AN EVENING WITH THE HIGHER SPIRITS.
At the head of social heresies, and rapidly beginning to take rank as a
religious heresy as well, I have no hesitation in placing modern
Spiritualism. Those who associate this latest mystery only with gyrating
articles of furniture, rapping tables, or simpering planchettes, are
simply in the abyss of ignorance, and dangerously underrate the gravity
of the subject. The later development of Spirit Faces and Spirit Forms,
each of which I have examined thoroughly, and made the results of my
observations public, fail to afford any adequate idea of the pitch to
which the mania--if mania it be--has attained. To many persons
Spiritualism forms the ultimatum, not only in science, but also in
religion. Whatever the Spirits tell them they believe and do as devoutly
as the Protestant obeys his Bible, the Catholic his Church, or the
scientific man follows up the results of his demonstrations. That is, in
fact, the position they assume. They claim to have attained in matters
of religion to demonstration as clear and infallible as the philosopher
does in pure science. They say no longer "We believe," but "We know."
These people care little for the vagaries of Dark Circles, or even the
doings of young ladies with "doubles." The flight of Mrs. Guppy through
the air, the elongation of Mr. Home's braces, the insertion of live
coals among the intricacies of Mr. S. C. Hall's exuberant locks, are but
the A B C which have led them to their present advanced position. These
physical "manifestations" may do for the neophytes. They are the
initiated. I am the initiated; or I ought to be, if patience and
perseverance constitute serving an apprenticeship. I have devoted a good
portion of my late life to the study. I have given up valuable evenings
through several consecutive winters to dark séances; have had my hair
pulled, my head thumped with paper tubes, and suffered other indignities
at the hands of the "Invisibles;" and, worse than all, my friends have
looked upon me as a lunatic for my pains, and if my enemies could have
wrought their will they would have incarcerated me as non compos, or
made an auto-da-fe of me as a heretic years ago.
Through sheer length of service, then, if on no other account, I had
grown somewhat blasé with the ordinary run of manifestations. Spirit
Faces no longer interest me; for I seek among them in vain the
lineaments of my departed friends. Spirit Hands I shake as unconcernedly
as I do those of my familiar acquaintances at the club or in the street.
I have even cut off a portion of the veil of Miss Florence Maple, the
Aberdeen Spirit, and gone away with it in my pocket: so that it was, at
all events, a new sensation when I received an invitation to be present
at a trance séance, where one of the Higher Spirits communicated to the
assembled things undreamed of in mundane philosophy. The sitting was a
strictly private one; so I must not mention names or localities; but
this does not matter, as I have no marvels in the vulgar sense of the
word to relate: only Higher Teachings, which will do just as well with
asterisks or initials as with the names in full.
The scene, then, was an artist's studio at the West End of London, and
the medium a magnetic lady with whom I had frequently sat before, though
not for the "Higher" teachings. Her instruction had so far come in the
shape of very vigorous raps, which ruined my knuckles to imitate them,
and in levitation of a small and volatile chess table, which resisted
all my efforts to keep it to the paths of propriety. This lady was not
young; and I confess frankly this was, to my thinking, an advantage.
When I once told a sceptical friend about Miss Florence Cook's séance,
and added, triumphantly, "Why, she's a pretty little simple girl of
sixteen," that clenched the doubts of this Thomas at once, for he
rejoined, "What is there that a pretty little _simple_ girl of sixteen
won't do?" Miss Showers is sweet sixteen, too; and when "Peter" sings
through her in a clear baritone voice, I cannot, despite myself, help
the thought occasionally flitting across my mind, "Would that you were
six-and-twenty, or, better still, six-and-thirty, instead of sixteen!"
Without specifying to which of the two latter classes our present medium
belonged, one might venture to say she had safely passed the former. She
was of that ripe and Rubens-like beauty to which we could well imagine
some "Higher" spirit offering the golden apple of its approval, however
the skittish Paris of the spheres might incline to sweet sixteen. I had
a short time before sat infructuously with this lady, when a distressing
contretemps occurred. We were going in for a dark séance then, and just
as we fancied the revenants were about to justify the title, we were
startled by a crash, and on my lighting up, all of the medium I could
see were two ankles protruding from beneath the table. She had fainted
"right off," as the ladies say, and it required something strong to
bring her to. In fact, we all had a "refresher," I recollect, for
sitting is generally found to be exhausting to the circle as well as to
the medium. On the present occasion, however, everything was, if not en
plein jour, en plein gaz. There was a good deal of preliminary
difficulty as to the choice of a chair for the medium. Our artist-friend
had a lot of antique affairs in his studio, no two being alike, and I
was glad to see the lady select a capacious one with arms to it, from
which she would not be likely to topple off when the spirits took
possession. The rest of us sat in a sort of irregular circle round the
room, myself alone being accommodated with a small table, not for the
purposes of turning (I am set down as "too physical") but in order to
report the utterances of the Higher Spirits. We were five "assistants"
in all--our host, a young lady residing with him, another lady well
known as a musical artiste, with her mamma and my unworthy self.
Installed in her comfortable chair, the medium went through a series of
facial contortions, most of which looked the reverse of pleasing, though
occasionally she smiled benignantly par parenthèse. I was told--or I
understood it so--that this represented her upward passage through
different spheres. She was performing, in fact, a sort of spiritualistic
"Excelsior." By way of assimilating our minds to the matter in hand, we
discussed the Apocryphal Gospels, which happened to be lying on the
table; and very soon, without any other process than the facial
contortions having been gone through, the medium broke silence, and, in
measured tones of considerable benignity, said:--"Friends, we greet you
in the name of our Lord and Master. Let us say the Lord's Prayer."
She then repeated the Lord's Prayer, with considerable alterations from
the Authorized Version, especially, I noticed, inserting the
Swedenborgian expressions, "the Heavens," "on earth;" but also altering
the order of the clauses, and omitting one altogether. She then informed
us that she was ready to answer questions on any subject, but that we
were not bound to accept any teaching which she--or let us say they,
for it was the spirits now speaking--might give us. "What did we wish to
know?" I always notice that when this question is asked at a spirit
circle everybody simultaneously shuts up, as though the desire for
knowledge were dried at its source. Nobody spoke, and I myself was not
prepared with a subject, but I had just been reviewing a Swedenborgian
book, and I softly insinuated "Spiritual Marriage." It was graciously
accepted; and our Sibyl thus delivered herself:--Mankind, the higher
Spirit or Spirits, said was originally created in pairs, and the soul
was still dual. Somehow or other--my notes are not quite clear how--the
parts had got mixed up, separated, or wrongly sorted. There were,
however, some advantages in this wrong sorting, which was so frequent an
accident of terrestrial marriage, since it was possible for people to be
too much alike--an observation I fancied I had heard before, or at least
not so profound a one as to need a ghost "Come from the dead to tell us
that, Horatio!" When the right halves did get together on earth the good
developed for good, the evil for evil, until they got to the heavens or
the other places--they were all plurals. Swedenborgianism has an
objection to the singular number; and I could not fail to identify the
teaching of the Higher Spirit at once with that of the New Jerusalem
Church. Two preliminary facts were brought before us; the Higher Spirits
were in theology Swedenborgian, and in medical practice homoeopaths. So
was the Medium. Although there was no marriage in the spiritual world,
in our sense of the term, there was not only this re-sorting and
junction of the disunited bivalves, but there were actual "nuptials"
celebrated. We were to be careful and understand that what terrestrials
called marriage celestials named nuptials--it seemed to me rather a
distinction without a difference. There was no need of any ceremony, but
still a ceremony was pleasing and also significant. I asked if it was
true, as I had read in the Swedenborgian book, that all adult angels
were married. She replied, "Yes; they married from the age of 18 to 24,
and the male was always a few years older than the female."
There was a tendency, which I continually had to check, on the part of
the Medium to wander off from matrimonial to theological subjects; and
the latter, though trite, were scarcely so heterodox as I expected. I
had found most "spiritualistic" teaching to be purely Theistic. Love to
God and man were declared to be the great essentials, and creeds to
matter little. If a man loved truth, it was no matter how wild or absurd
his ideas might be. The love of God might seem a merely abstract idea,
but it was not so. To love goodness was to love God. The love of the
neighbour, in the sense of loving all one's kind, might seem hard, too;
but it was not really so. There were in the sphere where this
Intelligence dwelt millions of angels, or good spirits, working for the
salvation of men.
I ought to mention that this lady, in her normal condition, is
singularly reticent, and that the "communications" I chronicle were
delivered fluently in one unbroken chain of what often rose into real
eloquence.
So Christ came for the good of man, and Christ was not the only Messiah
who had appeared on earth. In the millions of ages that had passed over
our globe, and in the other planets of our solar system, there had risen
up "other men filled with the spirit of good, and so Sons of God." I
here tried to get at the views of the Higher Spirits on the Divinity of
Christ, but found considerable haziness; at one time it was roundly
asserted, at another it seemed to me explained away by such expressions
as I have quoted above.
Our planet, I was informed, had been made the subject of special care
because we were more material, more "solid" than the inhabitants of any
other orb. There was an essential difference between Christ and all
other great teachers, such as Buddha; and there were no historical
records of any other manifestation of the Messiah than that we
possessed; but such manifestations had taken place.
The Spirit then gave us an account of its surroundings, which is, I
believe, purely Swedenborgian. The "celestial" angels were devoted to
truth, the "spiritual" angels to goodness; and so, too, there were the
Homes of the Satans, where falsehoods prevailed, and of the Devils,
where evils predominated. Spirits from each of these came to man and
held him in equilibrio; but gained power as his will inclined towards
them. The will was not altogether free, because affected by inherited
tendencies; but the "determination" was. I have no idea what the Higher
Spirit meant by this; and I rather fancy the Higher Spirit was in some
doubt itself. It rather put me in mind of the definition of metaphysics:
"If you are talking to me of what you know nothing about, and I don't
understand a word of what you are saying--that's metaphysics."
All can do good, continued the Sibyl. Evil cannot compel you. Utter only
such an aspiration as, "God help me," and it brings a crowd of angels
round you. From those who came to them from this world, however, they
(the Higher Spirits) found that teachers taught more about what we were
to think than what we were to do. Goodness was so easy. A right belief
made us happier; but right action was essential.
Pushed by our host, who was rather inclined to "badger" the Higher
Spirit, as to irresistible tendencies, the Intelligence said they were
_not_ irresistible. When we arrived in the Spirit World we should find
everything that had occurred in our lives photographed. You will condemn
yourselves, it was added. You will not be "had up" before an angry God.
_You_ will decide, in reference to any wrong action, whether you could
help it. Even in the act of doing it a man condemns himself; much more
so there. The doctrine of the Atonement was summarily disposed of as a
"damnable heresy." "Does the Great Spirit want one man to die? It hurts
us even to think of it!"
I then questioned the Medium with regard to the resurrection of the
body; and was told that man, as originally created, was a spiritual
being, but had "superinduced" his present body of flesh--how he managed
it I did not quite gather. As to possible sublimation of corporeal
integument, the case of ghosts was mentioned. It was to no purpose I
gently insinuated I had never seen a ghost, or had the existence of one
properly authenticated. I was told that if I fired a pistol through a
ghost only a small particle of dust would remain which could be swept
up. I was not aware that even so much would remain. Fancy "sweeping up"
a Higher Spirit!
I could not help once or twice pausing to look round on this strange
preacher and congregation. The comfortable-looking lady propped in an
arm-chair, and with an urbane smile discoursing on these tremendous
topics, our little congregation of five, myself writing away for dear
life, the young hostess nursing a weird-looking black cat; the other
young lady continually harking back to "conjugal" subjects, which
seemed to interest her; the mamma slightly flabbergastered at the rather
revolutionary nature of the communications; and our host every now and
then throwing in a rude or caustic remark. I dreaded to think what might
have been the result of a domiciliary visit paid by a Commissioner in
Lunacy to that particular studio!
Back, then, the musical young lady took us to conjugal pairs. It was
very difficult to convey to us what this conjugal love was like. Was it
Elective Affinity? I asked. Yes; something like that, but still not
that. It was the spontaneous gravitation in the spheres, either to
other, of the halves of the dual spirit dissociated on earth. Not at
all--again in reply to me--like flirting in a corner. The two, when
walking in the spheres, looked like one. This conjugal puzzle was too
much for us. We "gave it up;" and with an eloquent peroration on the
Dynamics of Prayer, the séance concluded.
The Lord's Prayer was again said, with even more varieties than before;
a few extemporaneous supplications were added. The process of coming-to
seemed even more disagreeable, if one may judge by facial expression,
than going into the trance. Eventually, to get back quite to earth, our
Sibyl had to be demesmerized by our host, and in a few minutes was
partaking of a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee as though she had never
been in nubibus at all.
What the psychological condition had been I leave for those more
learned than myself to determine. That some exaltation of the faculties
took place was clear. That the resulting intelligence was of deep
practical import few, I fancy, would aver. Happily my mission is not to
discuss, but to describe; and so I simply set down my experience in the
same terms in which it was conveyed to me as "An Evening with the Higher
Spirits."