Modern Religious Cults and Movements Part 16

Practically all the newer cults are quests in one general direction but down more or less specific roads. Christian Science and New Thought are endeavours after health and well-being and the endeavour also to reconcile the more shadowed experiences of life with the love and goodness of G.o.d. Theosophy and kindred cults are quests for illumination and spiritual deliverance along other than the accepted lines of Christian "redemption." Spiritualism is practically the quest for the demonstration of immortality through such physical phenomena as prove, at least to those who are persuaded by them, the survival of discarnate personality.

All these movements involve in varying degrees the abnormal or the supernormal. They imply generally another environment for personality than the environment which the ordered world of science supplies, and other laws than the laws of which it takes account. They are one in affirming the mastery of the psychical over the physical. They either affirm or imply faculties which do not depend upon the senses for their material; they suggest a range of personality which, if the facts which they supply are sound, demands a very considerable recasting of our accepted beliefs about ourselves.

Christian Science and New Thought confine themselves largely to the present term of life, though Christian Science affirms strongly enough that death is an error of the mortal mind. New Thought places a s.h.i.+fting emphasis upon immortality. Spiritualism centers wholly upon the phenomena of the discarnate life, upon the power of the discarnate to communicate with us and upon our power to receive and interpret their communications.

Spiritualism, or Spiritism, the name its adherents prefer, is, however, by no means so simple as this definition of it. It may be anything from the credulity which accepts without question or a.n.a.lysis the trick of a medium, to the profound speculation of Meyer or Hyslop or the new adventures in psychology of emile Boirac and his French a.s.sociates. It may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in forms of wors.h.i.+p and separate itself entirely from the churches. It may reinforce the faith of those who remain in their old communions.

Spiritism has a long line of descent. The belief that the spirit may leave the body and maintain a continued existence is very old. Mr.

Herbert Spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. Since primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. The spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its business. They, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his wives to serve him in his disembodied state. All this is familiar enough and perhaps the whole matter began as Mr. Spencer suggested, though it by no means ends there.

The animism which grew out of this belief characterizes a vast deal of early religion, penetrates a vast deal of early thinking. Primitive man lived in a world constantly under the control of either friendly or hostile spirits and the really ma.s.sive result of this faith of his is registered in regions as remote as the capricious genders of French nouns and the majestic strophes of the Hebrew Psalms, for the genders are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits, male or female, and the Psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the voice of G.o.d and the hail was stored in His armoury. It would take us far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in all its suggestive ramifications. Animism, medieval witchcraft and the confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for modern Spiritualism. (The whole subject is fully treated in the first and second chapters of Podmore.)

_The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism_

Modern Spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an ancestry. In 1848 mysterious knockings were heard in the family of John D. Fox at Hydesville, N.Y. They appeared to have some purpose behind them; the daughters of the family finally worked out a code: three raps for yes, one for no, two for doubt, and lo, a going concern was established. It is interesting to note that mysterious noises had been about a century before heard in the family of the Wesleys in Epworth Rectory, England. These noises came to be accepted quite placidly as an aspect of the interesting domestic life of the Wesleys. It has usually been supposed that Hattie Wesley knew more about it than she cared to tell and, as far as the ill.u.s.trious founders of Methodism were concerned, there the matter rests.

But the Fox sisters became professional mediums and upon these simple beginnings a great superstructure has been built up. The modern interest in Spiritualism thus began on its physical side and in general the physical phenomena of Spiritualism have become more bizarre and complex with the growth of the cult. Raps, table tiltings, movements of articles of furniture, playing upon musical instruments, slate writing, automatic writing, of late the Ouija Board, materialization, levitation, apparent elongation of the medium's body, are all a.s.sociated with Spiritism. It was natural that the voice also should become a medium of communication, though trance mediums.h.i.+p belongs, as we shall see, to a later stage of development.

Incidentally the movement created a kind of contagious hysteria which naturally multiplied the phenomena and made detached and critical att.i.tudes unduly difficult. For reasons already touched upon, America has been strongly predisposed to phases of public opinion which in their intensity and want of balance have the generally accepted characteristics of hysteria. Some of them have been religious, great awakenings, revivals and the like. These in their more extreme form have been marked by trances, shoutings and catalepsy and, more normally, by a popular interest, strongly emotionalized, which may possess a real religious value. Other religious movements have centered about the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Many of these peculiar excitements have been political. The whole offers the psychologists a fascinating field and awaits its historian.[70] Yet the result is always the same. The critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous following.

Movements having this genesis and history are in themselves open to suspicion.

[Footnote 70: Sidis has a resume of Social Epidemics in part three of his work on the "Psychology of Suggestion."]

_It Crosses to England and the Continent_

The American interest in Spiritualism from 1848 to 1852 belongs distinctly to this region. The Fox sisters have been generally discredited, but what they began carried on. In 1852 a Mrs. Hayden and a little later a Mrs. Roberts introduced raps and table turnings to England. There, and more particularly on the Continent, Spiritualism met and merged with a second line of development which in turn reacted upon American Spiritualism, and, in America, released movements on the surface wholly unrelated to Spiritism. In France to a degree and in Germany strongly Mesmerism lent itself to spiritistic interpretations. I quote Podmore, who is commenting upon the trance utterances of a Mrs.

Lindquist: "It is to be noted that the ascription of these somnambulic utterances to spirit intelligences was in the circ.u.mstances not merely easy but almost inevitable. The entranced person was in a state obviously differing very widely from either normal sleep or normal wakefulness; in the waking state she herself retained no recollection of what happened in the trance; in the trance she habitually spoke of her waking self in the third person, as of some one else; the intelligence which manifested in the trance obviously possessed powers of expression and intellectual resources in some directions far greater than any displayed by the waking subject. Add to this that the trance intelligence habitually reflected the ideas in general and especially the religious orthodoxy of her interlocutors; that on occasion she showed knowledge of their thoughts and intentions which could not apparently have been acquired by normal means; that she was, in particular, extraordinarily skillful in diagnosing, prescribing for, and occasionally foretelling the course of diseases in herself and others--the proof must have seemed to the bystanders complete."[71]

[Footnote 71: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. I, p. 77.]

_The Beginnings of Trance-Mediums.h.i.+p_

We have here plainly enough the beginnings of trance mediums.h.i.+p. It needed only unstable personalities, capable of self-induced trance states, so to widen all this as to supply the bases of spiritistic faith and the material for the immensely laborious investigation of the Society for Psychical Research. In the main, however, French interest in Mesmerism and animal magnetism took a more scientific turn and issued in the brilliant French studies in hypnotism. Spiritualism has made little headway in Catholic countries. The authority of the Church is thrown so strongly against it as to prohibit the interest of the credulous and the penetrating minds of the southern European scientists have been more concerned with the problems of abnormal personality than the continued existence of the discarnate.

The interest in Germany took another line. There was less scientific investigation of hypnotism and trance states as abnormal modifications of personality and far more interest in clairvoyance and spirit existence. Men whose names carried weight accepted the spiritistic explanation of phenomena ranging from broken flower pots to ghosts. Very likely the German tendency toward mysticism and speculation explains this. Jung followed Swedenborg and the mystics generally in affirming a psychic body, but was a pioneer in a.s.sociating it with the luminiferous ether in a range of speculation which in our time supplies an hypothetical scientific basis for the environment of the discarnate. (So Sir Oliver Lodge.) Podmore concludes that the foundations of modern Spiritualism were laid by the German magnetists of the first half of the nineteenth century.

The movement developed along these lines till 1875. Once broadly in action it touches at one point or another the whole region of the occult. Many spiritualists found in Theosophy, for which existence is the endless turning of a wheel, a cycle of death and rebirth, a pseudo-philosophic support for their belief. Spiritualism appealed naturally to the lovers of the mystic and the unusual and it a.s.sociated itself, to a degree, with extreme liberalism in the general development of religion. (On the whole, however, as far as religion goes, Spiritualism has created a religion of its own.) Its advocates were likely to be interested in phrenology, advanced social experiments, or modification of the marriage laws. Spiritualistic phenomena themselves became more varied and complex; trance mediums.h.i.+p became a profession with a great increase of performers; slate writing was introduced and finally materialization was achieved. All this might mean that the spirits were growing more adept in "getting through," the mediums more adept in technique, or else, which is more likely, that latent abnormal aspects of personality were being brought to light through suggestion, imitation and exercise. But no concerted effort was made by trained and impartial observers to eliminate fraud, collect data and reach dependable conclusions. This has been finally attempted by the Society for Psychical Research and the results of their laborious investigations are now at the service of the student of the occult.

_The Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work_

The weight which attaches to the names of many English and some American members of the Society, the carefully guarded admission of some of them that there is in the whole region a possible residue of phenomena which indicate communication between the living and the discarnate and the profoundly unsettling influence of the war, really account for the renewed interest in Spiritualism in our own time. In 1875 a few Englishmen, one of them a famous medium--Stainton Moses--formed a Psychological Society for the investigation of supernormal phenomena. (In general all this account of the history of Spiritualism is greatly condensed from Podmore and Hill and the reader is referred to their works without specific reference.)

This first group dissolved upon the death of one of its members--though that would seem to have been a good reason for continuing it--and in 1882 Professor (afterward Sir) William Barrett, who had already done some experimenting and had brought hypnotism and telepathy to the notice of the British a.s.sociation for the advancement of science, consulted Stainton Moses with the view of founding a society under better auspices and the Society for Psychical Research was organized, with Professor Henry Sidgwick as first president. The Society undertook, according to its own statement:

1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, otherwise than through the recognized sensory channels.

2. The study of hypnotism and mesmerism, and an inquiry into the alleged phenomena of clairvoyance.

3. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on testimony sufficiently strong and not too remote, of apparitions coinciding with some external event (as for instance a death) or giving information previously unknown to the percipient, or being seen by two or more persons independently of each other.

4. An inquiry into various alleged phenomena apparently inexplicable by known laws of nature, and commonly referred by Spiritualists to the agency of extra-human intelligences.

5. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing on the history of these subjects.[72]

[Footnote 72: "Spiritualism," Hill, p. 100.]

They sought also "to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and unimpa.s.sioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated."

As a matter of fact the region is the most obscure which inquiry has ever been called to enter. A n.o.ble rationality pervades the whole normal material order, causes can be controlled, effects antic.i.p.ated, laws formulated and above all, the hypotheses of science are, if true, always capable of a luminous and splendid verification. The disciplined intellect moves through it all with a sense of "at-homeness" which is itself a testimony to profound correspondences between the human mind and the order with which, during its long, long unfolding, it has been a.s.sociated in intimacies of action and reaction too close to be adequately set forth in words. But the mind does not rest easily in the region which Spiritism claims for its own.

_The Difficulties It Confronts_

Of course this is to beg the whole question. The more scientifically minded spiritualists might fairly enough answer that they are attempting to discover the laws of the occult and reduce an anarchical system to order, that our feeling of strangeness in these regions is only because of our little contact with them. There are, they claim, undeveloped aspects of personality which we have had as yet little occasion to use, but which would, once they were fully brought into action, give us the same sense of rapport with a super-sensible order that we now have in our contact with the sensible order. The crux of the whole contention is probably just here and in view of what has heretofore been accomplished in discovering and formulating the laws of the physical universe and in reducing an immense body of apparently unrelated facts to order, there is doubtless possible a very great systematization of psychical phenomena, even the most obscure. Nor may we readily set bounds to the measure of human development. But at any rate the statement with which this paragraph began is true. The region which the Society for Psychical Research set out to explore is obscure and is, as yet, so far from yielding to investigation that the investigators are not even agreed as to their facts, let alone the conclusions to be drawn from.

The proceedings of the Society literally fill volumes (thirty-two); it would require a specialist to follow them through and an a.n.a.lysis here impossible, rightly to evaluate them. When such careful investigators as Hill and Podmore, dealing with the same body of fact, differ constantly and diametrically in their conclusions, it is evident that the facts so far collected have not c.u.mulative force enough to establish in the generality of disciplined minds a substantial unanimity of conviction.

There are far too many alternatives in the interpretation of the facts and, in general, the personal equation of the investigator colours the conclusions reached. Of course this is, in a measure, true in every field of investigation, but it is outstandingly true in psychical research.

_William James Enters the Field_

For some years the Society was mainly occupied with hypnotism and thought transference, with occasional reports on "apparitions, haunted houses, premonitions, automatic writing, crystal vision and multiple personality." Professor William James' experiment with Mrs. Piper carried the Society over into the field of trance mediums.h.i.+p. James had a sound scientific interest in every aspect of the play of human consciousness and was earlier than any of his contemporaries awakened to the psychological value of abnormal mental states. He also loved fair play. He made his first report on Mrs. Piper in 1886. He was unable, he said, "to resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears and wits.... What the source of this knowledge may be, I know not, and have not a glimmer of explanatory suggestion to make, but from admitting the fact of such knowledge I can see no escape."

In a letter to Flourney dated August 9, 1908, James says of later investigations: "It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in the history of automatism.... Evidently automatism is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact." The reports of Mrs. Piper's sittings fill a large place in the Society's records. Dr. Richard Hodgson and Professor Hyslop were finally led to accept her trance utterances and writings as spiritistic revelations. Podmore, after a most careful a.n.a.lysis, concludes that "Mrs. Piper's trance utterances indicate the possession of some supernormal power of apprehension, at least the capacity to read the unspoken and even unconscious thoughts and emotions of other minds."[73] He is willing to admit that if any case in the whole history of Spiritualism points at communication with the spirits of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a working hypothesis." "I cannot point to a single instance in which a precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."[74]

[Footnote 73: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, pp. 342-343.]

[Footnote 74: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, p. 345.]

_The Limitations of the Scientist in Psychical Investigation_

It is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the Society. A representative group of its members, some of them men whose names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their investigations to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis. Significantly, however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who commits himself most strongly to Spiritism. He is strongly impressed, as was Sir William Crookes, by phenomena of one sort or another which do not come under his laws, and he a.s.signs to them causes which lie altogether out of his field. Indeed the temper and training of the scientist handicap him in all psychical investigations. He has only one of two alternatives: to explain what he sees in terms of what his laboratories have told him, or else in terms of forces with which he is not familiar. His training in careful experimentation may fit him to test and isolate physical phenomena, but if they cannot be explained in terms of the forces and laws with which he is familiar his conclusions are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to conclusions--or conjectures--entirely outside his own province. The element of trickery in the ordinary professional seance is notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers--many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most unusual phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least know where to look for a probable explanation.

[Footnote 75: Carrington, "The Psychical Phenomena of Spiritualism," pp.

6 and 7.]

_The Society for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to Their Investigations_

If the explanations of the whole group of phenomena is not in the known resident forces about us it is presumably in powers or aspects of personality not yet fully known. Here the psychologist is a better witness than the scientist and it is significant that psychologists have been slower to accept the spiritistic hypothesis than the scientist.

Hyslop is an exception but the extent to which Hyslop has of late gone in some of his reported utterances would seem to indicate that he has pa.s.sed far beyond the bonds of the scientific. And indeed, the whole tendency of those who let themselves go strongly with the spiritistic tide is exactly in this direction. It ought, however, to be said that even these members of the S.P.R. who have become spiritistic have generally been savingly conservative in their conclusions.

At any rate, the work of the Society for Psychical Research has given intellectual standing to what was before a sort of hole and corner affair under suspicion twice: first, because of the character of those involved, second, because of the character of what they revealed. It is difficult for one not predisposed toward the occult and even strongly prejudiced against it to deny in alleged spiritistic phenomena a challenging residuum which may in the end compel far-reaching modifications in the conclusions both of science and psychology. By one set of tests this residuum is unexpectedly small. One of the canons of the S.P.R. is to reject the work of any medium once convicted or strongly suspected of fraud. There is a vast literature in this region through whose outstanding parts the writer has for a good while now been trying to find his way, often enough ready to quote the Pope in the Ring and the Book.