|
Frederic Myers - Proof Of Life After Death2. The Cross-CorrespondencesWithin a few weeks of Myers's death in 1901, some very strange communications began to be received by psychics in England, the United States and India. They came through automatic writing to a total of a dozen psychics and continued for a period of thirty years and then later by his fellow leaders of the Society for Psychical Research, Professor Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney as they too died. What was strangest about them was that they made no sense. Or perhaps they did - for they were so mysteriously worded that it almost seemed their meaning was being deliberately concealed. And most of them were signed, "Myers." In all more than three thousand scripts were transmitted over thirty years. Some of them were more than forty typed pages long. But although the text of the messages seemed indecipherable, the 'instructions' which often accompanied them were clear. These instructions repeated a number of themes. The 'script' should be sent to a particular person, who would turn out to be one of the other psychics involved. Or it should be sent to the Society for Psychical Research. And that although its content may seem to be senseless, it was in reality anything but: it was an attempt by the deseased communicator to prove his continued existence. These instructions and explanations were, in fact, frequent and explicit. "Record the bits," wrote Myers, "and when fitted they will make the whole." And again, "I will give the words between you that neither alone can read but together they will give the clue." It was some time, however, before the people involved fully realized what was happening. When they did, they gathered the fragments together and found that they had communications which were clear, coherent and continuous. Most of these scripts consisted of references to and quotations from both classical and modern literature. Some were so obscure that only a scolar, and a specialized one at that, would recognize them. The intention was to make these scripts seem random and pointless to the individual psychics, in order to avoid giving clues to the train of thought behind them. They would only become meaningful and show evidence of design when pieced together by an independent investigator. The interest lies in the question: Who selected them to convey a train a thought which could not be deduced from any one person's script? The answer was the dead communicator. Myers was trying to prove that the mind of the medium could not be the creator of the message: how could it be when the message was only a fragment which made no sense unless linked with other, equally 'meaningless' fragments. Myers was quite explicit about what he was doing. He was causing a dozen psychics, in various widely separated parts of the world, not only to refer to the same topic - often a highly obscure one - but to do so in ways which were complementary. Like the parts of a jigsaw puzzle, these 'pieces' did more than refer to the same theme; they did so in ways which were intricately intertwined. Those who studied and tried to interpret these 'jigsaw puzzles' called them cross-correspondences. The simplest case involved the repetition of particular themes drawn from various language and literary sources. On April 24, 1907, while in trance in the United States, an American medium named Mrs Piper three times uttered the word "Thantos," a Greek word meaning 'death,' despite the fact that she had no knowledge of Greek. Such repetitions were often a signal that cross-correspondences were about to begin. But it had begun already. About a week earlier, in India, Mrs Holland had done some automatic writing, and in that script the following enigmatic communication had appeared: "Mors [Latin for death]. And with that the shadow of death fell upon his limbs." On April 29th, in England, Mrs Verrall, writing automatically, produced the words: "Warmed both hands before the fire of life. It fades and I am ready to depart." This is a quotation from a poem by nineteenth-century English poet, Walter Landor. Mrs Verrall next drew a triangle. This could be Delta, the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. She had always considered it a symbol of death. She then wrote: "Manibus date lilia plenis" [give lilies with full hands]. This is a quotation from Virgil's Aeneid in which an early death is foretold. This was followed by the statement: "Come away, come away, Pallida mors [Latin for pale death]," and, finally, an explicit statement from the communicator: "You have got the word plainly written all along in your writing. Look back." The 'word,' or 'theme,' was quite obvious when these fragments, given in the same month to three mediums thousands of miles apart, were put together and scrutinized. And in view of the lifelong interest of the communicator, it was certainly an appropriate theme. Death. This gives some indication of the complexity of even the simplest cross-correspondence. And most of those who have studied them have concluded that they were exactly what they claimed to be: an experiment conducted from beyond the grave to establish that Myers still lived. Myers pursued this task with a diligence characteristic of him in life. From 1901 to 1932, more than three thousand scripts were communicated. Receiving and interpreting such a vast body of material was often burdensome to those involved. But for Myers, the whole enterprise was a source of anguish. He had survived physical death, as others do, and now he was desperately eager to communicate this fact in a fashion which would convince his still living colleagues. But, because he had no body, he had to use the minds of others. He had to struggle to 'get through.' And in the scripts he sent, he refers again and again to the suffering that this cost him. "Oh, if I could only leave you the proof that I continue. Yet another attempt to run the blockade - to strive to get a message through. How can I make your hand docile enough - how can I convince them? I am trying, amid unspeakable difficulties. It is impossible for me to know how much of what I send reaches you. I feel as if I had presented my credentials - reiterated the proofs of my identity in a wearisomely repetitive manner. The nearest simile I can find to express the difficulty of sending a message is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass, which blurs sight and deadens sound, dicatating feebly to a reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary. A feeling of terrible impotence burdens me. Oh it is a dark road." Myers, for all the grand scope of his interests, was a very modest man. And he was also a very systematic one. These two qualities perfectly explained the style and timing of his after-death communications. He had first to prove to his friends that he still lived and he devoted thirty years to that. But what was of even greater interest, once that was established, was his description of what it was like to be dead. Myers, always the scholar, was not about to run hastily into a discussion about such a momentous subject. He was very systematic and cautious about that too. He had been dead for nearly twenty-three years before, at last, he started to communicate on that most mysterious of all geographies - the world of the dead. Myers was not, of course, the first to describe life after death. Plenty of other communicators had done that in spiritualist seances, but although their reports had at first been examined with fascinated anticipation, thay were soon dismissed with snorts of derision. For Heaven, the afterlife, had always been something very special to man - a transcendent paradise where the pain and struggle of this life would be surmounted and the mysteries of human life and death would at last be revealed in the very abode of God himself. But what was reported was quite something else indeed. For what the communicators described was nothing but an earth-life. It was terribly beautiful, and the 'dead' were very happy, and active too. What exactly did they do there? Well, pretty much what they had always done - they played golf, for example, and drank Scotch. They had sexual adventures and they smoked cigars. They played cards, lived in houses like those they had occupied on earth, and even went to work! Now this, obviously, could not be Heaven: it was clearly spiritualist self-delusion. Myers, however, was to show that these communicators were right - at least in part. For it had never occurred to the critics that if men were going to transcend their earth-lives after death and move onwards to a 'divine' realm, then it would certainly be a kindness to them them to start them off with something familiar - to match the lives and beliefs they were familiar with on earth.
return to top
|
|
|
|
