Further Preliminary Explanation

I must assume it known that messages purporting to come from various deceased people have been received through various mediums, and that the Society for Psychical Research has especially studied those coming through Mrs. Piper—a resident in the neighbourhood of Boston, U.S.A.—during the past thirty years. We were introduced to her by Professor William James. My own experience with this lady began during her visit to this country in 1889, and was renewed in 1906. The account has been fully published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vols. vi. and xxiii., and an abbreviated version of some of the incidents there recorded can be referred to in my book The Survival of Man.

It will be convenient, however, to explain here that some of the communicators on the other side, like Mr. Myers and Dr. Richard Hodgson, both now deceased, have appeared to utilise many mediums; and that to allow for possible sophistication by normal mental idiosyncrasies, and for any natural warping due to the physiological mechanism employed, or to the brain-deposit from which selection has to be made, we write the name of the ostensible communicator in each case with a suffix—like Myers_P, Myers_V, etc.; meaning by this kind of designation to signify that part of the Myers-like intelligence which operates through Mrs. Piper or through Mrs. Verrall, etc., respectively.

We know that communication must be hampered, and its form largely determined, by the unconscious but inevitable influence of a transmitting mechanism, whether that be of a merely mechanical or of a physiological character. Every artist knows that he must adapt the expression of his thought to his material, and that what is possible with one 'medium,' even in the artist's sense of the word, is not possible with another.

And when the method of communication is purely mental or telepathic, we are assured that the communicator 'on the other side' has to select from and utilise those ideas and channels which represent the customary mental scope of the medium; though by practised skill and ingenuity they can be woven into fresh patterns and be made to convey to a patient and discriminating interpreter the real intention of the communicator's thought. In many such telepathic communications the physical form which the emergent message takes is that of automatic or semiconscious writing or speech; the manner of the utterance being fairly normal, but the substance of it appearing not to emanate from the writer's or speaker's own mind: though but very seldom is either the subject-matter or the language of a kind quite beyond the writer's or speaker's normal capabilities.

In other cases, when the medium becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communicator's separate intelligence may become stronger and the sophistication less. A still further stage is reached when by special effort what is called telergy is employed, i.e. when physiological mechanism is more directly utilised without telepathic operation on the mind. And a still further step away from personal sophistication, though under extra mechanical difficulties, is attainable in telekinesis or what appears to be the direct movement of inorganic matter. To this last category—though in its very simplest form—must belong, I suppose, the percussive sounds known as raps.

To understand the intelligent tiltings of a table in contact with human muscles is a much simpler matter. It is crude and elementary, but in principle it does not appear to differ from automatic writing; though inasmuch as the code and the movements are so simple, it appears to be the easiest of all to beginners. It is so simple that it has been often employed as a sort of game, and so has fallen into disrepute. But its possibilities are not to be ignored for all that; and in so far as it enables a feeling of more direct influence—in so far as the communicator feels able himself to control the energy necessary, instead of having to entrust his message to a third person—it is by many communicators preferred. More on this subject will be found in Chapters [VIII of Part II] and [XIV of Part III.]

Before beginning an historical record of the communications and messages received from or about my son since his death, I think it will be well to prelude it by—

A message which arrived before the event;

A selection of subsequent communications bearing on and supplementing
this message;

One of the evidential episodes, selected from subsequent communications,
which turned out to be exactly verifiable.

A message which arrived before the event;
A selection of subsequent communications bearing on and supplementing
this message;
One of the evidential episodes, selected from subsequent communications,
which turned out to be exactly verifiable.

A few further details about these things, and another series of messages of evidential importance, will be found in that Part of the Proceedings of the S.P.R. which is to be published about October 1916.

If the full discussion allowed to these selected portions appears rather complicated, an unstudious reader may skip the next three chapters, on a first reading, and may learn about the simpler facts in their evolutionary or historical order.

CHAPTER II
THE 'FAUNUS' MESSAGE

Preliminary Facts

Raymond joined the Army in September 1914; trained near Liverpool and Edinburgh with the South Lancashires, and in March 1915 was sent to the trenches in Flanders. In the middle of July 1915 he had a few days' leave at home, and on the 20th returned to the Front.