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1. The Attitude of Spiritualists
LOOKING AT the mass movement of spiritualism which has increased so greatly
during the last twenty years*, one cannot fail to be struck by the attitude, not
only of the spiritualists, but also of their opponents. The attitude of
spiritualists in general appears to ignore the diversity of difficult points
with which the subject bristles and to treat it as a homogeneous whole. Thus
they get rid of the need for putting forth the mental effort required for
constant discrimination. Once they have sailed into the spiritualistic sea their
attitude is one of easy acceptance. This is not true of every spiritualist, but
it is the attitude which characterizes a large part of the movement. Psychical
phenomena form a difficult subject at best in which balance and poise are needed
more than anywhere else. The spiritualists have proceeded to make it more
difficult by turning it into a religion.
* ISS note: This chapter was written in 1931.
Examination reveals spiritualism as a whole to be a mixed mass of truth and
falsehood; of real facts distorted in the presentation; of unrecognized
meanings; of the deception which difficult circumstances have brought upon
people of limited vision in their attempt to deal with what really transcends
their scope; the distortion of true facts which results from an attempt to
compress them into limited language, and the failure to recognize things for
what they are. The mind which is alive to the baffling problems which psychical
phenomena present realizes the need for constant discrimination and drastic
criticism. It finds itself in diametrical opposition to the average
spiritualistic outlook which cannot see that psychic facts must be assimilated
into the general scheme of things, but is content to leave them in the air,
ignoring the scientific claim for continuity. Spiritualists rather tend to treat
their subject as if it were a newly discovered country lying in independence of
everything else, within special boundaries of its own, and to assume without
argument that it must be accepted or rejected en masse, instead of being
sifted through. How much evidence do you require to accept spiritualism and join
in the movement? This is the way in which the typical spiritualist looks at it.
It is a way which gives the genuine enquirer the feeling that the spiritualist
and he are talking in different languages. Spiritualism is not the name for a
compact and definite thing, but rather for a popular reaction towards a
difficult branch of enquiry. Psychical phenomena cannot be properly studied
under the poster-coloured enthusiasms of a popular movement, especially of a
popular religious movement.
The typical opponent of spiritualism betrays, on the opposite side, an even
stranger reaction. He is not primarily interested to know the truth about
psychic phenomena at all, but appears to be obsessed by a name and by the
associations which it carries for him. Spiritualism for him means the essence of
everything uncanny and dangerous, and he is convinced that it has a peculiar
power of sending its followers mad. Judging by the unbalanced way in which many
people embrace spiritualism, this latter fatality might well be commoner than it
is; but in point of fact unbalanced people become mad if they become too
exclusively engrossed in anything, and an equal case could probably be made out
against religion.
The fact that institutional Christianity in all its branches has always set its
face against the practice of spiritualism is one which deserves notice. When it
is remembered that modern spiritualism is the direct descendant of the
necromancy and magic of ancient times which formed part of that dark background
that hung like a pall over the boundary of the sensual world, the root of its
hostility is not hard to understand. The religious opposition to the modern
movement, though partly no doubt due to mental inertia, is also in part due to a
lively sense of the dangers which it believes to exist in the practice of the
mediumistic trance. Nor are these dangers by any means imaginary, and it is
perfectly true that caution, poise and judgment are absolutely essential if they
are to be avoided. But the chief objection of the Churches is not based on the
subtle and deceptive difficulties of trance mediumship which have been pointed
out in the last chapter, but on its own theory of diabolism. It presupposes that
all communications through mediums are the work of evilly disposed beings of a
non-human type who deliberately impersonate those who are purporting to
communicate. That such beings may exist we cannot deny. We know nothing to the
contrary. On the other hand, if we believe in universal human survival of death,
there is scarcely need to go beyond the human race in order to find beings who
would fit the description. Stand, for instance, on the pavement at Hammersmith
Broadway on Saturday night, and imagine the crowd there, having passed out of
this life, as crowding round a sensitive, finding there a channel of
communication open to its familiar world. A good deal that is false and
unedifying in the communications could be accounted for without going further.
Indeed, on the supposition that the clearer of the communications do emanate
from discarnate human beings, we should be obliged to assume that some guarding
of the sensitive must take place in order to keep out indiscriminate
interference, otherwise there would be a discordant medley and nothing coherent
would get through at all. For the channels of communication are few, and the
numbers on the further side immense.
In support of the theory of deliberate deception on the part of false
communicators, it is certainly true that, in addition to containing confused and
childish statements, mediumistic material is sometimes definitely false. There
have been cases in which the communicators have proved to be non-existent, or,
have claimed to be dead whilst still actually living. But on the whole, the
quality of mediumistic material when examined does not support the theory that
it is wholly, or even mainly, the work of malevolent beings. There are so many
instances in which genuine help has been obtained through this channel, and
permanent good achieved by it, that the supporters of the sweeping theory of
diabolism must admit that the supposed evil spirits are continually engaged in
defeating their own ends.
While it is true that the bodily route of a sensitive evidently means an open
door, and that there is always the danger that this door may not be efficiently
guarded, yet it is also true that the best types of sensitive are extremely
alive to this danger. All one can say is that they find that in practice their
efforts to keep their work up to the highest possible standard do seem to result
in the guarding being sufficient. The exclusion of all but the highest types of
communication seems to depend in some way upon a continuance of unselfish effort
on their part and a devotion of themselves and their work entirely in the
service of others. This is one of the way's in which moral and spiritual factors
introduce themselves into mediumistic phenomena.
2. The Lower Levels of Spiritualism
It is difficult to criticize the spiritualistic movement as a whole because it
exists stratified into different layers. The lowest layer indeed presents a
repellent spectacle, in which groups of people meet together and sit in the
dark, alternately bawling hymns and popular-songs while the table lifts or
luminous hands flit about; or perhaps messages of an extremely homely and
material order are thrown out hopefully for the benefit of those to whom they
may apply. If spiritualism meets with ridicule and contempt in some quarters and
grave condemnation in others, this is largely the fault of spiritualists
themselves - not of the subject-matter which some of them are mishandling. What
can they expect if they present an attitude which is devoid of reverence, of a
due sense of proportion and of all sane criticism? If they slip easily along,
accepting everything psychic at its face value, when the watchword of their
subject should be: Discriminate - again and again and again!
3. The Upper Levels of Spiritualism
But the movement has an upper stratum as well as a lower. There are earnest
workers, bent on using their powers for the good of others with whom discipline,
hardship and self-sacrifice are freely undergone to raise the quality of their
productions. It is significant that the communicating influences of this upper
layer are wholly and unequivocally Christian. Some of the results produced in
this way are on a very high level, but they tend to leave the evidential sphere
of psychical research for that of spiritual instruction. Such matter must be
judged by the internal quality of its evidence, so that, strictly speaking, the
means by which it is produced is irrelevant. It scarcely touches the field of
psychical research because it might as well have been discovered in an Egyptian
papyrus as have come through a mediumistic source. But, because it offers no
hold for an intellectual test, the significance of such teaching cannot
therefore be ignored. Weight should be given to the consideration that if the
personal life of the medium stands high in every respect and the material itself
is only produced at the cost of continual effort and self-sacrifice, then its
source is guaranteed as of high standing, wherever exactly it may come from. You
cannot have truth and falsehood both springing from the same well, particularly
when the truth is of a high kind. Even if you insist that, in the absence of
proof to the contrary, the material must be taken to have had its origin in the subconsciousness of the medium, it yet remains true that this subconscious
centre is capable of producing something which involves a deeper grasp of
ultimate things and is provided with a higher sense of spirituality than belongs
to the medium's conscious personality. There is, be it noted, a curious
inconsistency in thus restricting the source of such information to the medium's
own mind if you have already put down an astonishing range of phenomena to
telepathy, thus throwing the medium's mind open to every outside source in order
to escape from the spiritistic theory in general.
You may object that the quality of the material, however perfect at the start,
has been vitiated by the accidents of the bodily route. It is true that the
difficulties of the bodily route cannot be eliminated by a high quality of
sensitivity. This point should be carefully remembered; but there seems to be a
consistency of quality about some of the higher productions which tends to show
that, to some extent, the intermediate levels of the personality are being kept
under unusually good control. Nevertheless limitation remains. It looks as
though in its main lines the communication gets through, but that the exposition
of it is seriously cramped. It is of this cramping and limiting that the hasty
reader must beware, or he will carry away the impression that there is far less
depth in the substance of the material than is really the case. We must always
keep it before our minds that the communication as we receive it is conditioned
in its form of expression by the medium's vocabulary and by the stock of ideas
that has common currency in her mind. That alone is enough to account for much
being left unsaid, or poorly expressed. Even if the whole vocabulary of the
language were available, it is exceedingly poor in the terms needed to express
the higher kinds of thought. We must not be alienated if, instead of the latter,
we find terms from the spiritualistic vocabulary. These are probably the only
terms available in the medium's mind. I have the greatest sympathy for those
who find these terms powerfully repellent. The word "vibrations," for example,
which has a perfectly definite physical meaning, is distorted by spiritualists
to indicate something akin to mental and moral atmosphere. It gives rise to a
confused idea in the mind that some sort of physical radiation is being spoken
about. Again, the word "spirit" is used of everything outside the world of
sense, as in "spirit-world," "spirit-body," etc., and spirit is a word which has
acquired the most unfortunate associations, both on account of the unedifying
history of spiritualism, and also on account of the unnatural ideas about an
after-life with which religious orthodoxy has coupled it. "Spirit" conveys to
most people's minds the idea of something wispy and unreal. Communicators
through spiritualistic mediums are also apt to adopt unnecessarily fanciful
pseudonyms, which in themselves may be harmless enough, but which have the
effect of conveying an inevitable suggestion of charlatanism.
We must remember, however, that in most cases messages must either come through
clothed in these terms or not at all. It is for us to look out for thoughts
which may lie on a level above that of the words. Such thoughts must be detached
from their verbal forms and rolled over in our minds before being dismissed as
trivial. Sometimes what is at first repellent from its style is afterwards seen
to be attractive from its meaning.
One or two examples may here be given by way of illustration:
"The subconscious mind is, as it were, the cupboard where the secrets of the
past are stored, and sometimes because a certain vibration quickens that which
is in the so-called subconscious, something beyond the physical is released.
Therefore that which man regards as 'subconscious' indicates something which has
greater consciousness than the mind of the body can hold or grasp.
What am I trying to portray? How clear it is when you understand God's laws!
Children, before you entered the physical garment, you, as spirits, passed
through great and varied experiences. You have had many bodies but only one
'body of flesh,' and when the earth body has done its part you will pass into
another 'world' and find that you still have a body. It may be coarser, it may
be finer; it may represent greater strength, or, again, it may represent a
bondage difficult to break from."[1]
[1] "Zodiac," in The Greater World, July 6,
1929.
There are two ideas here baldly put, the import of which scarcely strikes one at
the first reading. The first is that there is a super-consciousness as well as a
subconsciousness; that is to say the conscious section of the personality
divides the subconscious region below it from a super-conscious region above it.
Some things are of a kind which cannot rise up into consciousness, but others
are of a kind which cannot descend into it. A thing can be
super-intelligible, which is what the recognition of higher grades of
significance would suggest.
The second idea is that our present existence is not a single and unique
experience, but only one among a number of lives. Although these may present
great individual differences and be characterized by greater or less degrees of
spirituality, yet they do not pivot on our present life as on one which is
uniquely different from all the rest. Hence some of them are naturally
antecedent to this one in time, while others follow after it. The passage from
life to life does, in a sense, mean a reincarnation, for we should have bodies
in all lives, although no two are lived in the same world. This teaching,
however startling it may at first sight appear, fits in completely with the
theory of aspects given above. It is also in thorough accord with the teaching
of Christ, whose single comprehensive description of God's universe was summed
up in the two words: "Many Mansions," however this teaching may have been
distorted by subsequent ecclesiastical influence.
Take again the simple sentences: "How much are you willing to suffer for the
release of the God within?" and "Go to those in pain, saying: 'That which you
suffer now in time to come shall represent a power which no one can take from
you'."[2] Trenchant thoughts, these, which cut at the very root of our
hedonistic civilization.
[2] "Zodiac," in The Greater World, August
10, 1929.
4. Spiritualism as a Religious Cult
Why have spiritualists turned into a religious cult a subject that might be more
naturally regarded as a branch of scientific research? The reason is not far to
seek. When people of no great culture or spiritual insight lose a close relative
or a friend, and look in their first distress for comfort and sympathy to those
around them, they are often met with insufficient imagination and understanding.
Faced with what is, perhaps, their first close contact with tragedy, they turn
to that branch of religious institutionalism in which they have been brought up,
and which has supplied them with the usual half or quarter-belief in human
survival of death. But the time is one of unusual sensitiveness. The words of
the clergyman or priest, which at ordinary times have passed muster, lack the
ring of conviction now that they are listening to them with genuine earnestness.
They want answers to definite questions. Where is my loved one? Is he (or she)
happy? Can I get into any sort of touch with him? And, perhaps, most urgently of
all, Can I do anything for him? Do my present thoughts and actions affect him?
No satisfactory answers are forthcoming. The Churches have conventionalized the
facts of religion until they have succeeded in divorcing them from reality.
People in bereavement are not going to be fobbed off with texts or platitudes.
They turn from these to seek out the society of others in the same plight as
themselves and talk their difficulties over with them. They soon discover that
spiritualism has something tangible to offer. Their loved one, it affirms, is
still alive in circumstances at least recognizably like those of this present
world. He is not engaged in singing unending Hallelujahs (which must come as a
relief to the minds of the mourners), but is living a life at least
approximating to what ordinary people would call normal. He has a body, and is
living amongst tangible surroundings of a kind at least comparable with those
which he has left behind. How can these things be? Quite well when you realize
what this body is, and this physical world. Further, and this is
the great point, proof is offered of these things, for at s้ances they are told
that it is possible to get into communication with him. What more natural than
to attend s้ance; to meet regularly; to bring hymn-books and to carry on the old
tradition of a service on Sundays, all based on what are now to them their
central religious facts? The clergy may denounce, and the learned may smile, but
messages bearing at least some appearance of being veridical will with very many
outweigh the indefinite teachings of orthodoxy.
Spiritualism since the war has shown a great increase, and this, besides being
due to the war, may owe something to a general improvement in the quality of
mediumistic material. The number of those who now give a mental assent to it is
not confined to avowed spiritualists alone. It includes also many unavowed
converts, some of whom are to be found in the most unexpected places. Owing to
the basis upon which it rests, the movement has become a religion which centres
upon, if it is not identified with, the facts of death and its immediate
survival. It is not much good to tell such people, what is the truth, that real
religion cannot be based upon external and finite facts. The confusion between
psychic facts and spiritual values is with them complete.
Spiritualism is not properly a religion because its subject-matter is concerned
with a field of phenomena which ought to be included within the boundaries of
scientific research. It deals with finite and temporal facts, and the whole
subject of human survival of death under finite conditions has nothing
necessarily to do with religion. Many of my readers will disagree with this
statement. I ask them to bear it in mind nevertheless and to compare it with
their own religious experience. We must never forget this fundamental fact, that
survival of death is a corollary of immortality, but immortality is not a
corollary of survival of death. Psychical phenomena in the abstract are
devoid of religious values, but spiritualists have turned them into a religion
because when plain men and women come into contact with them, it is usually in
connection with some personal bereavement, and actual human lives and human
deaths are intimately bound up with religion. Thus
it is that the two become confused in practice. The spiritualist's mode of
thought is also in part the product of a long tradition of religious teaching
which has always tended to place the religious element of a future life in the
externals of another world. That dualistic habit of thought which speaks
of this world of sense as "natural," and of whatever may lie outside it as
"supernatural," has so soaked into people's minds that it is taken for granted
that something religious must be met with directly we step across the boundary
of the world of sense.
It is on account of this close association between scientific facts and powerful
human emotions, and the religious values of actual life, that the whole field of
psychic enquiry is so difficult to approach in the right spirit. The keenest
discrimination and the most exact poise and judgment are essential in it. We
have to deal with finite facts of evidence which are subtly blended and need the
most careful disentangling. The ground broken is new to science and the
strictest evidential conditions are not only legitimate, but absolutely
essential. At the same time, psychical research has something to learn from the
spiritualists. It is they who have recognized the very special treatment that
must be accorded to the sensitive. The method of procedure used in psychical
enquiry is bound to differ markedly from that used in other branches of science
because the instrument used is a human being; and not only a human being, but a
human being in a very peculiar condition. That sensitiveness to mental
atmosphere which ordinary people of a highly strung type experience, is with
sensitives very greatly intensified, especially in connection with the trance
state. The sensitive is in a state comparable to spiritual nakedness, as
sensitive to the spiritual atmosphere as a person with no clothes on is to the
wind. The experimenter who wishes to make progress in his subject must possess
sufficient imagination to recognize this as a tangible fact and to allow for it.
It may even be necessary to exclude a person from the sittings whose mental
attitude or emotional characteristics include a factor of hostility, prejudiced
scepticism, contempt, or a general lack of sympathy or spirituality. This may be
a difficult and invidious thing to do, but it is useless to ignore it. To do so
is to shut one's eyes deliberately to the necessary conditions. If we do that we
are like physicists trying to make experiments with the pendulum on board ship.
High qualities and motives both in sitters and sensitive are conditions as
essential as intelligence in psychical research. Given these qualities, a spirit
of mutual co-operation will ensue, and there is not likely to be much difficulty
in applying the necessary evidential conditions. They will be mutually agreed
upon. To attempt to apply the conditions without first establishing the right
atmosphere results, as the history of the subject shows, in a long drawn-out
inconclusiveness.
Thus we are led to the conclusion that, although the field of psychical enquiry
is one which properly belongs to science, yet values and qualities of the human
character are so inextricably bound up with it as to raise it above the
exclusively intellectual level on to a higher grade of significance. There is
need for a more comprehensive effort. It is more than doubtful whether the
purely logical method of science can alone pierce the boundary of the world of
sense. If we want more light on our world and its problems we must rise to a
view of it on a higher significant grade than that of customary scientific
research. It will be necessary to bend the whole of our analytical capacity on
to the problem of unravelling the communications obtained through the best
sensitives, but we must frankly recognize at the same time that intellectual
efforts must be combined with the highest efforts of the whole personality.
5. Survival and Immortality
Although it is not the purpose of this book to deal with religion, the subject
cannot be altogether avoided. At this point we are inevitably brought into
contact with it in connection with the relation between survival of death and
immortality. The distinction between the two needs no elucidation for the
mystic. For him immortality is a living fact although he may never have thought
out the problem of survival of death. But the distinction is one which has never
been clearly presented by institutional religion. Put briefly, the knowledge of
immortality is borne in upon the human subject of experience as part and parcel
of his realization of the eternal values of truth, beauty and goodness, and of
his own essential oneness with them in the higher reaches of his being; also of
his sense of communion with the Divine, all of which experiences are of a
non-temporal character, and are therefore unaffected by the beginning and end of
life in this world. Existence, as he knows it in the highest region of his
being, has nothing to do with the temporal flux of finite things, and cannot be
subject to it. He is aware of immortality, not as a life that will be
more than as a life that is, for "is" and "will be" in this region do not
admit of the clear-cut distinction imparted to them by the world of sense.
Immortality belongs to the sphere of religion. Survival of death, on the other
hand, belongs to a different category of things altogether. It refers to that
aspect of the human personality which is drawn down into the finite and lives
amid the passing flux of events in the space-time of what we call the physical
world. Will that finite personality - that limited abstraction from the larger
self - continue to live a life recognizably akin to its present one? That is the
problem with which psychical research and spiritualism are concerned.
Unless we are careful to maintain the distinction between the life of facts and
the life of values very clearly in our minds, we are likely to become involved
in dire confusion, and we have seen that this vital distinction is one which the
spiritualists, as a rule, do not take the trouble to draw. It is not surprising
therefore that we should find the spiritualistic outlook energetically
challenged by an author who writes with a deep sense of the essentially mystical
nature of true religion. In his enthusiasm for religious mysticism, this author
includes psychical research along with spiritualism in his condemnation,
regarding the two as attempting to set up a superstitious substitute in the
place of eternal life.
"Psychical research is trying to prove that the eternal
values are temporal facts which they can never be."[3]
[3] W. R. Inge, Outspoken Essays,
Vol. I, p. 268.
To the mystic the suggestion that psychical enquiry is dragging down the high
values of religion is one which immediately calls forth sympathetic attention.
If this accusation is true it is by far the most serious which either psychical
research or spiritualism has to face. Dr. Inge continues:
"And so, instead of the blessed hope of everlasting life, the bereaved have been
driven to this pathetic and miserable substitute, the barbaric belief in ghosts
and demons, which was old before Christianity was young. And what a starveling
hope it is that necromancy offers us! An existence as poor and unsubstantial as
that of Homer's Hades, which the shade of Achilles would have been glad to
exchange for serfdom to the poorest farmer, and with no guarantee of permanence,
even if the power of comforting or terrifying surviving relatives is supposed to
persist, for a few years."[4]
[4] Op. cit., p. 268.
It is indeed true that if one regards the performance of a mediocre
spiritualistic sitting as giving a picture of what a future life is like, one
can scarcely do other than sympathize with the view which says: If I am really
destined to come back after I am dead and utter banalities of this sort, or give
a kind of variety entertainment in the dark, then spiritualism has merely added
another terror to death.
The unsatisfactory character of what either spiritualism or psychical research
has to offer when looked at from the real religious standpoint receives further
emphasis from an unexpected quarter. Thus the editor of the spiritualist paper
Light writes:
"All that is logically proved whether by psychic science or psychic philosophy
is human survival of physical death, the perpetuation of personality, the
continuation of consciousness beyond physical dissolution... The utmost that the
intellectual process can achieve in the matter is the recognition that something
of man survives death in a kind of mechanical or galvanic fashion. The
sanctities, the splendours, the poetry and the vision of life are beyond its
ambit."[5]
[5] David Gow, Survival, p. 141.
There, then, is the contrast. Real religion, that is to say the innate religious
experience of mysticism, is an utterly different thing from the whole outlook to
which psychical enquiry tends:
"He who has tasted eternal life is not wont to be
troubled in heart about the questioning of his personal survival; for such
survival would mean nothing to him, if he were separated from the object in
which he has found his true life. His immortality lies for him in his union with
the eternal object on which his affections are set, and he seeks no other
assurance."[6]
[6] W. R. Inge, Philosophy of Plotinus,
p. 147.
On the grade of significance on which religion lies, the things which are
perceived contain their own proof. The proof is part of the awareness of the
perception.
But we do not feel that we are faced with the dilemma of choosing between
religion and psychical research, because we recognize clearly the distinction
between immortality and survival of death. In our present world it is perfectly
possible for the religious mystic to live his life in the world of values
concurrently with his daily life in the world of external facts. His religion in
this world consists, not in what is outward, but in what is inward. So we
believe it will be in another world. There will be an outward life of finite
facts - the life of survival - and there will be an inward life of religious
values, involving an inexpressible union; a drawing ever closer and closer to
God - the life of immortality. The outer life may be less rigid and exacting,
giving the inner far more scope than at present, but the two will go on side by
side. In the end the finite life may sink into insignificance in comparison with
the other, but we can scarcely expect to attain such heights in a single step.
But the consciousness of the timeless and eternal things remains, and we know
that it is in them that the essence of our being lies, so that the discussions
of science and the conflict of thought and the dogmatisms of formal religions,
whatever their value, flow past these things, leaving them untouched. In such
lies the only true ground and assurance of human immortality. Because we
can rise to a knowledge of truth, beauty and love, and can live in them and they
in us; because we can, here and now, identify ourselves with the eternal
values, and with Christ, the incarnate revelation of these values and of God,
and know from experience the community of our natures with His, we know that,
"because He lives we shall live also." This is the key-position of mysticism,
and it is at the opposite pole from the point of view which attempts to base
either religion or immortality on psychical phenomena or indeed on external
facts of any kind.
Source: "Grades of Significance" by G. N. M. Tyrrell
(London: Rider & Co., 1931).
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