BY CORA L. V. RICHMOND.
From between ten and eleven years of age I have been endowed with gifts and favored with experiences that, I am well assured, are very exceptional, and that, until quite recently, have not been admitted to the realm of psychical investigation, philosophical discussion, or even human credence. Lately, however, there have been found a sufficient number of well authenticated facts in similar lines of experience to warrant the investigation and classification of them (if possible) under a modern name, “Psychic Research,” and under a well established and not so recent one, Spiritualism.
I am not intending to discuss these subjects, per se, nor to endeavor to classify or explain the experiences I am about to relate. They are experiences, as real as any of those in my human or mundane existence; indeed, if I were called upon to decide that one is real and the other illusion, I should say without hesitation that these, and similar ones throughout my lifetime, are the real, and the ordinary mundane experiences unreal.
At the age above referred to I was, without any seeking, and without any surrounding circumstances to “suggest” such a state, taken possession of (entranced) by intelligences, distinct personalities in thought, word, and action, who spoke through my organism, unfolded and educated my mind, in fact became my mental and spiritual instructors. The public discourses and teachings given under these conditions are well known to many of the readers of The Arena, as these labors are the work of a lifetime.
It is not of this public work that I am constrained to write; but I may as well say here that I have had no other teachers, no other instructors, and have pursued no course of study or reading of human books; those whom I call my guides and guardians have been my teachers. During the time that these outside intelligences are controlling and speaking through my organism I am wholly unconscious of what is passing in human life and wholly unaware of that which is being uttered through my lips. I am also unaware of the lapse of time.
It may be best for me to here declare that I am not, in the usual sense, peculiar, nor was I different in my childhood from other children, save as each differs from the other. I was very diffident, and—not using the word in the psychical sense—sensitive. I was not given to morbid states or to the “dreaming of dreams.” Perhaps I was imaginative; most children are; and I loved fairy tales, but not unduly. This is simply to show that there was no abnormal condition of mind or body to produce the supernormal results that I have referred to.
I ought also to say that I never made the slightest preparation for the discourses and poems given through my lips, many of which, as the reader may know, were listened to by able and thoughtful minds, and from them received the highest praise. I tell this, not boastingly, but with humble gratitude that I have been made the instrument of giving the message of immortality to the world.
My own experiences during this period of entrancement, or while in the supernormal state, may be of peculiar interest to the reader, since they seem to be almost unique. While passing into this state I experience no physical sensations that are describable; a sense of being set free, of passing into a larger realm,—not of being transported or going anywhere,—is all that I can ever recall as sensation. Before I have time or opportunity to think how I feel, I am in the other state. Then I see, but I now know it is perception more than sight; I sometimes experience that which we call hearing in the human state, but I am fully aware; perception supersedes the senses.
Those whom I meet are individualities; many are friends known to me in the form before they passed from the mortal state; many are those who were unknown to me personally, only known by name and fame; and many I have never known until they revealed themselves to me in this “inner,” “higher,” other realm. When returning to outward consciousness, I often see, or remember as sight, such visions of surpassing loveliness that no language, no gift of art, even with genius-portraiture, could describe or picture them. These scenes and visions are associated with individuals who exist in that state, and, apparently, are objective; yet I am fully aware that they illustrate or depict the states and tastes of the individuals with whom they are seen, and are not organic physical forms, but psychic projections of the individual spirits. These forms and scenes readily pass and change according to the state of the one seeing them, or according to the state of the individual with whom they are associated. The “sphere” of a spirit, or of spirits, is the state or condition, not the environment.