hartmann, was given in a review by the present writer in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 665.

The Precursors of Spiritism for the last 250 years, by A. N. Aksakoff (in Russian, St. Petersburg, 1895); reviewed by Dr. Walter Leaf in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xii. p. 319.

The Scientific Investigation of Physical Phenomena with Mediums, by M. M. Petrovo-Solovovo (in Russian, St. Petersburg, 1900); reviewed by Dr. Walter Leaf in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xv. p. 416.

For the physical phenomena connected with D. D. Home, see the references given in 938 A.

For the so-called "Reichenbach" phenomena, see the brief discussion given in vol. i., 541 D.