God Arises
Argument for the Life Hereafter
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consists of the communications given by the
persons called automatists. There are men or
women, whose organs of expression – their
hand, holding a pencil, or their vocal organs –
function at times automatically; that is, write
or speak words that are not the expression of
thoughts present to their consciousness at that
time or of knowledge they possess, but appear
to be as independent of the thoughts of, and
of the stock of knowledge possessed by
another person who happens to read them.
The automatist is usually in a trance at such
times, but there are many cases where he is
not, and where, for example, he will be
engaged in conversation, with someone
present, and yet his hand will at the same
time be writing, on some totally different
subject, a lengthy communication of whose
content he knows nothing until he reads it
afterwards. The communications so obtained
generally purport to come —either directly or
through some invisible intermediary referred
to as the automatist’s “control”—from a
person who has died and whose spirit has
survived death. Such communications, in
