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vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 231 |
< Communicating Spirits (continued from page 12-58) >
The testimony of Mr. T. Lake Harris is somewhat similar. “When a man enters the world of Spirits, after the old fashion of physical decease, it is but leaving one room for another; his earthly memory remains as before, there being a continuity of recollection; but when he is finally fitted for the heavenly eternity and enters into the light of Heaven the old natural memory sinks into entire quiescence; there is no continuity of recollection in the conscious memory, from present eternity into the past earthly time.” (“The Holy City,” p. 10.)
When we come to visible manifestations at a seance, however strong the likeness may be to deceased friends, there appears to me to be no ground whatever for supposing that in those simulacra the persons themselves are seen; and yet, to my thinking, there is quite as little ground for supposing that such individuals are not present. What is called materialisation may be the work of Spirits skilled in deception, fond, as Bohme* assures us all evil Spirits are, of jugglery,” but I cannot see why it may not be quite as possible for friendly Spirits, wishing to convince us of their presence, thus to represent it. That it is an effect of formative imagination on their part (not ours), I have long supposed from the transiency of such appearances. † We know that we can conjure up a face or a scene in our chambers of imagery for a few minutes, but to retain it there is not possible; the incessant movements of thought efface such ideas as quickly as one wave overflows its precursors. So, I fancy, do the vivid imaginations of the dead, when with matter abstracted from the medium, or other people present, they depict their former similitudes. Something, too, may be affected, as Madame Blavatsky says (“Isis Unveiled,” vol. I., p. 70), by deputy elementary Spirits effecting the same purpose.‡
In the context Madame Blavatsky repudiates the idea of the disembodied manifesting themselves because “their divine essence cannot materialise what is matterless and purely Spiritual.” To which I readily agree, but she assumes a great deal more than I can even suppose when she talks of the disembodied being matteriess and purely “spiritual.” I fear that is a condition few attain immediately after decease—if they do long afterwards.
* “Indeed, this is still to this day their greatest joy that they can transmute themselves, and bring themselves into many images; and thus achieve or make Phansie.”—10th Theosphie Question, par. 2.
† See par. 14 of chap. 14, “Sur les Fluides” in “La Genese” of Allan Kardec, for a very interesting and instructive account of this process.
‡ “Every so-called materialisation—when genuine—is either produced (perhaps) by the will of that Spirit whom the ‘appearance’ is claimed to be but can only personate at best; or by the elementary goblins themselves, which ‘are generally too stupid to deserve the honour of being called devils. Upon rare occasions the Spirits are able to subdue and control those soulless beings, which are ever ready to assume pompons names, if left to themselves, in such a way that the mischievous ‘spirit of the air,’ shaped in the real imago of the human Spirit, will be moved by the latter, like a marionette, and unable to either act or utter other words than those imposed on him by the ‘immortal soul.’” —‘‘Isis Unveiled,” vol. I., p. 68.
The Power of Healing
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<Untitled> (Better the chance...)
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Spiritualism in Calcutta
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Editor's notes
Sources
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Light, v. 2, No. 55, January 21, 1882, p. 29