W. T. Stead

“ What is our Ego? Is this Conscious Personality which receives impressions through the five senses, and through them alone, is it the only dweller in this mortal tabernacle? May there not be other personalities, or at least one other that is not conscious, when we are awake, and alert, and about, but which comes into semi-consciousness when we sleep, and can be developed into complete consciousness when the other personality is thrown into a state of hypnotic trance? ”

“ One time it would be, 'Georgie! It's me! Ah, Georgie!' Or, 'Georgie, are you in? Will you speak to Irwin?' Then a long pause, and at the end of, say, ten minutes, a most strange, unearthly sigh, or a cough—a perfectly intentional, forced cough, other times nothing but, 'Ah, Georgie!' On one night there was a dreadful fog. He called me so plain, I got up and said, 'Oh, really! that man must be here; he must be lodging somewhere near, as sure as life; if he is not outside I must be going mad in my mind or imagination.' I went and stood outside the hall door steps in the thick black fog. ”

“ Of recent years nothing has so fascinated the imagination even of the least imaginative of men as the theory of disease which transforms every drop of blood in our bodies into the lists in which phagocyte and microbe wage the mortal strife on which our health depends. Every white corpuscle that swims in our veins is now declared to be the armed Knight of Life for ever on the look-out for the microbe Fiend of Death. Day and night, sleeping and waking, the white knights of life are constantly on the alert, for on their vigilance hangs our existence. ”

“ If death is foreshadowed, the circumstances preceding and following the event pass as in dramatic scene before the eyes of the seer. It is much as if the seers had access to a camera obscura which enabled them not only to see that which was occurring at the same moment in various parts of the world, but in its magic mirror could reflect events which have not yet been as if they were already existent.
The phenomena of premonition, combined with the faculties of clairvoyance by which the percipient is able to reproduce the past, make a great breach in our conceptions of both time and space. ”

“ How vast and powerful are those hidden organs of the Unconscious Personality we can only dimly see. It is through them that Divine revelation is vouchsafed to man. The visions of the mystic, the prophecies of the seer, the inspiration of the sibyl, all come through this Unconscious Soul. It is through this dumb and suppressed Ego that we communicate by telepathy,—that thought is transferred without using the five senses. ”

“ M. The housekeeper, a comfortable, buxom Cornish woman, smiled incredulously. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing, believed nothing. "As to phantasmal bodies, she would prefer to see them first." "Had she ever seen a ghost?" "No, never." "Had ever had any hallucinations?" "No." But one thing had happened, "rather curious" now that she came to think of it. Last year, when living on the coast far down in the west country, she had suddenly seen as in a dream the house in Hindhead where we were now standing. She had never been in Surrey in her life. ”

“ One desperate resource, the convenient theory of pre-existence, is useless here. The fact seems to be that there is a kind of invisible camera obscura in Nature, which at odd times gives us glimpses of things happening or existing far beyond the range of our ordinary vision. The other day when in Edinburgh I climbed up to the Camera Obscura that stands near the castle, and admired the simple device by which, in a darkened room upon a white, paper-covered table, the whole panorama of Edinburgh life was displayed before me. ”

“ Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could hardly be conceived than the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and where afterwards his murderers were hanged. I visited it late at night, when the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air. It is the way with ghosts—they seldom appear where they might be looked for. ”

“ Whether in the sleeping or waking stage there are times when mortal men gain, as it were, chance glimpses behind the veil which conceals the future. Sometimes this premonition takes the shape of a deep indwelling consciousness, based not on reason or on observation, that for us awaits some great work to be done, which we know but dimly, but which is, nevertheless, the one reality of life. ”

“ It is an offence to some to take a ghost too seriously; with others it is a still greater offence not to take ghosts seriously enough. One set of objections can be paired off against the other; neither objection has very solid foundation. The time has surely come when the fair claim of ghosts to the impartial attention and careful observation of mankind should no longer be ignored. ”

“ He wrestled and struggled with all his strength and you know he was a very strong man, but he could do nothing in the iron grasp of his foe, and that foe a mere shadow, he was surely and steadily forced towards the boat, he was being forced over the side of the pier and into the boat through which he could see the waves rolling quite clearly, it was a mere shadow also.
"'Oh God help me,' he cried from the depth of his heart as he gave himself up for lost. Suddenly as though forced by some unseen power the grasp that held him ceased and Murdoch fell back upon the pier unconscious. ”

“ To be able instantaneously to paint upon the retina of a friend's eye the life-like image of ourselves, to make our voice sound in his ears at a distance of many miles, and to communicate to his mind information which he had never before heard of, all this is, it may be admitted, as tremendous a draft upon the credulity of mankind as the favourite Theosophical formula of the astral body. ”

“ Crystal-gazing is somewhat akin to clairvoyance. There are some people who cannot look into an ordinary globular bottle without seeing pictures form themselves, without any effort or will on their part, in the crystal globe. This is an experience which I have never been able to enjoy. But I have seen crystal-gazing going on at a table at which I have been sitting on one or two occasions with rather remarkable results. The experiences of Miss X. in crystal-gazing have been told at length and in detail in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society." ”

“ Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul." It is this Unconscious Personality which sees the Strathmore foundering in mid-ocean, which hears a whisper spoken hundreds of miles off upon the battlefield, and which witnesses, as if it happened before the eyes, a tragedy occurring at the Antipodes. ”

“ Thrilling as are some of the stories of the apparitions of the living and the dead, they are less sensational than the suggestion made by hypnotists and psychical researchers of England and France, that each of us has a ghost inside him. They say that we are all haunted by a Spiritual Presence, of whose existence we are only fitfully and sometimes never conscious, but which nevertheless inhabits the innermost recesses of our personality. ”

“ To this day the black disc of the moon no sooner begins to eat into the shining surface of the sun than millions of savage men feel "creepy," and begin to tremble at the thought of the approaching end of the world. But in civilised lands even the most ignorant regard an eclipse with imperturbable composure. Eclipses are scientific phenomena observed and understood. It is our object to reduce ghosts to the same level, or rather to establish the claim of ghosts to be regarded as belonging as much to the order of Nature as the eclipse. ”

“ To those who have neither studied the laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to be mistaken for reality. Yet there was the phenomenon before my eyes. The dog ran double—the real dog to the right, the spectral dog to the left—and no one could tell at first sight "t'other from which." Now, may it not be that this supplies a suggestion as to the cause of the phenomenon of clairvoyance? ”

“ In proportion as the active, domineering Conscious Personality extinguishes his submissive unconscious partner, materialism flourishes, and man becomes blind to the Divinity that underlies all things. Hence in all religions the first step is to silence the noisy, bustling master of our earthly tabernacle, who, having monopolised the five senses, will listen to no voice which it cannot hear, and to allow the silent mistress to be open-souled to God. ”

“ The whole question that lies at bottom is whether this world is divine or diabolic. Those who believe it divine are bound by that belief to regard every phenomenon as a window through which man may gain fresh glimpses of the wonder and the glory of the Infinite. In this region, as in all others, faith and fear go ill together.
It is impossible for any impartial man to read the narratives of which the present book is composed without feeling that we have at least one hint or suggestion of quite incalculable possibilities in telepathy or thought transference. ”

“ Besant replied, "There are several astrals, each with its own characteristics. The lowest astral body taken in itself is without conscience, will, or intelligence. It exists as a mere shadowy phantasm only as long as the material body lasts." "Then the mummies in the Museum?" "No doubt a clairvoyant could see their astrals keeping their silent watch by the dead. As the body decays so the astral fades away." "But that implies the possibility of a decaying ghost?" ”

“ Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of occasional loss of memory. Men are constantly losing consciousness, from disease, violence, or violent emotion, and emerging again into active life with a gap in their memory. Nay, every night we become unconscious in sleep, and rarely, if ever, remember anything that we think of during slumber. Sometimes in rare cases there is a distinct memory of all that passes in the sleeping and the waking states, and we have read of one young man whose sleeping consciousness was so continuous that he led, to all intents and purposes, two lives. ”

“ Contemporary psychology deprives us of the illusion of a definitely limited, impenetrable, and absolutely autonomous I. The conception of individual consciousness must be of an idea rather than of a substance. Though separate in the universe, we are not separate from the universe. Continuity and reciprocity of action exist everywhere. This is the great law and the great mystery. There is no such thing as an isolated and veritably monad being, any more than there is such a thing as an indivisible point, except in the abstractions of geometry. ”

“ Sometimes, however, the invading microbes come in, not in companies but in platoons, innumerable as Xerxes' Persians, and then "e'en Roderick's best are backward borne," and we die. For our life is the prize of the combat in these novel lists which science has revealed to our view through the microscope, and health is but the token of the triumphant victory of the phagocyte over the microbe. ”

“ When I was in Newcastle I availed myself of the opportunity to call upon Mr. Burt, M.P. On questioning him as to whether he had ever seen a ghost, he replied in the negative, but remarked that he had had one experience which had made a deep impression upon his mind, which partook more of the nature of clairvoyance than the apparition of a phantom. "I suppose it was a dream," said Mr. Burt. "The dream or vision, or whatever else you call it, made a deep impression upon my mind. You remember Mr. Crawford, the Durham miners' agent, was ill for a long time before his death. ”

“ Thus these mysterious visitants have hitherto failed to enter into that friendly relation with mankind which many of them seem sincerely to desire.
But what with the superstitious credulity of the one age and the equally superstitious unbelief of another, it is necessary to begin from the beginning and to convince a sceptical world that apparitions really appear. In order to do this it is necessary to insist that your ghost should no longer be ignored as a phenomenon of Nature. He has a right, equal to that of any other natural phenomenon, to be examined and observed, studied and defined. ”

“ The theory of these researchers is that besides the body and the mind, meaning by the mind the Conscious Personality, there is also within our material frame the soul or Unconscious Personality, the nature of which is shrouded in unfathomable mystery. The latest word of advanced science has thus landed us back to the apostolic assertion that man is composed of body, soul and spirit; and there are some who see in the scientific doctrine of the Unconscious Personality a welcome confirmation from an unexpected quarter of the existence of the soul. ”

“ If, on the other hand, they do exist, and are perceptible under certain conditions to our senses, it will be difficult to affirm the impiety of endeavouring to ascertain what is their nature, and what light they are able to throw upon the kingdom of the Unseen. We have no right to shut our eyes to facts and close our ears to evidence merely because Moses forbade the Hebrews to allow witches to live, or because some of the phenomena carry with them suggestions that do not altogether harmonise with the conventional orthodox theories of future life. ”

“ It is not a very uncommon faculty, but it is one which needs cultivation and development." "But what is a Thought Body?" My hostess smiled: "It is difficult to explain truths on the plane of thought to those who are immersed body and soul in matter. I can only tell you that every person has, in addition to this natural body of flesh, bones, and blood, a Thought Body, the exact counterpart in every respect of this material frame. It is contained within the material body, as air is contained in the lungs and in the blood. It is of finer matter than the gross fabric of our outward body. ”

“ Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more—and this last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative conclusions—Adrienne possessed a faculty, the muscular sense, of which Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly open as regards the relative faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for evolution, as well as for partition, for dissolution, of the corporate being. ”

“ The Quakers, whether it is because they allow their Unconscious Personality to have more say in their lives than others who do not practise quietism as a religion, or whether it be from any other cause, it is difficult to say, seem to have more than their fair share of premonitions. Every one remembers how George Fox saw a "waft" of death go out against Oliver Cromwell when he met him riding at Hampton Court the day before he was prostrated with his fatal illness. ”