by Colin Wilson
The third case he cites concerned Sir Auckland Geddes, Professor of Anatomy at Dublin, and it bears a strong resemblance to the case of the Rev. Bertrand quoted in Chapter One. Geddes describes how he began to feel very ill from acute gastroenteritis, and when he tried to ring for help, found himself unable to move. As he sat there, he realised that ‘my consciousness was separating from another consciousness which was also me’. He calls these A-consciousness and B-consciousness, and says that ‘B-consciousness’ was attached to his body, sitting in the chair, while ‘A-consciousness’ was attached to his ego. (We should note that he says ‘attached’ to the ego — not that it was identical with it.)
… as my physical condition grew worse and the heart was fibrillating rather than beating, I realised that the B-consciousness belonging to the body was beginning to show signs of being composite, that is, built up of ‘consciousness’ from the head, the heart and the viscera. These components became more individual and B-consciousness began to disintegrate, while the A-consciousness, which was now me, seemed to be altogether outside my body …
He suddenly became aware that he could not only see the room he was in, but the whole house and garden, then things in London and Scotland. He makes the odd comment that he felt he was now ‘free in a time dimension of space, wherein “now” was in some way equivalent to “here” in the ordinary three-dimensional space of everyday life’. In other words, he seemed to be one dimension ‘higher’ than in the physical world — an observation that may explain Alan Vaughan’s experience of precognition as he ‘left’ his body, cited in Chapter One.
Geddes was discovered a few minutes later, and given a powerful camphor injection which started his heart beating again. Like the Rev. Bertrand, he felt ‘intensely annoyed’ at being drawn back to his body, because he felt that he was finally beginning to understand. (When Geddes described this experience, in a lecture to the Royal Medical Society, he claimed that it was of a friend whose word he could trust implicitly, but he later confessed that it was his own.) He emphasised that, when the experience was over, it had no tendency to fade like a dream.
There is one very obvious difference between this experience of Geddes and that of the Rev. Bertrand on the Titlis. When Bertrand experienced the ‘separation’, his conscious ego looked down on his lifeless body. This seems to be what happens in most out-of-the-body experiences. Geddes, like Rosalind Heywood, experienced divided consciousness; he became two people, both conscious. This is something we find impossible to envisage; we can only imagine consciousness being in one place at once, so to speak. But Rosalind Heywood told Tyrrell: ‘I was definitely both “mes”, and conscious in both places simultaneously. There was no sense of a third “me” linking the two.’
This point can be underlined by another case cited by Tyrrell — a more typical example of an out-of-the-body experience. During the Boer War, Sir Alexander Ogston was admitted to the Bloemfontein Hospital suffering from typhoid fever, and he says that in his delirium ‘mind and body seemed to be dual … I was conscious of the body as an inert, tumbled mass near the door; it belonged to me but it was not I.’ He speaks of his ‘mental self’ leaving the body and wandering along, ‘seeing other dark shades gliding silently by’, until he felt rapidly drawn back to his body. It sounds as if all this could be easily explained in terms of delirium. But that fails to explain the following incident:
I saw plainly … a poor R.A.M.C. surgeon, of whose existence I had not known, and who was in quite another part of the hospital, grow very ill and scream and die. I saw them cover over his corpse and carry him softly out on shoeless feet … Afterwards when I told these happenings to the sisters, they informed me that all this had happened …
But Ogston experienced no sense of ‘double consciousness’, like Rosalind Heywood and Geddes. ‘He’ moved around the hospital while his body lay inert on the bed. And this is true of the majority of reported cases. Dr Celia Green, head of the Oxford Institute of Psychophysical Research, made a public appeal for cases of out-of-the-body experience in 1966, and received more than four hundred replies. She published the result of her statistical studies in Out-of-the-Body Experiences in 1968. And in most cases, the subject found himself outside the physical body, usually looking down on it from above. There was usually a sense of total detachment, as if the body belonged to someone else.
Yet the first case in the book suggests that this is slightly more complicated than a straightforward separation of body and ‘soul’. A waitress walking home after a twelve-hour stint, in a state of total exhaustion, suddenly found herself looking down on her physical body — still walking along the street — and thinking: ‘So that’s how I look to other people.’ This seems to suggest that her physical body had a consciousness of its own. And another subject who ‘separated’ during illness, reported ‘The top “me” was feeling very relaxed and comfortable but quite aware of the suffering of the other “me” …’ which clearly suggests a double consciousness.
Standard reference works seem to display a certain basic agreement about out-of-the-body experiences. The general view seems to be that such experiences involve a separation of the physical body and what is referred to as the ‘astral body’. C. Nelson Stewart writes as follows:
For centuries it has been a common idea that man is made of two components — a soul or spirit which comes from God, and a material body of flesh and blood. But some philosophers and occult theorists have suggested that each man has a third component, an astral body, meaning literally ‘starry body’, and sometimes called ‘the body of light’. This astral body is an exact copy of the flesh and blood body and is made of finer material …*
This, admittedly, sounds typical of the muddled beliefs of ‘occultism’, and it is easy to understand why many orthodox researchers, like Antony Flew and D. J. West, regard the ‘astral body’ as something of a joke. Others, like Professor Jean Lhermitte, of the Paris Medical Faculty, are willing to accept the genuineness of out-of-the-body experiences, but regard them as some kind of hallucination, or a trick played by the unconscious mind on our sensory apparatus. But then, cases like that of Sir Alexander Ogston raise the question of how a man suffering from hallucinations could obtain accurate knowledge of something happening elsewhere — such as a patient dying in another part of the hospital. Anyone who takes the trouble to examine the evidence will probably end by agreeing — like Celia Green — that out-of-the-body experiences are more than delusions, and that therefore, the ‘astral body’ probably exists.
The problem then is to find a theory that explains how Rosalind Heywood or Sir Auckland Geddes were able to experience ‘double consciousness’, and how the soldier mentioned by Tyrrell could carry on a conversation with his companion while his consciousness looked down on himself from above. Even the standard encyclopedias of the occult and paranormal fail to offer an explanation.
One of the few ‘occultists’ who can offer a satisfactory and comprehensive theory is Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical movement, whose views on life after death will be considered later. Steiner would, in fact, have objected to being labelled an occultist, for he regarded himself as a scientist, and his basic training was in science and mathematics.
Steiner taught that man consists of four components: body, etheric body, astral body and ego body. When he sleeps, he splits into two, with the astral body and ego separating from the physical and etheric body.
These views are worth examining more closely. According to Steiner, the etheric body (sometimes called the ‘aura’) interpenetrates the physical body, and may be regarded as its architect. He says: ‘All the physical organs are maintained in their form and shape by the currents and movements of the etheric body.’
The word ‘currents’ offers an interesting clue. Since the eighteenth century — when Galvani discovered that the leg of a dead frog could be made to kick when an electric current was passed through it — it has been recognised that, in some respects, human beings are electric
al machines. Every time we think, the brain discharges electric currents.
One of the more baffling things about living matter is what holds it together. This was underlined in the late-nineteenth century by a young biologist named Hans Driesch. Driesch waited until the fertilised egg of a sea urchin divided, and then killed off a half of it with a hot needle. He expected the other half to develop into half a sea urchin. To his surprise, it developed into a complete but half-sized sea urchin. He tried fusing two eggs together; the result was a double-size sea urchin. Clearly, some force was actively shaping the whole thing. Until then, it had been assumed that an embryo contains a lot of tiny labelled parts, like some do-it-yourself piece of furniture. Driesch’s experiment offered a surprising new picture — as if a do-it-yourself wardrobe came with a tiny dwarf whose business is to put it together.
Across the Atlantic, a professor of anatomy, Harold Saxton Burr, was interested in Driesch’s results, and particularly in this idea of a ‘shaping field’ or blueprint. Burr pointed out that if a salamander embryo is placed in an alkaline solution, its individual cells ‘disaggregate’ and turn into something like a bagfull of marbles. But if these are placed in a slightly acid solution, they come together again and re-form into an embryo. Burr compared this to what happens when a magnet is held underneath iron filings on a sheet of paper — they form into a pattern following the lines of magnetic force. Burr and his colleague F. S. C. Northrop attached delicate voltmeters to trees, embryos and other forms of living matter, and showed that seasonal changes are accompanied by a change in a weak electric field. This electric field is characteristic of all living creatures. It is the shaping force of life, the dwarf who comes with the do-it-yourself wardrobe. So Steiner’s remarks about the ‘etheric body’ — that it is the ‘architect’ of the physical body, and that organs maintain their shape through its currents — proves to be a precise and accurate scientific description. Since Steiner wrote these words in 1910 (in An Outline of Occult Science) — a quarter of a century before Burr and Northrop began experimenting at Yale — it must be admitted that he showed remarkable prescience.
But, according to Steiner, a human being who consisted only of physical body held together by etheric body would be literally a vegetable. In fact, a human being during sleep is a kind of vegetable. When he wakes up, consciousness has been added to the mixture and, according to Steiner, consciousness is the astral body — or at least, its most important effect. Just as man shares the etheric body in common with vegetables, so he shares the astral body in common with animals.
In man, says Steiner, there is yet another principle over and above these. An animal’s choices are dictated by its sensations: heat and cold, hunger and thirst, pleasure and pain. Man is able to develop desires and wishes that go beyond these. An obvious example is his interest in mathematics, which seems to have no possible connection with his physical appetites. (Throughout his life, Steiner maintained an interest in mathematics.) This higher level of choice man calls the ego. The ego, says Steiner, is a principle of continuity. The animal self forgets quickly and easily (everyone has noticed how easily we forget the miseries of physical illness, for example). The ego attempts to provide a certain lasting element in human life.
These observations will strike a chord in every intelligent person. Nietzsche once remarked that we would like to ask the cows the secret of their happiness, but it would be pointless because they would have forgotten the question before they could give an answer. They have no continuity of consciousness. H. G. Wells made the same point in his Experiment in Autobiography: that since the beginning of time most living creatures have been ‘up against it’, so their lives have been basically a struggle against circumstance. Now, says Wells, for the first time in history, you can say to a man: Yes, you earn a living, you support a family, you love and hate, but — what do you do? It applies to all kinds of men, from scientists to artists, from mathematicians to religious thinkers. Take away that central preoccupation of their lives, and condemn them to mere ‘living’, and they would want to commit suicide.
So Steiner’s fourfold division of man makes practical sense on at least three of its levels: the physical (obviously), the etheric level and the ego level. And if we are willing to concede the evidence for out-of-the-body experiences, then we could say that his fourfold division appeals to commonsense on every level.
Another ‘occult’ system that bears a close resemblance to Steiner’s is that of the Kahunas of Hawaii, as described by the anthropologist Max Freedom Long in works such as The Huna Code in Religion. The Kahunas (priests of the Huna religion) also believe that man consists of a physical body and three ‘spirits’ or selves. These consist of the ‘low self, man’s instinctive being, which corresponds roughly to the Freudian ‘unconscious’; the ‘middle self, man’s conscious ego or ‘everyday self’; and the ‘high self’, a superconscious ego which possesses greater powers than the other two. The everyday self is ignorant of the existence of the other two. He fails to recognise the existence of the ‘high self’ because it is as far above ordinary consciousness as the ‘unconscious mind’ is below it. Moreover, the ‘low self’ and the ‘middle self’ intermingle, so that man assumes they are one and the same.
This ‘low self sounds very much like Steiner’s ‘etheric body’. It interpenetrates every cell and tissue of the body, and is the manufacturer of vital force. It is also the seat of the emotions — of love, hate, fear and desire. Its centre of gravity, according to the Kahunas, is the solar plexus. It is naturally violent and emotional, and often behaves like a spoilt child. The ‘middle self’ should attempt to discipline it and raise it to its own level; regrettably, many people give way to the demands of the ‘low self’ and descend to its level.
All this begins to answer the question of how Rosalind Heywood could experience herself as ‘White Me’ and ‘Pink Me’, with ‘White Me’ feeling a certain contempt for ‘Pink Me’ and its selfish desires. In Steiner’s terminology, the ego was looking down on the etheric body; in Kahuna terminology, the ‘low self’ was Pink Me and the ‘high self’ was White Me. This seems confirmed by Rosalind Heywood’s comment:
A moment or two later — I felt no transition — White Me was once more imprisoned with Pink Me in one body, and there they have dwelt as oil and water ever since. It is only quite lately that I have become aware, though I seldom remember it, that I can deliberately identify myself with White Me and watch without feeling them — that is the point — the desires and repulsions that must inevitably toss all Pink Mes around.
And she adds the interesting comment: ‘If Freud ever struck such cases perhaps they helped to lead him towards the concepts of Id and Supergo.’ In Freud, the Supergo is, of course, another name for conscience, not for some ‘higher ego’, as Rosalind Heywood here implies. But her own analysis of the situation fits in perfectly with the views of the Kahunas on the ‘low self’ and the ‘high self’.
All this makes it clear that Rosalind Heywood is not, as we might at first have suspected, an egotistic female who has invented a lot of ‘psychic’ experiences to make herself sound interesting. She is simply describing the world as it is seen through the eyes of a typical ‘clairvoyant’. This world certainly differs from the world as described by modern science; yet it has its own inner consistency. And if the ‘sensitivity threshold’ theory is correct, it is certainly not in any way a contradiction of science. In fact, as we have seen, many of Rosalind Heywood’s experiences could be explained in terms of the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
Having said which, it is necessary to admit that she says many things that most scientists would find quite unacceptable — like her experiences with ‘Julia’ and ‘Vivian’ — the second of which finally convinced her of the reality of life after death. And what are we to make of her experience on the edge of Dartmoor, when she claims to have sensed various non-human presences, some of which came to visit her (‘a covey of little invisibles’) as she sat at her writing
desk the next day?
Here it is only possible to repeat that the experience is not peculiar to Rosalind Heywood. The entities she describes are usually known as nature spirits or elementals, and most ‘sensitives’ claim to have seen them. Steiner speaks of them as a matter of fact, and comments:
We can lay hold of nature with ideas that assume a monistic (i.e. material) reality because sense perception allows us normally to experience only as much of nature as is in accord with that principle. Everything contradictory is filtered out, and nature is communicated to us in the guise of a monistic system.
He goes on: ‘In the elemental world we find earth spirits (gnomes), water spirits (undines), air spirits (sylphs) and fire spirits (salamanders) …’*
W. Y. Evans Wentz, an authority on Eastern religions, states in his classic study The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries: ‘… we can postulate scientifically … the existence of such invisible intelligences as gods, genii, daemons, all kinds of true fairies, and disembodied man’. He arrived at this conclusion as a result of years of study of ‘fairy faith’ and the gathering of hundreds of depositions.
By far the strangest story in Adam Crabtree’s Multiple Man concerns ‘possession’ by an apparently non-human entity. Crabtree admits to having his doubts about including it because it sounds so preposterous, but adds: ‘The fact remains, however, that it occurred as I have described it (if anything I have toned down some of the more dramatic elements of the experience).’ It concerned a man called Marius, who taught history in a university and held a good position with a government health agency. He had been a happily married man until, for no reason he could understand, he suddenly began to experience murderous impulses towards his wife. He seemed to be driven by ‘some relentless inner compulsion to see blood’. These impulses were so strong that he believed he might lose control and kill her.