APPENDIX I
Why Are We Like This?
(Parts of a Hitherto Unpublished Manuscript by Mrs. Sinclair)
There comes a time in the life of each of us when we begin to wonder what it is all about—this life. I mean, to want, with all one’s bewildered and troubled heart, to know. What is life, what is the purpose of it, above all, what is the reason for the preponderance of the pain of it? This brief earthly existence, with its series of cares and sorrows and bafflements—what is the purpose of it? It seemed so full of purpose in our youth—full, rather of purposes, for youth has no one purpose. Youth’s purpose is to fulfill what seems to be the little purposes of each day, such as evading unpleasant things and pursuing the pleasant ones. But as we pass on through the days of our youth, toward early middle-age, we realize that these eagerly, zestfully pursued purposes of youth were thwarted, one by one. If achieved, they brought some penalty, or disappointment.
Three years ago, being ill and not happy,[[30]] reached the crisis of questioning. I wanted to know how to get well, and I wanted to know why I wanted to get well. And so, I began to ask, where is the path toward knowledge? In which little store-house will I find a clue to the answer? I went to see the medical men who have access to one little store-house. I went to the psychological healers who have access to another little store-house. And I went to the only religious group in the world today which seemed to have any real, or living religion.[[31]] From all three of these sources, one clue, one hint, stood out as a real clue. From the mass of purported knowledge it appeared to me to be the most significant. It seemed to be the thing which produced results in all these three domains, though the priests and priestesses of but one of them seemed aware of the great significance of this hint.
It had to do with man’s mind, to begin with, but it seemed to lead into the very heart of all the universe—into our “material bodies,” as well as into our mental hopes and longings and joys and despairs. So I set to work to experiment first with telepathy and clairvoyance. If clairvoyance is real, I said, then we may have access to all knowledge. We may really be fountains, or outlets of one vast mind. To have access to all knowledge.
If telepathy is real, I said, then my mind is not my own. I’m just a radio receiving set, which picks up the thoughts of all the other creatures of this universe. I and the universe of men are one. I had long known, of course, that my body was not my own—that it picked up sun-rays, and cold-waves, and sound-vibrations, which shook the atoms of my being into new forms; that I picked up iron and sulphur, and phosphorus, and vitamines, and what not, when I ate the plants and animals of my universe; in short, that I had to pick up the constituents of a new body in the form of “fresh air” and “water” and “food” every day of my life in order to maintain the hold I had on the thing I called my body. But somehow, in the vague way in which we think of the mind, I had felt that mine was entirely my own. Surely it was not dependent on, nor at the mercy of, outside forces—except in the one horrible, inexorable way of its dependence on my own body. It was free, of course, to accept ideas from other minds, if it wished; but it did not have to, unless it wanted to. So I had believed. Now, with my new clue, I began to wonder if all my life I had not been in error in my thinking, if I had not got the scheme of things turned upside down. Had I been looking at an image in a mirror, a reversal of the truth? Was my body dependent on my mind when I had thought my mind was dependent on my body? Was it sick when my mind was, and did it die when my mind died—of discouragement? And was my mind my own, or did it receive and accept thoughts constantly from all the other creatures of the universe without my being able to prevent it, without my even knowing it? * * *
What is myself, anyway—body or mind, or both, or one and the same thing, or—what? I must find out! Is my mind a hodge-podge of its own thoughts and the silent, ever-changing thoughts of all other creatures, just as my body is a hodge-podge of the elements of the plants and animals and light-rays it is fed on and made of?
Here were a lot of questions which had become terribly important, and I couldn’t answer them, I couldn’t really answer any of them. But I had a clue—a new clue which might lead—anywhere—to heaven or to hell. * * *
Some of the best scientific minds of the world have experimented with telepathy and believe that it is a proven fact. I have read much of this evidence, and I have watched a “medium” demonstrate telepathy. But perhaps he was deceiving himself—perhaps he used some trick without realizing it, such as listening to the breathing of the sender of the thoughts he received. I do not see how this could be, but it is possible, so I am told by experienced investigators of psychic phenomena. However, there is this mass of evidence, in books, written by men of the highest scientific training who have made experiments in telepathy and who are convinced that it is a fact. * * *
But despite all this evidence, I seem to be uncertain. And this is too serious a matter to leave to uncertainty. So I set to work to make my own experiments. I have experimented already with a “medium,” but I have been warned about the mediumistic temperament. These psychically sensitive persons are, thanks to the very quality of mind which causes them to be sensitive, overly prone to unconscious thinking which is supposed to take a form of conscious instability. So I must find a hard-boiled materialistic-thinking person to experiment with—one who is prone to object thinking, who can maintain a wide-awake consciousness with which to watch his own thoughts to prevent any self-deception, while I, by a trustworthy mechanical device, i.e., a writing pad and pencil, protect my mind from deceiving itself. I find such a hard-boiled object mind in the person of my brother-in-law, who is a most capable, practical business man, and whose philosophy of life does not include any “mysticism,” or unconscious knowledge. Being ill, however, and with no better way to pass the time, he consents to act as sender of telepathic messages to me. He is domiciled thirty miles away from me, and so we cannot look over each other’s shoulders at drawings, nor listen to each other’s breathing.
We proceed as follows: Each day at one o’clock, an hour which suits the convenience of both of us, he sits at a table in his home and makes a drawing of some simple object, such as a table-fork, or an ink-bottle, a duck, or a basket of fruit.[[32]] Then he gazes steadily at his drawing while he concentrates his mind intently on “visualizing” the object before him. In other words, he does not let his mind wander one instant from the picture of the fork, or the ink-bottle, or whatever he has drawn. He may gaze at the original object instead of at his drawing, but he must not think of anything else but how it looks. The purpose of the drawing is for proof to me that this was actually what he thought of at the appointed hour. If his mind wanders off to thoughts of something else, which he has no drawing of, I may get these wandering thoughts. Then he will forget these wandering, unrecorded thoughts, and I will have nothing to prove that he ever thought them.
When he has finished the fifteen minutes of steady concentration on one object, he dates his drawing and puts it away, until the time when we are to meet and compare our records. At my end of the “wireless,” I have done a different mental stunt. I have reclined on a couch, with body completely relaxed and my mind in a dreamy, almost unconscious state, alternating with a state of gazing, with closed eyes, into grey space, looking on this grey background for whatever picture, or thought-form may appear there. When a form appears, I record it at once. I reach for my pad and pencil and write down what I have seen, and make a drawing of it, and then I relax again and look dreamily into space again to see if another vision will appear, or if this same one will return to assure me that it is the right one. At the end of fifteen minutes, the period of time we arbitrarily agreed upon for each day’s experiment, I date my drawing and file it until the day comes to compare notes with my brother-in-law.
Each day thereafter, for several days, my brother-in-law goes through this same performance, varying it only by his choice of a different object to draw and concentrate upon each time. Every three or four days we meet and compare notes.
One day, while I lay passively waiting for a “vision,” a chair of a certain design floated before my mind. It was so vivid that I felt absolutely certain that this was the object my brother-in-law, thirty miles away, was visualizing for me. Other objects on other occasions had been vivid, but this one was not merely vivid; in some mysterious way, it carried absolute conviction with it. I knew positively that my mind was not deceiving me. I was so sure that this chair had come “on the air” from my brother-in-law’s mind to mine, that I jumped up and went to the telephone and rang him up. His wife was in the room with him and my husband was in the room with me, and we called on them as witnesses—for we had set out on the experiment determined that there was to be no deception, of each other, nor of ourselves. I wanted the truth about this matter—I was at life’s crisis, at the place where my whole soul cried out, “What is the meaning of it all, anyway?” And my brother-in-law knew my mood, and a painful, lingering illness was rapidly bringing him to share it. My vision of the chair, and my drawing of it, were entirely correct. This was our first thrilling success. Others followed it, and in the meantime, my husband and I had made together some similar experiments, with success. Before the summer was over, four persons—my husband, my brother-in-law, his wife, and I—had become convinced of the reality of telepathy. Then, having read a book by an English physicist (An Experiment With Time, by J. W. Dunne), I began keeping records of my dreams according to Mr. Dunne’s method, in order to see if, as he thought, they would render evidence of foreknowledge of future events. Clairvoyance is the usual term for this form of psychic phenomena, but Mr. Dunne, being a physicist, is averse to mixing it with psychic things to the extent of using the regular language, so he calls it “an experiment with time” and writes a book about it in the language of physics. Not being a physicist, I’m quite willing to stick to the well-known word, clairvoyance, even at the risk of repelling those ignorant persons who think that all psychic phenomena is trickery. There are hordes of charlatans who call themselves mediums, just as there are hordes of physicians who are charlatans, and of Christians who are cheats, and of bankers who are dishonest. So, having read Mr. Dunne’s useful book, I set out to record my dreams and to watch for their “coming true.” Some of them did. Some which could not be accounted for by coincidence. Some others came true which were clearly due to telepathy between my husband’s mind and my own. I dreamed that I was doing things which it turned out he was actually doing, at a distance from me, and at the time at which I was having the dream. Also, during these months, I made some experiments on a young hypnotist I knew. I had no intention of letting him hypnotize me, but I asked him to try to. I knew he would never consent to the telepathy experiment if he suspected it; he would not want me reading his secret thoughts. But he had played some tricks on me, so I felt justified. And so, when he concentrated on the task of putting me into a hypnotic sleep, I concentrated on “seeing” his thoughts. Again and again I succeeded in this experiment. I discovered his sorrows, his sins, his hopes, his daily adventures. And I recorded them and faced him with them and became his “Mother Confessor,”—and most generously rewarded his unintentional confidence. I am sure he will agree that I made a full return to him for the knowledge he inadvertently enabled me to obtain—the knowledge of the interaction of minds. * * *