Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

by R. Osgood Mason

Confining ourselves within the limits assigned, if the series of alleged facts which has been presented in the preceding chapters be true, then we are in the presence of a momentous reality which, for importance and value, has not been exceeded, if, indeed, it has been approached by any of the discoveries of modern times.

But, it may be said, your alleged facts are not new; they are coeval with history, with mythology, with folk-lore, with religion. Granted that the facts are old, that similar ones have been known from very early times, how have these facts been treated by the leaders of thought in the nineteenth century?

That the earth goes round the sun is an old fact, yet it was not made patent and credible, even to the cultivated, much less to the average mind, till recent times. Evolution has been going on since millions of years before the human race came into existence—it is a very ancient fact, yet it is only within the memory of men still living that it has been found out and accepted. So telepathy has existed ever since the race was young, yet few even now know the facts, observations, and experiments upon which its existence is predicated or comprehend either its theories or its importance. The subliminal self has been active in every age of which we have any record. Yet it has never been recognized as forming a part of each and every individual’s mental outfit, but its wonderful action has either been discredited altogether, or else has been credited to foreign or supernatural agencies.

But telepathy can no longer be classed with fads and fancies; if not already an accepted fact, it has certainly attained to the dignity of a theory supported by both facts and experiments; a theory which has attracted to its study a large company of competent men in every civilized country.

A theory, no matter in what department of investigation it may be found, whether relating to matter or mind, is strong in proportion to the number of facts which it will bring into line, harmonize and reduce to system. It is that which makes the Nebular Theory of the formation of the planetary system so wonderfully strong; it harmonizes and reduces to system so many known but otherwise unrelated and unsystematized facts; and it is easier to find excuses or form minor theories to account for isolated and apparently erratic facts, like the retrograde motions of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, than to give up a theory, at once so grand in itself and at the same time harmonizing so many important astronomical phenomena. The same is true of the undulatory theory of light, and again of the theory of evolution, which forty years ago was looked upon as a flimsy hypothesis, but which is now universally accepted as an established truth. Some of the facts are still unclassified and unexplained, yet it so harmonizes in general the facts of the visible world, that instead of a mass of disjointed and heterogeneous objects and phenomena, such as men beheld in nature only a hundred years ago, the arbitrary work of a blind chance or a capricious Creator, we now behold a beautiful and orderly sequence, progression, and unfolding of the natural world according to laws which command our admiration and stimulate our reverence.

Apart from recent studies, exactly the same condition of chaos and confusion exists regarding psychical phenomena as existed concerning the facts in the physical world only a hundred years ago. Nor is it likening great things to small when we compare the nebular hypothesis, or the theory of evolution, conceptions which have educated an age and vastly enlarged the boundary of human thought, to the theory of telepathy and the fact and power of the subliminal self. For if it was important that men should know the laws governing inanimate matter, to comprehend the orbits and motions of the planets; if it developed the understanding to contemplate the grandeur of their movements, the vast spaces which they traverse, and the wonderful speed with which they accomplish their various journeys—if such knowledge has enlarged the capacity of men’s minds, given them truer notions of the magnitude of the universe, and grander conceptions of nature and the infinite power and intelligence which pervades and is exhibited in it, is it not equally important and equally improving and practical to study the subtler forces which pervade living organisms, the still finer laws and adjustments which govern the action of mind?

It has been contended by a large and intelligent class of writers, and those who most pride themselves on scientific methods and the infallibility of scientific inductions, that mind is only the product of organization and ceases to have any activity or even existence when the organs through which it usually manifests itself have perished. The general consensus of mankind is a sharp protest against this conclusion—but the experimental proofs have, to many, seemed in favor of this scientific denial;—the healthy brain in general exhibits a healthy mental activity, the diseased or imperfect brain shows impaired mental action, and the disorganized brain simply exhibits no mental activity nor any evidence whatever of the existence of mind. Nevertheless, it is a lame argument; it is simply an attempt to prove a negative.

The healthy rose emits an agreeable odor which our senses appreciate. You may destroy the rose—it does not prove that the fragrance which it emitted does not still exist even though our senses fail to appreciate it.

But experiment and scientific methods have also somewhat to say upon this subject. And first, in August, 1874, twenty-two years ago, at the moment when the materialistic school was at the height of its influence, both the scientific and religious world were brought to a momentary standstill—like a ship under full headway suddenly struck by a tidal wave—when one of the most eminent scientific men of his time, or of any time, standing in his place as president of the foremost scientific association in the world, spoke as follows: “Abandoning all disguise, the confession which I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence and discover in matter, which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form of life.”[2]

On that day the tap-root of materialism was wounded, and materialism itself has been an invalid of increasing languor and desuetude ever since. On the other hand, supernaturalism in every form was left in little better plight.