Some of the best work that has been
undertaken which strongly supports the idea of survival is that which has been
termed the "Cross-Correspondences". What is so remarkable about this
research is that, if the survival hypothesis is accepted, the work was planned
and undertaken ‘post-mortem’; i.e. the individuals who designed and performed
the experiments were already dead when they undertook the work. F.W.H. Myers
was a classical scholar and a founder member of the Society for Psychical
Research who died in 1901. About five years later, and continuing for the
following 30 years, more than 2000 automatic scripts were produced which when
transmitted to different mediums across the world as separate fragments seemed
incomprehensible, but which, when brought together and integrated and analysed
turned out to be erudite essays on abstruse classical or similar subjects.
Myers’ collaborators in this project were Edmund Gurney, who died in 1888 and
Henry Sidgwick (died 1900) and they worked through several automatic writing
mediums, most of whom had no knowledge of the subjects transmitted. This
material has been published in great detail across many volumes of the
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and has also been summarised
in the following book:
Saltmarsh, H.F. (1938). Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences. Bell, London.
However, simpler accounts of the
cross correspondences can be found in Ellison (1988), Brookesmith (1989),
Iverson (1992) - see Section 1 above - and in many other general accounts of
psychical research. This research provides some of the best evidence for
survival of death yet available. As Ellison states when considering alternative
explanations for this enormous amount of evidence: "I choose the survival hypothesis.";
and, in this, he is much more positive in his response than is Saltmarsh.
At the turn of the 20th. century a
book was published which has been recognised as an indisputable masterpiece,
being an ambitious attempt to review the strange powers of the human mind.
Colin Wilson describes it as "... probably the most comprehensive work
ever written on the subject of the paranormal." F.W.H. Myers (1843-1901)
undertook meticulous research for almost 30 years and his Human Personality
and its Survival of Bodily Death was the result of an enormous amount of
work covering all aspects of psychic phenomena. The book was over 1300 pages
long and divided into two volumes; it was published in 1903, two years after
Myers’ untimely death.
Myers, F.W.H. (1903). Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. Longmans Green, London.
(An abridged version in one volume, leaving out much of the detailed case histories, was published in 1919).
The abridged version has been reprinted by Pilgrim Books, Norwich in 1992, ISBN 0-946259-39-9. This latest printing contains the unabridged Epilogue from the original edition).
Charles Richet was a French professor of physiology, an
impeccable researcher and winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for medicine. He also
spent many years of his professional career investigating all aspects of
parapsychology both on his own and in cooperation with other well-known
investigators. This latter part of his work was recorded in one of the classics
of this field of research:
Richet, C. (1923). Thirty Years of Psychical Research. Being a Treatise on Metapsychics.
Collins & Sons, London. 2nd. edition, translated by S. DeBrath.
In a book of nearly 650 pages,
Prof. Richet describes an enormous volume of research, the results of which -
almost against his will - he had to accept as proof of the reality of psychic
phenomena. Starting off as a complete sceptic he was slowly convinced by the
mounting weight of reliable evidence of the reality of different aspects of
E.S.P. - telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition - and of psychokinesis. With
particular difficulty, because it went against all his physiological training
and experience, he also eventually accepted ectoplasmic materialisation as a
reality. As he stated (pp. 543-544):
"There is ample proof that experimental materialization (ectoplasmic) should take definite rank as a scientific fact. Assuredly we do not understand it. It is very absurd, if a truth can be absurd.
Spiritualists have blamed me for using this word "absurd"; and have not been able to understand that to admit the reality of these phenomena was to me an actual pain; but to ask a physiologist, a physicist, or a chemist to admit that a form that has a circulation of blood, warmth, and muscles, that exhales carbonic acid, has weight, speaks, and thinks, can issue from a human body is to ask of him an intellectual effort that is really painful.
Yes it is absurd; but no matter - it is true."
However, at the time of the
publication of his book (he died in 1935) he couldn’t bring himself to admit to
the reality of survival, or what he called "the spiritist
hypothesis".