WE SHALL have to give illustrations of statements regarding the nature of
another life, but we cannot do so without first warning readers of the
difficulties under which we labor in determining their value. We have not
expressed any certain conviction as to the nature of a spiritual world and its
life; while we did indicate indifference to what it might be as long as it had
no definite relation to our ethical obligations in this life. If rational at
all, it must have some such relations, but they remain still to be determined.
We have made only slight progress as yet in regard to the questions involved,
except that of mere survival. The public forgets or is ignorant of what the
great problems are, and so assumes that it is enough if we prove survival to
carry with it any idea it pleases about the nature of the life which makes it
possible. It has not discriminated between two wholly distinct problems, and
the different methods involved in solving them.
The two problems are (1) that of survival and (2) that of the nature of the
world in which we survive. The first of these is very easy of solution compared
with the second, and from the painfully slow progress before the public of the
first problem, we can imagine what the second will be. The solution of the first
of the problems is effected by satisfying three requirements. (a) The exclusion
of fraud and secondary personality from the facts which claim to be
communication from the dead. (b) The acquisition of supernormal information
bearing upon the personal identity of the dead. (c) The exclusion of the
telepathic hypothesis in explanation. Now I regard it as a comparatively easy
task to satisfy each and all of these conditions. Those who have not
investigated the subject live in the blissful illusion that it is extremely
difficult to satisfy any one or all of these conditions. But this illusion grows
out of ignorance and indolence. If they knew in the least how to experiment,
they would find it a very easy thing to exclude every condition tending to
discredit the facts. It is respectability only that enables the skeptical
attitude to linger and persist in its difficulties. I regard it as perfectly
easy to prove survival and I shall here take it as proved with sufficient
clearness to justify ignoring the objectors to it. The evidence is clear and
conclusive, and indeed so overwhelmingly plentiful that concession to ignorance
and skepticism is no longer justifiable.
But when it comes to the second problem I would express a calmer judgment. That
is not so easy. It involves complications which the other does not have. Had the
means been supplied for experiment in this field the second problem would not be
so hard as it seems. The difficulty in getting the public to see what it is and
what the funds needed for it are is a greater problem apparently than that of
experiment. It would be an easy task to perform had the experimenter the means
and the help to carry out the necessary experiments, but most people, scientific
men as well as laymen, expect the case to be decided over night and by accepting
the messages in accordance with the ordinary interpretations of language, and so
approve or disapprove of the "revelations" according to their prejudices for or
against the case. This is another inexcusable delusion on the part of both
sides.
Now let us examine something of the method involved in settling whether personal
consciousness survives death. We start with the assumptions which the
materialists teach us; namely, that consciousness is a function of the brain and
that all knowledge is derived by normal sense perception. Now telepathy
negatives the latter and shows that some knowledge can come to us independently
of normal sense perception. But it does not prove survival. We must obtain
intelligent messages bearing on the personal identity of deceased persons not
known to the percipient or subject through whom such messages come.
Now it is perfectly easy to obtain conditions under which all normal knowledge
of particular persons has been excluded. All that we have to do is to take a
total stranger to a psychic and make a verbatim and complete record of what is
said or occurs there, and then determine whether the contents are possibly due
to guessing or chance coincidence, whether conscious or subconscious, and
whether they articulately represent facts once known to the alleged deceased
person. That is perfectly easy to do and it is just as easy to exclude any known
telepathy from the explanation. But in securing this evidence of personal
survival we do not require to raise any questions regarding the conditions for
communicating the messages. It suffices to know that they represent supernormal
information, after excluding all possible sources of normal explanation. We do
not require to know anything about even the physiological conditions that affect
the result, any more than we require to know anything about the spiritual
processes by which the result is produced. It is the facts that exclude normal
explanations which decide the case, provided the incidents relate to the
personal identity of the dead. The subconscious of the medium may color them as
much as you please or bury them up in its own chaff, provided only that they are
evidently not of its own creation and give evidence that they are not such. We
do not need to know how the thing is done. The facts when supernormal demand an
extraneous source, whatever their relation to processes by which they are
produced.
But when it comes to accepting statements about the nature of a spiritual world
it is a different matter. We have then to understand something about the
conditions under which information about it comes to us. This general principle
is even true about intercourse between the living about the material world,
though the difficulties are not so numerous or so perplexing to overcome. When a
man tells us that he has made a new discovery in science we require to know how
he did it and to ascertain whether the conditions under which he announces the
discovery make it truthful or not. And this in a world where we have a tolerably
easy command over things. But when it comes to telling us about a transcendental
world it is not so easy. It is not enough to get statements about it. We have to
confirm them and to know something of the conditions by which they get to us. In
proving personal identity it does not make any difference whether communications
are distorted or not, so we can recognize that they are not primarily products
of the living mind. We are trying, in deciding that issue, only to ascertain
whether personality in some way survives, and we do not require to know whether
this personality requires a bodily connection of any kind or not. It may be
anything you please in so far as that limited issue is concerned. But when we
ask whether personality has a spiritual body or not; whether it is a functional
stream in the universal energy of the cosmos, or whether it is an attachment of
a spaceless point of force, we have a very different situation confronting us.
The difficulties which we encounter in the endeavor to ascertain the nature of a
spiritual world manifest themselves even in proving survival; for the messages
are not all of them evidential. They are, many of them, not only non-evidential,
but so clearly subconscious that we have to accept the evidential matter under
the handicap of subliminal coloring. I have never known a spirit message to come
without this coloring. The language and limitations of the medium are always
apparent in the best of material. This liability is conceded by spiritualists
themselves, but they rarely if ever reckon with it in their treatment of the
facts. Besides they do not adequately distinguish in most cases between
evidential incidents and subliminal chaff that can make no pretense whatever of
spiritistic origin. The conditions may not wholly prevent transmission, but they
serve in most cases as a restriction on free communication. What they are we do
not know as yet and can only conjecture them along the broadest lines. We can
imagine that the analogies of normal experience may enter into them. Thus the
individual has to begin at birth to gradually acquire power to move his own
organism and after years of patient endeavor to obtain such facility in it as we
observe in normal experience. When an accident to the body occurs, like
paralysis or illness of any kind that weakens control of the organism, even the
living have gradually to recover that power. This is a fact so familiar to all
of us that it does not require discussion. Now it is conceivable that a
discarnate intelligence, having severed its connection with its own body would
encounter tenfold, perhaps a thousand-fold, greater difficulties in acquiring
power to control a new organism, with other connections and experiences
belonging to a living soul, than it would have with its own organism, and these
were great enough there, especially when the normal conditions were affected by
accident or disease.
Now if we will only add to this difficulty the next one; namely, the necessity,
perhaps, that all messages must either come through the mind of the psychic or
be affected by the mental, physical, and moral habits of the psychic, and as a
consequence be affected by these conditions, we shall see that we must always
have a source of confirmation for our facts. In the study of personal identity,
we have the testimony of the living to determine for us whether the
communications are true or not, and our own experience in the physical world
enables us to interpret their meaning. We find, too, that even the best messages
are extremely fragmentary and confused, so that they are not testimony to the
total material that was probably sent on its journey to the living. But
subconscious coloring and contributions add immensely to the data that passes
for spirit messages and we have to select from the mass those incidents which
are clearly not subconscious fabrications, but which are verifiable by the
living as supernormal information in spite of distortion by the mediumistic mind
or organism through which they come. The fact of distortion suggests that all
messages are subject to such influences and that proper discount has to be made
for messages reporting the nature of a transcendental world.
It's not necessary to suppose that any purpose exists to distort them. It is
inevitable, just as it is inevitable that any mind reporting impressions and
narratives must act in accordance with its past experience and habits and
express its conceptions in the mould of these prejudices, which we may call them.
A bell always rings its own tone, no matter with what it is struck. A piece of
wood gives its own sound in response to impact. It is the same with any physical
object. A mirror reflects images according to the nature of its surface. A bell
will not produce an opera; a piece of wood will not ring curfew; a mirror will
not sing a song. Each object acts and reacts according to its own nature, and
the human mind is no exception to this law. It must act along the line of its
structure and habits. The amount of knowledge which it possesses determines the
limits of its power to receive and express ideas. A mind which knows nothing but
the commonest sensations cannot be made the vehicle for impressive oratory. It
takes a mind of some intelligence to do this. A mediumistic mind must have some
qualifications for expressing what comes to it from a transcendental world and
its communications with such a world will be limited to its abilities and its
experience as a vehicle for ideas of any kind.
If the spiritual world be only a replica of the physical and so expressible in
the terms that are intelligible to us in the physical world, the main obstacle
will be in getting communications at all. They might be self-explanatory, if
that world could be described in our terms. But suppose it be quite different.
The whole process will then encounter difficulties of which people little dream.
Some would even go so far as to say that no possible conception of a
transcendental world could be obtained, unless it had some points in common with
the physical life, and this contention would be hard to refute. Let us take a
good analogy.
Suppose that a man born blind but having hearing tried to tell his auditory
experiences to a man who had lost his hearing, but retained his vision intact.
How would such a person describe his experiences to the blind man? It would be
in fact absolutely impossible for him to communicate any intelligible idea of
his auditory experiences. There is nothing in common between the sensations of
sight and hearing. All that the blind man could say about his auditory
sensations, or the deaf man about his visual sensations would convey nothing to
the friend who had not the sense which the communicator retained. The only
common element in such experiences might be the emotions which each had in his
own experience. The visual experiences of the one might have the same kind of
emotions accompanying his visual sensations that the other's hearing had in
connection with audition. They could communicate with each other intelligibly
only in terms of common emotions. The sensations and their meaning would be
wholly absent for each of them, so far as common knowledge is concerned.
The process of communicating anything at all between the living is much the
same. We have to possess a common language or we are much isolated from each
other as spirits can be supposed to be from the living. Signs, where language
does not exist, are no exception to this statement. Language is only an auditory
sign as mimicry and imitation are to vision. We have to agree on symbols
beforehand in order to communicate at all. Language in that way, combined with
imitation on the part of the younger generation, builds up a vast system of
symbols of common experiences, where we assume that we are alike in constitution
and experiences, and thus we come to be able to symbolize what we know, and the
person hearing the symbols can use his own experience for understanding what we
mean.
This means that, naturally or normally we cannot communicate with each other at
all, even among the living, and that we have had to develop an arbitrary and
conventional system of symbols for social and other purposes. And all this is
true in spite of the advantages which we enjoy in the possession of a physical
organism and sensory relations which do not subsist between the living and the
dead. But when a spirit is bodiless, as we know bodies, and without the
conditions for producing on the living the same impressions as a living organism
and its speech can do, how much more difficult it must be for the dead to
communicate with us. It is quite natural to believe it absolutely impossible,
but any such belief would be based upon assumptions that might not be true,
though we are not familiar with anything in normal experience to make it
impossible. How can a disembodied reality exercise any influence on an embodied
one? I do not ask this question to imply a negative answer, but to suggest the
difficulty of the problem which the alleged fact of communication creates. But
it is certain that the difficulties must be greater than between the living,
where we regard it as naturally impossible and achievable only by conventional
means.
Now if the transcendental world be totally different from the physical in its
essential characteristics, how can we expect any ready commerce of ideas between
it and us? Suppose it be a mental world altogether, how can we expect our
sensory ideas to represent it? Assuming it to be a purely mental world, we
should encounter at least the same difficulties that we meet in our physical
life when we try to tell each other what we mean by mental phenomena. Indeed we
cannot do it in sensory terms and we have to rely upon symbols of common sensory
experiences with the hope that common mental events may become intelligible to
each other by association with the sensory. Uniformities of coexistence and
sequence between mental and sensory may enable us to suggest to each other what
we mean by our mental states, and indeed it has been this very antithesis
between the mental and the physical that has given rise to a dualistic
philosophy and shown the difficulty of making our inner life intelligible in
sensory symbols.
Let me illustrate what I have said. First a man familiar with steam engines
could not make clear to an Esquimau what such an engine is, even by the use of
the English language, so far as an Esquimau would know it, much less if the
Esquimau did not know any English. He might call it a horse with wheels and fire
for power, but this would not convey to him a correct conception of it. He might
convey some idea of its motion by comparing this motion with that with which the Esquimau was familiar, by saying for instance, that in so many degrees of
movement of the sun it went such and such a distance with which the Esquimau was
familiar in his own movements. He would find that the engine had an incredible
velocity compared with his own, but this would not help him to any clear
conception of what the engine was. It would only give some analogy of its
behavior compared with his own. It would not give him a mental picture of what
the engine was.
It should be clear therefore, what the difficulties are in trying to form a
conception of a transcendental world. If it were completely analogous to the
physical world the same language would describe it that describes the physical.
But conceding its resemblance to this life, with nothing but the supersensible
to distinguish it from our sensory ideas, we should encounter all the
difficulties in the process of communication in our effort to obtain a clear
idea of it. These difficulties represent or are represented in the fragmentary
and confused nature of the messages coming from its inhabitants, in the
limitations imposed by subconscious conditions through which the messages have
to come, constituted by the experience and prejudices of the medium, and perhaps
many other obstacles. Then in addition they lack, at present, the confirmation
we desire.
But now suppose that the spiritual world is wholly different from the physical.
Suppose that supersensible means more than merely inaccessible to sense
perception, though like it in form. Suppose it means a purely mental world in
which the forms of time and space, as perceived by sense, do not participate.
What probability is there that we can form any intelligible conception of what
it is like, even if communication were perfectly easy? Here we would seem to
have conditions under which adequate ideas would be impossible, though we might
have reason to believe that the stream of consciousness survived.
Now in addition to the possibly radical difference between a physical and
transphysical world, let us suppose what is also possible, that there may be
either or both of the following conditions associated with communications from
the transcendental. (1) That communicators are in an abnormal mental condition
when communicating. (2) That the method of communication is by telepathic
hallucinations produced in the living by the dead.
It was Dr. Hodgson that advanced the first of these hypotheses and I defended it
after him for a long time. But much occurred to make me pause in my allegiance
to it. The work of recent years showed me that the "mental picture" method
undoubtedly prevailed in certain psychics and certain conditions, probably, of
all psychics. It explained so much that the first hypothesis seemed to be
unnecessary or untrue. But, while I am convinced that the terms "trance" and
"dream state" do not correctly describe the condition of the communicator, there
is still much to suggest and to sustain the theory of some mental condition not
normal as we might understand the term.
It is possible that two other conceptions of the condition may describe it and
explain the similarity of the situation to that described by "trance" or "dream
stake." I refer to the "Apparent Analogies with Aphasia" and the "Associates of
Constrained Attention," both of which have been discussed elsewhere at great
length. It is possible that the situation may be fully explained by either one
of these without the other. But either of them does much to explain the
similarity of the results to what would occur in a trance or dream state. They
would both of them represent some sort of abnormal mental condition, though
having analogies with the relation between voluntary and spontaneous thinking
with the living and the differences of effect on the organism. But this aside
for the moment, the main point is that the relation of a discarnate spirit to a
new organism not its own and when severed from such a relation as the soul had
when living, might prevent any such causal action on a living organism as it had
been accustomed to when living. Analogies with aphasia might readily occur in
that situation without involving any internally abnormal mental condition for
the spirit. But it would be some sort of an abnormal condition even if not
mental and if only in the physical condition of the psychic and the physical
relation of the organism to the communicating spirit. Though that does not
confirm any theory of abnormal mental conditions in the spirit, it does indicate
important difficulties in the way of giving us adequate knowledge of what a
spiritual world is.
Again, suppose this hypothesis of abnormal mental conditions in the spirit be
untrue, it is pretty clear that the process of communicating by mental pictures
is a common one. This would seem to imply that the spiritual world was a mental
one and that thoughts are transmitted from the mind of the spirit in the form of
"pictures" or hallucinations adapted to any sense and so seem to represent that
world as like our own in all its external characteristics. Apparitions
representing spirits in their earthly clothing, and objects exactly as known
among the living convey the impression to the living that the transcendental
world is exactly like our own in its form with no difference but inaccessibility
to the physical senses. Ethereal organisms and senses are supposed. This is the
reason that the layman has always accepted these phenomena with their
superficial interpretation. But a critical study of large masses of phenomena
and the perplexing problem of "spirit clothes" tend to show that what we take
for reality is a telepathic hallucination produced by the dead in the minds of
the living, and so prevents our forming any such conception of that world as the
phenomena seem superficially to imply. So long as we do not attribute form to
thoughts, such apparitions would only reflect the form of action or product of
the mind on which the discarnate thought had acted, and we should still be left
in the dark as to the real nature of a spiritual world, except that it might be
one of "pure thought," whatever that expression may mean.
It is quite conceivable that the transcendental world should have the same
character as the physical in respect of space properties and yet this "mental
picture" method be the only way to reveal its existence. This is actually the
situation in our present existence, according to the idealists. We do not
require to suppose the antithesis to be what it seems in some of our phenomena
of sense perception. In spite of the idealistic interpretation of knowledge and
mental phenomena we conceive the world to be what we call physical, and
sensations are "mental pictures," so that the nature of a transcendental or
spiritual reality may remain, in relation to the method of revealing it to us,
just what the physical world is to sensory knowledge. But the difficulties and
perplexities in the process of learning what it is may yet be as great as I have
indicated.
There is one more difficulty of very considerable importance which seldom or
never receives notice. It is the liability to differences of opinion about the
spiritual world on the part of its inhabitants. We never think of this, or we
ignore it if we do think of it. It is the habit to assume that a message from
the spiritual world tells the facts about it, and we forget to suppose that it
may be nothing more than the communicator's opinion about it. That opinion may
be good or bad according to the person's equipment to tell about it. Now if we
add to this situation the hypothesis that the spiritual world is a purely mental
one the differences of opinion about it will be extraordinarily great. And we
find them so in reports about it. Let us see the actual situation about the
physical world among the living.
Two people can hardly describe a physical object in the same way. One will mark
features that the other does not notice and the description as a whole will not
be the same in the two instances. Then if one of the two is an educated person
and the other ignorant the accounts will differ so much often as not to
recognizably refer to the same thing. Then if the description in any respect
depends on opinions about it instead of mere observation of facts in sense
perception, the differences will vary out of all calculation. Suppose a common
peasant is asked to describe the moon. Compare his account of it with that of a
learned astronomer and we should not imagine that the two were describing the
same thing unless they both used the word "Moon." The astronomer's account would
be mixed up with his theories about it and would not be based on the limited
observations of the peasant. His theories about it would be a part of the
description. It is the same with every object of existence. The scientific man's
account of it would be quite different from that of the common man.
Now when we allow for differences of sensory natures the two might differ
radically from each other in describing what they see or feel. The color blind
person will not see what the color perceiver can see. Training and education of
the senses may enable one man to see what another cannot see, or even make the
same person see at one time what he could not see at another. In each and all
experience and various interpretations of sense perception may introduce
opinions into our ideas of reality and instead of reporting what we see we will
inevitably report the results of what we believe about an object rather than
what we actually see. There is no uniformity of conception of the physical world
and people's accounts of it vary as much as do the accounts of a spiritual
world. But we do not sufficiently reckon with this circumstance in estimating
the revelations of a spiritual world. We get into the habit of accepting without
question what is reported of that world on the ground that it comes from a
spirit, after we have removed our skepticism of their existence. We think
spirits are to be believed because they are spirits and we do not practise
critical ways as we would regarding the statements of the living. People who
read fiction and the newspapers do it for amusement, not for instruction or
study. We have been taught to believe that a spiritual existence is such that
only the truth can come from its inhabitants. But there is no scientific reason
for believing this of that world, while the facts we get tend to prove the very
opposite, namely, that the statements are more unreliable than anything we
obtain from the living about their own earthly existence.
Even if the transcendental world were like the physical world in its formal
characteristics, or in all others save their non-sensory influence, we might
expect the accounts of it to be imperfect and varying. We find it so with the
living, as I have remarked. If its inhabitants are in any way abnormal in their
mental life, the effect of that on their communications would have to be
expected. I do not assert or assume that they are so, but we know so little
opposed to this hypothesis, and so much in accord with it, that we have to allow
for its possibility. But if it be a purely mental world, we may imagine that the
differences in opinion about it would be as great as the differences of opinion
among the living. Add to this the possibility that the cranks among the living
still retain their ideas and identity and may be those who are more interested
in communicating than the better developed, and we can imagine what a chaos of
ideas would be communicated about that life. Make it a dream life, for that type
at least, and what unity could we expect in the accounts of different
communicators. Then add to all this the fact that all communications are
fragmentary and many are confused, and we again have a situation justifying the
utmost reservations on the messages about that life. We might well nigh suppose
it impossible to obtain any clear idea about it at all. But after centuries of
work we might construct some intelligent conception of it, after the manner in
which astronomers have outlined the stars and their relations, or the
physiologists the human organism and its functions under the aid of the
microscope and the scalpel. But each communication, possibly affected by all
these limitations added to those of the psychic through which they come, and
nothing can be accepted until verified, and that verification is a task whose
magnitude can hardly be measured as yet.
All that we can do at present is to compare the casual results of personal
experience in communications or alleged communications until we can ascertain a
unity that is not the effect of collusion between the parties or of common
education. When we have the means and the men to carry on experiments for a long
period of time we may make some advance on the problem. But the messages cannot
be accepted as an unquestioned revelation in any instance. The material has to
be treated as we would any statement of a living man. It must be subjected to
critical study and comparison for a long period of time and from various
psychics. In ordinary life, our own experience is an effective guide for
measuring statements about things. We have to determine the probabilities of any
man's account of some distant region by its relation to our own experience,
according as that is wide or narrow, and we can safely assume sufficient common
elements to estimate the probabilities to some extent.
But when it comes to estimating the probabilities of what is said about a
spiritual world, the normal man has no criterion to go by in his ordinary
experience. Only the few can even claim the right to speak, and what they say
has to be discounted for the influence of the subconscious and the prejudices
established by normal experience, for the differences of opinion on the part of
communicators, for the possibility that the conditions of communicating are
sufficiently abnormal to affect the messages, for the certainty that messages
are fragmentary, for the fact that they are often confused, for the possibility
that different levels of spiritual development may affect the nature of
communications, and for other possible limitations, so that we have before us
one of the most perplexing problems science ever attacked, when we try to
ascertain what such a spiritual world is like. Critical habits of mind, far
beyond those usual with the people most interested, will have to be cultivated
and practised, if any intelligible conception of the matter be possible. There
are common elements in many of the messages from different sources, but there
are also differences which are intelligible on the theory that it is a mental
world, but they do not yet make us able to estimate its nature with any
assurance.
Note:
The article above was originally entitled 'Difficulties of the Problem' and was taken from James Hyslop's "Life
After Death. Problems of the Future Life and Its Nature" (London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd, 1918).
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