What motivated Eileen J. Garrett to dedicate her life to delving into the complexities of psychic phenomena with all its ramifications which culminated in the founding of Parapsychology Foundation, an organization my mother and I and now her great granddaughter all have administered in her absence? Life Magazine once described my grandmother as ‘Probably one of the best-known and most reliable psychics in the world.”
In several of her books some still in print such as Adventures in the Supernormal, Awareness, Call Me Lucifer, as well as others I hope to reintroduce, she tried without fail to bring about a greater understanding of these so-called gifts to ultimately stimulate research into them in hopes of not only finding answers to the questions they raise but to provide a deeper understanding of their ultimate use for humankind as we all seek to understand the why and wherefore of our existence here and possibly beyond.
Taken from her book The Sense and Nonsense of Prophecy published in 1950 by her own Creative Age Press I recently was pleased to find her own oft times “tongue in cheek” statement of her motivation for working in the psychic world in what strikes me as a sort of personal manifesto. Let me share it with you:
“I became a serious worker in the field of psychic research in the hope that we were on the threshold of a new era of understanding. In order to preserve my professional integrity I made it a point to refuse all offers of money or publicity that came as a result of my work. I would no doubt be an extremely wealthy woman by now, had I listened to some of these offers, but my usefulness to research would have been at an end. A circus proprietor wanted to set me up in a tent as Madame Oxana, the lady who could read the future. To publicize my presence, I would lead the parade dressed in a leopard skin costume and seated on an elephant. I was assured that there would be handsome ‘pickings’ for the revelations I could produce. I was also asked to assist in nightclub séances, and to become the proprietress of a chain store of séance parlors where, in my spare time, I could also do a little serious experimental telepathy and clairvoyance, just to keep up the tone of the establishment and keep me happy. ‘Cast horoscopes in our columns, give advice to the lovelorn—for a consideration—on a radio program…get the dollars by means for your research,’ advised one ingenious salesman, ‘and you will be happy and rich as well.’ Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a little fraud or a little showmanship.
I have often been accused of not being sympathetic to other workers in the field of extra-sensory perception, and in particular to workers in related fields. Nothing could be less true. Any new discovery, no matter how small, in psychic research has always excited me. But because I insist on proof, because I continue to stress the need for thorough investigation, there are those who feel that I am difficult to please. This is true; I am difficult to please. I am impatient with all the soft lights and ethereal music, the mumbo-jumbo and petty bickering of psychic and pseudo-psychic circles. If the whole, strange, mystifying psychic gift could be snatched out of the darkness of séance rooms and put into the capable, probing hands of science, everybody would feel much better about the subject and the world of science and philosophy would be enriched.
My impatience and my skepticism are come by honestly. When I first went to the British College of Psychic Science, the staff did not fawn upon me as God’s gift to psychic research. Instead, I was treated as a young Irish girl, very likely to be potty. I had to prove what I could do. I became a guinea pig for research, and while suspicious psychologists probed my brain, scientists evaluated the results obtained from endless and exhausting tests for clairvoyance, and often shook their heads in negation. There were no crystal balls, no beaded curtains, no incense: my séance chamber was a cold laboratory, my ‘clients’ were hard-bitten, doubting scientists who set traps and fired questions at me for three years, and my fee for services rendered was a series of severe headaches. But when the investigation was completed, I accepted the fact that I was a genuine sensitive and that any discoveries I might be fortunate enough to make in the realm of the supernormal would be authentic, however minor.
Is it any wonder, then, that with my early training in extra-sensory perception, I am not eager to accept as hard fact any statement made by any psychic worker without demanding scientific proof?
When I first began serious work, science was even more skeptical of mediumship than it is today—and rightly so. I had always heard scientists say that in mediumship there was nothing but emotion and make believe, and that such an unstable group really wouldn’t welcome any kind of investigation. Therefore I made up my mind that if I was going into research, I would approach it with a scientific attitude, coldly and objectively, with no emotions showing. Understanding lay not in sentimental nonsense but in getting down to a job of work. I didn’t need to have my emotions subjectively examined, I didn’t need any prophetic utterances. I just wanted to know if it were possible to discover the sum total of Eileen J. Garrett’s mind. Where was that mind? Was it within or was it external? From whence came the associations, the fantasies, the clairvoyant images and telepathic dreams? Did they come from heritage, from memory? By what route did they travel? What were associations and where was the seat of memory? These were the things that were important to me, and these are the things that are important to every serious worker in extra-sensory perception.
Yet, how long, we ask ourselves, must a handful of conscientious researchers strive and struggle to increase human knowledge while countless charlatans and witch doctors—money mad and publicity hungry—are doing everything in their power to work against it?”
Good question as we engaged in parapsychological research would love to know that answer! I took notice that what I refer to as ‘Garrett’s manifesto’ was published just one year before the birth of Parapsychology Foundation which has worked for 72 years as a worldwide forum supporting scientific exploration of psychic phenomena as our defining tag line asserts. Very regretfully Garrett’s foundation is about to run out of money unless some means of financial support is found immediately. Reluctantly the stock of PF publications will cease to be available for purchase after June 1st. This is a head’s up that should you want hard copies of these valuable works please go to our electronic store which will also soon cease to exist and order them for delivery before they are gone. Our Board of Trustees and Anna and I are personally heartbroken but we pledge to continue to act as clearing house for quality information about our complex and often understandably misunderstood field and with our office maintained continue support of parapsychology and students and researchers perhaps not with actual dollars but with the expertise and knowledge at hand as to where to go for quality answers to questions we are all looking for. Obviously I am looking for a “hail Mary pass” asking at this point for tax free donations to keep our work going. Please consider your contributions, in the knowledge that we fortuitously managed to save the Garrett Research Library– its future secure at UMBC, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Now we are setting about to save the organization that over the years has been acknowledged to have faithfully served the parapsychological community and the public. Should each of you who we served over the years contribute you will no doubt provide monetarily the life’s blood of the PF which is poised to continue our work.
And by the way DO NOT make the mistake of counting the PF as dead. While not inheriting my grandmother’s psychic abilities I did inherit her determination to not “give up the ghost”!