The medium's return to normal life--Speeches made while the medium seems
to hover between the two worlds.
In Mrs Piper's case, the moments which precede the actual quitting of
the trance offer, at least at present, a special interest. I think it
well therefore to dwell on this point a little. To avoid endless
circumlocutions, I shall speak as if the spiritualistic hypothesis were
proved. Indeed, whatever the future fate of this hypothesis may be, and
in spite of the serious objection spoken of in the last chapter, it is,
I believe, the only one that can be reasonably adopted for the moment.
When the sitting is over and the automatic writing has ceased, Mrs Piper
begins to return gradually to her normal state. She then utters with
more or less distinctness some apparently disconnected phrases which it
is sometimes difficult to catch. She is like a person talking in sleep.
Dr Hodgson and Professor Hyslop have collected as many of these broken
sentences as they could, keeping them separately under a different
heading from the record of the rest of the sitting proper. At the end,
Mrs Piper often asks this odd question, "Did you hear my head snap?" And
after her head is supposed to have snapped she looks round her in
apparent astonishment and alarm, and then all is over, she no longer
remembers what she has said or written during the trance.
We shall see that these scraps of phrase are less incoherent than they
seem, and that it is worth while to collect them. Very often when
numerous unsuccessful efforts have been made to recall a proper name
during the sitting, Mrs Piper pronounces it when coming out of the
trance; when she is re-entering her body, the communicator or
communicators repeat the name to her insistently, and make great efforts
to cause her to remember and pronounce it as she comes out of the
trance. I have already quoted an example of this. M. Paul Bourget asked
the name of the town in which the artist he was communicating with had
killed herself. The name did not come, but Mrs Piper pronounced it as
she was leaving the trance--_Venice_. Mr Robert Hyslop's name was given
in the same way the first time, but accompanied by very significant
scraps of speech as follows. Mrs Piper first tried to pronounce the
name, then she said _Hyslop_, and went on,--
"I am he.[86] Tell him I am his father. I--Good-bye, sir. I shouldn't
take him away that way. Oh, dear. Do you see the man with the cross[87]
shut out everybody? Did you see the light? What made the man's hair all
fall off?"
Dr Hodgson asks, "What man?"
Mrs Piper.--"That elderly gentleman that was trying to tell me
something, but it wouldn't come."
At a first glance this passage seems mere incoherence, but all the
portions of sentences have a very clear meaning when they are examined
together with the events of the sitting. They are, as it seems,
commissions with which the medium is charged as she is returning into
her organism, or they are observations made among themselves by the
spirits present, which the medium automatically repeats, or they are the
observations and questions of the medium herself. All that Mrs Piper
says on coming out of the trance belongs to one of these three
categories.
In the passage quoted, the words, "I am he. Tell him that I am his
father," are a commission with which the medium is charged by Mr Robert
Hyslop. Mrs Piper takes leave of Robert Hyslop with the formula,
"Good-bye, sir." The phrases which follow, "Oh, dear. I shouldn't take
him away that way. Do you see the man with the cross shut out
everybody?" are the remarks of spirits repeated automatically, or Mrs
Piper's own remarks on Imperator, who, seeing the light exhausted,
imperiously sends off everybody, including Mr Robert Hyslop himself, in
spite of his desire to remain with his son. Imperator must even have
used some force, to justify the observation, "I should not take him away
that way." The final phrases are always Mrs Piper's own questions and
remarks: When she says, "Did you see the light?" she alludes without
doubt to the light of the other world, invisible to us. The other
sentences are clear enough, when we remember that Mr Robert Hyslop was
entirely bald. There are utterances like these, only apparently
incoherent on coming out of all the trances; but they vary in length.
The last words, if I am not mistaken, always come from Mrs Piper
herself, which is logically to be expected, since she gradually loses
the memory of the world she has just quitted, up to the definite moment
of waking, marked by the so-called snap in her head.
These speeches on coming out of trance constitute, in our eyes, one more
argument against the hypothesis of telepathy and secondary
personalities, because there is no trace of simulation. To suppose
simulation would be to accord to telepathy too much skill in the arts of
deceit.
These speeches bring into the foreground the question: "What becomes of
the medium's spirit during the trance, if there is a spirit?" The
controls say that it leaves the organism and remains in the company of
the group of communicating spirits.
"But then," it will be said, "if she lives for the time being in the
other world, why does she not relate her impressions when she wakes?"
We must not forget that for spirits our life is a sleep, and that we are
only conscious of what we acquire through the medium of our five senses.
When the spirit is again plunged into the prison of the body, after
having left it for a time, it goes to sleep once more and forgets all;
it recommences living the fragmentary life which is all that the five
senses permit. The complete absence of memory in the medium when awake
is no more astonishing than the same phenomenon in a subject coming out
of hypnosis, during which he may have talked, and even done much.
Besides, during the short instants when Mrs Piper is as if suspended
between two worlds, she still has a vague recollection of what she has
just heard; the fragments of sentences she utters bear sufficient
witness to this. She rarely fails to shed a few tears, and to say, "I
want to stop here, I don't want to go back to the dark world!" Here is a
characteristic passage, as an example. Mrs Piper, coming out of the
trance, begins to weep and murmur, "I do not want to go back to the
darkness.... Oh, it is, it is, it must be the window ... but I want to
know.... I want to know where they are all gone[88].... It is funny ...
I forgot that I was alive.... Yes, Mr Hodgson, I forgot.... I was going
to tell you something, but I have forgotten what it was.... You see,
when my head snaps, I forget what I was going to say.... It must be
night. Oh, dear! I feel so weak.... Is that my handkerchief?"
On other occasions she uses an odd figure of speech. "You see Rector
turns round a dark board and says that's your world--and he turns round
the other side and that's light, and he says that's his world. I don't
want to go back to the dark world."
Another time she says, quite at the end, "Is that my body? how it
pricks!"
It appears that Imperator, before sending her back to the "dark world,"
prays for her, and she sometimes repeats fragments of the prayers
automatically.
"Is that a blessing? Say it."[89]
"Father be and abide with thee for evermore."
"Servus Dei--I don't know."
"I have all these to look out for. I leave thee well."
"Go and do the duties before thee."
"Blessings on thy head."
"The light shall cease."
"Why do you say that?"
"Are you going? Good-bye."
"I want to go along the same path with you."
"Hear the whistle?" (This was an earthly whistle, which those present
also heard.)
FOOTNOTES:
[86] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xvi. p. 322.
[87] That is to say, Imperator, who always signalises his presence by
making a cross on the paper, or, with his hand, in the air.
[88] The spirits in whose company she has been.
[89] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xvi. p. 396.