But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see, and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does. Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found. Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.
Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I could, if photographs had been presented.
Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead" friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_ in feature and character.
Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all, anything more or less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic vibrations, physical and psychical, with the power of producing on us certain impressions. You and I know our friends as such aggregates, and nothing more.
And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from the earliest reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our dreams; and the material is worked up into each personality through reactions with the environment. Thus it becomes an aggregate of capacities to impress another personality with certain sensations, ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate personality impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion of the vibrations constituting "the body" disappears, there still abides somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in the dream life. Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors, and gets into our dreams telepathically, though that is losing probability every day; and, with our anthropomorphic habits, we want to know "where" this capacity to impress us abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir, which I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless, throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original mind-potential plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been. And into this ocean seem to be constantly passing those currents that we know as individualities, that can each influence, and even intermingle with, other individualities, here as well as there: for here really is there. While each does this, it still retains its own individuality. This is, of course, a vague string of guesses venturing outward from the borderland of our knowledge. It may be a little clearer, the more we bear in mind that the apparent influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.