He saw "supernormal" faculties - one of many terms he invented - as evidence that spirit
operates beyond the body and therefore survives it. Telepathy and telaesthesia
(clairvoyance) are “survivals from the powers which that spirit once exercised
in a transcendental world” [2] ). “So soon as man is steadily
conceived as dwelling in this wider range of powers, his survival of death
becomes an almost inevitable corollary” [3]
He thought that "psychical excursions" in which an aspect of the self travels beyond the body and may be perceived by others are primary evidence that consciousness is not confined to a physical vehicle and will therefore survive death. To refer to what we might call an OBE or astral projection, Myers coined the scary term “psychorrhagy,” and referred to a propensity for this experience as a “psychorrhagic diathesis” [4] . At the high end this might be an ecstasy giving access to a spiritual world and to “communities higher than any which this planet knows” [5]
Myers described “self-projections” as “the one definitive act which it seems as though a man might perform equally well before and after bodily death” [6]
The first major public work by Myers, with Edmund Gurney and Frank Podmore, was titles Phantasms of the Living. Based on thousands of cases collected and analyzed by the Society for Psychical Research, this huge book was devoted to "apparitions of persons still living", received through any or all of the senses. Myers declares in his introduction that "we have no wish either to mystify or startle mankind". Yet the sheer volume of first-hand testimony of encounters with "ghosts of the living" would startle many audiences..
Myers says the authors are not aiming at any “paradoxical reversion of established scientific conclusions” but rather “working in the main track of discovery” and “assailing a problem which, though strange and hard does yet stand next in order among the new adventures on which science must needs set forth” [7] Trying to walk a middle path between the Spiritualists and the evolutionists, Myers continues, “We held it incumbent upon us… to conduct our inquiries in the ‘dry light' of a dispassionate search for truth” [8]
Some of my favorite cases involve experiences
in the hypnagogic zone, between sleep and awake, sometimes when a visitor steps
from a dream into the dreamer's physical space. Thus a minister from Bradford,
the Rev. E.H.Sugden, reports a vivid dream of a person he knows well. Waking
suddenly, he finds the man in his room. "I saw him in the light of early morning, standing by my
bedside in the very attitude of the dream." The minister gives him a good
kick and he vanishes. [9]
Myers' published oeuvre spanned a wide spectrum. He published poetry and essays on classical literature and a fascinating short autobiography that was unfortunately bowdlerized before publication by his widow. [10] Then there is all he has to tell us from the other side of death, especially the scripts recorded via two remarkable women mediums, Winifred Coombe- Tennant ("Mrs. Willett") and Geraldine Cummins. In his communications with Winifred, Myers gives the impression of a well-organized Club of psychic researchers working indefatigably to deliver evidence of the survival of physical death - from the other side of death. [11] Via Geraldine, Myers authored books describing several stages of the soul' s transitions beyond the physical plane, a comprehensive Western Bardo.
I feel tremendous affinity for "Fred" Myers across time, and gratitude for his work, which continued after death. While I was rereading Phantasms of the Living I made a comment about it to a friend who exclaimed, "Those Victorian ghost hunters really rock". I couldn't resist fooling around with an AI image generator to see what that might look like.
No comments:
Post a Comment