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Aubert, Georges

Category: Other spiritually gifted people

Georges Aubert was a French medium, living at the turn of the last century.

He wrote one book The Spiritual Mediumnity Of Georges Aubert Exposed By Himself With Experiments Made With Him By The Scientists From The General Psychological Institute from February to May 1905.

It is a very short autobiography of only about 40 pages, which nevertheless has great interest value, as it describes how he became a medium – the stages he went through [and the failures].

He divides his account into ‘Three Epochs’, each corresponding to a distinct period of his life as a medium.

The first is about his first primitive research and his initiation.
The second is the one where he only obtained ‘physical manifestations’.
The third, finally, is the presentation of his musical mediumnity, with a description of the decisive experiments made in Paris, at the Institute of General Psychology, 14, of Condé street.

A reluctant writer

Georges was persuaded to write his very short memoir at the prompting of a lady, he did it for neither fame nor money, and it certainly has not a hint of ego in it.

Paris, February 15, 1914. Georges AUBERT

For a long time now, in the face of charlatanism, shamed by some, in the face of the endless attacks of those who know only the name of spiritism, in the face of the almost absolute indifference of the learned world, in the face of, at last, the complete misunderstanding of phenomena by the majority, I say, for a long time now, I have been thinking of publishing everything I have seen happen, both through myself and through the mediums that I have known.

But the demands of life, the daily work, had constantly hindered the execution of my project. It took a letter to decide and, dear Madam, this letter is yours. May my modest contribution to the moral edifice we want to build, to the philosophical goal we are pursuing, make many minds think and help transform the majority I mentioned earlier into a tiny minority. Whatever happens, believe me, I am grateful for the effort you are making.

Perhaps what makes Aubert interesting is that he believed being a medium was a skill one could acquire by training and perseverance, in other words anyone could be a medium, and the best way one could convince the skeptic is to teach them what to do, as such his motives were very worthy.

Now, a great quality to possess, when one wants, at home, to seek to obtain manifestations: it is PERSEVERANCE. .............you will see how essential this perseverance is when you know that it sometimes takes several months … before there are suitable demonstrations. You will understand this by learning that the medianimal faculty often does not reveal itself all at once, but rather following a serious training, absolutely as the runner trains, as almost everything else in life is only training. I hope that with this modest mediums' advice on the perseverance that must be applied to experiments and the seriousness with which they must be considered, some will be able to obtain results, at home, in the family, which for the most part, is better than any manifestation observed in outsiders.

The classification of types of experience

Georges classified spiritual experiences according to a sort of degree of difficulty scale. The most common experiences were first and the last and third group required “high fluid expenditure”.

It was the degree of difficulty that meant that it was a great deal easier to produce, for example, table movements than the phenomena of non-contact levitation by the hands. “As for the third group, if I call them superior mediumnities, it is …the enormous fluidic expenditure that characterizes them”.

1° Mediums producing physical effects - Table movements, knocking, object transport [psychokinesis] and levitation with or without contact
2° Automatic - Writing, drawing, painting, sculpture, music;
3° Superior ‘mediumnities’ - Materializations, clairvoyance, incarnation, healing mediums.

First Epoch

Georges was born into a musical family. His father was a singing laureate of the Paris Conservatory and his mother had gained first prize in singing at the Lille and Paris Conservatories. His father was ‘the first light tenor’ at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels for 7 years. Despite this, Georges did not pursue music as a career or at school. He went to the Lycée and graduated with a bachelor of science degree, in 1896.

The main influence in his youth was a man he called Emile T, a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal, his father had met in 1887, and who became Georges’ tutor after he left the Lycée, helping him to pass his baccalaureate in March 1891 ... ‘who, from the end of 1888 until February 1890, was not only a wise tutor, but also a true friend’. Apart from ordinary music theory and piano lessons, Georges studies had not involved music, however Emile T had also been an 'outstanding musician …a student of Francis Thomé- , he and my father sometimes stayed very late, either to chat or to play music. So I had this part of my life cradled, in truth, by music.’

Emile T left France in February 1890, to be vice-consul in Havana in Cuba. But, a yellow fever attack in July of the same year ‘took him away from his family's affection and ours.' The shock of his death had a big effect on Georges and his father, ‘It was a great, great sorrow for us to see the death of this devoted friend.’ And it was because of this death and the invitation of Mr. E. David, deputy director of tinctures at the Gobelins factory, who had known Emile T, that Georges entire family started to attend séances, described in the observations in the order in which they occurred. The book describes an ‘awakening’ and a gradual move from scepticism to enthusiasm.

This first movement!.........

Nothing can describe to you the surprise mixed with happiness, true joy, that overwhelms us all at this moment. Think that, for three months, we had been standing in front of this inert piece of furniture and that, suddenly, as if under the influence of an incredible power, this piece of furniture was becoming, so to speak, alive and intelligent! After a few minutes of trying to regain control, my father asked for the name of the spirit that was manifesting itself so forcefully.

- "Emile T...," it replied.

Thus, it was our old friend who, in the family home, opened the era of demonstrations. Naturally, we thanked him for his fluidic effort, and my father asked him who the medium among us was that allowed this manifestation.

- It's Georges," replied Emile T.....

Second Epoch

During the second epoch, the family experimented with all sorts of physical phenomena, guided by the spirit calling itself Emile T. The table was turned and then knocking or rapping was used to communicate with the family. Objects were moved, sometimes taken out of cupboards. Sounds and other worldly noises were produced and finally an extremely large kitchen table was raised in the air.

By the time this second epoch had come to an end, their circle of participants had extended beyond just the family and had ‘grown very large’.

…..this physical mediumnity that I possessed then was never controlled and, apart from my father and mother, anyone could think that I was having fun at the expense of others. I very much regret that at that time, my father or Mr. David did not worry about this crucial issue, which is to prove the truth of the facts obtained. But complaining won't help…………. the same cannot be said of the whole third period of my mediumistic existence. During this period, as the experiments done on me at the General Psychological Institute were able to demonstrate that I was not a fraudster.

Third Epoch

During the third epoch, Georges became what he called a medium musician! His body was possessed by a spirit who then played on his behalf. According to Georges, spirits who could adopt the style of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach, Schumann, Schubert, Méhul, Stràdella, Rameau, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, F. David, Wagner, etc., etc. all used his body to play the piano!

During the possession his hands were ‘anaesthetized’ and he could not influence them in any way during the playing. Furthermore, his mind was completely free and was ‘absolutely extraneous to the phenomenon’.

Georges’ musical mediumship lasted for thirteen years, from 1891 to 1904, during which he was subjected to a few unnecessarily hostile investigations. Mr. E. David, who was finally beginning to worry about the control issue, introduced him to a Dr. Luys, who was known for his work on nervous diseases and owned a nursing home in the southern suburbs of Paris. Dr Luys observed him play piano for half an hour and then

Taking me to his office, he looked at my throat, looking for an insensitive or hypersensitive spot, then the nose, eyes, etc.... Finding nothing abnormal, he asked me some kind of crazy questions.

Dr Luys then concluded he had a sick person in front of him! If all you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail.

After a number of hesitant starts, however, as you will see from the observations, Georges eventually got what he most longed for, a chance to be studied in controlled conditions by a scientific institution – in his case the General Psychological Institute , 14, Rue de Condé, in Paris – where he was subjected to controlled experiments from February to May 1905.

It needs to be realised before you read the observations that Georges had had no tuition in harmony, composition, fugue or counterpoint and yet the completely new compositions he played involved all these and more.

He was accused of being a composer using the institute as a means of providing exposure to his own compositions. But as he repeatedly pointed out, he did not gain a living from his mediumnity. Furthermore, every time he played, a new composition was demonstrated

Indeed, anyone who has heard me several times has always noticed that no song ever played has ever come up again under my fingers. I can say that each time I have given myself to musical influence, a new work is created. It is, therefore, by hundreds of works that my production should be counted. But the most curious thing would be that this production would not correspond to anything tangible, since apart from the pieces transcribed by my father and the cylinders recorded at the Psychological Institute, no written piece exists in edition after twenty-eight years!

What were the conclusions from all these tests? Georges was never told!
Three months of collaboration including a hearing test with two phonographs playing different songs in each ear during the playing of Mendelssohn which Georges considered definitive because it proved:

1° That no musical memory was involved in the event. - The memory would have been blurred with both phonographs.)
2° That he was unconsciousness of what his hands were doing - The two phonographs would have taken care of annihilating any consciousness.
3° That it was impossible for him to influence the phenomenon - The two phonographs did not influence it
4° That ‘an intelligence external to myself is the only mistress of the event and extraneous to the listeners’

produced a deafening silence.

Despite all this, my experimenters, who could have at least let me know their deductions, never gave me a sign of their existence! I heard, vaguely, that they claimed to have been confronted with a case of unconscious automatism?...........Well, it is this silence that has always led me to suppose, …., that these gentlemen found themselves very bored with my case and very tired of having found an indisputable, clear, honest medium, whose phenomena leave matter for serious reflection …………….

Nevertheless by May 1905, the experiments at the Psychological Institute, which were decisive for Georges and his family were over. As he said “They absolutely prove that I am a sincere musician medium, entering the class of automatic mediums, in the same way as writers, painters and draftsmen. That was all we wanted.”

From that time on, Georges gave public séances world-wide. In general the book does not describe these, as they are similar to all the others he gave, however, on March 30, 1912, he gave what he described as ‘one of the most beautiful manifestations that I obtained’ and this he does describe.

Georges provides one piece of absolutely invaluable advice in the conclusions to his book – you get the spirits you deserve and attract, so beware of how you treat experiments in this area.

….. it is necessary to always put oneself under the protection of good spirits at the time of an experiment. The reason is simple. If musicians for me, writers and painters for other mediums, manifest themselves with all the talent we have known them on this world, by analogy, we must understand that evil, crude, frightful spirits remain in the afterlife with the same mentality and that consequently, the phenomena obtained by them can only be bad, crude or frightening.

…. never be discouraged. I know, from my own experience, that these spirits like to mystify experimenters and this is one of the big reasons that have often led us to say that, from spiritualist experiments, we never remove anything but unfounded things or unfortunate rudeness.…., if you ever try to communicate with the afterlife, feel free to pray to the good spirits around you, to drive out these evil spirits; but yearn for them to realize the inevitable birth in which they find themselves to finally change, and to try to improve themselves morally. Be convinced that it is not because the flesh is no longer that the soul is immediately superior. Superiority is only acquired in the afterlife, as it is here below, as in everything, through successive improvements.....

References

The pictures are by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (13 September 1803 – 17 March 1847), generally known by the pseudonym of Jean-Jacques or J. J. Grandville; he was a French caricaturist. His most memorable books are Les Fleurs Animées, and Un Autre Monde,from which we have taken examples. Leading members of the Surrealist movement recognised in Grandville inspiration for the movement. And British rock band Queen used part of his artwork for their 1991 album Innuendo and the subsequent single releases: the album's title track, "I'm Going Slightly Mad", "These Are the Days of Our Lives" and "The Show Must Go On".

George Aubert

I want to give you the main books you need to read in order to be able to experiment successfully afterwards.

Works by Allan Kardec:

1° The Book of Spirits (philosophical part);
2° The Book of Mediums (experimental part).

Works of G. Delanne:

1° Spiritism in the face of science;
2° The soul is immortal;
3° The materialized Apparitions of the Living and the Dead.

Works by Léon Denis:

1° After Death ;
2° In the invisible ;
3° Christianity-Spiritism.

When you have read these different books you will be familiar with the question and will be able to start the experimental study.

Observations

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WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

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