HPB-SB-10-540

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

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vol. 10, p. 540	volume 10, page 540 vol. title: vol. period: 1879-1880 pages in vol.: 577
Legend HPB note HPB highlighted HPB underlined HPB crossed out <Editors note> <Archivist note> Lost or unclear SBT, DT Restored

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< A few experiences of a veteran (continued from page 10-539) >

waken, now by gentle whispering, now by violent apparent vibrations on the drum of the ear, as though I were close to the firing of a cannon, and yet by sound entirely unheard by one sleeping at my side; and as if to show that it were really hearing by a sixth sense—is something uncommon but real.

Let me add that at the few seances I attended in London at that time, John King would allude to these visits. For instance, at my first seance with Mr. Williams, a private one, on May 4th, 1871, this is partly what passed. I copy consecutively from my note book of that time: “John King said, ‘I was with you when you wrote that.’ I said, ‘I know your voice, it is stronger than others.’ I said, ‘I sometimes wish my time was up.’ He said, ‘You are not going yet, you have a deal more work to do before you go.’ I said, ‘Have I the power to be a medium for the audible voice?’ He answered, ‘You are not strong enough.’” These answers were certainly not in my own brain, nor, I think, in that of the medium. Here is another reason why John King should have visited me, besides his implied promise at my own request, given at my first seance with him. I had written more than once, in very sceptical days, of my undoubted belief in his identity and in the bona fides of his mediums. I had written, too, in sympathy with his sufferings at that time, sometimes expressed by himself, as testified by Mr. Coleman and by my own observation, sufferings through having to return to earth for our instruction, and as a probation for former failings of his own on earth. I had written in a spiritual periodical, long since discontinued, under the heading of Voices at Mrs. Marshall’s, the following: “I had read so often of spirits speaking audibly in the scriptures, that when I heard of a recurrence of such prodigies in our days, instead of being shocked I praised God. I thought, here is something to convince sceptics if nothing else will.” But I was mistaken, strange though it still appears to me; I wrote the above after my first seance with the direct voice on December 17th, 1867; and after describing the seance, I wrote: “It must be no slight penance, one would imagine, for these spirits day after day to submit to the curiosity, the weaknesses and impertinences of spirits in the flesh for a long time together. It must be done, one must suppose, for their own advantage, or for the good of humanity, or for both combined.” Moreover, I think that John King knew that I had suffered on his account, especially at a later period, after I had early in 1871 described in a publication another seance with him through a then new medium, giving also specimens of my own clairaudience, that occurred during the night after the seance, and when, in consequence of that article, open attacks upon myself, which had been going on for some time, culminated.

Years have passed away, and much that I had hoped for has not yet been realised, but these identical voices and idiosyncrasies of the same spirits, heard through different mediums, are among the most convincing and encouraging proofs still, to my mind, of spirit identity, and of the fact of the dead once living upon earth coming back to assure us that we too shall live on after death. On this point, which would be of inestimable value, in these sceptical, materialistic days, to the clergy, if they would utilise it, as St. Paul did the resurrection of Jesus, my opinions are not a whit changed.*

An old Spiritualist.

* The general tendency of this article seems to be slightly in favour of the personal individuality of John King, and not of his identity as a person who once lived on this earth. The similarity of the powerful voice of John King, through the mediumship of Mr. Williams and Mr. Husk, is very striking.— Ed.

Dr. Tanner at a spiritualistic meeting

The last American mail brings us the Banner of Light (Boston) of August 28th, in which some unbelievable physiological assertions are made by a trance medium in New York. Mr. J. L. O’Sullivan writes:—“As soon as she had closed her address, a short, middle-aged man rose from one of the rear seats in the hall, in whose strongly-marked features, still exhibiting the evidences of his marvellous forty days of fasting, though his subsequent week of not less astonishing feasting had restored some healthy color to his cheeks, I recognised the hero of the day, Dr. Tanner . . . . He said that he could not but understand the speaker’s reference to his recent severe trial in this city, and that though he remained still too weak to desire to say much, he must remark that his former similar experience (for forty-two days) did not seem to him to support her theory of his having absorbed nutrition from the atmosphere charged with the elements furnished by a great population. It was in the wilds of the west, and much of his time was spent out on an open prairie, where he used to lay a great part of the day, basking in the sun and inhaling the fine, pure electric atmosphere of Minnesota, which he had often longed for here. He thought that he had been sustained by electric forces; nor did he think he would have lived twenty days under his recent trial if it had not been for the refreshment of his daily drives in the Central Park and on the Riverside Avenue, which had cost him six dollars a day. Air, fresh air, was what he was always wanting, and he often suffered for the want of it in Clarendon Hall. He should be disposed to think that the impure emanations exhaled from the population of a great city would do him more harm than any benefit to be derived in the way of nutrition from its other emanations.”

Editor's notes

Sources

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  London Spiritualist, No. 420, September 10, 1880, pp. 124-25