THE BOMBAY GAZETTE OPINION ON OCCULT PHENOMENA PRODUCED BY BLAVATSKY

 

 

This article was published in The Bombay Gazette newspaper, October 29, 1880:

 

« The stories of occult phenomena which are being wafted to us from Simla, although new to India, are equaled, and surpassed, by numberless well-attested narratives of the doings of spiritualists in England and America. Madame Blavatsky has distinguished herself in India by her discovery of a brooch under peculiar circumstances, but she can hardly claim the highest rank among the spiritualists of the world until she has performed some more striking feat.

 

Let her float out of one window, and into another, like Mr. Home, or traverse two miles in a moment of time, and appear suddenly on the middle of the table in a fast-closer room before twelve witnesses like Mr. Guppy, and she may then claim to have risen above the second rank of spiritualistic performers. What she has done so far would not be thought much of if it were merely given as a piece of jugglery, and only appears very marvelous from being ascribed to the unseen powers.

 

(Cid´s observation: Blavatsky did not pretend to be a great spiritualist, but she wanted to show people that there is nothing supernatural in hidden phenomena, which simply use aspects of nature that humans do not yet know. And if the writer of this article had he read the witness testimony more carefully, he would have realized that it could not have been juggling tricks.)

 

 

It is rather a pity that a lady of such unquestionable ability should condescend to trouble herself with the finding of missing brooches or the production of water from an empty bottle. Her powers are capable of much greater achievements. Spiritualism is not easy to refute. It is true that the so-called manifestations of spirit power have in many cases been convicted, and proved to be nothing but more or less clever pieces of imposture.

 

But such detections do not move the believers, who can plausibly reply that the detection of imposture in some instances does not prove the existence of imposture in every case, and that there are sure to be many who will pretend to be mediums for gain or reputation, and therefore try by jugglery to rival the true possessors of spiritualistic power.

 

If we urge that Maskelyne and Cooke, professed conjurors, perform as great, or greater, wonders than any medium, they either deny the fact, or allow it, and explain it by the hypothesis that these professed conjurors are really mediums who find it pays better to pretend that they are only conjurors. So the believers will hardly be convinced out of their belief until every manifestation has been traced to natural causes possible, particularly as the spirits manifest a predilection for displaying their powers most readily in darkened rooms, and were no sceptical eye is observing the operations.

 

So, as it is impossible to explain away each manifestation by exposing the natural agencies at work, it is incumbent upon the unbeliever to give some general grounds in justification of his refusal to believe stories given on the authority of apparently most trustworthy witnesses.

 

Such stories may be either the result of imposture, or they may have some foundations of fact to rest upon, which is exaggerated immensely by those who circulate them. The cases of intentional deception we may leave out of consideration. Most certainly deception has been often detected on the part of the supposed medium, but it is just as certain that a large number of cases remain which cannot be so explained, and it is with these we have to deal.

 

A great deal of the marvellousness of these tales is due to exaggerations that have gathered round the original nucleus of fact from the imagination or imperfect memory of the different narrators.

 

Thus Miss Cobbe was once assured by a lady that to her certain knowledge a table had rapped when nobody was within a yard of it. This, if true, would have been a marvel that could hardly have been explained by any natural causes: and Miss Cobbe expressed great surprise at the statement. The lady assured her that there was no doubt about the matter, but to make it still more certain, she promised to consult the notes she had taken immediately after the séance. She did so, and found that her memory of all other points was perfectly correct — but the hands of six persons had been resting on the table.

 

There we have an instance of instance of a marvellous story, asserted unhesitatingly by a witness who showed her truthfulness by acknowledging afterwards the mistake she had made; yet nearly all the wonderful part of the story was due to a defect of memory.

 

 

Dr. Carpenter quotes another instance, which shows how the marvellous additions that are unconsciously made to a story by its circulators may be dissipated by closer examination at the original source. A doctor who was sceptical about mesmerism heard often-repeated assertions about a maid of Miss Martineau, who could converse when in her mesmeric state in languages that she had never learnt, and of which she knew nothing when in her ordinary condition.

 

He could not believe that the story, in spite of the confidence with which it was told; and some time later, on meeting a brother-in-law of Miss Martineau, he enquired about this wonderful maid, telling what was reported of her. He then heard that the account given him of the matter was not quite accurate. The maid had replied in the vernacular to questions proposed by Lord Morpeth in the foreign tongue.

 

In this manner stories get improved in the telling; so that a small coincidence often swells into the in the proportions of a miracle when it has passed through a few months. Everybody likes to make the most of any story he has to tell, and if he has heard one or more versions, is inclined to repeat the most striking as being the one most able to excite the interest of his audience. It is also the most marvellous version that is most likely to fix itself in the minds of the hearers, while the more commonplace accounts of what took place are easily forgotten.

 

The residuum of solid fact which remains in each spiritualistic story after the excrescences produced by exaggeration have been pruned away may, if it transcends ordinary experience, and there is no possibility of bad faith on the part of the narrator, he explained by the abnormal power which great excitement occasionally produces in the muscles and the memory.

 

If the movements of pieces of furniture under the fingers are rather more violent than could be expected under ordinary circumstances, there is still no difficulty in accounting for them by pressure of the fingers, rendered unnaturally strong by the excitement of the excitement of the circle which is anxiously waiting to see what wonderful thing will happen.

 

A man with a mad bull behind, him can run far faster, and make greater leaps, than he could manage in the more ordinary excitement of a race, and in the lesser excitement of a race he can run faster than if he were merely running against time. In Dr. Carpenter’s “Mental Physiology” an instance is quoted of an old cook-maid, tottering with age, who having heard an alarm of fire, seized an enormous box containing her whole property and ran downstairs with it as easily as she would have carried a dish of meat. But after the fire had been extinguished she could not lift the box a hair's breadth from the ground, and it required two men to convey it upstairs again.

 

The assistance given by faith in the attempt to achieve seeming impossibilities must also be a most efficacious help at spiritualistic meetings. Belief in our power to do anything is often the most essential condition for bringing about its accomplishments. Everybody knows that it is much easier to repeat a muscular feat which you know you have done before than to do it for the first time.

 

This arises, not from any increase of muscular power, but from the fact that your confident belief in your own powers, derived from experience of what you have already done, enables you to use your muscles to their full effect. The great obstacle to learning to swim or to crack a walnut or a hazelnut with the fingers is want of belief in one’s ability; — when that obstacle is surmounted by success the rest is very easy.

 

Dr. Carpenter’s once saw a hypnotized subject — a man so remarkable for the poverty of his physical development that he had not for many years ventured to lift a weight of twenty pounds in his preliminary state, but after be hypnotized he can to lift a weight of hundred pounds and swing it round his head with the greatest apparent facility, upon being assured that it was as light as a feather.

 

 

It is well-known to physiologists, heads, that in our ordinary volitional contraction of any muscle we do not employ more than a small part of it at any one time; whilst, on the other hand, every experienced medical practitioner knows that in convulsive contraction far more force is often put forth than the strongest exertion of the will could bring into exertion.

 

Violent excitement combined with perfect confidence can sometimes abnormally increase the power of the memory to the same extent as it increases the power of the muscles. There .are many instances of persons remembering in the delirium of fever languages which they had once known, but entirely forgotten in their ordinary state.

 

Coleridge quotes an instance of an uneducated girl, unable to read and write; who, in the excitement caused by fever, alarmed everybody by talking Latin, Hebrew, and Greek.

 

The mystery was great, and was naturally referred to the devil. But further investigation revealed the fact that in her childhood she had lived in the house of a great scholar, who used to read his books aloud in her hearing. Among these books were found many of the passages which the girl had repeated in her fiver without the least idea of their meaning; but in the excitement of disease she could remember perfectly what was utterly forgotten by her memory in its ordinary condition.

 

Such fact may account for the instances in which surprising answers are really given by the raps of the table or the movements of the planchette, even although, from want of sufficient knowledge of the circumstances, it may be impossible to give the special explanation of each particular marvel.

  

(Cid's observation: the arguments given by the author of this article are valid for some cases, but not for all phenomena, since, for example, have also been persons who in particulars conditions respond in a language that they do not know with whole sentences to questions that people asked them, and that cannot be explained by the simple fact that these persons has heard that language before. And there are also many testimonies of hitting and floating objects without anyone being by their side.)

 

 

If the spirits were the real agents, they would surely transcend human power more clearly. One would think that it would be as easy for a spirit to move a house as to move a piano, and to answer the hardest question that can be imagined should be to them no more difficult than to answer easy questions.

 

Yet we never hear of spirits moving anything heavier than furniture, and no spirit has yet succeeded in revealing the number of a certain £100 note of the Bank of England which a gentleman has shut up in a box and promised to any spiritualist who can guess its number.

 

Everything that is said to have been done by the spirits so far may reasonably be explicated, and until something is done which is distinctly not amenable to such an explanation we may reasonably refuse to believe in supernatural interferences with terrestrial events. »

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OBSERVATIONS

 

I agree in part with what this writer said, but in the latter he is also wrong because the difference in weight between a house and a piano easily explains why "spirits" can lift the latter and not the former. And I put the word spirits in quotation marks because theosophy explains that the entities that spiritists communicate with are rarely human spirits and the vast majority of the time they are astral entities.

 

He also contradicts himself because at the end of his article he states that all occult phenomena can be reasonably explained, and until appear phenomena that cannot be explained in that way, he refuses to believe in supernatural interferences. But he himself at the beginning of his article mentioned two cases that disconcert human understanding: Mr. Home who floated from one window to another window, and Mr. Guppy who was teleported two miles away.

 

I cannot tell you if these stories are true or not, but esotericism explains that levitation and teleportation are possible. The detail is that supernatural interferences are not used, but very natural interferences, only that they are not yet known to science.

 

And as for Blavatsky, this individual did not investigate her seriously because in the previous posts I have compiled the information that I have found about these phenomena she produced, and after having analyzed it, I have come to the conclusion that these phenomena most likely were authentic.

 

But the editor of this newspaper had a particular animosity towards Blavatsky since in a previous article he had been insinuating that she was a charlatan, and that is why Blavatsky wrote him a letter that you can read here.