Spiritualism : Part 9

Modern Religious Cults and Movements
by Gaius Glenn Atkins

(Page 19 of 21)

Maeterlinck says somewhere in substance that our universe is as tightly sealed as a sphere of steel and that whatever happens inside must be explained in terms of its own resident forces, and, in general, the whole of science and the weight of experience are on Maeterlinck's side. Of course this assumes that a good many things have been put inside this sphere to begin with. speaking in terms of religion, this does not shut God out of the world, but it does shut up life and experience to conformity with their own laws and forces them to explain their phenomena in terms of their own content.

In a sentence, just as the resident forces of the outside world have been heretofore sufficient, in the measure that we have been able to discover them, to explain all the phenomena of the outside world, it is reasonable to believe that the content of personality is sufficient to explain all personal phenomena, whether normal or abnormal, and that it is to ourselves and not to the discarnate that we have to look for the explanation of the phenomena of alleged spiritualism.

The Investigations of Émile Boirac

The men who are working along this line, particularly Geley and Émile Boirac, by no means deny the phenomena, but they offer another solution. Boirac, particularly, finds his point of departure in hypnotism and suggestibility. Now here is a continuation of the line of approach and interpretation which cleared up the whole confused matter of mesmerism. We have already seen how the French investigators found the explanation of what Mesmer and those who followed him have been able to accomplish, not in magnetic influence or any such thing, but in the remarkable changes produced in personality by exterior or autosuggestion, and just as this was the key to the phenomena of mesmerism, it is more likely than anything else to prove the key to the explanation of the phenomena of spiritualism, for these are really nothing more than simply aspects of the trance state, however induced.

It is not necessary to follow, in this connection, Boirac's analysis of the phenomena attendant upon the trance state, or to consider his theories as to hypnosis itself. He believes that there are in our personalities hidden forces which, in the normal conduct of life, are not brought into action. They are no necessary part of our adjustment to our working environment; on the whole they complicate rather than simplify the business of living and they are best - though this is not his statement but the writer's conclusion from the whole matter - they are best left unawake. What we are normally is the outcome of the adjustment of personality to those creative and shaping forces in response to which life is most happily and usefully carried on.

But when the waking self and normal self is for the moment put in abeyance and new forces are evoked from the "vastly deep" of our souls, we are capable of an entirely different set of manifestations. First of all, those usually associated with the hypnotic state which do not need to be further considered here - a great docility to suggestion, unconsciousness to pain and the like. We have also the possibility of powers which Boirac calls magnetoidal. "These appear to involve the intervention of forces still unknown, distinct from those that science has so far discovered and studied, but of a physical nature and more or less analogous to the radiating forces of physics: light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc."

Under this general head he considers Animal Magnetism, what is known generally as mesmerism, the power, that is, to create hypnotic states in others; the phenomena of Telepathy "comprising numerous varieties, such as the transmission or penetration of thought, the exteriorization of the sensitiveness, psychometry, telepathy, clairvoyance or lucidity, etc.," and finally states "where physical matter appears to exert over animate beings, especially human beings, an action that does not seem to be explicable by any physical or chemical properties already known." He believes also that there is in human beings a radiating influence susceptible of being exercised at a distance over other animate beings or else upon inanimate objects.

He finds in trance mediumship all the elements which enter into any hypnotic state. "The trance is produced and developed spontaneously, without the intervention of any visible operator, under the sole effect of the nervous and mental conditions in which the medium is placed, and among which the belief in spirits and the expectation of their intervention would appear to play a considerable part." The italicized words "a belief in spirits" are extremely significant. In the entranced personality there is the suggestion, already strongly established, that whatever is experienced during the trance will be due to spirit intervention or revelation.

This introduces the element of expectant attention. We know on the physical side of what expectant attention is capable. It becomes a real factor in all faith healing; it may produce, either for the better or the worse, far-reaching changes in physical states and it is perfectly possible for such an expectant attention once fully in action in the trance - given of course, to begin with, the attitude and interests of the medium in a waking state - to create all the machinery of controls, revelation and the like, which characterize trance mediumship.

Boirac finds, therefore, in spiritualism a complex determined by certain particular nervous and mental states into which there enter, in one form or another, almost all the facts of abnormal psychology and he believes that science, faithful to the principle of economy, should consider the alleged phenomena of spiritualism, until proved to the contrary, reducible to facts of the preceding orders. He does not call the spiritual hypothesis impossible; he does believe it should not to be called in until every other explanation has been examined and found inadequate and he is not inclined to believe that we have as yet exhausted other possible explanations.

One man's authority here is by no means final. Myers has taken into consideration many of the facts upon which Boirac dwells and on the whole has reached a different conclusion. But, in general, the more deeply we advance into the region of abnormal personality and the phenomena of hypnotic and related states, the more reason there seems to be for believing that there are resident in human personality powers which, if at once evoked and released, are sufficient to account for all mediumistic revelations without assuming that they come from the discarnate.

Copyright 1923 by Fleming H. Revell Company