Do the dead depart? and other questions

Dedication

TO THE MEMORY OF

RICHARD HODGSON, LL.D.

Preface

This book is not evidential. That is not its aim. There is already a flood of literature on these subjects, written by experts for experts.

After twenty-five years of constant study and investigation and of meeting other psychic students in every quarter of the globe, I suppose I may consider myself somewhat of an expert ?

When writing Seen and Unseen it occurred to me : Why should not some one, who has a little knowledge in these matters, write a simple book for the general public, telling frankly and accurately a few simple personal experiences, without technical dissertations upon the theories connected with such experiences ?

It is difficult for some of us to realize that a story may be told quite accurately, and yet, not from the purely evidential point of view. The latter, of necessity, involves a mass of small details, very 7

8 PREFACE

wearisome for the ordinary reader, and in many cases of no essential importance to the narrative ; but not one of which can be omitted in an exhaustive evidential report.

In spite of the very genial and kindly reception given to my last book, some of my reviewers have missed this point. They have lamented the absence of " evidence "in Seen and Unseen, not realizing that the presence of " evidence " would have entailed page upon page of wearisome repetitions ; wearisome, I mean, of course, to those who have not yet begun to take a scientific interest in psychic matters.

It is to these people that both my books are primarily addressed.

I wanted to talk to them through my writing, just as I should have talked to them in real life, had we met, and had they said to me, " Now do tell me, as a sensible woman, what first attracted your attention to these questions ? Have you had any personal experience, apart from professional mediums, etc., etc. ? "

Some kind friends, on both sides of the Veil, have deeply regretted my writing

■ PKEFACE 9

in a style " so far below my capacity and brain power." But it seems to me that our only justification for writing at all in these overburdened days, is the fact that we have something to say to somebody. It is not a question of trying to impress people with the amount or quality of one's brain power (every one has brains nowadays !) but of getting them to listen to what one says. And in psychic matters, at any rate, it has been made very plain to me that so far as I am concerned, the public prefers a genial chat to a more elaborate presentation of my views and experiences.

The late Dr. Alfred Williams Momerie (one of our most brilliant Cambridge scholars and at one time an intimate friend of mine) often said to me, "Always remember that it is extremely easy to make simple things complicated, and extremely difficult to make complicated things appear easy."

All those who know his books or remember his lectures, will admit that he gave a brilliant example of how the latter difficulty could be met and overcome.

10 PREFACE)

So I have written the present little book on much the same lines as the last, so far as that is compatible with the difference of subject-matter.

I shall be more than satisfied if it receive as kind and genial a welcome as that which greeted my Psychic Reminiscences.

E. Katharine Bates.

I. Some Objections to

Spirit Re turn .

. 13 n.

Some Instances of Spirit Eeturn 28 in.

IN

America .

.

IV.

A Curious Illustration r

OI

Spirit Methods

.

v.

.

. 93

VI.

.

. Ill

VII.

.

viii.

Eeincarnation

IX.

.

. 167

X.

Materialization .

.

. 189

XI.

, 218 xn.

. 238

Do the Dead Depart?

Chapter I Some Objections To Spirit Return

A few months ago, I published with Messrs. Dodge Publishing Company, a book entitled Seen and Unseen, in which I related as simply as possible some of the events in my own life which distinctly suggest a supernormal cause. I say supernormal advisedly, for I think we have all learned by this time that nothing which happens can possibly be supernatural. That would be a contradiction in terms. Any event of which the immediate cause does not at present enter into the ordinary racial knowledge must of necessity be supernormal. It is equally certain that it cannot be supernatural.

It has been suggested that I should write a second book dealing with similar 13 experiences but more specially touching upon the question, " Do the dead return?" Were I criticising this title instead of writing upon it I should be inclined to put the query, " Do the so-called dead return ? " for there is a finality about the word dead which at once prejudges the case.

How can the dead return or do anything else involving movement and action ?

It is the living who return. It is the living who depart, for that matter. How can a dead man depart or return ? We hear a great deal about the worthlessness of words. It often seems to me that the worth and the power of words are incalculable and almost infinite.

How many delusions have been generated and built up and have flourished for centuries owing to a loose or incorrect use of words ?

Both science and theology have curious records and strange tales to tell us on this subject. A whole creed may rest upon so frail a foundation as the omission or addition of a tiny word of three letters : such a word as " not/' for example.

Again, the whole structure of the doctrine of the resurrection of our present flesh bodies, devoutly believed in for centuries and still held fervently by many good people, has rested upon the text, " Yet in my flesh shall I see God." But the revised version of the Bible translates this text, " Yet from my flesh shall I see God," and the marginal note to this gives " without" as an equivalent for " from," thus making the sense of the whole sentence the exact antithesis of that which we have been hitherto taught. "Yet in my flesh shall I see God " thus becomes, " Yet without my flesh shall I see God."

Who can say that words are of little value when one short word can thus create or destroy the whole doctrine of a resurrection of the flesh f

So much for the worthlessness of words ! Now when people talk of a dead man they are really using words in a contradictory sense, no matter how firmly custom and tradition have justified them in doing so.

A body can die but a man cannot die, although I suppose we all talk about dead men occasionally just as we all talk about a rising and setting sun when we really know that we mean the exact contrary of what we say.

An absolutely convinced and absolutely logical materialist — if such a being really exists — may say, " But I entirely deny your premises. I maintain that a man can die, because I deny the existence in him of anything beyond perishable material which dies as man and can only endure through transmutation into other forms of matter." Such a materialist has perfect liberty to make such an assertion ; but it is assertion pur et simple, and the presumption of evidence is against him ; enormously and increasingly against him as the years go on and metapsychics begin to take their due place as a subject for scientific investigation.

It may however be well to clear the ground at once by saying that this book is not addressed to that mythical and expiring dodo — the thorough-paced materialist. He is quite as rare nowadays as the historical dead Donkey that nobody ever saw.

Assuming, therefore, that no one is likely to read this little book who is not prepared to admit that man is a spirit, however little we may comprehend the exact nature of spirit, and has a body, we can go on to the next point.

Speaking just now of the enormous influence of words — rightly or wrongly used — reminds me of Shakspeare's dogmatic and most unfortunate assertion as regards the " bourne from which no traveler returns." It is unnecessary to point out how he contradicts his own words again and again in his plays by describing, as well as suggesting, visitors from that distant bourne. In spite of this, his words have been quoted again and again by all those who deprecate such visits and object to such visitors, and we are continually reminded that our greatest poet and philosopher demonstrated the impossibility of any intercourse between the living and the so-called dead ; whilst in the same breath they will point out as a further clinching of the argument, that " Holy Writ " specially deprecates the attempt to establish such intercourse.

Oh, blessed inconsistency ! Why should the writers of the Bible forbid and denounce a practice that is impossible f And why again, should those who quote Shakspeare's well-worn words as proof of the impossibility of the practice quote Scripture at the same moment as proof of its wickedness f

Why ? Simply because human nature is inconsistent ab initio, and never so inconsistent as when it is led by strong prejudice either to condemn or to approve.

I think any intelligent observer must be struck by the fact that taking humanity (as it now stands) as a whole, there is both undoubted indifference to, and most undoubted fear of, any possible intercourse between our present sphere and that which we believe will follow it.

No doubt this is partly theological — especially the fear.

To acknowledge that our departed friends not only can but do return to us — (I would rather say that they have never wholly left us) — here and now, is a complete bouleversement of Orthodox

Theology — by which latter I mean theology, not even as it has been presented in the Bible, but as it has been interpreted to us from the Bible, by our various Churches or teachers.

I remember once in America having a deeply interesting talk with Dr. Phillips Brooks of Boston, in connection with a letter I had written to him. When we met to discuss the latter, my first words were, " I am afraid, Dr. Brooks, you will have thought my letter rather unorthodox ? " I have never forgotten his look of genuine surprise as he answered quietly, " Such an idea never crossed my mind. I was deeply interested in your letter — I never thought about its being orthodox or unorthodox. In fact, I don't quite know how people define those words. Nor do I think I have much respect for orthodoxy unless it means the Truth."

How characteristic these courageous words are, read in the light of his own broad grasp of truth and impatience of those who would place stumbling-blocks in the way of its attainment ! "I asked for bread and you gave me a stone." I asked for Truth and you gave me— Orthodoxy. How many of us can say this in bitterness and loneliness of heart and spirit !

It was this great preacher's passionate love of Christ and love of Truth and hatred of all that tends to diversion and separation that gave him his marvelous influence over not only his country but his century, in all truly religious thought. But for us smaller souls who have not yet reached these heights, the theological measuring tape is ever at hand and we are desperately afraid, some of us, of being the eighth of an inch out in our theological calculations. Also I think we are naturally more eager to put our neighbors, than ourselves, through what may be termed the theological yard meassure.

People have said to me again and again, " But how can you reconcile " (oh, how I hate that word " reconcile " by this time !) " the statements of the Bible about the blessed dead awaiting the last Trump and the final Resurrection with your idea that your dead friends can be with you and talk to you and give you messages and so forth ? I don't attempt to reconcile anything — I can only speak of those things which have come to me as facts. There are so many apparently contradictory statements in the Bible that nobody can reconcile at present, if he be quite honest. I am willing to believe that we may misunderstand many of these statements owing to our own spiritual limitations. I am forced to believe that mistranslation may account for other discrepancies. But a long experience has convinced me personally that the Bible contains all that is necessary for our spiritual evolution and education, and common sense has convinced me that no truth on any plane can be in real conflict with Bible statements where such statements convey spiritual facts. All real facts must harmonize, although our present ignorance may not permit us to put the various blocks together and make a perfect map of the whole processes of the universe.

Is it not unthinkable that we should be able to do this under the circumstances of our present existence ?

To be quite honest, we must admit that modern theology is not nearly so comfortable as were the generally-accepted religious ideas of thirty or forty years ago, In those days people were divided into two camps as a rule, i. e., the " whollyworldly," who declined to trouble themselves about the future at all, boldly declaring the " one world at a time " theory as their rule in life, and the " worldlyholy," by which I mean those anxious to make the best of both worlds and to pay a sort of Fire Insurance by attending to their religious duties for some part at least of one day in seven. To these latter it is obvious that no scheme of salvation could be more convenient than one which put belief above character, and in fact rather deprecated any special development of the latter on any other lines, save those of a narrow theology, as tending to self-righteousness. To ignore the painful and strenuous education of life in building up character (a process seemingly as slow as that of forming corals beneath the sea), would naturally appeal to the second camp of which I speak. So also would the doctrine of instant salvation through an act of belief, and of a clean slate from which all the consequences of our errors and sins are rubbed out by that mysterious sponge called the Grace of God.

Far be it from me to say one irreverent word as regards the latter, which is a blessed fact, known to so many of us, thank God !

The mistake has been in confusing absolution from sin with absolution from the consequences of sin — a totally different matter. The latter is a question of law, and so far as we have any experience, God never acts in contradiction to His laws. When such appears to be the case, we may be quite sure that some unknown factor has been left out in our calculation and that the apparent inconsistency lies in this unknown quantity, through which the law is acting, and not in any difference in the working of that law. Now I think if there is one thing which the experience of life teaches each one of us more definitely than anything else, it is the fact that as we sow so we must reap, and that for every action of our lives, good or bad, we shall receive payment or some day be called upon to make it. There can be no doubt that the sowing may have been done for us to some extent, greater or less, as the case may be. In old days this seemed a terrible " injustice/' but now that science, as well as progressive theology are teaching us something of the cosmic consciousness and the solidarity and unity of life, a gleam of light has come to us.

This is an illustration of what I said before. Injustice and inconsistency are not inherent in any law of God. Where they appear so, be very sure there is an unknown factor — an X which must be added to all our calculations and which one day will have the Divine sign = added to it. Still the old ideas die slowly and die hard. People are wary enough to see that if they accept the pleasant trend of the new ideas they will be bound to accept the unpleasant trend also, and most of them (I am speaking now of the

" religious world," as it is called) prefer to leave well alone, to go on in the beaten tracks and to refuse the satisfaction of intercourse with their departed friends and relations, rather than open the door to some very inconvenient facts, which are bound to follow.

Some years ago, when staying at Cairo, Lady Dunmore and I paid a visit to a very old friend of mine, who had lived there for many years and held a high official position in the Government Finance Department. His wife was dead and his only daughter married, and I think Lady Dunmore's kindly idea was that we might together, persuade him to look into psychic matters and thus bring some consolation into a lonely life by getting into touch perhaps with those who had gone on. But this was not his view of consolation at all. He hastened to assure us that there was nothing he should dislike more ! " It seems to me a horrible idea," he said quite frankly, " that those we loved here should know w 7 hat we are doing and thinking about, now that they have left us ! I am sure it would make them most unhappy," he continued. " And you rather uncomfortable" was my mental note at the time.

There was something almost pathetic in his eager disclaimer to any such hope or wish. I am sure there are many hundreds, nay, thousands, who feel just the same, although they might not put it so frankly.

When I first realized the constant presence of friends in the Unseen as a matter of absolute conviction, I can remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It gave me at first a feeling of being overlooked, of never being alone and so forth. But as the months and years passed and some feeble idea of the cosmic consciousness awoke, this trivial ^(/"-consciousness as regards that special question passed away forever. In the larger consciousness, believe me, there is no room for small, self-conscious doubts and fears of this kind. And as regards the more serious questions of our sins and shortcomings, surely Tennyson has once for all answered these, in his exquisite verses.

" Shall he for whose applause I strove, I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shame, And I be lessened in his love 1

" I wrong the grave with fears untrue ; Shall Love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great death ; The dead shall look me through and through.

u Be near us when we climb or fall ; Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours, With larger, other eyes than ours, To make allowance for us all."

Chapter II Some Instances Of Spirit Return

I have always felt very strongly that nothing but personal experience can really help us in deciding the momentous question, " Do our dead return ? " Our friends may tell us of their experiences and still more frequently of the experiences of their friends ; we may read dozens of books full of the most circumstantial and well-attested evidence ; we may hear the most convincing testimony to an affirmative answer to our question ; and yet in the end to what does it all amount ? Absolute conviction overnight has become absolute incredulity by the morning.

I have seen this again and again and must even confess to personal experience of this undeniable fact. Something happens, so abnormal and yet so absolutely convincing to our bodily senses of sight and hearing, that we feel at the moment, 28

" Well, this settles matters once for all. There is no question of professional mediumship here. That which has happened has come about quite spontaneously. I am in full possession of my faculties and am neither dreaming nor romancing. So far as this fact is concerned I can never again entertain a doubt."

My dear friend ! probably by next morning — certainly by next week or next month or at latest next year — you will be full of doubts not only as to what really happened but even more as to your own powers of critical judgment. This is true even where purely physical phenomena are in question.

Some years ago, when staying on a large sheep station in Queensland, Australia, with a son of the late Sir Arthur Hodgson, who had married an old acquaintance of mine, I witnessed a curious illustration of this point.

Two Englishmen, friends of my hosts, from distant stations, had arrived one evening unexpectedly, in the charming Colonial fashion, and were to be hospitably entertained for a day or two.

30 DO THE DEAD DEPAKT?

My host and hostess were extremely anxious that I should consent to a little " sitting " on the evening of their guests' arrival and very unwillingly I felt obliged to fall in with this suggestion. To begin with, however, I made all four solemnly give me their word of honor that no trickery should take place and that if nothing happened I should not be reproached ; whereas, if anything not to be explained except by trickery, should occur, they would at least be willing to bear testimony to the facts. Under these conditions only, I consented to sit at the table with them, it being distinctly understood that each one separately had given me his or her word of honor that he or she would be entirely passive and willing to receive what came. Some extremely unpleasant things came, as a matter of fact.

The conditions were far from ideal. The two visitors were perfect strangers to me and knew nothing of psychic matters ; my host and hostess were in an equally elementary stage, and therefore mentally there was no sort of harmony. Physically, however, there must have been a great deal of latent energy. There was full light upon the proceedings all the time and, apart from the solemn promise given, I could see that no normal force was being used. Yet the table rose several inches from the ground, whilst the three men and we two women had our hands upon it in full view and in a way which would naturally have prevented its rising, had not a stronger force been acting in the contrary direction. Later, this power, whether intelligent or unintelligent, was at least extremely destructive.

This special " station " was very charmingly furnished, more like a London drawing-room than an Australian sheep farm ; the table was beautifully inlaid with woods and several of the chairs used were also inlaid, with porcelain designs. When the sitting was over, the table was broken and two at least of the chairs were smashed and the pretty porcelain designs hopelessly wrecked.

Our visitors were well-born and wellbred Englishmen and would scarcely have wished to ruin the property of their host and hostess. Certainly the latter would not have yearned to break up their own furniture, in a part of the world where such things are not easily replaced !

That night at least, there was no question of some extraneous force being present and all the men agreed that they could not suggest any reasonable explanation.

At the breakfast-table next morning every one of them had practically retracted his confession of faith ! Night had brought, not counsel, but false shame. The old tradition of the normal, in which they had lived for years, proved too strong for their judgment upon this abnormal experience. When taxed with the facts of the broken chairs and table they indignantly refuted my satirical suggestion that they must have broken them in some occult manner, under our very eyes, in full "ight, without detection !

But they appeared to have forgotten all their remarks of the previous evening. They hau slept over it, the pendulum of " the familiar " had swung back into place, dislodging the consciousness of something abnormal and inexplicable, and it was useless to remind them of their solemn vow that if anything happened to baffle ordinary explanations they should admit the fact. They had admitted it overnight but recanted their confession within twelve hours, although absolutely incapable of suggesting any normal explanation.

This is only a specimen of what is continually occurring. It is quite natural that it should do so, but it shows the uselessness of any phenomenal marvels with a view to shaking materialistic convictions in the ordinary observer and the ordinary sceptic.

This is why I do not propose to add to the innumerable cases which are at hand on every side, testifying to the continued existence of our so-called dead.

The most telling " case " of another person's experience does not " beg' .1 to compare " with the smallest experience of your own. An ounce of pergonal experience is worth pounds of other people's evidence when related by them and tons of other people's evidence when printed and not spoken. It is not by breaking an extra chair or table, nor by the exceptional and very occasional experience of a vision or a dream that we shall gain conviction. It is by the daily and hourly consciousness of the presence of our unseen friends — by their kindly help and loving warnings and by the constant proofs they / give us of a watchful companionship and an untiring love.

And this must come to each one of us individually. We cannot hand over our own experience to another. We can only tell him what has happened to us and suggest that there is no reason in the world, except his own attitude of mind, to prevent his having a similar experience.

Developed clairaudience and developed clairvoyance may be indeed, and probably are, to a great extent the result of heredity, the inheritance left us perchance by previous experiences. But I believe that in every human being lies the germ of these higher senses and that if we would only take some simple measures to develop these germs under favorable conditions, we should be astounded by the results obtained.

Professor Pritchard (Savilian Professor of Astronomy in Oxford, and one of the most successful and celebrated educationalists of the last century) said to me once, " No human being of common intelligence comes into this world, who is incapable of drawing to some extent — of reproducing what he sees. I am convinced of this through experience and have never known it fail." Yet the professor would have been the first to admit that every boy is not a budding Turner nor an undeveloped Raphael.

I am equally sure that the same truth holds good as regards psychic matters.

Love is the great developer here as elsewhere, and if we don't succeed in getting into touch with our " lost " friends and relations, I do not for one moment believe it is from lack of capacity ; but either from lack of true purpose and incentive or from the presence (even unconsciously to ourselves) of some deterring influence, due to prejudice or tradition.

Again, we are apt not to be sufficiently simple in our methods — we think some great step is necessary, some washing in Abana or Pharphar. We must go to this or that medium, " having no power ourselves." And we go, not feeling quite sure that it is right to do so. Perhaps we are met by incompetence or by that which appears to us an attempt at " fishing," or even fraud. Old investigators know well that the same medium who succeeds in one case will make an abject failure in the next. Why ? simply because there are mental laws as well as physical ones and some mental affinity must be established between sitter and medium, just as there must be sending and receiving stations established for wireless telegraphy. When one says this, people are apt to answer, " Ah, yes ! that proves that it is merely a question of telepathic transference from the mind of the sitter to the mind of the medium," and they look greatly pleased by their own intelligent and final, if somewhat vague, assertion.

You might just as well say that the necessity for receiving and despatching

INSTANCES OF SPIEIT RETURN 37

" stations " in wireless telegraphy and for the vibrations being tuned to the same pitch, proves that there is no sender of the message. It is doubtless true that the difficulties of discrimination and transmission are greater, where the telegraphic lines to be used are human and not material and vibratory. But these difficulties exist to be overcome, not to be shunted by a slipshod and unscientific dictum that it is " mere telepathy between sitter and medium, " and therefore not worthy of investigation. This lazy assertion is at once challenged and denied in the fairly numerous cases, where facts, neither in the conscious nor unconscious mind of the sitter (unless he be omniscient !) have been truthfully conveyed to the inquirer.