SOURCE: "The Pneuma and the Breath," in A Prophet and a Pilgrim: Being the Incredible History of Thomas Lake Harris and Laurence Oliphant, Columbia University Press, 1942, pp. 388-403.

[Herbert W. Schneider is a professor emeritus who writes extensively with George Lawton on philosophy and religion. In the following excerpt, they describe Oliphant's theories of spirituality as presented in Sympneumata and Scientific Religion.]

The Oliphant version of counterpartal theory was contained in two books: Sympneumata; or, Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man; and Scientific Religion; or, Higher Possibilites of Life and Practice through the Operaton of Natural Forces. The first of these volumes was given out anonymously, being merely "edited by Laurence Oliphant." In a letter [from Haifa, dated May 12, 1884] to the publisher he described the manner in which the authors wished the book to be presented to the world.

I am sending you by book-post the manuscript of a book which I want published, but which I doubt whether you will care to undertake—indeed I do not want it published in the ordinary way, as it is not an ordinary book. It is the result of the efforts of the last twenty years of my life, and contains what so many of my critics have been anxious I should tell them,—what I really believe, what I have been at all this time, what the result of all this "mysticism," as they call it, amounts to. In fact, it is a confession of faith, and certainly deals with a novel class of subjects [the letter here is unfortunately torn]… I have been the amanuensis, and so far as it could never have been written without me or through any other hand, I am the joint author. At all events, I assume the responsibility of its contents, and have written the Preface, as editor, to say so. Now as to the publication, I should like it to be published for me. I should like to know what it would cost to print a thousand copies, for which I would pay the full expense—and whether you would print it for me. I should not wish it advertised in the usual way, nor have any copies sent to reviews.… The class which will read it is a comparatively small though growing one, and I should like it to make its own way quietly and probably slowly. I believe, if published in the usual way, it would make something of a sensation, and bring down showers of criticism and ridicule: this, though I am not afraid of it, I don't court, though it would sell the book,—but that is not my object.

In Oliphant's Preface to the book he simply stated, "The following pages were dictated by one who, never having appeared in print before, shrinks from the publicity attaching to it, and desires, for the present at all events, to remain unnamed." In the later book, however, the composition of the first was explained as follows:

I had been conscious for some months in the summer of 1882 that a book was taking form within my brain, though I could obtain no clear idea of its nature,—and indeed the same experience has preceded the pages I am now penning,—when I decided one day to attempt a beginning, and trust to the inspiration of the hour to carry me on, as I am doing now. I had scarcely written the first sentence and begun the second, when the ideas which had presented themselves on taking up my pen suddenly left me, and my mind became a sheet of blank paper. I remarked upon this to my wife, who was sitting in the room, and, reading what I had written, asked her if she could finish the sentence: this, without a moment's hesitation, she had no difficulty in doing. I now most laboriously began another, but soon the same difficulty presented itself, which was solved in the same way. I found it hopeless to try and write another word. I therefore said to my wife that it was she evidently who was intended to write the book, and begged her to continue to dictate to me. To this at first she objected, on the ground of a want of literary practice, of material, and of capacity to treat properly so profound a subject; but she finally consented to try, and for a couple of hours dictated to me slowly, but without hesitation or correction. She then became too exhausted to continue. On the following day I suggested that, as I had a good deal of literary work to do, she had better write the book herself, and I went to write a magazine article in another room. After the lapse of a few minutes she came to me saying that she had not been able to write a line, or to find an idea in her head of any sort, suggesting that I should come back and continue to be her amanuensis. I had no sooner taken up the pencil that she began to dictate, and continued for some moments with apparent ease, when she paused, and finally announced that again all her ideas had vanished, and asked me if I could suggest a cause. As a few minutes previously a new idea had struck me with reference to the article I was writing on quite another subject, I remembered that perhaps it might be owing to my abstraction from the matter in hand. On my again directing my attention to it she continued without hesitation, and wishing to help her, I endeavoured to formulate some ideas. "Now," she said, "you are doing something that confuses me terribly. I have a whole mass of thoughts crowding on my brain, and I cannot feel which is the right one." I told her how my mind had been working, and suggested that I should try as much as possible to keep it an absolute blank. This I managed, with more or less success, to do, and in the degree in which I succeeded, did she dictate with freedom. We also found that if I had written anything on any subject previously, or been engaged in any matter of business the same day, it was useless for her to attempt to dictate. We were obliged to begin our writing the first thing in the morning, to allow of no interruptions, and to be in no way anxious or preoccupied with worldly matters till it was concluded. In this way the book was written, but the process was a slow one, owing to the many days lost by interruptions, which were unavoidable, and her own feeble health during a great part of the time. But there was nothing abnormal in her condition when dictating—no indication of the state popularly known as "mediumistic." Her mind was in full and active operation, and all her intellect, which was a very powerful one, was concentrated on the effort of expressing in appropriate terms the ideas which were suggested to her.

Anyone familiar with Laurence Oliphant's style could see at once that the volume was not his. Among Harris's followers it was assumed that at least parts of the book were produced by automatic writing and that Oliphant believed it to be a message from his celestial counterpart. [In a letter dated March 13, 1885, Harris's disciple Arthur] Cuthbert wrote:

Thanks for sending Oliphant's book. I received it last night, and have read about the half of it. It is written as he says through his own hand and mainly I judge from his own brain. His system is to seek the internal and that which he calls "God" through sexual sensation.. As gilding for this pill, to induce some if possible to receive it, he steals a showing of great part of Father's self-abnegating and humanitarian principles, all which with him is simply disgusting hypocrisy. The book, to whomsoever receives it will prove the "opening of the pit" (see Declarations). It is curious that up to page 79—about one third of the book—the style is clear and explicit, but at that page it suddenly changes to the vague vapid meaningless drivel that characterizes the usual run of spiritualistic utterances, and continues so to the end—as far as I have looked through the latter half of the book. I guess the whole to be got up between himself and Mrs. O., partly from their own brains and memory, consciously, and partly by automatic deliverance, either through hand or tongue.

The later explanation left no doubt that the book was really the work of Alice Oliphant. The style was diffuse and labored; the matter was simple and sentimental. The book represented what Alice had learned from both Harris and Laurence and how she attempted to piece it all together. On the surface there was little more than a verbal difference between this and the teaching of Harris: "counterpart" became "sympneuma," "interior states" became "subsurface degrees of consciousness," and the "fays" became "forces of the subsurface region." But the emphasis shifted, as the exposition proceeded, from the theme of bisexuality in Harris's sense, in which the presence of a celestial counterpart was basic, to the theme of "high love" between a man and a woman, both on earth and each bisexual. The "evolutionary force" of the "sympneuma" thus became primarily, what it was only secondarily for Harris, a basis of spiritual creation through the co-operation of the sexes, or, in other words, a philosophy of marriage as well as of social sex relations generally. The "creation" of the book Sympneumata was therefore an illustration as well as an exposition of the co-operation of the sexes freed from all "animalism."

The faithful and inseverable companionships which will represent in outer forms of life the sacred facts of the inner, will still exist with increase of worth to man and woman, but often with entire innocence of the relationship of person which would maintain in a painful activity the currents of the decaying unisexual layers of either frame; a partial suspension of race-reproduction is in fact a possibility that may become incidental upon the many changes in the physical constitution of man, which already begin to occur. To pause at least in assuming such grave responsibilities as are involved by transmitting to others, an organism which is the conscious seat of an extraordinary revolution, becomes to many a necessity of the hour: while the sense that retrievement from sin and misery for the present millions, is better than the increase of population, will more and more develop, and will cease to be startling to people in whom preservative and constructive forces so distinctively strengthen, as to point to the inevitable possession, in no distant future, by human beings of the power of greatly extending the length of the terrestrial career.

The reasons for this may be readily apprehended if we remember that the semi-animal layer that encompasses man's form is now in process of slow extinction, and that man has reached a phase in which at last he may safely forbid activities to enter it from the outer and surrounding world, because his inner growth can now at last transmit to his external, the vigours that will suffice to regulate accretions of terrestrial particles for terrestrial living. The outgrowth of the sympneumatic frame brings him at this day to the point where he may begin to grow as pure and simple man, and where the sensations of dual growth may engender in either sex the waning of all old sense, and by their fresh intensity push far behind them all dependence on experiences that fade. The men and women who now lead forth this type, that will spread and grow till it includes all men in distant future, are each one married to that spirit which makes their completion as units of a real humanity, and know no longer any of the unrest, the want, that arose from uncompleted humanness.

No other course in life seems worth pursuing but the one which holds out hope, however vague, of acquiring the power of sensational emotional acquaintance with the life-currents of the Deity; the power of a marriage by soul, or mind, or touch, or sight, or all, with a possible being who dwells in the fluid spaces of the organism, and has, by reason of the changes that are gradually forcing themselves upon external nature, the capacity for acquiring grosser reality of form and aspect; and then the power of so acute an identification with the whole body of humanity, that no use for life can now be found but to cast it before the feet of the human brotherhood in ceaseless and organic service. These powers are the sum of the offering of his age to man, so far as a phrase will state it to the untrained or the inexperienced.

This accession of quality as displayed among men, has included from the outset the elements which still fever the social mass with their effort at radiation, the elements of individual freedom and universal service; the elements of the equal right of woman with man to growth and power, and of the indissoluble interdependence of man and woman; the elements of the vigorous distinctness of race characteristics and of the annihilation of separate morality, mentality, and physique, which is now rapidly establishing itself as the eminent phenomenon of our era.

To make this even approximately intelligible it must be remembered that in the Swedenborgian tradition "woman" means essentially "emotion," and "man" means "intellect." The Oliphants' doctrine that woman should be the center of man and man the circumference of woman meant essentially that man was incomplete without more introversion, more cultivation of his sensitivities, and woman was incomplete without more extraversion, more executive ability in the world of affairs. But Alice believed most literally that woman was man's center and that man was the "complementary circumference" that should protect the "woman's sanctuary" from "invasive forces." Woman was "the central vessel in the human for secret inception of all vitalities from the divine, and for their distribution outwards into the masculine." The essence of the Fall [as stated in Sympneumata] was that

the secret woman came forth to breast the world, and the forces at large in it, like another sort of man,—deprived, in her region of the outer frame, of the quality in her original fluidity by which at will she withdrew herself within the protection of the male envelopings; and deprived of the screen which was to be held up between the delicate processes of her activities and the rough forces at work in external nature.

As history and physiology this is obviously fantastic, but as metaphor it is relatively intelligible.

Theoretically, as the passages quoted above reveal, the new "biune sensation" generated a passion for the "ceaseless and organic service of the human brotherhood" as a whole, but in practice this service of the whole had to begin with a pair who cooperated in building a "home" as a center for other biune persons. The whole idea was obviously an elaboration of Laurence's and Alice's love for each other and of their scheme to build a community in Palestine.

In the fourth chapter of Scientific Religion, a chapter which begins with a "treatise on domestic living, by the late Mrs. Oliphant," the theory was applied explicitly to the Oliphant "household," and the principles of organization and coi5peration were laid down. From this "house-book," as it was called, we quote the following passages in order that the reader may compare this type of community with Harris's.

The little household in which these lines are penned, has constituted itself by virtue of the apparent accidents of the moral and physical necessities of its various members, numbers of whom are not even able to be continuously resident in it. Its members, therefore, set up no pretension to offer, either by their number or by their differences of nationality, of occupation, or of age, any special model of what any other household actuated by the same motives, and following the same fundamental methods, should be.

This little household would be ready to reconcile some people with a relative simplicity of living, and to call up some into a relative affluence: it is groping for ways of drawing together the extremes of waste and want, of superfluity and of insufficiency, of suggesting the creation of recruits for the divergent classes of earth's civilisation; and of the new middle class, whose function will not be that of preying upon the classes on either side of it, while it transmits the means of life from one to the other, but that of feeding in such diverse forms the legitimate wants of men, that they will be drawn together in it away from all the antagonisms established by their present unsatisfied requirements.

The value of these groupings of individuals in intimate juxtaposition is incalculable: there are no other circumstances which are capable of producing the same results; and these results in the individual are indispensable, at this period of high social effort, to the lofty character which society strains to embody.

Such convictions lying at the root of the action which drew together the little fraternity here alluded to, it is evident that each member of it must adopt, with a solemn sense of responsibility to the world at large, whatever occupation befits them within it, or whatever they befit.

The difficulty of distributing financial responsibility in a satisfactory manner has broken up many of the best attempts at societary co-operation. It is probable that this responsibility, in common with others, the discharge of which affects equally every member of a family or group, will have to rest with all its weight and all its freedom upon one person.

We will assume, therefore, that a man, or, probably of necessity, a man and woman, have summoned together, under the clearly felt guidance of God, people whose harmony of feeling is absolute in respect of the principles just enumerated, whose motto is free evolution.

They must be prepared themselves to regard each member of the group which becomes their family, as held by them in charge for the world's service. These parents must take upon themselves the collection of all home funds, from whatever source contributed, in order to redistribute them with free exercise of judgment and of love among the members, according to the requirements of their moral and physical condition … But they will institute a systematic attempt to develop in each individual the highest degree of responsibility in special functions that is compatible with their age, judgment, or faculty and moral condition.

The type of persons who can produce good performance in any mode of labour by concentrating upon it their faculties with the single view of performing it well, is a very ordinary one; but the procreative quality of generous faculty at this date, requires us to develop a type of workers who hold the drive of personal energy in perpetual check; who scatter it by the way, preparing paths of others' work; who inquire of their own performance constantly if it creates facilities for performance by others; who act in all things in reference to the acting power of others. He can no longer be esteemed an excellent workman who can only work excellently. For his work to prove that it is living, it must be generative; and it will not be generative unless the workman has his mind trained to a clear conception of his own methods, and their connection with the laws of nature; unless he can impart that understanding by word of mouth at any time or write it down; unless the sum of his experience, while he is constantly increasing it, is as constantly forced by him into mental shape easy of registration, and, whenever useful, registered, so that it may be at all moments ready of access to all his fellow-creatures, and so that he may be at all moments in a mental position to impart his methods to others.

This household was in essence identical with that of Harris, a paternalism in the service of socialism, with two major differences: first, the household was under the direction of a pair of biune parents instead of under a "father" with a celestial counterpart, and the co-operation of this pair was to be both in theory and practice spiritually generative; secondly, there was to be more emphasis on educating the members into the capacities required for "co-operative responsibilities."

Scientific Religion was the elaborate defense Laurence added, after her death, to Alice's relatively simple exposition of the sympneumatic sex relations. He explained its "generation" [in the "Postscript to the Preface"] as follows:

I became conscious on my arrival at Haifa last spring that a book, the plan of which I could not determine, was taking form in my mind, and pressing for external expression, and at once sat down to write it. I found the attempt to be vain; the ideas refused to arrange themselves, and I was strongly impressed that they could not do so, unless I went to a summer-house I have built in a remote part of Mount Carmel, and made the room from which the spirit of my wife had passed into the unseen, a little more than a year before, my private study, religiously preserving it from intrusion. I had no sooner taken my pen in hand under these circumstances, than the thoughts which find expression in the following pages were projected into my mind with the greatest rapidity, and irrespective of any mental study or prearrangement on my part, often overpowering my own preconceptions, and still more often presenting the subject treated of in an entirely new light to myself. On two or three occasions they ceased suddenly. I then found it was useless to try and formulate them by any effort of my brain, and at once abandoned the attempt to write for the day. The longest interval of this kind was three days. On the fourth I was again able to write with facility, and though always conscious of the effort of composition, it was never so severe as to cause me to pause for more than one or two minutes.

At the same time there was nothing, so far as I could judge, abnormal in my mental or physical condition. I was unaffected by trifling interruptions, and the ideas as they presented themselves seemed to be my own mingled with others projected from an unseen source, or new ideas struggling with and overpowering old ones with force that I could not resist.

The effect of this internal connection was to mitigate to an inconceivable degree the sense of loss which at first threatened to overwhelm me when she passed into her present sphere of usefulness; for she was soon able to reach me through the internal tie which had been formed by this interlocking of our finer-grained material atoms while in the flesh, and it was only during the short interval consequent upon their dislocation from the atoms of ordinary matter that my suffering was acute. On the re-establishment of the vital connection between us under new and more powerful conditions, I was enabled to advance into the appreciation of knowledge which had been concealed from me; but this enlightenment never takes the form of being projected upon my brain from any outside source, but rather as a spontaneous idea suggested by my own consciousness, and yet accompanied by the peculiar internal sensation produced by this atomic interaction, which is sufficient to check me if, in writing, I am following a current of thought which is in opposition to hers, and to convey to me a sense of approval when I have succeeded in conveying the idea which, interweaving itself with mine in the atomic cerebral processes, she desires to have conveyed.

Assuming, then, that conditions can be reached by the interlocking of the dynaspheric atoms of those who are invisible, with those of persons still in this life, especially in the case where pneumatic as well as psychic interlocking has preceded the decease of one of the parties; and that it is possible for a commingling of ideas to take place, in which those of the invisible partner shall largely predominate, though they will have to take form through the channel provided for it in the moral expanses and mental processes of the living partner; and assuming, further, that the invisible partner was possessed of a powerful and well-trained intellect, and was developed morally to a very exceptional degree,—it is evident that, being released from the trammels of the flesh, the faculty of insight and observation into natural phenomena of such a person would result in knowledge of a deeply interesting and valuable kind.

The substance of this explanation is that Alice's death put an end to the confusion in counterpartal theory that had troubled them while both were living. Theoretically, during their life, since each enjoyed the sympneumatic consciousness, each had another, spiritual counterpart. After Alice's death, however, Laurence unhesitatingly proclaimed her as his counterpart and even claimed, as in the above passage, that they had been "sympneumatically interlocked" before her passage to the unseen.

In his book Laurence Oliphant attempted a twofold justification of his faith, basing it on science as well as on the Scriptures. The scientific argument was a variation on the familiar theme that spiritual phenomena are coming to be understood in terms of natural law. He recited the results of the latest experiments with hypnotism and psychical research. The "spiritual forces" were not literally "spirits" but natural energies, which he called "dynaspheric forces." He suggested that these forces were probably related to the interatomic energies, which were at that time beginning to be heard of in theoretical physics and which might be liberated with the break-up of the ordinary physical atoms.

If, then, a new atomic force can be introduced into man's organism, of a higher and purer quality than any of which we have any cognisance, it is evident that a new door of evolution is open to him. He will survive,… because he will find himself endowed with the vigours derived from a new and pure sex-potency, which will enable him ultimately to produce offspring of a loftier physical and moral type, possessing those finer faculties of a supersensuous kind, which were lost when the Adamic race closed all the subsurface region of its consciousness, and stupefied alike its moral instinct and its rational intelligence, by absorbing a current of lust from the lower animal creation.

He added to what he could use of the physical and biological sciences liberal gleanings from theosophic tradition. Of one thing he was quite certain, that he had left "spiritualism" far behind—that all "dabbling" with messages and mediums was worse than a waste of time.

In attempting a scriptural justification for his theories he may have been motivated by criticisms of Sympneumata similar to General Gordon's, of which he wrote [in a letter dated June 8, 1885]:

He saw only the manuscript, and wished it written from the more Biblical point of view, as, though he said it contained nothing that was not to be found in the Bible, yet few would recognise it, and it would frighten the majority, which it would not if it appealed more to the Bible as authority, and its agreement with it was made clearer. Mrs. Oliphant was not allowed, however, to alter the form, and indeed found herself rather prevented from thinking about the Bible, from which we gather, as we told Gordon, that such references as he desired would frighten away those who did not believe in the Bible, and were looking for light. It is not written for those who feel they have all the light they need, but for those who feel that the old religious landmarks have disappeared.

And the same motive may have been behind his inclusion, in both editions, of "an Appendix by a Clergyman of the Church of England," Haskett Smith, that consisted almost entirely of exegesis of texts from the Bible and the sacred writings of other religions.

On the scriptural side Oliphant expounded arcana of the inner sense of the Scriptures that rivaled those of Harris, if not in bulk, certainly in ingenuity. His commentaries on Genesis, the Pauline Epistle, and Revelations not only traced the history of bisexuality through the Fall, the mark of Cain, the birth of Jesus, and Pentecost, much as Harris had done, but wove into it the chief themes of the Kaballa and of Theosophy quite independently of Harris's Esoteric Science. On three important points he differed explicitly from Harris. First, though he was convinced of the near approach of the crisis in evolution, the event would be moral rather than physical. It would not be catastrophic.

The restoration of the sympneumatic union involves, sooner or later, the restoration of the divine conditions of procreation; but herein lies a great mystery, the revelation of which is reserved for One who has retained the Christ-like condition, concerning which it is not expedient to write further at present than to say, that the period when this revelation will be made does not seem very remote. But before it can be made, it will be necessary for the two or three who have passed away from this earth in full sympneumatic consciousness, to be reinforced by the addition of others now alive who have attained the same state.…

There is no more profound delusion than that which prevails in certain quarters, that a crisis is at hand which will sweep all humanity from the face of the earth, except a chosen few, who will be preserved immortal amid the general crash. A crisis is undoubtedly at hand, but it will not be catastrophic or outside of natural law. It will consist simply in the further development and collision of those forces which are already exhibiting themselves in unknown and startling phenomena … For any man who has attained sympneumatic conditions, or who thinks he has attained them, to desire immortality, or to suppose that he has already achieved it, is to nurse himself in a delusion as ignorant as it is selfish.

Secondly, he repudiated the whole doctrine of a pivotal man in scathing terms.

There is no doctrine attended with greater danger than this one, which involves the necessity of a pivotal man, through whom alone God can act upon the human race. It was invented by the early Church, is illustrated in Rome, and has since been acted upon by others. It is a doctrine which casts its magnetic fetters round the affections, the will, and the understanding, and makes abject slaves of those who yield themselves to it. The whole tendency of the divinely vital descent now occurring is to develop the entire nature of man, morally, rationally, and physically; to emancipate him from the bondage of Churches and of men; to make him his own pivot, standing erect in the light of his own divine illumination, and lifting his arms Godward, inspired by the dignity of his own aspiration—neither borne into the unseen in the swaddling-clothes of a sect, nor driven thither in a chain-gang under the cruel lash of a slave-driver, nor projected into it upon the fagot of an auto dafe.

Lastly, he demanded in and with the group an intimacy that Harris avoided. Though the Harris "family" was supposed to "hold" for him, he regarded his struggle as essentially solitary. Oliphant, on the other hand, thought of himself more as an intimate member dispensing his "magnetism" through intimate contact with others. His published statements on this subject were guarded, but they were liable to the kind of interpretation his enemies put on them. He wrote:

This training is of such a nature as to cause a suffering far more acute than all the self-imposed rigours and penances of monks and nuns. It may consist of a variety of disciplines—as, for instance, when two young people, who are both in quest of this pearl of great price, and who are passionately attached to each other, feel that they must marry if they would win it, and yet never know in this life what the marriage relation, as commonly understood, is. Or it may consist in intimacies which, though pure and innocent, are calculated to arouse jealousy in quarters where it would be legitimate under ordinary circumstances, and excite suspicions which nothing but supreme faith can banish; to say nothing of other ordeals to be undergone, which differ in each case, but are always of a character to try most severely the peculiar quality of the temperament to which they are applied. For the position of man in relation to woman, in this particular struggle, is reversed. It is she who, when she has herself attained to the consciousness of sympneumatic life, must lead him to it. From first to last he must be a passive instrument in her hands; under her guidance he must crush out of his nature every instinct of animal passion, and become dead to all the old sensations, before he can become alive to the new.

The man who has undergone this training finally becomes absolutely impervious to, and casehardened against, the subtle magnetisms which radiate from ordinary woman. He forgets at last what the emotion of being what is popularly called "in love," was like; no charms can captivate his outer senses, no feminine sympathy, based on a mere personal sentiment, can penetrate into that inmost shrine, which he has dedicated to the worship of the Divine Feminine.…

Men and women who have arrived at these new relations towards each other, enjoy a happiness in them which compensates for all the suffering they have undergone to reach it,—a happiness which would be shattered at a blow, if they could be guilty of any such act of physical gratification as the closeness of their external relations would justify the world in attributing to them. And yet the progress of the work in which they are engaged, involves an intimacy as close as that between sister and sister, or mother and daughter, and as pure; for the needful interchanges of magnetism can only be effected by constant and close proximity, by which new electromagnetic forces can be generated, sufficiently powerful to resist the invasion of the infernal lust-currents which are now struggling to make an entry into the world, through the organisms of "sensitives," who are ignorant of the nature of the forces which are accomplishing their subjection. To rescue such, when their eyes have been opened; to close up the rupture in their odylic sphere which has given entrance to the invading tainted magnetic current; and to restore them to physical health and moral sanity, is one of the most blessed duties which devolves upon those who are labouring in this new sphere of action; for it is one which medical science, with its present limitations of ignorance and prejudice in such matters, is quite unable to undertake.