Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

by R. Osgood Mason

Fitzgerald at Brunswick suddenly beholds the burning factories at Fall River, and shouts his orders to the firemen. Others spontaneously go into the somnambulic condition and only then become clairvoyant; while still others need the assistance of a second person to produce somnambulism and independent vision.

What is the nature and what the method of this peculiar vision which has been named clairvoyance?

Is it a quickening and extension of ordinary vision, or is it a visual perception obtained in some other manner, independent of the natural organ of sight?

It has been noted how vastly the action of the senses may be augmented by cultivation, but never has cultivation increased vision to such an extent as to discover a penny a thousand miles away and through opaque coverings. Besides, the clairvoyant vision is exercised quite independent of the bodily eye. The eyes may be closed, they may be turned upward or inward so that no portion of the pupil is exposed to the action of light, or they may be covered with thick pads of cotton or closed with plasters or bandages, yet the clairvoyant vision in proper subjects is obtained in just the same degree and with just the same certainty as when the eyes are fully exposed to the light.

It is true there has been much doubt and discussion on this vital point, the objectors maintaining that sight was possible and practicable by experts, notwithstanding the precautions used in blindfolding; in short, that the whole thing might safely be set down as deception and fraud.

In the face of facts such as are here cited, and the thousand others that might be adduced, it is hardly possible to treat this charge seriously.

To such objectors, cumulative evidence regarding facts out of their own mental horizon is useless. Their motto is: “No amount of evidence can establish a miracle;” and their definition of a miracle is something done, or alleged to have been done, contrary to the laws of nature. But the objector who refuses credence to well-attested facts on that ground alone, simply assumes that he is acquainted with all the laws of nature.

A miracle, really, is only something alleged to have been done, and we are not able to explain how; nevertheless, it may be perfectly in accordance with natural laws which we did not understand or even know existed. To the West Indian, whom Columbus found in the New World, an eclipse of the sun was a miracle of the most terrible character; to the astronomer it was a simple fact in nature. To the ignorant boor, “talking with Chicago” or cabling between New York and London is a miracle; to the electrician it is an everyday, well-understood affair. For a long time scientific men did not believe in the existence of globular, slowly-moving electricity; if such a thing had existed, it certainly should have put in an appearance before members of the “Academy,” or “Royal Society” some time in the course of all these years; but it never had done so; only a few cooks, blacksmiths, or back-woodsmen had ever seen it, and they certainly were not the sort of people to report scientific matter; they did not know how to observe, and undoubtedly “they did not see what they thought they saw.” But for all that, globular, slowly-moving electricity is now a well known fact in nature.

Neither the West Indian, the ignorant boor, nor the man of science had, at the time these several facts were presented to him, “any place in the existing fabric of his thought into which such facts could be fitted.” The fabric of thought in each case must be changed, enlarged, modified, before the alleged facts could be received or assimilated.

The objector to the fact of clairvoyance and other facts in the new psychology is often simply deficient in the knowledge which would enable him properly to judge of these facts; he may be an excellent mathematician, physicist, editor, or even physician, but he has been educated to deal with a certain class of facts, and only by certain methods, and he is wholly unfitted to deal with another class of facts, perhaps requiring quite different treatment.