Telepathy

Chapter I

Telepathy — A Function and Power of Thought Under a New Name.

Any function, faculty, sense or power of the soul which is not known to science may be termed occult. This does not imply that it is unknowable or that it is unthinkable, but that it is at present, so far as science or experimental knowledge is concerned, outside of the field of hypothetical or known causality. In fact* 1 action or force, which as yet is traceable to no sentient cause is regarded as occult. The word by derivation means hidden, concealed, dark, recondite. All supernormal operations of the ego, which are also supersentient, are occult because the usual scientific method of explaining the normal phenomena of the mind cannot apply to them. Psychology cannot even admit them as evidence until they are proved to be facts. When once the facts are admitted, then while it is still a difficult matter to classify them, these same facts become a matter of profound investigation. Their source of action, the law of their nature and the cause of their existence may not be known, but science endeavors to bring them within the sphere of its inductive method. Unless this is or can be done, science will remain agnostic concerning them.

Nature and human nature are full of mysteries despite the wonderful and seemingly inexhaustible revealments of science. These very mysteries keep science busy ; and in the end who can say whether she will not so uncover the so-called occult, — even make what now appears supernormal or supernatural the simplest of all simple facts, — as to cause the word occult to become obsolete ? In science there can be nothing hidden. The word supernormal simply means that which is above the normal and not that which is unknowable. The word occult includes many very illusive phenomena, — phenomena which though recognized by scientists as facts, yet seem to baffle all explanation. Certain metaphysical phenomena called psychical, with which Spiritualism deals, will some day cease to be mysteries because other human powers or sources of knowledge not now recognized by modern psychology will become operative, and these powers or sources of knowledge will enable man to verify facts from pseudo-facts in the outlying fields of psychical research. As Baron Reichenbach, through the aid of sonnambules, distinguished the delicate auras of mineral crystals not visible to the naked eyes, so by the exercise of these new but as yet unemployed powers of the soul, science will demonstrate what now resembles a fairy tale, so incredible is the fact itself. If supernormal facts can thus be substantiated, the inductive process of science will be given a range of comprehensiveness not hitherto recognized by the modern or ancient schools.

The eye and ear for the vibrations of light and sound, the mind for perception and sensation, but these supernormal powers for the deeper, etherial and more spiritual phenomena, which might here be named noumena, which point us to the hidden trail of Divinity as it spreads over the universal pathway of the inner, higher, diviner or spiritual life. Thus armed, science can prove each new step free of that cant which sometimes passes for knowledge. Demarkations between nescience and science will be clearly defined, while what in the popular and theological mind is designated natural and supernatural, will no longer appear eternal parallels. The exercise of one's supernormal powers will gradually strengthen the validity of the deductive method of reasoning, and the deductive and inductive methods will be accepted as arms of one and the same science or knowledge, of which modern inductive science is the right arm, taking hold of everything on the plane of the senses, while modern dedactive science will be the left arm, taking hold of everything on the plane of the supernormal or supersentient. Limited and one-sided indeed is either branch of science ; for science, though regarded as empirical, has always been the religious method, and it is empirical only in so far as it theorizes and hypothecates what cannot be proved by the scientific method here set forth. Since psychical researchers (the Psychical Research Society) have reasonably proved the facts of the supernormal life, it only remains for them or for any independent investigator to show that these facts are the effects of the operation of supernormal powers which anyone who knows how may exercise. The religious life will not then seem an anomaly or a mystery as men of science have always regarded it. It will be more than either a credulity or a superstition. The mystical will not hang in the air as a something which has no place in the category of facts. Nor will the mythological and symbological be cast aside in our progressive age as atavistic relics of a primitive ignorance which has no meaning in the larger human order of civilization.

The word spiritual must here be defined. It does not mean less but more than material. It means what matter by derivation implies : the mother of form, from mer, mu, or M, symbol of water, the source of life, all matter issuing, as the ancients taught, from H2O (water), which is the mother-principle of organic, physical life. Spirit cannot be defined by any of its forms, nor can it be known by any of its expressions or manifestations. These are appearances or phenomena, and as such form conditions and create functions for the spirit's operations. But as Paul, the Christian apologist wrote, spirit must be realized by spirit; that is, evidences which are only spiritual enable one to demonstrate and become conscious of spirit.

The ego, functioning on the sentient or sensuous or on the super-sentient plane, becomes aware of itself as such. The exercise of powers will not do this alone, although it may help. Pragmatism as exploited by the new school of psychology, which teaches that action is the measure of the life or divinity of the spirit, does not disprove what is here taught. For realization is the spirit's highest action, which for the lack of a more spiritual word must mean the very opposite of action as experimentally or inductively conceived. In this sense realization and consciousness pretty nearly mean one and the same, if by consciousness is meant not mind or a collection of thoughts and experiences, nor the mere self consciousness, but the state of the spirit which all experiences of the life of the spirit imply or reveal. Broadly put, the spirit is to matter what the ego is to its form of manifestation. How spirit evolves matter into organic forms is not here a subject of discussion, but that the one is the cause and the other the sequential effect is what deductive science can and will demonstrate. In truth, inductive and deductive science is so permeated with intuitive, mathematical propositions that the one can hardly be separated from the other. In the end, when both are allowed the widest latitude, their distinctive differences will dissolve and both will be what each should be — the oracle of truth. It is here declared that the deductive method of science will soon prove that the occult is no longer outside the sphere of science, but is only awaiting the searchlight of its bolder genius.

The recent admissions of the old school of psychologists that the supernormal facts of life can not longer be denied, has made it easier for the more advanced students of psychical research to speculate on the spiritual hypothesis. It would be rash to say that these supernormal facts are accepted by all scientists as evidences of the action of the spirit. The presumption, however, is that no other hypothesis can or does adequately explain them. The spiritual hypothesis is entertained while the facts are accepted. Facts are so stubborn that they force acceptance long before any rational theory is advanced to cover or explain them.

One of the new theories growing out of the study of these facts is one touching the origin of thought which also lies at the basis of the science of telepathy. The theory is not new in the sense that it is a recent discovery, but rather it is new in its deep but novel application to facts.

Thought was once regarded as a secretion of the brain, the result of the impact of sensation. The mind, even the ego, was regarded as the result of this natural creative process. No one thought that there was anything divine or spiritual in the process. It originated, said the^materialist, as the perfume of the rose, light from the sun, atmosphere or vapor from the sea and the land. There was nothing a priori or causal in its creation. Its involution and evolution, synchronous and simultaneous with the existence of the life or germ, were only natural and not spiritual products. Thus materialists apotheosized matter as the beginning and end of creation. All this is now passing away with the deeper understanding of the supernormal life. The deductive theory explains that thought, while correlated with the brain and its activities, and matter the object of sensation, has its source in what is called for lack of a better name, the subliminal mind, — that portion of the mind which is immaterial, which is not the result of the sensational or objective life at all ; and this leads to the ideal or spiritual origin of thought and mind. There is a spiritual as well as a physical basis for thought. The correspondence is so apparent that objective and subjective life must mean more than it once meant under a materialistic system. Thought is both objective (sensuous) and subjective (supersensuous or idealistic), normal (a sense perception) and supernormal (a divine) idea. The one is the manifestation or form of the other. Both centre in and become a fact of the self consciousness. And in the field of the mind, both sentient and super-sentient, thought is expressed. The correspondence between the normal and the supernormal will be made an exhaustive study when psychologists realize, not only that it exists, but also that its existence furnishes the mystic link between the hitherto unexplanable facts of Spiritualism. For when thought can be traced from spirit to matter, from the ego to the brain, from the centre where Divinity, self creative and self existent, expresses and manifests all that is less than itself and apparently contradictory to itself, to the circumference, where forms are made up to vehicle the spirit, ego and Divinity, what a marvelous sphere of vision will open up ! The spiritual hypothesis will revolutionize the canons of the old psychology.

Action there is in and of consciousness, but not the same kind of action ; and here is where the word action has been very misleading. The action of matter is not the same kind or degree of action as that of the mind, nor is the action of the mind the same kind or degree as that of consciousness ; and this means, that what is the passivity of the one or the activity of the other, differ as the silence from action ; and more than this, what are the phenomena of the one are not the phenomena of the other, although both are the product of the same power. This is the point at issue. Vibrations differ in this respect of motion. Such is the law that phenomena occur which apparently contradict each other. Here is where " The System of Philosophy Concerning Divinity " clearly defines the relation of spirit to matter in this important respect. For unless the exact correspondence is understood between vibrations and the functions known which produce them, psychology will at best remain empirical.

Telepathy deals with thought ; therefore the important question about thought is, how does it originate? If it can be shown that thought is not a secretion of the brain, but has its origin in the soul, that it is not a product of the senses but of the spirit in expression, then it will not be asking too much to consider thought as an immaterial or spiritual substance which can be employed independently of the brain by the soul through the control and use of its supernormal powers or functions. This must follow. There is no middle ground. If all experiences as all modes of action of the brain depend on thought, and thought itself is immaterial in its origin, then to use thought as the soul now uses it, only more freely — that is, more independently, without contact with normal sense or facultyis simply to take advantage of nature. Electricity is in the universe — but how to use it? A wire and battery solved the problem. Thought, like electricity, is in need of a sensitive wire and more sensitized brain through which it can run from pole to pole, but this wire must not be a gross, normal one. Ether waves are good conductors, and no doubt play an important part in the transmission of thought by telepathy. But mind can be made to synchronize with mind, in spheres of thought, so as to produce the very phenomena required. This phase of the subject will be considered under its proper head.

Now as to the origin of thought, and its consequent nature, 'this much can be said. The impulsion from within the soul which leads to certain definite experiences is certainly an inspiration, mathematically ordered and arranged for each life in the sphere of its expression. How else is growth or unfoldment possible? This law or order of life makes progress more than a name. Even evolution is seen in a clearer light. Whatever history may show, it does not deny that the human race is led forward, under some such system of order as is here premised. The evidences are not always clear nor conclusive, because the cause of the superficial changes and the profound movements of the collective or mystic soul of the universe are not known, but when the life of the world is considered, then the programme of development will not appear either a coincidence or a chance. The human race, as Pythagoras and even the oldest Vedic philosophers of India maintained, is led, and this leading is by a system as inexorable as fate. It proves its Divinity in the evolvment of life, and like a flower, it unfolds in a rational, sequential order. This has often been remarked. Never has this fact been more apparent. From this impulsive beginning, the 3oul emerges into the light of day. Its activity follows the law of cause and effect. Life began to feel. This feeling became the basis of its creative and generative life — the seed of a vast and enormous psychic development. What but an inspiration guides and shapes man's destiny from birth to death, from one incarnation to another, impelling him at first to use his senses, after the development of them, and afterward to think?

A simple metaphysical allegory will illuminate these abstruse statements. It was an allegory as popular in India and Persia as in Palestine and Egypt. It became the basis of Jewish mysticism as traditionally set forth in the Jewish Caballa. A god very much as a bird saw his image reflected in a clear surface ; it might have been the air, or water, or its own consciousness. But the story goes that it fell in love with its own image. The confusion that followed explains the deepest problems of science and religion, known as ontoldgy and eschatology — the beginning and end of things. Not being able to distinguish between the reality and the reflection, it chose the reflection, and so matter originated. Moses expressed the same truth in the reputed revelation of the Lord, who declared himself to be " I

II am that I am." If now, with the variety of phenomena called psychical, with which the Psychical Research Society deals, this allegory were applied to life, would not the law of reflection help one to understand the greater law of correspondence? The form in matter and mind is the reflection of what is within matter and mind. Who is the one reflected? Any one who is .looking out upon the expression or manifestation of life and is influenced or hypnotized by the reflection. Thus thought, like these ephemeral, excarnate spirit forms of Spiritualism, are but vortices of unreality, but such unreality as seem reality because of the hypnosis. Thus the senses deceive one as to the origin of thought itself.

CHAPTER II. Thought Further Elaborated

Thought at first seems to be wholly objective, the product of materiality, the result of sensuous activity, and yet when the origin is perceived, it is but the form of the idea, which is its soul, and inspires to action. Aside from the other inferences growing out of psychical research and a profound understanding of Spiritualism, this one of the origin of thought is the most patent; for the spiritual hypothesis means this and only this, that there can be but one derivation of thought, and that is spiritual. The law by which this correspondence is accomplished may not be understood, but that it is operative is self-evident. How and why life should be thus involved and evolved is a mystery, but that astute men of science should fail to perceive this order of life is perhaps the greater mystery.

This much can be offered as proof of what is here declared. Experience of any kind is induced by an impulsion from within the soul. Why or what this impulsion is, is not always clear. That it exists is evidenced by certain thoughts and feelings which arise in the mind simultaneously with a sensation from the physical world. Some philosophers claim that ideas are causal to thoughts and so relate themselves to thoughts, which are their recognized forms or bodies. Be this as it may, there is no question but that in the sphere of what is nominally termed the consciousness ideas arise from seemingly occult sources, presenting to the mind an inspiration which, to say the least, makes the external sensation or mental impression intelligible. Some go so far as to say that this very inspiration makes sensation possible.

Plato, following Socrates, declared for the innateness of ideas, that ideas are born not of sensation, but from within the mind, from a reservoir not mind but a source above or within mind. This might be the subliminal sphere of the ego, in which it functions when in the dream or subjective world, or when it realizes or contemplates itself apart from its experiences or its sensuous life ; hence the deeper meanings of the words inspiration (breath, or life or impulsion from within the soul) and intuition, or knowledge, which is a priori.

It is the doing of the doer which inspires thought, and it is that which is done which makes the fact — the experience. That doing begins, as has been hinted, in an impulsion from within. The mind, once a simple and potential function, takes on or assumes the complex and manifest forms of its expressions. The mind itself is virgin until touched by the generative power of ideas. This definition is not inconsistent with the idea that the mind is both an object and subject of evolution because it makes consciousness a uniform state of the spirit, co-extensive with and universal in all forms of life, conditioning all modes which differentiate it, the mind becoming an infinite series of modes, a reservoir of thoughts, to which the consciousness is made to minister as a searchlight is flashed over a large area of dark landscape, illuminating what was hitherto invisible, or when, to be more exact, the light of thought, is the result of a particular sensation. Few philosophers and fewer psychologists entertain this a priori, divine state of consciousness, and for the reason that its evidences cannot be made sensuous.

Of course, the point of view has a great deal to do with an understanding of this arrangement, some men of science ignoring and even repudiating the spiritual hypothesis on a priori grounds of prejudice and ignorance. But now that the facts of the supernormal life are so generally accepted by men of science, the propositions here set forth will not seem unreasonable nor untenable. The time has passed when facts will be winked at. They not only force recognition, but they demand explanation.

Briefly, the spiritual hypothesis relative to the origin of thought is this : there can be no thought which has not its origin in the supernormal man, and the supernormal man is that part of him which is the higher, inner correspondent of his physical nature. It is more than the dream consciousness and the subjective mind. It is not the distinctively spiritual part of man, but the psychic in contra-distinction to the spiritual or exclusively physical. It can be explained by the word potentiality as applicable to the soul's dualistic life, — that which is supernormal but so involved in the soul as to allow either or both to appear, under certain conditions, in the one human life. The excarnate spirit can manifest itself as incarnate, and the incarnate can manifest itself as excarnate because of spirit; that is, spirit by conforming to conditions, can appear in this dualistic form. To manifest at all on the plane of matter, the man must enter the subjective life before he can appear objective, and to transcend that plane of the senses he must pass through the ohjective to appear on the subjective. The dream consciousness lies between the objective and the subjective mind and life, and this is made evident in sleep. But the supernormal sphere of the man is that part of him that controls the normal. This is saying a good deal, but a careful observation of the facts of life will show that one's education is altogether on this inspirational and progressive scale. A child, a youth, a mature man sees, perceives and understands what is on his plane of experience. It is a geometrical allotment. He cannot transcend it. All that appears within the visible plane his eyes may catch, but he himself does not fully, adequately realize it. It does not enter into himself as an integral part of him and his life. That which leads him on, that is the inspiration of his thought; and it is this thought which becomes the basis of all of his experiences. Can the senses become useful at all, except as they become the servant not so much of outward, material excitation, but of the spirit? That is what these supernormal and abnormal phenomena through mediumship and the independent exercise of one's psychical powers imply.

A seer is one who uses the supernormal powers independently of the senses. A medium is one who uses his potential, psychical powers, miscalled mediumship, abnormally. The result is the same, but the use of power is not the same. And it is because of spirit, and not mind, in the segregated sense, it is because of the spirit operating through its supernormal and abnormal use or expression of power that the inference is made that thought is a free agent in so far as it can be made to do the will of the spirit. As form implies life, as phenomena suggests reality, as the senses hint at powers greater than themselves, so spiritism implies Spiritualism.

If the subtle relation existing between ideality (idea) and imagination (image) be examined, an understanding of this law of correspondence can be had. Very little is known of the resources of both the ideality and the imagination. In fact, very little is known of the subtle relation of these two faculties to the senses and to the spirit ; that is, their relation to the objective and subjective life. Ideality seems to lie on the great divide between the normal and supernormal life, and like a torch it casts a light outward and inward. Imagination, the seat of the form of the idea, called the image, holds a dual relation to the ideality, in that it is both creative and representative, manifesting the idea in a form and at the same time invoking the idea as though it were the ideality. The ideality presents the idea and, in a very occult way, affords a negative of the astral or spirit form, too elusive and spirituelle to appear before any of the normal faculties. That is why the ideality is the nexus between the normal and the supernormal life and powers. This is not denied by the old-school psychologists, but it is not accepted by them. However, if attention can be called to the fact of the relation, careful and painstaking investigation may prove what is here stated. All this is fully elaborated in the work "Clairvoyance."*

The idea, generated in the ideality, is as spiritual as it is possible to conceive thought. It is experience which helps one to realize the sublime correspondence of the divine and human order, between the object (image) and subject (idea). And he who fails to per-

* "Clairvoyance," (Fourth Edition), by J. C. F. Grumbine.

ceive the wisdom in the end which experience subserves, who is ignorant of the uses of experience, who who goes through the routine of experience without realizing what it is for, certainly fails to conjoin the two forms of one and the same spirit. Thus evil and good, though opposite in their effects, nevertheless subserve the spirit in this respect and show that in the working out of the problem of life evil, so called, and good become, like electricity, the opposite poles of one and the same force. Experience is the end which both subserve.

The correspondence between the spiritual and the material is shown in the delicate relation which Nature maintains between the supernormal and the normal in the use one makes of the ideality and the imagination. But this use and relationship are but hints of the exact and unchanging correspondence which the physical sustains to the mental and the mental sustains to the spiritual in the operation of all of one's powers. Thus it is evident that when it is said that "I" see, one should bear in mind that the eye as a sense and an organ could not and does not see of itself.

These statements have been reiterated again and again, but the average and self-satisfied psycho o gists who ride the hobby of materialism to death have laughed at the proposition, as though supernormal powers have no relation, in this respect, to normal ones. It will be conceded sooner or later that the " I" of the spirit has the prerogative to express itself on the normal as well as the supernormal planes, and when these facts of telepathy, clairvoyance and Spiritualism are accounted for on a basis which proves what is here declared, the spiritual hypothesis will not seem absurd. The word education as popularly conceived and taught is a perversion of the original meaning of the word. Education as modernly conceived is commercial and therefore useful, but the man is no nearer the solution of the problem of life, so far as any such culture solves that problem for himself. The commercial aspects of education are not here disparaged, nor are the uses to which education is put undervalued. Education should do more than merely teach one to be useful; that is, how to make money. To lead out what is in one, to unfold the flower of the soul, is the supreme end of education ; but that which grafts on the soul a semblance of development, a culture which is a veneer, is a hindrance rather than a benefit. Such culture often prejudices the worldly man to the higher uses of education — an education which the more serious learn to appreciate and prize. Experimental education is all important, yet the end of it is neither the results which are attained nor the illusive goals which are ever held before the mind. Education should have the spiritual hypothesis as its basis and end, without in any sense becoming ecclesiastical or making public schools parochical. The spiritual hypothesis is a scientific one. As such it claims attention. And unless it becomes the inspiration of the higher education, the supernormal powers will continue to lie dormant, or be entrusted to the few who will labor, as in the past, against the popular prejudices or the legal restraints of society.

Now when it is perceived that telepathy is the exercise of a supernormal power, and that it is not as some psychologists are trying hard to show, the action of the normal mind ; that it is wholly subjective and not objective at all; that the brain plays the least part in its expression ; that there is in it nothing which depends upon outward stimuli or excitation, — then something scientific can be done to formulate a system of telepathic communication. And so long as the origin of thought remains a mystery, or so long as thought itself is traced to a source other than spirit, or at least the higher vehicle of the spirit — the soul — telepathy will remain as the philosopher's stone, a lost science. But if the origin and nature of thought are accepted as telepathic, that is, if thought is found to be of super-physical origin, then psychological science will have a new basis on which the higher education can build an enduring civilization.

The spiritual world impinges on the material. Nay, more than this, the spiritual life permeates the material life and is at the roots of it, although the two seem so opposite to each other. For though the light is not the darkness, yet the darkness could not exist without the light; though the spirit is not matter, matter could not appear without spirit. Thought and feeling, sensational as they seem and are, have their roots in that which is supersensational, that which is essentially not of the senses. Inspiration is to experience what an idea is to a thought, what consciousness is to mind. This mystical hemisphere of being is as real as its more demonstrative shadow and fits into it. To use metaphorical language, the spiritual world swings somewhere within or beyond midnight darkness and our dawn. To prove this, and that "the highest," as Victor Hugo wrote, "is only attained through the high," one must not delve in the depths of phenomena, forgetting what is above in the clear light, to find or try to find what is or was never there, but he must ascend the spiral staircase within himself until he finds within himself, above the clouds of the human senses, in the impalpable, superphysical world, the central spirit of his being.