Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Lurancy had predicted the angels would let her stay as Mary with the Roffs until May. (Stevens 1887, pp. 13–14). Minerva Alter, Mary’s sister, wrote on April 16, 1878: “My angel sister says she is going away from us again soon, but says she will be often with us. She says Lurancy is a beautiful girl; says she sees her nearly every day, and we do know she is getting better every day. Oh, the lessons that are being taught us are worth treasures of rare diamonds; they are stamped upon the mind so firmly that heaven and earth shall pass away before one jot or one title shall be forgotten. I have learned so much that is grand and beautiful, I cannot express it; I am dumb. A few days ago Mary was caressing her father and mother, and they became a little tired of it, and asked why she hugged and kissed them. She sorrowfully looked at them, and said, ‘Oh, pa and ma! I want to kiss you while I have lips to kiss you with, and hug you while I have arms to hug you with, for I am going back to heaven before long, and then I can only be with you in spirit, and you will not always know when I come, and I cannot have you as I can now. Oh, how much I love you all!’” (Stevens 1887, p. 18)

On May 7, 1878, Mary told Mrs. Roff that Lurancy was coming back. As she was sitting with her eyes closed, Lurancy regained control of her body. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised by her surroundings, and displaying anxiety, said: “Where am I? I was never here before” (Stevens 1887, p. 19). She cried and said she wanted to go home. In five minutes, Mary returned, and began singing her favorite childhood song, “We are Coming, Sister Mary” (Stevens 1887, p. 20). Mary continued to inhabit Lurancy’s body for some more time. During this period, she continued communicating her visions of heaven to the Roffs, including an encounter with the baby that Minerva Alter had recently lost to death.

From time to time, during these last days, the personality of Mary would recede enough for the personality of Lurancy to partially appear. When the girl was asked, “Where is Lurancy?” she would reply, “Gone out somewhere,” or “She is in heaven taking lessons, and I am here taking lessons too” (Stevens 1887, p. 26). On May 19, 1878, Mr. Roff was sitting with Mary in the parlor of his house. Mary then departed, and Lurancy took full control of her body. Henry Vennum, Lurancy’s brother, happened to be visiting the Roffs and was called in from another room. Lurancy, weeping, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Everyone present began to cry. Henry left to get Lurancy’s mother, and while he was gone, Mary returned briefly. But when Mrs. Vennum came, Lurancy returned again. Stevens (1887, p. 35) said, “Mother and daughter embraced and kissed each other, and wept until all present shed tears of sympathy; it seemed the very gate of heaven.” Lurancy returned home, married, and lived a fairly normal life except that when she would see the Roffs sometimes “Mary” would briefly return (Stevens 1887, p. 35).

Is it possible that the Watseka Wonder can be explained as a hoax manufactured by Dr. Stevens, the author of a book about the case? This seems unlikely. Both the Vennum and Roff families testified to the accuracy of the account given by Stevens. Many details can also be corroborated from newspaper reports, and the case was thoroughly investigated by outside researchers such as Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research. Furthermore, William James, a world renowned psychologist, accepted the case and published it in his Principles of Psychology. In a footnote, James (1890 v. 1, p. 398, footnote 64) wrote, “My friend Mr. R. Hodgson informs me that he visited Watseka in April

1890, and cross-examined the principal witnesses of this case. His confidence in the original narrative was strengthened by what he learned; and various unpublished facts were ascertained, which increased the plausibility of the spiritualistic interpretation of the phenomenon.” What about Lurancy? Could she have been responsible? It does not seem likely that she could have acquired by natural means the extensive knowledge she displayed about numerous details of the lives of Mary Roff and members of the Roff family. Mary died when Lurancy was one year old, and the Roff and Vennum families had little contact with each other (Griffin 1997, p. 173).

The obvious paranormal explanation is that the soul of Mary Roff temporarily possessed the body of Lurancy Vennum.This would, of course, support the idea that there is a conscious self that can survive the death of the body. Supporters of the “superpsi” hypothesis might suggest that Lurancy picked up information about Mary from the minds of her living relations. But this would not easily account for her forgetting her identity as Lurancy Vennum and functioning for fourteen weeks, without a break, as Mary Roff. One researcher (Griffin 1997, pp. 173–174) has proposed that although Mary’s personality did not survive, perhaps some of her memories survived in a recoverable form and were used by Lurancy to construct the personality of Mary. But these memories should have stopped with Mary’s death. This would leave unexplained Lurancy’s account of Mary witnessing her own funeral. All things considered, the idea that the surviving personality of Mary Roff temporarily possessed the body of Lurancy Vennum seems the most economical and reasonable explanation of the facts.

The Watseka Wonder was cited by Frederick Myers of the Society for Psychical Research as one of the main evidences for survival of the human personality after death. From the total body of evidence available to him, Myers drew the following conclusions about spirits and the spirit world: “Spirits may be able to recognize spatial relations (so that they can manifest at an agreed place) but they are themselves probably independent of space; their interactions with each other are all telepathic, and the laws of telepathy are non-spatial laws . . . The spirits of the recently dead may retain telepathic links with spirits still in the flesh and may endeavor to contact them, or to ‘guide’ their activities. Beyond and behind such spirits, but still with affinities to them, are the spirits whose advancement in knowledge and understanding has linked them in fellowship to higher souls” (Gauld 1968, pp. 309–310). These are, according to Myers, linked to still higher ones, and all are linked to a Universal Spirit, the source of love and wisdom.

Ian Stevenson, known for his work on past life memories, also did work on xenoglossy cases, in which subjects manifest inexplicable abilities to speak foreign languages. Xenoglossy cases can sometimes involve past life memories, but possession is another possible explanation. One of Stevenson’s principal xenoglossy studies involved an Indian woman, Uttara Huddar, and her case does seem to involve possession.

Uttara Huddar was born on March 14, 1941, in the town of Nagpur, in the Indian province of Maharashtra. Like most of the inhabitants of this province, Uttara was of the Maratha group and spoke the Marathi language. Both of Uttara’s parents were Marathas. In her twenties she was hospitalized for some physical disorders. During her stay in the hospital, she took lessons in meditation from a yogi, and afterwards, during altered states of consciousness, began speaking a new language and manifesting a new personality. Dr. Joshi (pseudonym), one of the physicians at the hospital, recognized the language as Bengali. Because the Bengali she spoke contained no English loan words, it appeared to date to the nineteenth century. After Uttara returned from the hospital, her parents began to try to find an explanation for their daughter’s strange behavior. They consulted M. C. Bhattacarya, a Bengali who served as a priest at a temple of goddess Kali, in Nagpur. To Bhattacarya, Uttara identified herself as a Bengali woman named Sharada, and gave many details about her life. All of this was communicated in Bengali. From the information given by Sharada, it appeared to Bhattacarya that she considered herself to be living some time in the past. She said her father, whose name was Brajesh Chattopadaya, lived near a Shiva temple in the town of Burdwan. Her mother’s name was Renukha Devi, and her stepmother’s name was Anandamoyi. She gave her husband’s name as Swami Vishwanath Mukhopadaya, and said her father-in-law’s name was Nand Kishore Mukhopadaya. When asked where she had been living before she came to Nagpur, Sharada replied that she had been living with her maternal aunt in the town of Saptagram. This information was recorded in Bhattacarya’s diary for the year 1974 (Stevenson 1984, pp.73–75).