LIFE BEYOND DEATH WITH EVIDENCE
by
The Rev. CHARLES DRAYTON THOMAS
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
The Late VISCOUNTESS GREY OF FALLODON
LONDON 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO LTD
GLASGOW SYDNEY AUCKLAND
Copyright
Fitst Impression September, 1928
Second Impression October, 1928
Third Impression August, 1930
Printed in Great Britain
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
BY THE LATE VISCOUNTESS GREY OF FALLODON
THIS will be a useful book if it falls into the right hands. There are many to whom it may bring a measure of comfort, who feel an intense and despondent longing for word or sign from precious friends hid in Deaths dateless night; but, let it be added, only to those whom the obtaining of this through a medium does not fill with the sense of insuperable repugnance that it arouses in some. This book is not likely to be of use to such as find a more sublimated union through the channel of the Holy Eucharist; nor will it be congenial to Theosophists, or those followers of Rudolf Steiner, who so rightly teach that we should dwell beyond the psychic, pressing on into those higher reaches, which are the more celestial development of our nature. To many, however, this is a counsel of perfection, and it may well be that this book will reach a wide public of its own. Think of the great crowd that watches a football match, or sees a race run, or one that lines the route of some royal wedding, or state funeral, and ask yourself how many illumined minds, how many elevated religious minds, even how many minds simply intuitively convinced of survival, are there in that sea of faces? A small percentage. It is this other vaster portion of our fellow creatures that those of us who believe we have spoken with the risen dead, want to reach. And it is for these that such books as this are published.
The author has observed a rigorous method of investigation that puts high value on his work. Readers will find the subject dealt with in thoroughness and integrity. Spiritualism has not been too rich in wise adherents. Sir Thomas Browne says that if the banner of Truth trails in the dust, it is the fault of the standard bearer. And this subject, of all others, has had its full quota of ensign bearers that have been either strangely clumsy, or unworthy of their trust. So, to find someone willing and capable of working along the lines of the Society for Psychical Research, combining sympathy with their rigour, is no small good. Mr. Drayton Thomas is known to me through our common interest in Psychical Research; and we have had more than one interesting case of cross-correspondence, in our work, as recorded in my book The Earthen Vessel. These devices of Book Tests and Cross-correspondences, to the casual observer so unnecessarily complicated, were invented, it is believed, by a band of psychical-researchers on the other side of death, in order to counter the objection so commonly made, that all simpler communications arise from mind-reading. Many people think that it is we, spiritualists, who thrust these kinds of complicated methods upon our communicators, making, in a most repellent lightness of feeling, a kind of pencil and paper game, out of this spiritual bond. Not at all. Book Tests and Cross-correspondences, and the still more puzzling Newspaper Tests, have been given us from workers who have progressed further along this subject than have we. It was a great moment when, in the curious phenomenon of Cross-correspondences, it became apparent to the pioneers on our side of the grave, that they were not working alone. When in the midst of irrelevances, truncated quotations, and snippets from the Classics, there emerged something, fragmentary but insistent, which suggested the thing being part of a scheme, devised by those on the other side, to get messages through in a way that could not be attributed to any activity on the part of the medium, nor to any mind-reading between the medium and the person receiving the message, by any of the ordinary channels of sense. The moment when this first was apprehended, may be likened in Myerss fine image, to the thrill in the heart of the worker tunnelling through some dark mountains centre on hearing the first faint ring of the picks of the approaching party, working from the other side. In years to come, when people now unborn, shall look back upon this Age, to view its promontories, this outcome of the work of the Society for Psychical Research will stand as one of the Great Peaks. It is not that communication with the dead is any new discovery; it has been an old tale in the long Story of Man. The Folklore of every country is charged with it; religions are based on it and vitalised by all it implicates; but for lack of verification, all this has gone down the wind. Now, in this modern movement, the thing is being built upon a rock. There has been instituted a system of evidential investigation. This is brought to bear on such psychological material as may be presented to the test. Anything that has not passed through this mill is disclaimed; nothing is rightly held of value that does not bear the hall-mark of this trained scrutiny. And the work grows.
There have been some in all ages who have held they spoke with the dead, and who have given us their message.
It may be the message is being recorded, fruitfully, at last.
PAMELA GREY.
Published at the Bodley Head.
PREFACE
But what avail inadequate words to reach
The innermost of Truth?...
Yet, if it be that something not thy own,
Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes,
Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams,
Is even to thy unworthiness made known,
Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare
To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine
The real seem false, the beauty undivine,
So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer,
Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed
Of goodness dropped in fallow-ground of need.
WHITTIER. Utterance.
THIS book explains how I became assured that I was speaking with friends who had left earth. It also outlines their description of life in realms beyond.
The whole evidence is too voluminous to print, but sufficient is given to indicate its variety. I have selected striking instances among many of equal value. There is little mention of failures, because these have been relatively few. My friends enjoy testing their powers and some experiments have not been entirely successful.
The book and newspaper tests (explained in .), were experimental, and in these there were usually some failures. Both success and failure have been carefully analysedthe former by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick in a paper which appeared in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for April, 1921; and the latter in my book, Some New Evidence for Human Survival.
The impressive force of evidence personally received is difficult to convey in print. My book is, to the actual fact, something like a collection of butterflies in a museum, arranged and motionless, while away in the glades of the forest the air is full of joyous life, flashing and flitting from tree to flower under the blue sky. Those who know the life of the forest can best realise the significance of pressed specimens.
In addition to proofs, my friends tell something of their life and surroundings since leaving earth. But they remind me, from time to time, that they are unable to say all they wish, and that speaking through a medium is analogous to passing stones through a sieve; part will go through while the residue will not. I discuss the causes of this limitation in . and elsewhere.
