Personality and the Paranormal

Sheet 1 is the lecture's cover. Its heading — Personality + the Paranormal — stands above the venue and date in red pencil, Progressive League, Brighton, Feb 1949, the latest-dated set in Stapledon's surviving lecture archive; a bracketed "Introductory" block sets the key-note. The prose that follows keeps to what the notes license: editorial connective tissue is tinted like this (toggle below), and his shorthand is silently expanded.

The key-note: the opening up of a new world-view. But we must be true to certain old-new principles and values which come clear only today — in the clash of science and religion. We are discovering that religion is not a matter of belief or theory, but of feeling, attitude — to the actual; here and now.

This attitude is toward two things. First, something worth while (the margin's word: moral championship) — that is, spirit. Second, the Whole, or superhuman (the margin: agnostic piety). What the past gave us was religious experience, but confused with theory. What the modern age has given us is the scientific spirit, intellectual integrity, modern logic — and a realization of the limitations of thought and language. Therefore: agnosticism, natural piety, cosmical piety.

The aim of this talk: to assess the interim findings of paranormal psychology in relation to other modern experience, especially religion. That is, what difference does the paranormal make? — first, to our practical prospects, here and hereafter; second, to our understanding of self and cosmos; third, to religion, at its best.

Here the plain man looks at psychical research: a wide-mouthed amazement, but with tongue in cheek. I speak, then, tentatively, as no expert in this difficult field.

A summary of the experts' verdict. First, agreement: psi does happen, and is not reducible to the physical. Mind is no epiphenomenon on the physical; the physical is not the ultimate reality; spatial experience is "superficial" — and temporal experience likewise.

Second, disagreement. About the psi powers: only telepathy? clairvoyance? both? telekinesis? precognition, and post-? The margin here already reaches toward what sheet 5 will call pre-kinesis and post-kinesis.

About the self: a substantial ego? a psychon system? About survival: the value of the evidence? the cogito-to-substance argument (against which stands the margin's Hume)? partial and complete survival? pre-existence? About the common ground: personal, impersonal, "supra-personal"? About time: fully real, wholly illusory, superficial, multidimensional? About "reality": in principle fully revealed, open to scientific study — or are there grades of significance, as Tyrrell held? And, throughout, free will.

Distinguish two possible aspects of telepathy. Telepathy proper is awareness of experience in others — thought-reading. The second is "teleboulia" (the margin: far-willing): the influencing of other minds, whether by thought-transference or by swaying other wills — as, perhaps, in helpful prayer.

Notes on the evidence. Accept it, but still with caution. First, the possibility of a systematic error throughout, due to some hidden factor. The analogy is the old ether theory — "a perfect fluid" and the rest — framed while relativity was not yet above the horizon.

Second, the depths of human gullibility: in a complex field, anything is provable, given the obsessive will to prove it — for example, the Bacon–Shakespeare controversy, the British Israelites, the Flat Earth theory. Therefore reserve final judgement, but accept provisionally.

And — beware staking one's life on it: that is, founding a faith on the paranormal, using it as a prop for crumbling theories and doctrines which — the margin insists — should be outgrown.

Notes on the particular powers. Telepathy: a direct contagion of experience? or indirect, through the "other sphere"? What appears in consciousness may be a symbolization of an unconscious contagion — compare dreams — tangled with repressions and the rest.

There may be much undetected telepathy — "tilting" conscious thinking; in fashions of thought and feeling (war fever and the like); in artistic creation and inspiration; in reverie; in hypnagogic visions. Against this last the note records his own: my faces and voices.

Telekinesis needs greater caution; anyhow, its scope is very restricted. And yet — what of the ages of miracle-working? the autosuggestive cures? Is it a special case of psychokinesis, as in normal volitional action on the muscles?

Precognition presents a difficulty. If I foresee my dying in a railway accident tomorrow, then — I do not take the train; and then the foreseeing was illusory, not real foreseeing. But if it was real, then my precautions are defeated — in ways unforeseen.

Clairvoyance is awareness of remote objects, unsensed — and not by telepathy, and not by precognitive perception. It is extremely hard to isolate, since those rival explanations are so hard to exclude.

Precognition and postcognition may take telepathic or clairvoyant forms. Again: direct or indirect — through the other sphere, by some participation in the eternal "now"?

Precognition and free will are not antithetical. Grant that choice is free and effective; but grant also the other sphere, supratemporal. Then what I shall choose and do is now available — in the supratemporal.

But note — the free-will controversy is false. I may be, in one sense, determined through and through, physically and mentally, yet in another sense free — within limits (a trolley-bus, for instance): that is, self-determined by my own extant nature, not constrained externally.

Finally, free will is unimportant. The cult of it is due to veiled egoism, self-importance; it violates the best religious feeling. The note sets against it: "let me be God's hand, eye, voice."

Then the question whether "pre-kinesis" and "post-kinesis" are logical possibilities: a past volition might directly affect present events, or a present volition affect past events. The examples are the notes' own. John's present heroic choice might contribute directly to his future strength — or to his past strength. His present longing for a fine day in the future might influence the future weather. His present love for Jane might directly strengthen Jane in the past. God, as the ultimate flower of the cosmical process, might in the end create the initial stage of the cosmos. They are put as logical possibilities, no more.

Communication with the dead is offered as evidence for survival. But first, the definition of survival. Complete, true survival is the continuance of intelligent activity with memory of earthly life. Without intelligent activity — the mere survival of records (compare Broad's psychic factor). Without memory — no personal survival at all, unless a "clean-slate" ego.

Incomplete survival: intelligent activity with some memory — or memory without present intelligent activity.

As to the value of the evidence: some say "proven"; others, "no proof"; others, "not proven" but possible. I suspend judgement — no expert knowledge, but no strong preference. (More comments later.)

Consider, then, "ad hoc survival," or the "ad hoc re-creation" of a person — or, as sheet 6's keyed insertion has it, "ad hoc re-vival" of a full or partial personality. Tyrrell rejects it with scorn; but the second keyed line adds that it would explain the scrappy evidence, and would explain the want of any positive information of the after-life. The hypothesis implies a non-centred theory. The stimulus — a thought or desire from living persons — reaches the other sphere, the common ground; the response, from the common ground, is a re-creation of the person ad hoc, with memory and activity relevant to the stimulus, complete or incomplete.

A caution: our concepts are probably inadequate. "Does the person survive — yes or no?" may be a false question, neither yes nor no; the truth may still be inconceivable.

Rhine reports that psi functions according to the normal laws of the higher functions, and that drug effects on it are similar.

Some general questions. First, are the powers primitive or highly developed? The evidence for "primitive": the tradition of second sight, soothsayers, witches, oracles (Delphi), miracles; bird-flocks in motion; the homing instinct; modern primitive tribes; their being rare in civilized societies (too much individualism?); mediums mostly "primitive"; the importance of dreams and trances.

On the other hand, the evidence for "developed": Rhine's conclusion that the best subjects are intelligent, educated, balanced, not neurotic.

Second, are they universal or exceptional? The evidence suggests great differences of power; but Rhine claims that all have some power.

Third, are they fixed, or capable of improvement? Note the deterioration with use — fatigue? the onset of boredom? No evidence yet for improvement; but there may be a development of technique — compare the ancient knowledge of electricity.

A tentative hypothesis — three phases: primitive — strong, but wild; civilized — weak; and a great future development.

First the ideal limit. Full telepathy: awareness of all minds. Clairvoyance: awareness of all present events. Full telekinesis: control of all present events. Pre- and post-cognition: awareness of all events; pre- and post-kinesis: control of all events. Then "I" am "God"!

More to the point, partial development. Telepathy would need development and prevention alike: the end of privacy, and of secretiveness? We should get used to it. It might increase mutual understanding (Rhine). It would touch love, crime, politics, preparation for war; and the exploration of other worlds.

Clairvoyance: an extension of dowsing? astronomical exploration? Telekinesis (the margin: psychokinesis): a new age of "miracles," but systematic — and conflicts of magicians.

Precognition: forestalling accidents; the study of "future history." Postcognition: the revision of past history; the study of prehistory, of biological evolution, of cosmical origins.

Pre-kinesis and post-kinesis would carry intervention beyond the present. Teleboulia (far-willing): the control of other minds. And even preboulia (fore-willing), postboulia (after-willing) — volition across time as across space.

First, distinguish two forms of the system theory. In the one, the elements are strictly atomic (the margin: Price) — sense-data, for example — related together extrinsically.

In the other, the "elements" are not substances and not atomic: each is what it is in virtue of its function in a "field" — its relation to the external physical world; to the subsystem, the individual; to the supersystem. Thus, in Whitehead's manner, an individual is a "prehension" of the universe from a certain locality and date, and from a certain "position" in the "other sphere."

How does the paranormal work — how does psi work? What is its "mechanism"? Why does it work sometimes and not at others? Put at its most extreme: why am I not God?

The personality of common sense is imprisoned in the body, and in the specious present, but with remote perception and memory: perception limited by the sense-organs, memory to the personal biography, communication by the sense-organs; character due to heredity (physical) and conditioning. Yet a single paranormal occurrence shatters the theory.

Of the types of theory, the first is direct action by the common-sense personality, a substance. Telepathy and teleboulia: mind on mind. Clairvoyance: things on minds. Telekinesis: minds on things. Pre- and post-: the transcendence of time. But how? and why not always? — the theory gives no answer.

The second is indirect action, through a "common ground" — the other sphere, supratemporal and supraspatial, in which individual minds are "rooted." The individual is again a substance, but inhering in the normal world and the other sphere, or in several spheres potentially — with an extension and retraction of "pseudopodia," a "stretching" (Tyrrell): in trance, stretching to the other sphere; in death, complete withdrawal. The questions remain — how? why not always? — and there is no answer.

The third — Carington, Price — makes the person not a substance but a system, a subsystem within a supersystem. Its elements are "experiences," psychons, related psychologically within the system, and with the supersystem in paranormal phenomena (similar laws in both cases). But the questions remain: why sometimes, not always? and why am I not the supersystem?

Whatever theory we take, abandon simple materialism. Mind is not limited absolutely by the physical (but still largely limited); mind is not an epiphenomenon. Whether dialectical materialism may still stand is another matter.

A tentative suggestion on paranormal "linkage." Compare Rhine: interpret the paranormal in terms of normal psychological principles. With Carington, relate it to the unity of the individual mind: how do experiences coalesce?

The "association of ideas" may work through identical elements of content (compare F. H. Bradley): experience AB recalls experience BC through the identity of a common factor, B. B may be mainly cognitive, affective, or conative — a thought, a feeling, a desire, a volition — and may be hidden from consciousness, the identity undiscoverable.

Applied to the paranormal: telepathy, through an identical factor in the two minds (Carington's K-object), through the supersystem — an identical general tone, or a particular element.

Clairvoyance: the individual's view of the remote situation identical in some special respect — the identity imports the object. Telekinesis: likewise, a crucial identity of mental state and remote physical, so that the mental state sways the physical. Pre- and post-: a similar mechanism.

Does this imply the identity of indiscernibles (denied by Bertrand Russell and others)? Perhaps substitute "identity in the other sphere." The difficulty in the theory is plain: often, no discoverable identity.

So to the larger problem: the relation of the paranormal and established knowledge. How do they fit together? What must be abandoned? In particular, their relation to science, morality, religion, philosophy.

Objects "appear"; therefore they appear "to something." But the subject is a featureless abstraction — a mere viewpoint and biography. Objects stimulate the subject to cognize, but from that particular viewpoint and biography.

Error is mental squinting: a bush in a dark lane, mistaken for a cow. I complete the imperfect dark form by squinting past cowishness on to it.

What is a personality, or a person? Not merely a physical, electromagnetic system; nor a biological system of instincts and reflexes. It is something aware of something, and responding to something — the "subject-object."

Consciousness is essentially a relation: subjectivity involves objectivity — and, the note asks, objectivity subjectivity? But awareness is not photographic, passive; it is receptive-creative, and therefore largely erroneous — an inaccurate symbolization.

What is the "subject"? A metaphysical ego, and immortal soul? a living body? a subsystem of experience, absorbing new elements? a focal point within the supersystem, prehending an environment and responding, affecting? Anyhow: experience is from a viewpoint, and from a "biography."

There are ranges of objectivity, qualitatively different, hierarchical: sensed qualities; perceived objects; persons (self and others); scientific objects (electrons and the like), including societies of persons; pure abstractions, universals.

There is an infinite gradation of lucidity between awake and somnolent experiencing — we all know the difference. The awake is aware of more objects, more truly, more coherently, and of higher ranges of objectivity. Contrast the worlds of worm, dog, infant; the average man; the saint, the great artist, the philosopher. Here too, the error of mental squinting.

Values emerge from the impact of objects upon subjects. We are aware of some objects as dynamic, as tending to action: body tensions, personality tensions, social tensions — cosmical tensions?

We espouse dynamic objects, but with prejudice, due to biography: objects stimulate the subject to espouse or reject, from a viewpoint and a biography. Like objects, values are hierarchical; but lowly values may be ingredient in higher — for example, body values in person values.

The growth of personality is growth in cognition, affection, conation — that is, in response to objective "reality," in wisdom and love and creative action, and therefore to higher ranges of objectivity and value.

Perversion is deviation from the true line of growth: obsessive concern for the familiar, facile, trivial — objects and objective values. For example, concern for the body; for self-regard, the psychological "me"; for the beloved; for the social; for particular abstractions. Or — the keyed insertion from sheet 17 — concern for some isolated higher values to the exclusion of others: obsessive pacifism, say. And moral squinting: irrelevant values squinted on to the "here-now."

Of "the unconscious" there may be three. First, the primitive unconscious — innate and acquired. Second, the "upper" unconscious? Third, the universal unconscious?

Hence, the margin declares, I will for "personality-in-community" — each element involves the other.

Sheet 19 is a verso of Stapledon's home notepaper (Simon's Field, Caldy, West Kirby; Hoylake 1134); the sentence above is the only lecture text on it, written in the margin.

The highest reaches of human personality are derived from the most awake experiences — that is, the fullest sensitivity to objectivity — and hence the fullest cognition, affection, conation in relation to total objectivity.

First, personal love: the genuine "espousal" of an other self, the true "I–Thou" relation (Buber). A cognition of my "me" as object, and your "me" as object; a spiritual symbiosis, the experience of "we" (us). Complicated by individualism, and therefore by conflict and hate — but transmuted.

Second, social loyalty: to the "we" of acquaintance — love, friendship, partnership; to the larger "we," unacquainted — a college, a trade union, a Church, a profession; to the total society, the nation; to the total human "we," that is, loyalty to mankind.

Third, creative intellect: the manipulation of concepts, the motive being dispassionate cognition, intellectual integrity — hence the "scientific spirit," the philosophical spirit. These involve loyalty to objective fact (natural piety), and loyalty to logical thinking, with a horror of loose and of "wishful" thought. The issue is comprehensive theory, scientific, philosophical — but with inveterate doubt, the tongue in the cheek, intellectual humility.

Therefore this world is "the Vale of Soul-Making" (Keats) — and therefore a bad otherworldliness stands condemned: compare cash agriculture.

Fourth, creative art: the making of concrete symbols, having sensory unity-in-diversity and significance on all levels — primitive, "civilized," "religious." Distinguish two: purgation, the release of pent-up force by symbolical fulfilment; and creative innovation, midwifery to new experience — on the highest levels.

Here the keyed insertion α from sheet 21 enters — religion and survival: two conflicting religious feelings. The first: without survival, all is meaningless, worthless, and religious experience gives evidence for it (its interest, the margin says, in the subject). The second: survival is irrelevant, and so is immortality (its interest in the object) — what matters is the quality of individual life, here or hereafter. If we survive — well; if not — well!

On this second view we are vessels, instruments, not ends. The desire for survival is at bottom irreligious, even in its most refined form, and must be outgrown — even if survival is true.

And a salutary tension, between the sense of the extreme worthwhileness of personality and of personal relationships, and the sense of persons as ephemeral, not fully real. Out of this tension — the supreme religious experience.

Fifth, religious experience: two aspects, conflicting yet mutually supporting. The first, the apprehension of "spirit" — as Tao, the Way, the ideal form of behaviour: self-fulfilment by self-abnegation, that is, fulfilling what I am really "for" by identifying myself with "God" (an ideal universal self), and so abandoning "self" as finite individuality.

Compare the doctrine of salvation: sin and vision, instrumentality, the espousing of the supreme objects. Spirit is the way of love and wisdom and creativity — awareness of world, self, others; feeling; action, coherent, creative.

Here the keyed insertion ε enters — spirit's cosmical status is unknown, unknowable? Instrumentality — for what? God? Whole? for spirit itself. Ultimately, subjectivity fulfils objectivity, by awareness and espousing and creative action. But this may be sheer myth — symbolically true.

The second aspect, the margin's "the Others": an attitude to the inconceivable reality — the superhuman, superpersonal? the Whole? Its words: "Thy will be done." "Though thou slay me, yet will I love thee." Though thou slay mankind, — though thou slay thy cosmos, — yet will I love thee, — knowing not what thou art, — or whether thou art, — but feeling thee, in me, in others, in the cosmos.

On sheet 22 the phrases "knowing not —," "whether thou art," and "or not" are diagonal insertions worked into the prayer; they are set here in the reading order the margin marks. This is the salute's last dated appearance in the surviving lecture archive (see the headnote and the deep analysis, §3.10).

For science: the field for science is extended, and the scientific temper is still needed — empirical, analytical, sceptical; loyalty to the objective; natural piety; a passion for intellectual integrity. But present scientific orthodoxy is undermined: physical concepts are inadequate to the study of mind, and therefore to metaphysics. There will be need of new methods, concepts.

For psychology, a possible vast complication: behaviour influenced from three spheres — conscious experience, the individual unconscious, the paranormal — and the possibility of the control and development of psi.

For philosophy, two tasks. Critical philosophy: the re-examination of all fundamental ideas in the light of the paranormal. Speculative philosophy: the building of a new world-view — compare the influence of natural science.

For education, a possible use of paranormal influence: the development of psi powers, in all and in experts.

To sum, the significance of the paranormal. The practical significance is already noted. The scientific and philosophical significance: simple materialism untenable, mind no epiphenomenon; and an enlarged understanding of time and space — there is more to them than appears; they are real, but not fully revealed.

And an enlarged understanding of personality: unsuspected links between persons, an unsuspected supra-temporality; the possibility of survival (not thereby proved).

And the religious significance? Even if survival is proved, no new values yet emerge, and the "other side" offers no new vision. Spirit remains the goal: engagement in this world for spirit — to build Jerusalem, here and now.

And, note, a danger: bad otherworldliness, a new sphere for self-concern. Disbelief in survival was salutary, because clarifying to morality and to true religion; belief in survival makes true salvation harder.

Sheet 25 carries only Stapledon's home letterhead (Simon's Field, Caldy, West Kirby, Wirral; Hoylake 1134) and no lecture text — one of several versos of his own notepaper in this set.

Sheet 26 is a section-divider stub: the heading Towards a new world view, with an abandoned "Two" struck through above it — the struck word is not voiced. What "Two" would have divided is not recorded.

Science is not a key to ultimate reality. And that —

The note breaks off here. Sheet 27 also carries Stapledon's home letterhead and the circular Liverpool University Library stamp with "F12/20" (catalogue reference OS/F12/20). Whether the sentence was completed elsewhere, or the summation simply ended near this point, is not known.