Trance Medium Transcripts: Excerpts from The Image of an Oracle

 
In the Introduction to The Image of an Oracle: A Report on Research Into the Mediumship of Eileen J. Garrett (1964), Ira Progoff recalled being introduced to psychic and trance medium Eileen Garrett in 1957.  She asked him a question that he found clear and direct: "Could I, on the basis of my studies in the field of depth psychology, tell her what was the nature and meaning of the voices that spoke through her?  Were they in truth discarnate entities in which spiritualists were entitled to believe?  Or did they have some other significance?"  He acknowledged: "My answer to that question, together with the researches it made necessary, is the content of this report."

Progoff decided that basic research would consist of conversations with the 'control figures' who spoke through Eileen Garrett when in trance.

. . . I would undertake to discover what the meaning of those voices was for the personality of Mrs. Garrett as a whole.

To prepare for these trance sessions, it was necessary that I first familiarize myself with the history and background of Mrs. Garrett's life.  Ample material was available here in printed form to prepare me for our talks both in the waking and the trance state.  Of her several books, one was of particular assistance in this connection, her autobiographical study, Adventures in the Supernormal.  There were in addition numerous reports and transcripts of studies and seances conducted in connection with Mrs. Garrett's work under the auspices of the Parapsychology Foundation and other organizations.  There was no dearth of material to study.  What there did seem to be was a shortage of fresh insight into an old and intriguing subject.


My primary plan of approach to the problem was to establish as full a contact as I could with the dimension of the psyche of Eileen Garrett through which these control figures, as they were called using the terminology of spiritualistic mediumship, appeared.  I would ask her to enter into the trance state in her accustomed manner and then I would speak with whichever figures appeared, and whichever ones wished to appear.  Above all, I would treat the figures as persons, whether they were really to be understood as spiritual entities or not.  I would see, in my conversations with them, to reach into their personalities, to draw forth their desires, and enter into communication with them concerning the goals and possibilities of their existence, just as I would with any individual in depth psychological work who came to talk to me.


In an attempt to communicate these unfolding relationships and the relationship developing through the sessions as a unity, I am presenting this report in the form of a record of the trance experiences as they took place.  There were four control figures with whom I spoke, Ouvani, Abdul Latif, Tahoteh, and Ramah.  The sessions were irregular, sometimes separated by several months.  I did not hold all my sessions with Ouvani and then move on to Abdul Latif and then to Tahoteh, and so on.  The sessions rather were interspersed.


. . . I had ample opportunity to recognize the difference in voice and style between Ouvani and Abdul Latif.  Ouvani's voice was subdued with a Spanish or Arab-type accent and a quiet manner.  Abdul Latif, on the other hand, had a hearty, extroverted manner that instantly identified him and contrasted him to Ouvani.  My ear is not sharp enough to differentiate the accents of the various voices.  Eventually I could distinguish the four who spoke to me on the basis of their style of speech.  Abdul Latif remained the only one with an extroverted style.  Both Tahoteh and Ramah seemed to me to be similar to Ouvani in a general way.  Tahoteh spoke more seriously than Ouvani and in a slightly heavier tone.  He was, however, exceedingly fluent and relaxed in his conversations with me, regardless of how abstract and difficult some of our subjects of discussion became.  When Ramah spoke the accent seemed very similar to my untutored ear, but he was identifiable by the ponderousness of his manner and a heavy style in his speech that gave the impression that each word was being delivered from a great distance.

 
A biographical paragraph about Ira Progoff (1921-1998) is included on the book cover back flap —

Dr. Progoff was born in 1921 in New York City, where he now lives.  As a Bollingen Fellow from 1952 through 1958, he studied in Europe, working with C. G. Jung among others.  He is on the faculty of the Graduate School of Drew University.  His books include The Symbolic and the Real, Depth Psychology and Modern Man, and The Cloud of Unknowing.

Eileen Garrett (1893-1970) wrote about her life and experiences as a medium in such books as My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship (1939), Telepathy (1941), Awareness (1943), Adventures in the Supernormal (1949), The Sense and Nonsense of Prophecy (1950), Life Is The Healer (1957) and Many Voices: The Autobiography of a Medium (1968).

During the first research session when Eileen entered the trance state and the transcendental communicator spoke, "the tape recorder was faulty and the session could not be transcribed."  Therefore the first conversation in the book is actually the second conversation that Progoff held with 'Ouvani' [spelled 'Uvani' by Eileen in her books].  The following are excerpts from this conversation transcript.

Conversations with Ouvani
The Keeper of the Door
(Excerpts)

EG:     Are we not in a sense the dramatic experiment through which and by whom changes are made in the methods of man's thoughtfulness.


IP:     Well, may I ask a question in between this?  You used the word "we" and I couldn't help wondering how you could describe what that "we" refers to.

EG:     Oh, I think I can describe it very easily for you.  You see, Ouvani is the doorkeeper appointed in the beginning who deals with the various questions of the peoples, all that is of very little importance.  What he means, that is as you see it, but let me show it to you as he sees it.  Finally we have here what we will call something that for the sake of better visual impression I could describe to you as the light through which the life is thrown out to sea.  Now if anyone can come in and move this life in all directions, there will be much confusion, not only out at sea, but close at hand.  So when Ouvani refers to himself as the doorkeeper, he is not thinking of you, and you, and you, he is thinking of all this that is necessary to keep the equilibrium.  For if there is a lighthouse, many people would like to send their message.  Very well, imagine what a confusion there would be, if there were not anyone able to stand between confusion of imagery and that part of the impression of the instrument herself.  So you see there has to be order and perhaps I am, therefore, best able to be recognized as he who sustains the order.


IP:     Is there some other servant, some other gatekeeper, like you, who comes, you and Abdul Latif, is there some other?

EG:     Yes, and then we have one to whom we very often go on matters connected with deep philosophies.  We go to him who is the keeper of the word.  I think I tell you, he is known in many of your languages as Ta-ho-tay.

IP:     Tah . . .

EG:     Ta-ho-tay, the giver of the key of knowledge.  And then there is one who cares very much who is the great master of Abdul Latif and he is known by the name of Ramah.  Now we go in our turn to these, just as you would go tomorrow to one of your masters when you have need of help.  And do believe me when I tell you that there are these areas of thought, for thought does not come you know, by happenstance.  It is woven into dreams and passed from one area or level of experience to the other, as man is able to receive it.

In the second 'Ouvani' conversation, one of the metaphysical terms used may be found in other transcripts of transcendental communication: 'Cristus' (spelled phonetically by the author) as 'Ouvani' is quoted: "How many men was the Cristus?  How many Cristuses are there? . . . it was the events of the time that made him a symbol."

During "Conversation No. 2 with Ouvani," Progoff's question about "whether you and Tahoteh are the same in your natures" resulted with a statement about human individuality —

EG:     . . . there is the uniqueness for each one [of humanity] that makes very certain that the great rug of Abdullah that rests in his temple may be worked upon by the hands of many technicians, each technician contributing his own share, each technician taking excellent care not to interfere nor yet disguise the plans of his neighbor.  If he did, the basic concept of life would be thrown out of focus as has happened today.  It is the uniqueness of each one and what he brings to his task that makes for the order of the universe, of the many universes.  So while you may say that the biped that is man may look alike when you regard him away from you, yet you yourself must know that in man each one is the uniqueness that is spirit.  That is the miracle, the mystery, the consolation, finally to return to wholeness.  Is it not so?

The following are excerpts from the first 'Abdul Latif' conversation transcript.

 Conversations with Abdul Latif
The Psychic Healer
(Excerpts)

EG:      . . . And I think it is very necessary and very important to let it be understood, though, if perhaps in this universe it may not be agreeable to many people to think that the soul as it goes through has many names and many lives, it is obvious of course to you that we have not just come here to you like this today to go away tomorrow and that is all.  What of memory?  What would be the use of all this if we appeared as what-you-say, a phenomenon of nature, and went out the door as another phenomenon of nature and that were all.  It would not be in the meaning of life.  The meaning of life is that we commence from the very beginning of timelessness, that we begin eternally, and that we continue to move through all the areas that man calls evolution.  But all the areas of time and timelessness, always in eternity, but definitely as we are going through—not am I thinking now as man or woman—taking experience according to how the glands of the creature who brought us to bear have behooved us to shape ourselves.  And our own wish, will, and desire, to experience, which is limited.  Now it is not possible to believe that we just forget all this.

IP:     No, it remains.

EG:     It remains.  So what is Abdul Latif?  The It, is it not so?

IP:     The It, yes.

EG:    Is it not so?  It has come through all these experiences and is part of the——

IP:     Is it possible for you to say a bit more about what the "It" is; that is, Abdul Latif you say is that "it" who has come through all these experiences in time, through time.

EG:     And he's part of this instrument.

IP:     Yes, is part—is part, yes.

EG:     Of the memory, of the whole.  Abdul Latif is Abdul Latif, but Abdul Latif is not Abdul Latif.


EG:     But you see, it is very difficult . . . to make people understand Abdul Latif as a separateness and as their ownness.


EG:     . . . We are it now.  We are the world now.  We are the world to come.  And all our work and all that we are and all that we do is grinding out this experience, turning the unconscious into the conscious, in order to give experience.  We are the dynamos, are we not?  It is very difficult to make it clear.  We are here, we will be here, we will be there, but we are it, the word.

Concerning the six 'Tahoteh' transcripts presented in the book, Progoff commented: "I do more work with Tahoteh than with any of the others because Tahoteh was most fluent and responsive with me."  The following are excerpts from the 'Tahoteh' conversation transcripts.

Conversations with Tahoteh

The Giver of the Word

(Excerpts) 

EG:     (Moans, sighs, goes into trance state.)  It is I, Ouvani.  I give you greetings, friend.  Peace be with you and with your life and on your work and within your household.  I ask a moment of you for I have not come to stay but only to make certain of the tranquility of my instrument and to open the way for questions that you desire to put to one of our revered friends.  Abdul Latif must ask, therefore, that we leave the way open for you and in a moment another one will speak with you, though I will be near to close the door.  Therefore, Tahoteh will explain his presence to you of himself and I will offer you my salutations and leave you with the door ajar.  (Moaning preliminaries.)

(Additional groans, sighs and deep breathing as Ouvani departs and another figure with a different voice and accent enters.)

EG:     Now, my friend, you would have words with me?

IP:     Yes.  You are Tahoteh?

EG:     I am known as he who is called Tahoteh.

IP:     Yes.  Can you tell me something about your nature?

EG:     Yes, I think it will be very easy for me to explain to you.  My nature is universal.  It is the breath of life.  It is the breath of the elements.  It is the breath of the tempest and the breath of the stars.  It is the breath of the times, the breath of the sea, the breath of the running streams.  It is, indeed, the breath of life that is as much therefore as you will claim for you, or I will claim for me.  For it is this element that makes it possible for us to meet for amiable discussion.  But I have been regarded as a symbol of good by some men and as a symbol of freedom by other men, as a symbol of what is within the makeup of man by others, as a symbol of that creative side of man.  May I not then call myself truly in relation to you, the creative principle of life; and if I am then the creative principal of life and have been known as such in life, it is obvious that if I have been, I am.  If I am, I must continue and therefore must have for myself a dual meaning for myself and for all men.  Now, bear with me a moment.  In the orthodoxy of your age, I have no place?

IP:     No.  No, we know not of you.

EG:     I have not a place, but that does not say I am not very, very important; I have had my place.

IP:     Yes.  Can you tell me of this place or of these places?

EG:     I have been, and what is always more important for you to remember, is that I am always in the heart of man in suffering.  I am that symbol of man himself, many countered, many edged, many sided.  I have been taken according to man's way, shall we call it man's pleasure, and called by many names; according to the process of his understanding have I been named.  I have been known as the winged messenger, I have been known as he who travels by sea, by wind, by air.  Phoenicians have made their statues to put upon their ships and men have made statues to put within the contours of their gods.  I have been given many of the faces of man.  But in your time I do not think that I have a face, eh?

IP:     No, this is so.

EG:     So, he who has not a face is therefore not suspected.

IP:     Now when you come, when you come to people in our time, do you come to many?  Do you come in the same way as you come to this instrument?

EG:     Ah, not exactly the same way, and yet, in many ways, to some, very closely; to some of your leaders in a kind of prayer form.  Oh I have many many many many symbolisms in which to tell man, to induce man to take a little comfort from me.  Oh, yes, I have many symbols.  I think I could point out to you many men, that there are many men within the whole structure of your being who are being willfully blinded, who really do not know what they are doing, because the whole process of man's mind—I am talking now of the whole, I'm not talking of any country—the whole process of man's mind is turned toward another image.  Is it not so?  Another image of his universe altogether.


EG:     Now, man in his very beginning must also have had the concept of being held tightly in the allness and the wholeness.  But the urge to be identified with the uniqueness of himself demands that in order to understand what he is, he must stand away from the all-enveloping shadow; for if he did not stand away from the all-enveloping shadow, he would not be born.  He would be of it.  He would still be related and as long as he was so related, there would not have been the use in being parted.  So he must step out of the shadow into that place where he can observe, touch, feel, know the oneness and then begins the spinning wheel of life's identity with him.  But he is certain from the first moment—whether that moment is the grain of sand that blows before the wind, there is still that certainty within that grain of sand of its eventual destiny, which is a return to the oneness from which, however, it must divorce itself in order to experience nonbeing and then go through the long journey identifying with all things before it can return to what it knows, that its true identity is with the infinite.  Therefore, you see, man and God in his invincibility and in man's creativity are dependent one upon the other.  The very continuum of this work is the method by which the continuum of the wholeness is completed.


EG:     . . . it is terribly important that you never forget that you are part of the wholeness; and you can't, because man is always longing to return to that wholeness.  He cannot forget it.  This is the guiding lesson in this life.  No matter what experience he may seek, and in the final journey it does not matter; it matters if he has experience.  It matters also that during the experience he has given back to the cosmic life that which he has produced from the dynamo of himself; and it matters also that in doing this he is rubbing shoulders with his kind—not only with his kind, but with all life kind.  Consequently when he thinks that he is on his journey experiencing for him, he is also experiencing for the cosmos, giving it the life, stamping it as he goes on; but he is also making experience for the other cosmic energies around and about him, moving, do you see?

IP:     Yes; adding to life.

EG:     This is the cosmic.  The continuum of the wholeness, of infinity, is important.

IP:     Its nature is to grow.  That is, the continuum grows.  If it stops growing, it will die.

EG:     There would be nothing.  So do you begin to see what a tremendous force this is?  How terribly important it is; and yet, if we begin to think of the importance of the self in relation to it, we almost stop the work from progressing.

IP:     Ah, yes—the consciousness of it would stop it.

EG:     Yes.  And it would in a sense destroy what is called the mask, the cocoon, within which lies the whole dynamic structure of what you might call this Schweitzer [When asked to name a 'historical character,' Progoff said "Albert Schweitzer'].  This ego, therefore, you see, is very profoundly important; and this is important for you because you see that in dealing with it you must regard it as something natural, as the child looks at something with such admiration, at its color, its expanse.

The following are excerpts from the 'Ramah' conversation transcripts.  Progoff noted that during the first of the two conversations "the tape had run off" so the concluding portion of the transcript consists of "statements paraphrased from notes."  None of the following excerpts are from the 'paraphrased' part of the transcript.

Conversations with Ramah
The Giver of Life
(Excerpts)

EG:     I am known by many names.  Many cultures have thrown their cloaks to obliterate, or perhaps even not to permit the light to penetrate but dimly.  May I present myself as Re or Ra or Rahm.

IP:     My greetings, Rahm, and my thanks that you have come to speak with me.

EG:     I speak with some difficulty but this difficulty will soon disappear.

IP:     Can you tell me what this difficulty comes from?

EG:     Ohh.  Yes, I can tell unto you, it is a tiredness in the organism, probably of the instrument I do not many occasions use.  I veil my identity in many ways.  I do not think it is necessary to toss golden coins before children who do not comprehend the meaning of the finer alloy.  I am not as communicative at all times, but in a moment the resistance will cease and we will converse.  (pause)  You will talk with me.  I will do but answer for you.


EG:     I am the giver of life.  I am the representative in man's mind of the giver of life.


IP:     But, before there was man, was there you?

EG:     Yes, of course.  Man is a very new unit in this universe, you know, comparatively new.  Now what was there do you think that caused this creature to stand up and look and regard and seek and ask?  What was the great explosion that must have taken place within this creature to give him this great urgency, this vitality to understand that his cries of emotion, his cries of hunger, his cries of hate and battle and love could also have other meanings?  Must there not have been a great principle involved in making this sudden—shall we call it—primitive step?

IP:     Uh-huh.  And this principle?

EG:     And this principle—what is it?

IP:     Is it life, is it you?

EG:     It is force.  It is thought.—Now what is thought?  What is thought?

IP:     Perhaps you would say that thought is a form of life?

EG:     Is it not the energy that is flowing through you in all your moments, even when you are within the womb?  Is it not this that is bombarding you?  Is it not this, this that is contained around you, which is continually pressuring you, pressuring you, pressuring you, until you cry out to find ways and means to take the pressure of this away from you.  And finally something happens in the area of what man calls his being—let us not speak of his brain—but in the area of his being to make him finally cry out in joy or sorrow, in hurt or triumph, in anger or in joy, and finally when this has happened to him he begins to shape the energy that has bombarded him.  He begins to find a direction for the energy, he begins to ask himself what is this; and then he begins to entrap it, to encircle it and finally to use it.  True?  Without this, the word is of little importance.  So perhaps what Tahoteh was telling you was that, if you want to seek vitality, if you want to seek depth in yourself, if you want to reach a response, then you have got to speak to this principle because without this principle all else cannot be magnified.


IP:     . . . I am you, and you are I.

EG:     You are looking for the moment in the mirror of your own creative intelligence.  You have lifted the blind and you have asked, "Who is living in the house?"  And I tell you what is living in the house is that that has made the nations.  You will never make nations with men, you will never make great rules with men, you will never make great doctrines with men, but you will have one who will see, who will touch, who finally will know and he will say, "This is it."  This is what you have been looking for all your days.

IP:     So it is, so it is true.

EG:     That is Rahm.  That is the personification of the creativity of life that has broken man away, that has made him seek, breathe, demand, desire, and finally, having desired, found ways and means to make signs and sounds that finally have come together to make the poetry of understanding possible for his problems.  This is what you are asking for and this is why we have spoken to you in this way and not to any other, nor is it perhaps likely that we shall speak in this way again.  Just to you.  But I do not think that in the instrument's lifetime these words will be spoken.  I would that they were.  They are spoken to you because you are looking for them and the time comes that you must be ready to take them and give them fidelity, that force, that vigor, that instantaneous growth of all life to the word.


EG:     It would never have been given to you if your soul in its adolescence did not demand this light.  It would never have been given to you if we had for one moment the feeling that you would abuse it.  Now you will be called many things by many men, and we are quite aware of this.  But you will always laugh and with the laughter of the gods you will rub shoulders with men and you will remain true to the principle of the creative, vital force that is in it.  And as you begin to understand this, you will understand the Pantheon of Gods in the primeval world and in the modern.  You will begin to see the necessities and you will begin to see that they were just and necessary and wise and thoughtful.  And all these things will be revealed to you little by little . . .

 
IP:     I thank you, O Rahm, for what you have given me . .

EG:     I have given you the mirror in which to see yourself.

 
EG:     And be not one who will smudge that picture.  For the picture is yours.  Keep it clear and just.  I do not say clean; I know not the meaning of the word.  Clear as the freshet that streams out of the earth; and just, as the law of your universe is just.  To these words may your heart beat within you eternally.  So let it be.
 
(Deep breathing, moans, etc., as Mrs. Garrett emerges from the trance state.)