Observations placeholder
Stainton-Moses, William - Spirit Identity - A LONG COMMUNICATION OF A VERY PERSONAL NATURE
Identifier
015625
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This is a very important observation, but not because Moses was communicating with a spirit, but because this demonstrates the power of perception recall.
From what one can glean from the observation, Moses’ composer and the composer of the lady whose house it was were co-operating to pull together a picture of a person they mutually knew. All the information was being extracted from perceptions, so we have two instances of perception recall and then inter composer communication between the two to get the combined results. There must have been a great deal of subconscious to-ing and fro-ing of requests and replies to derive this, so it shows the power the subconscious has.
This has great value - if true - in the stage of the spiritual path known as purification – as it enables one to get at buried perceptions and obtain a composite picture of what happened. By knowing the ‘Truth’ one is better able to relearn or at least deal with a perception in a more rational way. It has great healing potential. By knowing it can be done – again if this is true – there is every reason to try to use it. Moses was ill, but in many cases he simply appears to have used a form of relaxation, in the séances he appears to have been hypnotised by his fellow members, so we can assume that these methods worked.
A description of the experience
Spirit Identity – William Stainton Moses
On a certain evening – April 8th 1874 – I was about to put a question on what had just been written, when the hand began to draw, or rather to move aimlessly over the paper, as is frequently the case when a new spirit comes.
Piece by piece a long communication of a very personal nature was written out. It must necessarily lose very much of its force from the brief abstract, which is all that I am able to print now.
I was staying at a house in the country and the communicating spirit was known to the lady of the house and also to me; or rather she had known me as a boy, twenty nine years ago.
She first gave her full name and inquired if I remembered it. I did not. She then said she was a cousin of the lady of the house where I was staying. She died on May 15th ult.
In answer to my questions, she said that she had been married and further gave her maiden name. The maiden name I dimly remembered and recalled the place where she used to live. This produced a record of her life, including time and place of birth a description of the very house and the name of its present occupier – particulars of her married life and date and place of death, with her age.
Then followed a very exact statement of a very trivial episode in my boyhood, when I had gone on a visit to her house. In the course of this, minute incidents were recalled and microscopic facts given which I knew nothing of and which it is very hard to imagine any personating spirit getting up.
I subsequently verified, from two sources, what she said and found every particular literally exact.