Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

What is a Human Being? Matter, Mind, and Consciousness

The research of Sir Alfred Russel Wallace suggests that if we want to understand how human beings have come into existence, we should first of all understand what a human being is. Under the influence of materialistic assumptions about the nature of reality, most scientists have concluded that human beings are composed only of ordinary matter. This assumption limits the kinds of explanations we can offer for the origins of humanity. We are reduced to speculating about how ordinary matter organized itself into such a complex biological form. Even within this limited sphere, an exact explanation of the origin of the first life form and its subsequent development into the human form has thus far eluded science. This failure gives us the warrant to consider a different set of assumptions about the nature of the human organism, thus increasing our explanatory options.

When we consider all of the evidence available to science, we find ample justification for basing our study of human origins on the assumption that a human being, or any other living entity of our ordinary experience, is composed of not just one thing, ordinary matter, but of three things—matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit). By mind, I mean a subtle material energy, connected with the human organism and capable of influencing ordinary matter or receiving sensory impressions in ways unexplained by the laws of science as currently accepted. Mind is not, however, conscious, although it may carry content for consciousness and may be in part instrumental for translating conscious intentions into action in the world of ordinary matter. By spirit I mean a conscious, experiencing, desiring, acting self that can exist apart from mind and matter. The assumption that humans, and other living things, are composed of matter, mind, and consciousness allows, indeed demands, new explanatory possibilities. We must explain from where these elements came, and how they combined in the human form.

Let us now review the scientific evidence favoring the assumption that a human being is composed not only of ordinary matter but also of the separate elements mind and consciousness. In the first part of this chapter, I shall include cases related to the existence of a mind element, and in the second part, I shall discuss evidence related to the existence of a conscious self apart from the subtle material mind and the gross physical body composed of ordinary matter.

PART ONE:

EVIDENCE FOR A MIND ELEMENT

In reviewing the evidence for a mind element, I have chosen to begin with contemporaries of Wallace and darwin. This is an arbitrary decision. Because I am addressing the question of darwinian evolution, which was formulated in the middle of the nineteenth century and developed to its mature form in the twentieth century, I thought it might be good to confine my citations of scientific evidence for a mind element to the same period of scientific development represented by darwinism.

James esdaile: mesmerism in india

James Esdaile was an English physician working in Bengal in the nineteenth century, when India was under British rule. He was a pioneer in using mesmerism, now called hypnosis, as an anesthetic. Patients who got painless operations regarded dr. Esdaile as “an incarnation of vishnu” (Esdaile 1852, p. 166). Around this time, however, ether and chloroform came into general use, and mesmerism was no longer quite so much needed as an anesthetic. Esdaile then turned his attention to the mysterious psychical effects he had encountered in his research into mesmerism. Esdaile (1852) reported that some of his entranced and blindfolded patients could identify objects and persons not visible to them by ordinary means. In addition to his own experiments, he also included in his book similar reports by other researchers.

for example, dr. chalmers, a calcutta surgeon, wanted to test the powers of a clairvoyant boy. In a room of his house, chalmers placed two candles on a table and a banknote between them. The banknote, which until the time of the experiment had been kept locked in a drawer, had not been seen by anyone except chalmers. In another room, the boy and some guests of chalmers were waiting. chalmers entered this room and asked the boy if he could see anything in any other room. The boy declared he saw two candles on a table. When asked if anything was between them, he said he saw a banknote. The boy then read accurately the four-figure serial number of the banknote and its value, twenty five rupees. dr. chalmers then returned to the room and secretly substituted a ten rupee note for the twenty-five rupee note. He told the boy he had turned the twenty five rupee note over, and asked what number he saw. The boy said he saw the number ten. chalmers returned to the room and placed a gold watch on the banknote. The boy accurately described it. Chalmers then secretly moved the watch and banknote to another room. While he was doing this, the boy announced to the guests who were with him, “He has lifted them from the table.” When chalmers came back to inform his guests of his action, he found they already knew of it (Esdaile 1852, pp. 76–78).

Esdaile possessed a remarkable ability to hypnotize people without their knowledge. for example, he described cases of silently hypnotizing blindfolded persons, inducing paralysis and insensibility in various limbs. Esdaile gave examples of entrancing unsuspecting subjects at a distance. Esdaile (1852, pp. 226–227) stated: “Mr. Grant, one of our oldest and most respected civil servants, and now in England, has often seen me entrance patients from another room while he was taking their portraits and engaging their attention as much as possible.”

Esdaile performed similar experiments with a blind man, thus ruling out any visual cues. Esdaile (1852, p. 227) reported: “I placed him on a stool without saying a word to him, and entranced him in ten minutes without touching him. I then roused him up a little, and made him a somnambulist; he walked with great difficulty, and, while doing so, said he was asleep and in his bed. He soon became unable to support himself, and fell into the trance again, in which he remained for two hours. This man became so susceptible, that by making him the object of my attention, I could entrance him in whatever occupation he was engaged, and at any distance within the hospital enclosure.”

Esdaile (1852, p. 227) wrote: “It will no doubt be said by those who attempt to account for all the mesmeric phenomena through the influence of suggestion, expectation, and imagination, that this man became aware of my presence and intentions by smell or hearing, or by my fixed position, and altered breathing.” Esdaile explained that these objections could not apply to his experiments in mesmerizing the blind man at a distance. He wrote (1852, p. 228): “My first attempt to influence the blind man was made by gazing at him silently over a wall, while he was engaged in the act of eating his solitary dinner, at the distance of twenty yards. He gradually ceased to eat, and in a quarter of an hour was profoundly entranced and cataleptic. This was repeated at the most untimely hours when he could not possibly know of my being in his neighbourhood; and always with like results.” Esdaile performed some interesting experiments with what he called “mesmerized water.” Esdaile would “mesmerize” water by blowing into it with a tube and keeping his fingers on the surface. He performed experiments offering plain water and mesmerized water to his patients and found that the patients would go into mesmeric trance simply on drinking the mesmerized water, without being told what it was or why they were being asked to drink it (Esdaile 1846, pp. 158–164). In one set of experiments, Esdaile gave mesmerized water to patients whose sores were to be treated with nitric acid, usually quite painful. The patients felt nothing during the nitric acid treatments. These experiments were carried out over several years at six different hospitals. The patients had no idea they were being given mesmerized water. The water had been treated with tinctures of rhubarb and cardamom, along with aromatic spirit of ammonia. It was given to the patients at the same time as their normal medicine (Esdaile 1852, pp. 231–232).

Esdaile believed that the effects of mesmerism were caused by a subtle nervous fluid, which carried sense impressions to the brain and transmitted the willing powers of the brain to the bodily organs, thus producing various actions. The mesmerist could transfer this fluid from his body to that of his subject. Overloading the brain with the fluid brought about the mesmeric trance. Reducing the overload restored normal waking consciousness. Thoughts and feelings could also be transmitted by this fluid (Esdaile 1852, pp. 234–238). Esdaile apparently believed that the mind associated with the brain was endowed with a consciousness that possessed its own faculties, capable of operating without the bodily sense organs: “When we reflect that it is the mind that sees, smells, tastes, touches, and hears, and not the organs of sense, which are only the instruments that it uses; and that the divine Intelligence, from whence the human mind emanates, dispenses with the use of organs, and is yet all-knowing and omnipresent, it is difficult to see why the mind of man should not, under extraordinary circumstances, occasionally partake of the same powers in a limited degree” (Esdaile 1852, p. 49). This would explain the clairvoyance displayed by some mesmerized subjects. In terms of the categories I have proposed (matter, mind, and consciousness, or soul), Esdaile is conflating mind and consciousness. But this conflation is superior to the elimination of the mind and consciousness by some modern cognitive scientists.

alexis and adolphe Didier: two extraordinary mediums

The mediumship of Alexis and Adolphe didier provides many examples of clairvoyance. Their remarkable abilities can perhaps be traced to their father, who would sometimes spontaneously fall into a mesmeric trance while reading the daily newspaper. At such times, he would drop the paper but would continue to read it aloud, correctly. Sometimes Alexis and Adolphe, as an amusement, would take the paper into another room, and their father would still continue to read it aloud (dingwall

1967, pp. 159–60).

On May 17, 1847, Alexis didier and his mesmerist Mr. Marcillet went to visit Lord frederick fitzclarence at the Hotel Brighton, on the Rue Rivoli in Paris. The purpose was to demonstrate the clairvoyant powers of Alexis. Also present were Lord normanby, the English ambassador to france, and other distinguished guests. neither Lord frederick nor Lord normanby believed in mesmerism. After Marcillet had sent Alexis into trance, Lord frederick asked him to describe his country house. Alexis replied with an exact description of the house, its furnishings, and its location (Esdaile 1852, p. 80). A skeptic might propose that Alexis and Marcillet had somehow learned these details beforehand. But what are we to make of the following report by Marcillet? “Lord normanby took up one of Lord frederick’s books, and, having stated the number of a page, Alexis read a sentence in it, though the book was not out of Lord normanby’s hands. This experiment was repeated several times, and always with the same success” (Esdaile 1852, p.

81). Before the account of these incidents was published, it was forwarded to Lord frederick, who wrote: “I have read the statement you sent me relative to the séance that was held at my apartments when in Paris, in

1847, in Mesmerism. It is quite correct in every particular; indeed nothing could be much more extraordinary than the whole thing was in every respect” (Esdaile 1852, p. 82–83).

chauncey Hare Townshend (1852) gave an account of a session with Alexis didier in Paris, in October of 1851. The session took place at Townshend’s hotel room. Alexis was first hypnotized by Marcillet, who then left the room. Townshend was left alone with Alexis. Townshend wrote: “I feel convinced there was no clue to any particular knowledge about me.” To test the clairvoyance of Alexis, Townshend asked him to describe his house. Alexis answered that Townshend had two houses, one in London and another in the country. This was true. Townshend had recently acquired a place in London, and had a country home in Lausanne, Switzerland. Alexis wanted to know which house he was to describe. Townshend asked him to describe the house in the country.

“I was surprised at the accuracy of the description of my house near Lausanne,” said Townshend, “particularly at the mention of the small house on the left-hand side, where, according to Swiss custom, dwells my landlady. It was, in fact, a marking feature of the place, not to be guessed at by a stranger, and, as such, brought much conviction to my mind.” Townshend pressed Alexis for further details. Alexis said he could see water and trees around the house. This was true—the lake of Lausanne could be seen from the windows, and there were trees.

Townshend then asked Alexis to tell what he saw in the drawing room of the house. Alexis said, “You have a good many pictures on the walls. But now, this is curious—they are all modern, except two.” Townshend asked Alexis to tell about the latter two paintings. He said, correctly, that one was of a seascape and the other of a religious subject (sujet religieux). Townshend said, “I really felt something of a shudder at this extreme precision. How then was I astonished when Alexis went on to describe minutely the sujet religieux, which was a picture I had lately bought from an Italian refugee, and which had many striking peculiarities.”

About this picture, Alexis said, “There are three figures in the picture—an old man, a woman, and a child. can the woman be the virgin? no! She is too old! The woman has a book upon her lap, and the child points with its finger to something in the book! there is a distaff in the corner.” Alexis had correctly described the subject of the painting—St. Ann teaching the virgin Mary to read. Townshend then asked Alexis, “On what is the picture painted?” Alexis answered that it was neither canvass nor metal. After some thought, he said the painting was made on stone, and that the back of the stone was rough, greyish-black, and curved. All these details were correct. The painting was made on black marble.

Alexis then gave an exact description of Townshend’s house in norfolk Street, London, a house only recently acquired. Townsend noted: “He gave an exact description of the two women-servants—one old, one young. . . . He seemed pleased to describe the young one minutely, whom he thought pretty. He made no single mistake as to the colour of eyes, or hair, etc.” Alexis correctly said there was a park in front of the house, and that the furniture was of the Louis XIv style. He went on to give correct descriptions of the furnishings of different rooms, including three paintings. The first he identified as a picture with a woman and two children, a depiction of the holy family, by Raphael; the second as a painting of a stormy sea; and the third as a painting of the interior of a stable, with a grey horse lying down. All of the identifications were correct.

Townshend then decided to test Alexis’s ability to read words from book pages hidden from his view. Townshend brought from another room a copy of Lamartine’s Jocelyn. He opened the book to a certain page. With closed eyes, Alexis read some lines. He then offered to read some lines from a page not open, and asked Townshend to specify the number of pages below the open one. Townshend asked him to read something from the page eight pages below the open one. Townshend reported: “He then traced with his finger slowly along the page that was open, and read, a dévoré d’un jet toute ma sympathie. I counted down eight leaves from the leaf first opened, and found, exactly under where his finger had traced, the line he had read, correct, with the exception of a single word. He had said déchiré instead of dévoré.”

“Human incredulity began to stir in me,” said Townshend, “and I really thought perhaps Alexis knew Jocelyn by heart. So I again went to a drawer in the next room, and brought out a large book I had also bought that day—a sort of magazin pittoresque, called les beaux arts. This, at least, Alexis could not know by heart. Again, the same wonder was performed. I have forgotten the exact place, which I omitted to mark as I did in Jocelyn (in which the pieces of paper I put to specify the marvel still remain), but I certify that Alexis read in les beaux arts, also, several words many pages below the page he had open before him. Still, to make all sure, I brought forth an English book, the inheritance, Miss ferrier’s clever novel of years ago, and in this he read the name of Gertrude, and other words at the distance of many leaves. With regard to all the books, they were opened but once, and kept open at the place first opened, and Alexis never touched the leaves.”

Alexis then asked Townshend if he had received a letter from a person in whom he was interested. He expressed a wish to reveal some things about the letter. Townshend then produced a letter he had recently received from a lady. Townshend noted, “The letter was enclosed in a perfectly opaque envelope, which Alexis (and I carefully watched him) never attempted to disturb. He held it quietly in his hand.” Alexis first indicated there was inside a piece of newspaper, bearing the words “brotherhood of nations.” There was in fact a newspaper clipping about a peace society enclosed with the letter. Alexis then took a pencil and wrote on the outside of the envelope the address of the lady who had written the letter. “But now—marvel of marvels!” wrote Townshend. “Alexis told me the whole history of my fair correspondent—how long I had known her, and many minute circumstances respecting herself and our acquaintance—something too about the character of her sister, and (to crown all) he wrote (still on the outside of the letter) both the christian and family name of her father!” Alexis went on to give many details about the personal health and history of Townshend.

dr. Elliotson, editor of the Zoist, appended to Townshend’s account other proofs of Alexis’s clairvoyance. for example, Monsieur Sabine, chief of the railway station at Le Havre came to see Alexis. Before Sabine spoke, Alexis, who was at the time in trance, said, “You come about something lost in the service to which you belong.” Sabine replied, “It is true.” Alexis then asked, “You are employed on the Havre Railroad?” Sabine again replied it was true. Alexis told Sabine that the missing object was a basket full of leeches (used in medical practice, for sucking blood or other fluids). Sabine replied that two baskets of leeches were missing. Alexis told Sabine that one of the baskets had been taken off the train by mistake at Rouen, and it had been placed on a large horsedrawn carriage from the station into town. A conductor found it later on the carriage, unclaimed. Alexis said: “from fear of being scolded he did not deposit it in the baggage warehouse, but hid it for some days in his stable; and while it was there you wrote to Rouen . . . about it, the reply being that it could not be found. A few days ago the conductor put it in the goods depot, near the entrance and beneath the first window on the right. You will find it if you set off to Rouen; only, on account of the length of time that has elapsed, you will find about 200 leeches dead.” Sabine went to Rouen the next day and found the basket in the place indicated by Alexis, with 200 of the leeches dead.

Eric dingwall, author of abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena, gives this summary of Alexis didier’s explanation of the mechanics of his gift: “There passed within him, he wrote, something indefinable, tending to convulse both his nerves and limbs and upsetting his whole interior being. The interior vision of the spirit then became open to endless horizons and later, after this painful sensation had subsided, a feeling of wellbeing took its place and material obstacles became transparent, so that vision was no longer obstructed. He could without fatigue, transport himself from one side of the earth to the other; talk with Africans, walk about in china, descend Australian mines and even enter the harem of a sultan. The soul only had to wish and it was everywhere; space and time were annihilated and events of centuries became present to the interior vision, so that occurrences long past could be evoked for the purposes of description. for Alexis, lucidity, like mediumship, was not something which could be learnt: it was innate; but once there it could be developed and the power could be intensified. Belief in the soul was essential if lucidity was to be understood. The aim of somnambulism was to demonstrate the powers which primitive man enjoyed and in particular that which the soul will possess when death liberates it from the body” (didier 1856, p. 15; in dingwall 1967, pp. 199–200). Adolphe didier’s abilities matched those of his brother. G. Barth (1853) described some experiences regarding Adolphe’s clairvoyance in the Zoist. Barth was engaged by two aristocratic English army officers to test Adolphe. Barth mesmerised Adolphe, who agreed to try to read unseen pages in a book. One of the officers took a book at random from a shelf, and, holding the book behind him, asked Adolphe to identify it. Adolphe correctly gave the title of the book—voyage en Suisse. The officer then asked Adolphe to read the first four lines on page 27. Barth (1853, p. 409) stated: “Adolphe immediately repeated several sentences in french. On opening the book and turning to page 27, we found that Adolphe had correctly read four lines from the 27th page of a closed book . . . entirely out of all the possible range of natural vision. He then went mentally to a nobleman’s residence in one of the midland counties, and described it most accurately even to the pictures and the costumes of the portraits hanging in the dining-hall.”

Chauncey Hare Townshend (1853) gave the following account of Adolphe’s clairvoyance. Adolphe came to Townshend’s room at the Hôtel de l’Ecu at Geneva. Townshend put Adolphe into trance and then asked: “can you see a person whom I know at Lausanne?” He deliberately did not tell the sex of the person. Adolphe, answered, “I shall be able; but you must first lead me to Lausanne by your thoughts.” He paused and then continued, “I embark on the steamer. I go up the Lake. The vessel stops at various places. I am now opposite a small town.” According to Townshend, this would have been Ouchy. Adolphe, who, according to Townshend had never been to Lausanne, continued, “I get into a boat. I land. I walk up a broad road, up hill. now I turn to the right. now I see a house to my right. The house stands in a sort of angle, between two smaller roads than the one by which i first came. It is very near the road. I go up steps to the door. I enter a not large vestibule; from this I go into a salon. There is a door open in the salon, which connects it with another room. The two rooms seem to me almost like one large apartment that stretches quite from one end of the house to the other.”

“And where is the person who lives in the house?” Townshend asked. “Wait, wait,” said Adolphe. “There is no one in the salon. I go up stairs. I see a woman.” Townshend asked him to describe her, and Adolphe proceeded to give “a very accurate description” of Townshend’s cousin. Townshend noted, “The features, the hair, way of wearing it, etc., were all correct.” Adolphe then commented that the woman was wearing something funny on her head. Townshend thought he might be referring to a particular hat his cousin was accustomed to wear when she went horseback riding. But Adolphe insisted it was a “brown net.” Townshend thought him mistaken. Adophe continued, exclaiming: “What an odd dress this lady wears! She has the upper and lower part of her dress quite unlike! The upper part is more like a man’s—a sort of jacket; then there are skirts of quite another material.” Townshend again thought him incorrect. Adolphe then said, “She goes to the window. She looks out anxiously. She is doubting about the weather: ah! she is wishing to go out on horseback. Riding horses is her current passion.” Townshend noted: “Here I was indeed struck; for nothing could be more true than this assertion.”

Adolphe, feeling somewhat fatigued, asked Townshend to refresh him with some mesmeric passes. He then continued speaking, “I am at a point of time anterior to that of which we were just now speaking. I see the same lady in another room—in another house. What I see happened before you left Lausanne for Geneva. She sits in a large arm-chair by the fire. You are sitting on another chair (not an arm-chair) facing her. You are telling her about your going to Geneva; you seem interested; you lean forward in your chair. I see you both perfectly!” According to Townshend, this description was correct in every detail. He especially noted that his cousin’s visit to him in Lausanne was accidental: “In passing, she had seen my carriage at the door—had entered to ask where I was going, and had been seated exactly as described while I was speaking of my going to Geneva.”

The séance had been witnessed by a Mr. Lawrence. After Adolphe left, Townshend and Lawrence discussed what had happened. Townshend, after telling Lawrence that most of Adolphe’s statements were true, added, “I think Adolphe was wrong on some points; namely, about the being able to see from one end of the house to the other, about the brown net and the dress, possibly even about my cousin riding out at all today, for I believe it is not her day for going to the riding-school.” On returning to Lausanne, Townshend related the details of the séance to his cousin, including Adolphe’s mistakes. Townshend was surprised to hear his cousin say, “But he was not wrong. The day you left Lausanne, I opened the door between my two rooms, to let in the warmth from the stove in the dining room, and so they have remained ever since.”

“But, he was wrong about the brown net?” asked Townshend. “not so! I was putting on a brown net to keep my hair up: I will show it you. I did not wear my wide-awake [hat] that day. Moreover, though not my regular day for riding, I went to take a lesson, because the days had just been changed. I also had put on only my jacket, but had my usual dress below it.” Townshend asked what time this had taken place. “Between 11 and 12,” replied his cousin. That was the exact time that Townshend had been with Adolphe in Geneva.

Bhaktivinoda thakura and Bishkishin

Bhaktivinoda Thakura (1838–1914) was a prominent figure in the religious history of the Gaudiya vaishnava sect of India. He was one of the predecessors of my own spiritual master, His divine Grace A. c. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. during much of his adult life, Bhaktivinoda Thakura worked with the British government of India as a magistrate. Before he adopted the honorific spiritual title Bhaktivinoda Thakura, he was known by his birth name Kedarnatha dutt. In 1870, he was appointed deputy magistrate and collector at the holy town of Puri in the state of Orissa, working under the British commissioner, T. E. Ravenshaw. In 1872, Ravenshaw assigned Bhaktivinoda Thakura to put down a disturbance led by Bishkishin, a leader of the deviant Atibari sect (Macnaughton 1989, p. 110).

Bishkishin, a yogi who displayed some mystic powers, claimed to be an incarnation of Maha vishnu. In the vedic cosmology, Maha vishnu, an expansion of the Supreme Godhead, lies in the causal Ocean and is the source of numberless material universes, which emerge from His breathing. In essence Bishkishin was claiming to be God. To impress people, he performed many miracles indicating he possessed paranormal powers. Macnaughton, relying on a variety of biographical and autobiographical sources, wrote (1989, p. 112): “He would sit erect in front of a fire and lean into the flames for some time and then return to an erect position without injury. He could read people’s minds, instantly cure diseased persons and manifest fire from his head.” He also announced that soon he would, as God Himself, kill all the Europeans, thus delivering India from their control.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura went with the district superintendent, the local chief of police, and some constables to confront Bishkishin, who was staying in the jungle near the village of Sharadaipur. Bhaktivinoda Thakura, leaving the constables hiding in the jungle, went forward and found Bishkishin with a crowd of admiring people. Seeing him, Bishkishin inquired, “I know that you are a Bengali and a Magistrate. Why have you come here on this dark night?” Bhaktivinoda Thakura said, “I have come to see you.” Bishkishin replied, “That being the case, please sit down and hear my teachings. I am Maha visnu. Arising from the ocean of milk, I have come to this place, and very soon I will destroy all the Europeans, including the King of England.” Bishkishin then began to reveal everything about Bhaktivinoda Thakura, including his name and his purpose in coming. Macnaughton (1989, p. 114) stated, “The yogi, in order to impress the Thakura with his power, then called before him many people with incurable diseases, and in a moment made them well. One person was suffering with a spear wound. The yogi brought him under his control and produced some ashes which he smeared on the wound. Immediately the wounded man was well and free of pain.”

After conducting further investigations in the surrounding villages, Bhaktivinoda Thakura returned later with one hundred red-turbaned police armed with rifles. Bishkishin asked, “What is the meaning of all this?” Bhaktivinoda Thakura said, “They have come to take you. It is the Governor’s order that you should be brought to Puri.” Bishkishin retorted, “Who is this Governor? I am king, for I am the Supreme Godhead and master of all the universes. I bow down before no one. Let us see who is able to take me away from this place!” (Macnaughton 1989, p. 115) Bhaktivinoda Thakura replied (Macnaughton 1989, p. 116), “If you do not go peacefully, we will be obliged to take you away by force.” Becoming angry, Bishkishin challenged, “I order you to immediately leave this place! Let us see who has the power to take me!”

Macnaughton (1989, p. 116), relying on contemporary accounts, stated, “The yogi shook his head violently, whereupon hundreds and hundreds of fiery flames like burning snakes began to fly out of his matted locks. The yogi’s eyes then became bright red and sparks of fire shot out of them. Seeing this, the police force was terrified and fell back apace.” nevertheless, Bhaktivinoda Thakura arrested Bishkishin and took him to the city of Puri on a bullock cart. In Puri, Bishkishin was placed in solitary confinement under heavy guard, day and night. He fasted completely and did not sleep at all. Eventually he was put on trial.

After the sixth day of the trial, Bishkishin threatened Bhaktivinoda Thakura (Macnaughton 1989, p. 118), “You must immediately desist from prosecuting me or everything you have will be destroyed. Go to your home now and see what disaster is taking place there!” When he returned home, Bhaktivinoda Thakura found one of his daughters had suddenly succumbed to severe fever and was falling in and out of consciousness. She later recovered, but Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s wife urged him to withdraw from the case against Bishkishin, fearing further actions by the yogi. The day before trial ended, Bishkishin said to Bhaktivinoda Thakura (Macnaughton 1989, p. 119), “The final day of my judgment will be your death!” That night Bhaktivinoda Thakura felt intense pain in his chest, which continued into the morning. finally, he felt well enough to write the final judgement, and he was carried into the courtroom on a palanquin. He found Bishkishin guilty and sentenced him to a prison term. As Bishkishin was being led out of the courtroom, the district medical officer, dr. Walters, knowing that yogis sometimes conserve their powers in their hair, cut off his long hair. Having lost his hair, the Bishkishin collapsed, powerless, and Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s chest pains immediately disappeared. In 1873, Bishkishin took poison and died in prison.

The Society for Psychical Research

In 1876, British physicist Sir William fletcher Barrett, later a fellow of the Royal Society, read a paper on telepathy to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Barrett asked that a scientific commission be formed to research such things. Many prominent British scientists dismissed the idea, but Barrett got a favorable response from the physicists Sir William crookes and Lord Rayleigh. Joined by scholars such as Henry Sidgwick, f. W. H. Myers, and Edmund Gurney, Barrett helped found, in 1882, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). In 1884, he became the first editor of the Society’s journal. during a visit to the United States, he influenced William James and other American scholars to start the American Society for Psychical Research. By 1887 members of the English Society for Psychical Research included Gladstone (a former prime minister), Arthur Balfour (a future prime minister), eight fellows of the Royal Society (naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace; cambridge astronomer John couch Adams; physicist Lord Rayleigh; physicist Oliver Lodge; A. Macalister; mathematician John venn, inventor of the venn diagrams; physicist Balfour Stewart; and physicist J. J. Thomson, a discoverer of the electron), two bishops, and the literary figures Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Ruskin. Lewis carroll, author of alice in Wonderland, was also a member (Gauld 1968, p. 140).

Among the members of the American SPR were many famous American astronomers, including Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834–1906), secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (nASA’s Langley Research center is named after him). Simon newcomb (1835–1909), a canadian American astronomer, served as president of the American SPR. He also was a United States navy admiral and professor of mathematics at the naval Observatory. Other astronomers who were members of the American SPR were Percival Lowell (1855–1916), Harvard professor of astronomy and founder of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona; Edward c. Pickering (1846–1919), MIT physics professor and Harvard astronomy professor; and William Henry Pickering (1858–1938).

William F. Barrett’s Research

In addition to helping found the Society for Psychical Research, Sir William f. Barrett was himself a researcher. One of his earliest experiments took place in dublin, in the late nineteenth century. Barrett attended a séance, in which the medium was the daughter of a well known photographer. He called her Miss L., and her father, Mr. L. The séance was held in light sufficient for Barrett to see everyone and everything in the room. Present were only Barrett, Miss L., and Mr. L. They sat for some time at the table. Barrett (1918, p. 44) recalled: “We all removed our hands and withdrew a short distance from the table. Whilst the hands and feet of all were clearly visible and no one touching the table it sidled about in an uneasy manner. It was a four-legged table, some 4 feet square and heavy. In obedience to my request, first the two legs nearest me and then the two hinder legs rose 8 or 10 inches completely off the ground and thus remained for a few moments; not a person touched the table the whole time. I withdrew my chair further, and the table then moved towards me,—Mr. and Miss L. not touching the table at all,—finally the table came up to the arm chair in which I sat and imprisoned me in my seat. When thus under my very nose the table rose repeatedly, and enabled me to be perfectly sure, by the evidence of touch, that it was quite off the ground and that no human being had any part in this or the other movements. To suppose that the table was moved by invisible and nonexistent threads, worked by an imaginary accomplice, who must have floated in the air unseen, is a conjecture which sceptics are at liberty to make if they choose.”

In december of 1915, Barrett was introduced by a dr. crawford, a lecturer on mechanical engineering at Queen’s University, Belfast, to a family, which Barrett described as “highly respectable and intelligent.” crawford had been investigating psychical phenomena taking place among the family members during séances. The medium was the eldest daughter, who was seventeen years old. during the sittings for which Barrett was present, the room was lit by a gas flame in a red lantern. describing one set of experiences, Barrett (1918, pp. 47–48) stated: “A tin trumpet which had been placed below the table now poked out its smaller end close under the top of the table near where I was sitting. I was allowed to try and catch it, but it dodged all my attempts in the most amusing way; the medium on the opposite side sat perfectly still, while at my request all held up their joined hands so that I could see no one was touching the trumpet . . . Then the table began to rise from the floor some 18 inches and remained so suspended and quite level. I was allowed to go up to the table and saw clearly that no one was touching it, a clear space separating the sitters from the table. I tried to press the table down, and though I exerted all my strength could not do so; then I climbed up on the table and sat on it, my feet off the floor, when I was swayed to andfro and finally tipped off. The table of its own accord now turned upside down, no one touching it, and I tried to lift it off the ground, but it could not be stirred; it appeared screwed down to the floor. At my request, all the sitters’ clasped hands had been kept raised above their heads, and I could see that no one was touching the table;—when I desisted from trying to lift the inverted table, it righted itself, again of its own accord, no one helping it. . . . It is difficult to imagine how the cleverest conjurer with elaborate apparatus could have performed what I described.”

Myers, Gurney, Podmore, and apparitions

frederic Myers, another founder of the Society for Psychical Research, wrote in 1900: “We must recognise that we have more in common with those who may criticise or attack our work with competent diligence than with those who may acclaim and exaggerate it without adding thereto any careful work of their own. We must experiment unweariedly; we must continue to demolish fiction as well as to accumulate truth; we must make no terms with any hollow mysticism, any half-conscious deceit” (Gauld 1968, p. 143). His attitude typified that of his colleagues, who did not fit today’s stereotype of psychical researchers as sentimental incompetents.

Myers’s personal research centered on the immortality of the conscious self. He gave evidence for this in his two volume study Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (1903). Myers (1903 v.1, p. 24) believed that once we accept the existence of extrasensory perception it naturally will follow, by a progressive chain of evidence and reasoning, that this ability “is exercised by something within us which is not generated from material elements, nor confined by mechanical limitations, but which may survive and operate uninjured in a spiritual world.” In Human Personality, Myers therefore began his progression of evidence with psychic phenomena such as telepathy, centered in the individual consciousness. He then gave evidence of phantasmal projection— cases in which people see apparitions of living persons. He then moved to death moment apparitions, and then to apparitions or communications with the dead. for each category of phenomenon, Myers gave many well documented examples. for the purposes of the present discussion, which centers on demonstrating the existence in connection with the human organism of a mind element that can act in ways not explained by our current laws of physics, we will concentrate on his evidence for telepathy, phantasmal projections, and death moment apparitions. Evidence for apparitions of the dead and communications with the dead relate more to the existence of a conscious self apart from the body, a topic we will consider in chapter 8. Some of Myers’s research into apparitions of the living was carried out with fellow SPR researchers Edmund Gurney and frank Podmore. Their results were published in Phantasms of the living (Gurney et al. 1886). Let us now consider some representative cases.

Early in the morning of november 2, 1868, in India, Mr. R. v. Boyle had a vivid dream. He was standing in the doorway of a house in Brighton, England. He saw his father-in-law, William Hack, lying on a bed, with his (Hack’s) wife standing silently beside him. Boyle was certain that his father-in-law was dead. He woke up briefly. When he slipped again into sleep, he experienced the same dream. He was so struck by the clarity of the dream that he recorded it in his diary. fifteen days later, Boyle received a telegram from England stating that his father-in-law had died on november 1 at Brighton. William Hack was 72 years old at the time of his death, but there had been no news of any danger to his health received by Boyle or his wife in India. The time of Boyle’s dreams in India corresponded to the night of november 1 in England. SPR member Edmund Gurney confirmed Boyle’s diary entry (Myers 1903, v.1, pp. 138–139).

On december 18, 1883, M. T. Meneer, principal of Torre college, at Torquay, England, told of an event that had taken place twenty six years before. At that time, his wife’s brother, Mr. Wellington, had been living in Sarawak with Sir James Brooke, the British adventurer who became the country’s ruler, or Raja. One night, Meneer’s wife awoke and told him of a terrifying dream. Meneer stated, “She saw her headless brother standing at the foot of the bed with his head lying on a coffin by his side.” Later that night, she had the same dream. After some time, news reached England that Mr. Wellington had been killed and decapitated during a revolt against Brooke by the chinese in Sarawak, who apparently mistook Mr. Wellington for Brooke’s son. The head alone was recovered for burial. Meneer stated, “I computed the approximate time, and found it coincided with the memorable night to which I have referred” (Myers 1903, v.1, pp. 424–425). SPR member Henry Sidgwick interviewed Meneer, who told him that his wife had no reason to suspect her brother would be in any danger (Myers 1903, v. 1, p. 425).

On a Sunday night in november 1881, Mr. S. H. B. attempted to project an image of himself into the presence of two young ladies known to him, Miss L. S. verity, 25 years old, and Miss E. c. verity, 11 years old. At the time of the attempt, they were sleeping in their bedroom on the second floor of a house at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington, in London. Mr. B. was at that time living at 23 Kildare Gardens, about three miles from the house where the girls lived. Mr. B. did not mention his planned experiment to either of the young ladies. In fact, he only decided on it after he had retired on that Sunday night. At one o’clock in the morning, he made his attempt. Mr. B. noted: “On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and, in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part), the elder one told me, that, on the previous Sunday night, she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who saw me also. I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative, and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence, she replied, about 1 o’clock in the morning. This lady, at my request, wrote down a statement of the event and signed it” (Gurney et al. 1886, v. 1, p. 105).

Here is the statement of Miss L. S. verity, dated January 18, 1883: “On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr. B. in my room, about 1 o’clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr. B., I told him what had happened; but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received, and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory” (Gurney et al. 1886, v.1, p. 105).

One of the authors of Phantasms of the living carefully interviewed the verity sisters and learned that Miss L. S. verity had absolutely no history of hallucinations. He also confirmed her account of the apparition from Miss E. c. verity. Another sister, Miss A. S. verity clearly recalled her two sisters telling her of the strange appearance of Mr. B. in their room, in evening dress, at one o’clock. The writer of the report also said of Miss L. S. verity that “she has no love of marvels, and has a considerable dread and dislike of this particular form of marvel” (Gurney et al. 1886, v. 1, p. 105).

In february of 1850, Mrs. Georgiana Polson was attending an evening party at her home, Woolstone Lodge, in Woolstone, Berkshire, England. She went upstairs to give some instructions to her maid, regarding the duties of another household servant, a girl from cornwall. Mrs. Polson later recalled, “As I reached the top of the stairs a lady passed me who had some time left us. She was in black silk with a muslin ‘cloud’ over her head and shoulders, but her silk rustled. I could just have a glance only of her face. She glided fast and noiselessly (but for the silk) past me, and was lost down two steps at the end of a long passage that led only into my private boudoir, and had no other exit. I had barely exclaimed ‘Oh, caroline,’ when I felt she was a something unnatural, and rushed down to the drawing-room again, and sinking on my knees by my husband’s side fainted, and it was with difficulty I was restored to myself again” (Gurney et al. 1886, v. 2, p. 178). caroline (Mrs. Henry Gibbs) was a cousin of Mrs. Polson. She had stayed at the Polson house a few days before, and Mrs. Polson had begun writing a letter to her but had not finished it.

The next morning, Mrs. Polson learned that her cornish maidservant had also seen the apparition. A member of the household informed Mrs. Polson that girl had seen “a lady sitting near her, in black, with white all over her head and shoulders, and her hands crossed on her bosom.” The following morning, Mr. Tuffnell, a neighbor residing in Uffington, near faringdon, came to visit. Upon hearing of the apparition, Mr. Tuffnell wrote an account in his notebook, and advised Mrs. Polson to inquire after her cousin’s health. She wrote immediately to an uncle, the Reverend c. crowley, of Hartpury, near Gloucester, and received a reply that “caroline is very ill at Belmont and not expected to live.” Mrs. Polson later learned that caroline had in fact died “on the evening she paid me that visit.” That was february 16, 1850, as mentioned in an obituary in the times of London (Gurney et al. 1886, v. 1, p. 178).

Upon being interviewed by one of the authors of Phantasms of the living, Mrs. Polson testified that she had not had any hallucinations before or after the apparition of caroline. At the time of her written testimony, given in 1883, Mrs. Polson was residing at 4 nouvelle Route de villefranche, nice, in france. A governess employed by Mrs. Polson at the time of the apparition testified on January 11, 1884: “Many years ago Mr. and Mrs. Polson, with the children and myself, were sitting one evening in the drawing-room at Woolstone. In the middle of the evening Mrs. Polson left the room, but soon returned; remaining silent, I looked up, and saw her drop down on the rug fainting. When she recovered, she told us she had seen Mrs. Gibbs on before her in the long passage. I recollect hearing that the little cornish girl said she had seen that same apparition” (Gurney et al. 1886, v. 1, p. 179).

On the night of August 21, 1869, Mrs. James cox was sitting in her bedroom in her mother’s house at devonport, England. Between the hours of eight and nine o’clock, her nephew, seven years old, came into her room, saying in a frightened voice, “Oh, auntie, I have just seen my father walking around my bed.” Mrs. cox replied, “nonsense, you must have been dreaming.” The boy replied that he had not been dreaming and refused to return to his room. Mrs. cox placed him in her own bed, where he went to sleep while she stayed up. Mrs. cox recalled, “Between 10 and 11, I myself retired to rest. I think about an hour afterwards, on looking towards the fireplace, I distinctly saw, to my astonishment, the form of my brother seated in a chair, and what particularly struck me was the deathly pallor of his face. (My nephew was at this time fast asleep.) I was so frightened, knowing that at this time my brother was in Hong Kong, china, that I put my head under the bed clothes. Soon after this I plainly heard his voice calling me by name; my name was repeated three times. The next time I looked, he was gone.” The next morning Mrs. cox told her mother and sister what had happened, and made some notes of the night’s events. The next mail from china brought news of her brother’s death. He had died August 21, 1869 in Hong Kong. A subsequent official communication from the Admiralty confirmed this. Mrs. cox wrote her report on december 26, 1883, while at Summer Hill, Queenstown, Ireland. On february 21, 1884, Mr. James cox responded to queries by one of the authors of Phantasms of the living, confirming, on his wife’s behalf, the details of the account given above. Mr. cox was Secretary to the naval commander-in-chief at devonport. In another conversation with an author of Phantasms of the living, Mrs. Cox stated that she had never experienced anything similar, before or after the apparition (Gurney et al. 1886, v. 1, pp. 235–236).

Some skeptics attributed such crisis apparitions to chance, inspiring statistical studies which tended to show that crisis apparitions were most likely not simply coincidental. William James, for example, cited studies showing that crisis apparitions occurred in the population at a rate 440 times greater than would be expected by chance (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, pp. 35–36). This suggests that the apparitions can be attributed to some power of the mind to receive sensory impressions from distant locations, beyond the scope of ordinary perception.

Aside from researchers working with the SPR, others also documented apparition reports from the same period. The following case of an apparition of a living person is particularly interesting because of its reciprocal nature. In 1863, Mr. S. R. Wilmot was on a ship bound for the United States from Europe. He was sharing a cabin with a friend, W. J. Tait. At night, Wilmot would sleep in the lower berth, and Tait in the upper. The arrangement of the berths was unusual. The upper birth, instead of being located directly above the lower birth, was offset to the rear. One night, Wilmot, while dreaming, saw his wife, dressed in night clothes, enter the room. Wilmot recalled: “At the door she seemed to discover that I was not the only occupant of the room, hesitated a little, then advanced to my side, stooped down and kissed me and after gently caressing me for a few moments, quietly withdrew.” The next morning, Tait chided his friend about having a woman come in to visit him at night. His description of what he saw, while awake, matched Wilmot’s dream. When Wilmot returned home, his wife asked if he had received a visit from her the previous Tuesday. Wilmot observed such a visit would have been impossible because he had been at sea. His wife replied, “I know it, but it seemed to me that I visited you.” She told her husband she had been worried about him, and had felt herself mentally going across the sea until she found the ship. She had then entered his stateroom, and noticed the unusual arrangement of the berths, with one extending back further than the other. She recalled, “A man was in the upper berth looking right at me, and for a moment I was afraid to go in, but soon I went up to the side of your berth, bent down, and kissed you and embraced you and then went away” (Griffin 1997, pp. 225–226).

About these apparition appearances, philosopher david Ray Griffin (1997, p. 211) noted, “Most people reporting them never experience another apparition in their lives; apparitions are not correlated with illness or morbidity on the part of the percipients; and telepathic apparitions are usually visual in nature (in distinction from hallucinations of the insane, which are primarily auditory).”

Sir William Crookes (Physicist)

The observations of Sir William crookes, a nobel laureate in physics and a president of the Royal Society, are among the most remarkable in the modern history of psychical research. Some of his observations, made along with Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, have already been noted in chapter 5. crookes performed many experiments involving the medium daniel dunglass Home, who was never detected in fraud.

for one set of experiments with Home, crookes set up a “balance apparatus.” It consisted of a mahogany board (36 inches long by 91/2 inches wide by 1 inch thick) with a small portion of one end resting on the edge of a table. The rest of the board extended horizontally from the edge of the table, being supported at its other end by a spring balance, which at the board’s horizontal position gave a reading of three pounds. Home, sitting in a low chair, lightly placed the tips of his fingers on the end of the board resting on the table, no more than 11/2 inches from the end of the board. crookes noted that the other end of the board began to move slowly down and then back up, causing the pointer of the balance to move, and register changes in weight. To insure that Home was not applying any great pressure, crookes arranged for him to put his fingers on a matchbox placed on the end of the board resting on the table. If Home did apply pressure, the box would be crushed (the box remained intact). during these tests, the balance showed additional weight of from 31/2 to 6 pounds. Once crookes stepped on the end of the board on the table, pressing with the entire force of his whole body, and produced only 11/2 to 2 pounds of additional pressure. Also participating in this experiment was William Huggins, a prominent physicist and astronomer, and like crookes, a fellow of the Royal Society (crookes

1871a; in Medhurst and Goldney 1972, pp. 28–29). crookes then made another arrangement by which no direct muscular pressure at all was applied to the board. The medium’s fingers rested in a water container placed on a separate stand just barely in contact with the board. The same results were obtained.

crookes forwarded an account of the experiments to the Royal Society on June 15, 1871 and requested the secretaries of the Society, Professor Sharpey and Professor Stokes, to come and observe the experiments for themselves. Sharpey refused. Stokes said he would come to look at the apparatus but would not agree to meet the medium or witness experiments. crookes replied on June 20, again inviting Stokes to witness an actual experiment. crookes promised that the experiment would be carried out under the most careful scrutiny and that the results, positive or negative, would be published.

Stokes did not attend, but raised some questions about the previous experimental set up. crookes replied, “It would have required a force of 74.5 lb.to have been exerted by Mr. Home to have produced the results, even if all your suppositions are granted; and, considering that he was sitting in a low, easy chair, and four pairs of sharp, suspicious eyes were watching to see that he exerted no force at all, but kept the tips of his fingers lightly on the instrument, it is sufficiently evident that an exertion of this pressure was impossible” (crookes 1871b, in Medhurst and Goldney 1972, p. 45). Stokes suggested some of the results were caused by vibrations of vehicles passing by on the street. crookes answered: “The upward and downward motion of the board and index was of a very slow and delicate character, occupying several seconds for each rise and fall; a tremor produced by passing vehicles is a very different thing from a steady vertical pull of from 4 to 8 lb., lasting for several seconds” (crookes 1871b; in Medhurst and Goldney 1972, p. 46). In his letter to Stokes, crookes added: “So many scientific men are now examining these strange phenomena (including many fellows of the Society), that it cannot be many years before the subject will be brought before the scientific world in a way that will enforce attention” (crookes 1871b; in Medhurst and Goldney 1972, p. 46). Home had the ability to make an accordion play tunes while holding it by one hand, on the end opposite the keys. The immediate skeptical doubt is that he was using a trick accordion. To guard against this, crookes purchased a new accordion, never seen or handled by Home. Another possibility was that Home was somehow using a free hand to manipulate the instrument. To guard against this, crookes built a special cage, which was placed beneath a table. The accordion was placed inside the cage, and Home was asked to insert one hand into the cage and grasp the end of the accordion opposite the end with the keys. Under these circumstances, the accordion played as usual. crookes (1871a) then observed: “The accordion was now again taken without any visible touch from Mr. Home’s hand, which he removed from it entirely and placed upon the table, where it was taken by the person next to him, and seen, as now were both his hands, by all present. I and two of the others present saw the accordion distinctly floating about inside the cage with no visible support. This was repeated a second time, after a short interval. Mr. Home presently re-inserted his hand in the cage and again took hold of the accordion. It then commenced to play, at first, chords and runs, and afterwards a well-known sweet and plaintive melody, which it executed perfectly in a very beautiful manner. Whilst this tune was being played, I grasped Mr. Home’s arm, below the elbow, and gently slid my hand down it until I touched the top of the accordion. He was not moving a muscle. His other hand was on the table, visible to all, and his feet were under the feet of those next to him” (Medhurst and Goldney 1972, p. 27).

At a sitting with Home, crookes observed writing produced in a mysterious fashion. The sitting took place in the light, at the home of crookes, and in the presence of friends. crookes asked for a written message. Here is his description of what happened: “A pencil and some pieces of paper were lying on the centre of the table; presently the pencil rose on its point, and after advancing by hesitating jerks to the paper, fell down. It then rose and fell again. A third time it tried, but with no better result. After this a small wooden lath, which was lying upon the table, slid toward the pencil, and rose a few inches from the table; the pencil rose again, and propping itself against the lath, the two together made an effort to mark the paper. It fell and then a joint effort was again made. After a third trial, the lath gave it up and moved back to its place, the pencil lay as it fell across the paper, and an alphabetic message told us ‘We have tried to do as you asked, but our power is exhausted”’ (crookes 1874, p. 93).

crookes supplied these notes of another séance with Home, on May 22, 1871, attended by himself and Wallace: “The table now rose completely off the ground several times whilst the gentlemen present took a candle, and kneeling down deliberately examined the position of Mr. Home’s feet and knees, and saw the three feet of the table quite off the ground. This was repeated, until each observer expressed himself satisfied that the levitation was not produced by mechanical means on the part of the medium or any one else present” (crookes 1889; in Gauld 1968, p. 214).

Home could not only levitate objects. He himself would often float into the air. crookes witnessed this three times and was aware of an additional one hundred recorded reports of Home’s levitations. About the Home levitation events he witnessed in his own home, crookes said: “He went to a clear part of the room, and, after standing quietly for a minute, told us he was rising. I saw him slowly rise up with a continuous gliding movement and remain about six inches off the ground for several seconds, when he slowly descended. On this occasion no one moved from their places. On another occasion I was invited to come to him, when he rose 18 inches off the ground, and I passed my hands under his feet, round him, and over his head, when he was in the air. . . . On several occasions Home and the chair on which he was sitting at the table rose off the ground. This was generally done very deliberately, and Home sometimes then tucked up his feet on the seat of the chair and held up his hands in full view of us. On such an occasion I have got down and seen and felt that all four legs were off the ground at the same time, Home’s feet being on the chair. Less frequently the levitating power extended to those sitting next to him. Once my wife was thus raised off the ground in her chair” (carrington 1931, p. 158).

The very credible reports of levitations by Home lend credence to the reports of earlier levitations reports involving catholic saints. for example, several persons observed levitations by St. francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226). Around the year 1261, St. Bonaventure wrote that the radiant St. francis was sometimes seen lifted off the ground during prayer (Thurston 1952, p. 6). In the little Flowers of St. Francis, we learn that Brother Leo, a member of the franciscan order, several times saw St. francis “rapt in God and uplifted from the ground sometimes for the space of three cubits, sometimes of four, and sometimes even to the height of the beech-tree” (Thurston 1952, p. 5). A cubit corresponds to roughly 18 inches.

William James (Psychologist)

William James (1842–1910), one of the founders of modern psychology, was an active member of the American and English branches of the Society for Psychical Research, serving a term as the English SPR’s president (1894–1896). Many other key figures in the history of psychology participated in the activities of the SPR. freud and Jung published articles in its journal and proceedings (Gauld 1968, pp. 338–339). James had a very high opinion of the scientific quality of the publications of the SPR. He said, “Were I asked to point to a scientific journal where hardheadedness and never-sleeping suspicion of sources of error might be seen in their full bloom, I think I should have to fall back on the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. The common run of papers, say on physiological subjects, which one finds in other professional organs, are apt to show a far lower level of critical consciousness” (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 29).

James’s first major investigation into psychic phenomena involved the medium Mrs. Leonora f. Piper. She could provide information about her visitors through a spirit being named Phinuit, who spoke through her when she was in trance. Skeptics proposed she got the information from good detective work or by extracting the information from her visitors by expert psychological methods. After learning of Mrs. Piper through his mother-in-law, James went to her and began a series of experiments. during the years 1885 and 1886, James sent to Mrs. Piper twenty-five people unknown to her, under pseudonyms. finding that Mrs. Piper was able to give information about the persons that should not have been known to her, James became convinced of the genuineness of her mediumship (Gauld 1968, pp. 251–253).

Richard Hodgson came to America in 1887 to run the American SPR. He was determined to expose Mrs. Piper. Hodgson was from Australia, and there was little chance that Mrs. Piper could know anything about his relatives. nevertheless, in trance she was able to give information about Hodgson’s family, including several deceased members. Hodgson arranged other sittings in 1888 and 1889. To guard against fraud, Hodgson hired detectives. They reported that neither Piper nor her friends or relatives were making suspicious inquiries. nor were they receiving reports from hired agents. for more experiments, Hodgson and James then sent Mrs. Piper to England. There the researchers chose sitters randomly and introduced them to Mrs. Piper anonymously at the last moment before a sitting. Under these conditions, Mrs. Piper was able to give unexpected information about the sitters and relatives. Back in Boston, she was studied for many more years by Hodgson, who remained convinced of her abilities (Gauld 1968, pp. 254–258). James said in a report: “I am persuaded of the medium’s honesty, and of the genuineness of her trance; and although at first disposed to think that the ‘hits’ she made were either lucky coincidences, or the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was and of his or her family affairs, I now believe her to be in possession of a power as yet unexplained” (James 1886–1889; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 97).

But James could also be sympathetic to opposition. “I think,” he said (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, pp. 39–40), “that the sort of loathing—no milder word will do—which the very words ‘psychical research’ and ‘psychical researcher’ awaken in so many honest scientific breasts is not only natural, but in a sense praiseworthy. A man who is unable himself to conceive of any orbit for these mental meteors can only suppose that Messrs. Gurney, Myers, & company’s mood in dealing with them must be that of silly marveling at so many detached prodigies. And such prodigies!” Here James emphasizes that scientists need to view psychical phenomena in the context of a theoretical background that can accommodate them. James noted that most critics rejected particular psychical events because they violated their presumption that events in nature always occurred in ways not allowed by the psychical events. But James felt that “the oftener one is forced to reject an alleged sort of fact by the use of this mere presumption, the weaker does the presumption itself get to be; and one might in the course of time use up one’s presumptive privileges in this way” (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 40). Specifically, James felt that the many telepathic reports from mediums like Piper “subtract presumptive force from the orthodox belief that there can be nothing in anyone’s intellect that has not come in through ordinary experiences of sense” (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, pp. 40–41).

James believed the ultimate resolution to questions about the reality of psychical phenomena would best be accomplished by “a decisive thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling darkness.” James declared, “for me the thunderbolt has fallen.” And this thunderbolt was the Piper mediumship. “In the trances of this medium,” said James, “I cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and wits. . . . So when I turn to the rest of the evidence, ghosts and all, I cannot carry with me the irreversibly negative bias of the ‘rigorously scientific’ mind, with its presumption as to what the true order of nature ought to be” (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 41).

In addition to his absolute conviction in the reality of the mental phenomena of mediumship, James was open minded about the phenomena of physical mediumship, such as manifested by Home (i.e. floating accordions). for James, well documented poltergeist phenomena lent credibility to similar events experienced in the presence of mediums. In a presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research, James listed ten credible ghost and poltergeist cases, noting: “In all of these, if memory doesn’t deceive me, material objects are said to have been witnessed by many persons moving through the air in broad daylight. Often the objects were multitudinous. . . . I confess that until these records, or others like them, are positively explained away, I cannot feel . . . as if the case against physical mediumship . . . were definitely closed” (James 1896; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, pp. 62–63).

On the subject of occasional cheating by mediums in the production of physical phenomena, James pointed out that “Scientific men themselves will cheat—at public lectures—rather than let experiments obey their well-known tendency towards failure” (James 1911; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 312). James gave several examples of physicists who rigged machines to give the desired results in public demonstrations. James himself confessed to this kind of cheating. Once Professor newell Martin was giving a demonstration on the physiology of a turtle’s heart. A shadow image of a real turtle heart was projected onto a screen for the audience. When the nerves of the heart were stimulated, the heart was supposed to move in certain ways. At a certain point in the demonstration, the heart stopped functioning. James, who was present as an assistant, recalled: “With my forefinger . . . I found myself impulsively and automatically imitating the rhythmical movements which my colleague had prophesied the heart would undergo. . . .To this day the memory of that critical emergency has made me feel charitable towards all mediums who make phenomena come in one way when they won’t come easily in another. On the principle of the S.P.R., my conduct on that one occasion ought to discredit everything I ever do, everything, for example, I may write in this article—a manifestly unjust conclusion” (James 1911; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 313). Here James was objecting to the policy of the SPR of not reporting on mediums who were even once implicated in fraud.

James accepted the reality of a wide variety of facts differing from the set of facts considered by ordinary science. This is significant, because the kinds of facts accepted by science to a large extent determine its theories and laws, which establish relationships among these facts. Once science accepts certain categories of facts, and constructs theories and laws based on these facts, and further uses these theories and laws to explain and predict patterns among these facts, it becomes difficult to give serious consideration to facts that have no place in this system. James (1897, in Murphy and Ballou 1960 p. 26) said, “Phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdities, and must be held untrue.” He called the total collection of such absurd facts “the unclassified residuum.” James (1897, in Murphy and Ballou, pp. 25–27) observed: “no part of the unclassified residuum has usually been treated with a more contemptuous scientific disregard than the mass of phenomena generally called mystical. . . . All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface of history. no matter where you open its pages, you find things recorded under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, trances, ecstasies, miraculous healings and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighborhood.”

James hoped that future generations of psychologists and anthropologists would carefully study these phenomena “with patience and rigor” and integrate them into a proper theoretical framework, instead of receiving them with “credulity on the one hand and dogmatic denial . . . on the other.” He felt it was a “scientific scandal” that this had not yet happened (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 31). Indeed, he said, “The most urgent intellectual need which I feel at present is that science be built up again in a form in which such things may have a positive place” (James 1897; in Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 42).

Unfortunately, it still has not happened. for this reason, James is a principal inspiration for this book, and particularly this chapter, in which I have tried to give a small indication of the actual scope and character of the unclassified residuum of observations related to the question of conscious human existence and origins. not only much of science but much of religion has turned its back on this unclassified residuum, with unfortunate results for contemporary human consciousness. If this situation is to change, the impetus will most probably come from the world of science, a science that breaks radically with its long flirtation with materialism and once more opens its eyes to the full range of phenomena displayed to rational human inspection.

The ultimate effect of such a change would be recognition of the power of personality as an explanation for factual events. The primary characteristic of modern science is its refusal to consider personal causation of natural effects. James (1897) said, “This systematic denial on science’s part of personality as a condition of events, this rigorous belief that in its own essential and innermost nature our world is a strictly i mpersonal world, may, conceivably . . . prove to be the very defect that our descendants will be most surprised at in our boasted science” (Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 47). James’s prediction is already coming true, and I believe it will be entirely fulfilled in the present century.

Lord Rayleigh (Physicist)

John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh (1842–1919), made many important contributions to physics. He studied mathematics at cambridge, and later became interested in physics. He did most of his work at a private laboratory, which he installed on his family estate. during this time, he corresponded frequently with physicist Jame clerk Maxwell. In 1871, he married Evelyn Balfour, sister of Arthur James Balfour, later prime minister of England. After the death of Maxwell in 1879, Rayleigh took his chair at cambridge. He served as President of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908, and in 1904 he received the nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the element argon.

In 1919, Rayleigh became president of the Society for Psychical Research. His presidential address (Rayleigh 1919; in Lindsay 1970) gives a good summary of his own experiences and his general attitude toward the scientific investigation of the paranormal. Rayleigh began his address by noting the recent death of Sir William crookes, a fellow nobel laureate in physics who had also served as president of the Society for Psychical Research from 1896 to 1899. He recalled that his own interest in psychical research, awakened while a student at cambridge, increased further when he read crookes’s “notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual during the years 1870–73.” He knew of crookes’s scientific reputation, and thought that such a careful experimenter was well equipped to guard against illusions. This gave credibility to his reports of psychical phenomena.

He thought the séances with the medium daniel dunglas Home were particularly credible. Skeptics claimed that crookes had been deceived, but Rayleigh said, “I found (and indeed still find) it difficult to accept what one may call the ‘knave and fool theory’ of these occurrences.” And it therefore seemed that “one must admit the possibility of much that contrasts strongly with ordinary experience” (Lindsay 1970, p. 231).

Rayleigh, desiring to perform his own experiments, engaged a well known medium, Mrs. Jencken. He invited her to his country house, where she stayed, on a few occasions, a total of fourteen days. Rayleigh’s séances with Mrs. Jencken gave some interesting results, but not as astounding as those obtained by crookes with Home. Rayleigh explained: “Before commencing, the room was searched and the doors locked. Besides Mrs. Jencken, the sitters were usually Lady Rayleigh and myself. Sometimes a brother or a friend came. We sat close together at a small, but rather heavy, pedestal table; and when anything appeared to be doing we held Mrs. Jencken’s hands, with a good attempt to control her feet also with ours; but it was impracticable to maintain this full control during all the long time occupied by the séances” (Lindsay 1970, p. 232). Rayleigh noted that paper cutters and other small objects would fly about the room. Most strikingly, lights would appear in the darkened room and drift about. “They might be imitated by phosphorus enclosed in cotton wool,” said Rayleigh. “But how Mrs. Jencken could manipulate them with her hands and feet held, and it would seem with only her mouth at liberty, is a difficulty” (Lindsay 1970, p. 233).

“Another incident hard to explain,” said Rayleigh (1919), “occurred at the close of a séance after we had all stood up. The table at which we had been sitting gradually tipped over until the circular top nearly touched the floor, and then slowly rose again into the normal position. Mrs. Jencken, as well as ourselves, was apparently standing quite clear of it. I have often tried since to make the table perform a similar evolution. Holding the top with both hands, I can make some, though a bad, approximation; but it was impossible that Mrs. Jencken could have worked it thus. Possibly something better could be done with the aid of an apparatus of hooks and wires; but Mrs. Jencken was a small woman, without much apparent muscular development, and the table for its size is heavy” (Lindsay 1970, p. 233). Rayleigh rejected the idea of hallucination. for one thing, all of the witnesses agreed afterwards on the movements they had observed. Rayleigh witnessed some séances with the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino, about whom we shall have much more to say. His cryptically stated conclusion was: “There is no doubt that she practised deception, but that is not the last word” (Lindsay 1970, p. 235).

Rayleigh, an accomplished experimental scientist, recognized that there was a difference between ordinary physical phenomenon and psychical phenomena, which “cannot be reproduced at pleasure and submitted to systematic experimental control” (Lindsay 1970, p. 236). But he pointed out that in the history of science there were other cases in which rare sporadic phenomena, contradicting standard scientific opinion, eventually came to be accepted as real. He gave the example of meteors. Before early nineteenth century, scientists refused to believe reports of stones falling from the sky. Rayleigh observed: “The witnesses of such an event have been treated with the disrespect usually shown to reporters of the extraordinary, and have been laughed at for their supposed delusions: this is less to be wondered at when we remember that the witnesses of a fall have usually been few in number, unaccustomed to exact observation, frightened by what they both saw and heard, and have had a common tendency towards exaggeration and superstition” (Lindsay 1970, p. 236). But eventually scientists did come to accept the reality of meteorites. Rayleigh stated, “I commend this history to the notice of those scientific men who are so sure that they understand the character of nature’s operations as to feel justified in rejecting without examination reports of occurrences which seem to conflict with ordinary experience” (Lindsay 1970, p. 237).

To his scientific contemporaries, Rayleigh said, “If my words could reach them, I would appeal to serious inquirers to give more attention to the work of this Society, conducted by experienced men and women, including several of a sceptical turn of mind, and not to indulge in hasty conclusions on the basis of reports in the less responsible newspaper press or on the careless gossip of ill-informed acquaintances. Many of our members are quite as much alive to a priori difficulties as any outsider can be” (Lindsay 1970, p. 239).

Pierre and marie Curie

Marie curie and her husband Pierre curie are famous for their discoveries in physics, which resulted in two nobel Prizes for Marie and one for Pierre. But their extensive research into paranormal phenomena is far less well known. In the late years of the nineteenth century, Pierre curie was investigating the mysteries of ordinary magnetism and simultaneously became aware of the spiritualistic experiments of other European scientists, such as charles Richet and camille flammarion, whose work we shall consider later in this chapter. Pierre curie initially thought that systematic investigations into the paranormal would help him with some unanswered questions about magnetism (Hurwic 1995, p. 65). He wrote to his fiancée Marie, whom he married in 1895, “I must admit that those spiritual phenomena intensely interest me. I think that in them are questions that deal with physics” (Hurwic 1995, p. 66). Pierre curie’s notebooks from this period show he read many books on spiritualism (Hurwic 1995, p. 68).

Ten years later, Pierre curie’s interests had turned, under the influence of his wife, from magnetism to radioactivity. He again thought that spiritualism might provide some insight into some of the problems of physics, and the couple started going again to séances. Historian Anna Hurwic noted in her biography of Pierre curie, “He thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity. for this reason, probably, he used the same experimental methods for studying spiritualism that he used all the time in radioactivity, especially the measure of ionization of atmospheric air in a room. . . . curie did not go to séances as a mere spectator, and his goal certainly was not to communicate with some spirits. He saw the séances as scientific experiments, tried to monitor the different parameters, took detailed notes of every observation. He was really intrigued by Eusapia Paladino” (Hurwic 1995, p. 247).

About some séances with Eusapia, Pierre curie wrote to physicist Georges Gouy in a letter dated July 24, 1905 (Hurwic 1995, p. 248): “We had at the Psychology Society a few séances with the medium Eusapia Paladino. It was very interesting, and truly those phenomena that we have witnessed seemed to us to not be some magical tricks—a table lifted four feet above the floor, movements of objects, feelings of hands that pinched you or caressed you, apparitions of light. All this in a room arranged by us, with a small number of spectators all well known and without the presence of a possible accomplice. cheating would only be possible if the medium had extraordinary abilities as a magician. But how to explain the different phenomena when we are holding her hands and legs, and the lighting of the room is sufficient to see everything going on?”

curie kept elaborate notes on the séances, which Marie also attended. About a séance on July 6, he wrote, “The table goes four feet in the air for one second, then falls down violently” (Hurwic 1995, p. 249). On April 6, 1906, he noted (Hurwic 1995, p. 250): “Table lifted up four feet. . . complete control [of Paladino] by myself. . . . lateral movements of the table without contact; excellent observation on both sides.” Hurwic wrote (1995, p. 250): “We can judge to what extent he was believing in those phenomena by the fact that he thought to include them in his official research program.”

On April 14, 1906, Pierre wrote to Georges Gouy: “We are working, M. curie and me, to precisely dose the radium by its own emanations; it does not seem much work but we have been at it for many months and only now starting to get some results. We had a few new ‘séances’ with Eusapia Paladino (we already had séances with her last summer). The result is that those phenomena exist for real and I can’t doubt it any more. It is unbelievable but it is thus, and it is impossible to negate it after the séances that we had in conditions of perfect monitoring” (Hurwic 1995, pp. 263–264). He then went on to describe how the medium had manifested bodily limbs, in addition to the other phenomena described above. Pierre curie then told Guoy, “I would like you to witness some séances of this kind and I don’t doubt that after a few good séances that you will be also convinced” (Hurwic 1995, p. 264). Like Rayleigh, curie admitted that the phenomena could not always be reproduced, but he was hopeful that a determined program of research would yield more results. He concluded (Hurwic 1995, p. 264), “There is, according to me a completely new domain of facts and physical states of space of which we presently have no idea,” Hurwic herself noted (1995, p. 263), “coming from an experimental scientist, it is a surprising judgement.”

Pierre curie’s interest in spiritualism continued to the time of his death in a road accident on April 19, 1906. Recollecting events on the day before her husband’s death, Marie described a talk between french mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré and Pierre: “At one point, Eusapia was the subject of the conversation and the phenomena that she produces. Poincaré was objecting with a sceptical smile, curious of new things, while you (Pierre) were pleading the reality of the phenomena. I was looking at your face while you were talking, and once more I was admiring your nice head, your charming words, enlightened by your smile. It was the last time that I was hearing you express your ideas” (Hurwic

1995, p. 262).

Camille Flammarion (astronomer)

camille flammarion (1842–1925) was a french astronomer, famous for his work on double stars and the topography of Mars. In 1861, he joined the Society for Psychologic Studies, beginning a long career of investigation into paranormal phenomena. In 1870 he was invited to submit a report to the dialectical Society of London, which had convened a commission to study “phenomena alleged to be spiritual manifestations” (flammarion 1909, p. 289). In his letter to the commission, flammarion (1909, p. 302) admitted that investigations into the paranormal were complicated by fraud and the capricious nature of the phenomena. But such investigation was also hampered by those who considered such things impossible. flammarion said that any scientific investigator free from such prejudice could assure himself of their reality. He himself had verified them through personal observation.

In the second volume of his masterpiece Death and its mystery (1922), flammarion documented evidence for apparitions of persons living as well as on the verge of dying. flammarion (1922, p. 37) explained: “It would seem that we are here concerned with a transmission of images by psychic waves between two brains harmoniously attuned, one serving as a wave-transmitter, the other as a receiver.”

flammarion (1922, p. 47) gave the following account of an apparition of a living person. The report originally appeared in English newspapers, including the Daily news of May 17, 1905. A member of parliament, Major Sir carne Raschse, was stricken with influenza, and he could not come to an evening session, although he very much desired to be there to support the government on a crucial vote. Sir Gilbert Parker, a friend, was surprised to see him. Sir Gilbert said, “My gaze fell upon Sir carne Raschse, seated near his usual place. As I knew that he had been ill, I waved to him in a friendly way, and said: ‘I hope you are better.’ But he gave me no sign of recognition, which greatly astonished me. His face was very pale. He was seated, his head resting, motionless, on one hand; the expression of his face was impassive and hard. for a moment I wondered what I had better do; when I again turned toward him, he had disappeared. I regretted this, and at once went to seek him, hoping to find him in the vestibule. But Raschse was not there, and no one had seen him.” Sir Arthur Hayter claimed also to have seen Raschse, pointing him out to Sir Henry Bannerman. flammarion (1922, p. 48) noted that Raschse himself “did not doubt that he had really gone in spirit to the House, for he had been extremely preoccupied with the thought of attending the session for a debate which interested him particularly.”

Another example given by flammarion (1922, p. 87) concerned an English physician, dr. Rowland Bowstead. Once, when playing cricket, he and another player followed a ball to a hedge. On the other side, he saw his brother-in-law dressed in hunting clothes and carrying a gun. He smiled and waved to dr. Bowstead. But his friend saw nothing. And when Bowstead looked again, he could not see his brother-in-law. depressed, he went to his uncle’s house and told him what he had seen. It was ten minutes past one. Bowstead stated: “Two days afterward I got a letter from my father, telling me of the death of my brother-in-law, which had occurred at precisely that time. His death came about in a curious way. The morning of that very day, since he was feeling fairly well, after an illness, he had declared that he was able to go hunting. Then, having taken up his gun, he had turned toward my father and had asked him if he had sent for me. My father having answered in the negative, he had flown into a rage, and had said that he would see me, in spite of everything. Suddenly he fell down as though struck by lightning, a bloodvessel in his lungs having burst. He was wearing at that time a huntingcostume and had a gun on his arm, exactly as in the apparition that had startled me.”

On november 10, 1920, Monsieur Agniel, a member of the Morocco branch of the Astronomical Society of france, wrote to flammarion about an eclipse of the sun that had occurred on that day. He added to his letter an account of a telepathic experiment. In 1906, Agniel was living in nice. He decided to pay a surprise visit to his sister in nimes. Because his sister liked orange blossoms, Agniel brought some with him on the train. Agniel wrote: “Alone in my compartment, I tried an experiment while the train was rushing along at full speed between Golfe-Juan and cannes. concentrating my thoughts on the flowers and then closing my eyes, I sent myself, mentally, into my sister’s room in nimes, and spoke to her thus: ‘I am arriving. I am coming to see you and to bring you the flowers you love.’ I imagined myself at the foot of her bed, showing her my bunch of flowers, of which I formed a mental image” (flammarion 1922, pp. 98–99). When he met his sister the next morning, she said, “It’s very odd. I dreamed last night that you were coming, and that you were bringing me orange-blossoms!” (flammarion 1922, p. 99).

In the third volume of Death and its mystery, flammarion (1923) gave reports of apparitions that took place just before the death of the transmitting person. One such report was published in the year 1905 in the journal luce e ombra. In 1882, two Italian army officers made a pact. If one of them were about to die, he would signal this to his comrade by mentally tickling his feet. On August 5, 1888 one of the officers, count charles Galateri, was in bed with his wife, who suddenly said to him, “don’t tickle my feet.” Galateri said he was not doing any such thing, but his wife continued to feel the tickling. Thinking it might be an insect, they got a candle and searched under the covers, but found nothing. Shortly thereafter, as they again tried to go to sleep, the countess Galateri exclaimed, “Look! Look at the foot of the bed!” The count saw nothing. The countess said, “Yes, look; there’s a tall young man, with a colonial helmet on his head. He’s looking at you, and laughing! Oh, poor man! What a terrible wound he has in his chest! And his knee is broken! He’s waving to you, with a satisfied air. He’s disappearing!” The countess told friends and relatives about the incident the next day. Over a week later, on August 14, the newspapers announced that Lt. virgini, the count’s old friend, had died during an Italian army action in Ethiopia. He had first been wounded in the knee and then struck by a bullet in his chest (flammarion 1923, p. 59).

could such apparition reports be explained by chance? flammarion (1922, p. 167) thought not: “In ‘Les Hallucinations télepathiqués’ Monsieur Marrillier has made, on his own account, certain calculations, from which it appears that the part played by chance is reduced . . . for visual hallucinations to 1/40,000,000,000,000; that is to say, in forty trillion visual hallucinations there would be only one that could be explained by chance coincidence. Plainly, this reduces the hypothesis of chance to a number equivalent to zero.”Flammarion believed that some kind of vibration was transmitted from the dying person to a sympathetic person, whose organism converted the vibration into a perception, just as a radio receiver converts electromagnetic waves into sound. flammarion (1922, p. 369) said: “All these observations prove that a human being does not consist only of a body that is visible, tangible, ponderable, known to every one in general, and to physicians in particular; it consists, likewise, of a psychic element that is imponderable, gifted with special, intrinsic faculties, capable of functioning apart from the physical organism and of manifesting itself at a distance with the aid of forces as to the nature of which we are still ignorant. This psychic element is not subject to the every-day restrictions of time and space.” In my system, this psychic element would correspond to the mind element.

Like the curies, flammarion participated in extensive research with Eusapia Palladino. His first séance with her took place on July 27, 1897, in the home of the Blech family in Paris. A light-colored curtain had been stretched across one corner of the room, forming a “cabinet.” Inside the cabinet were a small sofa, a guitar, and a chair, upon which had been placed a bell and music box. The cabinet had been set up at the request of Eusapia, who explained that such conditions were necessary for the effects. flammarion would have preferred that the cabinet not be used, but noted that in every scientific experiment certain conditions may be required. “He who would seek to make photographs without a dark chamber would cloud over his plate and obtain nothing. The man who would deny the existence of electricity because he had been unable to obtain a spark in a damp atmosphere would be in error. He who would not believe in the existence of stars because we only see them at night would not be very wise” (flammarion 1909, p. 68). Although he accepted the conditions, as requested by the medium, flammarion (1909, p. 68) said, “In accepting these conditions, the essential point is not to be their dupe.” Accordingly, flammarion carefully examined the cabinet and the entire room, making sure that there were no concealed mechanisms, batteries, or wires in the floor or walls. Before the séance, in order to detect anything suspicious upon Eusapia, Madame Zelma Blech, whose integrity flammarion considered beyond question, carefully undressed and dressed her.

The sitting was carried out in various conditions of lighting, ranging from full light to dim red light. Eusapia sat outside the curtain, with her back to it. A rectangular wooden table, weighing fifteen pounds, was placed in front of her. flammarion examined the table carefully, and found nothing suspicious. flammarion and another participant carefully controlled the hands and feet of the medium. Each held one of the medium’s hands with one hand and placed a foot on one of the medium’s feet. In addition, flammarion placed his other hand upon the medium’s knees. The room was fully lighted by a kerosene lamp and two candles. flammarion (1909, p. 70) reported, “At the end of three minutes

the table begins to move, balancing itself, and rising sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. A minute afterwards it is lifted entirely from the floor, to a height of about nine inches, and remains there two seconds.” Several other levitations took place in this session, causing flammarion (1909, p. 70) to conclude, “It seems that an object can be lifted, in opposition to the law of gravity, without the contact of the hands which have just been acting upon it.” Then a round table a small distance away, to flammarion’s right, spontaneously moved into contact with the table that had risen into the air. flammarion said that it appeared as if the round table was trying to climb onto the rectangular table. It then fell over. This took place in full light. The medium then signaled for less light. The two candles were put out, and the kerosene lamp was turned down somewhat, but there was still enough light for flammarion and the other witnesses to see everything that was happening in the room. The round table, which flammarion had set upright again, repeatedly made movements suggesting it was trying to climb onto the rectangular table. flammarion (1909, p. 71) tried to push the table down, but it resisted. He determined that the medium was not responsible for the round table’s movements.

The medium demanded less light. The kerosene lamp was turned off and a lamp of the kind used in photography dark rooms was turned on. It provided a dim red light, enough for the witnesses to see what was happening in the room. Many unusual occurrences took place, among which I consider the following to be the most significant. first of all the music box sounded behind the curtain, as if someone was turning its handle. As this was happening, the medium’s hands and feet were being carefully controlled by flammarion and another witness (de fontenay). Eusapia moved the hand held by de fontenay, and guiding the finger of de fontenay, touched the finger to flammarion’s cheek and moved it in circles, as if turning the handle of the music box. When she stopped, the music box stopped playing; when she moved the finger again, the music box again played. According to flammarion (1909, p. 72), the soundings and silences of the music box exactly matched the movements and stoppings of the finger on his cheek.

As I write this summary of what happened at the séance, I find myself desiring to leave certain things out. They seem too incredible to me, too unbelievable. But I shall resist that impulse. A small round table moved toward the table at which the party was sitting, and then it rose onto the table top. The sitters heard the guitar sounding behind the curtain and moving around. It emerged from the cabinet, floated toward the sitters, rose onto the tabletop, and then rose onto the shoulder of de fontenay. from there it rose into the air above the sitters, emitting sounds. flammarion (1909, p. 73) noted: “The phenomenon lasts about fifteen seconds. It can readily be seen that the guitar is floating in the air, and the reflection of the red lamp glides over its shining surface.” flammarion (1909, p. 74) also observed another striking movement of a large object: “Later, the chair within the cabinet moves out and takes up a position near Mrs. Blech. It then rises up and rests on top of Mrs. Blech’s head.”

After the séance at the Blech’s, flammarion held eight séances with Eusapia at his own home. flammarion (1909, p. 85) said, “Before every séance Eusapia was undressed and dressed again in the presence of two ladies charged with seeing that she did not hide any tricking apparatus under her clothes.” Arthur Levy, who came with an attitude of distrust and skepticism, gave an account of the séance of november 16, 1897. Levy examined the room, paying special attention to the cabinet, formed by hanging curtains across one corner of the room. He determined that there were no mechanisms therein and no ways to enter or leave the cabinet area except through the curtains, which were always in sight during the séance. The five sitters and the medium sat at a rectangular white table in front of the curtain. Some musical instruments were placed in the cabinet.

One of the sitters placed on the table a scale for weighing letters. Eusapia put her hands four inches from each side of the instrument and caused the scale to move. Levy noted: “Eusapia herself asked us to convince ourselves, by inspection, that she did not have a hair leading from one hand to the other, and with which she could fraudulently press upon the tray of the letter-weigher. This little display took place when all the lamps of the salon were fully lighted” (flammarion 1909, p. 88).

Levy and George Mathieu controlled the hands and feet of the medium. The sitters rested their hands on the table. “In a few moments,” observed Levy, “it begins to oscillate, stands on one foot, strikes the floor, rears up, wholly into the air,—sometimes twelve inches, sometimes eight inches, from the ground . . . All this in full light” (flammarion 1909, p. 88). Eusapia asked for less light, complaining that the brightness was hurting her eyes. The lamp was moved some distance away, and was placed on the floor behind a piano. But there was still sufficient light for the sitters to see what was happening. A tambourine and violin were thrown out of the cabinet onto the table. Levy took the tambourine in his hand, and an invisible personality tried to wrest it from his grasp, cutting Levy’s hand in the process. The table shook violently. An accordion was thrown from the cabinet onto the table. Levy said, “I seize it by its lower half and ask the Invisible if he can pull it out by the other end so as to make it play. The curtain comes forward, and the bellows of the accordion is methodically moved back and forth, its keys are touched, and several different notes are heard” (flammarion 1909, p. 90). Eusapia called for the sitters to join hands with her in a chain. Eusapia then cast an inflamed look at a large sofa, which then, according to Levy, marched up to the table. Eusapia looked at the sofa “with a satanic smile” and then blew upon it, whereupon it went back to its place.

The paranormal effects continued. Levy said: “The tambourine rose almost to the height of the ceiling; the cushions took part in the sport, overturning everything on the table; M.M. [Mr. Mathieu] was thrown from his chair. This chair—a heavy dining-room chair of black walnut, with stuffed seat—rose into the air, came up on the table with a great clatter, then was pushed off. Eusapia seems shrunken together and is very much affected. We pity her. We ask her to stop. ‘no, no!’ she cries. She rises, we with her; the table leaves the floor, rises to a height of twenty-four inches, then comes clattering down” (flammarion 1909, pp. 91–92). Soon thereafter, the séance, which lasted two hours, ended. Levy stated: “We took every precaution not to be the dupes of complicity, of fraud . . . And when, on looking back, doubts begin to creep into the mind, we must conclude that, given the conditions in which we were, the chicanery necessary to produce such effects would be at least as phenomenal as the effects themselves. How shall we name this mystery?” (flammarion 1909, p. 92)

Mrs. flammarion recorded the results of the séance held on november 19. The room was lit dimly by a night lamp set some distance from the table. Two of the sitters, Mr. Brisson and Mr. Pallotti, were controlling the medium. Mrs. flammarion and Mrs. Brisson were sitting some yards away from the table, facing Eusapia. The curtain behind Eusapia began to move. “And what do I see?” said Mrs. flammarion. “The little table on three feet, and leaping (apparently in high spirits) over the floor, at the height of about eight inches, while the gilded tambourine is in its turn leaping gayly at the same height above the table, and noisily tinkling its bells” (flammarion 1909, pp. 126–127). Mrs. flammarion drew the attention of Mrs. Brisson to this event. “And then,” she wrote, “the table and the tambourine begin their carpet-dance again in perfect unison, one of them falling forcibly upon the floor and the other upon the table” (flammarion 1909, p. 127). On november 21, flammarion and the other sitters saw a book move through the curtain. flammarion noted (1909, pp. 129–130): “The book went through the curtain without any opening, for the tissue of the fabric is wholly intact.” flammarion’s wife, who was looking behind the curtain saw the book enter the cabinet through the curtain, while outside the cabinet, said flammarion, the book “disappeared from the eyes of the persons who were in front, notably M. Baschet, M. Brisson, M. J. Bois, Mme. fourton and myself. . . . collective hallucination? But we were all in cool blood, entirely self-possessed.”

In his books on psychical research, flammarion included the results of the investigations of others. In 1891, the prominent Italian psychiatrist cesare Lombroso, on hearing of Eusapia’s phenomena, went to naples to experience them for himself. Six sitters participated in a séance. The room was lit by candles. Lombroso and another sitter controlled Eusapia. Levitations of the table occurred. further séances were held, giving positive results (flammarion 1909, pp. 142–146).

Acting upon the testimony of Professor Lombroso, a commission of scientists conducted seventeen séances with Eusapia in Milan. The group included the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (director of the Milan Observatory), the physicist Giuseppe Gerosa, and the nobel laureate physiologist dr. charles Richet of Paris. Lombroso was present for some of the experiments. The experimenters signed a report testifying to the reality of the phenomena (flammarion 1909, p. 151). complete levitations of a large table were observed several times. On these occassions, the medium was carefully controlled, her hands being held by the participants sitting next to her, who also kept her feet under theirs and their knees pressed against hers, so as to detect any movement. Here are observations of table levitations from the signed report: “At the end of several minutes the table makes a side movement, rises first to the right, then to the left, and finally mounts off of its four feet straight into the air, and lies there horizontally (as if it were floating on a liquid), ordinarily at a height of from 4 to 8 inches (in exceptional cases from 24 to 27 inches); then falls back and rests on its four feet. It frequently remains in the air for several seconds, and while there also makes undulatory motions, during which the position of the feet under the table can be thoroughly examined” (flammarion 1909, p. 154). The researchers concluded that the conditions they imposed ruled out various possible deceptions, for example hidden rods or supports that the medium might have introduced.

The joint report of the participants recorded several instances of the spontaneous movement of objects, without the touch of any person present. The report stated: “A remarkable instance occurred in the second séance, everything being all the time in full light. A heavy chair, weighing twenty-two pounds, which stood a yard from the table and behind the medium, came up to M. Schiaparelli, who was seated next to the medium. He rose to put it back in its place; but scarcely was he seated when the chair advanced a second time toward him” (flammarion 1909, p. 156). The researchers also noted the movement of objects through the air. To prevent the medium from surreptitiously using her hands, they were securely tied to the hands of her controllers (Flammarion 1909, pp. 157–159). On two occasions the medium herself levitated to the top of the table, seated on her chair while her hands were being held by her controllers. In the first case, the controllers were Richet and Lombroso, who according to the report “are sure they did not assist her in this ascension.” during the medium’s descent from the table, the controllers were finzi and Richet, who according to the report were “following her movements without at all assisting them” (flammarion

1909, pp. 159–160).

Charles Richet (Physiologist)

In 1913, charles Robert Richet, professor of physiology at the University of Paris, won the nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for his pioneering work in immunology. His interest in the occult began with hypnotism. After seeing a stage performance, he performed his own experiments. He then became interested in clairvoyance, and published an article on the statistical validity of extrasensory perception (Richet 1884). His studies involved people correctly naming playing cards turned over by another person beyond their sight. The results were beyond those that could be expected by chance. Richet persuaded his friend, Jean Meyer, a wealthy industrialist, to establish a society for the impartial scientific investigation of psychical phenomena. It was formed in 1919 as the Institut Métapsychique. Richet believed that just as chemistry had emerged from alchemy, a new science of the mind would emerge from metapsychology. Richet summarized the results of his studies in his book thirty Years of Psychical Research (1923).

According to Richet, there are two kinds of metapsychic phenomena—objective and subjective. The objective phenomena comprise physical objects moving under the influence of psychic forces. The subjective phenomena comprise purely mental manifestations, such as remote vision. Richet noted (1923, pp. 4–5): “The forces that govern presentiments, telepathy, movements of objects without contact, apparitions, and certain mechanical and luminous phenomena do not seem to be blind and unconscious forces . . . They have none of the fatality that attaches to the mechanical and chemical reactions of matter. They appear to have intellectuality, will, and intuition, which may not be human, but which resemble human will and intention. Intellectuality—the power of choice, intention, and decision conformably to a personal will—characterizes all metapsychic phenomena.”

Richet performed experiments in telekinesis with Eusapia Palladino. He attended over one hundred of her séances (Richet 1923, p. 412). Richet (1923, p. 413) noted: “All the men of science, without exception, who experimented with her were in the end convinced that she produced genuine phenomena.” He admitted that on occasion she would try to cheat, if allowed. But Richet regarded it as the responsibility of the investigators to insure that she did not cheat. In his own experiments, Richet did take such precautions. “At the moment in an experiment when a movement without contact was about to take place,” wrote Richet (1923, p. 413), “Eusapia gave warning that a phenomena was coming, so that these did not occur unexpectedly. The full attention of the observers was awakened and all possible precautions could be taken at the fateful moment that no trickery should be possible. Professors of legerdemain do the exact opposite, and endeavour to distract attention at the critical moment of their tricks.” Primarily, investigators took care to control Eusapia’s hands and feet, to make sure that she was not using them to produce the effects observed in her presence—usually the movement of objects in the room.

In 1893 and 1894, ethologist Henryk Siemiradzki (1843–1902) and philosopher Julian Ochorowicz (1850–1917) conducted experiments with Eusapia in Rome. Richet was present for these experiments. “While Eusapia’s hands were held, a hand-organ floated over the table, sounding all the while as if the handle were being turned,” wrote Richet (1923, p. 416). Ochorowicz made further investigations. While Eusapia’s hands and feet were carefully held and controlled, interesting psychokinetic effects were observed. Richet (1923, p. 416) wrote, “In light, dimmed, but still quite sufficient to enable the experimenters to distinguish forms, the table rose horizontally three times into the air.”

The most significant of Richet’s reports are about the sessions with Eusapia at his house at Ribaud Island. On this small island in the Mediterranean, Richet had a vacation home. The only other residents of the island were a lighthouse keeper and his wife. Richet invited Ochorowicz to join him. “for three months we experimented three times a week, and continually verified, fully, movements of objects without contact and other phenomena,” wrote Richet (1923, pp. 416–417).

Richet then invited frederick Myers and the physicist Oliver Lodge to join them. Richet (1923, p. 417) included in his book the following summary statement by Lodge: “A chair placed near the window, several feet distant from the medium, slid along, rose up, and struck the floor. The medium was held and no person was near the chair. I heard some notes on an accordion placed not far from us. A musical box was floated through the air and carried above our heads. The key was turned in the lock of the door, laid on the table, and again replaced in the lock; a heavy table (forty-eight pounds) was raised eight inches off the floor, the medium standing up and placing her hands lightly on one corner of the table.”

The reports from Ribaud Island were upsetting to SPR member Henry Sidgwick, who wrote in a letter to James Bryce Sidgwick, on August 8, 1894: “A crisis is impending. Three chief members of our group of investigators: f. Myers, O. J. Lodge, and Richet, (Professor of Physiology in Paris) have convinced themselves of the truth of the physical phenomena of Spiritualism . . . we have read the notes taken from day to day of the experiments, and it is certainly difficult to see how the results recorded can have been produced by ordinary physical means . . . At the same time as the S.P.R. has now for some years acquired a reputation for comparative sanity and intelligence by detecting and exposing the frauds of mediums; and as Eusapia’s ‘phenomena’ are similar [in] kind to the frauds we have exposed, it will be a rather sharp turn in our public career if our most representative men come forward as believers” (Gauld 1968, p. 230).

To check Eusapia’s phenomena, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, along with Lodge, then went to Richet’s chateau at carqueiranne, near Toulon. There the researchers also witnessed phenomena under conditions that ruled out deception. Objects such as a melon and a small wicker table floated from behind the medium onto the table around which the researchers were seated. The researchers also felt mysterious touches and saw manifestations of hands. They also heard notes sounding on a piano, which was apparently out of reach of the medium (Gauld 1968, p. 231). But some SPR members retained doubts.

To settle the matter, Eusapia was brought to Myers’s house at cambridge. There she gave an impromptu demonstration to Myers and his wife. Myers noted that it was still light outside when the sitting took place, in the early evening of July 31, 1895. Myers stated: “Under these circumstances the table rose in the air with all feet off the ground five or six times during about ten minutes . . . On each occasion it appeared to us that no known force cd. [could] have raised & sustained the table as we in fact saw it raised & maintained” (Gauld 1968, p. 235).Altogether, Eusapia held twenty sittings at Myers’s house. In attendance at least once were many prominent researchers, including Lord Rayleigh, J. J. Thomson, francis darwin, the Maskelynes (magicians), Richet, and Lodge. The usual phenomena were reported (Gauld 1968, p. 235).

The researchers then invited Richard Hodgson to come from America. He arrived in time for the last seven of the sittings. Hodgson, very suspicious of Eusapia, decided that she must be using trickery. To see if he could catch her he decided to relax the stringent controls. He found that on some occasions Eusapia, if allowed, would manage to get a hand free by tricking two controllers into accepting the same one. This led Hodgson and others to conclude that all the cambridge phenomena were fraudulent (Gauld 1968, p. 238).

Other investigators objected. It was always known that Eusapia might in some cases cheat, if the opportunity presented itself and she were feeling out of sorts, as had been the case in England. According to them, Hodgson had set up a situation that encouraged and allowed Eusapia to cheat (Gauld 1968, p. 239). Eusapia’s supporters pointed out that the kinds of tricks Hodgson detected were not sufficient to explain more than a small fraction of her phenomena (Gauld 1968, p. 240).

A full account of the cambridge sittings was not published. Henry Sidgwick, in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (April 1896) explained: “It has not been the practice of the S.P.R. to direct attention to the performances of any so-called ‘medium’ who has been proved guilty of systematic fraud . . . In accordance, therefore, with our established custom, I propose to ignore her performances for the future, as I ignore those of other persons engaged in the same mischievous trade” (Gauld 1968, p. 240). Myers, on learning of more reports on Eusapia from the continent, wanted to start a new series of tests, but Sidgwick refused to sanction them. Richet, however, continued his own experiments and became absolutely convinced of Eusapia’s phenomena (Gauld 1968, p. 241).

Late in 1898, Richet convinced Myers to come to france for some experiments. Myers was present at two sessions, which took place on december 1 and december 3, at Richet’s house in Paris. Also present were Theodore flournoy (a Swiss psychologist), the duc and duchesse de Montebello (the french ambassador to Russia and his wife), and Emil Boirac (a paranormal researcher). The first sitting had good light—a lamp turned low, a fire, and moonlight. All details of Eusapia’s dress and hands were visible. Her hands were placed far apart, both visible on the table, while an observer under the table held both of her feet. In other words, there was good control and visibility. A zither had been placed in a curtained-off window recess. The window itself was shuttered and bolted shut. The researchers noted movements of the zither and heard it play. The zither emerged from behind the curtain and moved to a position behind the researchers, so that the researchers were sitting between the floating zither and Eusapia. The zither played again and came over Myers’s shoulder and descended onto the table (Gauld 1968, pp. 241–242). Similar phenomena occurred at the second sitting. Myers, now again convinced about Eusapia, wanted to publish. But at this time Hodgson was the editor of the SPR Journal and Proceedings. He would not publish any substantial report, just a brief letter from Myers, stating that recent investigations had led him to renew his faith in Eusapia (Gauld 1968, p.242).

Investigations continued. At the Psychological Institute of Paris, a group of scientists, including Richet, carried out a long series of experiments with Eusapia (43 séances in all), during the years 1905–1907. According to Richet (1923, p. 420) the experiments yielded positive demonstrations of telekinesis. These are the experiments in which the curies participated as members of an investigating committee. Other members of the committee included the philosopher Henri Bergon, Richet himself, and the physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin, who like the curies won a nobel Prize in physics. Bergson won a nobel Prize in literature. So there were at least five nobel laureates in the committee that investigated Eusapia Palladino. After the years of study, the committee issued a favorable report, which included observations such as this: “The two hands, feet and knees of Eusapia being controlled, the table is raised suddenly, all four feet leaving the ground; then two and again four feet; Eusapia closes her fists, and holds them towards the table, which is then completely raised from the floor five times in succession, five raps also being given. It is again completely raised, while each of Eusapia’s hands is on the head of a sitter. It is raised to the height of one foot from the floor and suspended in the air for several seconds while Eusapia kept her hand on the table and a lighted candle was placed under the table; it was completely raised to a height of ten inches from the floor and suspended in the air for four seconds, M. curie only having his hand on the table, Eusapia’s hand being placed on top of his. It was completely raised when M. curie had his hand on Eusapia’s knees and Eusapia had one hand on the table and the other on M. curie’s head, her two feet tied to the chair on which she was sitting” (carrington 1931, p. 135).

Richet was also favorably impressed with a series of experiments carried out with Eusapia in naples. In 1908, Everard feilding, present at the cambridge séances, joined Hereward carrington, and W. W. Baggally, a magician and skeptic, for some experiments with Eusapia in naples. carrington, a magician and author of a book exposing fraudulent mediums, gave his summary impressions of the naples experiments: “In november and december, 1908, Mr. Everard feilding and Mr. W. Baggally and myself held ten séances in our rooms at the hotel under perfect conditions of control, and we were convinced that authentic metapsychic phenomena were produced that no trickery could account for” (Richet 1923, p. 420).

The sittings were held in rooms rented by carrington and his fellow investigators at the Hotel victoria in naples. The researchers carefully searched the rooms before the sittings. When Eusapia came, she herself was carefully searched, to insure there was nothing suspicious on her person or in her clothing. The rooms were on the fifth floor of the hotel, and the windows opened onto the street side of the building. After Eusapia entered the room chosen for the sitting, the door and windows were carefully locked and bolted. There was no possibility that any confederates could have entered. The researchers set up a “cabinet” by hanging two thin black curtains across a corner of the room. Upon a small table in the cabinet, the researchers placed objects such as a bell, guitar, and toy piano. The cabinet was inspected before each sitting, and several times during each sitting (carrington 1931, pp 213–214). The researchers carefully controlled Eusapia’s hands and feet, sometimes tying her to her chair at a table near the cabinet. carrington (1931, p. 215) noted that “all three of the investigators were fully aware of all the methods of trickery employed by mediums in order to release their hands, feet, etc., and were fully prepared to detect it, should trickery of this kind exist.” The researchers recorded levitations of a table and inexplicable movement of objects from the cabinet (Richet 1923, p. 420).

from 1909 to 1910 sittings were held in new York under the supervision of carrington. The usual phenomena occurred under carefully controlled circumstances. carrington (1931, p. 210) observed a table floating out of a curtained enclosure, noting that this happened “in a light sufficiently good to see that the medium was not touching it.” The table rose four feet in the air, bounced five times against a wooden partition set up in the room, and then turned upside down and fell to the floor. While this was happening, Eusapia was being carefully controlled, with some experimenters holding her hands while carrington was holding her feet with his hands.

during one of the new York sittings, the experimenters heard a mandolin playing inside the curtained enclosure. The striking of the strings was coordinated with the movements of Eusapia’s fingers on the hands of one of the experimenters. carrington (1931, p. 211) stated: “The mandolin then floated out of the cabinet, on to the séance table, where in full view of all, nothing touching it, it continued to play for nearly a minute—first one string and then another being played upon.” during this demonstration, Eusapia was carefully controlled, her hands tightly gripped by the experimenters.

On another occasion the experimenters placed a flutelike musical instrument on a table in the curtained-off enclosure in the room. Suddenly the instrument appeared floating in front of the face of one of the experimenters. carrington (1931, p. 211) stated: “no one saw how it got into its present position; but there it was, suspended in space, about five feet from Eusapia, and certainly too far for her to reach.”

carrington reported that he had often seen a wooden stool follow the movements of Eusapia’s hand, moving forward, backwards, and from side to side. “during its various movements I repeatedly passed my hand and arm between her hand and the stool, showing that no threads, hairs, wires, etc., were utilized for purposes of its manipulation,” said carrington (1931, p. 121). He reported that sometimes Eusapia transferred the power to him by touching him, and that at such times the stool followed the movements of his hand, until Eusapia removed her hand from him.

Richet himself concluded (1923, p. 421): “I have insisted on the phenomena of telekinesis produced by Eusapia because there have perhaps never been so many different, skeptical, and scrupulous investigators into the work of any medium or more minute investigations. during twenty years, from 1888 to 1908, she submitted, at the hands of the most skilled European and American experimentalists, to tests of the most rigorous and decisive kind, and during all this time men of science, resolved not to be deceived, have verified that even very large and massive objects were displaced without contact.”

Margaret mead (anthropologist)