THE STRANGEST OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA
by Meade Layne
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A psychic phenomenon, says the Runes Dictionary of Philosophy, may refer to any fact, particularly any strange fact or condition, of a mental nature. To us, the most remarkable phenomenon of our time is the ignorance, indifference, or hostility of millions of people with respect to life after death, the conditions of that existence, its relation to our present lives, and the enormous importance of 'spirit' communication. That is truly a "psychic phenomenon" of the first order. The basic reason for this, of course, is not in any lack of evidence or proof, but in the long-continued, almost universal hypnotic spell which is part of the alleged enlightenment of modern life.
This is not the place to explain how we "got this way". If you wish to understand why neither official science, nor orthodox religionism, nor the weight of contemporary philosophy has escaped this hypnosis, or has done or does any single thing to break its spell, read history - say of the last 500 years. "The true definition of anything is its history," said Nietzsche. That, we maintain, was the most intelligent remark of the 19th century; it should be engraved on the portals of every University, and is completely acceptable to the modern mind. Apply it, then, to the ignorance, bigotry and folly of which we spoke, if you are in search if explanations.
The endless gabble about "proofs" is almost meaningless, in the mouth of the average man. One should always inquire "Just what is your definition of proof?" and "What facts would constitute proof, to you personally - and exactly what do you wish to have proved?" The value of the square of the hypotenuse can be proved in one way, and that John Doe and his cat do not live forever can be 'proved' from the fact that all animals die, by a logical inference; and in courts of law people are said to be 'proved' guilty or innocent by a preponderance of evidence. (What constitutes 'evidence' and 'preponderance' are other weighty questions). Or you 'prove' that water contains hydrogen and oxygen by chemical experiments. These proofs have to be satisfactory to other minds also. Whose minds? Chemists and mathematicians, say? Qualified folk! What is your definition of 'qualified'? Who is to be the judge - and the judge of the judge? How many 'rigidly proven' facts in the history of science have turned out to be wrong? How many innocent people have been 'proven' guilty? We mention these points, only to emphasize, that if you insist on proof, and more proof, be sure you can define the words you are using.
In passing, we defy you to 'prove' that reading this article gives you a pain in the neck - no matter how much you are actually suffering. Or that you feel pity for the writer of it - or are hungry or cold or angry, or had a dream last night, or have been thinking about Julius Caesar. You don't doubt any of those things, yourself; their 'content of reality' is full and certain to you, but they're entirely unprovable, to anyone who chooses to say you are a liar or a fool or suffering from delusions. Though all experience is subjective in last analysis, probably nine-tenths of it is purely personal and subjective in this more limited sense, of being incapable of 'scientific' verification, that is, unprovable by empirical and mathematical methods.
Coming back now to 'proofs' of survival and communication - the spiritualistic explanation of various observed facts - all that we have said cuts both ways, [7] of course. The 'proof' that the spiritualists are right is the kind which obtains (supposedly) in the courts of law. The preponderance of evidence, that is, is overwhelming. We actually suffer from the surplus of it; there is too much data to analyze. It is derived from all history, and the modern additions are enormous. It piles up and up, fills libraries, and is constantly subjected to rigid scrutiny, and accumulates under all kinds of conditions, in laboratories and private seance rooms, and public demonstrations. But the serious objections, and jeers and sneers, haven't changed to amount to anything in 200 years. They have never met the issue, nor accounted for a tenth part of the phenomena, but ignorant people and tyro self-styled investigators, and religious pseudo-scientific bigots, and fanatics of various cults, repeat the some endless braying and their long ears can hear nothing else. And honest folk of good sense, who desire right knowledge and the comfort of it, are also struck deaf and blind by this heh-heh and pooh-bah cacophony, or discouraged by the abysmal ignorance which their inquiries encounter.
All these good souls 'want proof' - and usually, if they can be brought to define proof (it really means, anything that will convince the person concerned, tho God alone knows what that has to be), it can be found for them. It won't do to tell people this - and - that, it has to be 'personal experience.' Now personal experience in some degree is to be had by anybody who really wants it, and will take the time and trouble to find it, and employ sanity and good sense in his search. The 'proofs' are just as accessible as are, say, the facts of history, or astronomy or geology or medicine; if you want them and have the intelligence to go after them in the right way, from right sources, with right attitude, you will get everything needed. There are books literally by the tens of thousands, and a good number of them are unbiased and authoritative. If these innumerable sceptical Thomases would read a few, how grateful many of us would be. They (the Thomases) include scientists and clergymen and professional workers and other highly intelligent people, so they know how to read, all right. But it's not natural to know anything about a subject which you have never investigated and hold a prejudice against, anyway.
The 'proof' in spiritism, as has been said a thousand times, is cumulative. It consists in an immense piling up of facts which have no other reasonable explanation. If a satisfactory alternative can be found, every honest man will examine it with utmost attention. If you don't know what the facts of spiritism are, then of course any silly objection is, to you, a 'satisfactory alternative'. If you will get the facts, you will find that their total weight is immensely in favor of the spiritistic explanation - that is, of the assertion that the personality survives death and can and does communicate with the here-living. As for frauds and crooks, there has never been a cult, religion, sizable movement of importance that did not spawn exploiters and pretenders; if you fall into the clutches" of such gentry it is probably your own fault; live, learn, try to grow up and to take care of yourself. Never jump to conclusions about great bodies of facts and teachings on the strength of some trifling experiences of your own, pro or contra.
The obscurantism of orthodox religion and official science is inexplicable in terms of reason and logic; it is understandable as a form of auto-hypnosis, as a part of the vast dream-life which engulfs the world. To examine history is to study the record of collective dreams. This is not figurative language, nor any new contention. The thinkers of our own day have said it a thousand times, in various ways; the whole business of man is wake up, to discard false values, wishful thinking, petty ideals, a thousand idols of his own making. Spiritism presents a vast body of [8] facts pointing to an obvious interpretation. Why are they unacceptable? For the reason that the dreamer resents whatever threatens to awaken him - the defense reaction of the somnambulist. Religious orthodoxy (an insult to human intelligence) and the smugness and ignorance of scientism, along with a hundred other things one might name, are dreams which enslave mankind. Here and there, thruout the centuries, an individual, a group, a sect breaks thru this spell. Always, too, they pay harsh penalty for such treacherous behaviour.
The greatest of all 'psychic phenomena' are the collective dreams of mankind. Of all the 'planes of illusion', our earth life is the most deeply meshed in unreality.
When science destroyed the man-centered universe, it burst one age-old dream bubble. With the evidence for organic evolution it destroyed another. Its iconoclasm and crusading spirit were magnificent, and a mighty service to humanity. Then it built its own dream house - then the walls of this began to crumble. The Power which has steadily undermined them, which both destroys and wonderfully rebuilds for the better, is simply the progress of knowledge itself. Modern spiritism, modern science, and scientific study of spirit phenomena were born almost in the same hour, and of the same parent, the desire for knowledge. Inevitably, spiritism took on the aspect of religion, seemed to ally itself with age-old superstitions most abhorrent to science, and a deep and bitter antagonism developed. This vast stupidity has colored the whole of our contemporary life. The orthodox religions, hating both science and spiritism, fast disintegrated; spiritism, despised by both, wins its way by integrating with them - that is to say, in the deepest sense, establishing; its principles on a scientific basis of empirical studies, and also bringing intellectual proof of the great assertion of dogma and faith, the survival of the human personality.
The future, then, belongs to these three - to science, spiritism, and religion - but the three will inevitably be as one, interdependent, interblent. That is to say, if there be any future at all for our sorry modern world, if it be not wholly wrecked by our own stupidity and viciousness, or thru the outwearing of patience of whatever Gods may govern us. We speak with some optimism of the progress of knowledge - but who can do as much for our moral and spiritual unfoldment, considering the appalling uprush of sheer demonism which our century has witnessed?
Finally, let us say with all possible emphasis, that the knowledge or ignorance, acceptance or rejection of the facts of spiritism is not of one piece with some idle curiosity - like the true history of kookas, for example, or why cocks crow at midnight. Your convictions about these latter, pro or contra, may not matter one jot; but as to the former, we assert, with considered judgment, that it is the most important knowledge accessible to mankind. For why? Because, in the first place, it implies, contains and enforces the sanctions of conduct, of ethics and morality, the perdurable bases of human society. Because the relation of life here to conditions of life hereafter becomes real, vital and compelling. Next, because metaphysics, philosophy and religion are profoundly affected; we will not argue a statement in which every philosopher will concur. Then, because psychology, physiology, biology, medicine, all the psycho-biological sciences will be reconstructed in the light of this knowledge. Because the great creative Arts will profit by new inspiration and invisible assistance; at this hour a volume would not do justice to the Art-work already traceable to these sources . . . And yet we have heard from the mouths of educated people the sentiment, "Whether spiritism is false or true [9] makes no great difference to this World." The ne plus ultra of ignorance and folly!
One more reason, a melancholy and compelling one, when its truth is at last recognized. The tragedy of the bewildered spirits, the earth-bound, distressed and wandering ones, who night by night come blind and weeping into our little earth places of communication. Days, months, weeks, years they remain sometimes in this dreadful state, and whose is the blame therefor? On this earth plane there was knowledge and instruction to prevent all this? Why did they not receive it? Because the laborers were too few, the knowledge too narrowly confined. And this was because you and you, perhaps, thrust it aside. A starving neighbor you would surely have fed, but a soul in the outer darkness, tho once your best beloved, has no least whisper of earthly help from you. And it may even chance that you and you will be in no better case, once your mortal house returns to its elements. What fools we are, to learn too late and only in the halls of Death, what we might so easily have garnered here! Enlightened self interest then, if nothing else, should ring the bell of this alarm, of invitation to this knowledge old as humanity, but never of more vital import than in this present day and hour and minute, with the portentous close of a great world period hastening upon us.
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F.G.H. Comments
(Referring to your letter in A.S.) Your definition of the "Deros" is correct. They were created in Atlan for one of the wars of domination, when mankind reached its deepest low of development.
Many of their creators are still up amongst them . . . Beg to disagree with your statement, 'none of us know very much about the mysteries of this world or any other.' (*) There are many who function in several worlds. Advanced students and members of the White Brotherhood. It's only now, close before the collapse of our civilization, that the veil of silence has been lifted . . . The communicators are right, that the machine exists only in the astral, and that their creators would like to have them made here. Jazz, jive, and many aspects of our life are also manifestations from the same source, as are numerous cults and Holy Roller Societies . . . Concerning the screed by . . . . . . . he is as stupid as the monks who destroyed the documents of the Aztecs and Incas. A spirit or person can be highly intelligent and still be a moral moron. And morality counts even more than intelligence. Causing people to think the wrong way, on wrong data, is more than anything responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves. Thinking in itself is not enough . . . The majority of people are not naturally vicious - but being more or less neutral, wrong thinking is making them so. The truth does not skulk down alleys; it has been shouted from the housetops for several million years. But too many have truth deafness . . . ."
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(*) "Very much" is of course a relative expression. The RR Editor modestly believes he knows much more than he did at age ten, much less than scholars and Adepti - and also that all Adepts are themselves as children before the mysteries of the "unfathomable universe", which Whitman praised, and which Goethe declares beyond the comprehension of the Archangels. (Ed.)