Colonel Olcott sent this letter to the editor of the London spiritualist magazine "Spiritualist" in which he reflects on the phenomena that occur in spiritualism:
COLONEL OLCOTT ON PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA
Sir,
Mr. C. C. Massey makes an important omission in his account of our seance with Dr. H. Slade, in this city, on the evening of October 14th, which I beg to supply.
Writing phenomena
He describes the direct writing obtained when the medium and I held the slate under the edge of the table, and when the pencil was laid upon the table and the slate covered it over, and no one touched it. But we made one other experiment which I regarded as peculiarly satisfactory. I placed the pencil between Mr. Massey's two new slates, and held them in my own hand, at my right side —away from Dr. Slade and next to Mr. Massey— and the writing was obtained as easily as before.
As I have no mediumistic power whatever, and as under the circumstances deception was impossible, it is a fair inference that the force exerted by or through Slade can operate for the production of written messages independently of his personal contact with the thing to be written upon.
I have had the same phenomenon occur in the presence of other persons similarly endowed ; as, for instance, where pencil writing has come upon the under-side of a card upon whose face I was scribbling at the time, and inside a note-book placed in my bosom to try the experiment. I have also, in more than twenty cases, found the familiar writing of a certain spirit friend inside letters delivered to me by the postman, upon my opening the envelopes—the letters coming from correspondents in various parts of the world, and some from persons who knew nothing and cared less about Spiritualistic phenomena.
In Lane’s Modern Egyptian you will find an account of the experience which two visitors had with a famous sheikh, part of which bears upon this question. One of them desired an answer to a sealed letter, which he handed the sheikh and which was addressed to his own father, then living in a place far distant from the locality when the seance was occurring. The sheikh placed the letter behind one of the cushions of his divan, and shortly after turning down the cushion the visitor found his own letter gone and another addressed to himself, in his father’s familiar handwriting, replying to his questions and giving him unsought information about things that moment transpiring at home.
Once this happened to me. I wrote a letter to a dear • friend of mine who resided several thousand miles away from here—in India. I laid it, sealed, upon the mantel-shelf, where I could have it under my eye the whole time. In about an hour I looked and found my own envelope with unbroken seal, my own note inside, and inside that, and upon a sheet of coloured paper unlike anything in my own possession, and nulike anything that I ever saw letters written upon in America, was a reply from my correspondent, in his own handwriting.
Reflections
I might multiply stories of personal experience like this, but these will suffice to illustrate my point, viz.: That there are certain subtle forces, which can be controlled by will-power to produce written com munications, even at great distances. Now, what are these forces, and how does will-power control them? Can any Spiritualist, with only such knowledge as he has obtained in circles or through mediums, explain?
They can give vague theories, but only theories. It is not pretended that the writing is done, like ordinary writing, by a spirit’s tracing the characters with ink or pencil. I have heard them say it is a chemical effect; but how produced, pray? Some time since I sat with the President of the Photographic Section of the American Institute, to witness the slate writing of a certain Doctor Cozine, which is far more wonderful than Slade’s. The communications came upon the slate in bright blue and red colours, and no pencil or crayon was used by us, and I held one end of the slate myself. In my own experience I have seen the writing in pastil, ink, lead-pencil, and slate pencil, to say nothing of the direct paintings of figures, flowers, and other objects on paper and satin ; how are these done?
Who do spiritualists communicate with?
Another point I wish to call attention to. In your issue of the 26th ultimo, I read some very sensible talk by Mr. Jencken (as, indeed, what he says generally is) about the cause of the lying communications given by spirits. He puts this query. “ Why was this? Was it that the messages came from very inferior beings, who surrounded particular individuals ?” And he truthfull y adds — “circumstances such as these very much opposed the progress of Spiritualism.”
No more pertinent question has been asked; no truer assertion made. It is high time that this question should be pondered by every intelligent person interested in the subject. We have gone on for nearly thirty years, receiving communications and viewing phenomena, and taking it for granted that all those which are genuine are made by disembodied human spirits. This has caused all the trouble, and made all the odium.
But the Eastern people make no such mistakes. They do not believe that all their communications are from departed friends, nor all their physical phenomena produced by them. They know better. There is not a hungry fakir or tattered sheikh who could not have taught us where to seek for the truth. They could have shown' us how to produce slate writing ourselves, or any other form of physical manifestation, by controlling the currents of the “Universal Ether” by will power, and calling in the help of the elementary beings who exist in its bosom. They could have taught us what a direful calamity it is to yield to physical mediumship to the extent of perfect passivity—which is the same as saying to give oneself over as the helpless slave of the “elementarles.” Let us hope that when men of such character as Mr. Jencken formulate questions like that which I have quoted above they will be pondered over.
A few of us in this country have organised the Theosophical Society for the express purpose of looking into the science which, so far as we can discover, is alone competent to afford ns this desired knowledge.
One would suppose that the inquiry was a proper one, and that, if we could prove to Spiritualists that these “very inferior beings” of Mr. Jencken’s do surround certain individuals —individuals known as physical mediums—and made them lie, and cheat, and indulge in immoral practices, we should be doing a very great service. But no sooner did I broach the idea that the “ elementaries” of the Theosophists, the “ Dwellers of the Threshold ” of Bulwer, and these “inferior beings’’ were identical, than I was set upon and gibed at by every noisy creature who could handle a quill and gain access to the Spiritualist papers.
Worse than that; I, who had been thickly besmeared with praise for my previous writings, was openly charged with conspiracy to cheat a virtuous publlc; and some of these dogs —for their behaviour shames the human species— fell to slandering good people, and circulating all sorts of calumnies about their private characters.
(Cid's observation: The spiritists hated theosophists when they claimed that most of the spirits with whom mediums communicate in seances are not the souls of disembodied humans but deceptive astral entities.)
But I, at least, am not the man to be turned aside from the accomplishment of a lawful purpose by any such means; and now that we have begun our investigations, we mean to pursue them until we get at the truth which lies at the bottom of this filthy well. We look to the brave and true souls in Great Britain, in France, in Russia, and all over the world, for sympathy and help.
We want you, above all, as representing the better portion of English Spiritualism, to feel that not one of us has the slightest sympathy with Free Love or Free Lovers, that we have no selfish ends to promote, no dogmas to inculcate; that while we have deep sympathy for the misfortunes of the unhappy people who are under the dominion of “inferior beings,” we neither consult them as guides to philosophy nor as oracles of our departed friends. We study their cases as the physician more patient; their phenomena as the scientific observer any other manifestation of natural law. Our bread is cast upon the waters: will you send it back to us after many days?
Henry S. Olcott.
The Theosophical Society,
Mott Memorial Hall, 64, Madison-avenue, New York.
(This letter with this title was published in the Spiritualist, January 28, 1876, p. 45. While I added the subtitles to make them easier to read.)
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