An Added Word or Two
The possibility of the spirit “leaving the body” for a time and then returning and resuming its usual activities has been demonstrated many times. In some instances the temporary separation was caused by accident, illness, states of coma induced by anesthetics, trance, either of spirit control or hypnosis, and sometimes a voluntary absence or activity not suspending the vital functions of the body. It is also undoubtedly true that during sleep—especially that restful, dreamless sleep that betokens a normal state of mind and body, the spirit avails itself of the opportunity of restoration by spiritual methods and activities not possible while urging the body to do its bidding. Not only Spiritualists, Psychologists and Psychic Research students have well authenticated cases of the undoubted activity of the Spirit apart from the body, but many prominent physicians have recorded their experiences with patients whose bodily functions were suspended, even to seeming dissolution, and upon the unexpected resuscitation of the subject there would be a vivid account of active experiences in spirit—usually pleasant scenes and meetings with friends long passed into spirit life. These visits to “heaven” would be sometimes tinged with the religious bias of the subject, but this is not strange in view of the fact that spirit states are conditions of the mind and spirit experiencing them.
Among the most familiar popular illustrations are those narrated by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, especially by “Gail Hamilton” who, being thought “dead” returned to her body, narrated to her pastor the experiences she had during that period of suspended animation and resumed her pen, remaining in mortal life a considerable time thereafter.
Although not usual, this class of experiences is not so unusual as many imagine or assert. And the writer having been from childhood accustomed to the “other state” (“Inner,” “higher”), of consciousness can distinctly trace her experiences in that inner realm as forming fully a third if not one-half of her life-experiences.
The “realm of spirit” in which she has so often found herself a participant is, therefore, no unfamiliar realm; in fact if called upon to decide which state is the reality—the life, she would unhesitatingly say: the inner state, the super-mundane realm.
Of the many eminent men of Science in both Europe and America who have come to a knowledge of the truths of Spirit existence, continuance of life after transition,—and the writer has known them all personally, except the one she is about to mention,—probably Sir Oliver Lodge has approached the subject of “psychic Research” (Spiritualism) with a mind the best prepared to receive (perceive) Spiritual Truth. I say this with the utmost reverence and admiration for the long list of names—eminent alike in their personal qualities and scientific attainments, whose lives have been made brighter by a knowledge of demonstrated future existence and a belief in the Immortality of the Soul. Shall I name some of them? Hare, Mapes, Denton, Wallace, Crookes, Varley, Zollner, Flammarion—the list is almost endless.
Sir Oliver Lodge has not only recently, and very publicly, announced his full belief (knowledge) of continued personal existence beyond the change called death, but the possibility of communion with those “gone before” and the certainty that he had personal evidence beyond cavil or doubt, proofs indubitable, of the presence of and communication with his particular friends, but—and this is the point I wish to emphasize—in his earlier utterances on this subject he said in effect: “When I become aware that the human spirit while still animating the body, or not released by death, has such surpassing powers, ‘telepathy,’ ‘voluntary action’ apart from the body, showing conclusively that the activities of the mind are not dependent upon the physical organism—I concluded there must be evidence to show that the spirit can and does survive the body.” This and much more was in his published statements concerning his investigations in connection with Psychic Research—showing that he approached the subject not only from the “effect to cause” line of usual scientific investigation, but had already in his quickened perception the vivification of a-priori knowledge leading from “cause to effect.”
One would like to accumulate and set down in condensed manner all the available evidences of “absence from the body”—of which the writer has a large and increasing store, but this writing is more distinctly in the form of a message for this particular time.
With our own “other world” within and about us, moving “like wings of light on dark and stormy air,” with such unused, wonderful powers, what wonder that one having partaken of the bounties of that inner realm longs to awaken the “sleeping” spirits of those in human life—or, more correctly speaking, tear aside the veil and show how wonderful are the dormant powers within each person: Soul-powers more active, perhaps, than any are aware! Who can tell, until the film of mental blindness is removed, how great may be the works accomplished by the spirit when the body sleeps, when one is “absent minded,” or when thinking intently of a particular friend, one finds at that very day and hour the friend had “passed away”?
It is of the “Substance that dreams are made” that we shall ultimately find our divinest realities, our very lives are fashioned.
This narrative of “experiences while out of my body” is only a prelude to those vaster heights, those more inner scenes, that I hope sometime to be able to record: The Symphony is Life itself whose theme of Love is Endless, Endless, Endless.
—The Author.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] This was before the Woman’s “Peace Congress” had been thought of by Earth minds.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.