ON THE FACT OF SUPERNORMAL COMMUNICATION
"But he, the spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is numb."
TENNYSON, _In Memoriam_
However it be accomplished, and whatever reception the present-day
scientific world may give to the assertion, there are many now who
know, by first-hand experience, that communication is possible across
the boundary--if there is a boundary--between the world apprehended
by our few animal-derived senses and the larger existence concerning
which our knowledge is still more limited.
Communication is not easy, but it occurs; and humanity has reason
to be grateful to those few individuals who, finding themselves
possessed of the faculty of mediumship, and therefore able to act as
intermediaries, allow themselves to be used for this purpose.
Such means of enlarging our knowledge, and entering into relations
with things beyond animal ken, can be abused like any other power: it
can be played with by the merely curious, or it can be exploited in
a very mundane and unworthy way in the hope of warping it into the
service of selfish ends, in the same way as old and long accessible
kinds of knowledge have too often been employed. But it can also be
used reverently and seriously, for the very legitimate purpose of
comforting the sorrowful, helping the bereaved, and restoring some
portion of the broken link between souls united in affection but
separated for a time by an apparently impassable barrier. The barrier
is turning out to be not hopelessly obdurate after all; intercourse
between the two states is not so impossible as had been thought;
something can be learnt about occurrences from either side; and
gradually it is probable that a large amount of consistent and fairly
coherent knowledge will be accumulated.
Meanwhile broken ties of affection have the first claim; and early
efforts at communication from the departed are nearly always directed
towards assuring survivors of the fact of continued personal
existence, towards helping them to realise that changed surroundings
have in no way weakened love or destroyed memory, and urging upon
their friends with eager insistence that earthly happiness need
not be irretrievably spoiled by bereavement. For purposes of this
kind many trivial incidents are recalled, such as are well adapted
to convince intimate friends and relatives that one particular
intelligence, and no other, must be the source from which the
messages ultimately spring, through whatever intermediaries they have
to be conveyed. And to people new to the subject such messages are
often immediately convincing.
Further thought, however, raises difficulties and doubts. The
gradually recognized possibility of what may be called normal
telepathy, or unconscious mind-reading from survivors, raises
hesitation--felt most by studious and thoughtful people--about
accepting such messages as irrefragable evidence of persistent
personal existence; and to overcome this curious and unexpected and
perhaps rather artificial difficulty, it is demanded that facts
shall be given which are unknown to anyone present, and can only
subsequently be verified. Communications of this occasional and
exceptional kind are what are called, by psychic investigators, more
specifically 'evidential': and time and perhaps good fortune may be
required for their adequate reception and critical appreciation.
For it is manifest that most things readily talked about between
two friends, and easily reproducible in hasty conversation, will
naturally be of a nature common to both, and on subjects well within
each other's knowledge.
The more recent development of an elaborate scheme of
'cross-correspondence,' entered upon since the death of specially
experienced and critical investigators of the S.P.R., who were
familiar with all these difficulties, and who have taken strong
and most ingenious means to overcome them, has made the proof,
already very strong, now almost crucial. The only alternative, in
the best cases, is to imagine a sort of supernormal mischievousness,
so elaborately misleading that it would have to be stigmatised as
vicious or even diabolical.
In most cases complete proof of this complicated and cold-blooded
kind is neither forthcoming nor is necessary: indeed it can hardly
be appreciated or understood by non-studious people. Effective
evidence is in most cases of a different kind, and varies with the
personality concerned. It often happens that little personal touches,
incommunicable to others in their full persuasiveness, sooner or
later break down the last vestiges of legitimate scepticism. What
goes on beyond that will depend upon personal training and interest.
With many, anything like scientific inquiry lapses at this point,
and communication resolves itself into emotional and domestic
interchange of ordinary ideas. But in a few cases the desire to
give new information is awakened; and when there is sufficient
receptivity, and, what is very important, a competent and suitable
Medium for anything beyond commonplace messages, instructive and
general information may be forthcoming. An explanation or description
of the methods of communication, for instance, as seen from their
side; or some information concerning the manner of life there;
and occasionally even some intelligent attempt to lessen human
difficulties about religious conceptions, and to give larger ideas
about the Universe as a whole,--all these attempts have been made.
But they always insist that their information is but little greater
than ours, and that they are still fallible gropers after truth,--of
which they keenly feel the beauty and importance, but of which they
realise the infinitude, and their own inadequacy of mental grasp,
quite as clearly as we do here.
These are what we call the 'unverifiable' communications; for we
cannot bring them to book by subsequent terrestrial inquiry in the
same way as we can test information concerning personal or mundane
affairs. Information of the higher kind has often been received, but
has seldom been published; and it is difficult to know what value to
put upon it, or how far it is really trustworthy.
I am inclined to think, however--with a growing number of serious
students of the subject--that the time is getting ripe now for
the production and discussion of material of this technically
unverifiable kind; to be scrutinised and tested by internal
consistency and inherent probability, in the same sort of way as
travellers' tales have to be scrutinised and tested. But until
humanity as a whole has taken the initial step, and shown itself
willing to regard such communications as within the range of
possibility, it may be unwise to venture far in this more ambitious
direction.
It has nevertheless been suggested, from a philosophic point of view,
that strict proof of individual survival must in the last resort
depend on examination and collation of these 'travellers' tales,'
rather than on any kind of resuscitation of the past; because, until
we know more about memory, it is possible to conjecture, as I think
Professor Bergson does, that all the past is potentially accessible
to a super-subliminal faculty for disinterring it. And so one might,
in a sceptical mood, when confronted with records of apparently
personal reminiscence, attribute them to an unconscious exercise of
this faculty, and say with Tennyson
"I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past."
I do not myself regard this impersonal memory as a reasonable
hypothesis, I think that the simpler view is likely to be the
truer one, so I attach importance to trivial reminiscences and
characteristic personal touches; but I do agree that abstention from
recording and publishing, however apologetically, those other efforts
has had the effect of making ill-informed people--_i.e._ people with
very little personal experience--jump to the conclusion that all
communications are of a trivial and contemptible nature.