“A
Bodhisattva [David-Neel says this is a person that has attained a
spiritual perfection that places them just below the Buddha] is the
basis of countless magic forms. By the power generated in a state of
perfect concentration of mind he may, at one and the same time, show
a phantom (tulpa) of himself in thousands of millions of worlds. He
may create not only human forms, but any forms he chooses....” (pg
121)
David-Neel
continues by saying:
“The
power of producing magic formations, tulkus or less lasting and
materialized tulpas, does not, however, belong exclusively to such
mystic exalted beings. Any human, divine or demoniac being may be
possessed of it. The only difference comes from the degree of power,
and this depends on the strength of the concentration and the quality
of the mind itself” (pg 121)
With
this in mind, I wish to take a look at a relatively modern example of
the creation of a ghost named Philip. During the 1970s a group from
the Toronto Society for Psychical Research, along with a Dr. A.R.G.
Owen (who was a mathematician) meet in order to see if they could, in
essence, create a ghost. The group was comprised of Dr. Owen, his
wife, a former chairperson of Mensa, an industrial designer, an
accountant, a housewife, a bookkeeper and a sociology student.
Additionally a psychologist by the name of Dr. Joel Whitton would
also attend some of their experiments. The original idea was that
this group of people could create a ghost seemingly by meditating on
the idea of him including the history of the ghost. They would then
attempt to make contact with this discarnate entity through séances
and gain information from it.
Here
is a part of the biography for the spirit the group created in order
to flesh out “Philip Aylesford”:
Philip
was an aristocratic Englishman, living in the middle 1600s at the
time of Oliver Cromwell. He had been a supporter of the King, and was
a Catholic. He was married to a beautiful but cold and frigid wife,
Dorothea, the daughter of a neighboring nobleman.
One
day when out riding on the boundaries of his estates Philip came
across a gypsy encampment and saw there a beautiful dark-eyed girl
raven-haired gypsy girl, Margo, and fell instantly in love with her.
He brought her back secretly to live in the gatehouse, near the
stables of Diddington Manor - his family home.
For
some time he kept his love-nest secret, but eventually Dorothea,
realizing he was keeping someone else there, found Margo, and accused
her of witchcraft and stealing her husband.
Philip was too scared of
losing his reputation and his possessions to protest at the trial of
Margo, and she was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
Philip
was subsequently stricken with remorse that he had not tried to
defend Margo and used to pace the battlements of Diddington in
despair.
Finally, one morning his body was found at the bottom of the
battlements, whence he had cast himself in a fit of agony and
remorse.
 |
| One member of the group even sketched Philip's portrait |
With
this back story firmly in mind, the group meet weekly in order to
attempt to communicate with “Philip”. As a part of their weekly
meetings the group would come together and meditate on both the image
of Philip and also his history. The group did this for about a year
with no positive results. Some members of the group did claim during
this time that they were able to sense a presence, but apparently
nothing that was verifiable. The group was quite determined and
rather than let the last year be for waste they decided to change up
the tactics a bit. In order to have better results with conjuring
Philip, the group began to replicate the séances of old.
Candle
light, sitting around a table, soft music playing, the whole thing.
They even had pictures of castles like the one Philip would have
lived in, had he ever actually lived that is. This new method seemed
to do the trick. During one of the group's séances, they began to
receive communication from an entity. Through a series of rappings
(reminiscent of the early Spiritualism movement) the group was able
to determine that they were finally talking with Philip. The entity
revealed this to the group through a series of raps. Speaking through
raps, Philip continued to display his own unique attitude. This was
discovered by how long Philip would pause in between answering the
questions which the researchers posed to him.
The
group never questioned that the entity they were in communication
with was Philip because of it's lack of knowledge on many topics. It
seems that Philip only knew the answers to questions that someone in
the group knew the answer to. If they would ask him a question that
the group didn't know the answer to he would be unable to answer.
While the Q & A portion of Philip's ability might have been
lacking, he completely made up for this shortcoming with his very
clear psychokinetic abilities. Overtime as the séances continued,
the group discovered that Philip was able to move the rapping table.
Often, Philip would even cause the table to rush over to people that
were late to the weekly meetings.
The
height of the Philip saga came when the group set out to perform one
of their weekly séances in front of an audience made up of 50 people
or so. Additionally a TV film crew was brought in to record the
séance as part of a documentary. Unlike most paranormal phenomena,
Philip actually seemed to enjoy the spotlight. The rappings and
psychokinetic feats were on display for all the audience to see. At
one point during the séance the group was even able to get the
entire table to levitate a few inches off of the ground. Sadly,
because of the dim lighting that was required as a part of the séance
the film crew was unable to record this for posterity. Only a part of
the documentary seems to be online and you can check out the few
minutes of it that exist here.
Although
the groups main objective of having Philip physically materialize
(not unlike Rosalie), they were overall satisfied with the results of
their experiments. So much so that after their success with Philip,
the Toronto Society for Psychical Research went on to conjure other
ghosts with similar apparent success. In one instance, using a
different group of people, they were able to conjure a new spirit
which was called “Lilith”.
A few other groups are supposed to have been able to successfully
recreate this experiment as well, but finding information on those
incidents is rather difficult.
At
the end of the day it's hard to say what it was that was actually
occurring in this situation. It certainly seems to fit in with the
concept of the tulpa, especially as explained by David-Neel in her
classic work on the topic. I only wish that more of the documentary
existed so that it could be scene. Ostensibly, if this experiment was
truly as easy as the group proclaimed I suppose that anyone could
conceivably do this at home. Before you do decide to go through with
this and conjure your own ghost, I feel I must leave you with a
parting warning from David-Neel:
“.....the
practice is considered as fraught with danger for everyone who ….
is not aware of the nature of the psychic forces at work in the
process. Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable
of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its
maker's control.....Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son
and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between
magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even
killed by the latter.” (pg 313)
Sources
and further reading:
Conjuring up Philip by Iris Owen (part of the original group that summoned Philip)
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