DO THE DEAD SURVIVE?

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2961, 27 December 1916, Page 3

DO THE DEAD SURVIVE?

SIR OLIVER LODGE'S NEW BOOK

(By llobcrt Lynd, iu the "Daily News.")

Sir Oliver Lodge has written what is', perhaps, the most extraordinary book of the war —"Itaymond, or Info and Death." His son, liaymond, was killed in Flanders in September, IHo, and Sir Oliver claims that he and his family havo been in frequent cnimumoation with tho bay sinco ti'at time. The most absorbing part of his book is taken up with tho record of long conversations between tho living and tho dead. Not only Sir Oliver, but Lady Lodge and other members of the family, havo visited medium _ after medium "anonymously," in order to EJJfljd against any suggestion of "faking in tho "messages." In the result the communications havo often, been such as to appeal to tho human sense of the ridiculous. But tho issues at stake are so large and one quenches the senso of tho ridiculous and reads on. The book is a kind of Bluo Book, and ono has to lay aside alike one's incrcduhty and ono's credulity and face tho evidence. It may be that there is nothing at all in Spiritualism: it may bo, on tho other hand, that after many ludicrous failures it may lead men to oiscoveries as real as, and infinitely moro important than, tho discoveryof flying, jlt is one of those questions ia regard Ito wliick most of us must be content for some time yet to. preservo tho attitude of tho open mind. _ _ l'hero is not much evidence in _ Sir Oliver Lodge's hook that will convince tho sceptical. Ono or two points, howeve?, taken together, have a certain evidential interest. One is a prophecy of Raymond's death made at a seance in America a month before ho died. "Myers says you take the part of the poet," ran a sentence in the message, "and he will act as Faurius .... Ask Yerrall; she will also understand." . Sir Olivor could not make head or tail of the message, and so he_ asked Mrs. Verrall tho of it. She lm'mediately referred Sir Oliver lo that famous ode in Horace in which tho poet speaks of himself as having been almost killed by tho blow of a falling tree, had not Faunus lightened the blow. This interpretation reached Sir Oliver more than a week before the blow of his son s death fell on him. Strange Utterances, ' Shortly after Raymond's death Lady Lodge had an "anonymous" Bitting with the medium, Mr. A. V out Peters, and messages came about tho boy from a "control," or second prsonahty, ca led "Moonstone." After "Moonstone'; had described Raymond and given "identifying messages,"- tho trance-jpeech weift on:

Tho hoy—l call them all boys because I was over a hundred when I lived here and they are all boys to me —ho says, ho is here, but he "Hitherto it has bcea a thing of the head, now I am come ever it is a thing of tho heart." .. What is more (hero Peters jumped up in his chair, vigorously, snapped his fingers excitedly, and spoke loudly)— "Good God;-how father will bo able to speak out! much firmer than he has over done, because it will touch our hearts."

At the samo sitting, a group .photograph of which the Lodgo family know nothing was mentioned, and at a later sitting with a different medium some letails of this photograph, woro given. A. copy of tho photograph of Raymond and several fellow-officers "ultimately :ame from tho front, and confirmed to some extent tho description given by "Raymond," through ono of tho "controls." This and the Faunus prophecy mo, perhaps, the two most important pieces of evidence in Sir OlivSf'e hook. Hiere are a great many other things, howover, which are only less interesting because they can bo explained away as the results of thought-transference. Ono of the most remarkable' of these concerns a "sitting" which two members of the Lodge family arranged .to have with a medium about noon one day in London. At noon on tho same Jay their brother Alex, in Birmingham, suddenly carried off some of his sisters for a brief table sitting, "and tho test which ho then and there suggested was to ask Raymond to got 'Feda' in London to say the word 'Honolulu.'" Feda being the "child-control" of tho London medium, with whom tho others were holding a sitting. Tho sufficiently remarkable result was that Feda, 6poke the word. Sho told the sitters that Raymond wanted his sister to play. "Ho wanted to know," sho said, "whether you could play Hulu— Honolulu"? The Life Beyond. Sir Oliver has boldly included in his book , certain descriptions of life in the other world, which have no value as evidence, and the significance of which he is inclined to discount. One cannot . help reading them, however, with an | interest oven stronger than one's in- J clination to ridicule. In one of these conversations,, it is Feda, speaking for Raymond, who communicates with Sir Oliver —"0. J. L.," as he is called in tlio quotation below. Here are some curious passages referring to the life after death: Ho says, my body is very sim-^ rilar to tne one 1 had before. ' I pinch myself sometimes to seo if it's real, and it is, bin ii turn's seem to hurt as much as when I pinched the ilesh body. ... - Oh, there's one thing, he says, I have hover seen anybody blood. 0. J. L. —Wouldn't lie Weal if ■ he pricked himself? He never tried, it. But as yet lie has seen no blood at all. O.J.L. —Has he got ears and eyes ? Yes, yes, and eyelashes and eyebrows, exactly tho same, and a tongue and teeth. Ho has got a new tooth now in place of another one he had—one that wasn't quite right then. Ho has got it right, and a good tooth has come in place of the one that had gone. Again: There are men here, and there ars women here. l I don't . think that they stand to each other quite the same as they did on the earth plane, but they seem to have,tho same feeling to each other, vth a different expression of it. There don't seem to bo any children born • here. Peoplo are sent into tho physical body to have children on tho earth plane; they don't have them there. And a passage almost intolerably ludicrous follows: People here try to provide everything that is wanted. A chap came over tho other day, who would have a cigar. "That's finished them," . ho thought. He means ho thought they would never he able to provide that. But there are laboratories over here, and they manufacture all sorts of things in them. Not like you do, out of solid matter, but out of essences, and ethers, and gases. It's 'not tho samo as on tho earth plane, but they wore ablo to manufacture what looked like a cigar. He didn't try one himself, because he didn't care to j you know he wouldn't want to. But the other chap jumped at it. But when ho began to smoke it, he didn't think so much of it; he bad four altogether; and now hedoesu t look at one. It would be unfair to suggest, however, that the entire account of the future life is of this seemingly absurd

character. There aro also exalted j visions communicated. It is claimed I even that tho dead boy lias seen Christ. I

In any ease, it is obviously tho aim of tho alleged communicators to paint the lifo after death not as something terrifyingly new, but as a natural continuation of the lifo hero.