The open vision : a study of psychic phenomena

Front matter

A STUDY OF

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA

Class Book

Foreword

JH

Interest in psychical phenomena has travelled very far since the days of the first crude manifestations which led to modern spiritism. The era of mere manifestations gave place to that of books purporting to tell us about the spirit-world and the wisdom of life on the other plane, and that in turn led to the day of psychical research with its long and patient investigations. The great war brought us to another period. There was not only greater desire than ever to gain new light if possible on the nature of death and the life beyond, but from the soldiers themselves on the battlefield there came evidences of psychical visions and guidances. To meet the new interest, books of many types have been issued, so that psychical experience has become one of the great subjects of the day in the world of books. So many messages and teachings have apparently come over the great border that none of us has time to read them all. What next?

If we assume that the whole subject has passed out of its preliminary stage and that we have assured results at last, what use can we make of these results? Granting the survival of identity, accepting spirit-return as established and iv Foreword spiritual communion as a fact of real experience, what significance has all this for the individual, for those who may not themselves have indulged in direct experiments or had personal evidences of spirit-return? Has a body of principles been given us such that we may now adopt them and endeavor to live by them, or are the various teachings in such conflict that few of us can tell what to believe? Should a person have faith in communications from the other world, is the believing attitude right, or ought we to continue sceptical?

It would be claiming too much to undertake to decide any of these matters for the general public. But plainly we need to take the next step, and those of us who have in a measure seen our way through to conclusions and convictions should help others still in a questioning attitude. We may not be able to persuade any one to adopt our view, yet we may greatly assist the investigator and those who are heart -hungry by telling how we came to believe in the reality of certain psychical experiences while rejecting others. Indeed we may hold that our own experiences were given us that we might share their meanings and values with those whose interests are similar. And even if we should reject all mere phenomena as doubtful there would still be the question of the proper development of our own powers, sometimes called "psychical."

Foreword

It is in this tentative yet on the whole hopeful spirit that this book has been written. The point of view advocated departs somewhat widely from that of psychical research on the one hand, and that of the average believer in messages from the spirit-world on the other. Personal experience and study have led me to believe in many matters as perfectly normal and the information acquired wholly natural, in contrast with the point of view which tells us so much about the abnormal and the supernormal. I have never been an investigator in the usual sense, have not consulted mediums, have stood apart when others sought to arouse my interest, and have for the most part concerned myself with other matters. My training has been in philosophy and I have applied the sceptical tests of the student who is determined not to be misled. All the more significant, it seems to me, are the results to which experience has led me. For granting that there is at the present time unusual openness to the life beyond and concerted effort on the other side to bring certain teachings to us on this plane, one should be far more impressed by what has come spontaneously than by any quest on our own part. There ought to be a way to show us what is real and a means of making clear what is true.

The point of view of this book is that when all the evidence that can be gained through investivi Foreword gation or reading has come before the mind of today, it still remains for the individual to learn what is real and what is true for him. We are not likely to be genuinely convinced one way or the other until we too have had evidence. Strictly speaking, nothing is proved until it has been directly established for you and for me. We must either have experience or come into possession of principles such that we can tell what is true, what false. If we could be so fortunate as to follow direct guidance all the way along we might be spared the long process of research.

For there surely is divine wisdom in the matter. Each of us is led along a certain pathway and there is guidance for the path. If the time has come for penetrating more deeply into psychical reality, there is a sure way to find that reality. The eager quest of hundreds and thousands whose loved ones have left this world during the war has apparently made it possible to break down many barriers. Unexpectedly the intense experience of life at the front has led to the opening of the inner vision on the part of soldiers. Some of these have gone from our midst and they seem to be looking back. We on our part have been led to be more responsive. We have only to follow these leadings to the end in order to come in sight of clear principles.

Foreword vii

Meanwhile there is every reason why you and I should grow into the open vision, should long without undue yearning, and listen without giving ear too intently.

The point of view of this book is neither orthodox nor scientific, as these terms are usually understood. It is simply human. Those of us who have been with people who are yearning and with soldiers over seas have grown quite naturally into this attitude. We had a splendid chance "over there" to know and more intimately to appreciate human nature in many of its most genuinely attractive phases. There one came nearer the hearts and minds of men in whom the childhood of the world was in considerable degree preserved unspoiled. One seemed to realize from such relationships with the frank-hearted men of the trenches what life might have been on this earth if civilization could have kept the first-hand realities of the human spirit. One saw what Bergson meant when he graphically described the nature and function of the intellect, and then told us that creative evolution might have proceeded differently, might have fostered intuition. This vision of man's spiritual possibilities gave one a desire to re-interpret life, to go back in thought to the childhood of the race, to recover the lost gifts and possessions of the inner life.

viii Foreword

In our life at the front many of us found that the traditions which hamper and the creeds which keep men apart were set aside. One associated with the Roman Catholic on the same friendlyterms as with Protestant or Jew. One saw that the simple-minded peasant had kept untainted some of the beliefs and values of Christianity which modern criticism has refined away into "pale negations." One asked if it were not possible to look back of the Protestant Reformation, back of all the churches, and in a way back of the Bible itself, to see how men first came to believe in the soul, in heaven, in a higher wisdom. The undertaking would be difficult, for each of us comes forward with a word of warning in behalf of some out-worn creed. A dispassionate study of human nature from the point of view of inner spiritual experience is indeed difficult. Yet this book has been written with the hope that just such studies are possible, that many of us care so little for organizations, or for anything that doctrinaires may say or scientific critics may invent, that there is reason to press forward to learn for ourselves what is true, what is real.

While then many of us returned from the other war-countries unsettled, unable to take up our occupations in the same old way, we bore within our spirits something very definite and promising. There actually is a new dispensation

Foreword ix in process. The war was part of it. The present class struggle is another. The interest in psychical phenomena is a third. The remarkable unity attained by the Allies during 1918 was a forerunner of the spirit of cooperation that is to come. We have a right to believe that there is such cooperation between the other life and this as the world has never seen before. Those of us who are ready can play a part. By so doing we shall put ourselves in line with the constructive forces. By so doing we may pass far beyond the stage of mere questioning and mere investigation into that of actual assimilation and actual use. And why on the whole should we not be free to acquire a philosophy of the relationship of the two worlds? Why not take seriously the teaching that man is a spirit already in the spiritual world in his inmost nature, while at the same time active in this world's affairs? Why should we forever make concessions to materialism and to orthodoxy? Why not be free spirits in quest of truth?

This book is addressed at any rate to those who are eager for personal evidences because they have lost friends during the war, and to those who are free to follow wherever the spirit of truth may lead in these days of unrest. Its point of view is unclassified. Its teaching is eclectic, not in any sense sectarian. It appeals

Foreword to the reader to think and believe for himself, and to cultivate his own powers. This seems like individualism, but it is the call of the new age. It seems like undue emphasis on the inner life, but we have been putting the wrong stress on outward things. Well may we conclude to press through to the deeper meanings of the new dispensation, the age of the recovery of the open vision and the realities which it discloses.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The New Awakening . .... 1

II Psychical Experience 13

II

The word "psychic" is on every lip today* Yet there are many who have no clear idea of the nature of the psychical realm in relation to the spiritual and physical. The word seems to cover the whole range from credulity to science. There is a tendency to confuse external phenomena with inner experience. It is well to draw certain distinctions that we may mark out the field of inner experience in general and within that field distinguish what is psychical.

In the larger sense the psychical is the whole sphere of mental life in contrast with the physical. In psychology a psychical fact is whatever is directly experienced by the mind in contrast with what science tells us by way of explanation of what we feel and otherwise perceive. Thus the fact of pleasure or pain is psychical, while the science that describes it and supplies what is lacking to make our" knowledge complete is psychology. But this usage is too general.

In popular thought a psychical experience is mysterious or questionable. A person known as a "psychic" or "sensitive" is one supposed to possess uncanny or supernormal power, such as clairvoyance, "second sight" the ability to read another's mind, or to fall into a trance. There is a tendency to classify all phenomena bordering upon spiritism as occult or abnormal. But this may be chiefly because we have tended to push these matters aside instead of marching straight up to them. We shall make headway if we now undertake to describe and explain them in the light of reason.

There are phenomena indeed which we may always regard as abnormal. Thus the mesmeric or hypnotic sleep although psychical is an experience against which we rebel in behalf of sound individuality and the cultivation of the intellect and the will. We object also to mediumship and disapprove of trances. Yet back of all this that is unsound lies the fact that many of us are to a greater or lesser degree sensitive, susceptible to impressions, mental atmospheres and guidances which seem to bring us higher wisdom. What we protest against is undue use of this the sensitive side of our nature. There undoubtedly is a perfectly normal use of our psychical powers.

We may perhaps define more carefully what we mean by psychical experience if we compare the psychical with other phases of our life. When we speak of worship, prayer, pious service in almsgiving, ministering to the sick, the widowed and fatherless, we have in mind a distinct part of our individual and social existence, namely our religious life. In the best sense of the term "Christian" we mean by religion not only outward observances but personal piety, the response of the heart, a life according to the creed we profess in putting love for God and man above self-love. The word "psychic" does not enter in unless we associate with our piety something pertaining to the interior channels through which the experiences of the heart are said to come, unless we refer to other matters than direct communion with God or conversation through spoken words with men.

When we consider mysticism as a special phase of this life of the heart, however, we realize that the psychical always enters in. For the typical mystic is one who emphasizes inner experience as the primary means of knowing spiritual reality. The mystic may not hear voices or indulge in any activities in connection with spiritism, yet he surely has visions, he possesses psychical sensitivity to an unusual degree, and is likely to experience the ecstasy or uplift which leads mystics to believe they have direct communion with God. We fail to understand the mystic unless we take his psychical experiences into account. The mystic is in part a seer. He enjoys the open vision in some degree. His inner life might be studied as a clue to the reality of psychical experience, apart from any particular belief such as spiritual pantheism which springs from his visions.

We might say that psychical experience is a phase of the whole spiritual life. But whenever you speak of the spiritual life nowadays you must explain what you mean, for you might mean spiritism or you might be utterly opposed to it. A person might be a psychic or sensitive and not by any means "spiritual" as most of us understand the term. We would all like to be sanely spiritual and grow in insight. We think of the spiritual in the best religious sense as implying a divine standard. The clue to the interpretation of the psychical must be spiritual, we insist.

The term "psychic" has been applied to the whole range of phenomena inclusive of materializations, raps, automatic writing, table-tipping, planchette-writing, the ouija-board, clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, psychometry, visions, apparitions, and the like. But we must distinguish between psychical or inner experience and external events, things or methods of activity connected with such experience. A rap is a physical happening if objectively actual at all. If nothing physical occurs, it is merely an auditory illusion. So the tipping of a table is a physical occurrence. An experiment with a ouija-board is psychical only so far as the evidence compels us to look beyond unconscious muscular action or automatism for an explanation. The motions of a pencil held receptively in the hand may be purely automatic and may have no inner or psychical accompaniment whatever. What is psychical in connection with any of these phenomena when visible things are used is the inner experience of receiving impressions or the unwitting response to the activities of one's own subconsciousness. The inner impressions or responses are the psychical parts of the phenomena. This is probably always somewhat complex when, for example, the recipient contributes the requisite sensitivity and willingness to participate in the experience, in so far as the external memory is drawn upon, also the language that chances to be in one's mind as a whole, conscious and subconscious. If we could in all cases dispense with the external means, such as the use of a pencil or a board, what would be left would be the series of impressions with the feelings or words conveyed by means of these through the external memory.

We must distinguish between the inner or psychical reality and its associates or appearances, that is, the mere phenomena. There may be both outward associates, such as a tippingtable or a moving pencil; and inward associates subject to misinterpretation or illusion. Thus an inner voice might seem to be heard outside when no sound is produced, yet the inner voice might be profoundly real. Thus a spiritual vision might have mystical associates round about a very genuine religious experience. Interpretations may vary and the names attached to an experience may be different, just as a vision beheld on a battle-field is variously interpreted and named by soldiers of various nationalities or faiths. An acute psychology would tell us what element in each case is inwardly real and this inner reality would be psychical.

The question of the abnormal elements of inner experience pertains to the given individual and is another problem, referring to the state of a person's health, for example, the presence or absence of a high degree of intellect offsetting or fostering the emotions. Psychical experience may be said to give us "supernormal' ' information, that is, information over and above that of our physical senses, but only because we know so little about the total environment of the human spirit. We may come to see that every normal individual regularly receives information or guidance wrongly classified as supernormal. It is wholly normal to be a spiritual being. It is perfectly normal to live in the spiritual world and in the natural world at the same time. It is entirely normal and desirable to receive guidances from the spiritual world. It is in every way desirable to acquire wisdom from the other world by which to live in this — if it come according to divine order. The essential is knowledge, insight, intelligence in the use of wisdom from a truly superior source.

We may illustrate by telepathy or thought-transference. By this is meant direct communication between one mind and another otherwise than through the organs of speech or other physical means. It may involve the mere action of one mind on another or may also include definite words. Sometimes there is spontaneous transference, that is, without pre-arrangement or a direct act of will. Again, there is experimental transference under precise conditions as to time and receptivity. But the term has also been extended to include subconscious acquisition of memories from the minds of others present or absent. Thus a psychically inclined person may unwittingly read from another's mind thoughts which purport to come from spirits. A medium may draw on the minds of people present without intending to do so. Our minds may contribute subject matter without our consent. The tendency at present is to push this explanation as far as possible and to refrain from belief in the reality of a spirit-message if one can. However that may be, we note that telepathic experience implies psychical power. None of us knows to what extent we may give and receive similar thoughts.

According to theosophy, telepathy includes the projection of "thought-forms" from one person to another. This projection involves the idea of etheric substance or force vibrating between human beings, as in wireless telegraphy. Whatever the interpretation put upon the experience, we ought properly to say that it is not thought that is transmitted but rhythm or vibration arousing an equivalent or corresponding thought, as we shall see more clearly in another chapter. What is implied on the part of the sender is power to direct the mind towards another at a distance. What is implied on the recipient's part is a psychical sensitive-plate capable of receiving rhythms or vibrations which set up equivalent thoughts. For my psychical state is always just my inner state, it does not travel. Your psychical state is just your inner state, it does not become an outer state. Granting that thought-interchange is the regular speech in the spiritual world, it is the normal and most direct mode of communication between any and all spirits whether still in this world or out of it.

Telepathy may be called the universal psychical language. w

The ability to read another's mind wittingly or unwittingly is intimately akin to the power known as clairvoyance or second sight. This power was originally attributed to persons in a mesmeric sleep by which they were supposed to discern objects concealed from sight or to see what happened at a distance. Mediums in a supposed trance were found to possess the same power. Some operators who experimented with mesmeric subjects found that they too had this power of interior vision, hence that the surrender to hypnosis or a trance was not necessary. Clairvoyance is in fact dependent on neither spirits nor exceptional mental states. It is simply perception at a distance when this inner seeing cannot be explained by reference to another mind, when not due to mere thought-transference. It may involve reading another's mind at a distance or the perceiving of distant events. It readily runs over into what we vaguely call the prophetical faculty or sixth sense. It may include visions, hence it readily leads to mysticism. But while some who are psychically inclined have the power to "see things" others merely feel or discern them without the seeing. It is akin to intuition, a word which fortunately we are never afraid of. Intuition underlies any number of efforts to read character, any number of clues which we spontaneously follow and regard as sane and worth while. At its best clairvoyance is inseparable from intuition and the open vision.

Thus too clairaudience or clear-hearing implies an inner power or spiritual sense akin to the physical sense of hearing. One may apparently hear another's voice with all the clearness of spoken utterance when no other person present hears a sound. A person at a distance may be thinking of the recipient with a half -uttered desire to summon him or a longing to communicate by some more direct means. Thus the experience on the sender's end may be an excellent instance of spontaneous transfer. One need not doubt the reality of the clear-hearing on the part of the recipient just because it is accompanied by an illusion that the voice is external and physical. There is a corresponding experience of inner hearing and sometimes of speaking in the case of real psychical communications. That is, one may experience the motor-impulse but may not speak, one may seem to hear a sound but become immediately aware that it is a thought arousing a motor-associate. That a real psychical experience may be accompanied by a motor-impulse need not surprise us at all. The point is that the psychical experience on our part involves the possession of an interior or spiritual sense. We possess various spiritual senses and these correspond with the physical organs of sense.

Every person possesses a "sphere" or mental atmosphere which like the odor of a rose discloses the nature and conditions of the source from which it comes. We unwittingly exchange many sorts of influence through our spheres. Those of us who are sensitive know the differences between one presence and another, and we grow in inner discernment or intuition, well aware that some people are akin, some not. To be singled out as "clairvoyant" is to possess the same power in greater degree. Some have learned to depend on this visualizing intuition so that it has become a regular means of discerning the mental and physical states and conditions of people. Apparently we should all accustom ourselves to the conception of the human spirit as normally possessing these inner powers.

To take up the subject of apparitions and other physical phenomena' would be to study the associates of psychical experience and raise the whole question of illusions and delusions. A credulous mind though desirably psychical may generate experiences that are objectively unreal. A "psychic" with mystic tendencies may project pictures and other imagery because of the tendencies 'of that type of mind. These external matters have been before the world for a long time. We are all cautious. What is now needed is acuter knowledge of the psychical background, the inner core of reality.

Note, for example, the difference between alleged messages coming from spirits by the instrumentality of table-tipping, the ouija-bdard or automatic writing, and messages coming through direct inner impression. The physical instrument has apparently been used to arouse the recipient to the possibility of receiving thoughts by direct impression. Thereupon the use of material means has been given up and the great inner world has begun to receive attention. Others of us were fortunate enough to begin with direct impressions and so have not resorted to physical means save perhaps to help people to break away from them. There must always be direct impression behind the mere phenomena whenever the experience is real, whether or not the participants are aware of it. This after all is the real thing. We may throw the material accompaniment out of account and give ourselves over to a study of the processes going on in the mind, knowingly or unknowingly.

By psychical experience then we mean a kind of inner experience taking place because man is a spirit with interior senses, powers of talking, hearing, seeing, discerning from spheres, from minds, from spirits, in the spiritual world as well as in the natural. If we were interiorly awake we would know that we have these powers and would look to them first as guides. Partly asleep as we are, absorbed if not imprisoned in physical things, we need to be aroused. The form which psychical experiences assume when they come to awaken us depends upon the type of person. Psychical experience may take on successively higher forms as we proceed. It is incumbent upon us to discover the real inner experience in each case, to seek its meaning and to distinguish it from its associates.

It is out of the question to judge of the reality and value of inner experience either by reference to the outward associates or by the character of the recipient known as a "psychic." We need not be at all surprised to learn that speakers and writers of a high degree of refinement are open to help through psychical experience. It is a question of the point of view of inner experience with its sources and values, the results to which it leads.

Inner experience is what I come to know about when I learn in some degree the difference between mind and brain, between consciousness and subconsciousness, between what I contribute from my personality and character and what is from conscience, from God and from other men. I am unable to explain such experiences by reference to things and events outside of me as if I were a mere automaton with thoughts and feelings only apparently coming from myself. Nor am I able to explain away such experiences as if wholly produced within me by beings outside. I am a real participant. I may become as acutely intellectual as I like and still find that these inner experiences are untouched by my sceptical acumen. My experiences may continue while I am engaged in the usual daily occupations, in every way vigorously normal. There is no necessary conflict between such experiences and what we call "sound sense." Such experiences need not separate a person from the social world. As a social being, a person has inner and psychical relationships as well as external relationships. In the inner world we are all the more intimately "members one of another." If I would know myself as an individual in the profounder sense of the word I must understand these interior relationships. For in the inner world as well as in my external social life I have my affinities and dislikes, I am attracted or I am repelled, I close the door or I open it. For better or worse I accept or reject all matters of moment on the basis of my inner preferences. Fortunate indeed am I if aware of the personal equation in this its more intimate sense, if I possess a standard such that I discern the psychical in relation to the spiritual. Well too for me if I am led to keep my spirit open, that I may grow into appreciation of the real sources of religious experience. For I may then classify the psychical element of experience in its proper place, and help my fellow-men to make the same classification.

We conclude then that psychical experience has no necessary connection with spiritualism or any form of occultism. In fact, we conclude that the psychical element of the inner life is in itself neutral or non-committal. It may be combined with any conceivable assemblage of human powers, in any temperament, in connection with any kind of belief in any age or nation. It is simply an element or aspect of inner human experience. The same spiritual senses or powers are used in any case, from the lowest to the highest type, and to condemn the psychical unqualifiedly would be to condemn our entire spiritual nature. It is a question of the type of person, the degree of intelligence, the use which is made of psychical power, the enlightenment in the given instance. In the psychical as such there is nothing to fear. What plays havoc is misinterpretation and misuse. We are capable of coming into clear light and seeing the true meaning and the true values.