HPB-SB-3-72

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vol. 3, p. 72

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

vol. 3 (1875-1878)

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< Mediumship and Sciolism (continued from page 3-71) >

to a distinct vision of a living form, and the hearing of uttered words.

But unless the spiritual endowment is of a high order, the results are by no means uniform, as the powers of the medium vary as well as the surrounding influences. The results of one seance may be altogether satisfactory and delightful, and may be followed by another entirely unsatisfactory, especially when the parties to the interview are jealous and domineering in manner, or even in spirit. A certain liberality and kindness are necessary to give freedom in the exercise of mediumistic powers. The same kind courtesy which enables a shrinking, modest girl to feel at ease with a stranger, enables spirits and mediums to exercise their most delicate powers. The harshness which would disconcert the girl, is generally sufficient, also, to check or prevent the spiritual manifestations, unless the medium has more than average moral strength.

It is not just to hold mediums strictly responsible, in all cues, for a correct transmission of messages from the departed, or a correct description of their persons, for they cannot command the presence of the desired spirit, nor can they always come into Such rapport as is desired, although they may, under favorable circumstances, satisfy both their visitors and themselves. But when those of limited and irregular powers adopt the profession of a medium, they place themselves under constant temptation to palm off imperfect phenomena and substitute imagination for fact.

Mediumship for written and spoken communications, is abundant in its illusions, and furnishes copious material for skeptical criticism. The medium is either a reporter of his own perceptions and of the delicate impressions made upon him, or a passive instrument obsessed by a spirit.

It would seem, at the first blush, entirely certain that an obsessed medium or trance speaker would be a reliable channel for the transmission of thought from the spirit world; but we find that spirits often have great difficulty in impressing their conceptions on the mind of the medium, or in using his organism as freely as if it were their own. Hence the communications are often imperfect.

The brain of the medium has its own automatic action, and when long accustomed to the influence of a certain spirit, it may spontaneously assume the same mood and condition, and proceed to the same style of utterance, (retaining no consciousness thereof afterwards), although there may be no spiritual influence present. We have every gradation between perfect obsession and this unconscious and honest automatism, and in these different gradations it is a matter of no little difficulty to distinguish between partial obsessions and purely imaginative phenomena of speaking and writing mediums.

Mediumistic writers give us with great ease the splendid and envied pictures which may be created by an artistic imagination; but it is much easier for them to describe Henry Gay and Washington Irving in spirit-life, traveling on a smooth stream, in a gondola constructed like the body of a swan, and propelled by a galvanic battery in the bead of a swan, than to mention any fact or reminiscence in the lives of such gentlemen which has not been familiar to the public. The practical evidence that literary communications are really from their professed source, is too often deplorably deficient, and, in a great many cases, the ignorance and errors of such communications are fatal to the opinion that they emanated from the intelligent spirits to whom they were attributed.

Nevertheless, we should not contemptuously reject all messages which do not contain evidence of the genuineness of their supposed origin, for there are three forms of mediumship,—the distinctions, of which are not generally understood.

1. Obsession,— which is of the highest character when complete and passive, and when the medium is sufficiently developed in mind for his office.

2. Clairvoyant Communication,—In which the medium recognizes and intelligently communicates with the spirit,—in which we have every grade, from the perfect to the worthless.

3. Dramatic Clairvoyance and sympathy, in which the medium, as an independent clairvoyant, looks around the world, and perceiving a character or sphere of thought which intersects him, eaters Into sympathy with it and actually takes or personates the character. For example, a physician in Ohio found a young German girl to be an excellent medium, and through her consulted the spirits of eminent physicians, un on cases in his practice. He thus obtained the advice of Hahnemann and others.—the girl giving Hahnemann’s prescription, and signing his name in the German style. He then thought he would try the same experiment in reference to n living physician, and was equally successful. The girl gave the prescription, advice arid signature of Prof. B. L. Hill,—then in the northern part of the state,—as readily as that of Hahnemann.

In this case (unless we introduce a great deal of improved spiritual machinery), we must suppose that the girl was spiritually competent to obtain ideas from any mind, either by communication or by a perceptive sympathy, independent of their co-operation. Surely, the intelligence which reads sealed documents, explores libraries, and enters by psychometry into the interior thoughts and history of any one whose autograph is touched; or which, from a shell or stone, or other relic, brings up the history of the scenes which have surrounded it thousands of years ago; or which flees at once to a still chamber, a thousand miles away, and describes the condition of a patient and hit surrounding friends, entering into their sphere of thoughts, would be competent to interpret the sentiments, and speak in behalf of any public man, dead or living.

It is, therefore, highly probable that a great deal of what is supposed to be the mediumship of obsession is really dramatic Clairvoyance. Nor does the fact that it assumes the form of obsession prove that it is such. The clairvoyant if psychometric may be obsessed by the idea to which his attention is given. Thus a lady of fine intelligence, in describing psychometrically the character of Mr. Clay, entered into the character so fully as to become obsessed by it, (Mr. Clay was then living—1844), and objected to my questions as altogether too familiar and inquisitive for her dignity. It was a familiar exhibition, some years since, lor imaginative mesmeric operators to make a subject believe himself some remarkable character, and personate that character to the best of his ability.

It is, therefore, entirely possible for a gifted medium to enter into the mental sphere of Theodore Parker or Prof. Mapes, without their co-operation, and speak in their style of thought, developing even ideas which belong to their studies and their private history. I do not say that this is positively the case in reference to the brilliant discourses of Mrs. Tappan, as the ostensible mouthpiece of Theodore Parker and Prof. Mapes; but I do say that it is highly probable, and it is only by this explanation of dramatic clairvoyance, that we can understand now intelligent and honest mediums flatly contradict each other, and the same spirit is held responsible for communications through different mediums, which differ in style and positively contradict each other. He will be marvelously fortunate who can receive communications from the same spirit through different mediums, and find them all coincide, or find that spirit capable of recollecting with one medium what he is supposed to have communicated through another.

Dramatic Clairvoyance enables us to understand why a medium of unscientific mind nod education, acting as apparent mouthpiece of a scientist, but not really obsessed, unacquainted with matters entirely familiar to him, or speaking in behalf of an ancient Greek or modern German, knows nothing of their language.

Why, for example, should Prof. Mapes, if he really spoke through Mrs. Tappan, have fallen into the scientific errors and blundering philosophy of some parts of her discourse? The presentation of his views of primates, and of force as the basis of realities, is not at all above what we know of Mrs. Tappan's remarkable powers, and does not prove the actual co-operation of Prof. Mapes. But it is not supposable that Prof. Mapes could have said that bodies lost their gravity by being carried up in the air, and that the deleterious effort of rising three miles in the atmosphere, was owing to the fact that gravity teas to a great extent, lost, and that, in consequence thereof, the “forces of the system” flew to the brain. Such statements prove clearly the absence of Prof. Mapes as a directing power when they were uttered, as in the following quotations, in which we observe specimens of confusion of language, as well as falsehood in scientific fact:

“There is no weight in matter absolutely; it has only an apparent weight, the result of its position with reference to the motion of the earth, vide earth’s atmosphere.”

“If you go seven miles into the atmosphere, which a distinguished French aeronaut claims to have done, you will scarcely be aware of any specific gravity; even at the height of three miles, your body is robbed of its weight to such a degree that all the forces of the system have a tendency to fly to the brain.”

This is not Prof. Mapes—he was not ignorant of the most familiar laws of gravitation,—it is not obsession at all; it is not even clairvoyance; it is but vagrant conjecture of a mind unfamiliar with physical science.

Mrs. T. says, “it is known that in seven years there is no single atom of your body that existed previously; that every chemical property has changed, and that you are not the same individual.” Such slip-slop gossip as this never proceeded from an intelligent chemist. Nor do we perceive in the whole lecture any evidence of scientific knowledge beyond a mere smattering of matters familiar to the newspapers, such as Mape’s doctrine of primates, Ericsson’s caloric engine and plan of utilizing solar heat, and developing manufactures in tropic climates. The least scientific of our New York reporters would dash off, at short notice, an article much more creditable as a matter of science.

Is it possible that Prof. Mapes, in full control of a medians, would hove been either unable or unwilling to speak as a man of science, or to say something which would show that the speaker had some knowledge of the science to which he had been devoted? Or, is it credible that he could have <... continues on page 3-73 >