(3) Perceptions may have their origin telepathically—that is, scenes and incidents transpiring at a distance far too great to affect the bodily organs of sense in any direct or ordinary way do, nevertheless, in some way, cause perceptions to arise in the mind corresponding to those same scenes and incidents.
This is comparatively a new proposition in psychology and has for its basis studies and experiments which have only been systematically made within the past fourteen years. These studies and experiments relate to telepathy, automatism, and the action of the subliminal self. They have been undertaken and carried on by various societies interested in experimental psychology, but chiefly by the English Society for Psychical Research, some of the results of whose labors have been briefly sketched in the preceding chapters.
In addition to the reports of these societies an important contribution to the subject of apparitions was published by the then secretaries of the Society for Psychical Research, the late Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers, and Mr. Frank Podmore.
It appeared under the title, Phantasms of the Living, and contained more than seven hundred instances relating to various forms of hallucinations and phantasms—carefully studied and authenticated cases which were selected from several thousand presented for examination. It is to these sources chiefly that I shall refer for cases illustrating the subject under consideration.
It seems hardly necessary to recapitulate here the experiments on which the doctrine of telepathy or thought-transference is established—experiments which have been carefully made by so many well qualified persons, and which have proved convincing to nearly every one, whether scientific or unscientific, who has patiently followed them, though of course not convincing to those who choose to remain ignorant of the facts.
The same is true regarding the subject of automatism and the existence and action of the subliminal self. It remains to show the interesting relations which these subjects bear to hallucinations in general, and especially to phantasms and apparitions.
It is well known that hallucinations can be voluntarily or purposely produced by one person in the mind of another, and in various ways, though few perhaps consider to what an extent this is possible. In many of the most astonishing feats of the conjurer, and especially of the Indian fakir, suggestion and the imagination are brought into service to aid in producing the illusions.
Regarding the hallucinations which may be produced in the mind of the hypnotized subject by the hypnotizer there can be no doubt.
The following case is in point and illustrates telepathic influence excited at a distance as well. It is from Phantasms of the Living, and the agent, Mr. E. M. Glissold, of 3 Oxford Square, W., writes substantially as follows:—
“In the year 1878 there was a carpenter named Gannaway employed by me to mend a gate in my garden; when a friend of mine (Moens) called upon me and the conversation turned upon mesmerism. He asked me if I knew anything about it myself. On my replying in the affirmative he said, ‘Can you mesmerize any one at a distance?’ I said that I had never tried to do so, but that there was a man in the garden whom I could easily mesmerize, and that I would try the experiment with this man if he (Moens) would tell me what to do. He then said, ‘Form an impression of the man whom you wish to mesmerize, in your own mind, and then wish him strongly to come to you.’