All persons do not hear alike. They receive certain sounds and are deaf to all others, although the sound-waves strike all tympanums alike. All persons do not see alike. Some perceive colours, others cannot distinguish between one colour and another, or can only see the more striking colours—fineness of shade they do not perceive. So there are individuals who cannot receive mental impressions, unless, indeed, they are conveyed in the baldest and most esoteric manner. In a word to convey and receive impressions they must be sent along the line of the least resistance, that of true sympathy. There must be one mind adequate to the projection, and another mind sufficiently sensitive to receive and record the thoughts projected.
TRANSFERENCE OF TASTE IN THE MESMERIC STATE.
The operator will slowly eat or taste half-a-dozen lozenges or sweets of different flavours, and the subject or sensitive most in sympathy with him will also in imagination eat of and describe the taste of the various sweets, concerning which he has no other knowledge than the thoughts of eating and tasting, which are transmitted to him from the brain of the operator. The mere eating of the lozenges by the operator, without his being fully aware of the fact, will deepen the impression on the operator’s mind, and help to concentrate his energies for the transmission of his ideas or mental suggestions to his subject.
A step or two further and we find with greater sensitiveness the sensitives can read the thoughts of the operator, whether the thoughts were transmitted intentionally or not.
“We are compelled (says Dr. Hands) to acknowledge that certain emanating undulations from the sensorium can generate different series of thoughts, and that the trembling organisation, or parts of it, can, by flinging or throwing off distinct or particular pulsatory waves, inoculate or produce like vibrations in another person’s brain, making up in it identical thoughts, followed by like feelings, and often in this way, perhaps, capable of inciting, through sympathy, like enactments of deeds and pursuits.”
THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN DREAMS.
The following interesting letter appeared in The Phrenological Magazine (p. 260, April, 1890), and as I know of the bona-fides of the writer, I have much pleasure in reproducing it:—
“Dear Sir,—This morning, at a little before four o’clock, I awoke as the outcome of great mental distress and grief through which I had just passed in a dream, my body trembling and in a cold perspiration. I had been walking with my little boy, aged five and a half years, and some friends. A heavy rain overtaking us, we stood up for shelter; and venturing forth into a maze of streets, I missed my two friends, who, threading among the people, had turned into a side street without my noticing. Looking for them, my boy slipped from me, and was lost in the crowd. I became bewildered by the strange labyrinth of streets and turnings, and quickly taking one of them which gave an elevated position, I looked down on the many windings, but could nowhere see my boy. It was to me an unknown locality, and, running down among the people, I was soon sobbing aloud in my distress, and calling out the name of the child, when I awoke. With wakefulness came a sense of relief and thankfulness. Gladly realising that the whole was only a dream, and still scarcely awake, I was startled by a cry of terror and pain from an adjoining bedroom—such a cry as could not be left unheeded. It came from the same child, and pierced me with a distinct sense of pain. I was immediately by his side. My voice calmed him. ‘I thought I was lost’ was all he could say, and doubtless he was soon composed and asleep again. To me the coincidence was too remarkable and without parallel in my own experience. Later on, at breakfast, the child gave further his dream that he had been out with me and was lost. I am only familiar with such things in my reading. Mr. Coates’s article in last month’s Phrenological Magazine (page 143) mentions that, ‘when the Prince Imperial died from assegai thrusts in Zululand, his mother in England felt the intensity of his thoughts at the time, felt the savage lance pierce her own side, and knew or felt at the time that she was childless.’ But I am not of the spirituelle type, with only a thin parchment separation between this life of realities and the great beyond, of those who, privileged to live in close touch with the future, are the subjects of premonitions and warnings. My spirituality 4 to 5 and reflectives 6 point rather the other way, but I shall, nevertheless, hold tight to the lad. What is the underlying cause of the coincidence? Which of the two minds influenced the other, if either?—Yours truly,
“G. Cox.
“16 Bramfield Road,
Wandsworth Common, April 20, 1890.”