THE SPIRIT WORLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SPIRIT WORLD.

ARE THEIR VOICES FROM IT?

B7 NOVOCASTRIAN,

" I have looked forward to this hour with reverent • curiosity," said Charles Kingsley as ho lay upon his deathbed. " Curiosity!" Not, wo may think, as to the experience of dying itself, but rather as to the nature of that first conscious hour in the spirit world in which ho so intensely believed. Much has happened since Kingsley passed into silence, knowledge has grown " from more to more," religious thought has broadened and deepened, yet the curiosity of which ho spoke has not abated among men. It is a common criticism that our age is careless of spiritual realities and values, but there is nt its heart a silent, ceaseless quest, the urgency of which has been increased by the irreparable losses of the war. Have the medium and the seance brought the quest to the point of discovery ? It is impossible to think lightly of research that is associated with names which, in all other matters, ■ stand for unquestioned candour arid sincerity. Evidence which has impressed the minds of F. W. 11. Myers, fc'ir William Crookes. Sir W. F. Barrett, M. Flammarion, Sir Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge cannot bo dismissed with a shrug of the sliouldors, and the investigation will continue until either a result of scientific value has been attained or the futility 01 the inquiry is made evident. 'JJhe phenomena are there to be accounted for. It has become very largely a question of interpretation. It is a common and facile explanation in certain circles that the phenomena of spiritualism are of demonic origin. The spirits that speak are evil and earthbound personalities who cannot escape into a higher realm, and their aim is to deceive and injure men. But surely this method of explanation savours of a longpast day, and is born of a theology which held that storms and famines were caused by demons, that witches and sorcerers wore really the agents of nether powers and that funacy was due to an evil possession. Reasoning of this sort is rtot likely to get a very good hearing among thinking men to-day. Vague and Commonplace Messages.

Truo it is th.it tho spiritual realities around us, if such there be, may be evil as well as good in character; true also that care must be taken against the possibility of deception; but it is difficult to attribute the mild and innocuous sentiments said to have been communicated from Sir Conan Doyle through a lady in New Zealand, and which are a fair sample of much that the seance pro duces, to devilish agency. If the truth which these messages contain is attenuated and valueless, they at least can have no pernicious influence, and we have been taught that it is the mission of an evil spirit to degrade and to corrupt. We may therefore dismiss this naive solution of the problem. We come then to the view that the phenomena justify belief that the human personality persists beyond death and can communicate with those that remain in this life. There are, however, several considerations which make it difficult to go so far as this. In the first place tho alleged communications are generally utterly commonplace and make no contribution of value to our knowledge of the life'from which they "purport to come" The messages contain only vague generalities. They provide much chaff and little, if any, grain. We hear about glad meetings and hand-shakings and similar desirable experiences, but there is never a vivid phrase nor 0110 bit of description that has the living mark of verity upon it. Amid the wonders of that strange, new world, gifted minds that were masters of expression here have become wearisome and commonplace. Further, many of the communications awaken grave suspicion by their crudity and puerility. When "Raymond tells us of houses of brick and stone with windows of glass, the materialism gives us pause; when he goes on to say that in tho spirit realm they wear tweeds, smoke cigars and drink whisky-sodas, the veriest man of tho world feels that something is wrong; and when, speaking of Jesus Christ, he says: "He's suffered a lot, poor chap," we lay aside tho book sure that, whoever is speaking, the voice is not worth listening to.

Failure o 1 Crucial Tests. Still further, the difficulty of accepting the spiritualistic explanations is seriously increased by the failure of crucial tests arranged by scientific investigators prior to death and therefore reasonable and to lie regarded as decisive. A well-known instanco is that of F. W. EL Myers. Some years before his decease he deposited with the Society for Psychical Research a sealed envelope the contents of which he alono knew, and which he would disclose from tho spirit world. Speaking, as was claimed, through Mrs. Verrall, the famous medium, he revealed the secret, but when the seal was broken tho disclosure was found to be quite inaccurate. Other similar tests have also failed, and it may be fairly said that no such attempt to provide irrefutable evidence has been successful. Something always disturbs the memory of the would-be evangelist. There is yet another explanation to which we are bound to give serious attention. May there not bo latent in the human mind itself powers which account for the phenomena without the introduction of spiritual influences ? Dr. Forsyth has strikingly said that so deep and mysterious is the well of life within us that when wo drop a stono into the abyss we listen in vain for the sound to come up which tells us it has touched bottom. In this exploration of tho mystery of our own self wo are but childlike beginners. Probably nine-tenths of the facts of spiritualism can bo accounted for by telepathy, and further knowledge of tho powers of the subconscious mind may yet oxplain the remaining tenth. An Open Question.

Tt is at least a possibility that the medium is only raking the mind, con scious or subconscious, of some living per son. An excellent illustration of this is found in the attempt, under the auspices of the Society for Psychical Research, to obtain from Myers, after his death, an ac count of a conversation between himself and Mrs f-.'idgwiek, which had taken place during his lifetime and was known only to themseivos. The experiment was a failuro, and it was noticed that as long as Mrs. Sidgxvick was absent and did not come into contact with the medium the seanco afforded no true representation of tho conversation; but when the medium and Mrs. Sidgwick were in close touch with each other a remarkable, though not perfectly accurate, account was given. Such facts do not close t!io discussion, but they are most suggestive and point strongly in one direction. Clearly then the question must be regarded as at least a very open one. We cannot yet go one step beyond the very qualified* statement of Sir Oliver Lodge in the Hibbert Journal: —" With some reserve I am prepared to admit that the facts known to me render it more probable than not that occasionally " such communications as he has been discussing may take place. The proof is indecisive, the assurance feeble, the old questions aro left without sure answer. And it looks as if we should have 10 be content with tho fourteenth chapter of St. John s Gospel for many a day to come. And truly some of us believe that it is a sumciently good pillow for our beloved an •ourselves as we fall asleep.