These thought vibrations may be received suddenly like a flash, as in the case of premonitions and warnings of danger, the sensitive state lasting but a brief time; or it may be cultivated and become permanent with the individual. The hypnotic, or somnambulic subject, may be more or less affected at first, and slowly fall under the influence, until the continuous condition is the same as that in which a premonition is received.
As an illustration of the method by which this is accomplished, whether the operator be a spirit clad in a physical or in a celestial body, the improvements by age and use of the violin may be taken.
This instrument, the most perfect of all in its capacity for expressing the delicate feelings of the soul, gains its soft sweetness and rich perfection by use and age. The cremona, worth its weight in gold, may once have been harsh, with dissonant tones, rasping to the ear. The Tyrolese maker selects the smoothest wood his mountain affords, clear of grain, and free from flaw or blemish. He carves the parts with sedulous care and exhaustless patience; swell and curve and hollow are wrought, polished, and cemented together so as to make them as one. Then the delicate strings are drawn over the bridge, and the instrument tested. It may squeak or jar, and refuse, even in a master’s hands, to express his desire. But with every vibration of the strings it improves. Every movement changes its fibers, and forces them into harmonious accord. After a time they will all be in unison. The playing of a single tune may not produce this result; a score or a thousand may not. It may pass from hand to hand, and generation after generation may grow old and die, as each successive master touches its strings, before all its deepest qualities are expressed. Then its tones melt in voluptuous harmony; wail with the broken hearted; fill the soul with the gladness of delight; revive the murmur of the sombre pines; the song of the birds in the forest; the laughing of falling waters; the hoarse voice of the tempest with hail and lightning flash, rush of winds and burst of clouds. Nature speaks through the instrument, and vibrates the heart with every emotion, passion, and aspiration.
In the same manner, if a being independent of, and detached from the physical body, should attempt to impress its thoughts on a sensitive, it might no more than partially succeed after many trials. Each effort, however, would be more successful, for thought vibrations constantly tend to efface the causes of discord, and if the Intelligence is patient, and the sensitive submissive, the thoughts of the former would at last flow uninterruptedly into or through the mind of the latter.
And what is thus possible for a sensitive, in regard to an individual intelligence, is possible to acquire in relation to the thought atmosphere of the universe, or psychic-ether. If this be possible, if a being may become thus exquisitively sensitive, and receive the waves of thought as they traverse this ether, as the eye catches vibrations of light, that being would be a focus to receive the intelligence of all thinking beings in the universe.
The sensitive state, then, is the outcropping in mortal life, in apparently abnormal form, of that which is normal to the spirit of life. We thus conclude that its most astonishing development, as revealed, is immeasurably below its normal capabilities when freed from the limitation of the body. The permanent condition of a spiritual being after separation from the physical form must be that of the most perfect and delicately sensitive. What we see here in partial or total eclipse, is there in the glory of full light.
Thoughts not Words Impressed.—While Max Müller ardently supports his theory that thought itself depends upon the words which express it, we constantly meet with facts which indicate that the idea is conveyed from one mind to another, and there is clothed in words according to the culture of the receiving mind. The vividness with which the idea is impressed insures the use of similar verbal clothing. An instance is reported by Dapson, in Deleuze, where a sealed letter was given a very susceptible magnetic subject. It reads:
“No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read this sentence in this envelope.
Troy, New York, Aug. 1837.”
The subject read it: