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 AUTOMATISM, organic functions, or inhibitions, not controlled by the conscious self. The word "automatism" is a misnomer as the acts, or inhibitions, are only automatic from the viewpoint of personal consciousness and they may offer the characteristic features of voluntary acts on the part of another consciousness. Myers divided the phenomena of automatism into two principal classes: motor-automatism (the movement of the limbs, head or tongue by an inner motor impulse beyond the conscious will) and sensory automatism (externalization of perceptions in inner vision and audition). The first he called active, the second passive automatism, stressing, however, that the impulse whence it originates may be much the same in the one case as in the other. This place of origin is either the subconscious self or a discarnate intelligence. A message is conveyed. The problem awaiting solution is how are the motor or sensory centers excited without the action of the conscious self. Myers suggested that this excitation may take place either through the subconscious (subliminal) mind or the communicating intelligence may find some direct way for which he proposed the name "telergic."

The phenomena of automatism are often accompanied by organic disturbances, changes in the vaso-motor, the circulatory and respiratory system. The sensory impressions are sometimes accompanied by a feeling of malaise which is noticeable even in such simple cases as telepathy. In the phenomena of dowsing the disturbance is much keener.

Incapacity for action is an almost rudimentary type of motor-automatism. It may result from a simple subconscious perception or it may be induced by an outside agency to save the subject from grave peril, i.e., from entering a house which is about to collapse or boarding a train which will be derailed. An instructive instance is quoted by Prof. Flournoy from his experiments with Miss Helen Smith: "One day Miss Smith, when desiring to lift down a large and heavy object which lay on a high shelf, was prevented from doing so because her raised arm remained for some seconds as though petrified in the air and incapable of movement. She took this as a warning and gave up the attempt. At a subsequent seance Leopold stated that it was he who thus fixed Helen's arm to prevent her from grasping this object which was much too heavy for her and would have caused her some accident."

In a curious record of spirit cure, published in Proceedings, S.P.R. Vol. III. p. 182-187, we read: "On August 17, 1891, the patient felt for the first time a unique sensation, accompanied by formication and sense of weight in the lower limbs, especially in the feet. This sensation gradually spread over the rest of the body, and when it reached the arms, the hands and forearms began to rotate. These phenomena recurred after dinner every evening, as soon as the patient was quiet in her armchair. . . The patient placed her two hands on a table. The feeling of "magnetization" then began in the feet, which began to rotate and the upper parts of the body gradually shared in the same movement. At a certain point, the hands automatically detached themselves from the table by small, gradual shocks, and at the same time the arms assumed a tetanic rigidity somewhat resembling catalepsy."

Communication with the operating agency was established by automatic noddings of the head for "yes" and "no." One day "Mme. X. felt herself lifted from her armchair and compelled to stand upright. Her feet and her whole body then executed a systematic calisthenic exercise, in which all the movements were regulated and made rhythmic with finished art . . . Mme. X. had never had the smallest notion of chamber gymnastics ... these movements would have been very painful and fatiguing had she attempted them of her own will. Yet at the end of each performance she was neither fatigued nor out of breath.... Mme. X. is accustomed to arrange her own hair. One morning she said laughingly: ' I wish that a Court hairdresser would do my hair for me: my arms are tired.' At once she felt her hands acting automatically, and with no fatigue for her arms, which seemed to be held up; and the result was a complicated coiffure, which in no way resembled her usual simple mode of arrangement. The oddest of all these automatic phenomena consisted in extremely graceful gestures which Mme. X. was caused to execute with her arms, gestures as though of evocation or adoration of some imaginary divinity, or gestures of benediction. ... The few persons who witnessed this spectacle are agreed that it was worthy of the powers of the greatest actress. Of such a gift Mme. X. has nothing."

Dr. F. L. H. Willis performed in trance, controlled by Dr. Mason a difficult and delicate surgical operation. At that time he had not started to study medicine.

Myers classified the motor messages, in the order of their increasing specialization, as follows:

1. Massive motor impulses. Case of the bricklayer (Phantasms of the Living, Vol. II. p. 377) who had a sudden impulse to run home and arrived just in time to save the life of his little boy who had set himself on fire. Case of Mr. Garrison who left a religious service in the evening and walked 18 miles under a strong impulse to see his mother and found her dead. (Journal S.P.R. Vol. III. p. 125). We should include under this heading the phenomena of ambulatory automatism: moving about in a secondary state, as a result of an irresistible impulse and forgetting all about it on return to normal consciousness. It is noticeable in subjects affected with nervous diseases. The mysterious transportation of the Italian Pansini children was attributed ' by some Italian scientists, to this cause.

2. Simple subliminal motor impulses which give rise to table tilting and similar phenomena. (Miss Georgina Houghton in Evenings at Home in Spiritual Seance writes that on one occasion, being anxious to find her way to a house which she had not visited for several years, she entrusted herself to spirit guides and arrived safely.)

3. Musical execution, subliminally initiated. (Jesse Shepard, the famous musical medium, George Aubert and many child prodigies furnish cases of absorbing interest. The heading should be widened to include cases of contagious dancing, witnessed in religious revivals, or cases like that of Lina, studied by Col. Rochas, and Madeleine, studied by Emile Magnin, both girls exhibiting remarkable histrionic and dancing talent in trance.)

4. Automatic drawing and painting.

5. Automatic writing.

6. Automatic speech.

7. Telekinetic movements.

Maxwell suggests the following classification

1. Simple muscular automatism: typtology, alphabetic systems.

2. Graphic muscular automatism: automatic writing drawing and painting.

3. Phonetic automatism: trance speaking.

4. Mixed automatism: incarnations.

Sensory automatism embraces the phenomena of clairvoyance, clairaudience and crystal gazing. Therefore, according to Myers' scheme, the bulk of the phenomena of psychical research would range under the heading: automatism. We shall only deal here with automatic writing, drawing, painting and automatic speaking.

AUTOMATIC WRITING, scripts produced without the control of the conscious self. It is the most common form of mediumship, the source of innumerable cases of self-delusion, and at the same time one of the highest and most valuable spiritual gifts as, if reliable, it opens up a direct channel for obtaining teaching from the Beyond. Between these two extremes many problems of a complex nature present themselves to psychical research.

Let us see first how the power of automatic writing is acquired. In describing his first experience at a seance of Herne and Williams in 1872, Stainton Moses writes in Spirit Identity: "My right arm was seized about the middle of the forearm, and dashed violently up and down with a noise resembling that of a number of paviors at work. It was the most tremendous exhibition of 'unconscious muscular action' I ever saw. In vain I tried to stop it. I distinctly felt the grasps, soft and firm, round my arm, and though perfectly possessed of senses and volition, I was powerless to interfere, although my hand was disabled for some days by the bruising it then got. The object we soon found was to get up the force."

The first experience of William Howitt is similarly described by his daughter in Pioneers of Spiritual Reformation: "My father had not sat many minutes passive, holding a pencil in his hand upon a sheet of paper, ere something resembling an electric shock ran through his arm and hand; whereupon the pencil began to move in circles. The influence becoming stronger and ever stronger, moved not alone the hand, but the whole arm in a rotatory motion, until the arm was at length raised, and rapidly-as if it had been the spoke of a wheel propelled by machinery-whirled irresistibly in a wide sweep, and with great speed, for some ten minutes through the air. The effect of this rapid rotation was felt by him in the muscles of the arm for some time afterwards. Then the arm being again at rest the pencil, in the passive fingers, began gently, but clearly and decidedly, to move."

Mme. d'Esperance said: "I first noticed a tingling, pricking, aching sensation in my arm, as one feels as one strikes one's elbow; then a numb swollen sort of feeling which extended to my finger tips. My hand became quite cold and without sensation, so that I could pinch or nip the flesh without feeling any pain." The insensibility to pain was noticed by Professor William James, and Binet has proved this partial anaesthesia by mechanical means.

In Mrs. Piper's case the automatic writing began with spasmodic violence, with sweeping the writing materials off the table. She wrote in trance. Which brings us to the first important classification: automatic writing may be produced in the waking state or in trance. There are many degrees of the two states, blending is frequent, the important point apparently being to bar the interference of the conscious mind. In conscious writing it is the writer who moves the pencil, in automatic writing it is the pencil which moves the writer. In the waking state, of course, the writer is fully conscious of the strange thing which is going on but he must remain entirely passive. He may watch the flow of sentences but if he becomes too interested or anxious the writing becomes disconnected, words are left out, or the meaning becomes unintelligible. It is best if he occupies himself with something else, like Stainton Moses, who kept on writing consciously with his right hand while his left was in control of his communicators. All this, however, varies extremely with different mediums. Nearly every automatic writer has conditions of his own. Accordingly, the script, which at first is hardly more than erratic markings on the paper, discloses many curious features. The medium may have an impression of the sense of the communication or may not. The text may be couched in tongues unknown, the character of the writing may be his own or a strange one. It may be so minute that a strong magnifying glass will be necessary for reading it, it may be mirror writing, if the power is applied from underneath the hand, it may come upside down if the horizontal direction is changed to face a particular sitter, the words may be written in a reverse order, as "latipsoh" for hospital, and it may be executed at tremendous speed. The automatic communications alleged to originate from Philip the Evangelist, from Cleophas, and F. W. H. Myers, obtained by Miss Geraldine Cummins, were sometimes delivered at the extraordinary speed of 2,000 words per hour.

Where do they come from?

The question of paramount importance is the source of the automatic communications. It may be the subconscious mind of the medium or an extraneous mind. This need not necessarily be discarnate. There are cases on record which prove that the contents of the script may emanate from the mind of a living man. William T. Stead, who developed the power of automatic writing, often received such curious messages from many of his friends for a period of fifteen years. He said that, as a rule, these messages were astonishingly correct and the fact of such communication with the living was as well established for him as the existence of wireless telegraphy. He made it a subject of experimental investigation and found that the messages so transmitted sometimes came against the direct intention of the agent. He called the phenomenon automatic telepathy and asserted that he knew at least ten other automatic writers who received similar messages. Miss Felicia R. Scatcherd was apparently one of them. She is quoted in James Coates' book Has W. T. Stead Returned? as follows: "Then came a new phase; I was the recipient of messages from the living-mostly strangers engaged in public affairs, and was startled into a perception of the scientific value of these phenomena. When at a dinner in Paris I met a famous scientist who, in his after-dinner remarks, expressed the identical sentiments I had received as coming from him, many months earlier, in a language with which I was then ill-acquainted. There was no mistake about it. Knowing I should meet him, I had my written record with me, taken down in shorthand and copied in longhand as soon as possible, as was my invariable practice. I disliked receiving information in this way, but could not help it. If I refused these confidences, nothing else came. However, I became more reconciled to it when I found I could often be of service, in one instance preventing suicide, in others forestalling various casualties."

To Stead's direct question: "how is it that a person will tell me things with my hand that he would never tell me with his tongue?" Julia replied through automatic writing that the real self will never communicate any intelligence whatever except what it wishes to communicate, but the, real self is very different from the physical self, it sits behind the physical senses and the mind, using either as it pleases. "I find," said Stead in a lecture before the London Spiritualist Alliance in 1913, "that there are some who will communicate with extraordinary accuracy, so much so that out of a hundred statements there would not be more than one which would be erroneous. I find some who, though they will sign their names correctly, apparently in their own character, make statements that are entirely false." To his question "if the real self does not communicate any intelligence except at its volition, how is it that I can get an answer from my friend without his knowing anything about it?" Julia returned the answer that "the real self does not always take the trouble when he has communicated a thing by the mind through the hand to inform the physical brain that he has done so." In one ease the message which Stead received from a living friend referred to a calamity which happened three days afterwards.

Stead's theory of automatic telepathy appears to have been borne out in experiments with the planchette recorded in Proceedings, S.P.R., Vol. II, p. 235. A long series of communications between the Rev. P. H. Newnham, Vicar of Maker, Devonport, and his wife, clearly show that Mrs. Newnham's hand wrote replies answering questions of her husband which she neither heard nor saw.

A still better illustration is to be found in F. Bligh Bond's experiences with S., a lady who figures in the history of the Glastonbury scripts. As Bligh Bond writes in Psychic Research, April, 1929: "I noticed a very curious thing. The communications which she sent me began more and more to follow the line of my current archaeological enquiry. And after we had met once in the summer of that year, this tendency became increasingly obvious. There was some sort of mental rapport or attunement apparently present, and this I attributed to the dominance in both our minds of a very specialized line of interest. On one or two occasions in 1922 this correspondence became more pronounced and the communications took the form of answers to questions which were in my mind, though not consciously formulated ... Finally a very strange thing happened. I had a letter from S. in which she sent me a writing she had received automatically in the form of a letter addressed to her by myself and signed with my name, although not in my handwriting . . . I was and am totally unconscious of having mentally addressed it."

Nevertheless, such communications from the living are comparatively very rare. There is no doubt that, whether the contents disclose a rambling mind or powers of lucid reason, most of the automatic scripts represent a subconscious uprush. Therefore, in judging such scripts the standard of evidence should be very strict. So much more so as automatic writing is known to have been produced by post-hypnotic suggestion. Edmund Gurney was the first to conduct such experiments. His subject was, for instance, suggested in trance to write "It has begun snowing again." Awakened, he wrote with a planchette, while his waking self was entirely unaware of what he was doing: "It has begun snowing." Similar experiments were set on foot independently by Professor Pierre Janet in France. The primary personality will absolutely repudiate the authorship of such scripts and it will also say that they cannot emanate from him because there are things in it which he never knew. Another curious feature of these experimental scripts is that these manufactured personalities, dwelling in separate streams of consciousness according to the depth of hypnotism, will sometimes obstinately cling to their fictitious names and refuse to admit that they are only portions of the automatist himself. In multiple personality the case is still stronger.

The unexpectedness of an automatically received message is yet no proof for its extraneous origin. As Myers suggested, two separate strata of intelligences may be concerned and a man may hold colloquy with his own dream. Besides, automatic writing is often obtained by the collaboration of two people who touch the planchette simultaneously or one is touching the wrist of the other during the process of writing. The source of the messages in such cases may be found in a combined fountain of subconsciousness.

Col. Rochas records a case where the communicator of the automatic script was found to be a fictive being in a novel. The extreme Spiritualist would attribute such messages to lying spirits, the occultist to thought forms, endowed with temporary intelligence. It is very likely, however, that nothing else than a dream of the subconscious has been witnessed in the case. Speculative possibilities are well illustrated by the mediumship of Miss Helen Smith. If the claim of reincarnation and exceptional remembrance of preincarnate states were to be admitted both the information contained in the script and the question of the communicators as preincarnate personalities would have to be considered in this light.

The difference in the character of the automatic writing alone does not prove the presence of an outside entity. Prof. Richet proved in experiments, that are considered classical, that the new personality which he created by hypnotic suggestion completely transformed the handwriting of two hypnotized subjects.

The reproduction of the handwriting of the deceased is a much stronger but, in itself, not yet decisive point. Strict evidentiality requires that this resemblance should not be loosely asserted and that the medium should not have seen the writing of the alleged communicator, as hypnotic experiments reveal uncanny powers of perception and retention on the part of the subconscious mind. In the Blanche Abercromby case of Stainton Moses' mediumship Myers found every requirement satisfactory as both the lady's son and a handwriting expert found the spirit-writing identical with that by the lady when living.

The analysis is not an easy task as sometimes the handwriting shows the characteristics of two controls and yet the essential characteristics of the medium may also be discernible.

Simultaneously obtained messages are neither safe from telepathic suspicion. Stead's communicator, Julia, often impressed Stead and his secretary, Edith K. Harper, at the same time, but not until the idea was further developed to cross correspondence: to broken off sentences in each script so that they should complete each other, could these scripts be considered exempt from the influence of living minds.

Psychometry may offer an indirect presumption. If the script emanates from an extraneous intelligence its psychometric reading should result in the presentation of a character different from the medium's. There is no telling, however, to what extent the medium's influence may blend with the script and garble psychometric impressions.

The difficulties, therefore, are very great if we set out to prove that a certain message comes from a discarnate mind. It should not only be clear that the contents of the message were unknown to the medium, but also that they were unascertainable. And as we do not know the powers of the subconscious to acquire information those instances in which the information may have been acquired from books should only be provisionally accepted. Stainton Moses' control, Rector, could read books, and proved it in many tests. If a discarnate mind can do so, there is no a priori possibility that an incarnate mind, freed in trance, may not achieve the same thing. Another series of difficulties will be encountered if we consider the influence of telepathy. A rigorous inquiry should be held into how far the message could have been influenced by the knowledge contained in a living mind. If every exaggerated scruple is to be satisfied we will have to narrow down considerably the circle of conclusive messages. The revelation of the contents of posthumous sealed letters, of the whereabouts of intentionally hidden objects, or the sudden announcement of death unknown to the sitters may offer a prima facie case that the communication comes from a discarnate mind. A good case for the latter is quoted by Aksakof. A man named Duvanel died by his own hand on January 15th, 1887, in a Swiss village where he lived alone. Five hours after his death an automatic message, announcing the decease, was written at Wilna by Mlle. Stramm whom Duvanel wished to marry, but who could have received no news of his tragic end. -Nevertheless the enumeration of the many difficulties in the way of convincing evidence does not mean that the message in question if it could have been known to the medium, is worthless. Every case has to be examined as a whole. Sometimes the display of extraordinary, erudition or educational training, revealed by the scripts, alone is sufficient to establish a claim of supernormal origin. The banality of the message is usually taken as a proof of subconscious origin. This attitude is not justified by any means. If you begin to knock on a wall behind which, unseen to you, people are passing, there is no telling who will stop and answer. It may be a fool, a knave or a man of intelligence and sympathy, bent on helping and teaching. The recipient of the message may have confidence in the good faith of the communicator but no assurance of good faith alone justifies an unqualified belief in the intrinsic worth of the messages coming through. Good faith and ignorance, good faith and presumption often go together in this world. There is no reason to rule out their partnership in the Beyond. The question assumes a different aspect after long association between the automatic writer and the communicator. The latter may succeed in convincing the writer of his sincerity, erudition and high moral purpose. He has his own means of identification. From the sensation produced in the hand the automatist recognizes the presence of the well-known control or the appearance of an intruder. Occasionally the writing is attributed to preposterous sources. Victor Hugo received automatic messages from the "Shadow of the Tomb" and the "Ass of Balaam." Jules Bois quotes questions in Le Mirage Moderne to which the "Lion of Androcles" gave the answers. The communicator often avails himself of the services of an amanuensis who appears to have more skill in performing the psychic feat of communication. In the seances of Stainton Moses, Rector acted as amanuensis for Imperator and many others, producing a large part of the automatic script. In Mrs. Piper's case the communicators were often unconscious whether their messages were delivered by the spoken word or in automatic writing. The scripts of this famous medium are in a class by themselves. While she was writing her voice was being used by another communicator. To quote from Dr. Hodgson's report "the sense of hearing for the 'hand'-consciousness appears to be in the hand, and the sitter must talk to the hand to be understood. The thoughts that pass through the consciousness controlling the hand tend to be written, and one of the difficulties apparently is to prevent the writing out of thoughts which are not intended for the sitter. Other 'indirect communicators' frequently purport to be present and the 'consciousness of the hand' listens to them with the hand as though they were close by, as it listens to the sitters, presenting the palm of the hand, held in slightly different positions for the purpose by different 'direct communicators' so as to bring usually the region of the junction between the little finger and the palm towards the mouth of the sitter." In the old days writing was usually mirror writing, which sometimes was obtained in an unusual manner, i.e., Mrs. Piper wrote a name on paper held to her forehead so that the pencil was turned towards her face. With the advent of the Imperator group Rector took over the role of the scribe for all communicators and mirror writing only cropped up occasionally. Sometimes the letters were spelled in an, inverted order. The writing appeared to be less of a strain than speaking and these seances lasted for two hours or more.

An extremely interesting intellectual aspect of automatic writing is given, from the other side, by F. W. H. Myers in Miss Cummins' "The Road to Immortality":

"The inner mind-wrote Myers on the second occasion on which he purported to write through Miss Cummins-is very difficult to deal with from this side. We impress it with our message. We never impress the brain of the medium directly. That is out of the question. But the inner mind receives our message and sends it on to the brain. The, brain is a mere mechanism. The inner mind is like soft wax, it receives our thoughts, their whole content, but it must produce the words that clothe it. That is what makes cross-correspondence so very difficult. We may succeed in sending the thought through, but the actual words depend largely on the inner mind's content, on what words will frame the thought. If I am to send half a sentence through one medium and half through another I can only send the same thought with the suggestion that a part of it will come through one medium and a part through another."

The explanation may have been very true in the case of Miss Cummins, yet it need not have general application. She was conscious of the use of her brain by someone else.

"Soon I am in a condition of half-sleep-she writes in her introduction to The Road to Immortality-a kind of dream-state that yet, in its peculiar way, has more illumination than one's waking state. I have at times distinctly the sensation of a dreamer who has no conscious creative control over the ideas that are being formulated in words. I am a mere listener, and through my stillness and passivity I lend my aid to the stranger who is speaking. It is hard to put such a psychological condition into words. I have the consciousness that my brain is being used by a stranger all the time. It is just as if an endless telegram is being tapped out on it."

Like any other mediumistic faculty, automatic writing may appear at a very early age. Mr. Wason, a well-known Spiritualist from Liverpool, has seen the six months old son of Mrs. Kate Fox-Jencken, write: "I love this little child. God bless him. Advise his father to go back to London on Monday by all means -Susan." Susan was the name of Mr. Wason's wife. Myers and Hodgson saw a girl of four write the words "Your Aunt Emma." Celina ' a child of three and a half, wrote in the presence of Drs. Dussart and Broquet: "I am glad to manifest through a charming little medium of three and a half who promises well. Promise me not to neglect her."

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