PREFACE

 

THESE communications from the Other Side were received by A. B. and C. D.; A. B. putting the questions, and C. D., as amanuensis, receiving the answers from the Communicating Spirit, through the method of automatic or, more correctly speaking, inspirational writing. A. B., the friend with whom the Communicating Spirit held these conversations, and whom he had known well on earth, took no part in the actual writing, but merely asked the questions, concentrating meanwhile upon the subject in hand and awaiting the reply, but throughout having no premonition of what form it would take. This was almost always unexpected by both sitters. The questions asked were mostly those to which the scribe had given little time or thought, her mind having up to the time of those sittings been absorbed with other interests. A significant point, also, is that she had no acquaintance with the Communicating Spirit in this life. She knew his name only, but had never heard him speak, nor read any of his writings. The messages were received while she was in a state of normal consciousness, her mind passive and receptive, consciously registering the ideas which were flashed with extraordinary vividness and rapidity through her brain, one part of which seemed to receive the thought, while the other almost automatically furnished the word-clothing, and this word-clothing more often than not was in form curiously similar to that used by the Communicating Spirit when on earth. It is as though he had deliberately selected one who could have no preconceived or subconscious idea as to what would be in keeping with his character and thought; one also who, though highly evolved intellectually, was unusually free from settled convictions and theories on the vital questions here raised, thus offering no impediment to the transmission of the messages he desired to deliver.

 

The name of the Communicating Spirit is withheld at his own request. Those who knew him on earth as a spiritual guide and friend will recognise him without difficulty. Those who knew him in other relations of life, but to whom his spirit remained a stranger, will have no more interest in his thoughts now than they had before; and to attach a name to messages from the Other Side when it is manifestly impossible to give other than internal and inferential evidence for that personality, would merely be to raise a useless controversy. The real names of A. B. and C. D. are of no value in themselves in connection with these writings, and they prefer not to give them.