“While she was present a peculiar calmness came over me; but when she was gone a great anxiety took possession of me, and could I have taken a train, I should have at once started for home. But I at last resolved to await a letter, which came in due time from my son. He wrote: ‘Mother is quite sick, though better than night before last, when about half-past two or three o’clock in the morning we thought for twenty or thirty minutes she was dead. She lay insensible, pulsation ceased, or only fluttered at intervals, and respiration seemed suspended, but she rallied and is now in a fair way to recover.’ She did recover and enjoyed a fair degree of health.”
There is no limit to the facts of this class which might be collected. Enough have been here produced to show that coincidence offers a poor apology as an explanation. The student will observe also, that however carefully the facts are selected bearing on this one point of thought transference, it is impossible, so intimately related are the branches of psychic science, to have them entirely free from the possibility of other explanations. Granting that thought may be transferred from one mortal to another, admits that a spirit may transfer its thoughts to a mortal also, and hence a spirit seeing a friend in distress may act as a messenger. But in such a case thought is transferred, and in the same manner. The sensitive on one side receives the pulsations of thought from the other, through and by means of the psychic ether.
It will be thus seen that there is no mystery in one mind becoming cognizant of the thoughts of another mind, for if in sympathy, such a result is sure to follow. As a lamp gives light, because it is able to set the light medium in motion, or give off waves therein, so the brain gives off waves, or is a pulsating center in the psychic-ether. These waves go outward and form the sphere of the individual, as the waves of light go out and form the sphere of light around an incandescent body.
To be recognized, they must strike against a sensitive or sympathetic brain, wherein they may be reproduced. By sympathetic, we mean one which, for want of a better term, we will say is similarly attuned. Thus, when two musical instruments are placed at some distance from each other, and one is played, if they are not attuned in harmony the other will give no response; but if they are, then when one is touched, the other answers note for note.
The brain, being a pulsating center, its thoughts, as they go out in waves, have to other brains, a tangible representation. The psychic-ether, pulsating with innumerable waves, may be regarded as a universal thought atmosphere, and the sensitive brain is able to gather from it thoughts and ideas which its pulsations express.
If any reliance can be placed on the observations of the most credible witnesses, whose evidence would be received on any other subject, and in law would be given power to decide on life or death, these facts of Thought Transference cannot be rejected. If they are received, they demand explanation. If thought passes from one mind to another, or, as it is often expressed, the will influences a distant person, it is self-evident that something passes from one to the other. What is this something? Facts conflict with the hypothesis of its being matter radiated from one individual to another, as light was once supposed to be transmitted. It passes too readily through vast thicknesses of solid matter, and is too instantaneous in its action, to consist of radiant particles. On the other hand, all of its phenomena show a striking relationship to light, heat and kindred forces.
How is this Influence Exerted?—Admitting that there is a psychic-ether, in which thinking produces waves, how does one individual influence another thereby? If the brain vibrates like the strings of a musical instrument, as no two are alike, no two vibrate alike. This is more than a mere illustration. Both depend on similar laws, for the string excites vibrations in the air, which are felt by the nerves of the tympanum of the ear. Thinking creates undulations in ether, which are impressed on other minds. The string of the instrument excites similar vibrations in contiguous strings; for the atmosphere transmits the waves of sound.
This is very beautifully shown by a simple experiment, which equally well illustrates the method by which mind influences mind. If a plate of glass is strewn with sand, and, while held in a horizontal position, a bow drawn across its edge, a musical sound will be produced from the vibration of the plate, and the sand, by the impulse, forms into various geometric lines, according to the note produced—each note giving rise to a figure peculiar to itself. So invariably is this the case that a piece of music might be accurately written from the forms assumed by the sand.
Now, if a piece of parchment or paper be stretched, with proper precautions, across the top of a large bell glass and strewn with sand, and the glass plate held over it horizontally, and the bow drawn across its edge, the forms assumed by the sand on the paper will accurately correspond with the forms on the glass. If the glass is slowly removed to greater and greater distances, the correspondence will continue until the distance becomes too great for the air to transmit the vibrations.
When a slow air is played on a flute near this apparatus, each note calls up a particular form in the sand, which the next note effaces and establishes its own. The motion of the sand will even detect sounds that are inaudible.