WebSadhu

An instance of this was experienced by me in an old Quaker Meeting House in Sussex, where Friends had met for worship through several centuries.

One Sunday morning, I was listening to a Friend who was speaking with sincerity and simplicity, when I noticed immediately behind him a very tall Quaker of such outstanding force of personality, that he seemed to pervade the whole assembly. His face was weather beaten and lean; it gave the impression of strength won through suffering; he had evidently been a man of persevering effort and endurance. He wore the Quaker garb of a past age, and yet seemed to be inspiring the present speaker, who was a man of high quality of character.

Another man, wearing the tall hat of the Quakers of old, was also visible to me. An elderly woman was seated near the speaker, also belonging to a bygone age; she brought a feeling of serenity and peace. In fact, the whole atmosphere of that Meeting House was full of quiet power, created primarily, I felt, by persons long since gone, yet whose spirits came and went amongst the present worshippers.

George Fox had been often there, and a special chair in which he had sat is still to be seen in its place.

I have a pleasing picture in my mind of that other old Meeting House particularly associated with George Fox; I refer to Jordans. It is situated in a quiet and picturesque spot, far away from all sound of modern traffic.

One Sunday morning, I sat among the worshippers there, and I remember listening to an elderly man whose name was wellknown in the Society of Friends; he was seated where the Elders usually gather. His face bore traces of recent suffering; his eyes were tired; but when he raised them, they held that light which is peculiar to those who have absorbed the Quaker teaching through generations.

After a prolonged silence, he rose quietly, and led the Meeting in prayer; his words were as if inspired.

Whilst he was still seated, I had ‘seen’ close beside him the spirit-form of an elderly woman, of much the same build as himself. Her face was shining with that inner light, and her eyes, too, had that penetrating spiritual glance. She remained close beside him whilst he prayed, and I was convinced at the time that his prayer was inspired by that spiritual presence.

As we stood in little groups outside the building later, I mentioned this incident to a member of an old Quaker family. She immediately recognised the woman as the Elder’s beloved sister who had recently died.

Would not this vision suggest that many of the living are inspired by both the spirit and the words of those whom we term ‘dead’?

Now let us look at a lighter aspect of the same idea; for psychic perception ranges over all phases of experience; since it is associated with life and persons, that is what we should expect.

Here are some instances of its functioning at several concerts at which I was present, and during a play in a theatre at two of the concerts and at the theatre, there was a kind of poignancy traceable; the remaining one has a touch of piquancy.

At one concert, the platform was occupied by more than one artist, the central figure being best known to the audience; it was, however, to the pianist that my attention was chiefly drawn. As she played, there came on the scene the psychic figure of a man; he carried himself well, and appeared in full evening dress, the waistcoat cut very low. He might have been a man of thirty-five or forty; he was certainly a person of distinction.

At the back of the stage hung a heavy plain coloured curtain which showed up this man very distinctly.

He stood immediately behind the piano, a little to the side, one hand rested lightly on some large object with which he was familiar in come other setting. The hands were remarkably white, and beautifully shaped; his movements were slow and deliberate, his touch particularly gentle. He was himself exceedingly musical, and was watching the pianist with rapt interest.

There was an intimate link between these two, one that was recognised by them both, yet one that had never been expressed in words. His link was more than one of musical interest; it was based upon a deep regard, out of which might spring a real and enduring affection. The restraint of the man was very marked, as if he had deliberately trained himself to hid this. It would seem that he dared not deflect her attention from her musical nature. And how easily it was swayed by passionate emotion.

She seemed to have known her family many years ago, when they were in rather impoverished circumstances, and the family was not a small one. I saw in a flash a big room with the family group, early Victorian in every sense, and this daughter with a rather striking profile, and a proud tilt of the head.

I had almost forgotten the music for the moment; she was now playing, with apparent feeling, ‘The Gentle Maid’. For one moment, the two seemed intimately united, and I felt that she, too, must be seeing in memory scenes from their past lives. At that point I left them, enwrapped by the spell that held them both for a few fleeting moments.

Another scene concerns a pianist whose movements I watched with absorbed interest. As his small white hands moved lightly over the notes, his head sank deep into his chest, so that he almost embraced the keyboard.

What memories flitted before his mind/ there seemed to appear before my vision a picture of a small boy of some ten or eleven years or less, whose love of music took him frequently in and out of an old cathedral church; so old, that its walls were crumbling beneath the centuries, blackened with the smoke of many chimneys. At the west entrance was a low narrow rounded archway, under which one must bend the head to enter; above it was a large plain window. Past the doorway ran a narrow street, three or four feet wide, curving abruptly and disappearing.

Within the church, one looked far long a narrow low side-aisle; the old wooden seats had beautifully carved ends shaped somewhat like a mitre, and as they figured one

behind the other, they gave the strange impression of soldiers lined up in single file. At the extreme end, the figures of two men in miniature moved and spoke with one another, one an older and taller man.

Close by this old cathedral ran a river; the city was dark and ill-lighted, as if buried in a remote past. This city was in some distant part of Europe, as unlike the musician’s present surroundings as could be imagined.

Had his mind run over, as he played, the times when he, perhaps, stole into that dimly­lighted church to hear the organ? And was his home within sound of the cathedral bells? Was he recalling hs boyhood and his youth? For at one moment of his playing, his whole face changed, his back straightened, and he took on the appearance of a youth.

A light hand rested for a second upon his shoulder, and the spirit-form of an elderly lady in black bent slightly towards him, as he played a sonata which was surely familiar to them both, and recalled the budding genius of the youth she loved.

Their hands and fingers were alike, and she would spend many an hour in making the finest lacework; she, too, had the artist’s gift of creation. There was a deep attachment between the mother and son, and a sense of loneliness and remoteness from a much­loved home and country pervaded the man as he now appeared.

One thing united the various stages of his life, and that was his intense passion for music. The other memories might come and go, but this lifelong devotion to his art would remain with him to the end.

The next vision was from a box in a large crowded theatre, where a popular play was in progress. I knew only one of the actors, and nothing of his personal history.

Although the play was being magnificently acted, I was aware that the cast was sharply divided into two opposing factions, at variance with each other. This could not have been detected in any other way than by psychic intuition; and when I went to the green room later, my actor-friend told me that this division in their company was only too true.

A more interesting incident was the psychic vision of a young girl on the stage at intervals during the play; she was watching the performance with the keenest interest. There was a look of extreme delicacy about her, and when I mentioned this to the actor, he was deeply moved. She had been, he told me, his leading lady, and was greatly beloved by the whole company. She had remained with them as long as was possible, but had recently died from a lingering illness.

As I saw her, she was no ghostlike apparition, but was following the play and the performance of each actor with critical appreciation.

The actor to whom I spoke took the idea of such appearances quite naturally, so I had no hesitation in questioning him about the girl whom I had seen.

At the third concert, the sole performer was an elderly pianist of some renown; he was playing on this occasion the Sonata in B flat minor, by Chopin.

During the Scherzo movement, I saw with the inner vision a very beautiful figure of a young woman standing immediately behind him, wearing an old-fashioned dress which reached to her feet. The low-cut bodice was perfectly plain, and made in material of fine texture, the skirt falling around her in billowy folds; it was of light colouring, and I saw no pattern upon it, her fine golden hair hung in ringlets around her long and slender neck. Her hands were on her hips, with the fingers pointing backwards; her chest was thrust forward, as though she were studying a pose in deportment. She was stepping lightly, pointing her toes, her head turned over her left shoulder in the direction of the pianist.

During the Funeral March, she sank into an armchair, her head drooping, and her whole pose full of dejection. Upon her lap lay a profusion of flowers untied and loose. There seemed to have been a close association between these two at some time. I do not know in what relation they stood to each other; possibly, she had been a favourite pupil, or a dancer whose career he had followed with interest.

Some critics might say that with regard to the three pianists, they might have been remembering what I perceived, and that I picked up these memories. No definite pronouncement can be made, because there are so many examples which would fit either case, appearances of the dead or memories of the living.

We must remember that where those who have passed on are concerned, the memory of them is sometimes intensely vivid, and that a sensitive can ‘see’ other peoples’ memories exteriorized.

It would be better, therefore, not to state with too great certainty which category these examples fall into.

I remember a conversation which I had with Miss Moberly (joint authoress of An Adventure) in which she remarked, ‘There is a very fine line indeed between our ordinary normal experience and that strange psychic perception which takes one into a quite other field.’ I answered, ‘But how can we know for certain of which order these things are?’ to which she replied, ‘Do you not think that we who have this ‘other’ perception have at the same time some acute sense which accompanies it, and which becomes more reliable as experience grows? In fact this kind of discrimination can be trained.’

The whole of my experience in the psychic field goes to show that this is so. Throughout my work, I have found myself increasingly able to make this discrimination. In my own particular case, discernment is necessary to discover whether thoughts and ideas that I am receiving from a communicator on the Other Side are consistent throughout. It is possible that in the process of transmission, certain intrusions emanating from my own mind may creep in.

The matter is not a simple one. Even in ordinary conversation, it is not easy to draw sharp lines of demarcation between the ideas presented by different people. All of us are very open to suggestion in our intercourse, and our ideas certainly impinge one upon another.

If a strongly integrated and concentrated personality is communicating - whether in ordinary conversation or as a spirit-communicator - his ideas are more likely to keep in line and reach the recipient unmixed; provided that a sympathetic atmosphere is created through which ideas may flow.

The ‘fine line’ discussed with Miss Moberly may be largely a matter of tuning-in to other vibrations, and the adjustment that has to be made needs to be very exact. Any failure here makes for confusion and error. It may be impossible to describe how one steps across that ‘fine line’; and when I pressed Miss Moberly further, and even offered some kind of explanation of my own, her final remark was ‘When we know all there is to know about higher mathematics, we can, perhaps, proffer an explanation.’

My psychic experiences at Versailles (related in the following chapter) coincided with Miss Moberly’s in some degree, though I visited it many years after she had done so, and at a different time of year.

It appears that she was there when the place was highly charged with a psychic replica of the past.

Why places and houses re-awaken, as it were, to the call of a past age, or past personal history, I do not know; but I have stayed in old houses where this undoubtedly seemed to occur.

When we were discussing the phenomena to be seen at Versailles, she and I both remarked upon the strange feeling that accompanied the swift change of scene from present surroundings to those of a bygone time.

Every time I experience this, I feel this strangeness in the process of shifting from the present age to other earlier times and periods in history.

This sense of strangeness lies, I think, in the contrast of outward setting, such as dress and surrounding, rather than in the experience itself.