Phantasm

“ A phantasm produces an effect on us totally unlike any that can be produced by physical agency—at least such is my experience—hence, for those who have never come in contact with the unknown to pronounce any verdict on it, is to my mind both futile and absurd. Of one thing, at least, I am sure, namely, that banshees are no more thought materialisations than they are cats—neither are they in any way traceable to telepathy or suggestion; they are entirely due to objective spirit forms. ”

“ In the rare instances where the phantasm has been conversed with, it manifests perfect intelligence on the one subject, but pays not the slightest attention to any question pertaining to any other, not even to cognate subjects. ”

“ It has been said that the phantasm (taibhs or tamhasg) was independent of all thought and volition on the part of those whom it represented, as well as on [130] the part of the seer himself. At the same time, it was part of the creed that if the person whose double was seen was spoken to and told to cease his persecutions, the annoyance came to an end. The person spoken to, being utterly unconscious that his phantasm was wandering about and annoying any one, got very angry, but somehow the spectre ceased to appear. ”

“ The first serious consciousness of Nature's gesture--her attitude towards life--took form then as a phantasm, a nightmare, an insanity of force. For the first time, the stage-scenery of the senses collapsed; the human mind felt itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies, with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting, and destroying what these same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect. ”

“ But there are other cases where a man's phantasm is seen, in a place where there is no special reason for his appearing, although these places seem always to lie within the beat and circuit of his habitual thought. ”

“ The invented human being, the phantasm, desires to signify something necessary, but only in the eyes of those who comprehend even an actual human being only in a crude, unnatural simplification: so that a couple of striking, often repeated characteristics, with a great deal of light on them and a great deal of shadow and twilight around them, suffice to meet all their demands. ”

“ If, to illustrate our meaning, we point to images of things in mirrors or clear water, he will pretend to be blind, and will refuse the evidence of sense: he will require us to make out a rational theory explaining Non-Ens or Nothing.36 But when we try to do this, we contradict ourselves. A phantasm is that which, not being a true counterpart of reality, is yet so like it as to be mistaken for reality. ”

“ The phantasm is, after all, only the image of the spirit or soul; it is not actually the spirit or soul itself, any more than the man we see walking about Regent Street in a silk hat and frock-coat is actually the man himself; the latter is an abstract quantity, compounded of spirit, soul, and intelligence—what we see is merely an outward concrete form, whereby we are able to identify that abstract quantity. So it is with the superphysical ego. ”

“ A phantasm, in my opinion, is a phenomena that cannot be explained by any physical laws. It is an objective—something, that can materialise and dematerialise at will, that can sometimes emit sounds, sometimes move material objects, and sometimes (though rarely) commit acts of physical violence on material objects. It can produce various sensations on living material bodies, whilst it is, in itself, though sometimes sensible and rational, as far as we know, always [p.144] insensible to physical action. ”

“ He proceeds to explain Phantasy or the Phantastic department of the soul, with the phantasms that belong to it. It is not sensible perception, nor belief, nor opinion, nor knowledge, nor cogitation. Our dreams, though affections of the sentient soul, are really phantasms in our sleep, when there is no visual sensation; even when awake, we have a phantasm of the sun, as of a disk one foot in diameter, though we believe the sun to be larger than the earth.121 Many of the lower animals have sensible perception without any phantasy: even those among 475them that have phantasy have no opinion ”

“ There is just as much variety in the tastes and habits of phantasms as in the tastes and habits of human beings, and in the behaviour of both phantasm and human being, I regret to say, there is an equal and predominant amount of inconsistency.
Intuition
I do not think it can be doubted that psychic people have the faculty of intuition far more [188] highly developed than is the case with the more material-minded. ”

“ In many instances, children, and in some instances, very young children, have been the percipients—children too young to perceive any [Pg 303] difference between the phantasm and a real person, and who have accordingly addressed it and spoken of it as they would of a real person. ”

“ They are thus quite ready to treat phantasms as actual, necessary human beings because they are accustomed when dealing with actual human beings to take a phantasm, a silhouette, an arbitrary abridgment for the whole.— That the painter and the sculptor, of all people, give expression to the "idea" of the human being is mere fantasizing and sense-deception: one is being tyrannized over by the eye when one says such a thing, since this sees even of the human body only the surface, the skin ”

“ It will give unexpected answers, refuse to conform to our desires, and show all those other signs of intelligence to which we are accustomed in the acquaintances of our waking hours. And yet, when we are awake, we do not believe that the phantasm was, like the appearances of people in waking life, representative of a private world to which we have no direct access. ”

“ The same psychical faculty and the same elements are necessary for the personification of such types or idols. The three elements appear in their proper sequence even in the amorphous phantasms which these types first shadow forth, and which are subsequently perfected and embodied in human form. For the consciousness of the external form always exists in the first vague and nebulous conception of the phantasm which gradually appears and formulates itself in the vivid imagination ”

“ In these arrival cases, there is, I say, a certain likelihood that the man's mind may be fixed on his return home, so that his phantasm is seen in what might seem both to himself and to others the most probable place. ”

“ Possibly had the young lady been alone, and not actively engaged, she might have had a more definite view of the phantasm of her absent friend, for experience has shown that solitude and quiet are favoring conditions for the perception of telepathic apparitions. In nearly every instance reported to the Society for Psychical Research the percipient of the phantasm is alone and in a more or less passive, quiescent frame of mind. ”

“ We must say the same thing, therefore, concerning phantasms. For if these are not true, but other things are so which have a real existence, thus also in the appearances of spirits, they seem to be such as things which are true beings; at the same time they participate of falsehood and deception, in the same manner as the forms which present themselves to the view in mirrors; and thus vainly attract the mind about things which never take place in any of the more excellent genera. ”

“ We must accordingly admit that we believe sometimes on the supernatural, or on miracles.
"From this proved thesis you can deduce the corollaries for yourself if you possess the faculty of drawing inferences."
Phantasms which Are Real.—The teacher asked: "Can one see a phantasm?"
"What is a phantasm?"
"There are in optics real images which can be caught on a screen. An image reflected in a flat mirror cannot be caught upon a screen, and is therefore a phantasm. Can you see your image in a flat mirror?" ”

“ Tylor's theory of animism, then, as set forth in his great work, Primitive Culture, is that "the belief in spiritual beings" will do as a definition of religion taken at its least; which for him means the same thing as taken at its earliest. Now what is a "spiritual being"? Clearly everything turns on that. Dr. Tylor's general treatment of the subject seems to lay most of the emphasis on the phantasm. A phantasm (as the etymology of the word shows) is essentially an appearance. In a dream or hallucination one sees figures, more or less dim, but still having "vaporous materiality." ”

“ The manner in which the imagination co-operates in mental action is this. It presents to the intellect the materials from which that power forms its ideas. When we see, feel, hear, taste, or smell anything by our bodily senses, our imagination takes note of the object perceived by forming a brain-picture of it which is called a phantasm. ”

“ Even animals, especially horses and dogs, have given unmistakable evidence—by crouching, trembling, and fright—of perceiving the same phantasms that have been seen by persons who were present with them. The phantom being, so to speak, in the air, it is perceived by those whose organization is so adjusted as to make it impressionable, and to constitute, to a greater or less degree, what is known as a sensitive. ”

“ But what may be the cause of this decay or weakening? Is the motion the weaker, because the object is taken away? If it were, then phantasms would always and necessarily be less clear in the imagination, than they are in sense; which is not true. For in dreams, which are the imaginations of those that sleep, they are no less clear than in sense itself. But the reason why in men waking the phantasms of things past are more obscure than those of things present, is this, that their organs being at the same time moved by other present objects, those phantasms are the less predominant. ”

“ Nevertheless our soul, in its present state of substantial union with our body, is extrinsically dependent on the body; to form ideas it needs to have the sensible object presented to it by a phantasm or brain-picture. Now, a child born blind and deaf, and thus having its mind, as it were, cut off from communication with the outer world, could scarcely form the necessary phantasms, because the clogged senses could not supply proper materials for them ”

“ For the simple reason that, as in ordinary thought-transference, or in the “willing game” some are good subjects, or percipients, and others are not. For the same reason that of ten persons making trial of Planchette-writing, the board will move for only two or three out of the whole number—that is, in only a few would the hands act automatically in response to a subliminal self; and for the same reason it may also be true that amongst several persons, in only a few of those present, can the sense of sight or hearing be effected by a phantasm. ”

“ Surely there is no illusion - there are only grades of reality; and what we call phantasmagorias are merely very fleeting realities, created by man, in comparison to the eternal and immutable realities which we apprehend with our soul and our senses, and which must be of higher origin. But we will not give to human creations honors alone due to the Divine, and will not pronounce hollow words nor adore suggested phantoms. ”

“ Before we attribute such vast powers to these Ideas or phantasms, the shadows of visual perception, it will be convenient to inquire into their nature, and endeavour to ascertain the laws by which they are regulated. In that state of mental relaxation, when the intellect is not intently occupied on any particular subject, numberless phantasms will involuntarily intrude: for, during the [Pg 17] time we are awake, the mind is never wholly unoccupied, and such irregular presentations of Ideas constitute our reveries. ”

“ The whole doctrine of these apparitions of the living, or, as they are called in Cumberland, swarths, and premonitions of coming events, proceeds on the supposition that people have a counterpart or other self, an alter [125] ego, which goes about unknown to themselves, with their voices, features, form, and dress, even to their shoes, and is visible to those who have the unhappy gift of the second sight. This phantasm, or other self, is not the life or the spirit of the person whom it represents. ”

“ That the power resides in the subjective mind of man to create phantasms perceptible to the objective senses of others. Again, it seems to be well established by experiment that some persons have the power, not only to create such phantasms, but to endow them with a certain degree of intelligence and power. Thus, the experiments recorded in "Phantasms of the Living," and quoted in a preceding chapter of this book, show that the image of the agent was not only created by him in his sleep, but was projected into the presence of others at a long distance from where he slept. ”

“ The mind, as long as it dwells in the body, seems to have no intelligible species, except phantasms derived from sense. These he takes for impressions on the brain, driven to and fro by the animal spirits till they reach the phantasia, or imaginative faculty, and cause it to imagine sensible things. The soul, in Gassendi’s theory, consists of an incorporeal part or intellect, and of a corporeal part, the phantasy or sensitive soul, which he conceives to be diffused throughout the body. ”

“ His explanation of the phenomenon was, that, in some cases, all that prevents a vivid conception from assuming objectivity, is the self-assertion of external objects. The gradual approach of darkness cannot surprise and isolate the phantasm ”

“ But, generally speaking, popular phantasmagoria is full of angels, devils, shades of the dead, white women, but not of saints. Stories of apparitions of particular saints are, as a rule, suspect of having already undergone some ecclesiastical or literary interpretation. To the agitated beholder a phantom has no name and hardly a shape. ”