Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science. Hudson Tuttle
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has been received as true by profound thinkers in every age. Swedenborg, Zschokke, Davis, are not peculiarities of modern times, but repetitions of Socrates, Apollonius, and countless others who deeply impressed their personality on their times.
What is Clairvoyance?—Clairvoyance is a peculiar state of impressibility, presenting gradations from semi-consciousness to profound and death-like trance. Whether natural, or induced by artificial means, the attending phenomena are similar. In its most perfect form the body is in deepest sleep. A flame may be applied to it without producing the quiver of a nerve; the most pungent substances have no effect on the nostrils; pins or needles thrust into the most sensitive part give no pain; surgical operations may be performed without being felt. Hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, as well as seeing, are seemingly independent of the physical organs. The muscular system is either relaxed or rigid; the circulation impeded in some cases until the pulse becomes imperceptible; and respiration leaves no stain on a mirror held over the nostrils.
In passing into this state, the extremities become cold, the brain congested, the vital powers sink, a dreamy unconsciousness steals over the faculties of the mind. There is a sensation of sinking or floating. After a time the perceptions become intensified; we can not say the senses are intensified, for they are of the body, which for the time, is insensible.
The mind sees without the physical organs of vision, hears without the organs of hearing, and feeling becomes a refined consciousness, which brings it en rapport with the intelligence of the world. The more death-like the conditions of the body, the more lucid the mind, which for the time owes it no fealty.
If, as there is every reason to believe, clairvoyance depends on the unfolding of the spirit’s perception, then the extent of that unfolding marks the degree of its perfection. However great or small this may be, the state itself is the same, differing only in degree, whether observed in the Pythian or Delphic oracle, the visions of St. John, the trance of Mohammed, the epidemic catalepsy of religious revivals, or the illumination of Swedenborg. The revelations made have a general resemblance, but they are so colored by surrounding circumstances that they are extremely fallible. The tendency of the trance is to make objective the subjective ideas acquired by education. This is exhibited in cases of religious ecstasy and trance, when the subject sees visions of winged angels and of Christ; transforming dogmas and beliefs into objective realities. Such revelations, of course, have no more value than the illusory visions of the fever-stricken patient.
Yet there is a profound state which sets this aside, and divests the mind of all trammels, and brings it into direct contact with the thought atmosphere of the world—the psycho-ether. Time and space for it, then, have no existence, and matter is transparent.
The weakening of the physical powers by disease is favorable to sensitiveness. As the senses are deadened, the powers of the interior consciousness are quickened, and a new world rises above the horizon of the corporeal senses.
Evidence of the truth of clairvoyance was given in the Brooklyn Eagle, soon after the loss of the “Arctic,” in 1854. The wife, son and daughter of Captain Collins were making the tour of Europe, and the Captain, to gratify a passing whim, consulted a clairvoyant as to their locality. The answer was that they were at that time visiting a church, which was accurately described. When the wife’s letter came, it contained a narrative of a visit to a church at exactly the same hour, describing it as the clairvoyant had done, thus showing that the communication was quite correct.
As the family had arranged to return on the “Arctic,” and as the ship was a day late, of course Captain Collins became anxious. Sunday and Monday passed without news from the ship, and his anxiety increased. He thought of the clairvoyant and called on her. At first, although apparently deeply entranced, she could see nothing. Everything was in a cloud. At length she was able to see the three persons standing on the deck of a ship, amid great confusion, and almost concealed in fog and mist. This was all she could discern. This was nearly two days before the telegraph announced the loss of the “Arctic,” and the arrival of a boat-load of survivors on the Canadian coast. But the Collins family were not among the saved.
If we compare what may be called artificially induced with the spontaneous clairvoyance, we shall find them similar. The first example is of a sensitive, a youth of seventeen, who was blindfolded by means of soft paper folded double, and then gummed over his eyelids, and a silk handkerchief tied over this paper. Under these circumstances the sensitive was able to take a pack of cards and select any one called for, read the pages of a book, although those present were ignorant of the words, his sensitiveness being entirely independent of the knowledge of those around him.
Clairvoyance from Disease.—There are instances where persons have fallen into this sensitive or clairvoyant state by disease or a nervous shock, and in the prolonged trance which followed, manifested all the phenomena usual to the induced somnambulic or clairvoyant state, even in higher degree. Of these Mollie Fancher is one of the best examples. She was called the “sleepless girl of Brooklyn,” and for nine years, it is claimed by competent authority, did not sleep, and ate so little food that it was claimed she did not partake of any. She was, at fifteen years of age, healthy, but delicately organized. At that time she was thrown from a street car, and her head and body injured. A day or two afterwards she was seized with violent spasms. One by one her senses failed. Sight was first to leave, and hearing followed. Then she lost her speech, and then the ability to swallow. This last she had not been known to exercise for nine years, and during the same length of time her eyelids were closed. She took no sleep, unless the intervals of trance be called sleep. She was breathless and rigid as dead. These spasms lasted less than a minute, and were accompanied with, or followed by, violent muscular contortions.
Her lower limbs became twisted entirely around each other. Her right arm was bent upward and doubled under her head. She had no use of her right hand at all, and of the left hand only the thumb and little finger. Lying all the time, night and day, upon her right side, her right hand cramped under her neck, and only her left free, with closed eyes, and working back of her head, as she was forced to do, she wrought the most exquisite worsted work and wax flowers. The darkness or light were all the same to her; in fact, the light was painful to her, and even the gas-light was placed in the further corner of the room and shaded. She regained hearing and speech after several years, but otherwise her conditions remained unchanged. She knew the thoughts of those who came near her; printed pages or a sealed letter held in her hand back of her head were readily read. Mr. Henry Parkhurst made many experiments to test her powers. She repeatedly read sealed letters he gave her, and, as a crucial test, he took a letter at random from the waste basket of an acquaintance, tore it in strips, and then cut the stripes into squares. He shook the pieces well together, put them into an envelope, and sealed it. This he handed the blind girl. She passed her hand over it several times, took a pencil and wrote the letter verbatim. Mr. Parkhurst opened the envelope, arranged the pieces, and found she had made a perfect copy.
Not satisfied, with the assistance of two friends, Mr. Parkhurst secured an ancient mining report, yellow with age, and with averted face, so that he might not see the contents, he tore out a page of tabulated figures with explanation. This he folded and tore into scores of pieces. Some of the pieces fell on the floor and were allowed to remain there. The others he put in an envelope and sealed, and handed to one of his assistants, who put it in another envelope, which he also sealed and handed to the third, who enclosed it in the same manner. Then the party went to Miss Fancher’s room, and asked her to give them the contents of the envelope. She took it in her hand and wrote, “It is nonsense; figures in which there are blank places, words that are incomplete, and sentences in which words are missing.” She wrote on, in some sentences skipping three or four words, and began with the last five letters of a word having ten letters. The table of figures she made contained blank spaces, but she wrote it out; and the gentleman returned to Mr. Parkhurst’s, where they arranged the pieces in their original form. They found that the copy made by Miss Fancier was absolutely correct, and the blank spaces represented the pieces left on the floor. When these were fitted in, the broken sentences were complete.
Dr. Spier, from the first her attending physician, watched her case with unrelenting vigilance, and made a full record of her changing symptoms. One day he received a note from her, warning