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Many Voices: The Autobiography of a Medium,

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As both a gifted psychic and entrepreneur, Eileen J. Garrett was an amazing person. As a young women in London in the early 20th century, she was acquainted with people like Arthur Conan Doyle, W.B. Yeats, H.G. Wells and James Joyce. She was trained at the British College of Psychic Science by Hewat McKenzie and took part in psychic research. After the beginning of World WarII, she came to America and founded her own publishing house and eventually co-founded the Parapsychology Foundation in New York City.
Eileen Garrett was such an outstanding person and author that this book, written in 1968, really needs to be reissued, especially with the renewed interest in mediums and psychics. Fortunately, I was able to find a good used copy through the Amazon used book service.

I have found Eileen Garrett's autobiography to be both fascinating and beautifully-written. Eileen was one of the most well-known and studied mediums of the twentieth century. She helped thousands of people with her inner powers and participated in many studies of the paranormal as well as being a very successful businesswoman. She was acquainted with many figures of the early and middle part of the twentieth century, including William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and T. S. Eliot, who frequented her early business of a tea shop in Dublin, Ireland. Her descriptions of these luminaries give another side to their characters. In her autobiography she touches on many themes relating to ESP and the unknown. Here is her short chapter on the dream world.

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Chapter 46

I am happy that in an age of technology there are those who are giving modern interpretation to the dream world which contains the key to the development of the evolution of the race. The dream world, and the world of deep feeling which is interpreted by symbols, relate to us the ancient races, for the dreams of ancient man and modern man are given in the same symbolic language.

Symbolism, with its inner feelings and impressions, is expressed with the same sensory aspects of the outer world's intensity and association. Symbolic dreaming is a survival that leads us from different cultures and different historical associations across centuries. It is still the language of the myth and fairy tale, and it is never forgotten in the unconscious, but too often its meanings are overlooked or not understood. In the symbolic dream, where time and space do not exist, we are linked with our earliest ancestors.

The language of symbol and dream is the route to the unconscious whole. Within these two facets of mind we must look if we would find security. This has been the route specifically human, the dual level contained within the universal concept of being. It has been mostly a foreign language, but in recent decades we have grown to comprehend that if we could remember the past, we could find the conception of a future which is daily being unfolded.

Insight is within the grasp of the dreamer, for he escapes the waking intensity which tends to hold back the vitality that bids us carry on with life, often as underground levels. The eternal now instinctively carries us forward and contains within it knowledge and experience of the routes ahead, even though those routes are dimmed when we awaken to each day's new experiences. The prediction is clear in a dreaming world, but the route is clouded when we surface to live out the day's experience. The outer eye discerns only what is to be undertaken in a three-dimensional world. (pp. 218-219)

I got this book after Mrs. Garrett was referenced by Edgar Cayce. I am diving into this world and trying to learn as much about it as possible. Mrs. Garrett is a very facinating person and has many perspectives concerning the paranormal. This book was difficult to navigate at times and tended to digress a fair bit. I felt that Mrs. Garrett had many insights and I believe her to be a very gifted medium. I hoped for more information on how exactly she would go into her "trance" but got the feeling she herself was not quite sure. She is also lighthearted in her approach and maintains that she and we could all be crazy...lol. I like the fact that she did not take herself to seriously and I think this aspect of her personality only gave her more credibility.

It's an interesting read.

A book entitled Many Voices could be about schizophrenia. The 1969 paperback edition of this book has a psychedelic cover and on the back the blurb states, "From ESP to LSD... an Extraordinary Lifetime of Adventures in the Psychic World!" Sensational stuff so far. However, the book reveals a life of hard work and dedication to the truth in an attempt to uncover the meaning and value of a capacity to receive apparent messages from the dead.

This is a book packed full of incident. Ms. Garrett has a non-sentimental view of spiritualism and concedes that much in the way of supposed communication with the dead is banal and platitudinous. Written in 1968, it accurately predicts the advent of showbiz spiritualism where the emphasis is on showmanship and where alleged communication with the deceased is nothing more than social entertainment. She even speculates on whether the only purpose of spiritualism is as a form of propaganda "to deaden sensitivities and keep alive the feeling that all is well with the world".

As for her so-called spirit controls, she states, "I long ago accepted them as working symbols of the subconscious". However, when she moved to America, the spirit control going by the name of Abdul Latif, she says, stayed behind, and worked with (possessed?) another medium called Miss Francis.

The perils of mediumship become apparent as she suffers one illness after another in the course of her work. On one occasion a mysterious, apparently paranormal hooded being appeared in her hospital room to advise her to practice correct breath control to maintain her health and prevent asthma. She says that by following this being/person's advice she obtained a new elasticity of vision and mind.

She says that in anxious times the demand for mediums increases. The message of this book seems to be that it might be best not to bother. She makes reference to the strict training she received from Hewat McKenzie, who sounds like a hard taskmaster, and who spent time training the spirit controls to show respect to the medium's ego.

By 1968 spiritualism had become a religion. People attend services, get their bland messages and leave contented. Does it matter if there is no safeguard on conditions? That is one question that is raised. There don't seem to be any easy answers. I suspect that this book is of great value, probably especially to those keen, like Ms. Garrett, to explore the world of "dreams, psychic impulses and conscience itself" and I wouldn't be surprised if she is unique among mediums in recommending LSD as a means of reaching the unconscious self.

Ultimately, perhaps books like this are beneficial in that maybe they get the conscious mind to reconcile itself with the subconscious mind. Ms. Garrett states that she regards the unconscious with awe and veneration. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatric diagnosis was schizophrenia/multiple personality disorder, and it's probably not a book for those of a dogmatic disposition.