Do the Dead Survive?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 239, 5 January 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

Do the Dead Survive?

Sir Oliver Lodge has written what is, perhaps, the most extraordinary booh of the war. * His son, Raymond, was killed in Flanders in September, 19L">, and Sir Oliver eiaims that he and his family have been in frequent communication with the boy since that time. The most absorbing part of his book is taken up with the record of long conversations between the living and the dead. Not only Sir Oliver, but Lady Lodge and other members of the family, have visited medium after medium "anonymously," in order to guard against any suggestion of "faking'' in the "messages. In the result the have been such as to appeal to the human sense of the ridiculous. But the issues at stake are so large that one quenches the sense of tho ridiculous and reads on. The book is a kind of Blue-book, and one has to lay aside alike one's incredulity and one's credulity and face the evidence. It may be that there is nothing at all in Spiritualism : it may be, on the other hand, that after many ludicrous failures it may lead men to discoveries as real as, 'and infinitely more important than, the discovery of flying. It is ono of those questions in regard to which most of us must l>e content for some, time yet to preserve the attitude of the open mind. There is not much evidence in Sir Oliver Lodge's book that will convince the sceptical. One or two points, ho.wevv>r, taken together, have a certain evidential interest. One is a prophecy of Raymond's death made at a seance in America a month before lie died. "Myers says you take the part of the poet," ran a sentence in tho message, "and he will act as Faunus . . . Ask Yerrall; sho will also understand." Sir Oliver could not make'head or tail of the message, and so he asked Mrs. Verral the meaning of it. She immediately referred Sir Oliver to that famous ode in Horace in which the, poet speaks ol himself as having been almost killed bv the blow of a falling tree, had not Fa.unus lightened the blow. This interpretation reached Sir Oliver more than a week before tho blow of his son's death fell on him. STRANGE UTTERANCES. Shortly after Raymond's death Lady Lodge had an "anonymous" sitting witht he medium, Mr. A Vout Peters, and messages came about the boy from a ''control," or second personality, called "Moonstone." After "Moonstone" (had described lfciymond alnd given "identifying messages," the trance-speech went on: The boy—l call them all boys because 1 was over a hundred when 1 lived here and they are all boys to me —he says, lie is here, but he says: "Hitherto it hag been a thing of tho head, now 1 am come over it is a thira of tba heart." What is more (here Peters jumped up in his chair, vigorously, snapped his lingers excitedly, and spoke loudly)-

"Good God! how father will be able to speak out! much firmer than he has ever done, because it will touch our hearts."

At the same sitting, a group photograph of which the Lodge family knew nothing was mentioned, and at a later sitting with a different medium some details of his photograph were given. A copy of the photograph of Raymond and several fellow-officers ni'timately came from the front, and confirmed to Koino extent the description given by "Raymond," through one of tho "controls." This and tho Faunus prophecy are perhaps, the two most important pieces of evidence in Sir Oliver s book. There* are a great many other things, however, which are only less interesting because they can 1* explained aivav as the results of thought-trans-ferenca. One of the most remarkable of these concerns a '-sitting" jwhhch. two members of the Lodge family arranged to have with a medium about noon one day in London. At noon on

SIR OLIVER LODGE'S NEW BOOK.

(By ROBERT LYND in the London Daily News.)

the same day their brother A!ec, in Birmingham, suddenly carried off some ol his sisters for a brief table sitting, "and the test which he then and there suggested was to ask Raymond to get 'Feda, in London to say tho word 'Honolulu.' " Feda being the "childcontrol" of the London medium with whom the others were holding a sitting. The sufficiently remarkable result was that Feda spoke- the word. Sho told the sitters that Raymond wanted his sister to play. "He wanted to know," she said, "whether you could play Hulu—Honolulu?" THE LIFE BEYOND. Sir Oliver has boldly included in his book certain descriptions of life in tho other world, which have no value as evidence, and the significance of which ho is inclined to discount. One cannot help reading them, however, with nn interest even stronger than one's inc-1 ination to ridicule. In one of these- conversations, it Ls Feda, speaking for Raymond, who communicates with Sir Oliver—"o. J. L.," as he is called in the quotation Ikjlow. Here are some curious passages referring to the life after death :

He says —My body is very (.imilat to the ono I had before. I pinch myself sometimes to see if it's real, and it is, but it doesn't seem to hurt as much as when I pinched tht< flesh body. ... Oh, there's one thing, he says, I have never seen anybody bleed. O.J.L.—Wouldn't he bleed if ho pricked himself?" He never tried it. But as yet he has seen no blood at all.

O.J.L.—Has he got ears and eyes? Yes, yes, and eyelashes and eyebrows, exactly the same, and a tongue and teeth. He has got a new tooth now in place of another ono ho had—one that wasn't quite right then. Ho has got it right, and a good tooth has come in place of the one that had gone. Again:

There are men here, and there are women here. 1 don't think that they stand to each other quite the same as they did on tfre earth plane, but they seem to have the same feeling to each other, with a different expression of it. Thre don't seem to be any children born here. People are sent into the physical boSy to have children on the earth plane; they don't have them here.

And a passage almost intolerably ludicrous follows:

People here try to provide everything that is wanted. A chap came over- the other day, who would have a cigar. "That's finished them," he thought. He means he thought thev would never be able to provide that. But there are laboratories over here, and they manufacture all gortv of things in them. Not like you do, out of solid matter, but out of essences, and ethers, and gases. It's not tho same as on the earth plane, but they wero table to manufacture what looked like a cigar. He didn't try one himself, because he didn't care to: you know he wouldn't want to. But the other chap jumped at it. But when he began to smoke it, he had four altogether; and now he doesn't look at one.

It would be infair to suggest, however, that tire entire aecunt of the future life is of this seemingly-absurd character. There are also exalted visions rominunieated. It is claimed even thta the dead boy has seen Christ. In any ease, it is obviously the aim of the alleged communicators to paint the life nfer death not as something terrifyingly new, but as a natural continuation of the life here.

* "Raymond, or Life and Death. By Sir Oliver Lodge. Mcthuen. 10s 6d net.