963. There are numerous incidents in connection with Mrs. Piper's trances, which indicate not only that articles which have been worn by deceased persons may facilitate communications from such persons, but that articles which have been worn by persons still living may afford clues to long past events; but how these objects afford aid in the acquisition of knowledge of the past events is still entirely obscure. (See, e.g., Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 460; vol. viii. pp. 15-27.) This faculty of what I have called retrocognitive telaesthesia, is, as we have seen, sometimes manifested in cases where there is no reason to ascribe it to any extraneous spirit. (See 572, 572 A, 572 B).

The alleged controlling spirits sometimes seem to possess a supernormal knowledge of the present bodily state of living persons, with the occasional power of foretelling organic changes, including death, or of foreseeing the future surroundings of a living person. Here, again, we have had instances of similar supernormal knowledge on the part of the subliminal self (see 565 A, 573 F). Some of the most specific instances of predictions of deaths given through Mrs. Piper are quoted in 963 A. In one of these cases a death was predicted to occur "soon," and it occurred a little more than a year later. But in several other cases where deaths were predicted to occur "soon" or "before very long," or where similar expressions were used, the time elapsing before the death has extended from about two to not less than six years. There is little evidence of any true prevision of other events than death through Mrs. Piper's trance. In some cases, events seem to have been partially foreseen, but the predictions made were not completely fulfilled. (See Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 124, and compare 425 C).

Setting aside the instances explicable by some telepathic or telaes-thetic inference, the discarnate spirits claim occasionally to see specific future scenes in connection with particular persons - of the origin of which scenes they seem unable to offer any explanation. They do not profess usually to be aware beforehand of the precise time of death of a dying person, - except perhaps in cases where the death is very near, - when it is claimed that the approaching death becomes known to the incarnate spirit (not necessarily to the supraliminal self) as well as to the discarnate spirit of some near relative, but the real source of the knowledge remains, of course, obscure.1

1 On this point see 425 A, 425 B, 425 E, 717, 717 B, 852 A, 865 A (name of distant dying person written), 874 A and 927 B. Compare the case of "Elisa Mannors" in section 960, the cases of Mrs. Alger and Mrs. O'Gorman in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 293-95, and the case from Mrs. Meredith in Journal S.P.R., vol. x. p. 136. In the cases of Mrs. Alger and Mrs. O'Gorman the prediction of death seems to have emanated from the incarnate spirit of the person who died, and the precise date of the death was given, in the first case four days beforehand - though the evidence on this point is somewhat doubtful - and in the second case a week beforehand. In the case quoted in 874 A, the precise date of death was announced forty days beforehand by the tilts of a table, the communication purporting to come from a discarnate spirit.

964. With regard to the last of the three periods of Mrs. Piper's trance-history to which I referred in section 954, the only detailed published accounts are contained in Professor Hyslop's report of his sittings in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xvi. 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 945, 950, and 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.

965. The accounts here quoted are perhaps sufficient to illustrate that theory of possession which seems especially to apply to the case of Mrs. Piper, - according to which her bodily organism is controlled by dis-carnate spirits who attempt to prove their identity by reproducing recollections of their earthly lives.1

In the case of Mr. Moses the control of the mind or body by dis-carnate spirits seemed to vary in degree at different times, and the medium's own preconceptions seemed to form an important factor in the communications he received, - and it is obvious that in Mrs. Piper's case also the control must be limited by the idiosyncrasies of the medium. But we must continually bear in mind the impossibility of distinguishing the different elements that may enter into so complex a phenomenon. I have spoken of parallel series of manifestations indicating on the one hand the powers of the subliminal self, which culminate in ecstasy, and on the other the agency of discarnate spirits, leading on to possession. But the phenomena are not, in fact, so simply arranged. It seems probable that when a spirit can control a sensitive's organism, the sensitive's own subliminal self may be able to do the same. The transparency which renders the one possession possible facilitates also the other. This may be one reason for the admixture seen in most trance utterances, - of elements which come from the sensitive's own mind with elements inspired from without.

To this source of confusion must be added the influence of the sensitive's supraliminal self also, whose habits of thought and turns of speech must needs appear whenever use is made of the brain-centres which that supraliminal self habitually controls. Further, we cannot draw a clear line between the influence of the organism itself, - as already moulded by its own indwelling spirit, - and the continuing influence of that spirit, not altogether separated from the organism. That is to say, the sensitive's own previous ideas may go on developing themselves during the trance, which may thus be incomplete. The result may be a kind of mixed telepathy between the sitter, the sensitive's spirit, and the extraneous spirit. I believe that sometimes during one and the same access of trance all these elements are in turn apparent; and a long familiarity with the sensitive will be needed if we would disentangle the intermingled threads. In the case of Mrs. Piper it may be supposed that in the earliest stages of her trance-history she was not completely controlled by discarnate spirits, but that her subliminal self was used as an intermediary, - as a hypnotised subject, so to say, following the suggestions of discarnate spirits; that in the next stage the control by discarnate spirits was of the more direct and complete kind which I have specially called possession; and that in her last period she has reverted once more to the earlier stage where her subliminal self, or its influence, is not completely excluded.

1 Some ingenious experiments designed to test how living persons can be identified on somewhat similar evidence were carried out by Professor Hyslop, as described in his report, Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xvi. pp. 537-623. In these experiments, series of telegraphic messages were sent from one person to another, one person knowing who the other was, but not vice versa.

Whether this be so or not, the apparent distinction between the control by her own subliminal self and that by the alleged spirits is still not less marked than in the early stages. Generally it is even more noticeable, owing to the usual brief intervals of ecstasy (after the control by the discarnate spirit has ceased), when her own spirit or subliminal self resumes control, and appears to see and occasionally to describe scenes in the spiritual world, sometimes transmitting messages of evidential value; of all which she retains no recollection on her return to the normal state.

There is much additional evidence yet to be published that has come through Mrs. Piper during the last few years in support of the claim that recently deceased persons are communicating, besides instances of failures and confusion which we must doubtless continue to expect under the conditions apparently involved in the communications. It seems from our experience thus far that the most valuable evidence we can hope to obtain of personal identity is likely to come from spirits who have recently passed over with all their inexperience of that other world, but it may be that these are aided in their task by more remote spirits whose identity we can neither prove nor disprove. It is perhaps more reasonable to suppose that there is such supervision - if we are in actual communication with a spiritual world at all - than to think that the great spirits of the past take no abiding interest in the communication of that spiritual world with ours.