Psychic phenomena have this peculiarity, that identical assertions are made in far distant places through mediums who have never known each other,—a fact which would tend to demonstrate that, running through many declarations which apparently contradict each other, there is a certain uniformity of action on the part of the intelligent occult power.
In 1890 I also read the work of Dr. Antoine Cros, The Problem, in which I also found astonishing agreements between the ideas of this author and those of our Unknown Inspirer,—among others this: that man himself creates his Paradises and becomes that to which he has aspired.
We should always seek the simplest explanation of the facts, without desiring to find the occult in them, and above all without looking for spirits everywhere, but also without wishing, under any circumstances, to reject the intervention of unknown agents and deny the facts when they cannot be explained.
It is rather curious to remark that if we compare the dictations given by the tables and the other so-called mediumistic phenomena with observations made in conditions of natural or hypnotic somnambulism, we find the same phases of incoherence, hesitation, error, lucidity and supernormal excitation of the faculties.
On the other hand, the supernormal excitation of the faculties neither explains the cases of prediction nor the citation of unknown facts. In the case of many telepathic or other phenomena every explanation limps that excludes the intervention of external intelligences. But it is still impossible to formulate a theory. There exists a gap to be filled by new discoveries.[79]
I will add to these conclusions two short extracts from a letter which M. Goupil wrote me on the 13th of April, 1899, and from another one on the 1st of June, in the same year.
1. Replying to the request which you address to your readers, I will say that I have never observed telepathic cases, but that I have for a long time been experimenting with the phenomena called Spiritualistic, of which I was a simple analyst. I have come to no conclusions as to explanatory theories. However, I consider it probable that there exists powerful intelligences other than human that intervene under certain circumstances. My opinion is based upon a large number of very curious personal occurrences. In my opinion, we have not in these phenomena the appearance of simple coincidences, but of circumstances willed, foreseen, and produced by an intelligent x.
2. Of the ensemble—of all that I have seen—there is simultaneously the reflex action of the experimenters and an independent personality. This hypothesis seems to me true, while I should make at the same time this reservation, that the personality or spirit is not a finished being, with limitations of form, such as an invisible man would have, going, coming and executing commissions for human beings. I have glimpses of a grander and vaster system.
Take a handful of the ocean, and you have water.
Take a handful of the atmosphere, and you have air.