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New Methods in Detail

(CONTINUED)

"The evidence for telepathy is both good and abundant." -Frank Podmore.

"The philosopher is no longer regarded as the highest type of humanity. The age demands that thought shall pass into volition, and that volition shall find expression in action.

"The conscions side of thought is sensation. It must be because we remember it. There was contact and hence memory.

"Is it not possible that we are bathed in a sea of motion (thought), and that we feel what we invite--that is to say, we feel what, by our development and volition, we attracti In that case thoughts are things. They pass, and in passing leave their impress.

Tho

"Will is merely an adjustment (a turning of attention) next step is connecting sensation with consciousness. In consciousness we perceive what we have continually, but unconsciously, felt. We open our minds, or close them, in willing, and thought does the rest.

"The thoughts themselves are evidently vibrations. If not, how can thought be transferred from one mind to another, as in telepathy?"-Leavitt.

"Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss." -Bacon.

CHAPTER X.

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL-CONTINUED.

TELEPATHY.

Concerning the question of the universal ether as a bearer of thought I may now be indulged in a few observations.

In these days of telegraphy and telephony people are talking a great deal about telepathy or thought-transferrence. The same phenomenon has also been called "mind reading."

Among people of all classes we find many who have no faith whatever in the alleged phenomena and many others who have unbounded confidence in them.

The Psychic Research Society has done a good deal to elucidate the phenomena ascribed to telepathy, concerning which elucidation the following summing up by a member of the society, based upon undoubted phenomena, ought to set the question at rest. That the atmospheric ether, or something akin to it, as yet unrecognized, does act as a vehicle of thought, under conditions, the laws determining which are not yet clear, appears to be a fact.

The results of investigations undertaken by the Psychic Research Society are thus given by Edward T. Bennett, who was for many years one of the society's secretaries. He He says:

"The conclusion seems to be irresistible, that the five senses do not exhaust the means by which knowledge may

enter the mind. In other words, the investigator seems to be driven to the conclusion that Thought-Transferrence or Telepathy must now be included among scientifically proved facts. The interpretation of the facts, the means by which knowledge is thus conveyed, the mode of its transmission, belong to a different branch of the inquiry."

Experiments thus far made have translated impressions in the terms of physical sense. Το learn what mind can really do in the direction of sending out its thoughts, something more than this is required.

"It does not follow," says Leibnitz, "because we do not perceive thought that it does not exist. It is a great source of error to believe there is no perception in the mind but that of which it is conscious." That there is both an inner and an outer sense of feeling finds color in a physiological study of phenomena. Sensations are produced and their effects follow without our realizing either the perception or its effects. A multitude of impressions are continually pelting us, though we are conscious of but few of them. Moreover, we should remember that the impressions we do not recognize are not only there just as much as those we do recognize, but that they are sometimes more profound.

The nervous system is a harp with a thousand strings, upon which the whole world of thought and action is playing. Put your ear to the sounding board of a piano and you will hear the vibrations of wind and wave, of passing wagons and trains, of footsteps and the lower hum of cosmic motion. Just so do external forces awaken harmonies or create discords within us. We are elated or depressed, inspired, animated and enlightened, or are discouraged and over

TELEPATHY.

105

come, but we know not why. and we shall find the cause. the effects of vibrations.

Go deeply enough Sensations are only

Now here is the important consideration: FROM

OUT THIS MASS OF DIVERSIFIED VIBRATIONS WE CAN LEARN TO ADMIT ONLY THOSE THAT MINISTER TO

COMFORT AND PROFIT. To all the others we may become insensate. They reach us, to be sure, but our minds may be so under control that they shall be refused thought space, and accordingly pass unnoticed and without pronounced effect.

F. W. H. Myers himself, after taking every precaution against possible sources of error, witnessed the effect of one mind upon another through the power of hypnotism exercised at a distance by a Dr. Gilbert. The doctor strongly willed a woman more than a half-mile away to come at once to his office. To be sure he had frequently hypnotized her, but in this instance the possibility of collusion or of post-hypnotic suggestion was cautiously ruled out.

The woman came, in a state of hypnosis, and remained under its power until released by the doctor.

From a scientific work by Prof. Nathan C. Schaeffer, entitled "Thinking and Learning to Think," recently published, I take the following: "The stimulating influences which go forth from a live teacher are partly conscious and partly unconscious. The latter are the more effective. Minds gifted with quickening power create about themselves an 'intellectual atmosphere' that is like the invigorating atmosphere of the mountains or the tonic breezes which blow from the sea. The woman who touched the hem of the Savior's garment felt at once the vivifying influences which were all the time going forth from the Great Teacher. Here we stand face to face with the greatest mystery of the teacher's art.”

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