Gladys Osborne Leonard's Steps to Trance Mediumship (Trance Channeling) and Healing

 Gladys Osborne Leonard

Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882-1968) described in her autobiography My Life in Two Worlds (1931) how she became a deep trance medium (or what is now described as a trance channeler).  The book offers her reflections of the natural phenomena experienced by mediums that is sometimes construed 'supernatural' only because of a lack of understanding.  

During her childhood in England, Gladys experienced "visions of most beautiful places" where there were "people who looked radiantly happy."  She was a teenager when she saw a sign announcing "Spiritualism" meetings and attended the weekly Thursday night event without understanding what she saw happening.  Only later did she realize she had seen a man who had been, as Leonard described it, "controlled by a discarnate spirit."

The following week, she again felt an odd "exhilaration and interest" on her way to the meeting.  The person on the platform on this occasion was a delicate-looking middle-aged woman whom young Gladys thought at first was acting "the part of a North American Indian."  This night as she observed the proceedings Gladys began to realize what was happening.

 

"Why," I said to myself, "they are speaking of dead people.  They are asserting that these dead people are living, and are happy, and clean, and healthy, not rotting in a horrible grave, as I have believed."

 
Then the medium turned in her direction and Gladys saw that her "whole appearance underwent a change.  She shrank and trembled."

Waving her hand backwards and forwards in front of her, she said, "There is someone here who was drowned—a young boy.  He was so frightened, poor lad, and could not understand why no one attempted to save him.  So many people were near him at the time, but no one tried to save him.  Oh he is moving near to the person to whom he wishes to speak—it is to you, the young girl there—you—he wants you—his name is Charley, and he is related to you, though you did not know him intimately."
 
She pointed straight at me.  I at once recognized the description as being that of my cousin, Charley, who was drowned bathing, being seized with cramp in his legs, and in full sight of his friends who did not know anything was wrong with him, as he was a powerful swimmer for his age.  All these details were given correctly, and many other matters mentioned in connexion with my family.

The medium went on to say that Gladys was being prepared for a special work, similar to that which she, the speaker, was doing.  Gladys recalled, "This part of the message did not impress me at the time, as I had not the faintest idea how it ever would be possible for me to develop such powers, even if I possessed the nucleus of them . . ."

Gladys trained to become a professional singer but after being ill with diphtheria her voice did not improve so she "took parts in plays in which I was not called upon to sing."  She married an actor sympathetic toward Spiritualism and began experimenting with mediumship with two other actresses offstage during a tour of a play. 

On the twenty-seventh evening: ". . . the table began to tilt up and down!  Overjoyed, I explained how the alphabet was used, and soon Florence's mother and mine were spelling out evidential messages . . . a Communicator came who gave her name as Feda, and explained that she was an ancestress of mine.  She had married my great-great-grandfather."

'Feda' told her by spelling out words with the aid of the table that "she had been watching over me since I was born, waiting for me to develop my psychic power so that she could put me into a trance and give messages through me."

Gladys grew to love and trust Feda —

So I agreed to let her entrance me, and asked her what I was to do to help it on.  She told me just to go on sitting with two or three friends round a table, and that I should later on go into trance quite easily and naturally.

When Gladys participated in a 'developing circle,' she and the other attendees were sitting quietly around the table with the lights turned down after an opening prayer.  Then:

Suddenly I felt a tingling in my hands, which were resting lightly upon the table.  The tingling spread through my wrists, up my arms, then began in my feet and legs, till my whole being felt as if filled by a gentle electric current.  Then came a strange feeling in my head—a pressure on my temples as of a band tied round them, and also on top of the head.
 
The pressure ceased, and I felt a curious force pulling me up from my chair impelling me to stand.  What I was to do in the event of my standing up I seemed incapable of imagining.  It was like a dream in which I was neither conscious nor unconscious, but yet aware that somebody outside myself urged me to do one thing at a time, telling me not to try to think what the sequence of events might be.
 
I was drawn up on my feet by this strange magnetic power which seemed to operate from just above my head.  My mouth opened; a sound issued from my lips.  What it was I do not know, for at that moment the president touched me on the hand, saying, "All right, friend, don't worry, you'll be able to speak in a moment or two."  He was addressing the spirit who he knew was trying to control me, but I stupidly thought he was speaking to me.  That, and the touch on my hand, broke the spell.
 
All sense of magnetic control left me.  I became my normal self again, and hurriedly sat down in my chair, feeling that I had made myself ridiculous to no purpose.

Two sitters among the people at the gathering became entranced that night, allowing 'controlling spirits' to communicate.

An engagement at a West End theatre in London enabled Gladys to continue investigating mediumship on a nightly basis.  She reported, "Feda had given up spelling out messages, as she said she wanted to concentrate entirely on controlling me . . ."  One evening when Gladys was feeling pessimistic about her psychic possibilities, she relapsed into an unusually sleepy state.

The drowsy, tired feeling increased.  I lazily thought, "It's darker than usual to-night.  I'm sleepy.  They won't notice if I sleep for a little while."
 
I slept.  I awoke.
 
It seemed to me as if I might have been asleep for a few months or for as many hours.
 
Agnes and Nellie were leaning across the table holding my hands.  I noticed they were agitated.  Nellie turned the light on and I saw that tears were glistening on their cheeks.
 
"What on earth's the matter?" I asked.
 
"Matter!" said Agnes.  "Feda has been controlling you and giving us messages from our relatives.  Nellie's mother has sent her some messages, too.  We have had a wonderful time."
 
They told me of many evidential things that had been given about matters of which I knew nothing, yet I could scarcely believe it was true.  I felt too dazed and tired to enter into the spirit of joy and wonder that Agnes felt.

Gladys recounted that Feda controlled her whenever she could find an understanding or sympathetic sitter.  In 1913 she was planning on enlarging her circle of sitters.  Suffering slightly from neuralgia, Gladys decided to have a few teeth extracted.  She was rendered unconscious by gas and after the operation she "felt dreadfully tired and went to bed, almost immediately falling asleep."

The very second I lost consciousness, I had a most horrid and vivid experience.  I thought I was in the dentist's operating-room, sitting in the dental chair, and that the gas had just been given me.  I watched the doctor and dentist doing one or two little things, moving away a stand, selecting an instrument, and so on, and then the dentist began to extract my teeth.

Gladys observed the entire incident, feeling the pain of each extraction.

I saw the doctor bending down in front of me, watching my face, and heard him say to the dentist, "Go on a little longer," but the dentist answered, "No, I think I'd better stop now.  I've got a good handful."
 
I awoke, bathed in perspiration, and shaking with pain.  Summoning all my self-control, I assured myself that it was all overstrained imagination—I had only had a kind of nightmare.  I composed myself, and after a little while sleep came over me, but almost immediately I began to go through a repetition, in detail, of the same dreadful experience.

This happened night after night for two weeks and Gladys found that she wasn't able to go into trance during this interim.  'Feda' communicated via spelling out words during table sittings:

She told me that a North American Indian, called North Star, would give me some healing, and that I was to take things very quietly, only sitting occasionally for Mrs. Watkins and her sister, Mrs. Massey, or an intimate friend.
 
I gradually grew stronger while following this advice, but was still rather afraid of going to sleep.  One night, feeling very tired, I had prayed more fervently than ever that I should be spared the dental ordeal, and allowed to sleep, and to my great relief, I fell into a perfectly natural sleep for about three hours, waking between three and four in the morning.  As I awoke, I heard a glorious baritone voice singing the beginning of the hymn, "Nearer my God to Thee."
 
I sat up in bed quickly.  The voice appeared to be in the room.
 
Fully conscious, I listened to this voice singing the whole of the first verse.  (It was the kind of voice that one would expect to hear in first-class opera or oratorio.)  Then I became aware that the sound seemed not only to be in the room, but everywhere.

Gladys commented that she never again experienced "that awful nightmare, or whatever it was, about the dental extractions."  She also observed, "North Star continued to help me, or so I was told.  I cannot say that I was conscious of him doing anything to me, but I certainly grew stronger very quickly . . . North Star was never able to speak through me.  He only made a kind of guttural sound, but he used my hands and arms in an extraordinary way, making passes over the patient, and certainly he cured several people of different maladies."

There would be further problems with her teeth, which were successfully treated by a capable surgeon-dentist.  A friend of Gladys who facilitated spiritual healing for her at this time was Helen Macgregor, about whom Gladys wrote: "Miss Macgregor is certainly a marvellous channel for the healing power, as far as I am concerned."

In March 1914, Feda gave Mrs. Watkins a message for Gladys that she was "to take some rooms where I could begin work as a professional medium as soon as possible.  Feda repeated this message through friends who were psychic, through planchette, table, automatic writing, or any way she could manage."  Gladys found the appropriate place and began giving private sittings daily and small public circles on certain evenings.  Two reputable men became supporters of her mediumship.

During the winter of 1914, Mr. Hewat McKenzie, the founder of the British College of Psychic Research, called upon me, anonymously.  I had never seen or heard of him before, but Feda gave him what he considered was a satisfactory sitting, and from that time onwards he was of the greatest help to me, sending me just the right kind of sitter, bereaved, but well-balanced, even sceptical, people, to whom the sittings were of benefit and service.

One day Mr. McKenzie personally brought to me a lady in deep mourning, who was obviously in great grief.  Her sittings with me brought her some comfort.  She knew Sir Oliver Lodge, though I did not know him at this time, and when his son Raymond was killed in the war, in the autumn of 1915, this lady arranged a sitting for an "unknown gentleman."

It may sound absurd, almost unbelievable, but as it happened I had never before seen Sir Oliver Lodge in person, nor had I ever seen a portrait of him.  I had read, or seen, very little scientific or psychical literature, and I had never read anything that he had written.  Anyhow, I had not the faintest idea of his identity, but Raymond in this—his first—sitting with me, communicated with his father through Feda, and from that time onwards it has been my great privilege to have had many sittings with him, and also with many of the bereaved people who wrote to Sir Oliver, asking him to send them to someone who could give them a message from those who had passed over.

After becoming a prominent medium, Gladys learned that her spiritual development was continuing.  She recounted an experience that resulted with new insights, commenting:

I think that there are planes of an intermediate kind, where the higher spirit Guides and Teachers can meet us when we leave our bodies during sleep.  These intermediate planes are not, I think, in the same sphere or condition to which people go when they pass over after death.  To me there seems to be a difference.  One feels it but cannot explain it.

After settling herself for sleep one night, she experienced the sensation of leaving her body and traveling through space.

After a time, the blindfold condition began to disappear gradually, and I found myself in some kind of building, like a school or institution.  The feeling it gave me was neither happiness nor unhappiness, though I am usually very sensitive to places, whether on the earthly or spiritual plane.  I simply felt I was there for some definite purpose.

The room in which I stood was well lighted, and a passage led from it, not so light; at the end of the passage was a door leading into a darker room.  A voice directed me to go into this room, and I obeyed unquestioningly.  At first I could not see what was is the room, it seemed so dark after the lighter atmosphere, so I passed round and at last made out a low chair or seat in one corner, and reclining on this seat was the figure of a woman, apparently asleep.  The sight of her gave me a feeling of deep depression.  There was something about her that was so—not repulsive—but sad.  For one thing, everything about her was brown.  Her dress, hair and even her skin, were of a dull muddy brown.  As I stood there, I felt an overwhelming pity for her.  "I must help her," I thought.  "I must give her something of the spiritual happiness, the inspiration, and hope that I am so conscious of."

She soon became aware that the woman was herself — "It was just as if I were looking at myself in a very dirty, dark mirror."

After looking at her for what seemed an eternity, I heard a voice, though I could not see the speaker.  It was a deep resonant voice, like a note on the organ.  At the time, every word and every tiny inflexion of the voice was deeply impressed on my mind, but now I can only remember that this voice told me that the "brown woman," as I have always called her in my mind, was my lower self; and that my mediumship—my association with higher entities, and the advantages I had had through the development of my psychic faculties, had not brought about the spiritual and ethical improvement in my earthly self that there might have been.

Gladys expressed what was important to consider about her mediumship:

. . . what is it going to do for us, or what are we going to let the greater knowledge make of us?  Yes, the privilege of communicating brings a great spiritual and moral responsibility to us, which we cannot and must not shirk.

All this was told me at length by the Voice.  I did not imagine it, and not a word or idea of it had been in my mind.  Indeed, it was all a great shock to my self-esteem, as I had rather prided myself on taking care of my power, using it to help others and so on.  But I was told that was not nearly enough; that there was so much selfishness and vanity, and intolerance, allied to a disposition to take the line of least resistance if anything very unpleasant had to be done, or anything that would make me unpopular.  Oh, the Voice certainly "put me through it"!  Every scrap of my self-complacency dwindled into nothingness before the beautifully modulated, even tones that thrust these unpleasant truths at me.  It never entered my head to rebel, or deny any of it.  After the first shock, I made up my mind, even while the Voice was speaking, that I would take my lower self in hand on my return to my physical body.
 
I looked again at the "brown woman" as the resolution formed definitely in my mind.  I thought I saw a slight lightening or clearing up of the muddy depressing shade, and gradually she melted before my eyes, while I was conscious of being drawn away from the place, down and back to earth, though the Voice still kept beside me, quietly telling me what my faults were, and all I had to eradicate.

On awakening she remembered the details of what had happened.

I lay in bed and pondered over my strange experience, and wondered why I had been given the lesson just then.  As I lay wide awake, but with my eyes closed, I heard the Voice again, telling me that my physical health had been in a condition which, though not apparently serious in itself, was leading to a crisis in which I should need not only help from my spirit friends, but from my own higher self, which was even more important.  Shortly after this, I had the septic poisoning from my teeth, for which Miss Macgregor gave me such splendid help . . .

Gladys related another illuminating incident wherein a "hardened agnostic had understood in two short sittings the lesson it had taken me several years of intensive study and development to learn."

In the early days of the Great War, a bereaved father visited me with the hope of communicating with his only son who had been recently killed at the front.  Father and son had evidently been devoted to each other; the one seemed lost indeed without the other.  I felt it would be a difficult sitting, because the poor man was so sure that there couldn't be a God, there couldn't be an afterlife, there couldn't be any loving Providence, or anything of the kind in a world where such a war went on, and where thousands of fine young lives were thrown away daily.
 
He explained all this to me while I was arranging the room, and endeavouring to get him to settle quietly in his chair for the sitting.  Well, Feda brought his son to him, and he gave his father so much proof of his identity that he was staggered, and after the séance he went away without saying much to me, but he made an appointment for another sitting at an early date—I think it was a few weeks later.  After this second sitting he told me he had received so much evidence that he was now sure that it was his son who had communicated with him, and who showed him that he still loved him, was near him at times, and looked forward to their being together again.  He said he could no longer doubt either survival itself, or the possibility of communication.  I felt very happy, as I had been particularly sorry for this man.
 
Suddenly he threw his note-book violently down on the table, and started to stride up and down the room.  He drew his hand across his forehead with a bewildered gesture, and cried out, "Damn it!  Knowing this new truth about the life to come, and my son and others seeing me, and knowing what I am doing—it's all going to be an infernal nuisance to me, it's going to revolutionize my business life.  I can't go on conducting things on the old lines—I'd be ashamed.  Yes, damn it, this is going to give me some trouble."  He said more than this, and his language was much more lurid, but I didn't mind.  I saw that this boiling over of his sense of responsibility was really the outcome of his great relief and joy in finding his boy again.