Featured Perspective from Mystic Magazine March 1954 #3:
"MARK PROBERT, The Famous Medium"
How l Proved His Mediumship
By Roger Graham
"How about giving me a physical checkup, Dr. Luntz?" I asked casually. "That is, before you leave."
The figure sitting a few feet from me was slowly rocking in a slight forward and backward motion, the head cocked to one side as though listening, the eyes closed tightly, deep lines etched in the lean face, the high forehead. For almost two minutes there was no reply, although the lips were parted as though the man were about to speak. Then —
"Well . . ." the thin, high-pitched voice said, "for one thing, you are slightly anemic — but nothing serious. If you can remember to eat liver two or three times a week and plenty of green vegetables you will correct that in a month."
I have italicized the above statement because it was word for word the same as the parting words of a lab technician three weeks previous to this when I had donated a pint of blood in an emergency at a hospital two thousand miles away. The lab technician had made standard tests with blood samples. Dr. Luntz had made no tests, had not come near me — in fact, had not opened his eyes even to glance at me!
"Also," Dr. Luntz went on, "you have some trouble in your neck. If you will go to a good osteopath soon he can correct it. The one treatment should correct it so you won't need to go back again."
I had not said so, but my reason for being here had been to find out about this trouble with my neck. For a month I had been extremely nervous. A t times it had seemed that an invisible hand gripped the back of my neck. I had said nothing, because I wanted to see if Dr. Luntz could spot this trouble without coaching. He had!
But now he became silent — so long that I decided to help him. After all he had already performed miracles of diagnosis without actually seeing me or touching me. So I said, "I have trouble with pains in my knees when I go to bed at night—"
Dr. Luntz frowned angrily. "I wish you would keep quiet!" he said. "I was about to comment on those pains. They are caused by pull under the knees due to shortened tendons —"
"But the pains are in the knee caps," I objected, "not underneath. On top."
He was testy. "I don't care where you think you have pains. The pain is underneath, due to shortened tendons. You sit at your typewriter too much. You don't exercise. Every morning before you get up you should sit up in bed and reach as far as you can toward your toes several times to stretch those tendons." When you take a bath you should do the same when the hot water has had time to soak warmth into those tendons."
I secretly disagreed with him on this part of the diagnosis, but brushed it off. No use riling the doctor further. "Okay," I said. "Anything else?"
He was silent another minute. Then his agitated expression smoothed into friendliness. "We of the Inner Circle," he said, "wish to extend our greetings to you, Mr. Graham. We are glad you could come to visit us — and the boy here. I would like to stay longer, but I must go now. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, Dr. Luntz — and thanks," I said.
But even as I spoke he left. It was as abrupt as the turning off of a light. Every line of expression in the lean face subtly and abruptly altered. The slight to and fro rocking of the man stopped. A sigh seemed to originate deep within the lungs of the seated figure. Then the face settled into its normal expression of habitual good humor. The eyes opened. And it was Mark Probert who looked up, blinking as though he had just awakened. He accepted the cigarette which his wife Irene lit for him and took a deep nervous drag.
"Dr. Luntz just gave me a physical checkup, Mark," I said. "And he got sore when I started to tell him some of my symptoms. He wanted to diagnose me without help."
"What’d he tell you?" Mark asked. And from past experience I knew that he had no idea what his lips had spoken while Dr. Luntz was in possession of his body.
I told him briefly. Irene helped fill in. "And I saw him," she said. "He went over and stood over Roger. I saw his hands sink into Roger's body and move around, exploring. He was wearing his black clergyman's suit that he always wears." She turned to me. "He was a minister when he was living," she explained, although I had heard this before. "When he died he learned that much of what he preached when he was alive wasn't true, and he became interested in the study of medicine — which he knew nothing about when alive."
"He saved Irene's life two years ago," Mark said. "I wasn't to hold a seance that day, but suddenly I felt the forces pressing to get through."
"And Dr. Luntz came through," Irene said. "He told me that if I didn't go to a doctor at once and go to the hospital to be operated on that same night I would be dead by morning. Mark came out of it, I told him what Luntz had said, and we went to the doctor. I just told him I felt sick. He examined me, and suddenly he became alarmed at what he found. He rushed me to the hospital and operated that night. Later he told Mark I couldn't have lived until the next morning if he hadn't operated."
I had not known of this before, but I had known of the many other miraculous diagnoses Dr. Luntz made while possessing Mark's body to speak to the living. I also knew of and counted as my friends some of the other members of a small group of spirits who used Mark Probert. During the years since 1946 when I had first made Mark's acquaintance, I had studied these spirits, and the phenomenon that is Mark Probert, the trance medium. Slowly I had come to be convinced that Mark Probert was not a fake.
Any professional actor and most amateurs could easily put on as good a show, so far as appearances go. There is nothing spectacular about it. Mark will be talking, perhaps smoking. Abruptly and with no warning something seems to happen to him. H is hands move differently. His wife Irene will quickly reach for the cigarette still held in lax fingers. A breath of wind enters his lungs, seeming to inflate him enough to hold him erect. His face alters. And then he speaks, but in a different voice — which could be his own, consciously altered. It could be an act. Mark Probert, from all visual evidence, could be putting on an act. It is only in what is said, the accumulation of evidence piled up over the years, that his authenticity has been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
The scene I have described, where Dr. Luntz gave me a physical checkup, took place at the Probert residence at 931 26th St., San Diego, California, late in January, 1949, where he still resides with his wife, though he travels all over the west, from Salt Lake City to as far north as Portland, Oregon, giving his seances at the homes of people who have attended his seances before and have invited him to come and give seances for their friends, paying his travelling expenses. Far from being well off, he is more often so broke that only a continuous succession of miracles of opportune donations keep him from going hungry.
It is the aftermath of this physical checkup by Dr. Luntz that provides a type of proof that no guesswork, nor mind reading, nor anything explainable by known physical law can explain — or explain away.
As I have said, the anemia diagnosis confirmed or agreed with what a laboratory diagnosis of a blood sample had disclosed a month before. Although I was not consciously thinking of it, I knew about it.
A month later I had forgotten Dr. Luntz's diagnosis. The trouble with my neck returned, but still I didn't think of Dr. Luntz. One day when my neck was particularly bothersome and I was extremely nervous I happened to be passing the office of an osteopath and went in. I told the osteopath what was the trouble. He explored my neck with his fingers, then said, "Aha! Here's the trouble. Now relax your head. What I am going to do will make you quite dizzy for a moment, so don't be alarmed by the dizziness." While he was speaking he was slowly moving my head this way and that. Suddenly he jerked my head sharply. I heard and felt a sensation that reminded me of a tree falling through brush to the ground after being cut down. The next moment I felt violently dizzy. Almost seasick, I moaned.
"This is what is happening," the osteopath explained. "The top vertebra connecting to the skull itself has two holes in it coinciding with two holes in the skull. Through these holes pass two arteries which are auxiliary arteries supplying the brain. This vertebra was frozen slightly twisted, so that those two arteries were pinched off. That's what produced your nervousness and the feeling of a hand gripping the back of your neck. What I did was to free the joint so that the arteries weren't pinched any more. The sudden surge of blood to your brain produced the dizziness."
I straightened up, feeling better already.
"Feel better?" the osteopath asked. Then, the words and the tone of voice so exactly similar to Dr. Luntz's that it gave me an uncanny feeling, he added, "The one treatment should do it, so you won't need to come back again."
He was right — and Dr. Luntz was right.
Almost two years were to go by before the diagnosis of the trouble with my knees was to be verified with the same startling coincidence of words and tone of voice. I continued to have trouble with pains in my knee caps after going to bed at night. It was annoying, but human-like, I did nothing about it. Then one day I dislocated my back. An orthopedic specialist was called in to take care of it. For six weeks I was in bed before I was able to move about at all. When I was getting better he said, one day, "The basic cause of your back dislocation is shortened tendons. These tendons start underneath the knees and go up the back on either side of the spine. Due to lack of exercise they have atrophied — shortened. Every morning before you get up you should exercise by sitting up in bed and reaching as far as you can toward your toes several times to stretch those tendons. When you take a bath, after the hot water has soaked warmth into those tendons, you should do the same."
Almost word for word, and almost in Dr. Luntz's voice, this specialist repeated Dr. Luntz's diagnosis! So, for the third time, the hair on the nape of my neck tingled at this proof of something beyond the realm of known physical law.
To me, even if I had no other proof of life after death, and the existence of spiritual forces outside the realm of known law, this confirmation of things Dr. Luntz had said would be sufficient proof. But only to me. To you—it is quite possible that his report is pure fiction, concocted out of my imagination. No scientist can repeat this event in his laboratory. But any scientist—and even you—are able to find out for yourself. Mark Probert is himself the laboratory, so long as he lives and retains this remarkable gift of mediumship.
If anything, I have played down the phenomenon of Mark Probert. I have not touched on the strange feeling experienced while observing Mark under trance, the positive electrical effect that causes the hair on one's arms to rise, the skin to tingle, nor can mere words describe adequately the sensations experienced while watching Mark. If you live on the west coast or plan to be there any time in the near future, you can see and experience these things for yourself by getting in touch with Mark Probert at 931 26th St., San Diego 2, California. In my opinion and in the opinion of thousands who have seen him, he is the greatest living trance medium.
He will not "contact your loved ones." You need not hope for your dear departed brother Joe to "come and tell you he is happy where he is now." But if you are at one of his seances you will have the privilege of talking to one or more of the Inner Circle, a band of discarnate spirits working to help anyone who wishes to listen. Spirits such as Dr. Luntz, who lived in the flesh less than half a century ago, and Yada di Shi'ite, who lived before the dawn of recorded history. And if you are lucky, one of the inner circle may casually drop some statement which will become verified by later events in such a way that you'll feel the hair on the nape of your neck rise. I know. It's happened to me.—Roger Graham
There are parallels between what is reported in this article about the Mark Probert channeling case chronology and the contemporary Ray Brown / 'Paul' channeling case chronology.
Mark Probert and 'The Inner Circle' Blog Articles
"Bryant and Helen Reeve's Commentary . . ."
"'Speaking of Myself' by Mark Probert (from The Magic Bag)"
"Portraits and Profiles of The Inner Circle 'Teachers of Light'"
"Mark Probert and The Inner Circle"
"Yada Speaks"
"Excerpts from Lecture Transcripts of The Inner Circle . . ."
"Ray Palmer's Flying Saucer . . . Questions Answered . . ."
"Self-Realization in the Aquarian Age . . . Q&A 1955"
No comments:
Post a Comment
Use Chrome or Edge browsers to comment. The Firefox browser is not functional with this Blogger system.