- 4 - could not be performed officially and because the sciences would not progress without it. A lot of experiments that would still abhor us these days, are being undertaken somewhere or have already been undertaken. Many an experiment is started without the public’s finding out - at least not until some convincing results have been achieved. 1. 2 CROSS CORRESPONDENCE - evidence of immortality At the beginning of the last century, five men made the decision to tell the world about their life in the hereafter after their demise. The first of their messages was received in 1906 by a lady from within English society. She suddenly discovered that she could write automatically. In a state of semi-awake relaxation, her hand guided a pencil as if by its own accord. Only after reading the text later, did she become aware of what she had written. The sender of the message from the hereafter was a man who called himself Frederic Myers. • The reports that followed - altogether 3000 transcripts over more than 30 years - were not only given to this one medium, but also to four other mediums in England and a well-known medium in the USA. The authors, besides Frederic Myers, were Edmund Gurney, Henry Sidgwick, A. W. Verral and Henry Butcher. If one can give the spiritistic literature of the 19th century credibility, one finds that this was neither something new nor something special. It happened over again that “controlling spirits” from the hereafter announced themselves and transmitted messages via mediums. But a collective company excursion from the realm of the dead had never happened before, undertaken by men that had been highly respected personalities during their lifetime. All of them had been members of the English Society for Psychic Research. • The Society for Psychic Research was founded in 1882 under the chairmanship of the Cambridge humanist Professor Henry Sedgwick. Its aim was the scientific research of paranormal phenomena. The reputability of this still existing association cannot be doubted in any way even these days. The list of its presidents contains the names of three Nobel Price laureates, eleven members of the Royal Society, one Prime Ministers of Great Britain and 18 professors, with 5 physicists amongst them. The presidents of the society included for instance: Sir Oliver Lodge, William Crookes, Arthur and Gerald Balfour, Gilbert Murray, William James, Charles Richet, Hans Driesch, Henri Bergson, Professor Mundle. Arthur Koestler is a member of the council. The task of the society initially consisted of inexorably separating the wheat from the chaff and to expose all fraudulent manoeuvres. The specialists they dispatched became the bane of all mediums. Many a séance these psycho-detectives participated in, ended the carrier of many a hopeful sensitive. The deceased members of the society - Myers, Gurney, Sidgwick, Verral and Butcher - had been able to practically study the problems of collecting evidence for years. They knew how difficult it was to differentiate whether a message simply stemmed from the telepathic ability of a medium or whether it could indeed come from the hereafter. They themselves had been looking with scientific diligence for methods that could withstand any criticism. The idea of a joint message from these five men from the realm of death might initially have appeared monstruous. But if such a realm really existed, such a message wasn’t just possible, it was actually to be expected from these men. If there was anybody at all, they would have been competent enough to furnish irrefutable evidence of the continued existence of the spirit. These messages were indeed formulated in a way that any deception seemed difficult to imagine.
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