CHAPTER VI.
Thought-Reading Experiments.
Having satisfactory evidence of the reality of thought-transference, it would be interesting to know if this power or faculty can be cultivated, and if so, how? I propose in this chapter to show how this can be done, and how to give thought-reading entertainments.
Experimental mind-reading may be distinguished, for the sake of study, as the abnormal, the normal, and the spurious.
The abnormal, that which takes place in trance, dream, vision, or which may be the product of artificial somnambulism or of some super-sensitive condition of the nervous system, through disease. We observe thought-transference in these conditions, rather than attempt to cultivate it.
The normal, where the phenomena takes place in the ordinary waking state, without muscular contact.
The spurious mind-reading, so-called, as the result of musculation or contact, but which is, in fact, only muscle-reading.
In both the abnormal and normal, direct transference of thought from mind to mind can only take place when there is the necessary development of psychic activity in the agent or operator, and the equally necessary sensitiveness in the sensitive or percipient.
Classed under muscle-reading are those performances and games in which the sensitive reads not the mind, but some special desire (of those with whom he or she may be placed in contact), by a “careful study of the indications unconsciously given by the agent or operator to the percipient or reader.”
In both abnormal and normal thought-reading, then, are presented innumerable instances of the possession of psychic faculties; in the muscle-reading phase there may be, and it is possible all successful “readers” have, more or less sensitiveness, to take impressions.
To cultivate mind-reading in a sensitive, the operator should first cultivate in himself the habit of projecting mental pictures, and think of things as seen by the eye, rather than as described by words. This is best done by calling to mind a landscape or domestic scene, by conceiving and mentally building up the same, and, by degrees, getting each feature or detail well stamped in his mind.