In his 1909 book The Survival of Man, Oliver Lodge recounts some séances in which the deceased F.W.H. Myers apparently communicated. In one of the most intriguing and puzzling communications, "Myers" spoke of some earlier sessions and complained:
I could not say it, but they were translating like a schoolboy does his first lines of Virgil – so terribly confused and inaccurate. But somehow I could not help it. It was not me communicating, yet I saw it going on…. I can only think the things, and false things may creep in without my knowing it.
The medium's spirit control, "Nellie," then added in explanation:
He said it was not he, but neither was it fraud. He does not want you to stop the phenomenon, he wants to study it. You are not to say it was wrong and get it stopped. He likes to watch the somnambulistic thing at work. It is not he that is doing it, and yet he is looking on. He does not see how it is worked, but he finds this more interesting than the genuine communications. He did not rattle the curtains either … but it was not cheating, and he does not want you to make them think that they are cheats. He does not know how it is worked, but he is studying and he thinks it will help a great deal if he can understand how the cheating things that are not cheats are done …
He says he is finding out how honest non-phenomena are to be accounted for. Apparently dishonest phenomena are phenomena of extreme [interest] apart from the spirit which purports to be communicating.
Lodge adds this comment:
Whatever their origin, these words do, in my judgment, represent the truth about a good many of these phenomena – that is to say, that they are not precisely what their surface-aspect implies, yet neither are they fraud. [All quotes from p. 310.]
This is certainly confusing. How can there be "cheating things that are not cheats"? And what can this possibly mean: "He said it was not he, but neither was it fraud"? And who or what is "the somnambulistic thing at work" – the entranced medium or the communicating entity?
A possible answer to all these questions is provided in a book called The Astral Plane, by C.W. Leadbeater. The book is a Theosophist manual published in 1900. It can be read online at Project Gutenberg.
Before going on, I should say that I'm not a Theosophist and have many doubts about that movement, including the career of its charismatic founder, Madame Blavatsky. Famed psychic investigator Richard Hodgson debunked Blavatsky rather damningly, though Blavatsky's defenders continue to dispute Hodgson's findings. In any event, I would not take any Theosophical theory at face value. There is a great deal of jargon and rococo complication in Theosophy, with all sorts of detailed hierarchies of spirits and planes of existence, as well as a complex account of reincarnation that does not seem to fit very well with the best empirical evidence, such as Ian Stevenson's cases. (If I understand it correctly, Theosophy holds that a vast amount of time must elapse between earthly incarnations, while Stevenson's cases – involving children who spontaneously recall a past life – typically indicate a very brief interval between lives.)
Still, there are probably elements of truth in Theosophy. What interests me about this particular idea is that it dovetails nicely with the "Myers" comments quoted above.
In a section called "The Shade" (in Part 2 of the larger section called "Inhabitants"), Leadbeater tells us that lower and more degraded portions of the astral body may be left behind as the soul advances:
Thus comes into existence the class of entity which has been called "The Shade"—an entity, be it observed, which is not in any sense the real individual at all (for he has passed away into Devachan [a higher plane]), but nevertheless, not only bears his exact personal appearance, but possesses his memory and all his little idiosyncrasies, and may, therefore, very readily personate him, as indeed it frequently does at séances. It is not, of course, conscious of any act of impersonation, for as far as its intellect goes it must necessarily suppose itself to be the individual, but one can imagine the horror and disgust of the friends of the departed, if they could only realize that they had been deceived into accepting as their loved one a mere soulless bundle of all his worst qualities. Its length of life varies according to the amount of the lower Manas [mental function] which animates it, but as this is all the while in process of fading out, its intellect is a steadily diminishing quantity, though it may possess a great deal of a certain sort of animal cunning; and even quite towards the end of its career it is still able to communicate by borrowing temporary intelligence from the medium.
Leadbeater is not saying that all mediumistic communications are of this type; elsewhere he talks about how the actual deceased person can reach his loved ones through a medium at times. But according to the Theosophical view, mediumistic communications "frequently" do involve the discarded lower parts of the self, which have an autonomy that persists for a time.
If there is any truth to this theory, it might make sense of the puzzling "Myers" communication conveyed and reported some years after Leadbeater's book was published. The Shade would be communicating in the persona of the deceased person, yet would not actually be that person. The resultant communication would not be from Myers, but "neither would it be fraud." The communicator and its work would be a "cheating thing that is not a cheat." And "the somnambulistic thing at work" would presumably be the Shade, an ongoing (though decaying) fragment of the deceased person with an independent but limited existence.
All this would seem to be precisely the kind of anomaly that "Myers" would enjoy investigating, since it would offer significant insights into the makeup of the astral body and its gradual progress to higher planes. So maybe that's what he was talking about.
Incidentally, Richard Matheson makes use of a similar idea in his worthwhile fantasy novel What Dreams May Come, a book that recounts the adventures of a newly deceased person in the afterlife. At one point, the narrator is appalled to realize that a medium is in touch with his disintegrating astral shell or husk, rather than with his true self. Powerless to do anything about it, he can only observe in frustration. This scene reminds me of the "Myers" message: "I could not help it. It was not me communicating, yet I saw it going on." The difference, though, is that in Matheson's book, the astral shell has no mental powers and is merely inert – a sort of mindless zombie.