The medium's return to normal life—Speeches made while the medium seems to hover between the two worlds.

In Mrs Piper's case, the moments which precede the actual quitting of the trance offer, at least at present, a special interest. I think it well therefore to dwell on this point a little. To avoid endless circumlocutions, I shall speak as if the spiritualistic hypothesis were proved. Indeed, whatever the future fate of this hypothesis may be, and in spite of the serious objection spoken of in the last chapter, it is, I believe, the only one that can be reasonably adopted for the moment.

When the sitting is over and the automatic writing has ceased, Mrs Piper begins to return gradually to her normal state. She then utters with more or less distinctness some apparently disconnected phrases which it is sometimes difficult to catch. She is like a person talking in sleep. Dr Hodgson and Professor Hyslop have collected as many of these broken sentences as they could, keeping them separately under a different heading from the record of the rest of the sitting proper. At the end, Mrs Piper often asks this odd question, "Did you hear my head snap?" And after her head is supposed to have snapped she looks round her in apparent astonishment and alarm, and then all is over, she no longer remembers what she has said or written during the trance.

We shall see that these scraps of phrase are less incoherent than they seem, and that it is worth while to collect them. Very often when numerous unsuccessful efforts have been made to recall a proper name during the sitting, Mrs Piper pronounces it when coming out of the trance; when she is re-entering her body, the communicator or communicators repeat the name to her insistently, and make great efforts to cause her to remember and pronounce it as she comes out of the trance. I have already quoted an example of this. M. Paul Bourget asked the name of the town in which the artist he was communicating with had killed herself. The name did not come, but Mrs Piper pronounced it as she was leaving the trance—Venice. Mr Robert Hyslop's name was given in the same way the first time, but accompanied by very significant scraps of speech as follows. Mrs Piper first tried to pronounce the name, then she said Hyslop, and went on,—

"I am he.[86] Tell him I am his father. I—Good-bye, sir. I shouldn't take him away that way. Oh, dear. Do you see the man with the cross[87] shut out everybody? Did you see the light? What made the man's hair all fall off?"

Dr Hodgson asks, "What man?"

Mrs Piper.—"That elderly gentleman that was trying to tell me something, but it wouldn't come."

At a first glance this passage seems mere incoherence, but all the portions of sentences have a very clear meaning when they are examined together with the events of the sitting. They are, as it seems, commissions with which the medium is charged as she is returning into her organism, or they are observations made among themselves by the spirits present, which the medium automatically repeats, or they are the observations and questions of the medium herself. All that Mrs Piper says on coming out of the trance belongs to one of these three categories.

In the passage quoted, the words, "I am he. Tell him that I am his father," are a commission with which the medium is charged by Mr Robert Hyslop. Mrs Piper takes leave of Robert Hyslop with the formula, "Good-bye, sir." The phrases which follow, "Oh, dear. I shouldn't take him away that way. Do you see the man with the cross shut out everybody?" are the remarks of spirits repeated automatically, or Mrs Piper's own remarks on Imperator, who, seeing the light exhausted, imperiously sends off everybody, including Mr Robert Hyslop himself, in spite of his desire to remain with his son. Imperator must even have used some force, to justify the observation, "I should not take him away that way." The final phrases are always Mrs Piper's own questions and remarks: When she says, "Did you see the light?" she alludes without doubt to the light of the other world, invisible to us. The other sentences are clear enough, when we remember that Mr Robert Hyslop was entirely bald. There are utterances like these, only apparently incoherent on coming out of all the trances; but they vary in length. The last words, if I am not mistaken, always come from Mrs Piper herself, which is logically to be expected, since she gradually loses the memory of the world she has just quitted, up to the definite moment of waking, marked by the so-called snap in her head.

These speeches on coming out of trance constitute, in our eyes, one more argument against the hypothesis of telepathy and secondary personalities, because there is no trace of simulation. To suppose simulation would be to accord to telepathy too much skill in the arts of deceit.

These speeches bring into the foreground the question: "What becomes of the medium's spirit during the trance, if there is a spirit?" The controls say that it leaves the organism and remains in the company of the group of communicating spirits.

"But then," it will be said, "if she lives for the time being in the other world, why does she not relate her impressions when she wakes?"

We must not forget that for spirits our life is a sleep, and that we are only conscious of what we acquire through the medium of our five senses. When the spirit is again plunged into the prison of the body, after having left it for a time, it goes to sleep once more and forgets all; it recommences living the fragmentary life which is all that the five senses permit. The complete absence of memory in the medium when awake is no more astonishing than the same phenomenon in a subject coming out of hypnosis, during which he may have talked, and even done much.

Besides, during the short instants when Mrs Piper is as if suspended between two worlds, she still has a vague recollection of what she has just heard; the fragments of sentences she utters bear sufficient witness to this. She rarely fails to shed a few tears, and to say, "I want to stop here, I don't want to go back to the dark world!" Here is a characteristic passage, as an example. Mrs Piper, coming out of the trance, begins to weep and murmur, "I do not want to go back to the darkness.... Oh, it is, it is, it must be the window ... but I want to know.... I want to know where they are all gone[88].... It is funny ... I forgot that I was alive.... Yes, Mr Hodgson, I forgot.... I was going to tell you something, but I have forgotten what it was.... You see, when my head snaps, I forget what I was going to say.... It must be night. Oh, dear! I feel so weak.... Is that my handkerchief?"

On other occasions she uses an odd figure of speech. "You see Rector turns round a dark board and says that's your world—and he turns round the other side and that's light, and he says that's his world. I don't want to go back to the dark world."

Another time she says, quite at the end, "Is that my body? how it pricks!"

It appears that Imperator, before sending her back to the "dark world," prays for her, and she sometimes repeats fragments of the prayers automatically.

"Is that a blessing? Say it."[89]

"Father be and abide with thee for evermore."

"Servus Dei—I don't know."

"I have all these to look out for. I leave thee well."

"Go and do the duties before thee."

"Blessings on thy head."

"The light shall cease."

"Why do you say that?"

"Are you going? Good-bye."

"I want to go along the same path with you."

"Hear the whistle?" (This was an earthly whistle, which those present also heard.)

[86] Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. p. 322.