This book describes the work and personal experience of a distinguished, highly qualified researcher into this miss-understood phenomenon.
Plenty of photos and laboratory reports are included to make this subject more understandable. Further, the area of fraud is dealt with extensively.
When extraordinary things are observed, each eye-witness account assumes importance. Sometimes one witness will fill a gap in his story of events that others have left out. Each person has his own story to tell and this is mine. It is not meant to discredit or negate the observations of others.
Other investigators had included doctors and scientists. That impressed me from the beginning. Surgeons from Baragwanath Hospital, Johannesburg, discussed their experiences nonchalantly and openly, comparing events with those described by their friends — anaesthetists, doctors and businessmen. It was plain that they were not only technically skilled men of the world, but also orientated towards the esoteric sciences as well. One would quote an excerpt from "At The Feet Of The Master" and another would answer with a reference to "The Voice Of The Silence".
There was no hysteria, no anxiety to impress — all had participated in (rather than observed) materialisation seances, and all held a deep respect for the phenomena that their expert hands had palpated and their trained eyes had seen. And I was one of them. Later, I had opportunities to confirm my first impressions again and again elsewhere in different parts of the globe, as well as to hear the views and opinions expressed by scores of other observers and to examine carefully the evidence of their photographs and testimonies. Some of my own conclusions are more occult or esoteric than those of spiritualists, but they are just as sincere and well intended. The part played by the thousands of sitters at materialisation seances is indispensable. In most instances their patient devotion made phenomena possible. To them I dedicate this book.