CHAPTER XX

TELEPATHY AND CLAIRVOYANCE

THERE are few thinkers and still fewer experimentalists in the field of psychical research who are ready to draw a hard and fast line between one phase of psychical phenomena and another, for so closely interblended are various phases of psychical activity that it seems practically impossible to separate them, so persistently coexistent even through distinct are they. As Telepathy means feeling at a distance, and Clairvoyance means clear sight, we may not incorrectly add that one of the principal meanings of Clairvoyance is seeing at a distance, a distance so much greater than ordinary as to make its range of vision appear decidedly peculiar. In cases of simple Telepathy the general inference is that a message is distinctly conveyed from one place to another, and from one person to another, by some far subtler agent than is recognized in the ordinary affairs of common life. When the factor of Clairvoyance enters, the phenomena becomes complicated, demands further investigation and presents a far more intricate problem for solution. It is sufficiently marvelous for most people to be told that a person, a thousand or more miles distant, can transmit his thought accurately, causing you to understand his meaning as though he were actually by your side physically and conversing with you face to face, but as in the case of our own experiences, with Lady Caithness and others, vision as well as feeling, and mental perception have to be taken into account. Though such experiences have been designated telepathic, they include additional evidence in support of Clairvoyance. G. F. C. Grumbine in his book entitled “Clairvoyance,” includes under that single heading almost all that we are accustomed to refer to as illumination, insight, intuition, etc. The use of the word “Clairvoyance” in so broad a sense is probably no violation of etymology, as clear vision is certainly the bulwark of every seer or seeress, and those titles were continually applied to prophets and prophetesses in days of old, as the Bible abundantly testifies. The chief difficulty encountered in any endeavor to demonstrate telepathic communion is the obtuseness of many people to psychic impressions when the limitation is not found on the side of the would-be transmitter of information psychically. Concentration of thought and of gaze are very closely allied; the former is the great essential to success in Telepathy, the latter is equally necessary for the culture of Clairvoyance.

The successful telepathist is one who can and does definitely fix his mind on one object to the exclusion of all others; he has acquired the excellent all-important habit of thinking of just one thing at a time, never permitting two thoughts to become entangled. The seer or clairvoyant is one who as resolutely gazes upon one thing at a time, never allowing his vision to be confused, or his attention distracted, no matter how great the provocation or temptation to eye-wandering may be. Though there certainly are authentic instances on record of children whose Clairvoyance has been wonderful, though they have undergone no training whatever, these little ones seem not to be subject to the need of those mental exercises which the majority of adults find necessary, first to get them out of bad habits and then to get them into good ones. In the case of the remarkable children we refer to, there are no obstacles to be overcome and they are by nature of a quiet contemplative turn of mind or else so extremely alert that we may safely decide that their extremely transparent mental organization furnishes exactly the instrument needed for demonstrating to less enlightened people the reality of a spiritual universe. Grown people are for the most part anxious and fussy, and to the extent that they have allowed themselves to become apprehensive or careworn they have unconsciously built a wall or barrier around them psychically, so that they have become opaque or obtuse instead of transparent or diaphanous as to their auric envelope. Theosophists dwell much upon auras and a consideration of what affects the human aura is always an important study. The aura of a human being resembles closely the atmosphere of a planet. No less an astronomer than Dorman Steele undertook to suggest an interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis based on astronomical considerations, tending to the thought that the work of the fourth creative day—viewed from the terrestrial or geocentric standpoint, from which the author of the Pentateuch was viewing the universe—had no reference to the creation of the sun or the starry hosts, but only to the clearing of the earth’s atmosphere to such an extent that during the fourth great geologic period the sun’s rays began to penetrate and dissipate the dense fogs and vapors which had long encircled this planet, and thus the star-bespangled firmament became visible from an earthly viewpoint. Whether any of us are interested or not in the essentially historical question raised by the foregoing opinion on a much disputed document, the illustration serves remarkably well to enforce a true and reasonable view of how the clairvoyant faculty can be developed or, we may say, how it often presents itself as already actively existent.

The auric belt or zone which surrounds an individual is dense or bright in proportion to the mental clearness or fogginess of the one who generates the aura. People who live mentally in the cellars of their nature, never rising in thought above the contemplation of material foibles may develop a very crude sort of clairvoyance, scarcely worthy of so dignified a name, but the higher and distinctly ennobling aspects of the faculty are entirely beyond them, beyond their experience because far above their interest. Clairvoyance is by no means an unmixed blessing though it is capable of being so used as to prove always and only an advantage to its possessor and to all who are privileged to share in its revelations. The wise prophets of ancient Israel, who were themselves seers of the highest rank, knew enough of Chaldean and Babylonian psychism to be able to warn the people to whom they preached against a misdirected agent, which because of misdirection occasioned untold and inestimable misery.

Narrow, prejudiced commentators are very apt to exercise no discrimination whatever when expounding the letter of biblical text, but thoughtful unbiased students never fall into the error of supposing that invectives hurled against witchcraft and necromancy had any reference to simple and profitable Clairvoyance. Every great and accepted prophet has been renowned as a clairvoyant, but when unscrupulous people desecrated a noble faculty, not only for money, but to serve the ends of malice, there arose an outcry against the very gift itself which had been thus prostituted. It was nothing but shameless sensuality, often of the most revolting types, which drove many well-meaning teachers to proclaim asceticism as the highest good; in like manner abuse of psychic endowments has led to a blind, ignorant terror-stricken denunciation of those noble and beneficent psychic endowments which have ever characterized by their high presence the greatest moral teachers of our race.

Sir Wm. Crookes, one of England’s most illustrious scientific men, has on several occasions given publicity to his theory of brain-waves and to a kindred conception of an ether-substance, along which intelligence can be transmitted at an almost incalculable rate of speed to practically interminable distances. The sensitive man or animal who can feel the quivering or vibrating of this ether is “mediumistic” to an unusual extent in the estimation of investigators in the psychic field who are not personally so susceptible to impressions.

Animal worship as indulged in by the ancient Egyptians and many other historic peoples is largely to be explained on the basis of their great admiration for psychic demonstrations and their wish to unfold psychically themselves. Witnessing the extraordinary sensitiveness of dogs, cats and other familiar animals they supposed these creatures to be in close and favored communion with divinities with whom they hoped to curry favor by showing honor to the animals who were the recipients of their singular esteem. It is well worth any student’s while to read such portions of the Egyptian Book of the Dead as have been translated into English for the sake of understanding the probable origin and certain animus of several peculiar religious cults which are attracting great attention now that the world seems on the lookout for a new religion, and while searching for an acceptable one is devoting much time and thought to a reëxamination of the oldest as well as the youngest which can be offered for contemplation. A study of animal life is always entertaining and instructive, and as in some directions certain animals excel us in our present stage of development, we should not be too proud to observe our four-footed companions with a view to learning all they are able to suggest to us. It is noticeable everywhere that those animals which display the most remarkable sagacity, evince ability to discover lost children, and render other services of priceless value, are very thorough in all they undertake and enter into whatever they do with zest and earnestness. They take a great interest in life; they are thoroughly on the alert when anything is going on which in any way interests them, and at the same time they are fond of periodic ease and can be just as lazy when they are resting as they are active when engaged in some pursuit. An excellent rule for everybody is: Do whatever you do with all your heart; throw yourself unreservedly into all your undertakings one after the other; make yourselves completely at home, wherever you may be at present. When you eat enjoy your food thoroughly, cultivate a due appreciation of the pleasures of the table, give the organ of alimentiveness an opportunity to expand normally; then when a meal is over go to your business or study, whatever that may be, and throw your whole energy and interest into the work in which you are then engaging. When you retire for the night, give yourself up wholly to sleep; appreciate the boon of slumber, never permit yourself to think contemptuously of repose or wish it were unnecessary. Such brief, concise directions as the foregoing must be mastered and lived up to before any one is found ready to normally or healthfully pursue the path of psychical ascension into the upper realms where Clairvoyance is as normal as our ordinary lesser sight, common to every-day people, is normal on its lower plane of expression. Saul was sent to seek his father's asses which had strayed; Samuel set Saul's mind at rest, through Clairvoyance, concerning the asses and then immediately proceeded to unfold matters of immeasurably higher moment than the whereabouts of a few donkeys. Clairvoyance includes the lower as it rises to embrace the higher. It is doubtful whether public professional clairvoyants are generally accurate in their visions, not because they are other than honest men and women, but by reason of the impossibility of complying with necessary conditions in the surroundings in which most of them live and work. There may be a few people in every community who have arrived so near to the stage of adepts that they can afford to snap their fingers at such conditions as most sensitives find necessary for the exercise of their gift, and should we encounter one of these exceptionally developed people we should no doubt be greatly astonished at the revelation made to us in a surrounding apparently incompatible with the exercise of lucidity. When, however, the clairvoyant is only a tyro it is highly essential that the mental as well as the physical atmosphere during a "sitting" should be held as quiet as possible. Mental pictures are often projected on the screen of ether which we ordinarily speak of simply as the air of the room. The atmosphere is like the screen at a stereopticon exhibition and must be held steady if the pictures displayed upon it are to appear with sufficient distinctness to make the exhibition a success. Crystal-gazing, or even looking quietly into a glass of clear water, is an introductory help to many embryo sensitives. Any practice, indeed, which serves to induce comfortable passivity of mind and body is favorable to the display of Clairvoyance, but by passivity we do not mean what a great many people suppose is intended by that much abused word. Activity of desire and expectancy must precede passivity in action. There must be an end or object in view or there is little reason in the attitude of the clairvoyant. It is not usually very profitable to simply sit gazing into vacancy, ready to see anything which may present itself in a crystal; there should certainly be some definite end in view or object to be gained if the exercise is likely to prove profitable in any determinable direction. There are a great many things we wish to know which transcend the scope of material discovery, and if our quest for this additional knowledge is legitimate it is perfectly reasonable to believe that we are endowed with some means or faculty whereby we can make these discoveries. Once let the idea of Clairvoyance be brought down from the clouds of mysticism in which it has so long dwelt and psychical investigation will be so far simplified and rationalized that the exercise of Clairvoyance will be as natural and regular as the employment of physical eyesight. Cleared or clarified vision is necessarily extended vision and the thought of extension applies quite as much to insight as to farsight or foresight. Science is now rapidly demonstrating the presence of myriads of objects unseen by the average eye yet capable of being discerned with the aid of a microscope and often photographed without the employment of other or more delicate apparatus than that in constant use among photographers. If a clairvoyant says, "I see a form or object beside you which you do not see because you are not equal to discerning it," there is nothing more wonderful in that augmented vision of the human seer than in the proof afforded by photography or microscopy of the presence of the same objects. The present age is happily one in which man is coming to believe in himself as well as in something external to himself and in consequence of this ever enlarging view of man universally the old glamour of supernaturalism is waning, while a lawful recognition of psychic phenomena is gaining ground continually. Culture of the psychic faculty is not so difficult, neither is it so very easy, as some suppose. It requires persistent attention rather than laborious effort just as the close attention we pay to anything often rewards us far more than toilsome attempts to force ourselves to acquire knowledge. Night and darkness have been frequently associated with Clairvoyance, because night and shade do not afford opportunity or invitation to excessive physical exercise and we cannot as a rule do two things well at once. One by one our tasks must be fulfilled; one by one our occupations must be dealt with, and as it seems impossible to be awake and asleep at the same instant, so does it seem almost incredible that we can be seriously occupied with material cares and at the same time keenly alive to what lies beyond external ken. Another consideration of the means whereby Clairvoyance can be developed, occurs to us as we call to mind a narrative concerning some good people on the Pacific coast to whom the Klondike excitement brought spiritual development.

A happily married couple who had long been interested in psychical matters, but had registered no personal evidence of their own susceptibility to unseen influences, were for several months completely separated in body as the husband went to Alaska and the wife remained in Seattle with her mother. When the man had reached the gold fields he could not communicate with his wife in any material way as neither telegraph, telephone nor post-office was available, and though he had no cause to be anxious on her account, as she was a healthy woman living at home in a comfortable house among friends, she was greatly concerned for his welfare as many alarming accounts of the dangers and sufferings of miners in a district near where she believed her husband to be working had reached her ears. Determined to put to a practical test the statement often made to her by "sensitives" of her acquaintance, that she was an excellent clairvoyant potentially though actually she had never cultivated her endowment, she resolved upon devoting some time late every evening just before retiring for the night to the liberation of her psychic faculty. For three or four nights she sat quietly in an easy chair in her sleeping room for over an hour but received no evidence of seership. However before a week was over she felt herself capable of discerning the dim outlines of a mining camp, and shortly the form of her husband distinctly appeared to her. Describing her experiences to friends (she was always willing to relate them), she declared many times in the most positive terms that she had no sensation at all akin to traveling in an "astral body" or of being transported through space; on the contrary she felt thoroughly at home in her own organism, but her vision pierced all intervening space and Alaska was as near as an adjoining dressing-room. When her husband returned well and strong and with a larger pile of treasure than many miners brought with them, he was, to use his own words, “literally dumbfounded” with the contents of his wife’s diary which she had kept faithfully and which contained minute records of his own experiences in Alaska while she was in Seattle, and the most satisfying and at the same time amazing portions of her entries were thoughts of his which had clearly amounted to perfect mental messages.

After closely inspecting the diary and noting the dates of the different entries he discovered that whenever he had particularly wished to communicate some piece of information to his wife to ease her mind concerning his health and safety she had received a specially clear and strong picture of himself and of his whereabouts, while at other times when he had been thinking less intently of his home and its inmates her sight of him and his surroundings had been far less distinct. Evidences are everywhere multiplying which go far to prove that even so wildly romantic a tale as George du Maurier’s “Peter Ibbetson” may have been built on actual fact, for it does occur that when two people are devotedly attached to each other and circumstances hold their bodies rigidly apart, the soul-sense we may well call Clairvoyance, in company with a train of kindred senses beyond our common ken, assert themselves right vigorously and afford a present day explanation of the telling words of Lovelace, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”

We are now on the very verge of Spiritualism proper and we have only to say that though a mass of error has been mixed up with its history during the past half century and more, there is so much of truth in it as a demonstrable philosophy that through the steady and rapid advance of scientific study of all psychic problems now in progress, there are arising new and noble phases of mediumship convincing the inquiring multitude that physical dissolution is in no sense death in the old blind barbaric meaning attached to that ancient word. We are here and now spiritual beings and we remain such hereafter. “Death hath no power to part the fond, they are together still,” is a perfectly true statement, and equally true is it that no possible terrestrial barriers can separate effectually those who are truly linked in the bonds of sincere affection, and are therefore united one to the other in spiritual ways, which earthly changes can never have power to rupture. There are other aspects of clairvoyance apart from those we have been touching upon, which are less easily dealt with, because they are often mistaken for something they certainly are not. We allude to the sight of what are often termed “astral pictures” which inexperienced sensitives cannot very readily explain, but which deeper students of clairvoyance find no difficulty in accounting for. Nothing can be more unreasonable and unkind than stamping with the brand of falsehood visions which we have not yet learned to interpret scientifically. Clairvoyants often claim to know nothing of the real nature of what they see, consequently they are not justly chargeable with even making mistakes if they describe scenes which seem to us incongruous and which we may misinterpret in our present ignorance of what such visions truly signify. We are often greatly pleased with descriptions of absent or departed friends which strike us at first as extremely accurate, but when we look more deeply into the question, we are beset with grave difficulties. A good clairvoyant once gave exactly the following description of a departed brother to a gentleman in London who was then beginning to seriously investigate the claims of Spiritualism: "I see a young man with you; he is very much attached to you, and is constantly with you; he appears about twenty-eight years of age, certainly not over thirty; he is dressed in a gray tweed suit with a blue cravat; his hair is light brown, rather thin and parted in the middle; he has a moustache but no beard or whiskers." The gentleman in question went to another clairvoyant in another part of London two or three days later, and received an almost identical description which he declares answers exactly to the appearance of his younger brother who passed away quite suddenly while on a summer tour in Norway rather less than two years previously. The facts in the case are, that these two young men were greatly attached to each other and that the survivor keeps in his room on the mantelpiece a picture of his departed brother very differently dressed, so that had either clairvoyant seen the photograph she would have described a black suit and a white necktie. When the surviving brother last saw the one who has passed over, that young man was attired exactly as the two clairvoyants have described, but no material portrait has been taken of him in that dress. Now comes in the investigator's difficulty. Do we on passing into spirit life (he inquires) permanently retain the exact appearance, even to details of apparel, which we presented just before leaving the mortal frame, and if not why are we told that our friends present just such appearances? There are but two rational answers to this most natural question, and they are as follows: 1. Many clairvoyants see into our surrounding aura and behold imprinted thereon the pictures of events and circumstances which have greatly impressed us and which we carry about with us quite unknowingly, it may be, as a relatively permanent portion of the contents of our psychic picture gallery. 2. Our friends in spirit-life when seeking to make known to us the reality of their continued interest in us and in our welfare, often show themselves to clairvoyant vision in a manner most sure to strike us with a conviction of their identity. In the former instance we are very unlikely to receive any definite information and are apt to feel perplexed and saddened because, though our friends are thus accurately described as being with us, we never seem to derive a glimmer of intelligence as to their condition or to enjoy any comforting assurance that they are truly in communion with us. In the latter instance we invariably either receive some characteristic message, or we feel in some subtle spiritual way that we are truly in communion with one whom we love and by whom we are loved. All phases of psychic phenomena are now being considered both critically and sympathetically by large numbers of intelligent people to an extent utterly unprecedented in comparatively recent times, and as it is always desirable to be cautious ere we admit too much, though we should be ever ready to accept the logic of evidence from whatever direction it may come without the slightest prejudice, we feel properly thankful for all attempted definitions of so wonderful and far-reaching a faculty as clairvoyance which help in any way to afford a basis for a rational interpretation of its true nature. The public is indebted to that fascinating author, C. W. Leadbeater, for the following summarization of Clairvoyance which we quote from his very popular work, "Man Visible and Invisible," the sub-title of which is "Examples of Different Types of Men as Seen by Means of Trained Clairvoyance." Chapter three, entitled "Clairvoyant Sight," ends with these words,—"The clairvoyant is simply a man who develops within himself the power to respond to another octave out of the stupendous gamut of possible vibrations, and so enables himself to see more of the world around him than those of more limited perception." That statement surely applies with equal force to the telepathist who feels rather than sees, and to the clairaudient also whose especial sensitiveness is in the field of hearing. Increased sensitiveness is the key to the mystery in all cases and this can be successfully induced by living a quiet, wholesome life, free from undue excitement, subsisting upon simple nutritious food, taking a good amount of outdoor exercise, and above all by determining to live a life of untarnished truthfulness, so that the "auric envelope" may be kept unsullied as a reflecting medium.