Customer Reviews

Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Part 2

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What is a ghost? According to Frederic Myers it's a "purely subjective hallucination" and "probably one of the most complex phenomena in nature". In the first chapter of Part 2 of Myers's study he looks at "Phantasms of the Dead". As with Part 1 of this series, the most interesting bits are the case studies, which are mostly contained in the appendices to each chapter. Most of the case studies in this chapter I found a bit boring however - nothing much happens. Still, there were some interesting bits. For example, there's the case of a dead man appearing in his work colleague's dream a couple of days after he'd died (which the dreamer had not known) to announce that he wasn't guilty of what he was accused of. The morning after the dream, the dreamer got a letter announcing his colleague had committed suicide. Apparently this person had drunk wood staining solution and it was assumed that whis was suicide. In the dream he'd appeared with bluish-pale skin that was covered in a cold sweat - signs of sulphuric acid poisoning in real life! It turned out that he'd drunk the wood staining solution (which contained sulphuric acid) in one gulp, thinking it was whisky, so it was an accident, which was later confirmed in a letter the dreamer received the day after the dream. Then there's the case of a girl dying, her mother accidentally scratching her face after she'd died, then the spectre of this girl appearing to her sister (who didn't know she'd died) - with the scratch bright red on her face. There's one case of a near death experience where the person got out of his hospital bed, not recognising his wife or sister, having a wander about, discovering that his thoughts in this state were intensified enough to take a visible form, before waking up again in his body. Myers reckons that in the "boundless ocean of mind, innumerable currents and tides shift with the shifting emotion of each several [sic] soul".

One thing I really didn't like about this book is Myers's repeated references to "savages". In chapter 7 he defines the "essence of civilisation" as the "transmutation of savage fear into scientific curiosity". In Part 1 of this series he referred to "Australian savages". I think that an excellent case could be made that the white settlers in Australia are the "savages", rather than the aborigines there, as Australia has gone from being a stable, peaceful, self-sufficient country into a debt-ridden, drought plagued country riven by ethnic tensions. Myers also refers to "civilised Europe" (- does that mean that the rest of the world is uncivilised?) and "the white philosopher" (which means that other races are incapable of philosophising?)

In chapter 8, "Motor Automatisms" he also reveals his academic snobbery when he states, regarding the subject matter of this chapter, "Through the unlettered mind of Andrew Jackson Davis a kind of system of philosophy was given." That's the only reference to Mr Davis in the entire book. Presumably, because Davis didn't have letters after his name then he was unworthy of Myers's attention?! Myers also breaks out in discussion and quotation of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Homer, etc, etc, which I found exceptionally boring, especially when Myers breaks into Greek, assuming his readers understand Greek (also French on occasion) perfectly. I wasn't interested in this seemingly pretentious demonstration of so-called classical scholarship. Anyway, also in this chapter Myers discusses reincarnation and concludes that there's no valid evidence for it. The response from spirits asked on the matter was apparently that "their knowledge was too limited to allow them to generalise on the matter". He also discusses the phenomenon of automatic writing and decides it can do "some little harm, owing to the obstinate belief of the writers that the obvious trash which they wrote was necessarily true and authoritative". Fair enough. The use of the planchette is also examined. Some spirit is reported as having declared that the correct term for "mesmeric influence" is electro-biology.

Chapter 9 covers "Trance, Possession and Ecstasy". Myers died during the writing of this and the book was completed by its editors using Myers's notes. Possession is described as a "more developed form of Motor Automatism". Case studies include former US secret service chief John Wilkie's message from a dead person for Wilkie's doctor, delivered in the form of a hypnopompic dream, also the case of someone receiving info that some spirits were unhappy about the passing of president Franklin: "We laboured hard, for his life was of incalculable value to our country. He would have done more to rescue it from shame than anyone now left", they declared. There's also some discussion of Swedenborg, of whom Myers considers that there's much to support the judgement that he was a "madman" and that he was "uniquely gifted, but uniquely dangerous". The most interesting bit I found was the stuff about W. Stainton Moses, who Myers first met in 1874 on an evening that Myers states was "epoch making" in his life. Myers was most impressed with the demonstrations of Mr Moses, whose spirit contacts would reveal how it was possible for spirits to refresh their memories by referring to books (e.g. their own biographies), to read with difficulty what was on a particular page of a closed book selected at random by Moses, and who would demonstrate powers of molecular separation, e.g. the decomposition of water: "sending the oxygen atoms this way and the hydrogen that way". Myers reprints an article by Moses entitled "The Identity of Spirit", a partial updating of his earlier book Spirit Identity.

On the downside, there's nothing about materialization, nothing about the Fox sisters other than mention of a book title contained in a list of books and articles about fraudulent activities, also there's nothing about any potential dangers from getting involved with the "disembodied". Myers's attitude is to generalise them as the "blessed dead", who are "still minded to keep us as sharers in their joy". Overall, this would have been a much better book I think if the vast majority of Myers's comments and analysis had been stripped out so that the reader could judge the case studies for him/herself, due to (A) his tortuous writing style and (B) obvious inability to come to any definite conclusions due to being still alive and thus unable to check the facts for himself. Finally, Nandor Fodor's Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science would make an ideal companion for this book, and I would recommend getting that book first as it is excellent.

_In 1903 the Society for Psychical Research published this classic work- and effectively proved to any reasonable reader that man's true essence survives bodily death. However, the world of the early 20th century was obsessed with materialism and effectively ignored this finding. Those few scientists that did review the work came away convinced, more often than not. The problem was that most "reputable" scientists wouldn't even consider it- a problem that continues to this day.

_The author of this pioneering volume was F.W.H. Myers, the cofounder of the Society of Psychical Research. Myers was not some fringe crank, for he was a recognized classics scholar, platonic philosopher, poet, and son of a clergyman. It was Myers who first translated and introduced Freud to the British public. He was also the originator of the term "telepathy." He was a meticulous and conscientious investigator. That is what strikes you about the vast compendium of cases included here- they were painstakingly documented, all witnesses were carefully interviewed, and sworn affidavits were obtained. In no way can this be considered a book of "heresay." Myers covered a wide variety of phenomena from hypnotic trance, dreams, possession, mystic ecstasy, telepathy, mediumship, clairvoyance, automatic writing, phantasms of the dead, to actual evidence of the survival of the subliminal elements of personality after death- because he correctly considered them all to be in some way interrelated.

_So, in life, Meyers effectively proved survival of the personality after death. But that was only half of his work. Starting a few years after his death his spirit started communicating with widely separated mediums in England, the United States, and India. The result was a huge body of interconnected messages called the "Cross Correspondences." This work consisted of over 3000 messages delivered over 30 years, and of such a complexity- and consistency- that they provide absolute proof of the survival of Meyers and several of his colleagues.

_So you see, the case for survival of the spirit was effectively made over 100 years ago, but it is still effectively ignored by a mainstream materialist society with its own agenda. But that doesn't make it any less true.