|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 58
"Yours sincerely,
"R. HODGSON."
Now does not all this give a strong impression of an interflow among minds
all over--in New York (the place of the sitting), Granada (Mrs. A.'s place
of sojourn), Boston (A.'s home), New Haven (B.'s home), and the universe
in general (G.P.'s apparent home)--of an interflow free from the
limitations of time and space, and independent of all means of
communication known to us?
This impression tends to grow deeper with farther study. We have had a
cross-correspondence between two incarnate intelligences and one apparently
postcarnate. Mr. Piddington has unearthed a cross-correspondence between
one apparently postcarnate intelligence and seven "living" ones.
Perhaps the significance of cross-correspondences justifies a little more
specific treatment, and even the repetition of a paragraph from the first
number of this REVIEW. The topic has lately attracted more attention from
the S.P.R. than any other.
If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the
same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both
understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when
but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if
both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their
respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put
together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a
third mind.
There are many instances of strict cross-correspondence of this type. The
one we have given was perhaps more impressive than a stricter one would be
apt to be.
* * * * *
Accounts of sittings generally suggest apparent intercommunication
independent of time and space between postcarnate intelligences: often the
controls say that they will go and find other controls, and, generally,
after a short interval, the new control manifests. It is impossible to
read many of the accounts, whether one regards them as fictitious or not,
without getting an impression--like that given by a good story-teller, if
you please, of a life outside this one, among a host of personalities who
communicate freely with each other and, through difficulties, with us. The
nature of the communication we have already tried to express by
"interflow." But all metaphors are weak beside the impression of the
Cosmic Soul that has been brought to most of those who have persistently
studied the phenomena, as to nearly all those who have speculated _a
priori_ on the nature of mind.
* * * * *
Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are
provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be regarded as
very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it presents from an
alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some of them very attractive.
Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes of Piper
sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.
To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet
assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life,
presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing
conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce
work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit
them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary
development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
beginning.
My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout
it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul
would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to
communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for
ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her
manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came
through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came
from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within
our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as
distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor
telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material
would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a
reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest
the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I
have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might
be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George
Eliot.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|