From the archives: Things to do on Jersey when you're dead

This post is from 2008. If I were writing it now, I might give more attention to the possibility of low-level spirits communicating through the planchette, rather than focusing on "ordinary" psi. 

The title, by the way, is a pun on a movie called Things to Do in Jersey when You're Dead. Or at least I thought it was. I was sure I'd seen an ad for a movie with that title. But when I looked for it just now, I could find no reference to it online. I have no idea why I thought there was such a movie. Anyway, the title seems a lot less clever now. 

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For two years during the early part of his long exile from France, Victor Hugo engaged in regular séances using a planchette – a forerunner of the Ouija board, which worked by tapping out words one letter at a time. Two small tables were employed, a three-legged table perched atop a four-legged one. The tilting of the tables produced the taps. Hugo and his family and friends, exiled to the Isle of Jersey (and later the Isle of Guernsey) would gather in the evenings and coax messages from the Beyond. Hundreds of messages were received, and the material appears to have had a profound effect on Hugo's thinking and on the writing of Les Miserables, in which he was presently engaged.

This intriguing corner of the great novelist's life is exceptionally well documented in Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World, by John Chambers. Chambers, the first person to translate the séance transcripts into English (in an earlier edition of this book), does a fine job of evoking the atmosphere of the exiles' home away from home, their bitter homesickness and burgeoning fascination with the occult. His book is unusually well written for a study of this kind, laced with keen character sketches and absorbing sidelights on William Blake, James Merrill, and Kabbalah. He presents the facts without undue speculation and lets his readers draw their own conclusions.

The first question to ask is, naturally: Were these phenomena really paranormal? Nearly always, Victor's elder son Charles – who seemed to have the most natural mediumistic ability – would be one of the two persons operating the planchette. Charles' constant participation has led some critics to suggest that he unconsciously fabricated the messages to please his domineering father. But some of the messages were tapped out in languages of which Charles was ignorant – Hungarian and English, for instance. And in some cases (e.g. the January 22, 1854 séance, described on p. 113 of Chambers' book), Charles did not operate the planchette.

Other apparently paranormal events that took place in conjunction with the séances cast additional doubt on the skeptical view. When dogs throughout the area began barking in the night, the planchette told them sternly to shut their mouths – and they did. Strange singing was heard in different parts of the house when Hugo's son was ill. A communicator calling itself the Lady in White arranged for a rendezvous at three AM; no one was bold enough to keep the date, but at three AM the Hugos' doorbell inexplicably rang.

Some of the spirits' statements are intriguing and possibly prescient. Distance, we are told, is illusory, and the entire universe can be found in – and reconstructed from – its smallest part. These ideas remind John Chambers of Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe, which explores the cosmology of David Bohm.

But for the most part, the communications are rather banal. Nothing of evidential value was produced, and the sitters don’t appear to have pressed the spirits for proof of identity. When the spirits did make factual claims about their earthly lives, these claims were often wrong. The great Carthaginian general Hannibal, purportedly speaking through the planchette, described the city of Carthage as a vast expanse of six thousand temples on streets three hundred feet wide. This grandiose portrayal does not tally with any historical or archaeological findings. (On the other hand, when "Shakespeare" insisted that he had not died on April 23, 1616, we might wonder if it was the shade of Edward De Vere that the sitters were hearing from ... But the channeled Shakespearean drama produced by the sitters, though highly interesting and creative, does not bear any resemblance to the earthly Bard's work.)

Then there is the case of the Lion of Androcles. At times the sitters heard from the spirit of this beast, famous in folklore for having spared Androcles in the arena. It is, of course, quite unlikely that this folktale was based on fact, and even more unlikely that the noted lion was communicating with the Jersey exiles from beyond the grave. But what makes the Lion especially relevant is an incident that occurred on April 25, 1854. The Lion-persona, tapping out a lengthy poem, suddenly stopped after writing the lines

They raise against the saints their sacrilegious paw
And bury their blood-stained claws in the liv–.

A pause followed after which the Lion rewrote the last two lines, which apparently dissatisfied him. But in the interim, Victor Hugo wrote his own ending to the stanza, and showed his work only to one person (who, like Hugo, was not operating the planchette). Hugo's lines read:

They ripped open the saints dying in the mire
And their hideous claws enlarged the wound
In the side of Jesus Christ.

We are told that "almost immediately" after Hugo had written these words, the tapping recommenced, and the planchette spelled out

Their paws ripped open the martyrs here and there in the mire
And Jesus Christ slipped their claws into his wounds,
For a gift of nails to the gibbet.

The close similarity of the two verses suggests that the planchette operators – or the planchette itself – picked up the imagery from Hugo's own mind. But since the planchette operators had not seen Hugo's lines, the message must have been communicated via telepathy or via some even more mysterious influence.

In the final analysis, if we view the sessions as spirit communications, they are unconvincing and unsatisfying. But if we view them as Consciousness interacting with itself – Consciousness creating a kind of feedback loop between the sitters on the one hand and the planchette on the other – then things get more interesting. To read excerpts from the transcripts is like reading an inner dialogue carried out at the unconscious level between Hugo and himself (with occasional contributions from other members of the party). The sessions perhaps can be best understood as the externalization of the unconscious, a breakdown of the seemingly solid barrier between objective and subjective experience. The stream of consciousness running through the deeper channels of Hugo's mind seems to have been objectified, brought out into the open. In a deep sense, Hugo was talking to himself.

No wonder, then, that the tables mostly told him what he wanted to hear. The tables reported that Hugo's archenemy Napoleon III would die in two years – when actually the dictator lived another two decades. The discarnate Shakespeare opined that French was superior to English. Other spirits verified Hugo's theory of a cycle of reincarnation that proceeds through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and his idea of the universe as a vast darkness, with only the shining stars retaining God's pure light.

The strengths and weaknesses of the communicators matched Hugo's own talents. The spirits were good at improvising poetry and long, eloquent monologues; so was Hugo. The spirits were useless at composing music, even when Mozart himself ostensibly spoke through the planchette. Hugo had no musical training.

The appearance of so many famous names among the spirits – Aeschylus, Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, even Jesus – also makes sense in terms of Hugo's psychology. No one ever accused Victor Hugo of being humble. His self-regard bordered on megalomania. Who would seek him out, if not the spirits of world-historical heroes like himself? Nothing less would do.

And what of the more abstract or surreal entities, such as Civilization, Death, and Idea, or Balaam's Ass and the Lion of Androcles? In the highly intellectual atmosphere of Hugo's salon, large abstract concepts and mythological or folkloric imagery must have been part of everyday conversation. It was how these people talked, part of their mental furniture. And Hugo had a particular fascination – part sentimental, part mystical – with the idea that animals are ensouled, and was especially fond of the Lion of Androcles tale.

How about the most consistent, overarching motif to appear in the communications – that the earth is a prison, a penal colony for wayward souls? It matches up quite closely with the gloomy outlook of the dispirited, homesick exiles, persecuted by a dictator, stranded among fellow outcasts on a tiny outcrop of rock. All the more reason to believe that the tilting tables were reflecting the sitters' own ideas and feelings back at them. Perhaps the isolation of their exile, and the intense emotions it stirred up, actually made it easier for the sitters to access the unconscious mind, or universal consciousness itself.

Whatever the explanation, Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World is a superb contribution to literary history and to the study of the paranormal. I recommend it highly.

Comments

[Art]

||"Distance, we are told, is illusory, and the entire universe can be found in – and reconstructed from – its smallest part. These ideas remind John Chambers of Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe, which explores the cosmology of David Bohm." - Michael Prescott||
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One more bit of consilience for the Holographic Universe theory... thank you very much! And also thank you again for the word "consilience" and what it means. It is a great word and has strengthened my resolve and believe in life after death and that our Universe is a hologram and heaven is the original holographic film from which our present universe originates. Which of course means that whatever is here must also be there.

"In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significantly so on its own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience

[Kris]

Maybe you were thinking about the movie Things to do in Denver when your Dead.

[Michael Prescott]

That must be it, Kris. Thanks! I’m not totally crazy, at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Do_in_Denver_When_You're_Dead

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

I can’t comment in a civilized manner so I will just note that the dictation by Patience Worth to Pearl Curran is something one might want to consider if interested in planchette writing. I have mentioned it ad nauseum on this blog. - AOD

[Michael Prescott]

I’m not so much interested in planchette writing as in the overlap between personal situation of Hugo and his friends (they were miserable in exile) and the content of the messages (Earth is a miserable place where the most unfortunate spirits are forced to incarnate). The psychology of it is intriguing, with Earth becoming almost a cosmic Isle of Jersey in the minds of the stranded Frenchmen.

[Kris]

Maybe misery likes to keep company. Miserable spirits with miserable people.

[Art]

||"Maybe misery likes to keep company." - Kris||

Misery is just another way to experience separation in this life. Separation teaches us what it means and how it feels to be separate which is something that can't be learned in heaven due to those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness so many NDE'ers describe from the other side. It's just another one of life's lessons. This Earth life is a school and the more emotion we feel the more we remember what we learned while we we're here. https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20050131/emotions-make-memory-last

[Eric Newhill]

Spirits can make thing move. We are spirits so we can make things move. Sometimes it's them and sometimes it's us. Sometimes it's a group contribution. These are fine distinctions.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

I happened to run across a lecture by Nassim Haramein which I found very thought provoking. He is described as an “amateur physicist’ by some people who categorize him among the “fringe” groups of people, people perhaps like those who participate in this blog. Wikipedia editors will accept little or nothing about him but Rational Wiki jumps at the chance to ridicule and deride him and there are several if not many very derisive comments and reviews about him and his unified theory of the universe on various web sites.

Apparently those who find his theories interesting are considered to be idiots and imbeciles to entertain such nonsense such as “everything is connected’ and space has more influence on reality than particles. His lecture appears to be scientifically based in physics, mathematics and geometry so perhaps there may be some here who would be interested in spending the time (1.5 hours) to at least just listen to what he has to say. He is a very entertaining presenter if nothing else, but has spent more than 30 years developing his theories. I would be interested in any comments one might have about his ideas. - AOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFbCYOfxOnI

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Here is a thought to ponder taken from a discussion of the theories of Nassim Haramein. If you haven't considered the thoughts of Nassim Haramein I encourage you to do so. Although they require considerable time to digest, I think that he may have formulated an explanation of reality that best fits what some of us on this blog (Art's holographic Universe for example of which I am now convinced by Haramein's proof) have tried to express. He takes a scientific approach rather than a philosophical one and as difficult as it may be to follow at times, I find it easier to comprehend than the ramblings of some ivory-tower philosophers previously entertained on this blog. - AOD

"[I]n the “real world”, there is no color blue. The color blue is a symbol generated in the simulacrum of the external world by the conscious entity, a symbol that is only a representation of the real property of that electromagnetic radiation which is a wavelength at ~490 to 450 nm. The wavelength is what objectively exist in the real world, but the universe has no quality of “blue” except for the experience of it in the virtual world of the experiencer." – Nassim Haramein

[Kathleen]

I did myself use a Ouija board at one time. It did move of its own accord. The friend I used it with is one of the most trustworthy, honest people I've ever known, and I can attest that neither of us were moving it.

However, it did also tell what we wanted to hear. None of it ever came true, and it was pretty useless. But it did move of its own accord. I then used it with a person who I've since come to know as very dishonest, and nothing at all happened in those sessions, it just wouldn't move.

Also, it's weird how some people have a dread of the thing - that it attacks "bad spirits," etc. So silly.

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks, AOD. I'll try to make time to listen to the 1.5 hour presentation you recommended.

I think it's definitely true that the color blue exists only as a "quale" - a subjective perception. (Singular of "qualia.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

One might even argue that such properties as solidity are subjective, given that physical objects consist mostly of empty space, and their "illusion" of solidity comes from the electromagnetic charge of the particles. (Art has often made this point.)

I'm not sure, however, if the holographic-universe theory really holds up. These days, I'm more inclined to think that "noumenal" reality has *more* dimensions, rather than fewer dimensions, vis-à-vis our physical reality. (The holographic model would seem to require an underlying reality of fewer dimensions.)

In any case, I'm glad that you brought this thinker to our attention.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/noumenon

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Michael,
Harramein posits that it is space that ties everything together and he reminds us that those things which are thought to be solid are mostly space---99.9999% of what appears solid--- space which he thinks is filled with vibrational energy upon which past, present and future events in time are recorded, (something like the Akashic Records). I too had a difficult time with the “Holographic Universe” but although Harramein doesn’t devote a lot of time to discussing the holographic universe in that lecture, he does include it as a component of his theories although he does not describe as a film and that makes me what to think seriously about it. (Art will like his lecture I think.)

I think Harramein is an unusual guy with a developmental history, perhaps somewhat typical of highly intelligent innovative thinkers. Like Einstein, he was not attentive in school, apparently focused on his own way of thinking about things. He may appear to be somewhat querky to some and has become somewhat of a guru to “New Agers” who seem to have captured him for their own promotional purposes. One just has to ignore all of that and pay attention to what he is proposing as a unified theory of everything. I think he just might have something worthwhile to consider in the quest for an explanation of reality. - AOD.

[Art]

||"I'm not sure, however, if the holographic-universe theory really holds up." - Michael Prescott||
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In Christianity one is saved if one believes. Belief and salvation are somehow linked? When I really think about it it seems a very strange idea?

I suspicion though that we'll all be surprised when we get to the other side. That there is an "other side" I have a high degree of confidence. As to what exactly that other side is though it becomes a whole lot fuzzier. I think I know but I realize I could be very wrong. And I realize I won't know for sure until I get there.

All I know is I really miss my mom and I hope I get to see her again. But if I knew absolutely knew 100% for certain that one day we'd be reunited I think maybe I wouldn't mourn her loss quite as much. I have read several articles that say memory and emotion are linked and the things I remember most are ones that have evoked the most emotion. Perhaps life has to be this way in order for my soul to learn the things it came here to learn? Otherwise what is the point?

So it is fun to speculate what the other side may be like but until I get there...I realize that I don't really know. I have my theories but I realize that I could be wrong. It is fun to speculate though!

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Art,
I think my mother is the person who created my physical body. I really don’t know what the relationship is between her spirit or consciousness and my spirit or consciousness. I think it is easy to confuse one’s physical body with one’s spirit and become attached to the physical body rather than the enduring spirit of one who has passed on to another reality. It may be that there is a very different relationship between the spirit of my mother and my spirit which will become known perhaps when we encounter each other in another realm. If reincarnation is a fact and I and my mother have lived many lives some together and some apart then, our relationship may be not only be that of mother and son, but could be any of many other relationships possible between humans.

I tend to think that the experience of entering a non-physical environment is so exotic and overwhelming that those spirits who do so have little or no concern for those that they have left behind. Several or many of the people who report an NDE report just such a feeling, that is, they remember for a short time those they have left behind but know that they will be all right following their plan for their life and the spirit just goes on to other things following some plan for their own development. Actually I would expect this to be the case if I really believe in consciousness as prime, that is, that I and others all have various and sundry relationships with other consciousnesses while in the physical and what is perceived as an intimate relationship while in a physical form may turn out not to be a significant relationship in the realm of the spirit. Perhaps like “two ships that pass in the night” we all engage in many relationships as we travel on the waters of time and space; some may be important in terms or our learning experience and others may not be.

That is not to say that I do not miss my mother and father and the many, many other people (and animals) who were part of my physical experience. There were so many that sometimes I wonder why at least one of them has not contacted me in some way but in a larger sense that is only a wish of my self-important ego, thinking that surely someone would want to contact me.

Not so! They have other things to do. They have left earth behind and a whole new experience has opened to them. - AOD

[Art]

||"I tend to think that the experience of entering a non-physical environment is so exotic and overwhelming that those spirits who do so have little or no concern for those that they have left behind." - AOD||
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Have you ever watched Chris Markey's NDE description on youtube? Chris is a trial lawyer and had an NDE due to a heart attack. It is very entertaining since Chris is a good talker. He is also funny too so it makes his NDE on youtube fun to watch. Anyway he talks about his mother and it is interesting to hear what he has to say. Good stuff!

Enjoy! Chris Markey's NDE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6smxxTasyE&t=382s

[Art]

||"I did myself use a Ouija board at one time." - Kathleen||
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We did the Ouija board one time in high school. It said I was going to marry a girl named Connie... My wife is named Bonnie. One letter off.

[Art]

||"Distance, we are told, is illusory, and the entire universe can be found in – and reconstructed from – its smallest part." - excerpt from Michael's blog||
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Just for the record Emanuel Swedenborg, the 17th Century Swedish mystic, said exactly the same thing, while talking about the interconnectedness of all things.

"As he stated, "[In heaven, no one can pronounce a trinity of persons each of whom separately is God] - the heavenly aura itself, in which their thoughts fly and undulate the way sound does in our air, resists [such pronouncement]" (TCR 173 [2]).[5]

Another aspect of the holographic universe is the infinite interconnectedness of all things. Just as every portion of a hologram contains all of the information of the whole, so would every portion of a holographic universe contain the whole; every subatomic particle would be an extension of every other subatomic particle, and every point in space and time would, at a deeper level, be adjacent to every other point in space and time. Again, throughout his writings Swedenborg frequently seems to refer to the same stupendous interconnectedness of all things. As he wrote, "Nothing unconnected ever occurs, and anything unconnected would instantly perish."

Excerpt from Swedenborg and the Holographic Paradigm,
http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/articles/science-math/mt88.htm

[Matt Rouge]

Interesting post, Michael!

Yes, it suggests the question: What are "real" communications when it comes to ADCs, and what are mere "thoughtforms"?

Also: Can good, evidentiary communications be mixed in with superfluous thoughtforms? Moreover, can good, evidentiary communications be mediated via thoughtforms? (E.g., controls that have not turned out to be real people.)

[Art]

It doesn't have to be "either all true or all lies." It can be some of both. Some of it can be true and some of it can be filler, added on to take up time or beliefs that people believe to be true but could also be interpreted very differently. People who are psychics and Mediums can very honestly catching glimpses of the other side but not enough to take up a full reading so they ramble on adding on or interpreting or misinterpreting the information.

It is up to us to sift through the information we get and decide what is real and what it filler.