Glimpses Of The Next State.Pdf - Spiritualists' National Union

10And remember, those who possess the gift of mediumship are not the only members ofsociety who fraud. Let us look the matter squarely in the face. Every minister of religion whorepeats the Apostles’ Creed and yet does not firmly believe in the birth of Christ from a pureVirgin, His resurrection in His natural body, and His ascension into heaven in the same, is a fraud.Every physician who pays an unnecessary visit to a patient and charges for it is a fraud; everybarrister who accepts fees for going into court on behalf of a client and does not attend is a fraud.Fraud is rampant in trade; in the shipping interest; in municipalities; and indeed, in somegovernments of the-call Christian countries. It is always outrageously apparent during war, whenstrict supervision has to be relaxed; and in peace it is only limited by the amount of supervisionexercised. It is idle therefore, to talk about fraud as if it were peculiar to mediums.Some of the worst frauds, in my opinion, are those who profess to be able to tell us “how thething is done”, who account for every manifestation by normal jugglery. These persons requiregood looking after. It is becoming a lucrative profession to write books describing how allphenomena of the séance room can be produced by normal means; for such works are popular.One word against spiritistic manifestation has more weight at the present time than fifty words inits favour, and the large majority of people in the Western world are antagonistic to any new ideawhich implies that there are things about us we cannot see, influences that we cannot class, beingswhom we cannot sense, by our know organs. A man who is known in his suburban villa only to histradesmen and a few neighbours, and who would otherwise die in the obscurity his social rank andofficial importance entitle him to, is called a “savant” if he writes a book calling into question thescientific observation of a Crookes or the truthfulness and honour of a Stainton Moses. I havebeen told by friends that such books are useful, as they lay before us various tricks which mayassist us in detecting fraud in the apparently genuine manifestations of mediums. I deny it. Mostof the plausible explanations are simply efforts of the imagination, and not only do no good, butactually throw us off the scent. In my investigations I have not been assisted by any of thesearmchair detectives. Nothing that they write about has tallied with what I have seen. Bydiverting our attention from the real evils of spiritism they are a public nuisance. For a concreteinstance of the foolish suggestions pout forward by one of these ignorant “know-alls”, I would pointto a recent work in which there is a description of how slate-writing is performed by trickery. Thewriter says the sitter brings his own double slate, and the psychic deftly inserts a small piece ofchalk (for pencil) previously prepared by being mixed with steel filings. While the slate is beingheld under the table or elsewhere the psychic moves the pencil by means of a magnet concealed uphis sleeve, and does it as in mirror writing. Now, mind, he does not say” This is how I think itmight be done”; that would be foolish, but not criminal. He says “This is how it is done”. Hestates it as a fact. This statement of fact is untrue; such a thing cannot be done. Even with anElectro magnet in open sight it would be impossible to write twenty legible words; with a mansitting near you and watching you it is not possible to write five legible words without detection.It is of such stuff as this that books telling us “how the thing is done” are written. When Idipped into them, I said to myself: “Is this all? If so, nothing that I have seen has been explained.”But these writings pay well; they obtain for the authors a reputation for superior astuteness, andbring them into a social atmosphere above their level; for the majority of educated people areanxious not to be disturbed in their amiable doctrines of a Day of Judgement and a fiery materialhell in store for those who do not agree with them.In saying this I do not mean to include those bonafide conjurors who really believe the wholeof spiritism is a farce, and are prepared to go to trouble and expense to prove their case; whoundertake to repeat the phenomena, and who spend laborious days in practising juggling trickswhich they think, sincerely, will account for the phenomena of the séance room. Such men as Mr.William Marriott in England and Mr. David Abbott in the United States are of much use toinvestigators. I am referring to arm-chair writers, who evolve their explanations solely from theirimagination.Psychics, or mediums are, after all, only telegraph offices, by which we can, when conditionsare suitable, be brought into touch with the next state of consciousness. The gift of truemediumship, like that of poetry, art and invention, is entirely independent of character. At firstsight it would appear as fitting and proper that this divine gift of seeing into the next state of being