The Veil: Its Uses and Abuses

Improvement Era Vol. XXXII APRIL, 1929 No. 6 The Veil: Its Uses and Abuses By Professor N. L. Nelson II. ITS HUMAN ABUSES IN a previous article, it was maintained that the power to look behind the Veil is innate in every child of God sent to this lower world to finish his divine education; but that it is an occulted or static faculty, and one evidently intended by our Father in heaven to remain dormant during earth life, save as he himself quickens it, in prophet or seer, to put over the mortal horizon some message for the good of mankind. At the same time, so it was also pointed out, he does not leave us without guide in the darkness of mortality; some light, some echo, some infinite refrain, of the life that was and the life that is to be, gets across or through the Veil to each of us. Respecting the life that was, situations constantly arise which are apparently new, yet strangely familiar; faces, voices, ideas, seem to stir up, as it were, memories of that previous life. As Zion's poet has said: "Yet oft-times a secret something Whispered, 'You're a stranger here,' And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere." The same sort of submerged reminiscence led the poet Words- worth to exclaim: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us — our life's star — Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home." Outside the glimpses we obtain in scripture, the Veil in the East (pre-existence)has had few interpreters, though many have done violence to it.

448 IMPROVEMENT ERA April. 1929 But as to the Veil in the West (after-life existence) into which the life sun of every man and woman is scheduled to set, the world is full of interpreters. Books by the thousands essay to reveal the mysteries that lie beyond. Shakespeare's "bourne from whence no traveler returns" has long been discredited as ancient heresy: the dead now step out of seance cabinets and mingle with the crowd. Thus it comes about that from the crude spirit-rappings on western parlor tables, up through the night circles of psychic science delvers, to the profound searchings of yogi and mahatma in oriental schools of mysticism, the Veil is no longer the modest yet marvelous curtain which a loving Father intended should at once conceal from vulgar curiosity and reveal to loving faith and trust; but is in- stead a tattered and violated screen, through which are disclosed — alas, what sounds of bedlam in the spirit world! what sights to terri- fy and disgust! what babblings of imbecility to make the listener long for eternal oblivion! "I have been present at a few seances," said Dr. G. Stanley Hall, "and if what I heard there be fair samples of the human intelligence that survives the grave, then I pray for annihila- tion. The purpose of this second paper is to justify further the divine uses of the Veil, as set forth in a previous article, by showing in contrast some of the evils resulting from abuses. These latter are to be found variously named; as in demoniac possession, in the controlled exercise of the divine gift of tongues, in spurious revelations, in the seeing of ghosts and apparitions, in the hearing of spirit-voices, (clairaudience) , in looking through the Veil into the spirit-world (clairvoyance), in the evil tendency of ouija-board communications, in table-rapping circles, in spirit-seances, in spirit- writing, and in other similar devices; wherein, not improbably, this world and the next may overlap to the detriment, and often the positive danger, of credulous and unwary sojourners in the here and now. In the previous article it was suggested that the pendulum of human interest, which for three generations has swung in the direc- tion of purely natural phenomena, is now on the turn. It does not follow, however, that it will swing toward the spirituality of true re- ligion; the signs rather indicate that it will attempt to explore the hidden world to its last mystic labyrinth, through the violations of the Veil as above indicated. Appreciating this probability, Elder O. F. Whitney has set forth in an admirable series of articles, what the Lord has revealed for our guidance respecting the after-life world. The purpose of this article is to impress the same general lesson from another point of view. "To be forewarned, is to be forearmed."

April. 1929 THE VEIL: ITS USES AND ABUSES 449 And since the dangers attending these bypaths to the Beyond can be appreciated only by knowing some further details about them, I shall be pardoned if I draw upon facts accumulated by the Society for Psychic Research, as well as from the findings of other serious investigators, in further elucidation of the teachings of revelation. First as to the fact of Death. It is not death at all, in the sense of cessation for a time of our mental faculties; on the contrary, it is perhaps a swift rebound into life — into a wider, deeper, truer life than was possible on earth, especially in a worn-out, decrepit body. Full-grown, alert, clear-minded, emotional, free from bodily suffering, the released spirit may not improbably move about for a time in the very room where its late body lies, and mingle with the sorrowing occupants, quite as if it were one among them. For the fact of death dawns but slowly on one who has passed on, and comes, when it does come, partly no doubt from looking at its late but now useless tenement — perhaps even from being a listener at the funeral and a spectator at the grave, — but mainly because it has itself become impalpable to its late earth companions. Strive as it may to put over words of cheer and comfort, or tender embraces, it perceives that no impression whatever is made on its loved ones. It is behind the Veil! Terror might now easily overtake it — the terror of loneliness in an infinite universe1 — save from the fact that the other side of the Veil is more populous than this, and that consequently the new- comer is met by relatives and friends — perhaps by its guardian angel — who give to it its new orientation. Secondly, as to the continuance of the laws of growth and development. Evidently the spirit does not lose any power essential to progress, by reason of death. It is still free to obey or disobey, to live in harmony with, or in violation of, the commandments of God. If, therefore, a spirit on this side may waste time peeping through the Veil, a spirit on the other side may equally waste time looking in this direction. Moreover, that communication has actu- ally been established by means of spirit-mediums need not, it seems to me, admit of serious doubt. That such communication often takes place irrespective of mediums seems equally tenable. Indeed, if devils, the lowest or least advanced forms of intelligence, exercise this kind of agency among men, as witnessed by numerous instances in scripture, why should we take the attitude that God denies a similar agency to disembodied spirits? Such terror does in fact overtake the spirit which awakes in the new world without faith; the spirit whose inner nature is atrophied or paralyzed, as it were, by the stagnation due to indifference or infidelity during earth life. Such a spirit awakes in a world of darkness; whence may follow "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth." But the spirit to whom the veil was a guide in life awakes in a world of greater light. For in that world, "they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun, for the Lord God shall give them light." (Rev. 22:5.)

450 IMPROVEMENT ERA April. \9i9 In this connection, it may be pointed out that spirits do not continue the form, bearing, and dress of earth-life, but merge into the ranks and fashions of their new habitat. Infants do not continue in infant form, but stretch out again, as it were, to their pre-existent fulness of stature, albeit of a fainter texture and tenuity than those who are more mature when they pass; the old and infirm, who on this side totter as it were to the grave, rebound there into the youth and beauty of vigorous manhood and womanhood. How, then, when it come our time to pass on, and the departed shall meet us on the other side — how shall we recognize them as the loved ones we laid away? On the earth-plane, our rigid garment of clay makes it fairly difficult for us to change our appearance very greatly; but in the after-world, a spirit may, so it would seem, assume at will any stage of its previous earth life, with the very appearance of clothes worn at the time, including the peculiarities of personal bearing and mental traits. How this power to create by act of will any shape that fills the imagination makes for deception in seance communication and materialization will be discussed later in this paper. Thirdly, as to the persistence of law and order. That the hereafter-world is an organized world, and much more perfect indeed than this one, seems to me a just inference from three considerations: first, the law of eternal progress, which acts upon all intelligences, would inevitably result in organization, and could in fact be pro- moted only by organization; secondly, the fact that the church of the First-born — the church triumphant — has been operating behind the Veil for thousands of years, could result in nothing less than a perfection in social order and classification of which we can scarcely conceive; and thirdly, an organized spirit-world is surely implied in the "third heaven" of paradise to which Paul refers*; for if there be a third heaven, corresponding to the Celestial glory, then there must be also a second and a first, corresponding respect- ively to a Terrestrial and Telestial glory, and also a Hades, which might correspond to a no-glory or not-organized state. It would hardly admit of doubt, then, that the released spirit moves onward — classifies itself upward or downward by virtue of its own inner affinity. Paradise is evidently that state and place to any forward-looking soul, where it finds correspondence; the point at which it can effectually catch on — its frontier of eternal progress, as it were. Hades is probably the scriptural name for a similar, but negative, correspondence to the drifting soul; the point at which the good, the beautiful, and the true, do not pursue it to its discomfort and annoyance. 2See II Cor. 12:2.

April, 1929 THE VEIL: ITS USES AND ABUSES 451 This general scheme of the next world, as foreshadowed by scripture, is substantially the arrangement of the hereafter as found by psychic research. Spirits eager to learn and advance, or imbued as we should say with the spirit of eternal progress, soon leave the earth-plane and move outward to that spiritual sphere where they can be most happy; which to us can signify only the zone of new growth, new truth-perception, new achievement, whence alone comes real felicity; for "Man is," says the Lord, "that he may have joy," and no better formulation of the law of eternal progress than this could possibly be made. But what of the derelicts, the drifters, the wrecks, moral and physical, of whom scripture says, "He which is filthy let him be filthy still." These are earthbound spirits — stranded souls by the millions — who, until repentance shall turn them again toward spirit- ual growth, wander over the earth-plane and linger about the places that claimed their earthly love; the miser near his hoard, the wor- shiper of mammon in the whirl-pools of trade gambling, the im- moral man in houses of ill fame, the drunkard in the saloon, and so on; all trying to feel by ghostly propinquity a little of the illicit thrill of sensuality that earth-life once afforded them. Clairvoyants, i. e., spirit mediums who can see on the spiritual plane, declare that haunts of vice and crime are literally packed by these spirit-hulks, and that the impure atmosphere of such places is due even more to their low, unsatisfied desires, than it is to the influence of the mortal habitues. If then we would know in a word the true essence of spiritu- alism, as it is now on tap in ten thousand seance-circles throughout the world, we have it here suggested in the nature of the spirit-corres- pondents on the other side; souls that gave themselves over to mere sensation while on earth, and having formed no "hunger and thirst after righteousness" or things of eternal progress, are consequently obtuse to the spiritual promptings which call their fellow-spirits to higher spheres of achievement. Such souls are in hell — for what better characterization is there of hell than wanting to and can't? Out of hell they are reaching earthward, eager to feel again the low sensations to which they gave their lives. Spirit-seances furnish the opportunity. They are consequently ever on hand to squeeze unto the bodies, and control the mental powers of mediums. Such is the explanation, by psychic research scientists, of the low moral tone and intellectual drive characterizing the utterances of ninety-nine out of every hundred half-way clearing-houses be- tween this world and the next." This explains no less clearly the 'This estimate still admits of one per cent for spirit-visits and spirit-communications actuated by motives of love and service. In this class belong the many instances wherein

452 IMPROVEMENT ERA to*. i929 gradual coarsening and moral degeneracy characteristic of most spirit- mediums themselves. For, next to low sensual desires, mendacity is the quality oftenest detected in these spirit communications. No matter what departed person may be called for — child or grandsire, relative, friend, or foe — some spirit within hailing distance is ready to assume the part; often in such detail of dress, voice, bearing, and circumstantial hap- penings, as to deceive completely the sitter. It would not be an extraordinary stunt at all for a thousand mediums scattered through- out the world to call up and interview the shade, say, of Napoleon at one and the same instant of time! Nor is the intrusion of such influences into our lives the only penalty of tampering with the Veil: evil spirits of the brood of Lucifer are also next to earth-plane, not only distilling their ma- levolent ideals into every negative heart, but actually seeking to experience what their primal sin deprived them of forever; viz, a habitation in the second, or mortal estate. Demoniac possession may be glossed over in psychology and medicine under a harmless name; but the awful reality of it is too well attested, not only in scripture, but in latter-day experience, to doubt its possibility, as another of the terrors of a violated Veil. Sporadic instances of what one may well suspect to be cases of such possession are no doubt known to most serious-minded readers of this magazine; but the history of mankind, since the days when Jesus cast out devils, is not wanting in accounts of wide-spread attacks of similar, if not the same, dire evils; and numerous modern instances are to be found in connection with the frenzy often char- acterizing religious camp-meetings. "At no time," writes McMaster4 of the 1799-1800 revival in Kentucky, "was the 'falling exercise' so prevalent as at night. Noth- ing was then wanting that could strike terror into minds weak, timid and harassed. The red glare of campfire reflected from hun- dreds of tents and wagons, the dense blackness of the flickering shadows, the darkness of the surrounding forest, made still more terrible by the screams and groans of the spiritually wounded, who had fled to it for comfort; the entreaty of the preachers; the sobs and shrieks of the downcast * * * were too much for those departed loved ones return to the earth-plane to extend comfort or warning; also the visits of ancestors whose eternal progress is halted until work in the temple is done for them. In this same group must, it seems to me, be placed the motives of the beautiful spirit who for three years collaborated with Sir William Crookes in psychic experiments designed to rekindle faith in life beyond the grave: so also of the enlightening contributions of such disinterested in- vestigators as Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Oliver Lodge. But while on the whole we may believe that their findings in the spirit world have helped to overcome the blight of skepticism, we must still deplore their methods of getting these findings across the Veil. 4History of the People of the United States, II, p. 5 88.

April. 1929 THE VEIL: ITS USES AND ABUSES 453 over whose minds and bodies lively imagination held sway. The heart swelled, the nerves gave way, the hands and feet grew cold, and motionless and speechless they fell headlong to the ground. * * ''Some lay quiet, unable to move or speak; some talked but could not move. Some beat the floor with their heels. Some, shriek- ing in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a fish out of water. Many rushed wildly over the stumps and benches and plunged, shouting 'Lost! lost!' into the forest. "As the meetings grew more and more frequent, this nervous excitement assumed new and more terrible forms. One was known as 'jerks;' another as the barking exercise; a third as the Holy Laugh. The 'jerks' began in the head and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out, and the hair made to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to bounce about like a ball. At camp meetings in the far south, saplings were cut off breast-high and left 'for the people to jerk by.' One who visited such a camp-ground declares that about the roots of from fifty to one hundred saplings, the earth was kicked up 'as by a horse stamping flies'. * * * "From the nerves and muscles the disorder passed to the mind. Men dreamed dreams, and saw visions; nay. fancied themselves dogs, went on all fours, and barked until they grew hoarse. Tt was no uncommon sight to behold numbers of them gathered about a tree barking, yelping, 'treeing the devil'." Coming next to some of the specific ways in which human curiosity seeks to tamper with the Veil, we may consider briefly the occasional itching among Latter-day Saints for new revelation. Not a year passes that some would-be prophet does not turn up among us with a divine commission, superseding, or profoundly modifying, some thing or other in the Church. Most of them base their claims on the "coming of One mighty and strong," as predicted in the Doctrine and Covenants, which great prophet they declare themselves to be. Three of these unfortunates have been known personally to ' ! BProfessor Ross (Social Psychology, pp. 50-54), after quoting the above passage and much more to the same effect, yields to Professor Coe's explanation of it, as beginning with "sporadic cases of hallucination, auto-automotism and self-hypnotism," induced by the usual methods of revivalism, and then spreading to the multitude by the law of emotional imitation. This explanation seems shallow — a mere glossing over of profound mysteries by giving them new names. It can really satisfy only those who believe in a closed world, the beginning and end of which are birth and death. To one who sees life on each side of life as an eternal stream, with "fallen angels" eager to break through from pre-existence, and on the other hand human derelicts reaching backward out of hell to mingle again, if possible, in human affairs, such phenomena have a deeper significance than any findings in a laboratory pre-committed, by rigid exclusion, to "natural" explanation of every possible phase of existence.

454 IMPROVEMENT ERA Aprtt. 1929 the writer: men of more than average intelligence, and of clean moral habits. One had visions in which impersonations of the Father and Son appeared to him repeatedly, and called upon him to de- nounce the president of the Church as a fallen prophet. Another, as he was plowing, heard the voice of an "angel" who was walking by his side; a voice that followed him for years, led him into many a cul-de-sac, landed him in the insane asylum for a brief season, and gave him eventually enough revelations to fill a volume. A third was betrayed through his excessive spirituality, which caused him to withdraw from things earthly in the direction of spiritual self-sacrifice. Incredible as it may seem — and showing how men fall by insensible degrees — his advisers behind the Veil finally led him and his followers, after some years of admirable self- abnegation, into the supreme test-sacrifice of exchanging wives and still remaining continent — unless the Lord revealed otherwise to each pair individually! Here we have pitiable results of a violated Veil; of good men betrayed by false spirits which assumed to be heavenly guides. In- deed, whoever seeks spiritual guidance by open vision or articulated message, instead of trusting the light which proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space, and which ever shines translucent from the other side to those who have faith and patience, may indeed succeed in brushing the Veil aside, — since the Veil is a something within each person's consciousness — but how can he know who his spirit correspondent may be? Attempting thus to live by sight rather than by faith, involves a danger from which one should rather pray to be divinely protected. For the mile-posts in our spiritual journey we have truth — that is to say, the articulated messages of scripture — to guide us; for the uncharted spaces between, truthness is, it seems to me, a better guide than truth; for out of the feeling of "rightness" which fills our consciousness, must then issue, by definite act of will, our self- chosen conduct; whereas, if some other being told us at each step what to do, our blind response would add but little to our growth and development. Man's part in this scheme of salvation is to be- come like a little child, in other words, to trust; always we walk best when we walk by faith rather than by sight. Brushing the Veil aside is an attempt to reverse this divine law. Of all the means for delving into the occult, the most harmless seems, at first glance, to be the ouija-board, a mechanical device on wheels and fitted with a pencil to record messages. And messages it certainly delivers: from the subconscious mind of the person whose hand rests upon it, say the psychologists; from beings in the spirit

April. 1929 THE VEIL: ITS USES AND ABUSES 455 world, say other interpreters of the facts. Whatever be the merits of the controversy, this so-called psychological toy has, within the last few years, since the craze for it has been on, materially helped to fill insane asylums, more than one-third of whose occupants are there by reason of a violated Veil in one form or other. Here is one case vouched for by a noted authority in psychic affairs. An aged couple, devout Methodists, lost their only child. Month after month they remained inconsolable, till one day an acquaintance suggested that their son was eager to communicate with them through the ouija-board. At first their instincts and religious attitude warned them against it, but their sense of bereavement finally prevailed. It did not take long to convince them that James was really directing the pencil from the other side. So they purchased an ouija- board and would sit for hours communing with their dear, departed boy. Presently it dawned upon them that no sooner did they ask a question than they knew what his answer would be without wait- ing for the pencil. The Veil was growing thinner. Next they heard their son's voice almost as in life. Now came the tragedy. Their son's spirit — for we need not doubt it was he — could not always remain with them; and when he left, the gap in the Veil remained. Night and day they heard voices — the coarse, bestial, ribald voices and laughter of the human derelicts that are stranded on the earth-plane. Their souls were literally trampled upon like a public street, so that sleep and even rest fled from their home. Finally they called in a nerve specialist, to whom they told their story. The next move in their pitiable downfall was their landing in an insane asylum, which proved, how- ever, no asylum to them. Nothing but death would enable them to escape the hell they had brought into their lives. Latter-day Saints are perhaps least of all given to attendance at spirit seances; it is well, nevertheless, that the true inwardness of this aspect of the violated Veil be understood. Consider, then, what really befalls a man when, either from this side of the Veil or the other, he is hypnotized. A great thinker and writer of an oriental psychic school has well called this act the great psychological crime; and crime it must be, since it violates what the Author of man's being has made free — his divine agency. Think of a man's individuality or will being violently subdued; that part in him which measures his likeness to God, his ego or "I am," which the law of eternal progress has slowly been building up toward the ultimate freedom of God himself. Think of this divine power in him being so overcome that all his faculties, mental or physical, are subject to another's will!

456 IMPROVEMENT ERA April. 1929 As above suggested, when the violation takes place on this side, it is called hypnosis; when from the other side, it is known as me- diumship. In hypnosis the control exists on the mortal-plane; in mediumship, on the spirit-plane. In both cases the blight on man's personality is the same: his spirit becomes merely a public road or gateway for the trampling of alien feet. Because spirit-mediumship is thus seen to be a prostitution of man's ego, or the central possibility of Godhood in him, our Father in heaven never chooses this channel to get a message over to man- kind. Suspicion may therefore well attach to the method, even if we suppose the beings behind the Veil are honest, and of a high order of intelligence, which from facts already set forth is very rarely the case. Besides, the difficulties of so manipulating a medium's powers as to get a message across without flaws, are enormous — every spirit- istic authority emphasizes that fact. Finally, suppose spirits of a high order, like T. De Witt Talmage and Henry Ward Beecher, should succeed in transmitting their present ideas concerning the great objects of faith, such as God, salvation, eternal progress, and so on; why should we defer to them as being infallible? Are they not still among those who are ever learning, but never quite com- ing to a knowledge of the truth? One ray of knowledge from our Father in heaven would be more faith-illuminating than all the scintillations of earth — and spirit — realms put together. Latter-day Saints have therefore everything to lose and nothing to gain by giving attention to spirit-seances or promoting their teachings in any way. Nay, let us rather dedicate our homes, and pray for special protection against all influences that come to man through a violated Veil! We thus reach the same conclusion from studying the abuses of the Veil, that we reached through studying its divine uses. Earth- plane is peculiarly the sphere for acquiring earth-experiences. The lowliest duties in the here and now yield none the less of divine fruitage because of their lowliness; but in order that our experiences shall develop us heavenward; in order that earth-life shall not be out of unity with life which went before and which comes after, we need divine illumination; not of the flaring kind which appeals chiefly to sight and disturbs all our perspectives, but rather of the quiet, translucent kind which, in order to see, calls for faith and hope, and which, when seen, yields peace, joy and love. Our Father's way is evidently, therefore, the best way. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. — Emerson.