Chapter XII. Raising the Dead, Permanently and Temporarily

The Secret Science Behind Miracles, by Max Freedom Long, [1948], at sacred-texts.com

p. 201

CHAPTER XII

RAISING THE DEAD, PERMANENTLY AND TEMPORARILY

The dead can be raised. There are two kinds of "raising," however, one a complete restoration to life in the physical body, the other a temporary materialization of a physical body for a departed spirit to use. In both these cases we find proofs of the correctness of the ancient beliefs of the kahunas.

We have accounts of men being permanently raised from the dead in Christian and other religious literature. The kahunas were able, under certain conditions, to demonstrate such feats and also to explain them in a comprehensible fashion.

The temporary raising of a living body for the use of a spirit of the dead was common in Polynesia, and as "Materialization," has been studied and repeatedly verified in Psychical Research.

CASE 22

A Kahuna Raises the Dead Before Dr. Brigham

Preliminary Notes:

It takes but a short time in a warm climate like that of Hawaii for a dead body to begin to decay. However, there is a condition of deep trance or coma which so closely resembles death that there is a grave danger of

p. 202

being mistaken for dead if in such a condition, and of being buried alive.

The kahunas believed that decay could not set in until the shadowy body of the low self was entirely withdrawn from the body. The two spirits of the lower man can be out of the physical body in their shadowy bodies, and can travel to a great distance, as is done in "astral travel," but there is always a connecting thread (the "silver cord" of Theosophy) of shadowy material joining the physical body and the low shadowy body. It is only when this thread is broken that decay sets in.

After the connecting thread is broken, it would take an act of the High Self to restore tissues which had begun to decay and make possible the return to life of the one who had died. On the other hand, if the thread is unbroken, as is often the case when death comes without an injury to the tissues, as in drowning, life may be restored if a return to the body is made possible for the spirits.

The shadowy body of the low self, as has already been explained, is an ideal storage place for vital force, and when the spirits leave the physical body, most of the vital force is taken along in the shadowy body. When the dense physical body is left behind, after the removal of the elements of consciousness and vital force from it, unconsciousness and inaction result. Studies made of patients suffering from epilepsy, show that after the characteristic "cry" and fall, there is no action of either the body waves or brain waves, as measured by recording instruments. The indication is that the two selves of the patient, in their shadowy bodies, have been driven out of the body temporarily, or,

p. 203

as an alternate possibility, the two selves have remained in the body but have been robbed of the last vestige of vital force by a spirit of the obsessing type. Consciousness returns to the patient in about the length of time required to rebuild the supply of vital force.

The Case:

Dr. Brigham, during one of his field trips in search of rare indigenous plants in Hawaii, took refuge in a coastal village during a very severe storm. In the storm a native lad of about sixteen was drowned. All efforts to revive him failed, and a kahuna living some distance away was summoned.

The kahuna, an old man, arrived and began work about eight hours after the accident. The boy's body was cold, and, when examined by Dr. Brigham shortly before the arrival of the kahuna, seemed to have begun to stiffen in rigor mortis.

The kahuna sat down near the body and set to work to use his psychic powers to learn what had become of the lad's two spirits. In this work, as he later explained, he had the help of several spirit friends. (The shadowy body cord must still have connected the body to the low self of the lad, although probably stretched to the breaking point.) The boy's selves were found wandering in a confused state, and brought back to the body, being urged to remain there and make every possible effort to reenter it.

The body was warmed, and while the kahuna applied his hands to it, he gave of his own vital force. He also used verbal suggestion to cause the return into the body, using as a physical stimulus a stroking and squeezing, as if the spirits were reentering by way of one of the

p. 204

big toes, and was being squeezed up the leg into the body. The kahuna also invoked "the god" (High Self) asking for aid. After about an hour he announced that the spirits of the boy were entering the body. Gradually the flesh became warmer. The heart began to beat and the boy opened his eyes. The recovery was so rapid that in a short time he was asking for food.

Dr. Brigham, greatly impressed by the demonstration of kahuna magic, asked many questions of the kahuna, learning little beyond the fact that the "god" whose aid had been given was one of the Aumakuas, or parental and greatly trustworthy spirits who have formerly been men living in bodies on earth.

He kept track of the Hawaiian lad for a number of years and there seemed never to have been appreciable after effects from the death by drowning.

Comment:

The aid of spirits who have once been men and women in the flesh, is no new thing. The annals of Spiritualism and Psychical Research are filled with accounts of successful healing of the living through the ministrations of the spirit "dead." The most successful of these spirit healers often speak of their work being done by prayers to higher spirits or the conventional concept of God.

The spirits, like the living, have no way to make direct contact with the level of consciousness one step above, and can only speculate about the High Beings and their form of mentation which enables them to use a mysterious power for magical healing. Many spirits have given their ideas of the mechanisms by which healing is accomplished, but even when they claim to have exact knowledge, no two of them agree.

p. 205

They are amusingly like the living—each evolving his own explanation and rejecting all others. In the face of the sharp contradictions found in the explanations given by the spirits of the dead, we do well to fall back on the ancient explanations given by the kahunas, for they are correct in all details so far as we are able to check them with our present limited knowledge, and what is more important, THEY WORK as a basis for practical application.

Case 23

Raising the Dead Temporarily. Full Materialization

Preliminary Notes:

Nothing in Psychical Research has been so fascinating, so incredible, so violently denied (if futilely), so inexplicable or so deeply significant as "full materialization," or the temporary raising of the dead.

In raising the dead, as the process applies to the spirits of those long since passed over, there is the same need for the various elements which constitute a normal living man. The low and middle spirits of the deceased individual come to a spiritualistic seance. They furnish the element of consciousness. They live in the combined low and middle shadowy bodies, so bring these with them and thus furnish a mold of the physical body which they once had on the earth level. What the High Self lacks is the former physical body and its naturally large charge of vital force. To supply this lack, vital force and physical matter are drawn from the circle of living sitters. The physical matter is changed to the thin ectoplasmic form and then solidified in the mold of the spirit's low shadow body.

p. 206

This results in a "full materialization" of an actual living, breathing, warm and completely normal physical body with the two spirits resident inside it. Such bodies have repeatedly stood close medical inspection. However, they are not permanent. In from a minute to seldom more than an hour, the ectoplasmic material is returned to the living and the solid form vanishes.

It is conceivable that such a materialized body might be permanent if borrowed physical substance did not have to be returned. The Second Coming of Jesus might thus be accomplished were some devotee willing to step out of the flesh into the life of the departed and give his body to be used in this way to fill the mold of the shadowy body of the great Teacher.

In one of the Pacific islands a few years ago, there was quite a furor caused by a group of Polynesian natives who held secret seances at night and succeeded in getting a dead chief raised by the process of materialization. This chief, who had died a leper, was very wise and much loved. Oddly enough, he materialized and remained in the body for much longer periods than is common in the West. Because the authorities feared that the natives would be stirred to rebellion by the chief, the excuse was made that the materialization might spread leprosy, and the seances were broken up.

The Cases:

(A) THE KAHUNAS AND MASS MATERIALIZATION IN HAWAII.

In Hawaii, where the kahunas were the most powerful workers in psychic phenomena, mass materializations have been reported down the years. Usually a native

p. 207

chief with from ten to fifty of his followers (all long dead) materialize at night and march through the countryside. Often they materialize drums and torches. Sometimes they remain invisible but the sound of marching feet and of the drums and voices may be clearly heard. These ghostly processions are well known in Hawaii, have often been well substantiated, and many times described in books and articles about the Islands.

Dr. John Tanner, who studied the kahunas in Hawaii for some time, told me that he was at Waikiki Beach one night when he heard the ghostly marchers in procession moving toward the center of Honolulu. He guessed that they might be following the route described as usual by the older Hawaiians—that from Waikiki to the royal tombs near the old Missionary Church at the center of the city. Taking his car he drove to the old church and waited. In a surprisingly short time the same sounds of marching feet became audible, also soft chanting and low conversation. The sounds seemed to be swallowed up by the tomb of a native king long dead, in the church yard. Dr. Tanner saw nothing.

Dr. Brigham had many first-hand accounts of seeing visible marchers by torchlight and moonlight. The Hawaiians agree that the fully materialized marchers, armed with war clubs and spears, are dangerous to anyone who interferes with them. If such a procession is seen to approach, the wise native gets out of the way, or hides himself and remains very quiet while watching it pass. There are several accounts of men having been killed by such marchers. One Hawaiian of my acquaintance

p. 208

claimed to have run face to face into a small group of such marchers, all armed, and garbed in feather cloaks. One warrior rushed at him with a spear, but he instantly called out that he was a living relative and a friend. He was given time to tell his name and to recite the names of his ancestors. It was almost inevitable that, traced back a few generations, he should come to a family relation with any former citizen of these parts—and he did. He was pardoned for his accidental intrusion into the line of march and sent on his way.

While it is evident that much fiction has been added to the commonly accepted facts concerning the ghostly processions in Hawaii, I have no doubt that the basic facts are true. Legendary lore of the Polynesians is filled with accounts of mass and single materializations. The "gods" help the spirits of the dead to materialize, and it is related that vital force and substance for ectoplasm are borrowed from the living while they sleep, or, on rare occasions, are taken from animal and plant life.

(B) A BISHOP MATERIALIZES AFTER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF DEATH.

Carlo Mirabelli, a South American medium of Italian blood, provided excellent examples of nearly all types of psychic phenomena.

Dr. Fodor writes: "[Mirabelli's] phenomena of materialization were astounding. The figures were not only complete, they were not only photographed, but medical men made minute examinations which lasted

p. 209

sometimes as long as for fifteen minutes and stated that the newly constituted human beings had perfect anatomical structure. After the examination was completed the figure began to dissolve from the feet upwards, the bust and arms floating in the air. One of the doctors exclaimed; 'But this is too much,' and rushed forward and seized the half of the body. The next moment he uttered a shrill cry and sank unconscious to the ground. On returning to consciousness he only remembered that when he had seized the phantom it had felt as if his fingers were pressing a spongy, flaccid mass of substance. Then he received a shock and lost consciousness. For thirty-six minutes in broad daylight the materialization of the little daughter of Dr. Souza, who died of influenza, was visible to all the sitters. She appeared in her grave clothes. Her pulse was tested. Father and child were photographed. Then the phantom raised itself and floated in the air.…

"In another sitting Mirabelli announced that he saw the body of Bishop Dr. Jose de Carmago Barros who lost his life in a shipwreck. 'A sweet smell as of roses filled the room. The medium went into trance. A fine mist was seen in the circle [of sitters]. The mist, glowing as if of gold, parted and the bishop materialized, with all the robes and insignia of office. He called his own name. Dr. Souza stepped to him. He palpitated the body, touched his teeth, tested the saliva, listened to the heart-beat, investigated the working of the intestines, nails and eyes, without finding anything amiss. Then the other attending persons convinced themselves of the reality of the apparition. The

p. 210

Bishop bent smilingly over Mirabelli and looked at him silently. Then he slowly dematerialized.' 'At the sixth sitting, Mirabelli, tied and sealed, disappeared from the room, and was found in another room still in trance. All seals on doors and windows were found in order, as well as the seals on Mirabelli himself.' Once among fourteen investigators his arms dematerialized. On the photograph only a slight shadow is visible."

(C) YOLANDE AND HER MATERIALIZATIONS.

Mme. Elizabeth d’Esperance, a famous medium, had, among other spirits who materialized at her seances an Arab girl of fifteen named Yolande. This girl would appear as a mist and take several minutes to become fully materialized. Then, in good light, she was accustomed to talk with the living and to make objects in the room appear and disappear. She produced apports in great numbers, and caused plants to grow in waterbottles filled with water and sand, a large plant being grown in a few minutes. The medium was found by the investigator Alexander N. Aksakof, on one occasion, to have dematerialized the lower half of her body while visible spirit materializations were in the seance room. The upper half of the medium seemed to be suspended in air. She was not in trance, and was frightened to discover her condition, calling the investigator's attention to the situation. Others present also assured themselves that there was nothing in the collapsed garments of the medium below the waist. Ten years later, Aksakof published a weighty

p. 211

opinion which years of study and observation had forced upon him: the opinion that, in some cases at least, "the body of the medium is entirely absorbed for the production of apparitions.…"

(D) ANIMAL MATERIALIZATIONS.

The kahuna contention that all things have shadowy bodies which are molds of their microscopic parts as well as of their full form and shape, applies to animals as well as men. (Also insects and inert objects such as rocks.)

Gambier Bolton had a peculiar experience. He had befriended and doctored a wounded seal at a Zoo, but the seal had died. Ten days after its death, at a seance with Mrs. Craddock, and with a number of men of science present, a seal—seemingly the one known to Bolton—materialized and flapped its way across the room, staying close to Bolton for several minutes. The spirits officiating at the seance were asked to explain this. They said, "Their actions (those of animals at seances where they materialize) are altogether independent of us. Whilst we are busily engaged in conducting our experiments with human entities who wish to materialize in your midst, the animals get into the room in some way which we do not understand, and which we cannot prevent; obtain, from somewhere, sufficient matter with which to build up temporary bodies; coming just when they choose, roaming about the room just as they please; and disappearing just when it suits them, and not before; and we have no power to prevent this

p. 212

so long as the affection existing between them and their late owners is so strong as it was in the instances which have come under our notice."

Dr. Fodor points out that the above statement from the medium's spirit controls seems contradicted by the fact that in the famous animal materializations at the Kluski seances, there invariably appeared a human apparition acting as keeper of such animals as appeared. The keepers and animals seldom moved about at the same time, but the keepers, although still, were to be plainly seen. However, there was one animal which appeared with no keeper. It was an ape man spoken of by the investigators as Pithecanthropus. It had coarse shaggy hair, smelled like a cross between a deer and a wet dog, and was frolicsome, evidently of a low level of intelligence, but gentle and ready to obey. Its great strength caused fear at a few of the sittings at which it appeared. It lifted heavy men, seated in their chairs, high above the heads of the others. It picked up a large and very heavy case of books and carried it about the room, also a large sofa. It made only smacking sounds and scratched itself frequently.

Dogs, cats, parrots, bats, weasels and many other dead pets have returned to visit their former owners at seances. Hairs from one small pet animal were left behind in some lace in which its leg had been entangled during the appearance (the lace had been torn four inches). These hairs were placed in a light-tight and damp-proof box and were inspected often. After a few days the hairs dwindled in size, and before long vanished entirely, evidently dematerializing much more slowly than had the little animal itself.

p. 213

(E) PARTIAL MATERIALIZATIONS OF THE LIVING

A number of instances have been reported by investigators in which the living have appeared at seances in partial materializations. Horace Leaf saw the head, shoulders and one arm of a relative alive and living four hundred miles distant. A conversation was carried on in which matters known only to themselves were discussed for several minutes. Alfred Vout Peters, in a seance with Cecil Husk, saw the materialization (apparently almost complete) of a living friend who, it was later learned, had been asleep at his home at the time.

Dr. Nandor Fodor, in his long article on Materialization in his Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, made a comment which bears strongly on the ancient theories of the kahunas (unknown to Dr. Fodor at the time of writing). "Indeed, one is tempted to speculate whether it would be possible to build up, through the process of dematerialization and materialization a living organism on altered lines. Perhaps some of the miraculous cures in which organic parts of the body had been restored will find an explanation in the future along such speculative lines."

(F) CHANGES IN NORMAL SIZE IN MATERIALIZATION.

Many reports have included the appearance of materialized forms which were either larger or smaller than it is to be supposed the living person had been. This is similar to the phenomena of elongation of the

p. 214

living mediums at seances, in which the medium's body has been seen to become longer by as much as two feet. (The kahunas believed that the shadowy body of a thing could be made larger or smaller.)

Mme. Bisson studied a naked female figure not more than eight inches tall which repeatedly materialized, often with a change of hair arrangement, dancing and performing gymnastic exercises. It even stood on Mme. Bisson's hand some of the time, but usually on the hand of the medium, Eva.

In the sittings of Mme. Ignath small heads the size of walnuts and very beautiful materialized in glasses of water. The spirit control, Nona, gave the opinion that they were materialized plastic thought forms.

Partial materializations such as heads and hands have often been seen to be only a fraction of normal size.

(G) MATERIALIZED CLOTHING

Very few of the temporarily materialized spirits have come without clothing. Harry Price, most careful and skeptical of the S.P.R. investigators, in a recent book tells of the periodic materialization of a little girl unclothed—in dark seances held by her mother and a few friends, one a good medium. Attending such a seance, Price found the bare little body warm, solid and of normal weight in his hands. The child spoke a few words in answer to a question. The floor of the room had been sprinkled with white powder, the openings sealed, and all precautions taken against fraud. No footprints crossed the powdered floor and no seals were broken, satisfying Price of the genuineness of the materialization.

p. 215

On the other hand, spirits clothe themselves in materials ranging from misty gray vapors to cloth so solid that pieces of it have repeatedly been cut off by investigators to study after the dematerialization of spirit and garb. A peculiarity of the materialized fabric is that it is nearly always lighter and finer than ordinarily would be the case.

Sylvan J. Muldoon, famous for his practice and reports on astral travel, writes of once seeing clothing forming itself around his astral body when it had left the physical body but a few feet. The clothing was identical to that on his living body which lay recumbent on his bed.

Not only do the bodies of mediums dematerialize partly or completely at materializing seances on occasion, but sometimes their clothing also vanishes for the time being—though at other times it is left behind. Usually the cloth materialized at a seance remains white, even if the vanishing clothing of the medium is black.

Katie King, a spirit who frequently materialized at Miss Florence Cook's seances and was much studied by Sir William Crookes, often allowed the fabric of her ghostly clothing to be examined. Sometimes she cut as many as a dozen pieces from the bottom of her skirt and handed them to sitters to be examined. The holes in the skirt immediately closed up as the sitters watched. Most of this fabric vanished when the phantom dematerialized, but a few pieces were rendered enduring, in which case similar holes were found cut in the skirt of the medium after the seance ended, tending to show that the material of her skirt had been borrowed for

p. 216

materialization purposes, and that it was not returned when pieces were rendered permanent.

In passing it must be noted that the fabric of the ghostly garment was not like that of the skirt in which a hole had been left. It is thus seen that it is possible to transform matter through the process of dematerialization and materialization, changing one thing to another, and rendering the changed part permanent—as must be done in instant healing if the kahuna theory is correct.

Katie King said that in making bits of drapery permanent she was forced to take away permanently some of the medium's vitality (check the kahuna theory that all materializing operations involve the use of vital force of the living) and so weakening her. This material when presented to drapers with the request that it be matched, proved to be like nothing in the market. The drapers expressed the opinion that it might be cloth of Chinese manufacture.

A piece of Yolande's spirit dress was torn off and made permanent at a sitting with Mme. d’Esperance in Christiania. A similar hole, partly torn and partly cut appeared later in the medium's skirt. The piece from the spirit's skirt was several times larger but of exactly the same shape. The fabric was white and much lighter in texture, being almost as thin as gauze, but composed of definitely woven threads.

Some materialized fabric has been found not to be woven. It resembles filmy sheets of material slightly like rubber, often filled with holes to make it appear like lace.

p. 217

At a sitting with George Spriggs in Cardiff, a piece of the rich, bright red silk girdle of a materialized spirit form was cut off and left behind. It soon faded, but at a later seance, when called to the attention of the same spirit, was restored to its original color and lustre in some unexplained way.

Locks of hair cut from the heads of materialized spirits and left behind as permanent or as slowly vanishing souvenirs, have in almost all cases been found to be softer and finer than the hair of the medium through whose seance the apparition was enabled to materialize.

(H) MATERIALIZATION OF THE "LITTLE PEOPLE."

Fairies and other "little people" seem to materialize in visible and even tangible forms at times, most often in the presence of children. Around the year 1915 two young girls in England used their father's camera to get pictures of fairies and gnomes. The pictures were published and quite a stir created. A better camera was provided and more pictures obtained. The charge of the suspicious that the negatives could have been "faked" was never proved.

In Hawaii there is a belief in the gnomes or menehunes, these materializing at times and resembling the brownies of other lands. During my stay in Honolulu the papers were filled with accounts and comments after school children discovered one of the little men on the playground and followed him excitedly until he took fright and escaped from them by diving under a building set a few feet off the ground. He seemed to disappear

p. 218

into thin air under the building. The teacher, hearing the shouts, came on the scene and questioned the children. They all told the same story and described the little man in the same way.

The menehunes were credited with the building of many stone walls to enclose arms of the shallow sea and act as artificial fish ponds. In native folk lore a variety of such "little people" receive mention.

While the evidence of the materialization of elves, fairies, gnomes and their like is poorly verified, it would seem to be a mistake not to mention the possibility of their reality in listing the materials of the study at this point.

Comment:

Several things need to be especially noted in the above cases. The shock which rendered the doctor unconscious when he seized an apparition at one of Mirabelli's seances, indicates the electrical factor involved in materialization. Many investigators have studied the evidence of electrical vital or psychic force at work during materialization and have found it very real, even if its function was not fully understood. Spirits of the dead give contradictory opinions as to the nature and use of the force, some saying it is drawn from the brain of medium or sitters, others saying it comes from their bodies, and still others saying it is present in the atmosphere and has only to be collected.

Modern studies by medical men have proved that, when the electro-vital "body electricity" or "mind electricity" or both, are exhausted in a living person, unconsciousness results. This agrees with the kahuna belief that all consciousness functions only when there

p. 219

is at hand a proper amount of vital force of the necessary voltage. (Remember that they believe that the low self makes the vital force from foods we eat, that the middle self takes this low voltage force and steps up its voltage for its use in "will," and that the High Self takes the force and steps up its voltage to the highest voltage—in which condition it becomes similar to the "atom smashing" voltages known to science.)

The vitality of mediums and sitters at seances has often been depleted by materializations. The famous medium, D. D. Home, was sometimes left lying almost unconscious on the floor after such a seance. One investigator, F. W. H. Meyers, was so depleted after a seance that he went to bed for two days. Mediums frequently have been forced to take long rest periods between sittings.

The kahunas, in their healing practices, watched for the danger of the theft of vital force from the living by the dead. While doctors do not recognize such possibilities at the present time, it is evident, in the light of the long study of the kahuna lore, that some illness is directly caused by such theft of vital force. The doctors do, however, know that when vital force falls below par in the individual, the control of the conscious mind over the subconscious is greatly weakened, causing thought impressions to enter the subconscious without being subjected to the usual process of judgment by reason, causing unreasonable complexes or fixations. We have seen that shock impressions are dangerous when one is very tired or vitality is low because of illness or strain; that if, for some reason the normal supply of vital force continues for some time to fall,

p. 220

depressive states come, and—at more advanced stages—insanity results.

While medical men make no mention of the rest of the usual story, the patient, once insanity becomes pronounced, seems no longer to suffer so greatly from lack of vital force. Often there is violent physical action—indicating that the kahunas were right in thinking that the spirits of the dead often obsess the living, beginning by stealing vital force and ending by pushing out the resident pair of spirits and taking over the body for themselves—thus accomplishing a form of "rising from the dead" for themselves. (Doctors frown on the idea, but when they administer insulin shock or electrical shock to cure the insane, they are doing nothing more or less than the physicians of early times when they made the stay of obsessing spirits so painful in the body of the insane patient that the invaders left, allowing the rightful owners of the body to return.)

The passage of matter through matter in materialization is demonstrated when apports and even bodies of large animals and men are dematerialized and brought through closed and sealed doors to be materialized in the seance room. This indicates the fact that in the dematerialized state physical substance is sufficiently thin to pass through wood and other not-too-dense substances. (Glass seems too dense to allow such passage of thin materials or shadowy body molds through it.)

It is not necessary for the spirit of a dead person to materialize in denser form in order to carry vital force with it. Also, dematerialized physical substances need not be solidified to the visible state to be used as an invisible hand in moving solid objects, providing there

p. 221

is enough vital force lodged in the invisible ectoplasmic substance used by the spirit.

A case illustrating this came under my observation. A young man was to arrive by plane and have dinner with his sweetheart and her mother. The plane crashed and he was killed in the landing. A few minutes later the door bell rang at the house he had intended to visit. The sweetheart answered the bell but found no one there. The bell rang three times, the mother joining the girl in trying to learn who had caused the ringing. Some months later, at a seance, the young man communicated through a medium saying that he had not been aware of his death, and had gone to the home where he had been expected. He rang the bell three times, being greatly surprised and agitated to find that he was not seen or recognized by his friends. He failed after the third ring to be able to press the button (vital force evidently expended) and concluded that something was very wrong.

All the evidence accumulated by the study of hundreds of cases of haunting and poltergeist phenomena indicates that the kahunas were right in believing that the spirits of the dead can store large amounts of vital force in the shadowy body of the low self. At the moment of sudden death the shadowy body is charged with vital force, and seems to remain charged and ready to ring bells and do other kinds of work until the charge is exhausted. The poltergeist, being usually a low self cut off from his middle self after death, and given to childish antics, steals vital force from the living and uses it to move solid objects or make noises. The shadowy body appears to be an excellent storage battery

p. 222

for vital force, and when heavily charged, may become sufficiently solid to be used to move material objects. A small amount of. ectoplasmic material of the invisible and very thin grade may be needed to stiffen the shadowy body—later study may show whether or not this is true.

In cases where animals materialize at seances, one can only conclude that High Selves are present and doing the work. If the spirits of the dead disagree so largely on how materialization is accomplished, so showing that they are ignorant of the part played by the High Selves, it stands to reason that animals would not have sufficient intelligence to cause a materialization for themselves.

One more thing should be kept in mind. The materials of a supposedly living and fleshly nature used in forming ectoplasm with which to materialize animals, birds and insects, cannot be said to come from the medium and sitters. It must be found in other quarters by the High Selves and borrowed for temporary use. In fact, materializations have often been observed when no visible material was drawn from either medium or sitters, although the expenditure of vital force from the circle is very usual.

In the blacker phases of ceremonial magic it is probable that the vital force of sacrificed animals or even humans, was taken and used by spirits, but it is to be concluded that the High Selves would never use vital force or the bodily materials of sacrificial victims. The kahuna name for the High Self was "Entirely Trustworthy Parental Self," and there seems to be no question as to its aversion to cruelty.

p. 223

With the end of this chapter I finish the work of presenting the basic elements in the theories of Huna, together with some of the proofs derived from comparison with the findings of Psychic Science and the Psychologies, also, to a lesser extent, various religious beliefs.