Beyond the Occult

by Colin Wilson

  The ‘vision’ of the man in the tweed overcoat may be regarded either as clairvoyance or precognition. If it was clairvoyance then his mind was simply grasping something that was happening a few hundred yards away, as if the intervening fence and houses were non-existent. But in view of the later episode of the phantom car I am inclined to regard it as precognition. Because he was totally relaxed his mind was able, in some odd way, to scan the future. In that case we must assume that the whole episode took place inside his own head, and that if another person had been present in the room he would have heard nothing. The dog’s response would in that case simply be a response to Tucker’s own reactions, or possibly a telepathic rapport. The alternative explanation is that Barbara Tucker, driving home, imagined pulling into the drive and somehow ‘projected’ the event into her husband’s mind. I have cited elsewhere* the curious case of the Rev. Mountford of Boston, who was standing by the window in a friend’s house when he saw a horse and carriage arrive; his host also saw it. But when they reached the front door there was nothing there. The genuine carriage pulled up ten minutes later. But in the meantime the daughter of its occupants arrived, looking worried. She had been walking along the road when the carriage had passed her, and had wondered why her parents ignored her and drove straight past. In fact her parents were still sitting in front of the fire at home, resting before they set out. The likeliest explanation is that one of the parents had fallen into a doze or a revery and ‘projected’ the image of the carriage.

  The mouse episode raises some interesting questions. No doubt Tucker was right in assuming that some unpleasant denizen of the spirit world had been able to ‘find the door’ into the physical universe by stealing the energies of the idiot son, and Tucker’s own psychic sensitivity may have made him doubly vulnerable. The natural assumption would be that it was some ill-disposed ‘low spirit’ — that is, basically a poltergeist. But poltergeists seldom seem to show any genuine ill-will unless ‘directed’ by a malevolent human being. This entity seems to have been genuinely malefic in its own right. Moreover the smell of wet animal fur is the smell often associated with demons in witch trials. We must accept, at least as a possibility, that the demonic forces of mediaeval theology may have some real existence — even if, as Kardec insists, they are not permanently and irretrievably evil.

  Albert Tucker is obviously an unwilling psychic who has no intention of developing his powers and no desire to do so. This may sound strange, since most of us would like to be able to foresee the future and contact dead loved ones. But being psychic also has its disadvantages: living ‘between two worlds’ can be a wearing experience. Anne Bancroft notes that when she was sixteen she ‘became afraid and stopped it all’. Even Eileen Garrett experienced doubts about it. Describing her childhood ‘reveries’ she says, ‘These were not the beginnings of my ability to withdraw from the world and live within myself. I think that I may have had that ability always, but as the practical outer world became more insistent in its demands I developed the faculty for shutting it out … in an instinctive struggle for self-preservation.’

  The psychic experience seems to begin with a certain ‘opening up’, which brings with it an intense sensitivity to nature — Anne Bancroft’s sense of a ‘presence’ in woods and fields, Eileen Garrett’s ability to ‘converse’ with trees and flowers. Another remarkable psychic, Rosalind Heywood — of whom I have written at length elsewhere* — developed her childhood sense of ‘presences’ in the foothills of the Himalayas and cried herself to sleep with nostalgia when her family returned to England. It was then that she became aware of other ‘presences’ in her grandfather’s house near Dartmoor: a female ‘presence’ in her bedroom (her mother later admitted to seeing the apparition of an old woman there) and other ‘melancholy presences’ in her aunt’s home in Norfolk. Years later her aunt saw a portrait of a man in seventeenth-century dress and exclaimed, ‘That’s the man who’s always trying to stop me going upstairs.’ She was told that it was Oliver Cromwell, who had been unhappily in love with a girl who had once lived in her house.

  We have noted that Eileen Garrett heard ‘singing sounds’ as she stared at the ‘globules of light’ in her room. Rosalind Heywood devotes a whole chapter of her autobiography The Infinite Hive to ‘the Singing’,

  … a kind of continuous vibrant inner quasi-sound, to which the nearest analogy is the noise induced by pressing a seashell against the ear, or perhaps the hum of a distant dynamo … . It is far more evident in some places than in others: particularly so in a quiet wood, for instance, or on a moor or a mountain — clean wild places unspoilt by man. It is also clear in, say, a church or a college library, places where thought or devotion have been intense for years … .

  In this last sentence she seems to be speaking about the ‘information universe’ and the fact that objects can ‘record’ the vibrations of the human mind.

  Rosalind Heywood also makes it clear why this kind of ‘openness’ can be uncomfortable to live with. In such states the slightest sound or touch seems like an earthquake. She describes returning from a concert feeling so ecstatic that she lay down on the bed,

  … to mull it over … . Almost at once the whole vivid soaring climax existed again, simultaneously, not in sound but to my inner eye in colour. I was swept up into it and up it until I emerged at the top into a vast and beautiful marble hall, oblong, with painted walls and the whole of the east end open to the night sky and the stars. While I was staring enthralled at these splendid surroundings my husband thought I looked odd and touched me gently. The effect of his touch was far from gentle: it forced me back sharply and painfully into my body … and shaken and disappointed I told the poor man what I thought of him in no uncertain terms.

  On another occasion she was trying to practise a little mind-reading in her bedroom and experienced a feeling ‘like a glorified version … of going under anaesthetic’. Then she was jerked back to the world by a series of agonisingly loud bangs: her husband was gently tapping on the door to ask if she was ready for breakfast. This clearly explains why it can be dangerous to suddenly ‘awaken’ a medium who is in a trance: if the medium happens to have a weak heart the result can be fatal.

  Rosalind Heywood’s ‘openness’ also made her aware of non-human presences. When she and her husband walked out on to Dartmoor in the dusk, ‘the incredible beauty swept me through a barrier. I was no longer looking at Nature. Nature was looking at me. And she did not like what she saw. It was a strange and humbling sensation, as if numberless unoffending creatures were shrinking back, offended by our invasion … .’ She decided that they ought to stand quite still and try to explain mentally that they came as friends. Then ‘I seemed to feel their sigh of relief… . Our apology was accepted.’ A few days later, facing the moor through an open window, she ‘suffered an invasion… . It was as if, like ebullient children, a covey of little invisibles floated in at the window to say “Hullo!” and coax me to play with them.’

  On a visit to the House of Commons she sat, relaxed, in the entrance to Westminster Hall ‘and let the world fade out’. She found herself ‘passing beyond the Singing’ and into the presence of ‘a profoundly wise and powerful Being who I felt was brooding over the Houses of Parliament. In that inner space he towered so high that the actual buildings seemed to be clustered about his feet.’ She decided that she must speak of the experience to a saintly old mystic she knew. But this proved to be unnecessary: as soon as she arrived he began to speak spontaneously of the ‘Angel’ of the House of Commons … . A few years later, waiting for her son in the music school at Eton, ‘I once more seemed to pass through the Singing into the ambience of a great Being. He appeared to have the school in his care and, like his fellow at Westminster, he created an atmosphere of brooding wisdom and calm.’

  To ask whether such experiences are ‘real’ raises an interesting question. It implies that Rosalind Heywood may have been merely imagining the ‘presences’. Yet if her description is accurate she
became aware of them by ‘letting the world fade out’ and falling ‘down the rabbit hole’ into a state of trance-like awareness. What she ‘saw’ then may well have been merely the creation of her subconscious mind: that is to say her mind may have interpreted its perception symbolically, producing this impression of a gigantic being towering above the building. Yet our insight into the workings of clairvoyance suggests that the perception she was interpreting was of something real: the ‘presences’ were not poetic imagination, like the presences Wordsworth felt in the Lake District, but real ‘Beings’. But if we can accept that possibility then it is hard to see why we should draw a line and describe Wordsworth’s ‘presences’ as imaginary. The ‘open’ mind of the poet and artist can sense realities beyond the reach of our normal senses. The real problem is that our materialistic assumptions have a number of false premises built into them: it is only when we recognize this that we see that there is no sharp dividing line between the everyday world and the invisible world of the clairvoyant.

  Rosalind Heywood was lucky. As an upper-class young Englishwoman whose father was in the Indian Civil Service (and whose mother could also ‘see ghosts’), she experienced no conflict between the everyday world and the world of her clairvoyant insights. In due course she married an ex-army officer who worked in the War Office then became a diplomat, and who was also capable of flashes of clairvoyant perception. (Her younger son also developed odd ‘powers’: one day she asked him why he was looking at a London atlas and he told her that later in the day some stranger would ask him the way to a particular street. This happened within the hour.) In due course she was able to join the Society for Psychical Research and pursue her interest in the paranormal in a detached and scientific manner. There was never any temptation to develop mediumship since she had so many other things to do.

  Eileen Garrett’s career was altogether less smooth. Brought up by an aunt and uncle on a farm in County Meath, Ireland, she was an ‘outsider’ from the beginning. Her aunt was a strong-minded woman whose attitude towards the paranormal was one of total unbelief: she made the child’s life a misery. One day, as Eileen was sitting on the porch, her favourite Aunt Leon walked towards her and told her, ‘I must go away now and take the baby with me.’ She ran indoors to fetch her aunt, but when they came out Aunt Leon had vanished. Eileen was whipped for telling lies and sent to bed. But the following day Aunt Leon died in childbirth. The aunt still refused to believe that the child had seen Aunt Leon and told her angrily that she must never speak of such things again, ‘for they might come true’. Eileen withdrew into a world of her own and began to develop physical illnesses as a reaction against her rejection. A few days after the death of her uncle — whom she adored — the door opened and he walked into her room, looking cheerful and healthy, and had a long talk with her. He explained that she would have to put up with her aunt and do her best, and predicted that in two years’ time she would go to London. Then he went out, closing the door behind him. ‘It never occurred to me that I had seen a ghost, or that anything strange had taken place.’ But when her cousin Ann died she saw a ‘shadowy grey substance’ rising above her body, gathering itself into a spiral before it disappeared.

  Two years later, at the age of sixteen, Eileen Garrett found herself in London, and she soon married a pleasant young man whom she met at dinner in the house of her aunt’s cousin. But when they came back from their honeymoon he told her seriously that she must abandon her tendency to ‘visioning’ and that it might lead to insanity. She felt more self-divided than ever. The birth of a son delighted her, until an unseen presence warned her that he would not be with her very long. A second child was born, but she felt a premonition that he would die young. Not long after this both children died of meningitis. Her marriage ended in divorce. During the First World War she met a young officer and married him. Not long after, in a crowded restaurant, she felt she had been caught in the midst of a violent explosion then ‘saw’ her husband blown to pieces. Two days later she was notified that he was missing.

  She married again and had a daughter. The child developed pneumonia, and one day she overheard the doctor saying that he had given up hope. She took the child out of the cot and held her close. Suddenly she heard a voice say, ‘She must have more air. Open the window.’ When she had done this she became aware of a man standing beside the bed: her fear suddenly left her. ‘The next thing I recall was a resounding noise in my ears, which turned out to be someone knocking at the door.’ (This seems to indicate that she was in a condition of trance at the time.) It was her husband. When they looked at the child she was sleeping quietly, the crisis over.

  Eileen Garrett then joined a spiritualist society and attended lectures on clairvoyance and psychometry. She also joined a group of women who held seances. At the third meeting she grew drowsy and fell asleep. When she woke up she was told that the dead had spoken through her and that she was a gifted medium. Someone advised her to consult a Swiss clairvoyant named Huhnli. In his presence she once again ‘fell asleep’. When she woke up Huhnli told her that her ‘control’, a spirit named Uvani, had spoken to him, and that Uvani wanted to ‘do serious work to prove the theory of survival’. When she went home and told her husband he was furious and told her she was going insane. She ignored him and continued to visit Mr Huhnli. Finally her conflicts caused a serious haemorrhage. As she lay recovering she at last began to understand what had been happening to her throughout her life. The passage in her autobiography in which she speaks of this makes it very clear how close her own experience had been to that of many of Ralph Allison’s multiple personality patients:

  I saw for the first time that the trance state might be part of a psychological pattern which had its inception in my early childhood. I began to understand how the pain and suffering of these early days had made me withdraw from the world of people into the world of light and colour and movement. I could now recall that the first time I had been successful in escaping the pain of the punishment inflicted on me by my aunt was when I so separated myself that I could see her lips moving as she scolded me, but not a word penetrated my ears. I now remember also that when the physical punishment became almost unbearable … I learned to draw inside myself and would fall promptly to sleep, thereby banishing the painful after-effects of a beating … . I also recall the many episodes of amnesia which had taken place during the early and unsatisfactory years of my first marriage, and during the tragic episodes of my sons’ deaths. I understood now more clearly that these periods of so-called amnesia were also forms of escape from the too-painful conditions of living.

  All this makes it clear that Eileen Garrett was lucky to escape becoming a multiple personality. A sceptic might argue that she had become a multiple personality and that Uvani was only another aspect of herself. Yet the incredible successes of her later mediumship argue strongly against this.

  In fact her second important mentor, Hewat McKenzie, founder of the College of Psychic Science, startled her with his refreshingly sceptical attitude towards ‘controls’. He explained that it was a mistake to regard the pronouncements of ‘controls’ as the word of some higher power — they were often limited personalities who needed just as much education and training as the medium. Lack of this, he thought, had allowed mediumship to deteriorate until it functioned mainly on the emotional and sentimental levels. This led Eileen Garrett herself to express doubts about whether Uvani was a real ‘control’ or merely a split-off fragment of her own mind — an attitude that shocked McKenzie.

  Her third marriage having now broken up, Eileen Garrett became a full-time medium. As far as she was concerned it was rather frustrating. It simply meant that she became unconscious and was told what had happened when she woke up. It was only occasionally rewarding, as when Hewat McKenzie asked her to help him investigate a poltergeist disturbance. Uvani apparently talked to the ‘disturbed spirit’ and found out why it was causing so much trouble to its relatives: it turned out that the problem had to do with a
lost will, which was found behind a picture frame. After this the disturbances ceased. But at most of her sittings she felt that the sitters were basically frivolous. They wanted to contact dead relatives for their own purely emotional reasons and had no real interest in the mysteries of life after death. It all struck her as irritatingly trivial and she began to feel revulsion at the part she was playing.

  The level of the trance communications suddenly improved when a new ‘control’ called Abdul Latif began to appear. He claimed to have been a Persian physician at the time of the Crusades, and she was interested to discover later that she was not the first medium through whom he had manifested. Yet her sense of revulsion persisted, and she finally decided to give up mediumship and to accept a proposal of marriage from an old friend. Then once again she heard the voice that had announced the death of her child: it told her to make the best of her happiness since it would not last. On the day the marriage banns were published she developed a mastoid and he caught a chill: within a week he was dead. When she recovered from a serious illness she realized that her clairvoyant faculties were more highly developed than ever. At that point, sick of the vague sentimentality of English spiritualists, she decided to go to America. It was the autumn of 1931 and she was thirty-eight years old.

  The United States proved at first to be an immense disappointment. Once again she found herself expected to work with people whose only interest was in communicating with their dead loved ones. It was even worse when she reached Los Angeles and San Francisco. Then she discovered that there were a few more serious researchers, like Hereward Carrington, then working with Sylvan Muldoon, and the psychologist William McDougall and his assistant Professor J. B. Rhine. In New York she carried out a classic experiment in astral projection with a Newfoundland doctor who possessed the same ability. She ‘projected’ herself to a room of his house in Newfoundland while remaining fully conscious of the room in New York. The doctor came downstairs with a bandage around his head as she ‘arrived’: he sensed her presence and explained that he had had an accident. When she relayed this information in New York she heard someone say, ‘That can’t possibly be true — I had a letter a few days ago and he was quite well then.’ The doctor asked her to look at the objects on the table; she described them to the stenographer in New York. Then he took down a book about Einstein from the shelf and read a paragraph to himself: in New York Eileen Garrett interpreted the sense of what he was reading. After this the doctor projected himself to the bedroom of a co-experimenter in New York and described it, mentioning that it had been redecorated since his last visit and that two photographs were no longer there. Then the experiment ended: it had taken fifteen minutes. The next day they received a telegram from the doctor mentioning the accident to his head; later his detailed notes were checked against the New York stenographer’s record and found to be accurate.