Telepathy (Theory, Facts & Proof). William Walker Atkinson
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we formerly began. It would be well to begin with Telepathy; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the recognized organs of sense—that knowledge may enter the human mind without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognized ways. Although the inquiry has elicited important facts with reference to the mind, it has not yet reached the scientific stage of certainty which would enable it to be usefully brought before one of the sections. I will therefore confine myself to pointing out the direction in which scientific investigation can legitimately advance. If Telepathy take place, we have two physical facts—the physical change in the brain of A. the suggestor, and the analogous physical change in the brain of B. the recipient of the suggestion. Between these two physical events there must exist a train of physical causes. Whenever the connecting sequence of intermediate causes begins to be revealed, the inquiry will then come within the range of one of the sections of the British Association. Such a sequence can only occur through an intervening medium. All the phenomena of the Universe are presumably in some way continuous, and it is unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies when with every fresh advance in knowledge it is shown that ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to any demand—even the transmission of thought.”
The same eminent authority also says:
“It is supposed by some physiologists that the essential cells of nerves do not actually touch, but are separated by a narrow gap which widens in sleep while it narrows almost to extinction during mental activity. This condition is so singularly like that of a Branly or Lodge coherer (a device which has led Marconi to the discovery of wireless telegraphy) as to suggest a further analogy. The structure of the brain and nerves, being similar, it is conceivable that there may be present masses of such nerve coherers in the brain, whose special function it may be to receive impulses brought from without through the connecting sequence of ether waves of appropriate order of magnitude. Roentgen has familiarized us with an order of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason for believing that we have reached the limits of frequency. It is known that the action of thought is accompanied by certain molecular movements in the brain, and here we have physical vibrations capable from their extreme minuteness of acting direct upon individual molecules, while their rapidity approaches that of the internal movements of the atoms themselves.”
Prof. Camille Flammarion, the well-known French astronomer, says:
“We sum up, therefore, our preceding observations by the conclusion that one mind can act at a distance upon another, without the habitual medium of words, or any other visible means of communication. It appears to us altogether unreasonable to reject this conclusion if we accept the facts. There is nothing unscientific, nothing romantic, in admitting that an idea can influence the brain from a distance. The action of one human being upon another, from a distance, is a scientific fact; it is as certain as the existence of Paris, of Napoleon, of Oxygen, or of Sirius…. There can be no doubt that our psychical force creates a movement of the ether, which transmits itself afar like all movements of ether, and becomes perceptible to brains in harmony with our own. The transformation of a psychic action into an ethereal movement, and the reverse, may be analogous to what takes place on a telephone, where the receptive plate, which is identical with the plate at the other end, reconstructs the sonorous movement transmitted, not by means of sound, but by electricity.”
Prof. Ochorowicz says:
“Every living being is a dynamic focus. A dynamic focus tends ever to propagate the motion that is proper to it. Propagated motion becomes transformed according to the medium it traverses. Motion tends always to propagate itself. Therefore when we see work of any kind—mechanical, electrical, nervic, or psychic—disappear without visible effect, then, of two things, one happens, either a transmission or a transformation. Where does the first end, and where does the second begin? In an identical medium there is only transmission. In a different medium there is transformation. You send an electric current through a thick wire. You have the current, but you do not perceive any other force. But cut that thick wire and connect the ends by means of a fine wire; the fine wire will grow hot; there will be a transformation of the current into heat. Take a pretty strong current and interpose a wire still more resistant, or a very thin carbon rod. The carbon will emit light. A part of the current then is transformed into heat and light. This light acts in every direction around about, first visibly as light, then invisibly as heat and as electric current. Hold a magnet near it. If the magnet is weak and movable, in the form of a magnetic needle, the beam of light will cause it to deviate; if it is strong and immovable, it will in turn cause the beam of light to deviate. And all this from a distance, without contact, without special conductors. A process that is at once chemical, physical and psychical, goes on in a brain. A complex action of this kind is propagated through the gray matter, as waves are propagated in water. Regarded on its physiological side, an idea is only a vibration, a vibration that is propagated, yet which does not pass out of a medium in which it can exist as such. It is propagated as far as other like vibrations allow. It is propagated more widely if it assumes the character which subjectively we call emotive. But it cannot go beyond without being transformed. Nevertheless, like force in general, it cannot remain in isolation—it escapes in disguise…. Thought stays at home, as the chemical action of a battery remains in a battery; it is represented by its dynamic correlate, called in the case of the battery, a current, and in the case of the brain—I know not what; but whatever its name may be, it is the dynamic correlate of thought. I have chosen the term ‘dynamic correlate.’ There is something more than that; the universe is neither dead nor void. A force that is transmitted meets other forces, and if it is transformed only little by little, it usually limits itself to modifying another force at its own cost, though without suffering perceptibly thereby. This is the case particularly with forces that are persistent, concentrated, well seconded by their medium; it is the case with the physiological equilibrium, nervic force, psychic force, ideas, emotions, tendencies. These modify environing forces without themselves disappearing; they are but imperceptibly transformed, and if the next man is of a nature exceptionally well adapted to them, they gain in inductive action.”
It is quite gratifying to find such eminent scientific authority expressing its conviction of the reality of thought-transference. But the average person, in the end, believes in Telepathy not so much because this scientist or that one thinks it reasonable, but because he or she has had some personal experience or bit of individual proof. Who of us has not had the experience of thinking of someone whom we have not seen or heard of for months or years, only to see the individual in person shortly afterward? Often in speaking to another person, we will find that he will utter the very words that we had in mind. It is not uncommon for two persons to start in at the same moment to say precisely the same thing to each other. How often has the person of whom we have been speaking walked unexpectedly into our presence. The old saying, “Speak of the angels, and you hear the rustle of their wings” voices the common experience of the race in this respect. Several years ago, Mark Twain wrote a magazine article in which he stated an experience common to many others. He said that he was in the habit of writing a letter to a person, and then, after duly addressing it, destroying it instead of mailing it. He added that he had noticed that very frequently he would receive an answer to the unmailed letter, written by the person addressed about the same time that the original letter was written, addressed and destroyed, and that these answers frequently covered the identical points mentioned in the original letter.
Moreover many persons have experimented with “the willing game” and similar parlor feats along the lines of “mind-reading,” and have found that there “is something in it, after all.” The rise into popularity of the teachings of the New Thought or Mental Science has familiarized many persons with the idea of thought-transference in some of its varied forms, until to-day we find that the majority of persons are prepared to admit that “there must be some fire where there is so much smoke.” We trust that we will be able to make the subject somewhat clearer in this little volume.
CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF THE