: Psychical Miscellanea Being Papers on Psychical Research Telepathy Hypnotism Christian Science etc. by Hill J Arthur John Arthur - Parapsychology

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le. We shall remember everything after death. And with memory there will be recognition; we shall know one another. Husband and wife, parents and children. Sixthly, we still take great interest in the world we have left".

The good Bishop gets all this out of the Bible, and quite rightly. We hope no heresy-hunter will accuse him of "selecting" his texts and ignoring the hell-fire ones.

So far as earth-language can go, the foregoing represents the probable truth regarding the after life. If we inquire for details, we shall get nothing very satisfactory. If we ask a spirit concerning what he does--how he occupies himself--he will either say he "cannot explain so that you will understand" or will tell about living in houses, going to lectures, teaching children, and the like. All this is obviously symbolical. Any communications that a discarnate entity can send must, to be intelligible to us, be in human earth-language; and this language is based on sense-experience. After death, experience is different, for we no longer have the same bodily senses--eyes, ears, etc.: consequently no explanation of the nature of spiritual existence can be more than approximately true; yet such expressions as living in houses, going to lectures, and the like, may be as near the truth as earth-language can get. If a bird tried to describe air-life to a fish, the best it could do would be to say it is something like water-life, but there is more light, more ease of movement, more detail, more things of interest and beauty. Of the wonders of sound--skylark's song, human choruses, instrumental symphonies--no idea could be conveyed to the fish. Probably our friends in the next stage of existence have, in addition to the experiences which they can partly describe, other experiences of which they can give us absolutely no idea. They have been promoted. Their interests and activities have become wider, their joys greater. Yet they are the "same" souls, as the butterfly is the "same" as the chrysalis from which it has arisen. But to know exactly what it feels like to be a butterfly, the caterpillar and chrysalis have to wait Nature's time. So must we.

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH: ITS METHOD, EVIDENCE, AND TENDENCY.

Spiritualism and Psychical Research are to the fore just now, and there is much newspaper and vocal discussion, based for the most part on ignorance, particularly as regards the violent attackers of these things. It is desirable that exact knowledge of the subject should become more general, and in a recent volume I have tried to review the whole subject impartially.

But there are many who in these stressful days have no time for even one volume on this kind of thing, and for them, or such of them as may read this, I have tried in the present article to give an idea of what psychical research is, on the spiritualistic side, omitting the medical side which concerns itself with suggestive therapeutics. The article was first written as a paper which was read before a society of clergy in Bradford, whose request for it was a significant and pleasing indication that ministers are aware of the importance of the subject. They are realising that psychical research is a powerful support to religious faith, and that its results provide comfort for the bereaved. We live in a scientific age, and the sorrowing heart asks for more than a text and an assurance that it is God's will and all for the best; it asks whether it is a fact that the departed one still lives and knows and loves, whether it is well with him, and whether there will be reunion "over there". Psychical research enables us to answer these questions in the affirmative. Science is now backing up religion, and is providing ministers with by far the best weapon against materialism and so-called rationalism. It meets these negative 'isms on their own ground, and does not need to take cover under intuition or personal religious experience, which are convincing only to the experient. I am not belittling these; I am only saying that the phenomenal evidence is more potent for the scientific type of mind, and that a knowledge of this evidence is useful to those who are defending religion.

TELEPATHY

It is found by experiment that ideas can be communicated from mind to mind through channels other than the known sensory ones. Professor Gilbert Murray of Oxford, probably the most famous Greek scholar in this country, recently carried out some interesting experiments of this kind in his own family. He would go into another room, leaving his wife and daughter to decide on something which they would try to communicate to him on his return. They chose the most absurd and unlikely things, but in a large number of cases Professor Murray, by making his mind as passive as possible and saying the first thing that came into his head, was able to reproduce with startling accuracy the idea they had in mind. For instance, they thought of Savonarola at Florence and the people burning their clothes and pictures and valuables. Says Professor Murray: "I first felt 'This is Italy', then, 'this is not modern'; and then hesitated, when accidentally a small tarry bit of coal tumbled out of the fire. I smelt oil or paint burning and so got the whole scene. It seems as though here some subconscious impression, struggling up towards consciousness, caught hold of the burning coal as a means of getting through". On another occasion they thought of "Grandfather at the Harrow and Winchester cricket match, dropping hot cigar-ash on Miss Thompson's parasol." Professor Murray's guess, reported verbatim, was: "Why, this is grandfather! He's at a cricket match--why it's absurd: he seems to be dropping ashes on a lady's parasol." Another time they thought of a scene in a book of Strindberg's which Professor Murray had not read: a poor, old, cross, disappointed schoolmaster eating crabs for lunch at a restaurant, and insisting on having female crabs. Professor Murray says: "I got the atmosphere, the man, the lunch in the restaurant on crabs, and thought I had finished, when my daughter asked: 'What kind of crabs?' I felt rather impatient and said: 'Oh, Lord, I don't know: female crabs.' That is, the response to the question came automatically, with no preparation, while I thought I could not give it. I may add that I had never before heard of there being any inequality between the sexes among crabs, regarded as food."

This kind of evidence is not the best, because the thoughts of members of one family run more or less in similar grooves; though the experimenters recognised this and chose unlikely things purposely. Other investigators have sometimes used cards, drawing one at random from a shuffled pack, looking at it, and the percipient then trying to say what it is. The chance of success is of course one in fifty-two, and the amount of success which we might expect by chance in any series can be mathematically determined. In one series of successful experiments conducted by Sir Oliver Lodge the odds against an explanation by chance alone were about ten millions to one. In ordinary matters this would be regarded as proof.

PHANTASMS OF THE DEAD

NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE

There are instances, then, of people occasionally having visions which seem to be in some way caused by departed persons. Sometimes the percipient has only one experience of the kind in his life; more often he has several, for this seeing power is somehow temperamental--a sort of gift, like the alleged second sight of the Highlander. It was well known to St Paul, as his reference to "discerning of spirits" shows . With some people the experience is fairly common. And in a very few persons the gift is so strong that it is to some extent under control. I say to some extent, and I wish to use words very carefully and to have them understood very clearly at this point. I know several people, who by putting themselves into a passive and receptive condition, but without any trance state, can generally get evidential messages from somewhere; that is, messages embodying facts which the sensitive did not normally know. And some of this matter seems to be due to telepathy from the dead. But it cannot be done at will. I believe that professional mediums who sit for all comers for a fee are often, and indeed generally, quite honest people, but that they cannot distinguish between their own imaginations and what really comes through. Professor Murray, when saying what came into his head, did not know whether it was right or not; that is, he did not know, until he was told, whether he had really got the thing telepathically or whether it was an idea thrown up by his own imagination. So with professional mediums. They give out the ideas that come to them, but as a rule they cannot distinguish; and, the power not being entirely under control, there is often a large mixture of their own imagination.

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