Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical ResearchSage, Michael
Religion
Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research
Sage, Michael
Mediums -- Practice -- Great Britain; Parapsychology -- Investigation -- Great Britain; Piper, Leonora, 1859-1950; Spiritualism
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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