THE INVENTION OF ECTOPLASM
THE WINTER OF 1892 howled across the Atlantic coast of North America like an ill-tempered spirit, spitting snow across the landscape. In hard-hit New York, where a seemingly perpetual crystalline haze veiled the air, horses struggled along Fifth Avenue, heads down against the wind, wading through a treacherous mire of slush over ice.
George Pellew, a thirty-two-year-old philosophy student and writer, was among that season’s many victims. He was riding along an icy path in Central Park one bleak February day when his horse lost its footing. Pellew died in the resulting tumbling fall.
Dick Hodgson came down from Boston for the funeral, mourning another friend gone too young. The Australian had been on a lecture visit to New York when he’d met Pellew, an outspoken skeptic on the subject of psychical research. Hodgson enjoyed a good argument, and they’d struck up a friendship, as much because of Pellew’s prickly stance as in spite of it. On his subsequent visits to the city, the pair would meet for beer and talk, occupying a tavern table for hours while they debated immortality and the odds of life after death.
The prospect of floating around after death as some ill-defined energy field or specter seemed to Pellew an unlikely idea, even a ludicrous one. Hodgson had agreed, to a point. He was willing to concede that spirit life was improbable, yes, but not impossible.
A few months before his death, Pellew had made a half-joking promise. If Hodgson was right, Pellew was willing to prove it. If he died first, he would return and “make things lively.” He would make himself so obvious, Pellew threatened cheerfully, that his friends wouldn’t be able to deny him.
Hodgson had laughed.
(The author's commentary: "Among so many important members in the ghost hunters, George Pellew was not that important while he was alive. He even didn’t believe that "the soul is eternal", and his attitude to soul was more like ridiculing。After death, he became a “ghost” and played an important role. I believe he must have experienced a period of extreme shock and inevitably a little shyness about his ignorance during his lifetime, especially it’s so stubborn about things that he was completely ignorant, but fortunately, he didn’t hide because he was so shy that he didn’t dare to show up, but he turned into a most positive attitude and became the most positive. He had the most frequent contact with Hodgson and other "ghosts hunters" members. It can be guessed that he should be deeply apologetic to "Richard Hodgson" and the gentleman's demeanor, so the positive legend comes back. Really, as he was alive, he said, "He will do it very obviously, let his friends want to deny and can’t deny it." However, it’s really not a bit. What is controversial is that he turned out to be a slang, and unfortunately, he only lived for thirty-two years, and he died unexpectedly. Therefore, when he started the communication through the psychic "Mrs. Piper", he began to interact with human world for a long period. For this, George Pellew has changed his attitude after his death; and such a sharp contrast provides information from the post-mortem world for humans. It is indeed a great contribution to the study of "soul theory.
THE BITTER FEBRUARY gave way to a bitter March. Then, five weeks after the fatal accident in Manhattan, a new voice interrupted one of Mrs. Piper’s trances. The personality identified itself as George Pellew. Soon, and persistently, this new presence would alter the very nature of a Piper sitting.
Although G. P—as Hodgson came to call the personality—manifested himself at first as a voice, he preferred to communicate through automatic writing. Early on came a few bizarre and hectic trances in which Phinuit answered one question verbally, while the medium’s right hand wrote G.P’s answer to another on a paper tablet. Gradually, though, the familiar Phinuit began to fall silent. When Hodgson asked a question, the medium’s only response would be the scratchy sound of her pencil (pens were never used because of the need to continually dip them in ink) moving across a page.
(The author's commentary: The psychic Mrs. Piper was really very special. Imagine; don't say that the message received from the "spiritual world" is not clear, even if it limits the scope to the daily life of the human world. She needs speak about the recent trivial things and wrote at the paper at same time, which was not easy to achieve. Mrs. Piper’s psychic skills was very special.)
It was G.P’s arrival that provided the concluding note of optimism to Hodgson’s report on Mrs. Piper. Hodgson wasn’t convinced that this new personality was a spirit. Perhaps it was no more than another peculiarity of Leonora Piper’s subconscious. But unlike the dubious Dr. Phinuit, G.P claimed to be someone Hodgson knew personally. That fact offered a realm of possible tests to determine who or what—if anyone or anything—was communicating through the baffling medium.
Hodgson began by making a list of old friends and family members of the dead writer. He would invite them, as many as would agree, to come anonymously and check their knowledge against that of the trance personality. Maybe they would confirm that this new spirit guide really was George Pellew. Maybe they would not. As always, the investigative strategy was as interesting to Hodgson as the possible results.
(The author's commentary: We really know too little about the "immortality of the soul" and the "world after death". In the case of the case of George Pellew, it is quite peculiar. When he first came back to human world, He obviously did not directly report his name and information. He only hinted that he was "Hodgson’s personal relationship." In the original book, there was not much ink on it. However, according to the author's personal inference, it should not be his intention. Like to be jokes, there must be special reasons for us until now, or are there any restrictions? Because we will observe them later; in the latter part, the contents of contact and communication show that he is indeed George. Then why not reveal his identification earlier directly? This is also a questionable one. It is worthy of our future research.)
His investigation of the so-called ghost of George Pellew was based upon a simple idea, with a twist. He would bring more than a hundred visitors, eventually, to sit with Mrs. Piper. Some would be friends of the dead man; some would be strangers to him. But she would be given no relationship clues. No participants would be allowed to tell their names or whether they had any connection toG.P. They would be allowed to improvise personal tests, but they would not be allowed to give any explanation for them.
One visitor brought a photograph of a building.
“Do you recognize this?”
“Yes, it is your summer house.”
Which it was.
Another woman placed a book on the medium’s head.
“Do you recognize this?” she said to G.P
“My French lyrics,” he answered.
That was right too.
Another visitor, a man, simply asked, “Tell me something, in our past, that you and I alone know.”
As he spoke, Mrs. Piper sat slumped forward into a pile of pillows on the table, her left hand dangling limply over the edge, her right hand coiled loosely around a pencil. Next to her right side, a pad of paper sat on the table. Suddenly, her fingers tightened and she began to write, wildly, filling pages, ripping them off, thrusting them away from her.
Hodgson moved to the other side of the room. The man began flipping through the pages. He paled and folded the papers. They were too private to read aloud, he told Hodgson.
But he was “perfectly satisfied, perfectly.”
(The author's commentary: From the above descriptions, we can see that the psychic "Mrs. Piper" was almost no hesitation or ambiguity. Playing with any "fake psychics" tricks is simply a straightforward "live broadcast". In the words or words, the reply of George Pellew was transmitted, and not only was it correct, but the subject of the question was even "very satisfied, with the absolute satisfaction." Even if it could not be said that this is complete evidence. At least, it is quite powerful. For those so-called experts and scholars who are extremely negating or questioning "the soul is not destroyed," can such evidence provide them with something more humbly to look at in the field of their own ignorance?
“I COULD NOT distinguish anything at first,” G.P told a friend during one of the sittings. “Darkest hours just before dawn, you know that, Jim. I was puzzled, confused.”
“Weren’t you surprised to find yourself still living?” his friend asked in return.
“Perfectly so. It was beyond my reasoning powers. Now it is as clear to me as daylight.”
(The author's commentary: George Pellew‘s confession is indeed very pertinent and honest, and it is also completely in line with the facts of the mind reaction, which is also a feature discovered by the author's long-term research; especially for the "completely disbelievers" and some "religious believers" found themselves "always still exist!" or "not even a paradise that they have always believed in!" but a "unfamiliar space but a familiar self!" It’s definitely a shocking experience, and it takes a considerable amount of time to adjust. But here, for George, it’s like: “It’s like the dark moment before the dawn... This fact is clear as the sky” is generally clear. " Of course the sky here doesn’t refer to the natural landscape of the post-mortem world, but to the transformation between himself and his understanding of the environment."
IT WAS IN the summer of 1893, while still traveling abroad, that William James received an unexpected letter from a colleague at Harvard, a researcher who’d decided to sneak a visit to Leonora Piper, Boston’s most famous medium. The professor had contacted Hodgson using a fake name. Even after the sitting, he’d not offered his real one. Mentally, he’d been snickering as the medium slumped into her trance, as her hand began to write.
“I asked her barely a question, but she ran on for three-quarters of an hour, telling me names, places, events, in the most startling manner.” Someday, he promised he would tell James what she had revealed; for now, he’d just say it was information not meant to be shared.
Still, there were a few interesting details that he wanted to pass along. Once again, Mrs. Piper had revealed her peculiar psychometric gift, as if she could read a story from a material object. It made no physical sense, but there it was:
The professor had brought a single circle of gold, one that once belonged to his dead mother. The ring had been one of two, a set that he and his mother had exchanged one Christmas.
Each ring had been engraved with the first word of the recipient’s favorite proverb. Long ago, he’d lost the one she’d given him. But the previous year, when his mother died, the ring he’d given to her had been returned to him.
The professor was holding that ring in his hand during the sitting, hiding the word as he inquired, “What was written in Mamma’s ring?”
“I had hardly got the words from my mouth till she slapped down the word on the other ring—the one Mamma had given me, and which had been lost years ago.
“As the word was a peculiar one, doubtfully ever written in any ring before, and as she wrote it in such a flash—it was surely curious.”
As an educated man, a scientist, no believer in the silly afterlife ideas of the spiritualists, the professor would admit only to being curious, as he explained carefully to James.
(The author's commentary: In the above paragraph, some key points were revealed: First, the professor "is a knowledgeable person and a scientist". He first went to observe "Mrs. Piper" with the intention to dismantle and ridicule the “scam”. However, just before he secretly snickered in his heart; "Mrs. Piper" wrote forty-five minutes on the vibrating pen and "told him many names, places and events, and scared him out of his body." With "Readings", the correct reading has lost the same set of rings, and almost no one can know and can't guess the sentence. Although this is enough to make the professor and the future generations feel shocked. But what is the performance of this professor? He "does not believe in the ghosts of the soul believers who lived in the past." He is still paranoid and does not want to believe. This is definitely not a rational scientist with responsiveness and attitude, but an irrational act that a self-contained narrow "scientific supremacy" paranoia. This kind of attitude has always existed in the so-called scientific world. Too many people like this, including those who intend to retain their own scientific authority, and those who fear that they are "nonsense" that believes in "the soul is not destroyed" to those who attract laughter or even shake their position, and are worried about being seen by others. People who are really ignorant of their own make the study of "spiritual science" or "soul science" difficult to get the right attitude from the scientific community, not to mention any moral recognition and support.)
FRED MYERS AND OLIVER LODGE were coming to America. They were to present the latest SPR research at the Congress of Psychical Research. Both were looking forward to visiting Chicago in August 1893, especially because the city was hosting the newly opened World’s Columbian Exposition.
Myers’s only disappointment was that, despite his pleas, James refused to cut short his sabbatical to join them, even with the added lure of the new World’s Fair.
發表於 2020-3-11 20:18:40
樓主
