2 (Return)1891.
Lucie and Adrienne.
The next case, although not marked by the same violent contrast, is quite as remarkable, because it illustrates the extent to which the Sub-conscious Self can be utilized in curing the Conscious Personality.
The subject was a girl of nineteen, called Lucie, who was highly hysterical, having daily attacks of several hours' duration. She was also devoid of the sense of pain or the sense of contact, so that she "lost her legs in bed," as she put it.
On her fifth hypnotisation, however, Lucie underwent a kind of catalepsy, after which she returned to the somnambulic state; but that state was deeper than before. She no longer made any sign whether of assent or refusal when she received the hypnotic commands, but she executed them infallibly, whether they were to take effect immediately, or after waking.
In Lucie's case this went further, and the suggested actions became absolutely a portion of the trance-life. She executed them without apparently knowing what she was doing. If, for instance, in her waking state she was told (in the tone which in her hypnotic state signified command) to get up and walk about, she walked about, but to judge from her conversation she supposed herself to be still sitting quiet. She would weep violently when commanded, but while she wept she continued to talk as gaily and unconcernedly as if the tears had been turned on by a stop-cock.
Any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in a brusque tone of command reached the Unconscious Self alone; and other remarks reached the subject—awake or somnambulic—in the ordinary way. The next step was to test the intelligence of this hidden "slave of the lamp," if I may so term it—this sub-conscious and indifferent executor of all that was bidden. How far was its attention alert? How far was it capable of reasoning and judgment? M. Janet began with a simple experiment. "When I shall have clapped my hands together twelve times," he said to the entranced subject before awakening her, "you will go to sleep again." There was no sign that the sleeper understood or heard; and when she was awakened the events of the trance were a blank to her as usual. She began talking to other persons. M. Janet, at some little distance, clapped his hands feebly together five times. Seeing that she did not seem to be attending to him, he went up to her and said, "Did you hear what I did just now?" "No; what?" "Do you hear this?" and he clapped his hands once more. "Yes, you clapped your hands." "How often?" "Once." M. Janet again withdrew and clapped his hands six times gently, with pauses between the claps. Lucie paid no apparent attention, but when the sixth clap of this second series—making the twelfth altogether—was reached, she fell instantly into the trance again. It seemed, then, that the "slave of the lamp" had counted the claps through all, and had obeyed the order much as a clock strikes after a certain number of swings of the pendulum, however often you stop it between hour and hour.
Thus far, the knowledge gained as to the unconscious element in Lucie was not direct, but inferential. The nature of the command which it could execute showed it to be capable of attention and memory; but there was no way of learning its own conception of itself, if such existed, or of determining its relation to other phenomena of Lucie's trance. And here it was that automatic writing was successfully invoked; here we have, as I may say, the first fruits in France of the new attention directed to this seldom-trodden field. M. Janet began by the following simple command: "When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour." This was done in the usual scrawling script of automatism, and Lucie, though fully awake, was not aware that she had written anything at all.
M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all questions of his after her waking. The command thus given had a persistent effect, and while the awakened Lucie continued to chatter as usual with other persons, her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which, in many cases, a new and invading separate personality is assumed.
A singular conversation gave to this limited creation, this statutory intelligence, an identity sufficient for practical convenience. "Do you hear me?" asked Professor Janet. Answer (by writing), "No." "But in order to answer one must hear." "Certainly." "Then how do you manage?" "I don't know." "There must be somebody that hears me." "Yes." "Who is it?" "Not Lucie." "Oh, some one else? Shall we call her Blanche?" "Yes, Blanche." Blanche, however, had to be changed. Another name had to be chosen. "What name will you have?" "No name." "You must, it will be more convenient." "Well, then, Adrienne." Never, perhaps, has a personality had less spontaneity about it.
Yet Adrienne was in some respects deeper down than Lucie. She could get at the genesis of certain psychical manifestations of which Lucie experienced only the results. A striking instance of this was afforded by the phenomena of the hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient was subject.
Lucie's special terror, which recurred in wild exclamation in her hysterical fits, was in some way connected with hidden men. She could not, however, recollect the incident to which her cries referred; she only knew that she had had a severe fright at seven years old, and an illness in consequence. Now, during these "crises" Lucie (except, presumably, in the periods of unconsciousness which form a pretty constant element in such attacks) could hear what Prof. Janet said to her. Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at; could no longer obey orders, and if she wrote, wrote only "J'ai peur, j'ai peur."
M. Janet, however, waited until the attack was over, and then questioned Adrienne as to the true meaning of the agitated scene. Adrienne was able to describe to him the terrifying incident in her childish life which had originated the confused hallucinations which recurred during the attack. She could not explain the recrudescence of the hallucinations; but she knew what Lucie saw, and why she saw it; nay, indeed, it was Adrienne, rather than Lucie, to whom the hallucination was directly visible.
Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical patient very seriously amiss. One conspicuous symptom was an almost absolute defect of sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned, an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state, not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but the corresponding or complimentary movements, the corresponding facial expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments. Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?" "Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."
In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were—as the pure experimentalist might say—only too sanative, only too rapidly tending to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries with therapeutic suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the rational command, her own Undine-like identity vanished away. The day came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the unconscious again—must I say?—for ever more.
Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons. For us who are busied with automatic writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport quite outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's own identity.
And we must remember that Adrienne—while she was, if I may say so, the Unconscious Self reduced to its simplest expression—did, nevertheless, manifest certain differences from Lucie, which, if slightly exaggerated, might have been very perplexing. Her handwriting was slightly different, though only in the loose and scrawling character so frequent in automatic script. Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more—and this last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative conclusions—Adrienne possessed a faculty, the muscular sense, of which Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly open as regards the relative faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for evolution, as well as for partition, for dissolution, of the corporate being.
Félida X. and her Submerged Soul.
Side by side with this case we have another in which the Conscious Personality, instead of being cured, has been superseded by the Sub-conscious. It was as if instead of "Adrienne" being submerged by Lucie, "Adrienne" became Lucie and dethroned her former master. The woman in question, Félida X., has been transformed.
In her case the somnambulic life has become the normal life; the "second state," which appeared at first only in short, dream-like accesses, has gradually replaced the "first state," which now recurs but for a few hours at long intervals. Félida's second state is altogether superior to the first—physically superior, since the nervous pains which had troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior, inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her shop much more effectively than when she was in theétat béte, as she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew. In this case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing, the spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities—the second state, no memory of which remains in the first state—has resulted in an improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word "normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Félida's normal state was in fact her morbid state; and the new condition which seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life of bodily and mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of average women of her class. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)
Chapter III.
Madame B. and Her Three Souls.
Marvellous as the cases cited in the last chapter appear, they are thrown entirely into the shade by the case of Madame B., in which the two personalities not only exist side by side, but in the case of the Sub-conscious self knowingly co-exist, while over or beneath both there is a third personality which is aware of both the other two, and apparently superior to both. The possibilities which this case opens up are bewildering indeed. But it is better to state the case first and discuss it afterwards. Madame B., who is still under Prof. Richet's observations,[3]is one of the favourite subjects of the French hypnotiser. She can be put to sleep at almost any distance, and when hypnotised completely changes her character. There are two well-defined personalities in her, and a third of a more mysterious nature than either of the two first. The normal waking state of the woman is called Léonie I., the hypnotic state Léonie II. The third occult Unconscious Personality of the lowest depth is called Léonie III.
"This poor peasant," says Professor Janet, "is in her normal state a serious and somewhat melancholy woman, calm and slow, very gentle and extremely timid. No one would suspect the existence of the person whom she includes within her. Hardly is she entranced when she is metamorphosed; her face is no longer the same; her eyes, indeed, remain closed, but the acuteness of the other senses compensates for the loss of sight. She becomes gay, noisy, and restless to an insupportable degree; she continues good-natured, but she has acquired a singular tendency to irony and bitter jests.... In this state she does not recognise her identity with her waking self. 'That good woman is not I,' she says; 'she is too stupid!'"
Madame B. has been so often hypnotised, and during so many years (for she was hypnotised by other physicians as long ago as 1860), that Léonie II. has by this time acquired a considerable stock of memories which Madame B. does not share. Léonie II., therefore, counts as properly belonging to her own history and not to Madame B.'s all the events which have taken place while Madame B.'s normal self was hypnotised into unconsciousness. It was not always easy at first to understand this partition of past experiences.
"Madame B. in the normal state," says Professor Janet, "has a husband and children. Léonie II., speaking in the somnambulistic trance, attributes the husband to the 'other' (Madame B.), but attributes the children to herself.... At last I learnt that her former mesmerisers, as bold in their practice as certain hypnotisers of to-day, had induced somnambulism at the time of her accouchements. Léonie II., therefore, was quite right in attributing the children to herself; the rule of partition was unbroken, and the somnambulism was characterised by a duplication of the subject's existence" (p. 391).
Still more extraordinary are Léonie II.'s attempts to make use of Léonie I.'s limbs without her knowledge or against her will. She will write postscripts to Léonie I.'s letters, of the nature of which poor Léonie I. is unconscious.
It seems, however, that when once set up this new personality can occasionally assume the initiative, and can say what it wants to say without any prompting. This is curiously illustrated by what may be termed a conjoint epistle addressed to Professor Janet by Madame B. and her secondary self, Léonie II. "She had," he says, "left Havre more than two months when I received from her a very curious letter. On the first page was a short note written in a serious and respectful style. She was unwell, she said—worse on some days than on others—and she signed her true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in quite a different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity:—'My dear good sir,—I must tell you that B. really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me. I am going to demolish her, she bores me. I am ill also. This is from your devoted Leontine' (the name first given to Léonie II).
"When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her concerning this curious missive. She remembered the first letter very distinctly, but she had not the slightest recollection of the second. I at first thought there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment when she closed the envelope. But afterwards these unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study the mode of their production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was seated at a table, and held in the left hand the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic tune; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round wide-awake but was surprised to see me, for in her state of distraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.
"Léonie II.'s independent action is not entirely confined to writing letters. She observed (apparently) that when her primary self, Léonie I., discovered these letters she (Léonie I.) tore them up. So Léonie II. hit upon a plan of placing them in a photographic album into which Léonie I. could not look without falling into catalepsy (on account of an association of ideas with Dr. Gibert, whose portrait had been in the album). In order to accomplish an act like this Léonie II. has to wait for a moment when Léonie I. is distracted, or, as we say, absent-minded. If she can catch her in this state Léonie II. can direct Léonie I.'s walks, for instance, or start on a long railway journey without baggage, in order to get to Havre as quickly as possible."
In the whole realm of imaginative literature, is there anything to compare to this actual fact of three selves in one body, each struggling to get possession of it? Léonie I., or the Conscious Personality, is in possession normally, but is constantly being ousted by Léonie II., or the Subconscious Personality. It is the old, old case of the wife trying to wear the breeches. But there is a fresh terror beyond. For behind both Léonie I. and Léonie II. stands the mysterious Léonie III.
"The spontaneous acts of the Unconscious Self," says M. Janet, here meaning byl'inconscientthe entity to which he has given the name of Léonie III., "may also assume a very reasonable form—a form which, were it better understood, might perhaps serve to explain certain cases of insanity. Mme. B., during her somnambulism (i.e.Léonie II.) had had a sort of hysterical crisis; she was restless and noisy and I could not quiet her. Suddenly she stopped and said to me with terror. 'Oh, who is talking to me like that? It frightens me.' 'No one is talking to you.' 'Yes! there on the left!' And she got up and tried to open a wardrobe on her left hand, to see if some one was hidden there. 'What is that you hear?' I asked. 'I hear on the left a voice which repeats, "Enough, enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance."' Assuredly the voice which thus spoke was a reasonable one, for Léonie II. was insupportable; but I had suggested nothing of the kind, and had no idea of inspiring a hallucination of hearing. Another day Léonie II. was quite calm, but obstinately refused to answer a question which I asked. Again she heard with terror the same voice to the left, saying, 'Come, be sensible, you must answer.' Thus the Unconscious sometimes gave her excellent advice."
And in effect, as soon as Léonie III. was summoned into communication, she accepted the responsibility of this counsel. "What was it that happened?" asked M. Janet, "when Léonie II. was so frightened?" "Oh! nothing. It was I who told her to keep quiet; I saw she was annoying you; I don't know why she was so frightened."
Note the significance of this incident. Here we have got at the root of a hallucination. We have not merely inferential but direct evidence that the imaginary voice which terrified Léonie II. proceeded from a profounder stratum of consciousness in the same individual. In what way, by the aid of what nervous mechanism, was the startling monition conveyed?
Just as Mme. B. was sent, by means of passes, into a state of lethargy, from which she emerged as Léonie II., so Léonie II., in her turn, was reduced by renewed passes to a state of lethargy from which she emerged no longer as Léonie II. but as Léonie III. This second waking is slow and gradual, but the personality which emerges is, in one important point, superior to either Léonie I. or Léonie II. Although one among the subject's phases, this phase possesses the memory of every phase. Léonie III., like Léonie II., knows the normal life of Léonie I., but distinguishes herself from Léonie I., in whom, it must be said, these subjacent personalities appear to take little interest. But Léonie III. also remembers the life of Léonie II.—condemns her as noisy and frivolous, and is anxious not to be confounded with her either. "Vous voyez bien que je ne suis pas cette bavarde, cette folle; nous ne nous ressemblons pas du tout."
We ask, in amazement, how many more personalities may there not be hidden in the human frame? Here is simple Madame B., who is not one person but three—first her commonplace self; secondly, the clever, chattering Léonie II., who is bored by B., and who therefore wants to demolish her; and thirdly, the lordly Léonie III., who issues commands that strike terror into Léonie II., and disdains to be identified with either of the partners in Madame B.'s body.
It is evident, if the hypnotists are right, that the human body is more like a tenement house than a single cell, and that the inmates love each other no more than the ordinary occupants of tenemented property. But how many are there of us within each skin who can say?
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Chapter IV.
Some Suggested Theories.
Of theories to account for these strange phenomena there are enough and to spare. I do not for a moment venture to claim for the man and wife illustration the slightest scientific value. It is only a figure of speech which brings out very clearly one aspect of the problem of personality. The theory that there are two independent personalities within the human skin is condemned by all orthodox psychologists. There is one personality manifesting itself, usually consciously, but occasionally unconsciously, and the different method of manifestation differs so widely as to give the impression that there could not be the same personality behind both. A man who is ambidextrous will sign his name differently with his right or left hand, but it is the same signature. Mr. Myers thinks that the Secondary Personality of Subliminal Consciousness is merely a phase of the essential Unity of the Ego. Some time ago he expressed himself on this subject as follows:—
"I hold that hypnotism (itself a word covering a vast variety of different states) may be regarded as constituting one special case which falls under a far wider category—the category, namely, of developments of a Secondary Personality. I hold that we each of us contain the potentialities of many different arrangements of the elements of our personality, each arrangement being distinguishable from the rest by differences in the chain of memories which pertain to it. The arrangement with which we habitually identify ourselves—what we call the normal or primary self—consists, in my view, of elements selected for us in the struggle for existence with special reference to the maintenance of ordinary physical needs, and is not necessarily superior in any other respect to the latent personalities which lie alongside of it—the fresh combinations of our personal elements which may be evoked by accident or design, in a variety to which we at present can assign no limit. I consider that dreams, with natural somnambulism, automatic writing, with so-called mediumistic trance, as well as certain intoxications, epilepsies, hysterias, and recurrent insanities, afford examples of the development of what I have called secondary mnemonic chains; fresh personalities, more or less complete, alongside the normal state. And I would add that hypnotism is only the name given to a group of empirical methods of inducing these fresh personalities."
A doctor in philosophy, to whom I submitted these pages, writes me as follows:—"There can be no doubt that every man lives a sub-conscious as well as a conscious life. One side of him is closed against examination by himself (i.e.unconscious); the other is conscious of itself. The former carries on processes of separation, combination, and distribution, of the thought-stuff handed over to it, corresponding almost exactly to the processes carried on by the stomach, which, as compared with those of eating, etc., go on in the dark automatically."
Another doctor, not of philosophy but of medicine, who has devoted special attention to the phenomenon of sleep, suggests a new illustration which is graphic and suggestive. He writes:—
"With regard to dual or multiple consciousness, my own feeling has always been that theindividualsstand one behind the other in the chambers of the mind, or else, as it were, in concentric circles. You may compare it to the Jewish tabernacle. First, there is the court of the Gentiles, where Ego No. 1 chaffers about trifles with the outer world. While he is so doing Ego No. 2 watches him from the court of the Levites, but does not go forth on small occasions. When we 'open out' to a friend the Levite comes forth, and is in turn watched by the priest from the inner court. Let our emotions be stirred in sincere converse and out strides the priest, and takes precedence of the other two, they falling obediently and submissively behind him. But the priest is still watched by the high priest from the tabernacle itself, and only on great and solemn occasions does he make himself manifest by action. When he does, the other three yield to his authority, and then we say the man 'speaks with his whole soul' and 'from the bottom of his heart.' But even now the Shekinah is upon the mercy-seat within the Holy of holies, and the high priest knows it."
The latest word[4]of the French psychologists is thus stated by M. Foüillée:—
"Contemporary psychology deprives us of the illusion of a definitely limited, impenetrable, and absolutely autonomous I. The conception of individual consciousness must be of an idea rather than of a substance. Though separateinthe universe, we are not separatefromthe universe. Continuity and reciprocity of action exist everywhere. This is the great law and the great mystery. There is no such thing as an isolated and veritably monad being, any more than there is such a thing as an indivisible point, except in the abstractions of geometry."
Whatever may be the true theory, it is evident that there is enough mystery about personality to make us very diffident about dogmatising, especially as to what is possible and what is not.
Whether we have one mind or two, let us, at least, keep it (or them) open.
4 (Return)1891.
"And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter's voice, she ran in and told how Peter stood before the gate. And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel (or double)."—Actsxil. 13-15.
Chapter I.
Aerial Journeyings.
I began to write this in the autumn of 1891 in a small country-house among the Surrey hills, whither I had retreated in order to find undisturbed leisure in which to arrange my ideas and array my facts. It was a pleasant place enough, perched on the brow of a heath-covered slope that dipped down to a ravine, at the head of which stands Professor Tyndall's house with its famous screen. Hardly a mile away northward lies the Devil's Punch Bowl, with its memorial stone erected in abhorrence of the detestable murder perpetrated on its rim by ruffians whose corpses slowly rotted as they swung on the gibbet overhead; far to the south spreads the glorious amphitheatre of hills which constitute the Highlands of the South.
The Portsmouth road, along which for hundreds of years rolled to and fro the tide of martial life between London and the great Sea Gate of the Realm, lies near by, silent and almost disused. Mr. Balfour's land, on the brow of Hindhead, is enclosed but not yet built upon, although a whole archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up amid the heather as the ground slopes towards Selborne—White's Selborne—that can dimly be descried to the westward beyond Liphook Common. Memories there are, enough and to spare, of the famous days of old, and of the not less famous men of our own time; but the ghosts have fled. "There used to be a ghost in the mill," said my driver, "and another in a comparatively new house over in Lord Tennyson's direction, but we hear nothing about them now." "Not even at the Murder Stone of the Devil's Punch Bowl?" "Not even at the Murder Stone. I have driven past it at all hours, and never saw anything—but the stone, of course."
Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could hardly be conceived than the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and where afterwards his murderers were hanged. I visited it late at night, when the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air. It is the way with ghosts—they seldom appear where they might be looked for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday world, which always happens.
Of this I had soon a very curious illustration. For, although there were no ghosts in the Devil's Punch Bowl by the Murder Stone, I found that there had been a ghost in the trim new little villa in which I was quartered! It didn't appear to me—at least, it has not done so as yet. But it appeared to some friends of mine whose statement is explicit enough. Here was a find indeed. I spent most of my boyhood within a mile of the famous haunted house or mill at Willington, but I had never slept before in a place which ghosts used as a trysting place. I asked my hostess about it. She replied, "Yes, it is quite true; but, although you may not believe it, I am the ghost." "You? How?" "Yes," she replied, quite seriously; "it is quite true what your friends have told you. They did see what you would correctly describe as an apparition. That is to say, they saw a more or less shadowy figure, which they at once identified, and which then gradually faded away. It was an apparition in the true sense of the word. It entered the room without using the door or window, it was visibly manifested before them, and then it vanished. All that is quite true. But it is also true that the ghost, as you call it, was my ghost." "Your ghost, but——" "I am not dead, you are going to say. Precisely. But surely you must be well aware of the fact that the ghosts of the living are much better authenticated than ghosts of the dead."
My hostess was the daughter of a well-known London solicitor, who, after spending her early youth in dancing and riding and other diversions of young ladies in society who have the advantage of a house in Park Lane, suddenly became possessed by a strange, almost savage, fascination for the occult lore of the ancient East. Abandoning the frivolities of Mayfair, she went to Girton, where she plunged into the study of Sanscrit. After leaving Girton, she applied herself to the study of the occult side of Theosophy. Then she married a black magician in the platonic fashion common to Occultists, early Christians, and Russian Nihilists, and since then she has prosecuted her studies into the invisible world with ever-increasing interest.
The Thought Body.
"I see you are incredulous," she replied; "but, if you like, I will some time afford you an opportunity of proving that I am simply speaking the truth. Tell me, will you speak to me if I appear to you in my thought body?" "Certainly," I replied, "unless I am struck dumb. Nothing would please me better. But, of course, I have never seen a ghost, and no one can say how any utterly unaccustomed experience may affect him." "Unfortunately," she replied, "that is too often the case. All those to whom I have hitherto appeared have been so scared they could not speak." "But, my dear friend, do you actually mean to say that you have the faculty of——" "Going about in my Thought Body? Most certainly. It is not a very uncommon faculty, but it is one which needs cultivation and development." "But what is a Thought Body?" My hostess smiled: "It is difficult to explain truths on the plane of thought to those who are immersed body and soul in matter. I can only tell you that every person has, in addition to this natural body of flesh, bones, and blood, a Thought Body, the exact counterpart in every respect of this material frame. It is contained within the material body, as air is contained in the lungs and in the blood. It is of finer matter than the gross fabric of our outward body. It is capable of motion with the rapidity of thought. The laws of space and time do not exist for the mind, and the Thought Envelope of which we are speaking moves with the swiftness of the mind."
"Then when your thought body appears?"
"My mind goes with it. I see, I hear, and my consciousness is with my Thought Envelope. But I want to have a proper interview while on my thought journeys. That is why I ask you if you would try to speak to me if I appear."
"But," I objected, "do you really mean that you hope to appear before me, in my office, as immaterial as gas, as visible as light, and yet to speak, to touch?"
"That is just what I mean," she replied, laughing, "that and nothing less. I was in your office the other morning at six o'clock, but no one was there. I have not got this curious power as yet under complete control. But when once we are able to direct it at will, imagine what possibilities it unfolds!"
"But," said I, "if you can be seen and touched, you ought to be photographed!"
"I wish to be photographed, but no one can say as yet whether such thought bodies can be photographed. When next I make the experiment I want you to try. It would be very useful."
Useful indeed! It does not require very vivid imagination to see that if you can come and go to the uttermost parts of the world in your thought shape, such Thought Bodies will be indispensable henceforth on every enterprising newspaper. It would be a great saving on telegraphy. When my ideal paper comes along, I mentally vowed I would have my hostess as first member of my staff. But of course it had got to be proved, and that not only once but a dozen times, before any reliance could be placed on it.
"I often come down here," said my hostess cheerfully, "after breakfast. I just lie down in my bedroom in town, and in a moment I find myself here at Hindhead. Sometimes I am seen, sometimes I am not. But I am here; seen or unseen, I see. It is a curious gift, and one which I am studying hard to develop and to control."
"And what about clothes?" I asked. "Oh," replied my hostess airily, "I go in whatever clothes I like. There are astral counterparts to all our garments. It by no means follows that I appear in the same dress as that which is worn by my material body. I remember, when I appeared to your friend, I wore the astral counterpart of a white silk shawl, which was at the time folded away in the wardrobe."
At this point, however, in order to anticipate the inevitable observation that my hostess was insane, I think I had better introduce the declarations of my two friends, who are quite clear and explicit as to their recollection of what they saw.
My witnesses are mother and daughter. The daughter I have seen and interviewed; the mother I could not see, but took a statement down from her husband, who subsequently submitted it in proof to her for correction. I print the daughter's statement first.
"About eighteen months ago (in May, 1890) I was staying at the house of my friend in M—— Mansions. Mrs. M. had gone to her country house at Hindhead for a fortnight and was not expected back for a week. I was sitting in the kitchen reading Edna Lyall's 'Donovan.' About half-past nine o'clock I distinctly heard Mrs. M. walk up and down the passage which ran from the front door past the open door of the room in which I was sitting. I was not thinking of Mrs. M. and did not at the time realize that she was not in the flat, when suddenly I heard her voice and saw her standing at the open door. I saw her quite distinctly, and saw that she was dressed in the dress in which I had usually seen her in an evening, without bonnet or hat, her hair being plaited low down close to the back of her head. The dress, I said, was the same, but there were two differences which I noticed at once. In her usual dress, the silk front was grey; this time the grey colour had given place to a curious amber, and over her shoulders she wore a shawl of white Indian silk. I noticed it particularly, because the roses embroidered on it at its ends did not correspond with each other. All this I saw as I looked up and heard her say, 'T——, give me that book.' I answered, half mechanically, 'Yes, Mrs. M.,' but felt somewhat startled. I had hardly spoken when Mrs. M. turned, opened the door leading into the main building, and went out. I instantly got up and followed her to the door. It was closed. I opened it and looked out, but could see nobody. It was not until then that I fully realised that there was something uncanny in what I had seen. I was very frightened, and after having satisfied myself that Mrs. M. was not in the flat, I fastened the door, put out the lights, and went to bed, burying my head under the bedclothes.
"The post next day brought a letter from Mrs. M. saying that she was coming by eleven o'clock. I was too frightened to stay in the house, and I went to my father and told him what I had seen. He told me to go back and hear what Mrs. M. had to say about the matter. When Mrs. M. arrived I told her what I had seen on the preceding evening. She laughed, and said, 'Oh! I was here then, was I? I did not expect to come here.' With that exception I have seen no apparition whatever, or had any hallucination of any kind, neither have I seen the apparition of Mrs. M. again."
After hearing this statement I asked Mrs. M. what she meant by the remark she had made on hearing Miss C.'s explanation of what she had witnessed. My hostess replied, "That night when I passed into the trance state, and lay down on the couch in the sitting-room at Hindhead, I did so with the desire of visiting my husband, who was in his retreat at Wimbledon. That, I should say, was between nine and half-past. After I came out of the trance I was conscious that I had been somewhere, but I did not know where. I started from Hindhead for Wimbledon, but landed at M—— Mansions, where, no doubt, I was more at home." "Then you had no memory of where you had been?" "Not the least." "And what about the shawl?" "The shawl was one that Miss C. had never seen. I had not worn it for two years, and the fact that she saw it and described it, is conclusive evidence against the subjective character of the vision. The originals of all the phantom clothes were at M—— Mansions at the time Miss C. saw me wearing them. I was not wearing the shawl. At the time when she saw it on my Thought Body it was folded up and put away in a wardrobe in an adjoining room. She had never seen it." I asked Miss C. what was the appearance of Mrs. M. She replied, "She just looked as she does always, only much more beautiful." "How do you account," said I to my hostess, "for the change in colour of the silk front from grey to amber?" She replied, "It was a freak."
I then asked Mr. C., the father of the last witness, what had occurred in his wife's experience. Here is the statement which his wife made to him, and which he says is absolutely reliable. "I was staying at Hindhead, in the lodge connected with the house in which you are staying. I was in some trouble, and Mrs. M. had been somewhat anxious about me. I had gone to sleep, but was suddenly aroused by the consciousness that some one was bending over me. When I opened my eyes I saw in shimmering outline a figure which I recognised at once as that of Mrs. M. She was bending over me, and her great lustrous eyes seemed to pierce my very soul. For a time I lay still, as if paralysed, being unable either to speak or to move, but at last gaining courage with time I ventured to strike a match. As soon as I did so the figure of Mrs. M. disappeared. Feeling reassured and persuaded that I had been deluded by my senses, I at last put out the light and composed myself to sleep. To my horror, no sooner was the room dark than I saw the spectral, shimmering form of Mrs. M. moving about the room, and always turning towards me those wonderful, piercing eyes. I again struck a match, and again the apparition vanished from the room.
"By this time I was in a mortal terror, and it was some time before I ventured to put out the light again, when a third time I saw the familiar presence which had evidently never left the room, but simply been invisible in the light. In the dark it shone by its own radiance. I was taken seriously ill with a violent palpitation of the heart, and kept my light burning. I felt so utterly upset that I could not remain any longer in the place and insisted next morning on going home. I did not touch the phantom, I simply saw it—saw it three times, and its haunting persistency rendered it quite impossible for me to mistake it for any mere nightmare."
Neither Mrs. nor Miss C. have had any other hallucinations, and Mrs. C. is strongly sceptical. She does not deny the accuracy of the above statement, but scouts the theory of a Thought Body, or of any supernatural or occult explanation. On hearing Mrs. C.'s evidence I asked my hostess whether she was conscious of haunting her guest in this way. "I knew nothing about it," she replied; "all that I know was that I had been much troubled about her and was anxious to help her. I went into a very heavy, deep sleep; but until next morning, when I heard of it from Mrs. C. I had no idea that my double had left my room." I said, "This power is rather gruesome, for you might take to haunting me." "I do not think so, unless there was something to be gained which could not be otherwise secured, some benefit to be conferred upon you." "That is to say, if I were in trouble or dangerously ill, and you were anxious about me, your double might come and attend my sick-bed." "That is quite possible," she said imperturbably. "Well," said I, "when are you coming to be photographed?" "Not for many months yet," she replied, with a laugh. "For the Thought Body to leave its corporeal tenement it needs a considerable concentration of thought, and an absence of all disturbing conditions or absorbing preoccupations at the time. I see no reason why I should not be photographed when the circumstances are propitious. I shall be very glad to furnish you with that evidence of the reality of the Thought Body, but such things cannot be fixed up to order."
This, indeed, was a ghost to some purpose—a ghost free from all the weird associations of death and the grave—a healthy, utilisable ghost, and a ghost, above all, which wanted to be photographed. It seemed too good to be true. Yet how strange it was! Here we have just been discussing whether or not we have each of us two souls, and, behold! my good hostess tells me quite calmly that it is beyond all doubt that we have two bodies.
Three Other Aerial Wanderers.
A short time after hearing from my hostess this incredible account of her aerial journeyings, I received first hand from three other ladies statements that they had also enjoyed this faculty of bodily duplication. All four ladies are between twenty and forty years of age. Three of them are married. The first says she has almost complete control over her movements, but for the most part her phantasmal envelope is invisible to those whom she visits.
This, it may be said, is mere conscious clairvoyance, in which the faculty of sight was accompanied by the consciousness of bodily presence, although it is invisible to other eyes. It is, besides, purely subjective and therefore beside the mark. Still, it is interesting as embodying the impressions of a mind, presumably sane, as to the experiences through which it has consciously passed. On the same ground I may refer to the experience of Miss X., the second lady referred to, who, when lying, as it was believed, at the point of death, declares that she was quite conscious of coming out of her body and looking at it as it lay in the bed. In all the cases I have yet mentioned the departure of the phantasmal body is accompanied by a state of trance on the part of the material body. There is not dual consciousness, but only a dual body, the consciousness being confined to the immaterial body.
It is otherwise with the experience of the fourth wanderer in my text. Mrs. Wedgwood, the daughter-in-law of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the well-known philologist, who was Charles Darwin's cousin, declares that she had once a very extraordinary experience. She was lying on a couch in an upper room one wintry morning at Shorncliffe, when she felt her Thought Body leave her and, passing through the window, alight on the snowy ground. She was distinctly conscious both in her material body and in its immaterial counterpart. She lay on the couch watching the movements of the second self, which at the same moment felt the snow cold under its feet. The second self met a labourer and spoke to him. He replied as if somewhat scared. The second self walked down the road and entered an officer's hut, which was standing empty. She noted the number of guns. There were a score or more of all kinds in all manner of places; remarked upon the quaint looking-glass; took a mental inventory of the furniture; and then, coming out as she went in, she regained her material body, which all the while lay perfectly conscious on the couch. Then, when the two selves were reunited, she went down to breakfast, and described where she had been. "Bless me," said an officer, who was one of the party, "if you have not been in Major ——'s hut. You have described it exactly, especially the guns, which he has a perfect mania for collecting."
Here the immaterial body was not only visible but audible, and that not merely to the casual passer-by, but also to the material body which had for the moment parted with one of its vital constituents without losing consciousness.
It must, of course, be admitted that, with the exception of the statement by my two friends as to the apparition of Mrs. M.'s immaterial body, none of the other statements can pretend to the slightest evidential value. They may be worth as much as the confessions of the witches who swore they were dancing with Satan while their husbands held their material bodies clasped in their arms; but any explanation of subjective hallucination or of downright lying would be preferred by the majority of people to the acceptance of the simple accuracy of these statements. The phenomenon of the aerial flight is, however, not unfamiliar to those who are interested in this subject.
Mrs. Besant's Theory.
I asked Mrs. Besant whether she thought my hostess was romancing, and whether my friend had not been the victim of some illusion. "Oh, no," said Mrs. Besant cheerfully. "There is nothing improbable about it. Very possibly she has this faculty. It is not so uncommon as you think. But its exercise is rather dangerous, and I hope she is well instructed." "How?" I asked. "Oh," Mrs. Besant replied, "it is all right if she knows what she is about, but it is just as dangerous to go waltzing about on the astral plane as it is for a girl to go skylarking down a dark slum when roughs are about. Elementals, with the desire to live, greedily appropriating the vitality and the passions of men, are not the pleasantest companions. Nor can other astrals of the dead, who have met with sudden or violent ends, and whose passions are unslaked, be regarded as desirable acquaintances. If she knows what she is about, well and good. But otherwise she is like a child playing with dynamite."
"But what is an astral body?"
Mrs. Besant replied, "There are several astrals, each with its own characteristics. The lowest astral body taken in itself is without conscience, will, or intelligence. It exists as a mere shadowy phantasm only as long as the material body lasts." "Then the mummies in the Museum?" "No doubt a clairvoyant could see their astrals keeping their silent watch by the dead. As the body decays so the astral fades away." "But that implies the possibility of a decaying ghost?" "Certainly. An old friend of mine, a lady who bears a well-known name, was once haunted for months by an astral. She was a strong-minded girl, and she didn't worry. But it was rather ghastly when the astral began to decay. As the corpse decomposed the astral shrank, until at last, to her great relief, it entirely disappeared."
Mrs. Besant mentioned the name of the lady, who is well known to many of my readers, and one of the last to be suspected of such haunting.
Chapter II.
The Evidence of the Psychical Research Society.
In that great text-book on the subject, "The Phantasms of the Living," by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, the phenomenon of the Thought Body is shown to be comparatively frequent, and the Psychical Research Society have about a hundred recorded instances. I will only quote here two or three of the more remarkable cases mentioned in these imposing volumes.
The best case of the projection of the Thought Body at will is that described, under the initials of "S. H. B.," in the first volume of the "Phantasms," pp. 104-109. Mr. B. is a member of the Stock Exchange, who is well known to many intimate friends of mine as a man of high character. The narrative, which is verified by the Psychical Research Society, places beyond doubt the existence of powers in certain individuals which open up an almost illimitable field of mystery and speculation. Mr. B.'s story, in brief, is this:—
"One Sunday night in November, 1881, I was in Kildare Gardens, when I willed very strongly that I would visit in spirit two lady friends, the Misses V., who were living three miles off in Hogarth Road. I willed that I should do this at one o'clock in the morning, and having willed it I went to sleep. Next Thursday, when I first met my friends, the elder lady told me she woke up and saw my apparition advancing to her bedside. She screamed and woke her sister, who also saw me." (A signed statement by both sisters accompanies this narrative. They fix the time at one o'clock, and say that Mr. B. wore evening dress.)
"On December 1st, 1882, I was at Southall. At half-past nine I sat down to endeavour to fix my mind so strongly upon the interior of a house at Kew, where Miss V. and her sister lived, that I seemed to be actually in the house. I was conscious, but I was in a kind of mesmeric sleep. When I went to bed that night I willed to be in the front bedroom of that house at Kew at twelve, and make my presence felt by the inmates. Next day I went to Kew. Miss V.'s married sister told me, without any prompting from me, that she had seen me in the passage going from one room to another at half-past nine o'clock, and that at twelve, when she was wide awake, she saw me come into the front bedroom where she slept and take her hair, which is very long, into my hand. She said I then took her hand and gazed into the palm intently. She said, 'You need not look at the lines, for I never had any trouble.' She then woke her sister. When Mrs. L. told me this I took out the entry I had made the previous night and read it to her. Mrs. L. is quite sure she was not dreaming. She had only seen me once before, two years previously, at a fancy ball.
"On March 22nd, 1884, I wrote to Mr. Gurney, of the Psychical Research Society, telling him I was going to make my presence felt by Miss V., at 44, Norland Square, at mid-night. Ten days afterwards I saw Miss V., when she voluntarily told me that on Saturday at midnight she distinctly saw me, when she was quite wide awake. I came towards her and stroked her hair. She adds in her written statement, 'The appearance in my room was most vivid and quite unmistakable.' I was then at Ealing."
Here there is the thrice-repeated projection at will of the Thought Body through space so as to make it both visible to, and tangible by, friends. But the Conscious Personality which willed the visit has not yet unlocked the memory of his unconscious partner, and Mr. B., although able to go and see and touch, could bring back no memory of his aerial flight. All that he knew was that he willed and then he slept. The fact that he appeared is attested not by his consciousness, but by the evidence of those who saw him.
A Visitor from Burmah.
Here is a report of the apparition of a Thought Body, the material original of which was at the time in Burmah. The case is important, because the Thought Body was not recognised at the time, showing that it could not have been a subjective revival of the memory of a face. It is sent me by a gentleman in South Kensington, who wishes to be mentioned only by his initials, R.S.S.
"Towards the close of 1888 my son, who had obtained an appointment in the Indian Civil Service, left England for Burmah.
"A few days after his arrival in Rangoon he was sent up the country to join the District Commissioner of a district still at that period much harassed by Dacoits.
"After this two mails passed by without news of him, and as, up to this period, his letters had reached us with unfailing regularity, we had a natural feeling of anxiety for his safety. As the day for the arrival of the third mail drew near I became quite unreasonably apprehensive of bad news, and in this state of mind I retired one evening to bed, and lay awake till long past the middle of the night, when suddenly, close to my bedside, appeared very distinctly the figure of a young man. The face had a worn and rather sad expression; but in the few seconds during which it was visible the impression was borne in upon me that the vision was intended to be reassuring.
"I cannot explain why I did not at once associate this form with my son, but it was so unlike the hale, fresh-looking youth we had parted from only four or five months previously that I supposed it must be his chief, whom I knew to be his senior by some five years only.
"I retailed this incident to my son by the next mail, and was perplexed when I got his reply to hear that his chief was a man with a beard and moustache, whereas the apparition was devoid of either. A little later came a portrait of himself recently taken. It was the subject of my vision, of which the traits had remained, and still remain, in every detail, perfectly distinct in my recollection."
Thought Visits Seen and Remembered.
Here is an account of a visit paid at will, which is reported at first hand in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society." The narrator, Mr. John Moule, tells how he determined to make an experiment of the kind now under discussion:—
"I chose for this purpose a young lady, a Miss Drasey, and stated that some day I intended to visit her, wherever the place might be, although the place might be unknown to me; and told her if anything particular should occur to note the time, and when she called at my house again to state if anything had occurred. One day, about two months after (I not having seen her in the interval), I was by myself in my chemical factory, Redman Row, Mile End, London, all alone, and I determined to try the experiment, the lady being in Dalston, about three miles off. I stood, raised my hands, and willed to act on the lady. I soon felt that I had expended energy. I immediately sat down in a chair and went to sleep. I then saw in a dream my friend coming down the kitchen stairs where I dreamt I was. She saw me, and exclaimed suddenly, 'Oh! Mr. Moule,' and fainted away. This I dreamt and then awoke. I thought very little about it, supposing I had had an ordinary dream; but about three weeks after she came to my house and related to my wife the singular occurrence of her seeing me sitting in the kitchen where she then was, and she fainted away and nearly dropped some dishes she had in her hands. All this I saw exactly in my dream, so that I described the kitchen furniture and where I sat as perfectly as if I had been there, though I had never been in the house. I gave many details, and she said, 'It is just as if you had been there.'" (Vol. III. pp. 420, 421.)
Mr. W. A. S., to quote another case, in April, 1871, at two o'clock in the afternoon, was sitting in a house in Pall Mall. He saw a lady glide in backwards at the door of the room, as if she had been slid in on a slide, each part of her dress keeping its proper place without disturbance. She glided in until the whole of her could be seen, except the tip of her nose, her lips, and the tip of her chin, which were hidden by the edge of the door. She was an old acquaintance of his, whom he had not seen for twenty or twenty-five years. He observed her closely until his brother entered the house, and coming into the room passed completely through the phantasm, which shortly afterwards faded away. Another person in the room could not see it. Some years afterwards he learned that she had died the same year, six months afterwards, from a painful cancer of the face. It was curious that the phantasm never showed him the front of its face, which was always hidden by the door. (Vol. II. p. 517.)
Sometimes, however, the Thought Body is both conscious and visible, although in most cases when visible it is not conscious, and retains no memory of what has passed. When it remembers it is usually not visible. In Mr. Dale Owen's remarkable volume, "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," there is a narrative, entitled "The Visionary Excursion," in which a lady, whom he calls Mrs. A., whose husband was a brigadier-general in India, describes an aerial flight so explicitly that I venture to reprint her story here, as illustrating the possibility of being visible and at the same time remembering where you had been:—
In June of the year 1857, a lady, whom I shall designate as Mrs. A., was residing with her husband, a colonel in the British army, and their infant child, on Woolwich Common, near London.
One night in the early part of that month, suddenly awaking to consciousness, she felt herself as if standing by the bedside and looking down upon her own body, which lay there by the side of her sleeping husband. Her first impression was that she had died suddenly, and the idea was confirmed by the pale and lifeless look of the body, the face void of expression, and the whole appearance showing no sign of vitality. She gazed at it with curiosity for some time, comparing its dead look with that of the fresh countenances of her husband and of her slumbering infant in the cradle hard by. For a moment she experienced a feeling of relief that she had escaped the pangs of death; but the next she reflected what a grief her death would be to the survivors, and then came the wish that she had broken the news to them gradually.
While engaged in these thoughts she felt herself carried to the wall of her room, with a feeling that it must arrest her further progress. But no, she seemed to pass through it into the open air. Outside the house was a tree; and this also she seemed to traverse as if it interposed no obstacle. All this occurred without any desire on her part.
She crossed Woolwich Common, visited the Arsenal, returned to the barracks, and then found herself in the bed-chamber of an intimate friend, Miss L. M., who lived at Greenwich. She began to talk; but she remembered no more until she waked by her husband's side. Her first words were, "So I am not dead after all." She told her husband of her excursion, and they agreed to say nothing about it until they heard from Miss L. M.
When they met that lady, two days after, she volunteered the statement that Mrs. A. had appeared to her about three o'clock in the morning of the night before last, robed in violet, and had a conversation with her ("Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," p. 256.)
A Doctor's Experience of the Dual Body.
Whatever may be thought of the Psychic's description of her experiences in her thought journey, they are vivid and realistic. Here is the description given by a medical man in a well-known watering-place on the south coast of his experience in getting into his material body after an aerial excursion:—
"I was engaged to a young lady whom I very much loved. During the early part of this engagement I visited the Hall in the village, not far from the Vicarage, where the young lady resided. I was in the habit of spending from Sunday to Monday at the Hall. On one of these mornings of my departure I found myself standing between the two closed windows in the lady's bedroom. It was about five o'clock on a bright summer morning. Her room looked eastward, mine directly west, and the church stood between the two houses, which were about five hundred yards apart. I have no impression whatever how I became transplanted from the house. The lady was in a camp bedstead, directly opposite to me, looking at and reaching out her arms towards me, when my disembodied spirit instantly disappeared to join the material body which it had left in some mysterious way. As I returned and was fitting in to my body on my left side, when half united I could see within me the ununited spiritual part on glow like an electric light, while the other united half was hidden in total darkness, looking black as through a thunder cloud, when, like the shutting of a drawer, the whole body became united, and I awoke in great alarm, with a belief that if any one had entered my room and moved my body from the position in which it lay on its back, the returning spirit could not have joined its material case, and that death, as it is vulgarly called, would have been inevitable."
In the morning at the breakfast-table the young lady said she had a strange experience. She saw M.D. in her bedroom, looking at her as she sat up in bed, and that he disappeared after a short stay; but how he got there she could not say, as she was positive she had locked her bedroom door. So one experience corroborated the other.[5]