chapter 5 — the psychic phenomena of spiritualism sources

WORK-IN-PROGRESS (MARCH 2, 2019) PARALLEL CHART FOR

Chapter 5 — The Psychic Phenomena of Spiritualism

from The Truth About Spiritualism (1923)by

William S. Sadler, M.D., F.A.C.S.

© 2013, 2019 Matthew Block

Sources for Chapter 5, in the order in which they first appear

(1) William S. Sadler, M.D., The Physiology of Faith and Fear: Or, The Mind in Health andDisease (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1912)

(2) Wilfred Lay, Ph.D., Man’s Unconscious Spirit: The Psychoanalysis of Spiritism (NewYork: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1921)

(3) Bernard Hart, M.D., The Psychology of Insanity (Cambridge: at the University Press,1912, 1916)

(4) William S. Sadler, M.D., Worry and Nervousness: Or, The Science of Self-Mastery(Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1914)

(5) Pierre Janet, Ph.D., M.D., The Major Symptoms of Hysteria (New York: The MacmillanCompany, 1907 and 1920)

(6) Lloyd Kenyon Jones, God’s World (Vol. 1): A Treatise on Spiritualism Founded onTranscripts of Shorthand Notes taken down, over a period of five years, in the Seance-room of The William T. Stead Memorial Center (Chicago, Illinois: The William T. SteadMemorial Center, 1919)

(7) Isaac K. Funk, D.D., LL.D, The Psychic Riddle (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company,1907)

(8) James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., Psychotherapy (New York: D. Appleton and Company,1912)

(9) A. T. Schofield, Modern Spiritism: Its Science and Religion (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’sSon & Co., 1920)

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(10) Rev. Samuel McComb, The Future Life in the Light of Modern Inquiry (New York:Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919)

(11) Joseph McCabe, Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A. C.Doyle and Others Drastically Examined (London: Watts & Co., 1920)

(12) Edward T. Bennett, Psychic Phenomena: A Brief Account of the Physical ManifestationsObserved in Psychical Research (New York: Brentano’s, 1909)

(13) David P. Abbott, Behind the Scenes with the Mediums, Fifth Revised Edition (Chicago:The Open Court Publishing Company, 1916)

(14) Anonymous, “Spirits Guided His Plans: Great Rail Builder Tells of Help Given Him:Came to Him in Dreams, ” in The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, June 14, 1922)

(15) Morton Prince, M.D., LL.D., The Unconscious: The Fundamentals of Human PersonalityNormal and Abnormal (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914 and 1921)

(16) Horatio W. Dresser, Ph.D., The Open Vision: A Study of Psychic Phenomena (New York:Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1920)

Key

(a) Green indicates where a source first appears, or where it reappears.

(b) Yellow highlights most parallelisms.

(c) Tan highlights parallelisms not occurring on the same row, or parallelisms separated byyellowed parallelisms.

(d) An underlined word or words indicates where the source and Sadler pointedly differ fromone another.

(e) Bold type indicates passages which Sadler copied verbatim, or nearly verbatim, froman uncited source.

(f) Pink indicates passages where Sadler specifically shares his own experiences, opinions,advice, etc.

(g) Light blue indicates passages which strongly resemble something in the Urantia Book, orwhich allude to the Urantia phenomenon.

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(h) Red indicates either an obvious mistake, in most cases brought about by Sadler’smiscopying or misunderstanding his source, or an otherwise questionable statement onSadler’s part.

Matthew Block2 March 2019

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SOURCE 5: THE TRUTH ABOUT SPIRITUALISM

Work-in-progress Version 29 May 2013© 2013, 2014 Matthew BlockRevised 17 July 2014 and 2 March 2019

V — THE PSYCHICP H E N O M E N A O FSPIRITUALISM

XXXVIII: PSYCHIC FADS ANDFAKES (The Physiology of Faith and Fear 457)

SPIRITUALISM (The Physiology of Faith and Fear 466)

[contd] Like mental telepathy,spiritualism is not a matter which can beadjudged in the experimental laboratory.

5:0.1 SPIRITUALISM is not a matterwhich can be finally tried and adjudgedin the experimental laboratory.

Recent investigations have convinced theauthor that

While the investigations which I havemade into spiritistic phenomena haveconvinced me that

nine-tenths of all so-called spiritualisticphenomena are purely fraudulent,

practically all so-called materializationsand other transactions of the “seance” arepurely fraudulent—

sheer chicanery and trickery; sheer chicanery and trickery—

but we are equally willing to admit that incertain rare cases real phenomena areproduced in the name of spiritualism,which are not of a fraudulent nature.

it is not my intention to assert that all so-called occult or spiritistic phenomena are of a fraudulent nature.

There may be a residue that will have tobe accounted for otherwise, but it hasnever been my privilege to come incontact with mediums of this unusualsort.1

These spiritualistic manifestations weregard as beyond the pale of scientificinvestigation.

Such genuine spirit phenomena, ofcourse, would be beyond the pale ofscientific investigation.

They are problems in theology and spiritualscience (PF&F 466).

They constitute problems for study by thetheologians and philosophers.

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1 . P H A N T A S Y A N DIMAGINATION

[For some people the easiest thing in theworld to do is to sit and day-dream (Lay 13).]

5:1.1 There can be little doubt but thatcertain human beings possess atremendously large “bump” of phantasy.That is, they have the day dreamingfaculty developed to the point where ithas acquired the proportions of a well-nigh separate personality. This must bethe case with many clairvoyants,mediums, and other occult practitioners.They might be said to possess anautomatic power of phantasy—one thatacts quite independently of their ordinarymental processes—and one which formsits conclusions and formulates itsstatements quite without the consciousknowledge of the higher powers of suchindividuals’ minds.

IV: PSYCHOLOGY—HOW WE THINK(The Physiology of Faith and Fear 35)

IMAGINATION AND PHANTASY (The Physiologyof Faith and Fear 42)

As we ascend in the realms of thought,we reach more and greater possibilities ofmental confusion and mind deceptions.

5:1.2 As we ascend in the realms ofthought, we reach more and greaterpossibilities of mental confusion andmind deception.

It is quite impossible for the very youngchild to discriminate between imagination,memory, and images.

It is quite impossible for the very youngchild to discriminate between imagin-ation, memory, and images.

The child of three years will vividlydescribe his meetings with lions and otherwild beasts,

The child of three years will vividlydescribe his meetings with lions andother wild beasts in the back yard,

and may tell these things as real experienceswhich have just happened.

and may relate these things as realexperiences which have just happened.

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He is really recalling the pictures of lionsfrom his books, or reviving the memoryimages of the beasts observed at the zoo(PF&F 42-43).

He is really recalling the pictures of lionsfrom his story books, or reviving thememory images of the beasts observed atthe zoo;

and many of our mediums andclairvoyants are so constituted of mindthat their own subconscious plays thesame subtle trick upon them. They see,hear, feel and perceive things that havenot just happened, as facts, and as suchportray them. These experiences are thephantasms of a short circuited memoryacting under the impulse and inspirationof a misguided imagination.

5:1.3 In the case of these mediums, themind has grown up in some respects, butin this particular feature they haveremained juvenile, and we all know thatthe younger we are, the more active, vividand uncontrolled is the imagination andphantasy.

What is to hinder the imagination fromsetting in operation false notions,resurrecting disagreeable impressions,

5:1.4 What is to hinder an over-developed phantasy from setting inoperation fictitious feelings and im-pressions

and, by its well-known powers of recon-struction,

and, by its well known powers of recon-struction,

creating new feelings and strangesensations? (PF&F 43)

creating spiritistic forms, unreal appar-itions, and the fantastic concepts of thespirit world?

XI: PHANTASY (Hart 143)

5:1.5 The highly organized nervoussystem of a psychically unstable indiv-idual can easily imagine itself to be thehero of the moving picture play,identifying itself with all the experiencesportrayed on the screen, as indeed he willin the case of

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Identification is intimately bound upwith those day-dreaming processes whichhave been dealt with in the earlier portionof the present chapter. The day-dreamerwho witnesses the triumphal progress ofsome popular hero through the streets

the public procession in which someprominent individual, or some hero, is onparade;

lives himself into the part of the centralfigure, and marches with him through thecheering crowds (H 162).

such individuals will imagine themselvesto be the hero

[Identification] consists in identifyingourselves with another individual, eitherreal or fictitious, so that we experiencehis joys, sorrows, and desires, as if theywere our own (H 158).

and will experience all the pleasant andgratifying emotions experienced by thehero himself.

This mechanism, which has beentermed “wish fulfilment,”

This sort of “identification,” or, as it hasbeen termed, “wish evolvement,”

furnishes a psychological interpretationfor a vast number of the manifestations ofinsanity (H 149).

furnishes the psychological interpretationfor a vast number of mediumistic pheno-mena.

The mediums desire to be what theyprofess to be and thus, through the mentalprocesses of “projection,” on the onehand, and the phantasy of “identifica-tion,” on the other, they seek to bringabout their “wish evolvement;” and thus,from the unlimited supply of material inthe reservoir of the subconscious mindthey bring forth those things whichcomplete the picture and enable them,through their clairvoyance and clair-audience, to depict to the devotees ofspiritism the images of departed spiritsand to hear messages from another world.

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5:1.6 Mental confusion, crossed wires,endocrine disturbances, and a dozen otherinfluences, mental, chemical, andphysical, not to say spiritual, may allcontribute to the making of a first class,sincere, utterly self-deceived medium orclairvoyant.

5:1.7 Personality determines thepsychic tendency of those uniqueindividuals; and we now know thatpersonality is largely determined by thesecretions of the endocrine, or ductlessgland system, of the body. There is notonly a psychic basis for spiritualistictendencies, but also an hereditary and achemical basis.

2. DETACHED COMPLEXES

[Compare Chap. 38 of The Physiology of Faith andFear and PF&F 444.]

5:2.1 You should understand that thehuman mind is represented by a veryintricate organization and grouping ofcells, which hold the patterns of memoryand thought, and which are undoubtedlyformed after the fashion of groups,systems, constellations, and so on. Now itis known that certain groups of mind cellsor systems, commonly known ascomplexes, may be cut off, as it were,from active connection with the majormental powers, and may behave in aninsubordinate manner, playing the role ofa psychic insurgent, as regards the mentallife as a whole.

[See Hart 54-55.] These detached complexes areundoubtedly present in some forms ofinsanity, and they are able to assertthemselves in such a fashion as to causethe demented individual to hear voicesand in many other ways to disturb themental equilibrium.

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[Suffice it to say, the majority of trance mediums, nodoubt, honestly believe themselves to be the channelof communication between Heaven and earth, and itis their enthusiasm and earnest confidence in theirown work, coupled with the fact that they aresometimes really insane, that gives such peculiarinfluence and power to their teaching (Worry andNervousness 288).]

5:2.2 It is highly probable that, in somecases of clairvoyants and mediums, wehave a mental condition that actuallyborders on insanity.

These individuals may be suffering froma “complex detachment” in a very milddegree, so that they are able from time totime to recognize these voices and otherimpressions that come up from this sortof dissociation, complex detachment, ordouble personality—or whatever name itmay be called—and they are, therefore,wholly sincere when they represent toothers that they have heard these voicesin the mind as from an outside source.

I am convinced that many mediums andother spiritistic enthusiasts have sopersistently and successfully built uptheir “ghost complexes;” that they haveso effectively come to transfer the“reality feeling” to these “spook”creations of their own subconsciousmind; that they have so ardently weldedtheir emotions to these spirit concepts,that in time, this grouping of complexes,having to do with spirit beliefs anddesires, becomes so powerfully en-trenched and so highly influential in thepsychic life of such individuals that theybecome capable of instituting some sortof psychic insurrection, and come thusmore or less fully to dominate theconscious life, opinions, and behavior oftheir victims.

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5:2.3 An individual may bury certainunwelcome ideas or unpleasant emotionsin his subconscious, from whence, astime passes, they may come forth again toplague and harass him. So may themediums and clairvoyants, as the yearspass, bury things in their subconsciousminds, from whence these long forgottenideas and emotions may constantly springforth during the spirit seance toimpersonate, through the process of“projection” and the technique of“transference,” the person, mannerisms,and voices of dead and departed humanbeings.

3. COMPLEX DISSOCIATION

I: THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS(Lay 13)

[PREAMBLE] (Lay 13)

5:3.1 Now it is believed that someindividuals possess such a power ofdissociation, in connection with apeculiar and uncanny concentration of theattention, that at any one moment thewhole stream of consciousness may be sodirected and so successfully diverted that

My experience is that the feeling ofsameness and the feeling of reality arequalities that may, under appropriatecircumstances, occupy the focus ofattention

the “feeling of reality”—the sense ofreality—may be so focused

upon a single idea or desire as to shutevery other sensory feeling or emotionalexperience out of the mind’s eye, or theawareness of consciousness;

and thus be the only sense quality inconsciousness for certain brief periods.

and thus the whole psychic machinerywould be concentrated upon this singleidea of the mind.

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In this way, psychologists believe thatmediums sometimes come to materialize

As will later appear, this is a mostimportant point in considering thevalidity of the so-called proofs of theexistence of disembodied spirit (L 19). disembodied spirits in the eyes of their

own minds,

to become—mind, body, and soul—possessed with the reality of the thingwhich they think they see outside of theirminds, but which, in reality, lives andfunctions on the threshold of their ownpsychic life and which had its inception,origin, and birth within their ownsubconscious mind.

XVIII: HYSTERIA—THE MASTERIMITATOR (Worry and Nervousness 221)

COMPLEX DISSOCIATION (Worry and Nervousness223)

In the presence of this temporary sortof complex dissociation, it would appearthat in the case of these highly suggestibleindividuals, that

5:3.2 In the presence of this temporarysort of complex dissociation, it wouldappear that in the case of these highlysuggestible individuals, that

some sort of dominating and all-pervadingidea—now free from natural restraints andcustomary restrictions—

some sort of dominating and all-pervading idea—now free from naturalrestraints and customary restrictions—

sweeps through the mind and out over thebody, completely dominating andabsolutely controlling the organism

sweeps through the mind and out over thebody, completely dominating andabsolutely controlling the organism

to such an extent as to be able to producecramps, paralyses, and fits, as regards thebody;

to such an extent as to be able to producecramps, paralyses, and fits, as regards thebody;

while, in a mental way, the patient maybecome as one possessed of the devil onthe one hand, while on the other hand,

while, in a mental way, the patient maybecome as one possessed of the devil onthe one hand, while on the other hand

she may establish herself as aspiritualistic medium,

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she may go forth in some noble and daringröle as did the heroic maid of Orleans(W&N 224).

or she may go forth in some noble anddaring role as did the heroic Maid ofOrleans.


SPIRITUALISM (The Physiology of Faith and Fear 466)

There can be no doubt that the mindsof many so-called mediums are strikingillustrations of that dissociation amonggroups of conscious processes

5:3.3 There can be no doubt that theminds of many so-called mediums arestriking illustrations of that dissociationamong groups of conscious mentalprocesses—

which was previously discussed inconnection with double personality, andhysteria in general.

they verge on actual hysteria and doublepersonality.

In as far as this is the case, one must infairness admit that such a medium is notfundamentally (I mean morally) a fraud,

In so far as this is the case, one must infairness admit that such a medium is notfundamentally (I mean morally) a fraud,

but rather the subject of an elusivefunctional nervous disorder,

but rather the subject of an elusive,functional disorder,

and at the same time, clever enough tocapitalize the disorder and make it providethe necessaries of life.

and at the same time clever enough tocapitalize the disorder and make itprovide the necessaries of life.

In whatever instances this is the case, theso-called messages from the dead are madeup of the more or less coherent trains ofideas that troop in from the marginalconsciousness

In whatever instances this is the case, theso-called messages from the dead aremade up of the more or less coherenttrains of ideas that troop in from themarginal consciousness

in response to those suggested ideas whichcome into the medium’s attention when heor she is in a state of semi or completetrance. To whatever extent this representsthe nature of mediumship, it, together withso-called spirit messages, admits ofscientific psychologic investigation (PF&F466).

in response to those suggested ideaswhich come into the medium’s attentionwhen he or she is in a state of semi- orcomplete trance.

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4. THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

IV: THE UNCONSCIOUS AS ANURGE (Lay 93)

§ 7. The Unconscious an Hypothesis (Lay117)

[contd] The unconscious is of coursenot a state of mind of which we canbecome directly aware. It is, on the otherhand, a working hypothesis, a suppositionnecessary to explain the sequence ofthoughts in the stream of consciousness;but, as a hypothesis, it has worked so wellthat a great many extraordinary thoughtoccurrences in normal waking life areexplained by it (L 117).

5:4.1 The subconscious mind, like theatomic theory, is a splendid and practicalworking concept,

whether it really exists or not.

One thing we are sure of—the thingwhich it stands for is an actual part of ourmental life.

IV: PSYCHOLOGY—HOW WE THINK(The Physiology of Faith and Fear 35)

INACCURACIES OF THINKING (The Physiology ofFaith and Fear 38)

Sensations can produce ideas, and it shouldalso be borne in mind that ideas canproduce sensations (PF&F 39).

While sensations can produce ideas, itmust also be borne in mind that ideas canproduce sensations.

THE POWERS OF MEMORY (The Physiology ofFaith and Fear 45)

It is impossible to conceive of thepossibilities of mind deception, extendingfrom mental delusions to fictitious physicaldisease,

5:4.2 It is impossible to conceive of thepossibilities of mind deception, extendingfrom the mental delusions of fictitiousphysical disease

to the consummate deceptions ofspiritualistic phantasms,

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that would be made possible by a workingconspiracy between imagination andmemory,

that would be made possible by aworking conspiracy between imagination,phantasy, and memory,

when both these mental powers areirritated and diseased by a poisonous bloodstream (PF&F 47).

when all three of these powers areunstable from heredity or irritated anddiseased by a poisoned blood stream.

5:4.3 It is my opinion that much of thepsychology of clairvoyants and spiritmediums takes place out in the dimconsciousness of the marginal state. Thatis, these spirit manifestations, in theirideas and images, originate in thesubconscious mind, much as thephantasms of the dream world originateduring the night season, when the higherreasoning, the logical, analytical andconscious centers of the brain areasleep—dead to the world.

5:4.4 Unquestionably the seance room,as conventionally conducted, constitutesa very favorable setting—one which is inevery way calculated to encourage theemergence of visual or auditory hallucin-ations from the realms of theunconscious. These no sooner appearthan the expectant attitude of bothmedium and spectator disposes themearly to transfer to these children ofsubconscious creation that “feeling ofreality,” which justifies the consciousnessfrom that time on in its recognition andreception of these phenomena as a bonafide experience.

XIII: HYSTERICAL STIGMATA—SUGGESTIBILITY (Janet 270)

Our poor patients were not lucky.Formerly, they were burnt as witches;then, they were accused of all possibledebaucheries;

5:4.5 Hysterical patients, in a formergeneration, were burned at the stake aswitches.

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Today they preside over parlor seancesand perform as spirit mediums.

then, when the manners had becomegentler, one was content with saying thatthey were versatile to excess, remarkablefor their spirit of duplicity, of falsehood,

And today, as in olden times, theirperformances are characterized byfalsehood and duplicity,

of perpetual simulation (J 277). as well as by a continuous series ofimpersonations.

It should be remembered that hystericalwomen are not only able to impersonateserious diseases of the body in theirattacks, but that they are equally gifted inpsychologic legerdemain, in that they areable to impersonate, and other-wise makerepresentations to onlookers, the spirits ofdeparted human beings.

5. THE PHYSIOLOGY OFSPIRITUALISM

VII: BELIEF BEFORE KNOWLEDGE(Lay 247)

§3. Continuousness of Urge (Lay 251)

5:5.1 In the mind of the primitivesavage

And it is but a step from the separateexistence of the conscious life after death

it constitutes but a short step

to the separate existence of consciousnessduring life, just as the savage or the childwhen dreaming, thinks he is in anotherplace than where his body is.

in reasoning (from his dream-experi-ences), to lead to the belief that his“consciousness” could be absent from thebody,

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and so these two ideas put together—orrather, the one growing out of the other—lead the primitive mind to believe in“consciousness” separate and apart fromthe physical body, and thus thefoundation is securely laid for a belief inspiritism.

And, the dream, whether in the night or inthe day, has this characteristic that itpresents the dreamer with an apparentpower over space (L 253).

Dreams seem to endow the mind with apower that is quite independent of timeand space,

Similarly the medium’s communicationswith spirits are an extension of powergreater than ordinary in the averagewaking existence (L 253-54).

and the fancies of the dream world arenot wholly unlike those extraordinaryclaims and superstitions of the spiritmedium.

XI: PRESENT STATUS (Lay 325)

§3. What is “Spirit”? (Lay 327)

[contd] As far as science today knows,spirit is nothing. There is no such thing tobe revealed as a force operating fromwithout upon real things with anythingmore like human intelligence than theswelling of water before it becomes ice(L 327).

5:5.2 As far as psychology isconcerned—the physical sciences—thereis no spirit.

[See 5:0.1, above.] Spiritual forces are not able to manifestthemselves to the instruments employedin scientific investigation. They areimmaterial, and science deals only withthe material.

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X: SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS(Lay 300)

5:5.3 Science comes more and more tolook upon that which lays claim to beingsupernatural, or spiritual, in theperformance of spirit mediums, as being

If the medium were analysed hewould then have it made clear to him thatall the trance utterances are butemanations from his own mind (L 311). an emanation from the unconscious

realms of the medium’s own mind,

and that the entire performance is subjectto natural explanation by the laws ofphysio-psychology; that the laws ofphysiology on the one hand, and ofpsychology, on the other, are adequatequite fully to explain these apparentlysupernatural phenomena.


§4. Quality of Content (Lay 328)

[contd] A word should be added aboutthe quality of the content of the spiritisticmessages.

The very nature of the content of thesespirit messages and revelations

is sufficient to brand them as whollyhuman,

Not only are they trivial and without theremotest resemblance to the grandeur ofthought of the bibles of the world whichcontain the phantasy of the races backedby the claim of authoritative inspiration;

and in every way very ordinary

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not only have they in every instancefailed to give what would be the mostdesired by humans, and have besidescriticized the questioners for wanting it;... but it is possible in these spiritisticcommunications to detect the mercenary,the quibbling, the fencing, the indirectionof a wild attempt to guess out what willplease the hearer, without any attemptwhatever to gain true breadth of visionand nobility of thought (L 328).

and utterly devoid of any ear-marks ofthat superiority which would in any wayserve to class them as extraordinary oridentify them as supernatural.

V: MECHANISMS (Lay 147)

§19. Desire for Excitement (Lay 193)

[contd] It is more than likely thatbesides the unconscious desire for theamplification of the ego manifested in allspiritual phenomena there is also anadditional factor in the unconscious wishfor excitement (L 193) .

5:5.4 Spiritualism panders to thategotistic human desire for excitement andadventure.

§18. Desire for the Extraordinary (Lay 191)

The average man likes to dabble with theextraordinary.

§17. Miracles (Lay 189)

[contd] The greatest miracles are thecommonest occurrences of every day life... One is impressed with the fact thatthere is nothing in any of the “pheno-mena” of spiritualism any more wonder-ful than almost anything that takes placearound us or in us every day.

We tend to overlook the remarkablenature of the common occurrences ofeveryday life,

and we long to make contact with bigthings and unusual events.

We enjoy the exhilaration of talkingthrough the air;

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The performance of the antennae or thecoherer in the wireless is no lessremarkable than the hypersensitivity ofthe medium in receiving spirit messages(L 189-90).

wireless telephony and radio appeal toour imagination;

and we long to project the experimentone step further—to hoist our spiritualaerials and get the wireless waves fromother worlds. The one seems little moreimpossible than the other, that is,provided we but lead ourselves to admitthe existence of a spiritual world and thereality of spiritual forces.

6. THE FEAR OF DEATH

[Compare Lay 63 and 333.] 5:6.1 The biology of spiritualism isrooted in the pain-pleasure complex ofthe human mind and nervous system. Fornumerous reasons, the primitive mind ofthe savage fears death. Death is usuallypreceded or accompanied by pain andsuffering. Death spells the extinction ofall possibility of pleasure enjoyment, andtherefore death becomes the symbol—thegoal, or culmination—of suffering, agonyand pain. It becomes the central idea thatstands for cessation of pleasure, andtherefore, the primitive mind, on the basisof the desire to avoid pain and experiencepleasure, desires in every way possible,in its efforts to survive the fear of death,to prove the unreality—the non-existence—of death. And so theunconscious mind of even the primitivetribes reaches out with a persistentlonging to grasp any and all evidencesand proofs that would tend to strengthenthe belief of spirit survival after death,and thus directly and indirectly, in everyway possible, to prove that death is but anillusion—

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but the vestibule to another world—theveil behind which occurs the birth ofanother existence into a new and higherlife.


§6. Reality Thinking (Lay 334)

5:6.2 We are thus coming to that placewhere we are able clearly to recognizethat

The unconscious holds the key not only tothe explanation of the “phenomena” ofspiritism

the key to spiritualism—that is to thenon-fraudulent, non-materialistic phase ofthe phenomena—is to be found in thephysiology of the unconscious.

but of the explanation of all thephenomena of present day existence, andis the only key which will unlock the doorto a dignified and worthy social life in thefuture (L 335).

Here in this mysterious realm of thehuman intellect are locked up the secretsand mysteries of mediumship, clair-voyance, trances, automatic writing, andother of the real and respectable manifes-tations of modern spiritualism.

7. WHAT IS A SPIRIT?

5:7.1 Physiology is the key by whichwe will open the psychological lockwhich will enable us to begin ourexplorations of the secret birthplace andlodgement of the human well-springs ofmodern spiritualism.

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§14. Complexity of Consciousness (Lay 44)

5:7.2 What then is a spirit?

Finally the thesis of this chapter isthat those who make any statement what-ever concerning the thing they call spiritwill be obliged not only to make a carefuldefinition of what it is, and what relationit bears to the subjective sensations ormental images;

I would offer two definitions:

but also to orient themselves exactly as tothe functions of these mental images inthe mental life of the individual, beforethey venture to state that anythingperceived via the subjective or objectivesensations can be said to be scientificallytrue or to prove the existence of a forceoutside the body but related to thebody—a force that preserves in itsexistence outside of the body somethinglike a conscious personality.

5:7.3 1. Spirit, in a theological sense,is an invisible, non-material entity, or intelligence, operating in the spiritualworld in accordance with spiritual lawsand for the accomplishment of spiritualpurposes; and limited, in its contact withthe human mind, to the making ofspiritual suggestions and to communi-cating with the spiritual monitors whichare assumed to indwell the human mind.

[See 5:0.1 and 5:5.2, above.] The proof of their existence must ever bewithout the pale of science, and theirrecognition is purely and wholly a matterof belief. Their contemplation is a matterof faith, and their reality and existenceare not for scientific investigation.

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5:7.4 2. Spirits, as recognized andstudied by science, as pertaining tomediumship and the phenomena ofmodern spiritualism, are psychicprojections—fantastic creations of thesubconscious mind. They have a biologicorigin; they are the deceptive offspring ofa working conspiracy between thephysiological and psychological powersresident in, and operating upon the deepand unknown deposits of humansensation, memory and emotions, whichwe commonly call the subconsciousmind, but which is more properly andscientifically known as “the greatUnconscious.”

5:7.5 The spirits, then, that we dealwith so largely in the study ofspiritualism, exist within the humanbody, and from the realms of theunconscious centers of the mind projectthemselves outward for the production oftheir phenomena. They do not existwithout the body and come in to possessthe body, and thus work upon the mind asan extraneous spiritual force.

In brief In brief,

as far as science has been able todiscover,

the direct experience we have of mind or“spirit” is only in connection with thebody,

the spirit operating in connection withoccult manifestations functions only inconnection with the body,

and so far science has not been broughtface to face with any phenomena thatcannot be adequately explained on thishypothesis, or that cannot be reproducedby psychic manipulations and inaccordance with natural laws.

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5:7.6 Science, therefore, makes twochallenges to the spiritualist, and they areas follows:

and it is a matter of deduction pure andsimple to prove (1) its existence apartfrom the body and

5:7.7 1. That the existence of a spiritseparate and apart from the body,

operating to produce spiritualistic pheno-mena, is as yet unproved.

The scientist calls for further proof—science asks for evidence.

(2) its ability 5:7.8 2. Science challenges the abilityof spirits,

the projections of the subconscious mind,

to affect bodies with which it is notdirectly connected. Some of the diffi-culties of such proof, not to say itsimpossibility, I shall attempt to show inwhat follows (L 45-46).

to affect any human body with which it isnot connected,

except as through the ordinary agenciesof suggestion and other well-knownchannels of psychic influence.

8. WHY ARE MEDIUMSNECESSARY?

III: MEDIUMSHIP (Jones 33)

5:8.1 The spiritualists tell us that

30 The medium never brings ourspirit-friends to us. We bring our ownfriends. The medium is the keeper of thegate, permitting us to pass through.... Themedium forms the connecting linkbetween the two phases of life.

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It is as though we had a house wired forelectric lights. Unless we had the light-bulbs to insert in the sockets, we wouldnot have light. We can never have onlypart of the conditions and still receivecommunications (J 41).

mediums are necessary for the samereason that you have to have copper wireto conduct electricity; you cannot conductit through a board fence.

They tell us we cannot do it on our ownhook, we have to have peculiar, sensitivemediums. You see our preparatorytraining has built up in us the idea thatspecial people can do special things andit is very easy to make us believe thistheory about spirit mediums.

[See 5:2.1, above.] 5:8.2 The psychic laws regulating thisthing are based on what we call “complexformations.” The brain cells in the humanbody are organized on the principle of thesolar system. And these things canbecome dissociated so that you can haveone part of your mind talk with the otherpart. You know how one part of yourmind can be so engrossed in thought, thatyou can read two pages and never knowit, never have the slightest recollection ofwhat you read. We do these things andthey are perfectly normal and natural.

[Compare: [T]he incompetent workman whoascribes his failure to the inferiority of his tools andthe unfair treatment meted out to him by hisemployer is admittedly still sane, while the manwho complains to the police that he is the victim ofan organised boycott is certified to be sufferingfrom “delusions of persecution” and is removed toan asylum (Hart 139-40).]

If you can keep your thoughts centered onspiritualism you are all right, but if yougo too far with them, we will put you in ablue wagon and haul you off to thepsychopathic hospital. Just as long as yousay you hear a spirit talking to you youcan get away with it; but as soon as yousay you hear voices and see things theywill put you in an asylum. One leads toaffluence and a large income, and theother incarcerates you.

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5:8.3 Not only do we find morewomen functioning as mediums, ascompared with men, but

[contd from 5:8.1] 31 The spirit-worldtells us that women are better mediumsthan men. Their forces are finer. A greatmany male mediums lose their medium-ship in a period of ten years.... There aremany women mediums who havepractised their mediumship anywherefrom thirty to fifty years, without anyapparent loss of their powers (J 41).

we find instruction from the spirit worldexplaining that women are bettermediums than men.

5:8.4 The spiritualists claim that

[contd] 32 The woman medium is lesslikely to care for material possessionsthan the male medium. The more themedium seeks the pleasures and things ofthe world, the smaller that medium’sdegree of mediumship. The more spiritualthe medium, the finer the forces and themore wonderful the communications (J41).

women are less likely to be mercenarythan men.

V: SPIRIT EXISTENCE (Jones 56)

18 We are told that the spirit-world They further tell us that the spiritualworld,

inferring at least some degree ofmateriality,

is much more beautiful than our world,that it has what we call scenery—asurface of their earth, or ground, orwhatever it may be termed;

is much more beautiful than our world,

and one writer goes on to describe, insuperlative terms,

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that they have rivers and lakes, but nooceans; that they have large and beautifulcities, live in homes that are far morebeautiful than ours, eat food, have rest-periods corresponding our own sleep,some form of bodily waste and repair, arethe same size they were on earth, live asocial as well as an intellectual existence,and converse through mediums withspirits in higher spheres, who are asinvisible to them as they are to us (J 59).

their rivers, lakes, and oceans, theirbeautiful cities and homes;

[See eight rows up.] and explains that a woman’s finer senseand more artistic tendency is more easilybrought into sympathetic contact with,and more highly appreciative of, thosethings, and therefore serves as the betterchannel between the higher spiritual andlower material worlds.

5:8.5 So far as my personal experiencegoes, I have never detected anything inthe line of mediumship, thus far, whichwould call for a resort to a spiritualhypothesis for explanation. I have met, inmy practice, peculiar psychic cases, someof which I have not been able fully tounderstand in the light of physiologic andpsychologic laws, but as before stated,none of these have been mediums, and inno case did they claim to communicatewith the dead.

5:8.6 In ordinary psychic experience,when disjunction occurs in the mind—when a constellation of complexesinaugurate an insurrection and try to setup business for themselves, they usuallyseek to displace the real self—to supplantthe actual ego of the personality—andthus establish themselves in the place ofpower, and immediately to assumecontrol of the mental actions and nervousbehavior of the individual. This is whatwe see taking place in hysteria.

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Now, it seems that in the case of themedium,

[The most common explanation of “spiritcommunication,” next to fraud on the one hand andspirits on the other, is the hypothesis of thesecondary personality, or the “other self” of themedium.

this disjuncted, or insubordinate, minorpersonality, instead of crossing swordswith the reigning ego of the psychicrealm, rather chooses to establish itself asa separate entity—as a minor personality,distinct and separate from the mind andego of its origin.

Often when the medium is in a hypnotic or trancecondition a group or groups of latent brain cellsseem to be quickened, and what appears to beanother personality takes control and writes andtalks through the medium and claims to be aforeign intelligence (Funk 71).]

Thus it professes to be foreign to the realself of the individual, alleging that it is anoutside entity, often a discarnate spirit,present from a higher and invisible world.

5:8.7 How easy for this detached groupof psychic complexes to take one stepfurther, after organizing itself into asubconscious source of feeling andinformation, to relegate to itself theprerogatives of a departed spirit, and topalm itself off on the credulous andsuperstitious mind of its indwelling as a“spirit control,” as the discarnate spirit ofsome departed friend or relative of recenttimes, or the disembodied ego of someprince or hero of olden days. So our newpersonality, so mystically set up inbusiness, proceeds to borrow the mindand muscles, the talking mechanism ofthe medium, as a means of expression onthis so-called material plane to which ithas returned for various alleged bene-volent purposes.

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9. THE TECHNIQUE OF“PROJECTION”

5:9.1 “Projection” is the technique ofreversing the physiology of theconduction of sensory impulses from thebody to the brain, there to form ideas,images, memories, etc. In “projection”this process is reversed—ideas andimages are aroused in the mind and fromthere travel outward and are recognizedthrough the sense organs as having hadorigin outside the body. Ordinarily, ourvisual images and our auditory sounds gowith the feelings and emotions whichthey arouse and which accompany them,for registration and attention in thearchives of memory; I say ordinarilythese sights and sounds, as well as othersensory impressions, originate outside ofthe body as the result of its contact withthe external and material world.

[Compare: It has been suggested that [hallucin-ations] might be due to a reversal of the nervousprocess by which a sensation reaches the brain. Theexternal object produces the sensation, this travelsalong a nerve causing a perception, this perceptionis stored in the memory, and then, when veryvividly reawakened, causes impulses to travelbackward along the nerve to the periphery with theproduction of a feeling very like sensation (Walsh 604).]

5:9.2 Now, if we imagine a reversal ofthis process—that instead of thesesymbols of material things, these sightsand sounds originating without the mindand external to it, and passing in assensory impressions from the nervoussystem to the brain, to be thererecognized by the mind and therein to berecorded and retained as memories—ifwe can imagine a reversal of this processso that we would have arising, down inthe unconscious centers of the mind,various memory images and soundswhich would travel outward over thenerves to the center of hearing and vision,there to be recognized,

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there in reality to appear just as if theyhad come from without in the normalmanner (and as they no doubt originallydid arise before they were buried in theforgotten regions of the unconscious),then you will have a picture in your mindof the technique of projection. Yourimagination need go but one stepfarther—to throw these sounds andimages from the seeing and hearingcenters of the mind, out of the body intothe external world, and you have thefoundation all laid for perfecthallucination. In this way an hystericalindividual, a spiritualistic medium, orinsane person, will be able to see andhear things that do not exist—that is, thatdo not exist in the external world—andthey are not discoverable except to thosepeople who, from whatever cause, are“seeing things” and “hearing things.”

V: THE MECHANISMS (Lay 147)

§7. Projection (Lay 165)

[contd] Projection is normal in everyone,

5:9.3 This sort of “projection” is, to acertain extent, normal to all of us,

and is no doubt unconsciously practiced(to a limited degree) by most of us.

Occasionally we run across an individualwho has become a victim of this sort ofthing in one particular phase of his life.He is thoroughly sane and rational inevery other avenue of thought, but onsome one thing he has become amonomaniac. He hears and sees thingsthat are not real, his mind is notcontrolled by reason and is not dominatedby logic in this particular realm ofthought, as in all others

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but in those persons in which it reachesan abnormal degree it is considered oneof the symptoms of paranoia.

and when this is well marked and classic,we say that such a patient has paranoia.

We project an idea upon some person orthing when we attribute to that person orthing ideas or feelings that reallyoriginate in our own minds; and, inattributing to a person an idea, we thinkthat he has that idea.

5:9.4 We are quite likely to projectsome of our own fears and feelings onother people—

it is notorious that we have a tendency tojudge other people by ourselves.

For example, a bad conscience is a quiteuniversal instance of normal projection. Ifwe have done anything bad, it is bad onlybecause other people think it bad if theyknew we had done it.... So it is evidentthat our judgment of the morality of ourown actions is practically in everyinstance the criticism which we know orimagine other people would make of thataction (L 165-66).

We judge many of our own acts by theway in which we think our friends andneighbors would judge us.

Our standards of morality are largelythose that are “projected” from theconsciences of other people upon us. Weare influenced by tribal standards; we aregoverned largely by fashion; we regulateour lives in accordance with convention;we are constantly interchanging ideas andfeelings, emotions and reactions, betweenourselves and other people.

5:9.5 Origin and Nature of Projection.

§8. Animism (Lay 168)

It would seem that

[contd] The earliest type of thoughtamong peoples before the era of simplestcivilization was a projection of their ownideas and feelings impartially upon otherpersons and inanimate things

primitive people—savages—were wontto project their ideas and emotionalreactions on a great variety of things,both animate and inanimate,

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and so these simple children of Naturecame to endow

whether motionless, like rocks, or movingthings, like clouds or rivers, the moon,sun and stars (L 168).

rocks, clouds, rivers, not to mention thesun, moon and stars,

with spirits and various supernaturalattributes as shown by the superstitiousbeliefs of ancient peoples, as well as thehighly organized mythology of theGreeks and other olden tribes.

As the race developed it was observedthat

But other people and animals havebreath. He can see and feel it too. Theytoo have spirits (L 169).

animals breathed,

and then the savage saw the mist arisefrom the waterfall, looking not unlike

On cold mornings he can see [his breath]leave his nostrils (L 169).

the condensation of his breath on a frostymorning.

How easy for the primitive mind toreason that

The waterfall has a spirit. He can see itpassing from the cataract in a fine mist.

the waterfall had a spirit as shown in themist floating from the plunging waters.

The trees have spirits too, which gather infilm clouds on the mountain sides (L169).

And so, later on, the trees were endowedwith spirits,

and the whole primitive psychology of aspirit world was built up—which stillclings to the human mind and infests thehuman consciousness, predisposing insuch a deep-seated, pathological fashion,the men and women, even of a civilizedday and generation, to the sophistries andvagaries of spiritualism.

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10. THE “REALITY FEELING”


§9. Reality Feeling an Internal Sensation (Lay34)

5:10.1 Thus we see that in certainpeculiar types and temperaments

In short, my reality feeling workspretty well in conjunction with vision inall the ordinary experiences of life. Ibelieve it does also with other people andwith other sense qualities of conscious-ness as well as vision (L 35).

the “reality feeling” works very well inconnection with the clairaudientstate—automatic hearing.

IX: COLLECTIVE HYPNOSIS(Schofield 155)

Power in Crowds (Schofield 157)

And it is easy to suppose that in a seancemany individuals whose minds areattuned—who are en rapport as theprofessionals call it—would be able tosee and hear the same things the mediumwould. It is a sort of collective sensation,or collective illusion—

[W]hatever is presented to the collectivemind seems objective to the senses, andthus sights are seen, and sounds are heard (hallucinations, as in the rope trick), thatare merely the projection, objectively, ofideas that obsess the mind when in thiscondition, which may fairly be called“collective hypnotism” (S 158).

some one has called it “collectivehypnotism.”

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§9. Reality Feeling an Internal Sensation (Lay34)

But from time immemorial there havealways been people who have attemptedto give objective validity to their visualand auditory images.

5:10.2 Every now and then some onearises who attempts to make other peoplebelieve in the things which they see andhear in their own minds.

Seers have seen visions Self-styled “prophets” arise to convinceus of the reality of their visions.

and solitary hermits and others haveheard voices, which means only that thefeeling of reality has become detachedfrom external sensation and, in more thanordinary intensity, has attached itself tosome visual or auditory image (L 35).

Odd geniuses appear who tell us of thevoices they hear,

and if they seem fairly sane and sociallyconventional in every way, they aresometimes able to build up vast follow-ings, to create cults and establishchurches; whereas, if they are too bold intheir imaginings, if they see a little too faror hear a little too much, they arepromptly seized and quickly lodged safewithin the confines of an insane asylum.

5:10.3 When an individual has a greatvariety of these visualizations, and whenhe hears too many voices, we readily draghim from his pedestal as prophet or highpriest of spiritualism, haul him before asanity commission, adjudge him insaneand confine him in the crazy house. Thatis the penalty of allowing his “feeling ofreality” to once gain possession of thehuman intellect, of indulging in thefailure to discriminate between thecreatures of consciousness and thecreatures of the material world, in thepractical affairs of life.

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5:10.4 If we intently believe anything,if we ardently will to believe a certainthing, it greatly helps us in transferringour memory images and our imaginativecreations of the mind from one psychicassociation to another;

[contd] The cause of this transfer ofassociation from the association of feelingof reality with external visual sensation to

that is, to transfer the “feeling of reality,”which belongs to an external visual sense,

the association of feeling of reality with avisual image

to an association that is purely andproperly a visual image of consciousness;

(or its transfer from sensation to image inthe auditory or any other quality)

or to transfer a “feeling of reality”connected with the reception of soundwaves through the external ear, to aconcept or sensation of sound which isinternal in origin,

but which is made real to consciousnessby such a transfer of these emotions andreactions which go by the name of“reality feeling.”

will be taken up in the second part of thisbook. Here, however, it should be saidthat in the nature of belief and in therelation which belief bears to theunconscious wish, there is an adequateand perfectly comprehensible cause forthe transfer... (L 35-36).

11. DOUBLE PERSONALITY

5:11.1 Double, or multiple personality(for sometimes there are more than two)is one of the most interesting psychicphenomena to be described in moderntimes.

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That an individual may actually possessa dual psychic nature, may actually beone person one day and another thefollowing, and still a third a few dayssubsequently, is a fact now well estab-lished in the study of abnormalpsychology.

5:11.2 Interesting as it would be furtherto go into this question here, space willnot permit, and we can only touch upon itas an illustration of the manner in whichsome sorts of psychic phenomena may beadequately explained.

5:11.3 In cases of double personality,individuals may wander off and be underthe guidance of the subordinatepersonality, and then return, after days orweeks, not knowing where they havebeen or what has transpired.

A P P E N D I X C : M U L T I P L EPERSONALITY (The Physiology of Faith andFear 524)

Under the influence of one personality,

“ ... I will give a few illustrations: If there isone thing which Miss Beauchamp has aperfect horror of, it is snakes and spiders.They throw her into a condition of terror.One day Sally went out into the countryand collected some snakes and spiders andput them into a little box.

a girl will go into the woods and gathergarter snakes and bring them home inboxes

She brought them home and did them upin a little package, and addressed them toMiss Beauchamp,

addressed to her other personality,

just to witness the consternation of theother individual

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and when B. I. opened the package, theyran out and about the room and nearly senther into fits. In order to get rid of them shehad to handle them, which added to herterror...” (PF&F 527).

when the wriggling reptiles crawled outof the box when it was opened.

One personality is afraid of snakes, theother is not;

“[Sally] cannot read French or any ofthe foreign languages which MissBeauchamp knows, and she cannot writeshorthand; in short, she lacks a great manyof the educational accomplishments whichthe other character possesses...” (PF&F526).

again one personality may be able towrite shorthand, the other cannot; onemay speak French fluently, while theother knows not a word of the language.

Those are but a few illustrations to showhow one personality may knowabsolutely nothing of what the otherpersonality, dwelling in the same mind,may say or do.

[Compare 5:0.1 and 7:5.1.] 5:11.4 It is my opinion that aboutseventy-five per cent of our common-place spiritistic manifestations arefrauds—conscious, deliberate, commer-cial frauds, and that about twenty-five percent belong to the order which we aredescribing at this time, and include thepossible cases of actual spiritual orsupernatural phenomena, which I, it willbe observed, all the way along, accept aspossible, though I have never personallycome in contact with but one or two casesthat, could lay even remote claim tofalling into this last named group.

5:11.5 What a calamity that theuncertain cerebrations of such abnormalminds should come to be regarded bysuch a large number of people asconstituting information from asupernatural source, and wisdom ofDivine origin;

36


or that these ebullitions of automatic,psychic origin in the human mind, shouldcome to be regarded by tens of thousandsof persons as communications from thediscarnate spirits of departed friends andrelatives. The time has certainly come toapply common sense methods ofreasoning to our investigations of psychicphenomena, and to apply rigid, sober-minded, scientific tests to all men andwomen who claim to be channels ofeither supernatural communication, ormediums through whom disembodiedspirits manifest themselves to living menand women.

12. SOMNAMBULISM

5:12.1 Perhaps there is little differencebetween the performances of the sleepwalker and the phenomena of the trancemedium. They are each in more or less ofan unnatural and artificial state of mind,and are more or less automaticallyexecuting their various actions.

5:12.2 In other cases, when thesesubordinate personalities or constella-tions of complexes start on a rampagethey exceed the limits of a mere mentalmood, although they fall short of carryingtheir insurrection to the point of anindependent existence such as would beexemplified by trances, cataleptichysteria, or spirit voices, and then such anindividual experiences the keen sufferingwhich accompanies the variegatedvagaries of neurasthenia, brain fag,nervous exhaustion, psychasthenia, etc.

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5:12.3 We are all more or less familiarwith the somnambulistic phenomena ofthe “sleep walker;” how he will auto-matically perform marvelously intricatepedestrian feats while oblivious to allsurroundings, and utterly unconscious inhis own mind of the things which he doesas he goes forth on these extraordinarynocturnal strolls. This common pheno-menon is so well understood thatattention only needs to be called to it toemphasize the fact that sleep walkers areunconscious of what they are doing andthat they continue to do it exceedinglywell as long as they are not aroused fromtheir slumbers, or otherwise molested intheir performance.

[Compare Janet 225.] 5:12.4 Now, in the case of numerousphenomena connected with abnormalpsychology in general and with medium-istic performances in particular, we haveconditions that are in every way identicalwith, and analogous to, the sleep walker’sautomatic performances. In the case ofthe sleep walker, the subconscious mindis directing the legs—the feet are made toexecute the mandates of the greatunconscious—while in the case ofautomatic writing it is the hands that havefallen under the control of the sub-conscious centers. In automatic talkingthe tongue and speaking centers of themind are dominated by the unconscious.In the case of hearing voices and seeingimages of supposed spirits, we have thesame general condition prevailing, onlyin these latter cases it is the sense ofhearing and the sense of sight that havebecome in their turn the victims ofsubconscious domination—the subject ofthis outward projection of subconsciousmachinations.

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5:12.5 An Interesting Case.

IX: SPECIMENS OF THE EVIDENCES U P P L I E D B Y P S Y C H I C A LRESEARCH (McComb 166)

THE AMAZING STORY OF DORIS FISHER(McComb 179)

Not long ago Doctor Prince reported acase of dissociation, or multiplepersonality, which is very interestingwhen studied in the light of mediumship.

It should be borne in mind that in thesecases of multiple personality

“Dissociation,” which is a phenom-enon of very rare occurrence, butrecognized by all modern psychologists,consists (employing the psychologicallyorthodox explanation) in a fissuring ofthe mind,

the mind is sort of split up, or “fissured,”

much as the main branches of a tree partfrom the trunk, into two subsistences, inwhich case they are called “dualpersonalities,” or into more than two,which are accordingly known as“multiple personalities” (McC 179-80).

after the fashion of a tree with manybranches

which in turn are connected withnumerous similar sub-branches.

5:12.6 This interesting individual wasDoris Fisher,

At the time that Doris was discoveredby Mrs. Prince and taken in hand by Dr.Walter F. Prince, she had five person-alities including the primary one.

who had five personalities including theprimary one.

But previous to the death of her mother in1906, there were three

Before the death of her mother she had atleast two or three personalities,

the uncertainty being due to the fact that

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(if “Sleeping Margaret” was a personalityand not, as she has since claimed, aspirit), of which two were of such natureas to then manifest themselves tobeholders (McC 181).

she claimed one of her personalities wasa spirit.

Here we have scientific proof of thepsychic origin of much that appears in theperformances of modern spirit medium-ship.

13. AUTOMATIC WRITING

5:13.1 The automatic talkers andwriters, those who “speak with tongues,”etc., constitute the most interesting groupof individuals who live their queer livesout on the borderland between the normaland the abnormal in psychology. Theseindividuals are very interesting to study,from a psychologic standpoint.

[These cases, several of which the author had theopportunity of fully examining a few years ago, areillustrations of those peculiar and unusualautomatic talking performances which come to beregarded as the miraculous gift of tongues ... (ThePhysiology of Faith and Fear 462-63).]

I have recently been privileged tothoroughly examine and carefully studynot less than half a dozen men andwomen who are supposed to have the“gift of tongues,”

and who are prominently identified withnumerous present-day religious move-ments that exhibit these gifts of the spiritas evidence of Heavenly authenticity.

VIII: AUTOMATIC WRITING (McCabe129)

5:13.2 I have had some very interestingexperiences in connection with the studyof automatic writers.

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I remember one case which came undermy observation some twenty years ago,and after giving this man a thoroughcourse of instruction regarding thephysiology and psychology of his strangeperformances, he gradually lost the powerof automatic writing and for the past sixor eight years has been wholly unable toindulge in this phenomenon. Years agohe was able to

But beyond [professional mediums]are hundreds, or thousands, of privateindividuals who discover that they aremediums. They take a pencil in theirhands,

take a pencil in his hand,

fall into a passive, dreamy state, drop off into a sort of passive dream-state,

and presently the pencil “automatically”writes messages

when suddenly the pencil would start into write messages,

as he supposed,

from the spirit world. having their origin in the spirit world.

Others use the planchette (a pencil fixedin a heart-shaped board which, when themedium’s fingers are on it, writes on asheet of paper) or the ouija board (inwhich the apex of the heart spells outmessages by pointing rapidly to the lettersof the alphabet painted on a larger boardover which it travels). I have studied allthree forms, and may take them togetheras “automatic writing” (M 133).

In this connection let me record it as myopinion that automatic writing and theautomatism manifested in the ouija boardperformance are very nearly, if not quite,one and the same thing.

That is, I regard them as identical in theirpsychologic roots—in their psychicorigin and direction.

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5:13.3 I have found it exceedinglydifficult to segregate the sincere andsubconscious automatic writers fromthose performers whose writing is moreor less controlled—

[contd] The first question is whetherthis can be done unconsciously. If suchmessages are consciously spelt or writtenby the medium, it is, of course, fraud,because the messages purport to comefrom the dead. My own experienceconvinces me that even here there is avast amount of fraud (M 133).

those who are to a certain degreeconsciously fraudulent.

5:13.4 There seems to be an inherenttendency on the part of these psychicfreaks and so-called “sensitives” toexaggerate their gifts and, childlike,magnify their performances.

The mental attitude of the medium seemsto be to try and

People get into the attitude of the child. “Ican do what you can’t do,” you con-stantly hear the child say to its fellows.There is a good deal of the child in all ofus (M 134).

outdo other “psychics,”

and so there is ever present this sort ofurge to the perpetration of fraud.

But while there is much fraud even inautomatic writing,

5:13.5 Notwithstanding the frauds tobe found among automatic writers,

there are certainly hundreds of mediumsof this description who quite honestlybelieve that they are spirit-controlled (M134).

there is, nevertheless, a residue who arewholly sincere, honest men and womenwho believe they are “spirit controlled,”

or that in some other way their automaticwritings have a spiritual origin.

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14. TELEPATHY AND MINDREADING

VIII: THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCEDRAWINGS (Bennett 89)

5:14.1 Telepathy has been variouslycalled mind reading, thought trans-ference, and universal intelligence, and ithas been more associated with thepropaganda of spiritualism in GreatBritain than in this country. This isprobably due to the fact that early in hisspiritistic investigations Myers attacheda great deal of importance to the role oftelepathy in connection with variousspiritistic and occult manifestations.Myers was so impressed with theprovince of telepathy in the study ofspiritualism that

The reader is referred to a passage in theconcluding chapter, quoted from Mr.Myers, in which he claims an exaltedposition for Telepathy, as almost thefundamental doctrine of SpiritualisticPhilosophy (B 109).

he once stated that it was “almost thefundamental doctrine of spiritualisticphilosophy.”

5:14.2 Telepathy should not beconfused with alleged second sight,intuition, clairvoyance, etc. It rests uponan entirely different and separate hypo-thesis. In this connection it is well toremind the reader that these peculiarpsychic tendencies appear to run infamilies.

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VIII: THE ARGUMENT FROMPSYCHICAL RESEARCH (McComb140)

1. The telepathic hypothesis.

5:14.3 I think the consensus of opinionamong the scientists2 today would be that

The word “telepathy” is a convenientsymbol

telepathy is merely a popular word-symbol which has come into use

to cover coincidences between livingminds

in explanation of certain coincidenceswhich take place between livingindividuals

and which are to be explained in twogeneral ways:

not due to chance; but we have not evenan inkling of the process by which thesecoincidences come about (McC 160).

5:14.4 1. Chance. Coincidences, pureand simple.

5.14.5 2. Similarity of hereditarypredisposition, or environmental influ-ences, either or both of which tend tocause two individuals to think of thesame thing, approximately, at the sametime and under similar circumstances.

[See The Mind at Mischief chart 19:2.1-2 for mention ofPopenoe’s research into identical twins.]

5:14.6 In consideration of the fact thathereditary similarity may account for theapparent coincidence of two individualsin different parts of the world thinking ofthe same thing at the same time, we maycite the many experiences recorded ofidentity of thought on the part of so-called “identical twins.”

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5:14.7 The Universal Mind.


TELEPATHY AND MAGNETIC HEALING (ThePhysiology of Faith and Fear 463)

This plausible hypothesis of aUniversal Mind completely does away withthe assumption of the transfer of thoughtfrom one finite mind to another.

This plausible hypothesis of a UniversalMind completely does away with theassumption of the transfer of thoughtfrom one finite mind to another.

This is a Universal Intelligence whoseemanations radiate to all who are inharmony with the Divine Mind.

There may be a Universal Intelligencewhose emanations radiate to all who arein harmony with the Divine Mind.

Every soul who is “in tune with theInfinite” enjoys the possibility of receivingmessages and inspirations from the HolySpirit.

Every soul who is “in tune with theInfinite” would enjoy the possibility ofreceiving messages and inspirations fromthis Central Source.

If this is true, it is not difficult to see thattwo minds may have the same thought atthe same time,

If this is true, it is not difficult to see thattwo minds may have the same thought atthe same time

just as two wireless telegraph stationswhich are attuned alike may receive, at thesame time, the same message, which hasbeen flashed from a vessel many milesfrom each station.

just as two wireless telegraph stationswhich are attuned alike may receive, atthe same time, the same message, whichhas been flashed from a vessel out at seamany miles from each station.

Many good people adhere to this view andderive comfort therefrom.

Many good people adhere to this viewand derive comfort therefrom.

Their own intimate experiences, theyaffirm, supply testimony in its favor(PF&F 465).

Their own intimate experiences, theyaffirm, supply testimony in its favor.

[contd] Even the American Indian hadin his religion the “Great Spirit.”

5:14.8 Even the American Indian hadin his religion, the “Great Spirit.”

All modern religions recognize thepresence of a universal spirit.

All modern religions recognize thepresence of a universal spirit.

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It is a cardinal thought of Christianity thatGod should pour out His “Spirit upon allflesh.”

It is a cardinal thought of Christianity thatGod should pour out His “Spirit upon allflesh.”

Jesus told His followers before Hisdeath—before He departed, that He wouldsend them the “Comforter,” the “HolyGhost,” who would teach and guide them“into all truth” (PF&F 465).

Jesus told His followers before Hisdeath—before He departed, that Hewould send them the “Comforter,” the“Holy Ghost,” who would teach andguide them “into all truth.”

[contd] The author is not disposed tofollow the deceptive and illogical reasoningof the telepathist in order to find anexplanation of these common experiencesof thought harmony and identity.

5:14.9 I am not disposed to follow thedeceptive and illogical reasoning of thetelepathist in order to find an explanationof these common experiences of thoughtharmony and identity.

We are rather disposed to accept theequivalent of the Christian doctrine of theomnipresent Spiritual Mind, the doctrine ofthe Great Spiritual Teacher,

We are rather disposed to accept theequivalent of the Christian doctrine of theomnipresent Spiritual Mind, the doctrineof the Great Spiritual Teacher,

as a basis for the phenomena describedunder the title of telepathy (PF&F 465).

as a basis for some of the phenomenacommonly described under the head oftelepathy.

[contd] If such phenomena find theirexplanation either in the doctrine of theUniversal Mind or in any other doctrinewhich assumes the activity of spiritualforces in their production,

5:14.10 If such phenomena find theirexplanation either in the doctrine of theUniversal Mind or in any other doctrinewhich assumes the activity of spiritualforces in their production,

they, of course, lie outside the realm ofphysical science and in that of personalreligious belief; they are problems inspiritual science (PF&F 465).

they, of course, lie outside the realm ofphysical science and in that of personalreligious belief; they are problems inspiritual science.

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5:14.11 Mrs. Piper and ThoughtTransference.

V: TYPICAL CASES OF SEVERALCLASSES OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA(Funk 166)

Class V: Indicating intelligences outside of humanbodies (Funk 187)

By the time Mrs. Piper got into thespiritualistic game it was becoming ratherdangerous for mediums to indulge inphysical manifestations, and so Mrs.Piper stuck rather closely to the direct-voice mode of transmitting spiritmessages, occasionally indulging inperformances that bordered on the trance.

CASE 2. Prof. James H. Hyslop tellsof the following concerning his firstseries of many tests through the mediumMrs. Piper:

Professor Hyslop at the time of thisseries was personally unknown to Mrs.Piper. He went into her presence indisguise, and communications came tohim through her while she was in a tranceor cataleptic condition (F 190).

Prof. James Hyslop, in his investigationof Mrs. Piper,

was so impressed by the large number ofcoincidences—he was so influenced byMrs. Piper’s shrewd guessing—that

The Professor has published, under theauspices of the Society for PsychicalResearch, a complete report of this seriesof sittings, every word uttered, howevertrivial, having been taken down inshorthand and published in this report.

in a published report of his sittings withthis medium

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The result of this series of sittings was toconvince Professor Hyslop that the deadcan and do at times commune in aphysical way with the living, and that inthis case they did identify themselves tohim so that he was convinced that he wastalking to his father and other of hisrelatives (F 190-91).

he advanced the opinion, that no matterwhat his ideas might be about Mrs.Piper’s ability to communicate with thedead,

he was sure of her ability to communicatewith the minds of the living.

In one case it was claimed that

Here is a fact that must be included in theexplanation: Professor Hyslop assures usthat the Society for Psychical Researchhas secured transatlantic communicationthrough Mrs. Piper in America andanother medium in England,

Mrs. Piper was able to project a trans-Atlantic communication, getting amessage from some living mind inEngland,

and it was asserted that

the message having started in English andbeen received in Latin,

this particular message while started outfrom Great Britain in English wasreceived in this country in Latin,

and yet it was claimed that

neither medium understanding Latin (F192).

Mrs. Piper understood nothing of theLatin tongue.

[Compare 3:6.3.] 5:14.12 Most of the investigators whostudied Mrs. Piper, if they believed at allin telepathy, usually reached theconclusion that her seances were largelyto be explained on that hypothesis.

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And so it seems that the theory oftelepathy has become, in recent years,very convenient to the psychic researcheras a means of accounting for a vastsphere of psychic phenomena which, onthe one hand, the investigators cannotprove to be fraudulent, and which, on theother hand, is not sufficiently evidentialto establish its claim to supernatural orspirit origin.

SOME MODERN SORCERY (Abbott193)

IV. The Use of the Card Servante and Blackboard(Abbott 211)

5:14.13 I recently attended a mindreading performance in which I amsatisfied that communications werecarried to the medium by means of radio.

[My brother-in-law] suggested to methe idea of ... wireless telephony ... Hethinks that an apparatus can be concealedon the person of the medium, with wiresleading to the same “watch-case receiver”on his ear. The tassel from the turban canconceal it if the medium be a gentleman,while if a lady, the hair can be dressedand combed so low as to conceal iteffectually. ... (A 213-14).

She wore a form of hair dressing whichextended high upon her head, and Ibelieve she had a radio antennaeconcealed within it, and her hair coveredher ears in such a manner that I amconvinced a small watch-case receivercould have been so concealed as toenable her to hear messages completely.

This is the first time I have seen amedium carry on such an exhibition

When the manager returns to thestage with the sealed envelopes, themedium, who is on the stage in full view,immediately begins giving tests while hewalks about (A 213).

and at the same time move about thestage.

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5:14.14 And it should be borne in mindthat most of these demonstrations areoffered to the public as proofs oftelepathy.

5:14.15 Natural Law and Telepathy.

IV: THE UNCONSCIOUS AS ANURGE (Lay 93)

§11. Magnification (Lay 130)

If telepathy is based on natural laws, thenany person who would master these lawscould practice telepathy.

If I could do this thing and it were ascientific fact,

If telepathy were based on science,

like telegraphy and telephony and gramo-phony or any other thing, anybody coulddo it.

like telegraphy, and gramophony, any-body could do it.

When radium was made by Curie, When radium was discovered by Curie,

his description of his process enabled anyother chemist having the same materialsto make the same product.

the description of the process of itsdetection was sufficient to enable anyother chemist, having the same materials,to secure the same product.

When Jenner told others how tovaccinate,

When Jenner published his discovery ofvaccination,

any physician could do the same. any other physician could perform theoperation.

When serum therapy was discovered, When antitoxin was discovered,

every physician was in a position to useit.

every intelligent physician was in aposition to use it successfully.

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When telepathy is scientifically proved, When telepathy is scientifically proved,

all I have said that I would do, if I could,will be possible for me and for any otherpsychologist as soon as he reads thedescription of the proper method. It hasnot yet been scientifically discovered (L133-34).

then can any and all psychologistspractise it.

Natural laws are universal in theirapplication.

1 5 . D R E A M S A N DSPIRITUALISM

“SPIRITS GUIDED HIS PLANS:GREAT RAIL BUILDER TELLS OFHELP GIVEN HIM: CAME TO HIM INDREAMS” (Anonymous)

5:15.1 Recently there appearedprominent mention in the daily press of acase of

New York. June 14—(Special)—Atan exhibition of spirit pictures at theAnderson galleries to-day, a railroadbuilder told how spirits had furnished himnightly with the plans for more than 3,000miles of track, which he constructed (A).

a railroad builder who claimed to beunder the control of spirits in theplanning and executing of his engineeringfeats.

Mr. Stilwell said that nearly all his life hehad made a secret of his powers, becausehe feared that people would think him a“nut.”

Mr. Stilwell said that nearly all his life hehad made a secret of his powers, becausehe feared that people would think him a“nut.”

For years, however, some of his friendsand many directors in companiesassociated with him, knew the source ofhis inspiration and believed in his spirits (A).

For years, however, some of his friendsand many directors in companiesassociated with him, knew the source ofhis inspiration and believed in his spirits.

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VI: UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION(Walsh 134)

SLEEP COMMUNICATIONS (Walsh 136)

[contd] Any one who has been thinkingmuch for several days about a problem islikely to wake up with the thought that hehas dreamed a solution of it, thoughunfortunately the solution has notremained in his memory.... I havediscussed dream life with many menengaged in serious work, and practicallyall of them confess to such experiences(W 136).

5:15.2 I am familiar with many caseslike this.

[Compare W 136-37, in which Walsh relates howdreams have provided inspiration to artists and ledscientists to solve problems.]

I know an inventor who dreams out mostof his inventions. I am acquainted with anauthor who dreams out the plans for mostof his books and the outlines of hischapters. I have a patient, a business man,who dreams out most of his financialdeals—and they usually turn out well,too. I have myself dreamed out many acomplicated problem, and the solution ofthe dream was very much better than theones I had worked out during my wakingmoments.

The fact that dreams may “come true,” orthat the conclusion reached in the dreamstate proves to be valuable or serviceable,in no way connects the dream life withsupernatural forces or with discarnatespirits.

5:15.3 I want to make it clear to youthat during sleep, the subconscious mindis in full commission, in fact is able to actmuch more freely, unhampered by therestraints and cautions of the higherpowers of reason, judgment, and logic;although it must not be inferred that thesubconscious mind does not reason—itdoes reason—

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[Mr. [Thomson Jay] Hudson maintains thatthe subjective mind is incapable of inductivereasoning, that deduction is its process, and that italways reasons deductively without error (Albert B.Olston, Mind Power and Privileges [1902]), p. 18.]

but it reasons largely by deduction, not somuch by induction.

5:15.4 We commonly meet with thoseindividuals who dream much concerningtheir work, and they secure manyvaluable suggestions from their dreams—though they are the exception, not therule. The average engineer who buildsrailroads by his dreams, or by theguidance of “spooks,” will make a sorrymess of the whole undertaking; but thereare exceptions, many of which I haveinvestigated and studied. But it is notnecessary to fall into the arms ofspiritualism in order to understand,explain, or account for these interestingand unusual occurrences.

[Our powers of phantasy find expression indaydreams and reveries. Phantasy represents the selfadrift. It is the state of mind one finds himself inwhile resting in a hammock on a beautiful summer’safternoon, oblivious of all surroundings, wide awake,and yet letting the thoughts drift down the stream ofmind without guidance, help, or interference (ThePhysiology of Faith and Fear 42).]

5:15.5 Many individuals secure fromtheir dreams suggestions just as theywould if they reclined in a hammock, outon a mountain side on a summer’safternoon, and allowed the phantasy torun riot in the mind,

and as they indulged in day reveries,permitted the marginal consciousness topush far up into the central conscious-ness, and thus by reflection andmeditation many new ideas will cometrooping into the conscious mind. Andthis is true, whether the meditations be ofthe religious sort, indulged in by thereligious thinker, or whether they be ofthe mechanical sort, indulged in by anengineer.

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5:15.6 An Experience of My Own.

Hilprecht’s Sleep Vision. (Walsh 137)

I had a friend, a physician, who died adozen years ago. We were very intimate,and two or three years back,

Quite as surprising a dream was thatof Prof. Hilprecht, of the University ofPennsylvania. He had been trying forsome time to decipher certain characterson ancient cylinders from the Orient. Inspite of much hard mental labor he hadbeen utterly unable to reach definiteconclusions. In the midst of work on the subject he dreamt one night that a priestof the olden time appeared to him

I well remember very vividly dreamingone night of his coming to me

and discussing quite minutely a certainarticle which I had in preparation, orwhich I contemplated preparing.

and read off the inscription that he had invain been trying to decipher.

The suggestions he gave me, or the ideasI gathered from our dream conversation,

were very interesting,

Immediately after waking he told his wifeof his dream and wrote down theinterpretation that had thus been given (W137).

and on waking up I jotted them down,feeling that I really had received avaluable “hunch.”

In fact I wrote the article along this line,and it proved to be something out of theordinary.

Now it would have been very easy for meto have utilized this as a demonstration ofthe return of the spirit, of spirit control,and of help from the spirit land, would itnot? Indeed, but for two reasons:

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5:15.7 1. I am not disposed to grab forspiritistic explanations for ordinaryphysical and psychic phenomena, and

5:15.8 2. After the article waspublished, in one of those periodicalhousecleanings that occur when one goesthrough the memoranda that accumulatein the desk drawers—I subsequentlyfound the outline for this article whichhad been prepared by me and forgotten,and I found that I had outlined it almostexactly as my departed medical frienddiscussed it with me in my dream, and yetI can say I had truly and wholly forgottenever having prepared these memoranda. Ihad written them down while traveling ona train one afternoon, en route toChicago, and mislaid it and had forgottenall about it.

[?]

5:15.9 The psychology of my exper-ience is simply this: the thing which I hadthought out in a day reverie came upagain with certain modifications in anight reverie, and this night reveriehappened to collide and become confusedwith the dream vision concerning mydeparted friend, and what was morenatural than that he and I should talk overthis, as we had talked over many similarthings in life. And yet how easy, withoutanalysis, it would be to proclaim myarticle, which was one of the most uniqueI probably ever prepared, as having beenindited by supernatural forces and havingbeen transmitted to me by the spirit of mydead colleague.

5:15.10 And so one remarkableexperience after another, as related bynumerous individuals, vanishes into thinair, when accurately analyzed.

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And yet I am frank to say that it would bevery difficult for me to explain thisexperience as I do, had I not subsequentlyfound the forgotten memorandacontaining the outline for my literaryeffort, as I had prepared it several yearsbefore. But such an experience helps usto understand some others which we arenot in a position to analyze in thefortunate manner of this particularexperience of mine.

1 6 . T R A N C E S A N DCATALEPSY


TRANCES AND CATALEPSY (The Physiology ofFaith and Fear 461)

It is not uncommon for persons in acataleptic trance to imagine themselvestaking trips to other worlds.

5:16.1 It is not uncommon for personsin a cataleptic trance to imaginethemselves taking trips to other worlds.

In fact, the wonderful accounts of theirexperiences, which they write out afterthese cataleptic attacks are over,

In fact, the wonderful accounts of theirexperiences, which they write out afterthese cataleptic attacks are over,

are so unique and marvellous as to serve asthe basis for founding new sects, cults, andreligions.

are so unique and marvellous as to servethe basis for founding new sects, cults,and religions.

Many strange and unique religiousmovements have thus been founded andbuilt up.

Many strange and unique religiousmovements have thus been founded andbuilt up.

It is an interesting study in psychology tonote that these trance mediums always seevisions in harmony with their owntheological beliefs.

It is an interesting study in psychology tonote that these trance mediums alwayssee visions in harmony with their owntheological beliefs.

For instance, a medium who believed in thenatural immortality of the soul,

For instance, a medium who believed inthe natural immortality of the soul,

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was always led around on her celestialtravels by some of her dead and departedfriends.

was always led around on her celestialtravels by some of her dead and departedfriends.

One day she changed her religiousviews—became a soul sleeper,

One day she changed her religiousviews—became a “soul sleeper,”

and ever after that, when having trances,she was piloted about from world to worldon her numerous heavenly trips by theangels;

and ever after that, when having trances,she was piloted about from world toworld on her numerous heavenly trips bythe angels;

no dead or departed friends ever madetheir appearance in any of her visions afterthis change in her belief (PF&F 461).

no dead or departed friends ever madetheir appearance in any of her visionsafter this change in her belief.

[contd] Nearly all these victims oftrances and nervous catalepsy, sooner orlater come to believe themselves to bemessengers of God and prophets ofHeaven;

5:16.2 Nearly all these victims oftrances and nervous catalepsy, sooner orlater come to believe themselves to bemessengers of God and prophets ofHeaven;

and no doubt most of them are sincere inthis belief.

and no doubt most of them are sincere intheir belief.

Not understanding the physiology andpsychology of their afflictions, theysincerely come to look upon their peculiarmental experiences as somethingsupernatural,

Not understanding the physiology andpsychology of their afflictions, theysincerely come to look upon theirpeculiar mental experiences as somethingsupernatural,

while their followers blindly believeanything they teach because of thesupposed divine character of these so-called revelations (PF&F 461).

while their followers blindly believeanything they teach because of thesupposed divine character of these so-called revelations.

5:16.3 As far as my actual experiencegoes, as far as I have personally been ableto test and observe those who havetrances, visions, and other seizures orexperiences of this sort, I have not yetcontacted with a case in which I couldnot, after a thorough-going psychologicresearch and painstaking physicalexaminations,

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determine fully—at least to my ownsatisfaction—those various psychic,chemical and physical influences whichquite fully accounted for their unusualand extraordinary behavior.3

5:16.4 Another most interestingphenomenon I have noticed in connectionwith trance mediums, who, as previouslyremarked, are in the majority of caseswomen, is that these trance or catalepticphenomena which in some respects arevery similar to attacks of majorhysteria—only carried out still further—Isay, it has been my experience that theyusually make their appearance afteradolescence has been established, and inno case which I have observed, or ofwhich I have known, have thesephenomena ever survived the appearanceof the menopause. The character of thephenomena associated with these femaleprophets or trance mediums is alwaysmodified by the appearance of the“change of life.”

1 7 . H Y P N O T I S M A N DPSYCHOANALYSIS

VI: SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES(Prince 147)

Neurograms may also function assubconscious processes exhibiting intelligenceand determining mental and bodily behavior.(Prince 150)

5:17.1 From our study of hypnotizedsubjects and trance mediums we concludethat

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The automatic script that describes thememories of a long-forgotten childhoodexperience may at the same time reason,indulge in jests, rhyme, express cognitionand understanding of questions—indeed(if put to the test), might not only pass aBinet-Simon examination for intelligence,

the subconscious mind would be able topass a very satisfactory Binet Simon test,

but take a high rank in a Civil Serviceexamination.

and in many cases to take a stiff civilservice examination.

If a subconscious mind—a marginalconsciousness, or whatever other name itmay be called—holds its memorymaterial in such an organized form as tomanifest such a high degree ofintelligence it should not be difficult forus to conceive of such a realm of themind as being wholly capable of thecreation and perpetration of the psychicfrauds which characterize modernspiritualism.

We must accept it as true—an establishedfact—that

In these more elaborate exhibitions ofsubconscious intelligence it is obviousthat there is an exuberant efflorescence ofthe residua deposited in manyunconscious fields by life’s experiencesand synthesized into a subconsciousfunctioning system (P 153-54).

the subconscious mind of man constitutesa practical, functioning system,

which embraces a creative imagination,association of ideas, employing a highdegree of subtle reasoning and keenjudgment, together with an ability ofdiscreet deception, that is positivelyuncanny.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS(Prince 634)

5:17.2 The subconscious may becomeresponsible for our spells of periodicdepression,

If so, moods, trance states, fugues,somnambulistic states, secondarypersonalities, and other hysterical statescome into being (P 642).

our temperamental moods, hystericalcatalepsy, trance states, somnambulisticwanderings, as well as the uniquephenomena of secondary personality.

And to any power of mind so versatile asthis, it requires not a great stretch of theimagination to understand how thesubconscious may be the birthplace of thedeceptive vagaries and the uniquehallucinations of spirit mediumship, forthis unconscious realm is richly endowedwith all the memory and experiencematerial of one’s past life.

5:17.3 The Unconscious Wish.

VII: SUBCONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE(Continued) (Prince 188)

IV. Subconscious intelligence underlyingdreams. (Prince 196)

[contd] As is well known, Freudadvanced the theory, now well fortifiedby numerous observations of others, thatunderlying a dream is a subconsciousprocess which fabricates the consciousdream. According to Freud and hisfollowers this subconscious process isalways an antecedent wish and the dreamis an imaginary fulfillment of that wish (P196).

If dreams represent an effort on the partof the subconscious during sleep toexperience wish-fulfillment,

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to project its wishes out into theconscious mind by means of thesymbolisms of the dream world, it mayalso be true that the mediumisticphenomena, in the form of visual andauditory hallucinations, spirit messagesand spirit forms, may be but arepresentation of the same effort of theunconscious to gain expression—toeliminate its complexes—to experiencewish-fulfillment.

5:17.4 When certain unstable types ofhuman beings have long desired andintensely wished, in their minds, tocommunicate with the dead, when theyhave studied, thought and prayed overthis problem; when they have faithfullyattended seances and have allowed thelongings of their souls to be focused andconcentrated on the thought, the desire todraw the veil aside and communicatewith the spirits beyond—I say, after allthis preliminary psychic preparation, it islittle wonder, then, that ultimately theirday dreams and reveries should begin toflow in the channel of wish-fulfillment,and that the overflowing content of thesubconscious should push itself up andout toward the attainment and realizationof those visions and experiences whichwould in some measure gratify thisintense longing of the soul.

XI: DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS(Dresser 155)

5:17.5 Owing to the widespreadprevalence of spiritistic teachings,

We have been prone to judge innerexperiences

there is a great tendency on the part ofmany people to confuse their innerexperiences or “inner voice”

by what we have heard about ghosts andapparitions,

with their beliefs about ghosts andapparitions,

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and the trickery through which credulouspeople have been misled.

all the while forgetting how tricky thesubconscious mind is in palming off onits owner the creatures of its owncreation.

Our scepticism has naturally beenincreased by all that we have learnedabout hallucinations.

It is failure to recognize this fact thatleads the insane and the near-insane tobecome victims of both hallucinationsand delusions.

We have learned to our discomfiture that It must be remembered that

the average mind cannot be trusted to tellprecisely what is objectively real evenwhen circumstantial evidence is calledfor. Then too we are doubtful aboutintrospection and the imagination, aboutany one who is in the least degreevisionary (D 158).

the average human mind cannot betrusted to tell exactly, precisely, andtruthfully what is going on in its owndepths.

5:17.6 Belief and Will.

VII: BELIEF BEFORE KNOWLEDGE(Lay 247)

§1. Belief (Lay 247)

In general,

[contd] Belief is the consciousexpression of an unconscious wish.

belief is but the conscious recognition orexpression of an unconscious desire orwish.

The unconscious wish of the individual isfor self-aggrandizement in all forms.

The dominant human wish is for self-glory, power and self-aggrandizement.

One of the greatest of all the forms ofhuman activity is that of the seer, who isone who can persuade his fellows that hecan not only see but hear, or in othersenses perceive, more than they. In allages and in all grades of society

All down through the ages,

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the seer has been accepted as one whosesubjective ego has been most extensive,just as the hero in the shape of king orgeneral has most enlarged his objectiveego (L 247-48).

outside of the military hero and thesovereign of the realm, a “seer” was themost honored of all men.

We look with reverence and awe uponthe men and women who are supposed tobe in touch with unseen power. We areinclined to worship those of our fellowswho have been able to push aside the veiland peer into the realms of another world.

The medium has become in our day aseer, one whose subjective ego hasenlarged itself beyond the bounds of theordinary man,

In modern times the “medium” hasbecome the successor of the ancient“seer.”

5:17.7 The ordinary clergyman, it istrue, reads his Bible and prays, and thenorates his message from the pulpit; butthe medium leans over the threshold ofanother world, and there—so he claims—actually hears the voices and sees theforms of spirit beings, angelic hosts anddeparted humans.

and he is worshipped in the modernmanner by all who feel the need for heroworship—of the subjective sort (L 248).

The medium today is worshiped as ahero,

adored as a “seer” by the faithfulbelievers in spiritualism—until of coursesuch time as the grand exposure results,the fraud is made manifest, the deceptionis disclosed, and even then many of thefaithful are slow to abandon their beliefin the spiritual powers of their chosenmedium.

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1 8 . T A P P I N G T H ESUBCONSCIOUS

III: CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTENEXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTI-FICIAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL LIFE(Prince 49)

I. Normal Life (Continued) (Prince 49)

Subconscious perceptions. (Prince 52)

[contd] It is not difficult to show thatperceptions of the environment

5:18.1 It has been scientificallydemonstrated that the subconscious mindcan hold, formulate, and subsequentlygive forth for expression, ideas, images,emotions, and associations of ideas,

which never even entered the fringe of thepersonal consciousness, i. e., of which theindividual was never even dimly aware,may be conserved (P 52).

which have never been consciouslyrecognized or entertained for oneinstant—even in the fringe of thepersonal consciousness.

Never have these things been brought tothe attention of the individual, so that intheir subsequent upbringing from thesubconscious depths they are recognizedas things wholly foreign to that very mindwhich has just given them birth.

That this is true is conclusively shown inthe case of the study of

Mrs. Holland, both by automatic writingand in hypnosis,

Mrs. Holland who, by automatic writingand in hypnosis,

describes perceptions of the environment(objects seen, etc.) of which she was notaware at the time.

described things transpiring in herenvironment of which she was whollyunaware at the time.

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5:18.2 In experiments of this sort Ihave been able to have

Miss B. and B. C. A. recall, in hypnosisand by automatic writing, paragraphs innewspapers read through casual glances

subjects recall things which had beenread in newspapers,

without awareness thereof (P 52). but without sufficient attention beingpaid to them to enable the consciousnessto be aware of the fact,

and to trace out in the very depths of thesubconscious mind experiences longsince forgotten and which were producedas new creations in automatic writing,trance speaking, etc.

5:18.3 Exploring the Subconscious byHypnotism.

Experimentally, by means of hypnosisand by the procedure of psychoanalysis,we are able as will be seen, to take thesemystics, psychics, clairvoyants, andmediums, and after they have given us abeautiful spirit seance and havetransmitted to us messages from theirspirit guides and controls—after we havehad most wonderful and touchingconverse with our dear and departeddead—then we are able to take theseunstable, hysteric, and unique individualsin hand, and by scientific processes andpsychologic procedure show, first toourselves and subsequently to thosemediums themselves—if they aresincere—that all this stuff, the wholesordid mess, had a purely human andwholly natural origin in the depths oftheir own subconscious minds.

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5:18.4 Psychoanalysis.

Many years ago I became greatly inter-ested in psychoanalysis and its possibil-ities in the study and treatment of nervousdisorders, but I had not gone far in theemployment of this method when, as theresult of an experience that came to methrough the study of a spirit medium, Isaw I had accidentally stumbled uponwhat to me seemed the most valuable toolI had as yet discovered for scientificallyinvestigating and intelligently explainingthe more subtle phases and phenomena ofspiritualism.

5:18.5 Suffice it to say, in thisconnection, that psychoanalysis enablesus, without putting the patient intohypnotic sleep, systematically to explorethe superficial strata of the subconsciousmind. In this way we have been able toshow, again and again, that practically allof these things which mediums bringforth as communications from departedspirits have been palmed off on theirconscious consciousness by their ownunconscious, or subconscious selves.

III: PSYCHOANALYSIS (Lay 73)

§1. Ignorance about Psychoanalysis (Lay 74)

To the contention, therefore, of themany writers who have supported thestatements of spiritism

5:18.6 In the case of the sincerespiritualist today,

I am able to sit down and look himstraight in the eye as I listen to hisenthusiastic recital of the marvelousphenomena associated with his favoritemedium,

we shall have to say: while I say:

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“It is all very interesting, but has it everoccurred to you that

Is there not another explanation of thesephenomena—an explanation that youhave either never heard of, or have heardof only inadequately, or have perhapsmisunderstood? (L 74-75)

I have in my own mind another, and whatseems to me to be a much morereasonable explanation for what you aretelling me?

And furthermore, if your medium issincere and you will bring him to me, andhe will honestly and fairly submit to thetests that we can put him through, we willfirst prove to you that his physicalmanifestations and phenomena arematerialistic and fraudulent; and, second,that his psychic phenomena—hismessages from the dead—take origin inthe subconscious depths of his ownunconscious mind.”

By means of either or both hypnotism andpsychoanalysis, and perhaps in certaincases by means of automatic writing, ifthese mediums are sincere, this canusually be demonstrated.

X: SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION (Lay300)

§2. Exclusion of Unconscious Factor (Lay303)

5:18.7 Mediums should be warnedagainst submitting to

If a medium should be adequatelyanalysed by a thoroughly scientificanalyst of the Freudian school and afteryears of patient investigation on the partof the analyst and training and study onthe part of the medium,

psychoanalysis of a thorough-going sort,

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1. Note: In this passage from the same section in The Physiology of Faith and Fear, Sadler tells of hisexperiences with spiritualistic mediums who he believes to be associated with malignant spiritual powers:

The author of this book is personally inclined to accept the Biblical diagnosis, and urges again, as he repeatedlydoes in this volume, that his readers adopt the attitude of faith in their own better selves and in the Supreme Being. This,he believes, is the key which, together with a rational use of material means, will unlock the mysteries of the present andthe future. From his personal experiences with spiritualistic mediums, he thinks that we have in them themselves aboutthe strongest imaginable empirical evidence pointing to the existence of those spiritual powers which are by nature liarsand deceivers. We feel confident that the phenomena of spiritualism will never be settled by so-called scientificinvestigation and laboratory experimentation (PF&F 467).

2. Speaking generally, “official” science rejects as pure fancy the alleged facts connoted by the term (M 160).

3. In Chap. 23 of The Mind at Mischief, Sadler reproduces this paragraph, but adds:

Perhaps this statement should be qualified by adding that there are possibly one or two exceptions to this

if they want still to persist in the practiceof their profession as a means of gaininga livelihood, for all those of any honorwill be forced to abandon their career andseek new economic paths as a means ofmaking a living, because any experiencedpsychoanalyst will shortly

... the medium ... was not himselfconvinced that all his conscious andunconscious utterances emanated directlyor indirectly from his own unconscious,then and not until then would science bejustified in giving serious attention towhat now seem to be exceptions touniversally valid laws of matter (L 303).

convince them of the autopsychic originof their so-called spirit communications.

5:18.8 Within the past year I have hadnot less than five cases of clairvoyantsand mediums who have, after they hadbeen but superficially studied andanalyzed, abandoned belief in thesupernatural origin of their voices andvisions, and who are rapidly gettingthemselves under control and bringingtheir minds into safe and normalchannels.

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general classification of so-called psychics and trance mediums. Many years ago I was made acquainted with a veryextraordinary phenomenon of this sort, which it has been my privilege to observe periodically from that time to this, andsome day I hope to report more fully upon this unique case; but I hasten to say that in none of my observations of thisindividual and the peculiar associated experiences of the night period was there ever anything that pointed towardspiritualism. [Etc.] (MM 332)]

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chapter 5 — the psychic phenomena of spiritualism sources

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