Five Years of Theosophy

by Unknown

Introversion of Mental Vision

Some interesting experiments have recently been tried by Mr. F.W.H. Myers and his colleagues of the Psychic Research Society of London, which, if properly examined, are capable of yielding highly important results. With the details of these we are not at present concerned: it will suffice for our purpose to state, for the benefit of readers unacquainted with the experiments, that in a very large majority of cases, too numerous to be the result of mere chance, it was found that the thought-reading sensitive obtained but an inverted mental picture of the object given him to read. A piece of paper, containing the representation of an arrow, was held before a carefully blindfolded thought-reader, who was requested to mentally see the arrow as it was turned round. In these circumstances it was found that when the arrow-head pointed to the right, it was read off as pointing to the left, and so on. This led some to imagine that there was a mirage in the inner as well as on the outer plane of optical sensation. But the real explanation of the phenomenon lies deeper.

It is well known that an object as seen by us and its image on the retina of the eye, are not exactly the same in position, but quite the reverse. How the image of an object on the retina is inverted in sensation, is a mystery which physical science is admittedly incapable of solving. Western metaphysics, too, with regard to this point, hardly fares any better; there are as many theories as there are metaphysicians. The only philosopher who has obtained a glimpse of the truth is the idealist Berkeley, who says that a child does really see a thing inverted from our standpoint; to touch its head it stretches out its hands in the same direction of its body as we do of ours to reach our feet. Repeated failures give experience and lead to the correction of the notions born of one sense by those derived through another; the sensations of distance and solidity are produced in the same way.

The application of this knowledge to the above mentioned experiments of the Psychic Research Society will lead to very suggestive results. If the trained adept is a person who has developed all his interior faculties, and is on the psychic plane in the full possession of his senses, the individual, who accidentally, that is, without occult training, gains the inner sight, is in the position of a helpless child—a sport of the freaks of one isolated inner sense. Such was the case with the sensitives with whom Mr. Myers and his colleagues experimented. There are instances, however, when the correction of one sense by another takes place involuntarily and accurate results are brought out. When the sensitive reads the thoughts in a man's mind, this correction is not required, for the will of the thinker shoots the thoughts, as it were, straight into the mind of the sensitive. The introversion under notice will, moreover, be found to take place only in the instance of such images which cannot be corrected by the already acquired sense-experience of the sensitive. A difficulty may here suggest itself with regard to the names of persons or the words thought of for the sensitive's reading. But allowance must in such cases be made for the operation of the thinker's will, which forces the thought into the sensitive's mind, and thereby obviates introversion. It is abundantly clear from this that the best way of studying these phenomena is when only one set of inner faculties, that of the sensitive, is in play. This takes place always when the object the sensitive has to abnormally perceive is independent of the will of any other person, as in the case of its being represented on paper.

Applying the same law to dreams, we can find the rationale of the popular superstition that facts are generally inverted in dreams. To dream of something good is generally taken to be the precursor of something evil. In the exceptional cases in which dreams have been found to be prophetic, the dreamer was either affected by another's will or under the operation of some disturbing forces, which cannot be calculated except for each particular case.

In this connection another very important psychic phenomenon may be noticed. Instances are too numerous and too well authenticated to be amenable to dispute, in which an occurrence at a distance—for instance, the death of a person—has pictured itself to the mental vision of one interested in the occurrence. In such cases the double of the dying man appears even at a great distance, and becomes visible usually to his friend only, but instances are not rare when the double is seen by a number of persons. The former case comes within the class of cases under consideration, as the concentrated thought of the dying man is clairvoyantly seen by the friend, and the incidents correctly reproduced by the operation of the dying man's will-energy, while the latter is the appearance of the genuine mayavirupa, and therefore not governed by the law under discussion.

—Mohini M. Chatterji

"Precipitation"

Or all phenomena produced by occult agency in connection with our Society, none have been witnessed by a more extended circle of spectators, or more widely known and commented on through recent Theosophical publications, than the mysterious production of letters. The phenomenon itself has been so well described in the "Occult World" and elsewhere, that it would be useless to repeat the description here. Our present purpose is more connected with the process than the phenomenon of the mysterious formation of letters. Mr. Sinnett sought for an explanation of the process, and elicited the following reply from the revered Mahatma, who corresponds with him:—"….Bear in mind these letters are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes corrected …. I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by precipitation. As the fixing on chemically-prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for, otherwise—as often found in bad photographs—the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on—so we here to first arrange our sentences, and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds, before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell you."

Since the above was written, the Masters have been pleased to permit the veil to be drawn aside a little more, and the modus operandi can thus be explained now more fully to the outsider.