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Page 61
As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his death, the
foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited but unpublished
allegations.
Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of George Eliot,
just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as if it might be a
transcript of one of my own dreams, with the important exceptions that the
dreamer wrote it all out, and that it is made up from a series of dreams,
coming up at intervals for about six months, and apparently only when
Hodgson was present, though there are records of George Eliot appearing to
other sitters at other seances.
* * * * *
We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life on the
part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in another life, in
some ways similar, that is led by intelligences who have passed beyond the
body.
We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is the correct
one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a suspicion that any day
it may be exploded by some new discovery. But we do say, with considerable
confidence, that of all the interpretations yet offered--even including
the pervasive one that "the little boy lied," it surpasses all the others
in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight attached to it
by the most capable students--even by James, who, however, did not accept
it as established, though he gave many indications that he felt himself
likely to. Myers definitely accepted it, not from the impressions of the
sensitives, but from having them capped by a veridical impression of his
own. Through the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice
assuring him: "Your friend is still with you." Later he found that Gurney,
with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died the night before. We are
not aware that Myers ever published this, but he told it to the present
writer and presumably to others. The convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver
Lodge were interpretations of the phenomena of the sensitives, though
Hodgson, it is now known, was probably mainly influenced by communications
from the alleged postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.
But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk
out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see,
and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and
hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves
more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does.
Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to
sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found.
Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But
from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.
Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a
class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she
identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very
few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I
could, if photographs had been presented.
Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead"
friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in
indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in
distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all
the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees
and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_
in feature and character.
Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all, anything more or
less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic vibrations, physical and
psychical, with the power of producing on us certain impressions. You and
I know our friends as such aggregates, and nothing more.
And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first
answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's
angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds
that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest
information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like
this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a
manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied
with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from the earliest
reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our dreams; and the material
is worked up into each personality through reactions with the environment.
Thus it becomes an aggregate of capacities to impress another personality
with certain sensations, ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate
personality impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion
of the vibrations constituting "the body" disappears, there still abides
somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in the dream life.
Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors, and gets into our
dreams telepathically, though that is losing probability every day; and,
with our anthropomorphic habits, we want to know "where" this capacity to
impress us abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir,
which I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless,
throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original mind-potential
plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been. And into this ocean
seem to be constantly passing those currents that we know as
individualities, that can each influence, and even intermingle with, other
individualities, here as well as there: for here really is there. While
each does this, it still retains its own individuality. This is, of
course, a vague string of guesses venturing outward from the borderland of
our knowledge. It may be a little clearer, the more we bear in mind that
the apparent influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.
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