Part 20 (1/2)

In some of that group of collective cases which we are at this moment considering, this absence of link is noticeable in a special way. There is nothing to show that any thought or emotion was pa.s.sing from agent to percipients at the moment of the apparition. On the contrary, the indication is that there is no necessary connection whatever between the agent's condition of mind at the moment and the fact that such and such persons observed his phantasm. The projection of the phantasm, if I may so term it, seems a matter wholly automatic on the agent's part, as automatic and meaningless as a dream.

a.s.suming, then, that this is so--that these _bilocations_ or self-projections to a point apparently remote from one's body do occur without any appreciable stimulus from without, and in moments of apparent calm and indifference--in what way will this fact tend to modify previous conceptions?

It suggests that the continuous dream-life which we must suppose to run concurrently with our waking life is potent enough to effect from time to time enough of dissociation to enable some element of the personality to be perceived at a distance from the organism. How much of consciousness, if any, may be felt at the point where the excursive phantasm is seen, we cannot say. But the notion that a mere incoherent quasi-dream should thus become perceptible to others is fully in accordance with the theories suggested in this work. For I regard subliminal operation as _continuously_ going on, and I hold that the degree of dissociation which can generate a perceptible phantasm is not necessarily a profound change, since that perceptibility depends so largely upon idiosyncrasies of agent and percipient as yet wholly unexplained.

That special idiosyncracy on the part of the agent which tends to make his phantasm easily visible has never yet, so far as I know, received a name, although for convenience' sake it certainly needs one. I propose to use the Greek word f?????a??, which means strictly ”to let the soul break loose,” and from which I form the words _psychorrhagy_ and _psychorrhagic_, on obvious a.n.a.logies. When I say that the agents in these cases were born with the _psychorrhagic diathesis_, I express what I believe to be an important fact, physiological as well as psychological, in terms which seem pedantic, but which are the only ones which mean exactly what the facts oblige me to say. That which ”breaks loose” on my hypothesis is not (as in the Greek use of the word) the whole principle of life in the organism; rather it is some psychical element probably of very varying character, and definable mainly by its power of producing a phantasm, perceptible by one or more persons, in some portion or other of s.p.a.ce. I hold that this phantasmogenetic effect may be produced either on the mind, and consequently on the brain of another person--in which case he may discern the phantasm somewhere in his vicinity, according to his own mental habit or prepossession--or else directly on a portion of s.p.a.ce, ”out in the open,” in which case several persons may simultaneously discern the phantasm in that actual spot.

Let us apply this view to one of our most bizarre and puzzling cases--that of Canon Bourne (see Appendix VI. B). Here I conceive that Canon Bourne, while riding in the hunting-field, was also subliminally dreaming of himself (imagining himself with some part of his submerged consciousness) as having had a fall, and as beckoning to his daughters--an incoherent dream indeed, but of a quite ordinary type. I go on to suppose that, Canon Bourne being born with the psychorrhagic diathesis, a certain psychical element so far detached itself from his organism as to affect a certain portion of s.p.a.ce--near the daughters of whom he was thinking--to effect it, I say, not materially nor even optically, but yet in such a manner that to a certain kind of immaterial and non-optical sensitivity a phantasm of himself and his horse became discernible. His horse was of course as purely a part of the phantasmal picture as his hat. The non-optical distinctness with which the words printed inside his hat were seen indicates that it was some inner non-retinal vision which received the impression from the phantasmogenetic centre. The other phantasmal appearance of Canon Bourne chanced to affect only one percipient, but was of precisely the same character; and of course adds, so far as it goes, to the plausibility of the above explanation.

That explanation, indeed, suffers from the complexity and apparent absurdity inevitable in dealing with phenomena which greatly transcend known laws; but on the other hand it does in its way colligate Canon Bourne's case with a good many others of odd and varying types. Thus appearances such as Canon Bourne's are in my view exactly parallel to the _hauntings_ ascribed to departed spirits. There also we find a psychorrhagic diathesis--a habit or capacity on the part of certain spirits of detaching some psychical element in such a manner as to form a phantasmal picture, which represents the spirit as going through some dream-like action in a given place.

The phantasmogenetic centre may thus, in my view, be equally well produced by an incarnate or by a discarnate spirit.

Again, my hypothesis of a real modification of a part of s.p.a.ce, transforming it into a phantasmogenetic centre, applies to a phantasmal voice just as well as to a phantasmal figure. The voice is not heard acoustically any more than the figure is seen optically. Yet a phantasmal voice may in a true sense ”come from” a given spot.

These psychorrhagic cases are, I think, important as showing us the earliest or feeblest stages of self-projection--where the dissociation belongs to the dream-stratum--implicating neither the supraliminal will nor the profounder subliminal strata.

And now let us pa.s.s on from these, which hardly concern anybody beyond the phantom-begetter himself--and do not even add anything to his own knowledge--to cases where there is some sort of communication from one mind to another, or some knowledge gained by the excursive spirit.

It is impossible to arrange these groups in one continuous logical series. But, roughly speaking, the degree in which the psychical collision is _recollected_ on either side may in some degree indicate its _intensity_, and may serve as a guide to our provisional arrangement.

Following this scheme I shall begin with a group of cases which seem to promise but little information,--cases, namely, where A, the agent, in some way impresses or invades P, the percipient,--but nevertheless neither A nor P retains in supraliminal memory any knowledge of what has occurred.

Now to begin with we shall have no difficulty in admitting that cases of this type are likely often to occur. The psychical _rapprochement_ of telepathy takes place, _ex hypothesi_, in a region which is subliminal for both agent and percipient, and from whence but few and scattered impressions rise for either of them above the conscious threshold.

Telepathy will thus probably operate far more continuously than our scattered glimpses would in themselves suggest.

But how can we outside inquirers know anything of telepathic incidents which the princ.i.p.als themselves fail altogether to remember?

In ordinary life we may sometimes learn from bystanders incidents which we cannot learn from the princ.i.p.als themselves. Can there be bystanders who look on at a psychical invasion?

The question is of much theoretical import. On my view that there is a real transference of something from the agent, involving an alteration of some kind in a particular part of s.p.a.ce, there might theoretically be some bystander who might discern that alteration in s.p.a.ce more clearly than the person for whose benefit, so to say, the alteration was made.

If, on the other hand, what has happened is merely a transference of some impulse ”from mind to mind”;--then one can hardly understand how any mind except the mind aimed at could perceive the telepathic impression. Yet, in _collective_ cases, persons in whom the agent feels no interest, nay, of whose presence along with the intended percipient he is not aware, do in fact receive the impression in just the same way as that intended percipient himself. This was explained by Gurney as probably due to a fresh telepathic transmission,--this time from the due or original percipient's mind to the minds of his neighbours of the moment.

Such a supposition, however, in itself a difficult one, becomes much more difficult when the telepathic impulse has never, so far as we know, penetrated into the due or intended percipient's mind at all. If in such a case a bystander perceives the invading figure, I must think that he perceives it merely as a bystander,--not as a person telepathically influenced by the intended percipient, who does not in fact perceive anything whatsoever. I quote in ill.u.s.tration a bizarre but well-attested case (see Appendix VI. C) which this explanation seems to fit better than any other.

In a somewhat similar case[113] there is strong attestation that a sailor, watching by a dying comrade, saw figures around his hammock, apparently representing the dying man's family, in mourning garb. The family, although they had no ordinary knowledge of the sailor's illness, had been alarmed by noises, etc., which rightly or wrongly they took as indications of some danger to him. I conceive, then, that the wife paid a psychical visit to her husband; and I take the mourning garb and the accompanying children's figures to be symbolical accompaniments, representing her thought, ”My children will be orphans.” I think this more likely than that the sailor's children also should have possessed this rare peculiarity of becoming perceptible at a distant point in s.p.a.ce. And secondary figures, as we shall see later on, are not uncommon in such telepathic presentations. One may picture oneself as though holding a child by the hand, or even driving in a carriage and pair, as vividly as though carrying an umbrella or walking across a room; and one may be thus pictured to others.

And here I note a gradual transition to the next large cla.s.s of cases on which I am about to enter. I am about to deal with _telaesthesia_;--with cases where an agent-percipient--for he is both in one--makes a clairvoyant excursion (of a more serious type than the mere psychorrhagies already described), and brings back some memory of the scene which he has psychically visited. Now, of course, it may happen that he fails to bring back any such memory, or that if he _does_ bring it back, he tells no one about it. In such cases, just as in the telepathic cases of which I have just spoken, the excursive phantom may possibly be observed by a bystander, and the circ.u.mstances may be such as to involve some coincidence which negatives the supposition of the bystander's mere subjective fancy. Such, I think, is the case which I give in Appendix VI. D.

There is a similar case in _Phantasms of the Living_, vol. ii. p. 541, where a girl, who is corporeally present in a certain drawing-room, is seen phantasmally in a neighbouring grove, whither she herself presently goes and hangs herself.

Ponderings on projected suicide form perhaps the strongest instance of mental preoccupation with a particular spot. But of course, in our ignorance of the precise quality of thought or emotion needed to prompt a psychical excursion, we need not be surprised to find such an excursion observed on some occasions as trivial as the ”arrival-case” of Col. Reed, with which I prefaced the mere psychorrhagic cases.

Again, there is a strange case,[114] which comes to us on good authority, where we must suppose one man's subliminal impulse to have created a picture of himself, his wife, a carriage and a horse, persistent enough to have been watched for some seconds at least by three observers in one place, and by a fourth and independent observer at another point in the moving picture's career. The only alternative, if the narrative be accepted as substantially true, will be the hypothesis before alluded to of the flas.h.i.+ng of an impending scene, as in crystal-vision, from some source external to any of the human minds concerned. I need hardly at this point repeat that in my view the wife and the horse will be as purely a part of the man's conception of his own aspect or environment as the coat on his back.

And here, for purposes of comparison, I must refer to one of the most bizarre cases in our collection.[115] Four credible persons, to some extent independently, see a carriage and pair, with two men on the box and an inside occupant, under circ.u.mstances which make it impossible that the carriage was real. Now this vision cannot have been _precognitive_; nothing of the kind occurred for years after it, nor well _could_ occur; and I am forced to regard it as the externalisation of some dream, whether of an incarnate or of a discarnate mind. The parallel between this case and the one mentioned above tends therefore to show that the first, in spite of the paraphernalia of wife, horse, and dog-cart, may have been the outcome of a single waking dream;--of the phantasmogenetic dissociation of elements of one sole personality.

In the cases which I have just been discussing there has been a psychical excursion, with its possibilities of clairvoyance; but the excursive element has not brought home any a.s.signable knowledge to the supraliminal personality. I go on now to cases where such knowledge _has_ thus been garnered. But here there is need of some further pause, to consider a little in how many ways we can imagine that knowledge to be reached.

Firstly, the distant knowledge may, it would seem, be reached through hyperaesthesia,--an extended power of the ordinary senses. Secondly, it sometimes seems to come through crystal-gazing or its correlative sh.e.l.l-hearing,--artifices which seem to utilise the ordinary senses in a new way. And besides these two avenues to distant knowledge there is a _third_, the telepathic avenue, which, as we have already surmised, sometimes shades off into the purely telaesthetic; when no distant _mind_, but only the distant _scene_, seems to be attracting the excursive spirit. And in the _fourth_ place we must remember that it is mainly in the form of _dream or vision_ that the most striking instances of telaesthesia which I have as yet recorded have come. Can we in any way harmonise these various modes of perception? Can we discover any condition of the percipient which is common to all?