924. This serious warning given, I may pursue my task of describing that most interesting of supernormal phenomena which we term Possession; - a phenomenon to which the telekinesis which has often accompanied it lends an additional element of attractive mystery. It has, of course, been that interest, that mystery, which has attracted the fraudulent imitations of which I have spoken; - and which it would not have been worth while to contrive except for some phenomena thus strongly manifesting spiritual presence and spiritual power.

This persistent simulation of telekinesis has, naturally enough, inspired persistent doubt as to its genuine occurrence even in cases where simulation has been carefully guarded against, or is antecedently improbable. Important though the phenomenon is, it is not so intimately linked with my own general thesis in this work as to render it needful for me to review its whole history in detail. I deal with it only where it comes immediately before me as an element in spirit-possession; - especially noticeable in the two important cases of D. D. Home and of W. Stainton Moses.

And recognising, as I do, that telekinesis - like the simpler motor automatisms of which it forms the extreme term - reaches in cases of possession its maximum intensity, I feel bound (if it were only for the sake of analogical completeness) to show that, like other motor automatisms, telekinesis has appeared occasionally at earlier stages, although needing the free play of a possessed organism to develop itself to the full.

925. It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose that all telekinesis is due to spiritual action. Rather we may begin by regarding it as a form of motor automatism, initiated by the subliminal self. I believe that there is sometimes an element of telekinesis in such common phenomena as table-tilting and automatic writing with planchette or even with pencil (eg. in Mr. Wedgwood's and Mrs. Newnham's experiments, see 861, 862, and 849 A).

1 Modern Spiritualism; a History and a Criticism, by Frank Podmore (Methuen and Co., London, 1902).

We cannot, of course, expect that any such slight and obscure admixture of telekinesis can be sifted out from an act of motor automatism in any evidential form. But from my point of view this kind of evidential difficulty is pretty sure to occur, from the very nature of the supernormal movement. If that movement could be started with equal ease from any given point in space, and in any direction, we might fairly expect that such points would be chosen, and such movements performed, as gave the best evidence of the movement's independence of ordinary human agency. But the telekinetic force, in my view, is generally (I do not say always) a mere extension to a short distance from the sensitive's organism of a small part of his ordinary muscular power. It even seems to tend to simulate that ordinary action; - much as other supernormal exercises of faculty follow, so far as they can, the modes in which normal faculty operates.

So gradual, so inconspicuous, are the beginnings of telekinesis; - which presently develop, no doubt, into something which we can no longer ascribe to any hyperboulic activities of the subliminal self. It develops, indeed, in two directions, - into messages and into marvels. Genuine raps, or percussive sounds, are rare (see 925 A), nor is it possible by mere description of the noises to prove their genuineness in any given case, unmistakable and inimitable though they are when actually heard. But with one sensitive known intimately to me, - the lady described as Miss A. (see 859), - raps have occurred (as I know both by actually hearing them and by abundant attestation) as a means of attracting attention under many circumstances, and of conveying advice and information of all kinds; - from such dicta as subliminal perception might furnish up to evidential messages ascribed to deceased persons.

Midway between the raps which spell out messages and the sheer marvels which may be performed "to show spirit-power" come the various displacements of objects, etc, which are attested as coinciding (like veridical phantasms) with moments of death or crisis (see, e.g., case III. in 716 C), - or merely as testifying to presences, - as of a dear friend recently dead.

926. Thus much it was needful to say in order to make certain cases of possession soon to be cited intelligible to the reader, but I should not have deferred my mention of telekinesis to this point in my book had I intended to deal with these physical phenomena as fully as with the psychical phenomena which I endeavour to expound and in some measure to connect and correlate.

While believing absolutely in the occurrence of telekinetic phenomena, I yet hold that it would be premature to press them upon my reader's belief, or to introduce them as an integral part of my general expository scheme. From one point of view, their detailed establishment, as against the theory of fraud, demands an expert knowledge of conjuring and other arts which I cannot claim to possess. From another point of view, their right comprehension must depend upon a knowledge of the relations between matter and ether such as is now only dimly adumbrated by the most recent discoveries; - for instance, discoveries as to previously unsuspected forms of radiation.

In a long Appendix, viz., "Scheme of Vital Faculty" (926 A) - originally written with reference to the manifestations through Mr. Stainton Moses - I have tried to prepare the way for future inquiries; to indicate in what directions a better equipped exploration may hereafter reap rich reward. Even that tentative sketch, perhaps, may have been too ambitious for my powers in the present state not only of my own, but of human knowledge; and in the text of this chapter I (Introduction. Human Personality And Its Survival Of Bodily Death) shall allude to telekinetic phenomena only where unavoidable, - owing to their inmixture into phenomena more directly psychological, - and in the tone of the historian rather than of the scientific critic. As a matter of history I shall give in 926 B references to the best extant accounts of telekinetic phenomena.