THE DEAD.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7749, 15 July 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE DEAD.

CAN THEY SEND MESSAGES? A few years ago there died a wellknown man who had been interested in psychism, and other people interested in it said at the time that it would not be long before his “spirit” would be heard from in the physchic circles. And a news dispatch states that learned investigators are actual, ly claiming to receive such communications. These men call thejnselves scientific; but the communications are of such triviality that we prefer to leave them to the imagination rather than quote them in these pages. A newspaper, in commenting on this psychic research, emphasises the curious materialism of the investigators, and also their lack of dignity for themselves and of reverence for subjects that are sacred to others; they are at the other pole from spirituality, and “would climb Mount Sinai to receive, not the Ten Commandments, but a tip on the stock market.” NOT FROM THE DEAD. It is clear that, whatever commumtinieaLions are obtained, they do not come from the deceased. They come from that confused and teeming atmosphere of thoughts which hangs like a damp log over the purlieus of human society, and they are transmitted by latent faculties in the mediums and sitters. Such sitting is a well-known means of attracting to oneself certain most undesirable influences from the invisible regions--the astral and psychic remnants and effluvia of deceased human beings, in process of natural disintgeration, but disturbed and galvanised into a semblance of life by the practices of these misguided experimenters. It is also recognised that indulgence in such practices is fraught with great risk to those engaged in them. It sems a pity that this should be associated with the honoured name of science. If this kind of thing is what is called “evidence.” ve cannot entertain a very high idea of the judgment of those who are willing to accept it as such. PICKED BRAINS. Tn most cases the ideas reproduced at the sittings are picked from the brains of those present; for the brain is known to psychologists to be a storehouse of memories, which will preserve indelible records of impressions we have received, including many impressions of which our mind was not conscious at the time we received them. The fact that the familiar say. ings of the deceased are reproduced Is therefore no cause for wonder; am' even if some of the things are such as could not have been derived from the conscious or sub-con&cious memories of anyone present, still they could have been preserved In the astral light—that storehouse of all thought impressions. At the very most the only evidence ot survival obtained is that of the survival of certain fragments of the deceased, and constitutes as good proof as would a lock of hair out of his cofttn. Most ancient races, ana a good many still living, have been or arc fully aware of the reality of that which the ancient Egyptians called the Kha, an astral remnant of the deceased which survives for a time the disintegration of the body, am! on account of which certain funerary rites were prescribed and observed. But no one with any knowledge or discrimination would confuse this shade with the immortal reincarnating soul of the deceased. The nature attributed to the shade, or Kha, was exactly that which would correspond with and explain the phenomena obtained by the modern dabblers. —IT. T. Edge, in the “Theosophical Path.”