Speculations on Spiritual Agencies
Sir,—Will you permit me a somewhat discursive reference to some of the articles and correspondence in your paper this week? Let me first advert to the letter of my friend Dr. Carter Blake, in whose kindly praise and too liberal appreciation of crude ideas I fancy I can, or ought, to detect a flavour of Socratic irony. In associating psychography with physical phenomena produced by the duplicated limbs of the medium, I went unnecessarily far in suggesting that the modus operandi was the same in both cases. It is suificient that analogy may lead us to suppose that, in the one case as in the other, the psychic force of the medium is instrumental. The main point in Dr. Wyld’s theory is that man, being a spirit, the natural presumption arises that he has all the powers latent during his abode in the flesh that he will possess when emancipated therefrom, and that these, under exceptional conditions, may become operative. It is no more incumbent on the supporters of this theory to show how the pencil is moved than this is incumbent upon those who call in another, but similar, agency for the task. Nor is it more easily explained on the one hypothesis than on the other. However, I do not, in fact, regard the explanation as difficult. The forces which give vitality to the physical organism may exist in all their organic potency in an invisible and imponderable vehicle. The efficacy of these forces does not depend on incarnation. We know, for instance, that many physical phenomena are produced without materialisation, that is to say, the visible or tangible presentation of the means. I have seen, with Dr. Slade, a chair raised from the ground, in the middle of a brightly lighted room, and placed at my side, while my eyes were upon it, no object intervening. An astral body I conceive to be the organised vehicle of force, which can produce all its effects upon the smallest scale as upon the largest. As it is better to I be diffuse than obscure (I hope not to be both), I venture to enlarge a little on this point. In writing these lines I hold the pen between my thumb and two fingers. What really “holds” the pen are two currents of force coming from opposite directions, nerve force, which contracts the muscles. Why is this machinery of nerves and muscles necessary? To localise and confine the force, which, if not otherwise controlled, would escape like electricity without a conductor. The nerves act as conductors to the muscles, and the muscles, which are supposed to do the work in reality, only enable the force to do it. According to this view it would be almost more correct to say the muscles contract the force, than that the force contracts the muscles. The psychic organism, if it exist at all, must make a like provision for the passage and direction of vital force. But being fluidic (some old writers call it the “fluidic body”), it has not fixed and invariable dimensions. Freedom, subtlety, mobility, expansiveness, and compressibility, must be the attributes of a psychic body. Thus the ancients, according to Cudworth (Intellectual System) described it not as a body but as a “vehicle.” I Force must still move in certain lines, but need not move through the same distances as are prescribed by the fixed and permanent dimensions of molecular structures. This, I think, is one answer to Dr. Blake’s dilemma of the psychic “hand” being either smaller than, or as large as, the physical hand. We have only to get rid of the notion of fixity in the dimensions of psychic objects. When both sides of a folded slate are written on, the fulcrum must be reversed from above to below the slate. Why are we not permitted to see the process on a slate laid open on the table? Probably because our eyes and attention being in that case directed to the very point at which the force was concentrated, would project one of those disturbing currents of which Mr. Simmons speaks. If this current is of the same nature as the force, no doubt it would equally penetrate table and slate; but then it is not aimed at the very point at which the writing is proceeding. This, probably, explains the condition of darkness at seances generally. Otherwise, the moment an object began to be moved, every eye would be fixed upon it with eager attention, and many streams of force would interfere with the operative power.
As to the cases referred to by Miss Kislingbury, in which no pencil has been placed for the writing, the letters nevertheless occurring, I can only suggest that the pencil is brought and removed by the same agency that writes.
The great question of the intelligence which starts and directs the force remains behind. Notwithstanding a suggestion to that effect in Dr. Wyld’s paper, I imagine he would not seriously maintain that mediums are such adepts as Madam Blavatsky speaks of, or that the conscious will-power of the former is the source of the phenomena. As to this the answer of M.A., Oxon, seems conclusive. “Nothing short of the severest exercise of will,” he tells us, “so severe as to paralyse the mental powers for a long subsequent time, can avail to produce any objective effect. Yet the medium, passive ex hypothesis and in many cases not entranced, produces these without (so to say) turning a hair.” It was scarcely necessary to confine the proposition that “this hypothesis carries on its face its own plain refutation” to “those who have tried it.” By will, M.A., Oxon, means volition. But there is another sense of the word, in which it means the disposition or tendency from which all definite volitions proceed, and many acts which take place without any definite volition at all. By far the larger number of actions, and even characteristic actions, we perform are automatic. The subtlest analysis of consciousness cannot trace any preconception of them interposed between the stimulant and the effect. Consciousness is not even an essential factor in the elaboration of intellectual results; and of course materialism, with its unconscious cerebration, has given prominent importance to this fact, which is in truth one of profound spiritual significance. Two intelligent processes can proceed simultaneously, of which one is conscious, the other unconscious. We know this by results which are more or less in the experience of every one. The most remarkable illustrations of it are recorded in books on psychology. Be it remembered that consciousness is not the artificer of our thoughts, or even of our habitual modes of expression, but only the reflection and revelations of these. Also that the process may, and often does, go on without this reflection. and revelation. Is it difficult to conceive without supposing consciousness the production of an intelligible sentence consisting of ideas entirely familiar, and couched in forms of expression habitual to the medium? Yet I believe that the difficulty of accepting the agency of the medium is chiefly owing to the assumption that consciousness is necessary to the production of intelligent results. That this theory does not cover all the recorded facts, that it is not a sufficient account of spiritual phenomena generally, I quite admit, nay, would myself insist. But finding in a large proportion of cases a thorough identification of the phenomena, with the knowledge, inclinations, and characteristics of the medium and those en rapport with him, I seek rather to explain them, if possible, by psychological facts and probabilities too little attended to, but which it is highly important to recognise, than by the introduction of foreign spirits, when these do not give unmistakable evidence of their presence. These phenomena are not the less spiritual, or rather not the less demonstrative of a soul or psychic body, separable from the physical organism, when referred to the personality of the medium, than when ascribed to habitual denizens of the world of spirits. The presumption that individual life ceases with the dissolution of the body arises from the possibility (or, perhaps, it is only the difficulty) of conceiving life without an organism through which it can act and manifest. That presumption is got rid of by proof that we have an inner organism; with most of us, indeed, too closely fitted to the outer to be discernible from it during the life of the latter, but with some so easily and frequently disengaged as to afford a thousand evidences of its independence. I, for one, would as soon rely upon this fact for the proof of continued existence (not immortality), as upon those other proofs to which Dr. Wyld adverts. Taken together, however, and taken also with the proportion of facts in Spiritualism, which I must submit are not covered by the largest and occultist powers reasonably ascribable to the still embodied spirit, there is no ground for the apprehension that the essential significance of the phenomena will be at all impaired by Dr. Wyld’s speculations. But much prejudice will doubtless be excited against them among those whose interest in Spiritualism mainly arises from the supposed facility of renewed intercourse with their departed friends. Spirit identity is struck at, as well by Dr. Wyld, as in the interesting paper signed “T. J.,” which you lately published. And, with all deference, 1 must say it is high time it should be so struck at, if Spiritualism is not to be given over to an illusion, in so many instances demonstrably such, as to impede the acceptance of facts which seem inextricably entangled with false assumptions. Let us see. where we are. We have got the fact of the psychic body, which can go forth, materialise, and act upon matter. We have got the fact, known in mesmerism, that the clairvoyant, in the thought-reading stage, can perceive not only the present contents of another consciousness, but also all the past experiences, thoughts, pictures stored up, as the occultists have it, in the “astral light” surrounding each individual. Here are the materials, if we have but a competent agent, for many a “test.” The fact “known only to myself,” “forgotten by me, but afterwards verified,” the visible form “distinctly recognised,” “the expression which I never could forget,” “the pet name,” &c., all accounted for, while your beloved friend may be all the while—as surely we ought rather to wish—progressing in another stage of existence, with new associations, and a new life sphere, from which he is not drawn whenever you choose to sit at a table, or opposite a cabinet. Let me advert to one significant fact which I have frequently noticed. Persons of mediumistic temperament, or of mesmeric power, commonly obtain more satisfactory “tests” than others when sitting with professional mediums. Why? Is it not that in their case the blending of the psychic spheres is more complete, and thus the records of their own experience are more easily available?
As the “English Member of the Theosophical Society” quoted by “Scrutator” in supposed opposition to Col. Olcott, I have this explanation to make:—The “elementary” spoken of by “ the very learned occultist” whom I cited in the letter referred to, is not the “elementary” in the sense more recently adopted in Isis Unveiled, and by Col. Olcott, of a departed and earth-bound soul, but the rudimentary spiritual being in process of evolution into humanity. So that the passage, “When the elementary dies out of one state of existence he is born into a higher one,” in no way contradicts Dr. Olcott’s statement of the fate of the human “elementary.” Nor is the rest of the passage quoted by “Scrutator at all inconsistent with the idea that the thoroughly depraved man at death is but a duality, having lost all sympathy (and by sympathy alone is spiritual synthesis maintained) with the Divine Spirit. The passage continues thus—“And when man dies out of the world of gross matter, he is born into one more ethereal; so on, from sphere to sphere, man never losing his trinity.” It must be remembered, that this is part of an account of the process of evolution, or of the ascent from lower to higher forms when that ascent is maintained. True, man as man never loses his trinity, that is, so long as he continues a man; and it is, perhaps, partly to guard against any apparent inconsistency, that when he has lost his trinity he is designated no longer man, but “elementary,” a creature of the elements, in whom the human spirit has no part.
Col. Olcott says, also, “At birth the babe is but a duality, and becomes a trinity only when reason begins to manifest itself—usually at the age of seven years, but sometimes earlier.” Apropos of this—though I admit that the coincidence, untraced to its origin, amounts to very little—the following fact from the Duchess of Orleans’ Secret Memoirs of Louis XIV. may (or may not) be worth quoting— <... continues on page 4-142 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Speculations on Spiritual Agencies by Massey C.C., London Spiritualist, No. 281, January 11, 1878, pp. 19-20
London Spiritualist, No. 281, January 11, 1878, pp. 19-20