The natural order of spirit : a psychic study and experience

Front matter

LUCIEN C. GRACES

Class U _____

/I Book_i^_

Preface

This book has been a work of compulsion. A necessity has been laid upon me and for several years has led me in the direction of this expression. I venture to quote the words of Jeremiah : " But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay."

There are times in life when these words of the prophet do not seem far-fetched or inappropriate. There is the sudden turn in the road when we come face to face with an experience that appalls us for the time, when the easy complacencies of life are broken up and we are led to search for reality as never before. There are times when a great truth takes possession of one's being and a new vision of life and the universe dawns upon us, when out of the pit our feet are set upon a rock and a new song put in our mouth, and then we quote this ancient scripture with new understanding. In this expression, there has been also a clear consciousness of spirit guidance and urgency much more than I should want to state in this simple beginning. This writing, such as it is, has been a deliverance of soul; it has been an experience of life for which I must find a door of utterance or be untrue to myself and the divine voice within. It has also been a work of long waiting and preparation, into which many volumes and prolonged study and experimentation on psychic lines have ii PREFACE

been wrought, and which I hope has made for strength and moderation in my statement.

The ruling idea of the book is the natural order of spirit. Is not such a conception of the future life and its conditions pressing upon thinking minds more and more insistently? Are there not many in these inquiring days who are led by the demands of the rational faculty for law and order, by an imperative sense of search for the dear ones who have been truly lost to them by death — are there not many who are constrained to ponder deeply on the reasonable conditions of a future life?

And in the unification and coordination of all life and knowledge, can it be otherwise, we ask, than that the conditions and besetments of the future life should be an extension of the present natural order — though it would seem on a vastly larger and more refined scale? Are there not far-reaching suggestions in biology, and illuminating revelations in the new knowledge of our time concerning the ether and matter, that open up wonderful vistas of the possibilities of the universe for life continued? An able scholar and writer has referred to this dawning vision as " a universe of infinite subtlety, and yet of solidest reality and inconceivable potentialities."

And what is psychic science doing here in bringing order and consistency and natural persuasiveness into this life and world extension? What are the conclusions of the great experimenters and students in this field rather than the mere theorizers as to the reality and order of spirit? And what shall we do with this increasing and illuminating body of testimony from the other side, unmistakably, em-

PREFACE iii

phatically, and persistently declaring the orderly sequences of life and the affiliation and correspondences of the material and spiritual worlds?

But what shall we do also with the old supernaturalism? That is taking care of itself. The old lines of demarkation between the natural and supernatural have insensibly faded away, and these fields of human thought have become continuous and unified. The growing wonder of life and our surroundings have crowned all things with a halo of the miraculous, and our deepening sense of law and order has brought all things into the realm of nature. Only a deeper vision was needed in both cases, and that is the growing vision of our time.

And, we note, the way has been long preparing for this sober view of the natural order of spirit. There has been a long eliminating process. The modern mind is little troubled by the notion of a curse resting upon the earth, the old antagonism of matter has disappeared in its wondrous idealism ; and so the old contamination of the juxtaposition of heaven and earth and the expulsion of the spirit world into the unknown have lost their appropriateness. Crude pagan notions of the future life and the disjunctive and revolutionary modes of Messianic thought are becoming obsolete. The old conceptions and habitations of the soul have long since failed to furnish any evident and congenial home. The underworld with its Elysian fields or paradise, the Hebrew crystal firmament, the Egyptian course of the sun-god, the path of the Milky Way, the islands of the blessed, and the heavens of the great poets, serve as a field for the poetic imagination, but they belong to

CONTENTS A PRELIMINARY TESTIMONY

I A TESTIMONY TO OPEN-MINDED AND REV- ERENT TREATMENT OF THE FUTURE LIFE AND ITS PSYCHIC STUDY . . . . 1

The bane of inquiry: the closed door and the closed mind — Neither revelation nor science can set arbitrary bounds to our spiritual vision — Caution about asserting that it is better we should not know aught of what lies beyond — Let the winds blow and the floods come — Some knowledge vs. all faith — A notable confession of orthodox uncertainty and materialism — The man on the plank — God has put man on the search^ and the truth comes to us as we search.

II A TESTIMONY TO CREATIVE ADAPTA- TIONS 16

" Ne plus ultra " — Limiting the creative resources — The adjustability of the creative wisdom as seen in deep-sea life — He who has given us an earthly housing and a bodily tabernacle, shall He not be able to give us a spiritual housing and a spiritual tabernacle ? — Transformation story of the water grub — The magic power of life, the immanent life — Certainly life has no difficulty about a body.

III A TESTIMONY TO A SPIRITUAL FOUNDA-

TION 35

The two bases of existence, the material and the spiritual — Paul, the resurrectionist and student of the unseen — A man of striking psychic experiences — Our concern is with these two orders of life and their vital connection — Life has to begin somewhere — The ascent from crude materiality to the refinement of spirit — The deeper insight into the world of matter — Things are not what they seem — The romance of radioactivity, and its revelation of the inmost depths of matter — How the material and the spiritual worlds run into one another — But the energy of the material points to a higher energy of the spiritual.

IV MARVELS OF THE ETHER 48

How the ether speaks for itself — Continuity of the ether — Incompressibility or density of the ether — A hint at the psychic significance of the ether — The ether bridges all chasms, and permeates all substance, and binds all things into a spiritual universe — Elasticity of the ether, and its marvelous and varied vibrations — Invisible rays or dark light — The diversified manifestations and functioning of the ether waves — The universe is larger than it seems — Spiritual telegraphy.

V SOMETHING MORE ABOUT THE ETHER,

ITS ENERGY AND BASIC NATURE ... 66

Lord Kelvin's kinetic theory of rotational motion — The secret of the elastic energy and strength of the ether in its rotational circulation — The secret of all substance in the rotational ether — Plenty of material for any number of spirit worlds — What a magical substance ! — Final conclusions as to the energy and vitality of spirit — Spirit more expressive than matter — Augmented powers of seeing and moving — " And they sung as it were a new song " — Low ideas of the future state held by the ancient world.

VI OTHER TESTIMONIES TO THE NATURAL

ORDER OF SPIRIT 86

Transcendence and immanence of certain great religious ideas — The drawing near of God, heaven, and spirit body — The unifying process in human thought — Historic approach to the spirit world — The Hebrew firmament — The heavens of Dante and Milton — A surrounding spirit world — The law of the counterpart.

VII OBJECTIVITY OF THE SPIRIT WORLD . . 101 Shall we insist on demonstration in all this ? — Spirit testimony and the spirit spheres — Difficult to conceive of spirit adaptations — It would seem to be altogether fitting that the spirit world should be related to our mother earth.

VIII HISTORIC APPROACH TO THE SPIRIT

BODY 120

Alien look of spirit body — Resurrection ideas of Paul and his time — The underworld

— The Hebrews developed a rising-up from the underworld — Paul's house from heaven

— A word on miracle — Modern programs of the resurrection — " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter " — Why not look for the spiritual body in the natural order ? —

The soul inseparable from a spirit envelope — With what kind of a body did the risen Christ come?

IX IS THERE A WORD FURTHER ON THE

ORIGIN AND DERIVATION OF SPIRIT? . 137

Some observations of the aura and fluidic body — The suggestiveness of all this — What takes place at death ? — Allegory of the spirit body and soul — Emanations. Nature's hints and spirit testimony as to the upbuilding of the spirit world.

X A TESTIMONY TO SPIRIT COMMUNION AND

COMMUNICATION 161

The naturalness and compulsion of spirit communion — Various testimonies on spirit communion — Spirit communication and telepathy — Extended telepathy and its assumptions — Telepathic vs. spiritistic credulity — Why not go on and explain away all things as forms of social telepathic suggestion ?

XI TELEPATHY AS A SUBTERFUGE FROM

THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 185

What shall we think of a subconscious intelligence capable of such fiendish deception? — • Is the subconscious activity of our nature an independent ego with no limitations ? — A few testimonies on the telepathic assumption — The fatal lack of personal psychic experiment.

XII LET US NOW COME TO THE SPIRITISTIC

INTERPRETATION 198

It is an explanation that explains — Spirit return and communication inevitable — Consider for a moment the high purpose and character of the communication — Spirit teachings in their higher aspects — Consider the manner of communication or the trance situation — Hypnotism and secondary personality ruled out — Philosophy of the trance situation by Sir Oliver Lodge.

XIII A TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE SCEP-

TICAL INTELLECT AND SPIRIT COMMU- NICATION 222

The subjective side of proof — Scientific scepticism, and how it misses the truth — Intellectual short-sightedness — The element of respectability in our intellectual miss of the truth — The heart has its rights and must be heard — Dogmatic bias and the spirit world

— The old controversy between authority and reason — The dogmatic ascription of all psychic phenomena to Satan and demons — The old transcendence of the future life and its bar to spirit teaching — But is the loss of the old transcendence to be deplored?

XIV THE SCEPTICAL INTELLECT 244

This little world all there is — The fatal lack of imagination — Conflict of the new with the old — The new has to force and win its way — Progress held to be of Satan — The danger of reversion to former mental habitudes.

AN EXPERIMENTAL TESTIMONY

I A PSYCHIC BRIDGING OF THE CHASM,

The incurably suspicious — A word on the situation — " He is so eager to communicate "

— First attempt at reflecting symbols and pictures through the mediumistic lens — A never-to-be-forgotten train experience — A critical psychic estimate.

II REPORT OF SECOND SITTING, OCTOBER

7, 1911 265

" Eager to tell of the wonderful life " — God's way of speaking to the aching heart — " The home over there " and the sweet home influence — A straight talk — The natural and progressive view of the future life vs. medieval transcendentalism — Spirit obj ectivities.

III REPORT OF PSYCHIC INTERVIEW, APRIL

" The great joy of the knowledge of this life " — Mental imaging or spirit impressions — " O think of the friends over there who before us the journey have trod " — " Come and let us reason together."

IV INTERVIEW THE WEEK FOLLOWING,

" Walter opens the door wide " — " He walked with you "— " Two little feet "— A letter from the world of spirit — Familiar portraits — A strain of music.

V REPORT OF SITTING, OCTOBER 8, 1912 . . 294

" The old sense of separation gone " —

" Waking from a troubled sleep " — " O think

of the home over there " — Spirit welcome —

Churches over there and cheerful humor also.

VI OCTOBER 24, 1912, INTERVIEW ..... 299 A book reference interwoven — Spirit employments, their variety and freedom — Mediumistic writing a natural process — A spirit procession and greetings.

VII BRIEF REPORT OF SPIRIT MESSAGE,

Spirit visitants — " It seems so good to be talking in a language that we all understand " — " The place whereon thou standest is holy ground " — " Everything I studied and every step I took, of importance in my life over here " — Psychic discussions in spirit — Familiar family talk and fellowship.

VIII MENTAL PICTURING, APRIL 25, 1913 ... 311 Thought-communion and its difficulties in the trance situation — Spirit guidance through the old parsonage — Putting up a wire fence by telepathic imagery — The old charge of triviality — Growth of the spirit body — A letter dictated from the spirit.

IX MYERS' INTERVIEW, APRIL 27, 1913 ... 318 Mr. Myers' pronounced belief in spirit communication — Friendly introduction — A spirit questionnaire. Thirty questions and answers.

X FAMILY SPIRIT INTERVIEW, APRL 30, 1913 336 " It means more to me than you can ever understand " — Cooperative plans — The vision of lambs — The glasses' case righted — " The awakening was beautiful " — The eye and ear trouble — How the truth worked out on the other side — " Nobody ever loses their own."

XI PSYCHIC INTERVIEW, THURSDAY, MAY 1,

1913 345

A strange reappearance and its lesson — Spirit report of complicated family relationship — Grandfather Daniel — "He is just away ! "

XII FINAL TALK OVER THE BORDER, MAY 2,

1913 353

Parting exchanges — A little dramatic interplay — Have you ever seen Christ? — Amherst life — The postman and his leather bag — Good-bye words — " Home of your own at last " — " You are looking at the stars " — " Why don't you go on with the book? " — Closing the case.

A PRELIMINARY TESTIMONY

Chapter I

A TESTIMONY TO OPEN-MINDED AND REVERENT TREATMENT OF THE FUTURE LIFE AND ITS PSYCHIC STUDY

" Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

Can we approach this great question of the future life and the psychic investigation thereof with an open mind and reverent spirit? Can we lay aside the assumption, at least in the interest of friendly discussion, that tradition on the one hand, or materialism on the other, has said the last word upon the subject or forever barred the gate of further inquiry ?

THE BANE OF INQUIRY: THE CLOSED DOOR AND THE CLOSED MIND

The bane of inquiry, we admit, is the closed door and the closed mind. And whether the closed mind results from a rigid assumption that nothing can be added to or subtracted from a given discussion, or from short-sighted and sophistical notions, the result is about the same.

But if this subject of life continued and its investigation is to be discussed with any enlightenment and profit, it must surely be treated like any other vital subject in an earnest, fair-minded, and scientific spirit. This accords with the spirit of our age, the zeit-geist that is abroad in human thought. It is not so much the fashion of thought, as once, to assume that a subject is forever closed and sealed, and that it is blasphemy to make further inquiry, and that God has no further light for countless souls that cry out for such light. Such a hard-and-fast attitude has been so often rebuked in the progress of discovery and invention and the onward march of great liberating ideas, that it has become an old story that he who runs may read.

We have heard the story of the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic. It was loudly predicted that it could not be done, and some one in England wrote a demonstration, it is said, that it was impossible. It is asserted that when Marconi was experimenting with wireless telegraphy on the Swiss lakes, there were people who called him insane and advised that he be confined in an asylum. But what a wonderful record the wireless has made in these few years in ameliorating the horrors of marine disasters and the saving of human life! And the end is not yet.

The story is told of the French philosopher, Comte, that he declared it was of no use to study the stars ; they were forever beyond the reach of man's intellect. But the spectroscope soon compelled the stars to disclose their elements, and an arduous course of study is before one to-day who would learn all that the heavens have revealed to the searching mind of man. In this same category is Galileo's letter to John Kepler : " O my beloved Kepler ! How I wish we could have one good laugh together. Here at Padua is the principal professor of philosophy whom I have repeatedly requested to look at the moon and planets through my telescope, which he pertinaciously refuses to do." Another contemporary, fearful of the new knowledge, is said to have averred : " I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian, though I die for it." But Galileo's four satellites of Jupiter continued on their majestic course in spite of closed eyes and ecclesiastical prohibitions, as they had from the beginning.

And has it not been so in all the fields of human knowledge? Have not the barriers, whether seemingly impossible, or seemingly scientific, or seemingly religious, been swept away again and again and the horizons of human vision steadily enlarged, until now who can venture to say what shall or shall not be, or who shall dogmatize: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further " ?

Surely the open mind is becoming to us, in view of the lessons of the past, and modest assertions in our circumscribing the revealings of the future and the possibilities of the universe.

So many things have been declared to be impossible, so often the assumption has been made of the whole counsel of God, or the drawn veil which no man can penetrate, that we need to be wiser than we are now or very cautious, before we assert that beyond this line we must not search, or beyond the present outlook we can know nothing.

NEITHER REVELATION NOR SCIENCE CAN SET AR- BITRARY BOUNDS TO OUR SPIRITUAL VISION

But what shall we say here of revelation and science? And we answer at once that neither revelation, so-called, nor science can set arbitrary bounds to our spiritual vision. There has been a vital enlargement of men's thoughts here. Revelation is a larger term, and science a more ideal term than we once conceived. A clearer and profounder study of the essence and scope of revelation has been given to this age, and a notable contribution might be instanced in the writings of J. Brierly. We are clearly perceiving that revelation cannot be limited to any particular age, or people, or book; and in saying this we do not detract from the unique spiritual message and position of the Bible, the Book of all books. The vision has come to us that revelation is universal and progressive, not local and static ; that it includes science itself, its inductive method and liberalizing influence, and in fact holds in its sweep all manifestations of the infinite and indwelling Wisdom. Revelation is a seed forever growing, a light forever brightening and shining more and more unto the perfect day; and Christianity is the river of God forever receiving and incorporating into itself new tributaries from the infinite reserves of truth.

And sae is Fashion, And baith will watch till sinners faint,

To lay the lash on; Men follow them wi' ane accord,

Led by their noses, Because they cry, ' Thus saith the Lord/

The God o' Moses."

And as for science, a new idealism has entered here also with the deeper insight into the nature of matter, and the new theory of electrons and radio-activity; and this new idealism is fast dissolving the old hard-and-fast materialism. Sir Oliver Lodge, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, is a striking example of this new scientific idealism; and his address before that body (Septemtember, 1913), on " The Continuity of Life," was quoted far and wide by the press and seems to point to a larger scientific vision.

Note these excerpts : " The physical discovery of the twentieth century, so far, is the electrical theory of matter."

" The universe is a larger thing than we have any conception of."

" The ether of space is the great engine of continuity, the one all-permeating substance that binds the whole of the particles of matter together, and the universal medium of communication between worlds."

Such statements are highly significant, and they pave the way for a final declaration by this distinguished physicist that after thirty years' experience of psychical research begun with the usual hostile prejudice, the facts have convinced him that " personality persists beyond bodily death." And to this he adds the bold testimony : " The evidence to my mind goes to prove that discarnate intelligence, under certain conditions, may interact with us on the material side."

Such an address on the part of science in its official robes, pointing out the significance of the electrical theory of matter in its bearing upon spirit existence and spirit world, is certainly a sign of the scientific times, and is calculated to make many people think where they have not thought much before. And so we might repeat that neither revelation nor science can set arbitrary bounds to our spiritual vision ; revelation is too comprehensive and science is too prophetic.

We have reason to be very chary, in view of the history of human thought, about assuming that we possess the whole counsel of God, and that any serious consideration of the future life is out of the question. In these days when the world is so full of the sense of mystery at the wonderful works of God, we cannot dismiss the problem of survival and the existence and evidences of spirit by assuming an exclusive or trifling attitude. As Dr. Hyslop has said in one of his lectures : " The time has gone by when psychic phenomena can be dismissed with a sneer."

CAUTION ABOUT ASSERTING THAT IT IS BETTER WE SHOULD NOT KNOW AUGHT OF WHAT LIES BEYOND

And further, the open mind, it seems to me, will be cautious about asserting that it is better we should not know aught of what lies beyond, and that no such new evidence is needed. What ground have we for saying that no new evidence is needed, and how did people find it out? We have little right to make this objection until we have fairly canvassed the whole field and come to a just understanding of what the mind requires in different situations — the mind bereaved, the scientific mind, the perplexed mind. When the skies of life are clear and there are few obstacles in the way and no great challenge has come to us, we can seem to get along passably well with the traditional supports we have been accustomed to. We have heard by the hearing of the ear, but we have given no special thought to circumstances widely-diverse from our own. There has been no great breaking-up of the quiet routine of life; we have not been called upon suddenly to face some unaccountable and appalling situation; we have not been led to make any special explorations into the critical world of science or the great cosmopolitan world of affairs that have sharply questioned our easy-accepted ways of thinking.

LET THE WINDS BLOW AND THE FLOODS COME

But let the winds blow and the floods come. Let some unexpected and paralyzing bereavement come ; let the mind be bewildered and the heart despairing; let a deathly lonesomeness hold the soul in its grip — and the world does not seem so simple. We have not lost the religious nurture of the past — that cannot be taken away, it is a part of us ; we have not lost touch with our spiritual environment. But our religious complacency as to the ordering of life, its stability and continuit}^, and the priceless values of life, may be rudely shocked. What and where is the future, after all — the future of the soul? "O my God, my soul is cast down within me. All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." We are conscious now of a new need of reality. In its supreme loss, the bereaved soul finds its conventional hope and faith not enough, and cries out in anguish for some assurance that is nearer, more personal, and human. Faith may be strained even to the last limit of tenuity.

" Yes, faith is a goodly anchor, When skies are sweet as a psalm,

At the bows it lolls so stalwart,

In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm.

" But after the shipwreck, tell me,

What help in its iron thews, Still true to the broken hawser,

Deep down among seawood and ooze."

SOME KNOWLEDGE VS. ALL FAITH

We would by no means minimize the function of faith and the religious evidences of the future life. Faith gathers up in her arms the intimations and anticipations of the future as interpreted by the church, and these in their highest aspect have brought unspeakable help to struggling souls. But is there no need of further token? Have we never been conscious of any further need here, as when standing dumbly by the grave of our loved ones or when deeply involved in the perplexities and problems connected with life and its continuance?

" And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill: But oh ! for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still ! ,3

The reticence of tradition and the Bible as to any definite and rational account of the future, and to our eager questionings about the future, is freely acknowledged.

We are told that : " Ever by our side is that impalpable wall, which, to those who go hence is as yielding vapor, but to those who would come hither is as adamant. Every hour, every moment, the cloudy wall is pierced by departing souls; still it keeps its awful secret. No cry comes back to us, no voice to tell us of yonder realm."

But it is just this awful silence that is unbearable, especially in the crises of life; and to the statement that no cry comes back to us we must take positive exception in the light of modern psychic research and spirit philosophy and the Bible, and in the light of personal experience. A wall that should be as vapor from one side and as adamant from the other, is a singular structure, to say the least. There is not a little preaching of this nature, and doubtless some of us have indulged in it in our argumentative and pious effort to justify the ways of God to men.

But are the preachers in general quite satisfied with this old fatalistic, priestly position, that God cannot have any further light in store for men on this great question of human destiny? It seems to me that not the preacher nor the hearer is quite satisfied here. There is a light that does not shine, a healing that does not come. We may charge it up to faith — the dumbness, the silence, the longings of the aching heart for some little token, the irrepressible questionings of the rational faculty — but does not the heart still cry out in its bitterness and is not the intellect restless and wearied like a captive bird beating its wings against its cage? We believe there is a large confession here. We believe from our own inner life and observation that these experiences are common, and that there is a need here that affects humanity, and doubtless more in this twentieth century than in the past. For our spiritual needs increase with the complexity of our growth and development.

If, in one case, the heart is sick with longing and the lonesomeness of the terrible gulf that has intervened; in another case, the mind that is accustomed to think out its problems and to feel its way cautiously on grounds of rational inquiry may be equally troubled in its perplexities. And while we would not presume that it is necessary for us to know all about the future life in its nature, yet we are profoundly convinced that some direct and definite knowledge of a life and world behind the veil is of the greatest possible benefit to the soul and to humanity. We want something more than " I hope so," so often heard in this connection ; than the easy conventional faith with its ups and downs in this great interest. What we need and cry out for is something of the certainty and joyous expectation of real life.