The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 by Various

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_March 13, 1807:_ "I was speaking about the songs of our birds.
Then the birds seemed to pass beyond my vision, and I longed for
music of other kinds.... When, to my surprise, my desires were
filled.... Just before me sat the most beautiful bevy of young
girls that eyes ever rested upon. Some playing stringed
instruments, others that sounded and looked like silver bugles,
but they were all in harmony, and I must truly confess that I
never heard such strains of music before. No mortal mind can
possibly realize anything like it. It was not only in this one
thing that my desires were filled, but in all things accordingly.
I had not one desire, but that it was filled without any apparent
act of myself.

"I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no sooner had
the desire than they appeared.... Such beautiful flowers no human
eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything
was real.... I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would
pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight,
nothing cumbersome, nothing.... I passed along through this
garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to
me, each and every one seemed to be my friend.... I then thought
of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet
some one of them, when like every other thought or desire that I
had expressed, the friend of whom I thought instantly appeared."

How much all this is like dreams!

_March 27, 1897._ (A good deal of confusion, out of which appears)
"He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if he wishes. I
am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits him....

"I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole surrounding
is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many different
authors.... When I touched a book and desired to meet its author,
if he or she were in our world, he or she would instantly appear.
[Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for female authors, by
one of them, 'evidential,' or was Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to
invent it? Ed.]...."

The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike touch.

_March 30, 1897._ "I wished to see and realize that some of the
mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be
visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed,
instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before
me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the
instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it
with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was
playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of
music."

She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of pictures. She
wanted a symphony, and an orchestra "of some thirty musicians" at once
appeared and gave her several, which she enjoyed to the full.

Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an
orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a
hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in
Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing
(which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages)
make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this
control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less
unlike George Eliot than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of
communication or any other _tertium quid_, make up the difference? I first
read the record with repulsion, and now find in it some elements of
attraction.

Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see "angels," and gives a
very pretty picture of an experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy
from the sitter will hardly account for the following, especially the
strange turn at the end, which is signally dreamlike.

"I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history, etc., felt
a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several others.
Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of 'writers of
ancient history'! Ed.] As I stood thinking of him a spirit
instantly appeared who speaking said 'I am Bacon.' ... As Bacon
neared me he began to speak and quoted to me the following words
'You have questioned my reality. Question it no more. I am
Shakespeare.'"

_June 4, 1897._ "... Speak to me for a moment and if you have
anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly
recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain
longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of Dowden's
beginning,

'I said I will find God and forth I went
To seek him in the clearness of the sky,' etc. Excitement.]

G.E.: 'I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.: Who says
that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by G.) I do.
My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do you mean by
G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes while I am
saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy. And when I
did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more _happy than tongue
can utter_."

As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his death, the
foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited but unpublished
allegations.

Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of George Eliot,
just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as if it might be a
transcript of one of my own dreams, with the important exceptions that the
dreamer wrote it all out, and that it is made up from a series of dreams,
coming up at intervals for about six months, and apparently only when
Hodgson was present, though there are records of George Eliot appearing to
other sitters at other seances.

* * * * *

We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life on the
part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in another life, in
some ways similar, that is led by intelligences who have passed beyond the
body.

We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is the correct
one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a suspicion that any day
it may be exploded by some new discovery. But we do say, with considerable
confidence, that of all the interpretations yet offered--even including
the pervasive one that "the little boy lied," it surpasses all the others
in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight attached to it
by the most capable students--even by James, who, however, did not accept
it as established, though he gave many indications that he felt himself
likely to. Myers definitely accepted it, not from the impressions of the
sensitives, but from having them capped by a veridical impression of his
own. Through the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice
assuring him: "Your friend is still with you." Later he found that Gurney,
with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died the night before. We are
not aware that Myers ever published this, but he told it to the present
writer and presumably to others. The convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver
Lodge were interpretations of the phenomena of the sensitives, though
Hodgson, it is now known, was probably mainly influenced by communications
from the alleged postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.

But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk
out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see,
and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and
hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves
more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does.
Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to
sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found.
Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But
from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.

Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a
class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she
identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very
few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I
could, if photographs had been presented.

Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead"
friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in
indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in
distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all
the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees
and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_
in feature and character.

Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all, anything more or
less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic vibrations, physical and
psychical, with the power of producing on us certain impressions. You and
I know our friends as such aggregates, and nothing more.

And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first
answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's
angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds
that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest
information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like
this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a
manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied
with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from the earliest
reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our dreams; and the material
is worked up into each personality through reactions with the environment.
Thus it becomes an aggregate of capacities to impress another personality
with certain sensations, ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate
personality impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion
of the vibrations constituting "the body" disappears, there still abides
somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in the dream life.
Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors, and gets into our
dreams telepathically, though that is losing probability every day; and,
with our anthropomorphic habits, we want to know "where" this capacity to
impress us abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir,
which I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless,
throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original mind-potential
plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been. And into this ocean
seem to be constantly passing those currents that we know as
individualities, that can each influence, and even intermingle with, other
individualities, here as well as there: for here really is there. While
each does this, it still retains its own individuality. This is, of
course, a vague string of guesses venturing outward from the borderland of
our knowledge. It may be a little clearer, the more we bear in mind that
the apparent influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.

Now apparently among the accomplishments of a personality, does not
_necessarily_ inhere that of depressing a scale x pounds: for when that
capacity is entirely absent, from the apparent personalities who visit us
in the dream state, they can impress us in every other way, even to all
the reciprocities of sex. But for some reasons not yet understood, with
ordinary dreamers these impressions are not as congruous, persistent,
recurrent, or regulable in the dream life as in the waking life. But with
Mrs. Piper, Hodgson after his death, and especially G.P. and others, were
about as persistent and consistent associates as anybody living, barring
the fact that they could not show themselves over an hour or two at a
time, which was the limit of the medium's psychokinetic power, on which
their manifestations depended. But that these personalities are not in
time to be evolved so that they will be more permanent and consistent with
dreamers generally, would be a contradiction to at least some of the
implications of evolution.

* * * * *

Accepting provisionally the identity of a postcarnate life with the life
indicated in dreams, are there any further indications of its nature?
There are some, which may lend some slight confirmation to the theory of
identity.

It seems to show itself not only in the visions of the sensitives, but in
the dream life of all of us. If Mrs. Piper's dream state (I name her only
as a type) is really one of communication with souls who have passed into
a new life, dream states generally may not extravagantly be supposed to be
foretastes of that life. And so far as concerns their desirability, why
should they not be? Our ordinary dreams are, like the dreams of the
sensitives, superior to time, space, matter and force--to all the trammels
of our waking environment and powers. In dreams we experience unlimited
histories, and pass over unlimited spaces, in an instant; see, hear, feel,
touch, taste, smell, enjoy unlimited things; walk, swim, fly, change
things, with unlimited ease; do things with unlimited power; make what we
will--music, poetry, objects of art, situations, dramas, with unlimited
faculty, and enjoy unlimited society. Unless we have eaten too much, or
otherwise got ourselves out of order in the waking life, in the dream life
we seldom if ever know what it is to be too late for anything, or too far
from anything; we freely fall from chimneys or precipices, and I suppose
it will soon be aeroplanes, with no worse consequences than comfortably
waking up into the everyday world; we sometimes solve the problems which
baffle us here; we see more beautiful things than we see here; and, far
above all, we resume the ties that are broken here.

The indications seem to be that if we ever get the hang of that life, we
can have pretty much what we like, and eliminate what we don't
like--continue what we enjoy, and stop what we suffer--find no bars to
congeniality, or compulsion to boredom. To good dreamers it is unnecessary
to offer proof of any of these assertions, and to prove them to others is
impossible.

The dream life contains so much more beauty, so much fuller emotion, and
such wider reaches than the waking life, that one is tempted to regard it
as the real life, to which the waking life is somehow a necessary
preliminary. So orthodox believers regard the life after death as the real
life: yet most of their hopes regarding that life--even the strongest hope
of rejoining lost loved ones--are realized here during the brief throbs of
the dream life.

There seems to be no happiness from association in our ordinary life which
is not obtainable, by some people at least, from association in the dream
life. And as this appears to exist between incarnate A and postcarnate B,
there is at least a suggestion that it may exist between postcarnate A and
postcarnate B, and to a degree vastly more clear and abiding than during
the present discrepancy between the incarnate and postcarnate conditions?
This of course assumes, that B's appearance in A's dream life, just as he
appeared on earth (though, as I know to be the case, sometimes wiser,
healthier, jollier, and more lovable generally), is something more than a
mild attack of dyspepsia on the part of A.

Dreams do not seem to abound in work, and are often said not to abound in
morality, but I know that they sometimes do--in morality higher than any
attainable in our waking life. Certainly the scant vague indications from
the dream suggestions of a future life do not necessarily preclude
abundant work and morality, any more than work and sundry self-denials are
precluded on a holiday because one does not happen to perform them.
Moreover, the hoped-for future conditions may not contain the necessities
for either labor or self-restraint that present conditions do: they may
not be the same dangers there as here in the _dolce far niente_, or in
Platonic friendships.

* * * * *

Men are not consistent in their attitude regarding dreams. They admit the
dream state to be ideal--constantly use such expressions as "A dream of
loveliness," "Happier than I could even dream," "Surpasses my fondest
dreams," and yet on the other hand they call its experience "but the
baseless vision of a dream." What do they mean by "baseless"? Certainly it
is not lack of vividness or emotional intensity. It is probably the lack
of duration in the happy experiences, and of the possibility of
remembering them, and, still more, of enjoying similar ones at will. Yet
the sensitives do both in recurrent instalments of the dream life, and
like the rest of us, through the intervening waking periods, after the
first hour or so, generally know nothing of the dreams. It is not
vividness of the dream life itself that is lacking, but vividness in our
memories of it. James defines our waking personality as the stream of
consciousness: the dream life gives no such stream. To-night does not
continue last night as to-day continues yesterday. The dream life is not
like a stream, but more like a series, though hardly integral enough to be
a series, of disconnected pools, many of them perhaps more enchanting than
any parts of the waking stream, but not, like that stream, an organic
whole with motion toward definite results, and power to attain them. But
suppose the dream life continues after the body's death, and under
direction toward definite ends, at least so far as the waking life is, and
still free from the trammels of the waking life--suppose us to have at
least as much power to secure its joys and avoid its terrors as we have
regarding those of the waking life; and with all the old intimacies which
it spasmodically restores, restored permanently, and with the discipline
of separation to make them nearer perfect. What more can we manage to
want?

The suggestion has come to more than one student, that when we enter into
life--as spermatozoa, or star dust if you please--we enter into the
eternal life, but that the physical conditions essential to our
development into appreciating it, are a sort of veil between it and our
consciousness. In our waking life we know it only through the veil; but
when in sleep or trance, the material environment is removed from
consciousness, the veil becomes that much thinner, and we get better
glimpses of the transcendent reality.

Does it not seem then as if, in dreams, we enter upon our closer relation
with the hyper-phenomenal mind? All sorts of things seem to be in it, from
the veriest trifles and absurdities up to the highest things our minds can
receive, and presumably an infinity of things higher still. They appear to
flow into us in all sorts of ways, presumably depending upon the condition
of the nerve apparatus through which they flow. If that is out of gear
from any disorder or injury, what it receives is not only trifling, but
often grotesque and painful; while if it is in good estate, it often
receives things far surpassing in beauty and wisdom those of our waking
phenomenal world.

Apparently every dreamer is a medium for this flow, but dreamers vary
immensely in their capacity to receive it--from Hodge, who dreams only
when he has eaten too much, or Professor Gradgrind who never dreams at
all, up to Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Piper.

As oft remarked, dreams generally are nonsense, but some dreams, or parts
of some dreams, are perhaps the most significant things we know. Each
vision, waking or sleeping, must have a cause, and as an expression of
that cause, must be veridical. On the one hand, the cause of a trivial
dream is generally too trivial to be ascertained: it may be too much
lobster, or impaired circulation or respiration; while on the other hand
(and here the paradox seems to be explained), the cause of an important
dream must, _ex vi termini_, be some important event. But important events
are rare, and therefore significant dreams are rare; while trivial events
are frequent, and therefore trivial dreams are frequent.

The important and rare event _may_ be such a conjunction of circumstances
and temperaments as makes it possible for a postcarnate intelligence,
assuming the existence of such, to communicate with an incarnate one. That
such apparent communications are rare tends to indicate their genuineness.

* * * * *

Now to develop a little farther the time-honored hypothesis of a cosmic
soul as explaining dreams, and supported by them.

Admit, provisionally at least, that the medium is merely an extraordinary
dreamer. Does a man do his own dreaming, or is it done for him? Does a man
do his own digesting, circulating, assimilating, or is it done for him? If
he does not do these things himself, who does? About the physical
functions through the sympathetic nerve, we answer unhesitatingly: the
cosmic force. How, then, about the psychic functions? Are they done by the
cosmic psyche?

Like respiration, they are partly under our control, but that does not
affect the problem. Who runs them when we do not run them, even when we
try to stop them that we may get to sleep? Even when, after they have
yielded to our entreaties to stop, and we are asleep, they begin going
again--without our will. The only probability I can make out is that our
thinking is run by a power not ourselves, as much as our other partly
involuntary functions.

To hold that a man does his own dreaming--that it is done by a secondary
layer of his own consciousness--is to hold that we are made up of layers
of consciousness, of which the poorest layer is that of what we call our
waking life, and the better layers are at our service only in our
dreams--that when a man is asleep or mad he can solve problems, compose
music, create pictures, to which, when awake and in his sober senses, and
in a condition to profit by his work, and give profit from it, he is
inadequate.

Nay more, the theory claims that a man's working consciousness--his
self--the only self known to him or the world, will hold and shape his
life by a set of convictions which, in sleep, he will _himself_ prove
wrong, and thereby revolutionize his philosophy and his entire life.
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to attribute all such results--the
solutions of the problems, the music, the pictures, the corrections of the
errors--to a power outside himself?

I cannot believe that there's anything in my individual consciousness
which my experience or that of my ancestors has not placed there--in raw
material at least; or that in working up that raw material _I_ can exert
any genius in my sometimes chaotic dreams that I cannot exert in my
systematized waking hours. All the people I meet and talk with in my
dreams _may_ have been met and talked with by me or my forebears, though I
don't believe it; but the works of art I see have not been known to me or
my ancestors or any other mortal; nor have I any sign of the genius to
combine whatever elements of them I may have seen, into any such designs.
And when in dreams _other_ persons tell me things contrary to my firmest
convictions, in which things I later discover germs of most important
workable truth, the persons who tell me that, and who are different from
me as far as fairly decent persons can differ from each other, are
certainly not, as the good Du Prel would have us believe, myself. All
these things are not figments of _my_ mind--if they are figments of a
mind, it's a mind bigger than mine. The biggest claim I can make, or
assent to anybody else making, is that my mind is telepathically receptive
of the product of that greater mind.

Here are some farther evidences of the greater mind, given by Lombroso
(_After Death, What?_, 320 f.):

It is well known that in his dreams Goethe solved many weighty
scientific problems and put into words many most beautiful verses.
So also La Fontaine (_The Fable of Pleasures_) and Coleridge and
Voltaire. Bernard Palissy had in a dream the inspiration for one
of his most beautiful ceramic pieces....

Holde composed while in a dream _La Phantasie_, which reflects in
its harmony its origin; and Nodier created _Lydia_, and at the
same time a whole theory on the future of dreaming. Condillac in
dream finished a lecture interrupted the evening before. Kruger,
Corda, and Maignan solved in dreams mathematical problems and
theorems. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his _Chapters on Dreams_,
confesses that portions of his most original novels were composed
in the dreaming state. Tartini had while dreaming one of his most
portentous musical inspirations. He saw a spectral form
approaching him. It is Beelzebub in person. He holds a magic
violin in his hands, and the sonata begins. It is a divine adagio,
melancholy-sweet, a lament, a dizzy succession of rapid and
intense notes. Tartini rouses himself, leaps out of bed, seizes
his violin, and reproduces all that he had heard played in his
sleep. He names it the _Sonata del Diavolo_,...

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