Some 'Evidence' of The Divine Mind

Arthur Ford         Sherwood Eddy       Gerald Heard       George Russell       Havelock Ellis

 

In An Arthur Ford Anthology (1999) compiled and edited by Frank C. Tribbe, one of the close friends and associates of Arthur Ford (1897-1971) is reported to have been George Sherwood Eddy, who had many interests in common with the famous trance medium.  This blog article presents one of the Arthur Ford trance seance descriptions published in Eddy's You Will Survive After Death (1950), a nonfiction book about his investigation of psychic phenomena and the afterlife.   
 
An Arthur Ford Anthology mentions that Eddy was a prolific author, had served as YMCA secretary for all of Asia and was a founder of the World Christian Student League.  In his 1950 book he commented about the realm of psychic experience after a lengthy and intensive investigation that changed his perceptions of life: ". . . the psychic world is to most of us a twilight zone . . . there is no field or area of life today that must meet such bitter, obstinate, and often unreasoning prejudice as the psychic field . . . Although the writer has had opportunity in America, Europe and the Orient to come in contact in his traveling work with rare geniuses in the psychic sphere they are not accessible to the average reader."
 
Eddy in his book made a frank admission: "Like most of those who have been subsequently convinced of survival by psychic evidence, I was long prejudiced against this whole area of life."
 
George Sherwood Eddy (his first name was left out of his pen name) prefaced his accounts of trance mediumship sessions conducted by Arthur Ford with some biographical paragraphs about him and his mediumship in Chapter 6 "Evidences of Survival" of You Will Survive After Death.  (Biographical information about Arthur Ford is presented in a case study blog article.) 

    

He is a well-known platform clairvoyant, or clairaudient, in America, Great Britain, Australia and other countries.  I have known Mr. Ford somewhat intimately for ten years and I have had him as a guest in my home.  His relations with me personally have always been on a basis of frank integrity.  There has never been any professional connection between us:  I have never been asked nor have I ever paid a cent for his services.  I am glad to count him as my personal friend.
 

For several decades Mr. Ford has traveled widely over the world, devoting himself to psychic work.  He was in London when I was there in July, 1938, and I attended several of his meetings and lectures and was impressed with his apparent power as a platform clairaudient.

 
. . . I went to Mr. Ford's flat in London on July 14, 1938.  Most of the things said through him during the hour that he was in trance could not have been known to him by normal means, nor could they have been learned from any printed volume.  Some of them were highly evidential.

 
I was delighted when he voluntarily offered to go into trance for me.  He told me that he followed the method used in India in inducing the state of trance, and that as soon as he was unconscious, his control, Fletcher, a Catholic French Canadian who had lived in Quebec, would come through and take charge of the interview.  (Fletcher's mother was English, his father French Canadian.  He was a college fraternity brother of Arthur Ford's.  He died in 1917 in World War I.).

 
. . . the control or medium had got fifty-three things right and seven of them were to me personally highly evidential.

  

The following is George Sherwood Eddy's account of his second trance session with Arthur Ford.  This passage is unabridged except for the omission of one paragraph of Fletcher informing Eddy about some past events in China from the perspective of a former Chinese admiral.  The omitted paragraph is presented following the rest of the transcript to show it in conjunction with Eddy's remarks evaluating the scope of the communication.  
 

SITTING WITH ARTHUR FORD,

NOVEMBER 2, 1940

Two years after I had sat with Ford in London, I was traveling in California and learned that he was then living in his own beautiful home in Los Angeles.  At this time I met Gerald Heard, the English writer, anthropologist, and mystic philosopher, who has been deeply influenced by Buddhism.  When I asked Gerald Heard if he would care to go with me to see Arthur Ford as a perfect stranger—for Heard had but recently arrived in California and was known only to a few friends—he said he would be eager to do so, as he had been for twenty years a member in London of the Society for Psychical Research.  This was my first meeting with Gerald Heard and we talked for perhaps a quarter of an hour.  On November 2, 1940, I called for him and introduced him as a complete stranger to Arthur Ford.  Ford chatted with us for a few minutes about psychic phenomena, saying that he himself was not sure how much of the material came from Fletcher, his control, and how much might possibly come from his subconscious self while in trance.  We were told to ask any questions or to do anything we liked after Fletcher took control, and to take notes.  Ford tied the silk handkerchief about his eyes, relaxed in his easy chair, and soon was in apparent trance.

Ford first faced toward me, and the control, Fletcher, speaking through the lips of the medium in his French-Canadian accent, said he had met me before, far away (in London, 1938).  We three then chatted freely for an hour, as simply as any three men meeting casually on earth.  Gerald Heard and I both took notes of every word spoken, for it was in broad daylight, and we alternately fired a steady steam of questions at Fletcher, who professed and appeared to be in touch with several of our relatives and friends on the other side.

Speaking, of course, through the control, Fletcher, and in turn through the lips of Arthur Ford, my mother came through and said, "I used to call you 'Georgie,' though Sherwood was a family name and also Norton.  There was an ancestor of ours, Sherwood Norton, a simple man who lived on the land, a pioneer.  You [Sherwood] have inherited from my side of the family tenacity and courage.  You were very earnest in youth and adopted four cornerstones for character: purity, honesty, surrender, and sacrifice.  You were not happy at the end of your college course; but wanted to leave college.  You heard a simple man with little knowledge of English [Moody, obviously] who moved you as he spoke on 'rivers of living water.'  It changed your whole life.  It strengthened your personality.  You have not a great mind, for you take after me.  I was always forthright, at least, and could not dissimulate."

This was all correct.  I took after my mother exclusively.  If I examine my scrapbook, I find that there was a time during my course at Yale when I became very dissatisfied and wanted to leave college and travel in Europe.  I knew that I was never going to be an engineer and had not found my niche or place in life, but my parents wisely prevailed upon me to finish college.  Facts about the influence of Moody and his text on "rivers of living water" might have been known to anyone who read my Pilgrimage of Ideas.  It is emphatically true about my mental limitations but most characteristic of my Spartan mother, as an unsparing critic, to point them out.

Ford then faced toward Gerald Heard (whom he had never before seen or heard of) and Fletcher continued: "You, man with the beard, you were the youngest son in the family.  Your gentle mother was but a shadow of the egotist (your father) who over-shadowed her.  She says, 'I was but a "yes man" to your father.'  He looks a bit like a priest or bishop.  He was rigid, orthodox, and loyal to his church.  You have overcome much of the evil effects of your early life.  You are a rebel against tradition.  They used to call you 'Harry' but dropped the name because it was your father's.  [All true.]  The world is now a surprising place to you, but you have not found half the mystery of the universe yet.  Your mother, though not highly educated, was intellectual and of an intelligent family."

All this was emphatically true and highly evidential to Gerald Heard.  His father was a church dignitary, an Anglican prebendary — so oppressive, harsh, and dogmatic that he estranged this youngest son, Gerald, to the extent that he was driven away from religion to take an agnostic and antireligious attitude for many years.  Gerald Heard chuckled as Fletcher described exactly his overshadowed mother and his proud and arrogant father.  He has indeed been a rebel against tradition, and as a deep student of Buddhism and Hinduism is now a practicing mystic in southern California.

The Irish poet, George Russell, was next introduced by the control.  As Gerald Heard and I had never seen each other except for our first visit of a quarter of an hour and had no knowledge of our mutual friends and acquaintances, we were both startled at the introduction of George Russell and later Havelock Ellis, whom we had both known.  As the blindfolded medium, directed by his control, Fletcher, faced Gerald Heard, he said: "George Russell, the poet, is here!  He says: 'I have a better beard than you have.  Give me that paper quick, and a pencil.  This is the way I signed my name.'"  [He writes AE, thus "Æ" "Exactly!" said Gerald Heard.]  "I am here speechless amid splendor [said the poet].  You are a mystic [George Russell to Gerald Heard].  Hello, Eddy, I knew you too.  I admired you, though you wanted to proselytize and make Christians of people of a higher culture.  I was always a 'pagan' and have not changed much.  I met you, Eddy [in Washington].  I spoke to Alexander Irvin [both Heard and I knew him in Los Angeles].  There is a woman here [to Gerald Heard] who always refused to have anything to do with the astral plane.  I was never a theosophist, though I believed in reincarnation.  You would make a good Buddhist monk."  [Gerald Heard replied, "I hope so."]  George Russell continued: "I tried to keep all the windows of my life open on all sides.  I have not seen Jesus over here, nor have I met any who have.  They have seen only the rays or effulgence from his presence.  We do not talk of heaven or hell here.  It is just life abundant.  We have things and places but nothing enchains us here.  The 'eightfold path' of Gautama is for me simplest and perhaps best."

This was startlingly evidential to both Gerald Heard and myself.  Granted that the Divine Mind knows everything—whether the divine is personally or pantheistically conceived—a moment's thought will convince many that George Russell himself is the only human mind in the universe that knew that he knew us both.  Neither Gerald Heard nor I knew that the other knew him.  AE, the poet, was just a joyous and beautiful "pagan" who could not approve of my evangelistic work "to proselytize and make Christians of Hindus and Confucianists of a higher culture," but who liked Gautama's "eightfold path" that Gerald Heard was even then following.

Fletcher then continued, again addressing Gerald Heard, who had specialized on the sex problem in several of his books [as in Gerald Heard's Pain, Sex and Time, Harper & Brothers]: "You are nearly right on the sex problem.  You take it in a spiritual sense.  We have the equivalent of sex here, as a beautiful, emotional, spiritual overtone.  We have the equivalent of the ecstasy as a sublimation with no downward drag of the flesh."
 
 
The paragraph that follows seems to me highly evidential.  When writing my Sex and Youth in 1927, I called on Havelock Ellis in London, as an author and expert on sex relations, to discuss these problems with him.  Gerald Heard had done the same thing at another time.  If the reader will consider Havelock Ellis's statement, "You were both in my house," he will realize that the only human mind in the universe that knew that fact was Ellis himself.  I did not know that Gerald Heard had ever been in his home, nor did he know that I had been.  Neither the medium nor any other person on earth knew anything about this.  There was no guessing or groping uncertainty in the whole sitting.  This was spoken with assurance and apparently positive knowledge.  In my judgment telepathy and clairvoyance on the part of the medium could not account for it.  Is it not the simplest explanation that Havelock Ellis was living and in touch with both of us whom he recognized as having been in his home?

Fletcher continued: "Havelock Ellis is here, with his long white beard; he knew you both and both of you were in his home in London."  [When I asked Ellis what he and I talked about in his home, he said:]  "I talked incessantly and loved it and was always getting my wife out of trouble.  She was a fine woman.  She should not have come to America.  I am still occupied here with the subject of war and sex.  They are making men cannon fodder now in this war.  You were both in my house [true].  We discussed sex problems in general.  I gave my life to these problems.  You [to Gerald Heard] studied in Cambridge.  It ought to have been bombed long ago [jokingly]!  Why did you go to Cambridge when you might have gone to Oxford?  You wrote books and articles and editorials."  Heard was editor of the Realist.  Ellis then mentioned a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, known to Heard, who died in a New York hotel.

Fletcher resumed: "I see you, Eddy, in a picture with some Indian boys, and Alden Clarke [secretary of the American Board, in Boston] has some connection with them.  I see a Syrian Christian and an outcaste.  They are two of the most useful men in the Orient.  Both are bishops now [obviously Azariah, the bishop of Dornakal, and Bishop Abraham of Travancore].  The outcaste was the first Anglican Indian bishop.  You were present at his consecration, though you could take no part in that Anglican service; but he loved you more than any of them.  The Reformed Bishop — you ask his name?  Abraham [right], Isaac and Jacob."

As the medium again faced Gerald Heard, Fletcher said: "You lived near Bristol and Cornwall."  ["Right," said Heard.  "We lived ten miles from Bristol and were there for eighteen years."]  Facing me again, Fletcher resumed: "Your mother is here again, holding the hands of her two grandchildren, Margaret and Arden.  Conan Doyle is here also.  He says: 'In the last war I did not then first discover psychic facts, for I had studied them for twenty years, but the war was a challenge to me to share my knowledge and experience with those bereaved and those without faith.  Today we face another crisis.  Many have lost their faith and are in cynicism and despair.  You two men both write and speak, and are known and trusted, so that your word would carry weight.  We need at this tragic hour a crusade for spiritual things, especially regarding survival and the life beyond.  There is need, with so many bereaved and concerned in this war, to be as shining lights, giving this knowledge and evidence to those who need it.'"

Ford then showed signs of the power leaving him.  He awoke heavily, took the silk handkerchief from his eyes, and professed not to know who AE (George Russell) was, nor remember anything that had taken place.

Nearly all of the statements made in this sitting were correct, and there was no waste material and no apparent groping or guessing.  The medium was strikingly correct about Gerald Heard's family, his autocratic and harsh father and "shadow" mother, his early name Harry, as mine was George, both dropped because they were our fathers' names, mine after my father's death when my mother could not bear having the name spoken in her presence.  Regarding facts which were mentioned in no book on earth, and known to no person on earth, neither to the medium or to myself, I for my part can find no adequate explanation save the simplest of all, that these people were living "beyond the death line" and could contact and get in touch with some on earth if the proper means of communication between the two worlds were used.

 

Eddy also commented in this chapter: "I am only one of many who have received similar evidence through this medium, Arthur Ford.  There are hundreds in America, England, and Australia who could supplement and confirm this evidence."

  

The following paragraph from Eddy's description of the November 2, 1940 sitting induced him to reflect about the nature of all the material being shared.

  

Fletcher continued: "There is a Chinese admiral, Ching or Chen, of South China here who says: 'You came to stand beside my casket when they killed me [true].  I was about to sign a card in your meeting and the man next to me [Wu Ting-fang, China's minister in Washington] nudged me to dissuade me.  I was killed that night and you concluded from that experience that you would never postpone again until "tomorrow" in calling men to immediate decision.  You knew Sun Yat-sen, who was a dreamer.  His courageous wife has done good work.  He was not reconciled that his family married a general.  He [Chiang Kai-shek] still reads your Bible, but he is a kind of Old Testament Christian.'"  The above statements are true and would have been most evidential had not some of them been published in my Pilgrimage of Ideas (pp. 124-125).  I did give Chiang Kai-shek my marked Bible and perhaps he is or was "a kind of Old Testament Christian."

 

Of course, a reader may perceive how the statements are no less evidential than any of the others as it seems a mistake to disregard them on the basis mentioned by Eddy, who also commented about this portion of the transcript in the concluding chapter of You Will Survive After Death:  

. . . there seem to be unmistakable references to passages in a book I had myself given him (A Pilgrimage of Ideas, pp. 95-100, 124-125).  I can hardly conceive of a pagan Chinese admiral remembering my side of incidents that had happened years ago just before his assassination.

 

Sixty-eight years after the publication of You Will Survive After Death, many documented cases of transcendental communication that have been published during this period (as shown in a variety of articles at this blog) include occasional explanations about these circumstances as articulated by the manifesting communicators found throughout the numerous recordings and transcripts of authentic channeling cases, Direct Voice Phenomena cases and Instrumental Transcommunication cases.