How to thought-read / A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism

by F.A.S. Ph.D. James Coates

THE SPIRIT WITHIN US.

There is Spiritualism and Spiritualism. That which I am most interested in is not so much a hankering after spirits, “spirit controls,” and the phenomena, generally recognised as the right thing in certain circles, as that other Spiritualism which leads to an honest endeavour on our parts to ascertain if we are spirits, here and now, albeit clothed for the time being in an organic envelope, relating us to our present estate.

If we are embodied spirits, it will be possible for the spirit-man (the essential self—ego, I am), in each human being to communicate at times, and under certain fitting conditions, with other fellow-beings, under such circumstances, and in such a way, as to make it clear:—

(a.) That the communications could not have been transmitted and received by the ordinary channels, or physical sense organs, which in ordinary circumstances appear essential to our exchange of thought.

(b.) That the exchange of thought, in independence of the ordinary sense channels, will demonstrate that man must possess other, extraordinary or psychic, organs for the transmission and the reception of thought.

Both positions I have endeavoured to sustain on the foregoing pages; and, lastly, concerning spiritualism, I have arrived at the profound conclusion that spirit-communion—that is, thought transmission from the disembodied to the embodied—is a solemn fact. After carefully eliminating all the possibilities of self-deception—auto-trance, discreet degrees of consciousness, of natural and acquired clairvoyance, of thought-transference and mind-reading, and lastly, the puerile performances of conjurors and the simulated phenomena of tricksters—there remains evidence of disembodied or disincarnate spirit, and of such control influencing and directing the actions of men, just as one man in this life influences and directs the actions of another.

What I esteem, however, as satisfactory evidence might not be evidence to another; and I for one do not think it necessary to open up the life chambers of my psychic experiences to the indifferent, the thoughtless, or the sceptic, to furnish the desired evidence. Others must travel by the way I have come to understand something of that way. All men cannot believe alike, hence it will not be surprising that some will accept as sufficient evidence of spirit what others would deem insufficient.

It is not my intention meantime to advocate spiritualism. I only refer to it, in so far as it is related to “How to Thought-Read.” However, phenomenal spiritualism is not a matter of belief so much as of evidence, and many eminent thinkers have been compelled by the force of the evidence to accept spiritualism now, who, a quarter of a century ago, would have hesitated, principally through fear of ridicule, to speak of the subject in language of ordinary civility.

While I am convinced that such communications between the so-called dead and the living are possible, I do know and feel satisfied that much which is accepted as evidence of the existence and influence of spirits by the majority of the unthinking and excitable crowd who rush after novelties, and perchance call themselves “spiritualists,” is traceable to no other or higher source than our own innate, but little understood, human or psychic powers. I have arrived at this conclusion also, as the result of carefully investigating spiritualism, and it is therefore not an a priori hypothesis conveniently elaborated from my own or borrowed from the brains of others who are opponents to spiritualism. It is probable, had I not devoted the greater part of my life to spiritualism, as one of the factors in human character, I should have known but little of that sympathetic transference of thought from one mind to another, or of the light which that fact throws upon our dual or compound existence.

In this “sympathetic transference of thought” we find a solution to the problem of spiritualism, whether old or new. I conclude, with Buffon, “The true springs of our organisation are not these muscles, these veins, these arteries, which are described with so much exactness and care. There exist in organised bodies internal forces which do not follow the gross mechanical laws we imagine, and to which we would reduce everything.” Or, as Laplace puts it more strongly—“Beyond the limits of this visible anatomy commences another anatomy, whose phenomena we cannot perceive; beyond the limits of this external physiology of forces, of action, and of motion, exists another invisible physiology, whose principles, effects, and laws are of the greatest importance to know.”

It may be esteemed reprehensible to “seek communion with the dead;” but to know ourselves, to fathom this invisible physiology, whose principles, effects, and laws are of such importance to understand, I hold to be not only legitimate but perfectly laudable. How can we serve God, whom we have not seen, if we do not understand ourselves, whom we think we have seen, or the laws which govern our being, as created by him? To know ourselves as we should, we ought not to neglect the search for “the spirit within us.”