Case Profile: Psychic and Trance Medium Eileen Garrett

 

The life of medium and author Eileen Jeanette Garrett (1893-1970) is documented in a succession of autobiographical books chronicling her life as a psychic whose rare abilities encompassed what at the time became associated with her being a 'trance medium' (or what today would be called a 'channeler').  A 2010 blog post presented channeled perspectives of the brain as documented in Eileen Garrett and Edgar Cayce case chronologies.  One distinction prior to the publication of her first memoir is that in 1934 she and Cayce engaged in trance readings (or 'channeled readings') for one another.  (article)  

 

Eileen Garrett's 1939 memoir My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship begins with her earliest recollections of living in a farmhouse in Ireland.  After the suicides of her parents, she resided with "a cold and distant aunt" and an uncle "ever cheerful."  Garrett was devoted to this uncle yet he was another of her close relatives who died during her childhood.  

 

She recalled that when she told her guardian aunt about the visit of another aunt holding a baby, she was questioned closely and then whipped.  The news soon arrived that the aunt in question had died while giving birth with the infant also having perished.  Her uncle also visited her in this phenomenal manner.

Eileen's early memories include making friends with children no one else ever saw and noticing for each living person, animal or plant a 'surround' consisting of transparent changing colors.  For people, the colors sometimes became dense and dull according to the variation in moods.  A marriage at the age of 16 in London was followed by the birth of a son.  Garrett described removing the five-month-old child from his perambulator and hearing "a faint sigh over my shoulder, then I heard my name called distinctly and a voice, cold and admonishing, warned me that I must not lose my temper with the child as he would not be with me much longer."  The following year, a second son was born and both sons succumbed from meningitis.  A third son died a few hours after birth. 

 
During World War I, she gave birth to a daughter.  Garrett reported that on another occasion a strange 'voice' was heard to say: "You knew that this marriage would not last."  She wrote: "A part of me had always known that I must some day create a place for myself in the word . . . The swiftness of my desire to end my marriage shocked both my mother-n-law and my husband.  He could not see why his temporary unfaithfulness, while I was still ill, would be a sufficient reason for the break-up of our marriage."

 

After a successful enterprise assisting as a partner in her friend's restaurant, she started her own.  "In the two years that I ran my own place, it grew rapidly, with the patronage of the soldiers from the nearby hospitals."  However, she decided, ". . . I had had enough of that special type of activity.  Everyone was then engaged in some form of war work, and I felt impelled to do something of that kind."  The new plans made were delayed by "a severe attack of rheumatic fever which the doctor attributed to over-work.  When I had recovered, I leased some large premises in central London, where I set up a resting home for wounded soldiers." 

 

She discovered that her "seeing and sensing were now opening into other types of perceptions.  I began to see fragments of incidents and episodes connected with people whom I knew, flashing before me like blurred pictures on a dark screen . . . I began to see events taking place in the lives of my friends, before they had actually occurred to them."  She found herself drawn to an officer who'd contracted a fever.

 

I noticed, when the men spoke of their war experiences, that he shuddered and would say, "I wish you fellows wouldn't be so bloodthirsty" . . . One day he came home very upset and told me that his regiment would be leaving in a week's time for the front.  "I can't," he said, "face the going away from you, nor the horror of war, unless you marry me" . . . I did so . . . About a month later, came a day when I knew that my husband was going through hours of terrific suffering and fear . . . At eleven-thirty, as I went out of the crowded room, the vision of my husband dying, began to open; I seemed for the moment, to have lost my own identity, and was caught in the midst of a terrible explosion.  I saw this gentle, golden haired man blown to pieces . . .

 

 
. . . I came to feel that Mind was a greater phenomenon than anyone had yet seemed to realize.

 

When her daughter was ill with pneumonia, Eileen was caring for the child when she heard a voice say to her, "Be careful!  She must have more air.  Open the windows and allow a new current of air in the room."  She then saw "the outline of a figure leaning against the bed . . . I was too petrified to look very closely at him . . . I knew I must approach the bed, and put the child back on it.  As I laid her down, I was aware of this man in gray garments, standing beside me, with a sympathetic and kindly smile . . . I knew he had come to help me save the child."  Her daughter was a young woman of 22 when Eileen's first autobiography was published.   

 

One of the people staying at her resting home talked with her about being clairvoyant, spiritualist beliefs and one of her interactions with him was realized to offer "proof that I had the power to psychometrize."  He took her to a meeting where "a clairvoyant was giving messages to the audience from dead relatives and friends" and the next day Garrett "took out a membership in this society."  She attended lectures and clairvoyant demonstrations.  She soon joined a group of several women meeting once a week for psychic experimentation.

The third time that I sat in the circle with the group of women, something unexpected happened.  I found myself growing drowsy and before I knew it I was sound asleep.  When I came to I was being roused and shaken by the other women who seemed frightened and upset.  I found myself in a somewhat nauseated and giddy condition with an effect of lights playing before my eyes.  I heard them say that in my sleep I had given evidence of their dead ones being present, entities who spoke to them all.  I was thoroughly frightened at what had occurred . . .

 

The secretary of the spiritualist society arranged for her to her to consult "a friend of hers, who had a profound knowledge of psychic matters."  The man informed her that she was "potentially a trance medium of great power" and that an entity had spoken through her who declared he is an Oriental with the name 'Uvani.'

 

At a moment when she was considering to close off her trances and move to Australia, there was "an impulse to call on the secretary and this call changed the course of my life."  The secretary had been informed by another medium's control that she herself would be instrumental to helping Garrett continue trance work.  This led to Garrett meeting Mrs. Kelway-Bamber (editor of transcendental communication transcript anthologies Claude's Book and Claude's Second Book, 1919/1920) who arranged for her to have experimental sittings with "most of the leaders of the spiritualist movement in London."  

 

Garrett was especially impressed by Hewat McKenzie, who with his wife had founded the British College of Psychic Studies.  She began working as a trance medium at the College.  After Hewat's passing in 1929, she also became affiliated with other spiritualist societies.  When she grew concerned that sitters possibly were becoming less independent, there was consideration for Garrett beginning "a new cycle of living."  It was then that she became ill with para-typhoid fever followed by "two serious operations which suspended all my activities for many months."

 

Upon resuming her trance mediumship, she learned that a new personality had emerged during a trance session, 'Abdul Latif.'  This control had appeared and worked through a number of mediums in different parts of the world before and after he spoke through Garrett. 

 

When there were further ailments Garrett again contemplated giving up her trance mediumship work.  When she "went right ahead with my plans," a manifesting voice is quoted: "Make the most of your happiness; it cannot last."  She married a "dear and valued friend . . . and life moved ahead smoothly enough for us, until the day that the banns of our marriage were published.  On that very day both my fiancé and I fell very ill.  I developed an active mastoid and he caught a serious chill, which quickly developed into septic pneumonia.  Within a week he was dead and I was lying in a hospital, dangerously ill from the complications of a burst appendix and a mastoid."

She developed a high temperature and underwent a throat operation.  During convalescence, there was an unusual anomalous incident of a tottering wardrobe cabinet and explosive sounds.  "I was just able to touch my bell before I passed out in a dead faint.  It took me twenty-four hours to recuperate from the effects of this experience."  There quickly followed that autumn of 1931 "in an almost miraculous manner" the invitation for her to go to the United States and work there under the auspices of the American Society for Psychical Research.  Garrett participated in psychic experiments at universities and other sites through 1937, including Duke University, Johns Hopkins University and Oxford University.  

 
Throughout her life, Garrett continued dedicating herself to participating in scientific studies of her psychic gifts.  One scientist who published a book reporting about his tests of Garrett's trance mediumship is Hereward Carrington (1880-1958) with The Case for Psychic Survival (1957).  The same  year Garrett published a book about the subject of healing, Life Is The Healer.   Her publishing ventures include being publisher and editor of the American magazine Tomorrow (1941-1962) and in 1951 she founded the Parapsychology Association in New York City.   

Eileen Garrett's book Telepathy was published in 1941.  In a chapter about the function of symbolism in relation to her psychic experiences, she offered some idea of the scope of conditions:

 

. . . it was only after I gave up working with the control personalities (see the Preface), and re-examined the mechanics of my psychic functioning, that I realized that better results were achieved when I projected myself into a detached, yet highly accelerated state of breathing and rhythm . . . I had found access to a greater reality of self — another self, which from now on I will refer to as the superconscious.

She mentioned that while working with the Zener cards she heard several phenomenal "ding dong voices which reiterated, 'This is wrong — you cannot do it!'"

 

In another chapter she wrote about childhood interaction with a man named Michael whose job was taking care of a house she would sometimes visit.

 

An episode out of my childhood suggests that I very early had access to the universal consciousness, and, at the same time, presents a further illustration of telepathy in the dream-state.

Michael told her about what he perceived as being the thwarted romance of the house resident Miss Cecily due to her domineering guardian uncle only for Garrett to have a dream about the young woman who responded to Garrett's thoughts during the dream.  Cecily said she sent away the young man, Hugh, after dreaming that both of them must die soon.  The following winter after the young man had left the house, Cecily had a severe fall while hunting that some months later caused her death.  A few weeks after Garrett's own dream, her uncle told her he'd just learned that Hugh Goring had died due to being thrown from his horse in India: "You remember him?  He was the popular young officer to whom Cecily was engaged.  What a pity it is about those two children, and what a coincidence that they should both die in the same manner!"

In Awareness (1943), Garrett included a chapter entitled "Trance and the Controls" that provide further observations and details about her abilities along with observations about theories related to her states of consciousness.  Garrett stated that the condition of mediumistic trance is "not understood or defined."

 
Garrett conceded in Awareness that she personally had no determinations to announce concerning the nature and identity of the controls communicating through her trance.  

 

Uvani was the first control who used my trance for communication.  Over a period of several years, he gave repeated evidence of the survival of human life beyond death, and transmitted messages of the most personal nature between people living on this earth and their known "dead" in the conditions of the "beyond" . . .  in all of his communications, he has appeared most gentle, kind and meticulously considerate.

In the transcripts published in Health: Its Recovery and Maintenance (1928) brought to publication by R. H. Saunders, there are a few Uvani comments among the transcripts chronicling 12 discourses orated by the Latif voice.  When asked by Saunders during the Twelfth Address "you are the same race as Abduhl Latif?," the following sentences are found from the response recorded in the transcript.

I have lived only one hundred years ago . . . I had realised in my own day that the principles for which our great race stood were not everything, and that one could learn a great deal from the white man.  Being killed in warfare myself I was not ever permitted to understand anything of the principles of this race, but when I go out as I do, knowing nothing of anything of life but that the sun came up and went down, that the air was good, and the wine was sweet, I asked for instruction from the English, and then I realised that if ever the East is to get back that great knowledge which, unfortunately, my brethren, she has lost, it behooves us each son of the great civilisation that once was—of the great civilisations, which is the better way to put it?—to do his poor best to work through the mind that will convey the knowledge, and so try to give back to the East that which she has lost.

But I am not Uvani.  I call myself Uvani, meaning: "the son of happiness"; it was a name given to me.  I was killed in that warfare by the Turk.  I am Youssef, Ben Hafik, Ben Ali, and I lived in Basrah where my family is a noble one of merchants and soldiers.

Eileen reported that Baron Sylvestre de Lacy had collected and transcribed the numerous references to Abdul Latif in Arabic literature, while in the Bodleian Library at Oxford was a book written by Abdul Latif himself known as Al Mokhtasir (The Compendium).  Abdul Latif's own Arabic handwriting is displayed among 133 pages telling about his travels in Egypt.  Another case study book reporting about Direct Voice manifestations of "the great Persian physician Abduhl Latif" including "information concerning the life hereafter" had previously been written and compiled by R. H. Saunders.  The spelling of the name of 'Abduhl Latif' was on one occasion told to Saunders, who first heard the voice while attending a sitting conducted by Mrs. Etta Wriedt of Detroit.  "About midway through the sitting, a steely blue light in the form of a ball, some three inches in diameter, shot at an angle across the room, coming from the ceiling furthest from the medium (and apparently far beyond the ceiling) and alighting on the floor near her, and a voice addressed us."  

 

"Friends, I am here to take part in the development of the power which is being generated in this circle.  I am permitted to help in all work that is good-working and thinking.  I am the guide of your circle and I am empowered to help you, and I am learning your ways and manner of life and language with that object.  Our power though great at times is limited at others.  We draw from you to the extent of your strength.  We dare not deprive you of all.  We take what the sitters throw off, and mould it to our purpose."

 

  
Garrett in her books—including the 1949 memoir Adventures In The Supernormal—always was reluctant to reach a conclusion about 'the controls.'  Her final memoir was published in 1968 as Many Voices: The Autobiography of a Medium.  The book includes passages providing an overview of her psychic ability when conscious to experience clairvoyant images and colors in meaningful array — 

 

I have seen ships that might have been sailed by Phoenician fisherman, and busy but ancient seaports; all of these images, when translated, might point to a journey to be undertaken.

A person passing by my office door will set in motion a whole assembly of ideas, or a word will turn my attention toward some other necessary detail. 

 

 

When I encounter forms alleged to be entities, they are seemingly transparent — an eggshell blue, an opaqueness that alerts one to their difference in aspect, for it is seldom that one sees one's fellows glittering blue and magnificent. 

 

Pregnancy often announces itself in a blue-purple. 

 

We live in a green world.  It is a color that appears of itself to be transitory.  In hospitals, I have noted the dark brown cloud of the ailing body giving way to a green-blue when the visit of the physician breaks into the atmosphere with cheerful news of the restoration of good health.

 

Many Voices includes a description of Garrett's visit to Los Angeles in 1933.   She was working with the California branch of the American Society for Psychical Research and a Society officer who was a songwriter at Paramount escorted her and her small daughter to observe filming taking place.  While watching Cecil B. DeMille directing Elissa Landi, Garrett described seeing a woman dressed differently from the others in the manner of an elderly teacher.   The woman spoke to DeMille but "nothing at all happened.  I saw him scratch the back of his head, as though he were reflecting upon her words . . ."  There was the possibility of herself having lapsed into a psychic experience.  Then the woman began speaking to her directly, asking Garrett to speak to him on her behalf.  It would be 1935 when Garrett was able to obtain an appointment with DeMille and she told him about the incident:

I began to relate the episode of two years before, when the little lady bade me talk with him.  Even as I spoke, I felt I was no longer alone.  The little lady was at my elbow giving me confidence, for I must say that DeMille’s reception had not made me feel too welcome.  She urged me on, saying: "Go on, go on."  I had a stream of consciousness which I can only describe as being in a state of receptivity where her personality overflowed to drown mine.  I was speaking with her precision, taking on some of her personality, and actually using her gestures.  I remember that she spoke sharply, rather like a schoolmistress, and in an assured manner that commanded attention.

 
Garrett related the spirit woman's desires for DeMille's life and her commentary revealed that he was her son.  After the mother’s messages were given, Garrett noticed that DeMille had become quite emotional and he told her he'd been waiting for such an experience for more than 20 years.

   

In Many Voices Garrett mentioned that Health: Its Recovery and Maintenance was made possible through the efforts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. H. Saunders, who used a Q & A format with oration transcripts.  Saunders noted in the introduction to Health that occasionally some distinguished person was present at the sittings (including Doyle) attended by Mr. A. L. Morris and himself.   Morris was identified as a gifted healer whose work manifested the wonderful 'Pearl Ray,' the discovery of which is described in Healing Through Spirit Agency.

Shortly after he came through to us, he discovered that one of our group possessed what Abduhl called the “Pearl Ray,” the hyperbolic way the Orientals describe something very rare and valuable.  This Pearl Ray is an emanation from the human body, purely physical and can be seen by the spirits, who state it is grey in colour, and is probably a form of ectoplasm.   It has the property of being able to burn up the diseased tissues, and so give nature the opportunity of recuperation.  Nature is ever desirous and working to readjust the balance of disturbance, and is a prime factor in the healing of disease.  This Ray, tangible to Spirits, can be detached from the body and taken by Spirit Agency, and applied to sufferers at a distance.

 
As recounted in Health, upon learning about Garrett Saunders arranged a sitting where he asked her spirit control if he knew Latif.   The reply was that Latif had already spoken through Garrett.  At his next sitting with Garrett, Latif manifested at once and proposed that seances be organized: "I would wish to give to the world knowledge it does not at present possess . . ."

Here are some excerpts of Latif’s commentary from Health. 

 

It was meant that our food should be eaten crisp, and young, and green.  If we would take care to have less of the lead and chemical compositions in our foods we would be wise, and if we would realize when we have pain that that is the way this material body kicks, if you like, against the disorders that we insist on piling upon it.

 

 

The average citizen, the average normal living man to-day as you look upon him, without any other fluid that he may introduce into the system and which has not the same washing effect — he needs at the very, very least three pints per day of clear running water.

 

 

Remember that what is good for you, brother, may not be good for the other man.  Do not, therefore, sit in judgment and say: "Because I do this, you may" . . . We are going to teach him how to be healthy and clean-minded.  We are going to take away all the scornful, idiotic laws of Church and State, we are going to banish them from his mind and we are going to ask him, not to be only a lawful citizen of a king or country but, before he begins to be that, be a lawful citizen of God Who made him.

 

 

Let us regard ourselves as temporals of the mighty life force, sympathizing with man and realizing that each man, whoever he may be, has something to give to his fellow men.

 

 

It is in the subconscious that all the potentialities are stored. 

 

 

I have not much understanding of time, but since I have been coming to you again and again, I have been measuring my moments in eternity in your own time so that I should not be far away from you.  Truly, my dear friends, it is a great miracle that I have, after all these years, been privileged to speak of those things that I know to be true — a great miracle, one that I am not unaware of, and I do thank you at this, almost the end, or the material end, of our little communion for permitting me to come to you and speak with you.  Tell mankind at the end of my speech with you, that he who thinks that he is deriving help from that spiritual world and giving none is sadly making a mistake.

 

There have been three blog articles about Garrett's four-year research collaboration with psychotherapist/author Ira Progoff.  (1, 2, 3)  The resulting case study book The Image of an Oracle: A Report on Research Into the Mediumship of Eileen J. Garrett (1964) includes discourse transcripts involving 'control figures' 'Tahoteh' and 'Ramah.'  The concept of a shared subconscious and Superconscious Mind among all of humanity—an aspect of spiritual ‘Oneness’—is not fully articulated by Eileen Garrett or Ira Progoff; however, some of their written reflections suggest intimations of such an insight.

 

Another 2016 blog post compares an incident in Garrett's life with three other accounts of transcendental requests.  The scientist who first informed her that she was a potential trance medium was identified as Mr. Huhnli.  A paranormal case study involving Garrett's trance mediumship is The Airmen Who Would Not Die (1979) by John G. Fuller.  This book is the subject of the article "'Trance Mediumship' Session Accounts Pertaining to the Continuance of Individual Personality Beyond Earth Life".