Part 21 (1/2)

”Then why get up?” ”Because I can get into that house.” ”How, if it is shut up?” ”I see the proprietor standing under the lamp-post this side of the bridge, with another man.” ”You have been dreaming.” ”No, I have been wide awake; but dreaming or waking, I mean to try.” I started with the firm conviction that I should find the individual in question. Sure enough there he was under the lamp-post, talking to a friend. I asked him if he was going home.

(I knew him very well.) He said he was, so I told him I was going to see a patient, and would accompany him. I was positively ashamed to explain matters; it seemed so absurd that I knew he would not believe me. On arriving at the house I said, ”Now I am here, I will drop in and see my patient.” On entering the room I found the maid giving her a tumbler of strong grog. The case was clear; it was as I suspected--delirium from drink. The next day I delicately spoke to the husband about it. He denied it, and in the afternoon I received a note requesting me not to repeat the visits. Three weeks ago I was recounting the story and mentioned the name. A lady present said: ”That is the name of the clergyman in my parish, at B., and his wife is in a lunatic asylum from drink!”

In conversation with Gurney, the narrator explained that the vision--though giving an impression of externality and seen, as he believes, with open eyes--was not definably located in s.p.a.ce. He had never encountered the proprietor in the spot where he saw him, and it was not a likely thing that he should be standing talking in the streets at so late an hour.

In this case we cannot consider either the drunken patient or the indifferent proprietor as in any sense the _agent_. Somehow or other the physician's own persistent wish to get some such opportunity induced a collaboration of his subliminal with his supraliminal self, akin to the inspirations of genius. Genius, however, operates within ordinary sensory limits; while in this physician's case the subliminal self exercised its farthest-reaching supernormal powers.

With this again may be compared a case in _Phantasms of the Living_ (vol. ii. p. 368), where a dreamer seems to himself to be present in the Thames Tunnel during a fatal accident, which did in fact occur during that night. Here again the drowned workman--who was quite unknown to the distant dreamer--can hardly be called an _agent_; yet it may have been the excitement surrounding his death which attracted the dreamer's spirit to that scene, as a conflagration might attract a waking night-wanderer.

There are, on the other hand, a good many cases where a scene thus discerned in a flash is one of special interest to the percipient, although no one in the scene may have actually wished to transfer it to him.

A case again of a somewhat different type is the sudden waking vision of Mr. Gottschalk,[118] who sees in a circle of light the chalked hands and ruffled wrists of Mr. Courtenay Thorpe--a well-known actor--who was opening a letter of Mr. Gottschalk's in that costume at the time.

Trivial in itself, this incident ill.u.s.trates an interesting cla.s.s of cases, where a picture very much like a crystal-vision suddenly appears on a wall or even in the air with no apparent background.

I know one or two persons who have had in their lives one single round or oval hallucinatory picture of this kind, of which no interpretation was apparent,--a curious indication of some subliminal predisposition towards this somewhat elaborate form of message.

Somewhat like Mr. Gottschalk's projection of his picture upon a background of dark air is the experience of Mrs. Taunton.[119] In this case the phantasm was perfectly external; yet it certainly did not hold to the real objects around the same relation as a figure of flesh and blood would have held; it was in a peculiar way transparent. Gurney regards this transparency as indicating _imperfect externalisation_ of the hallucinatory image.

My own phrase, ”imperfect _co-ordination_ of inner with outward vision,”

comes to much the same thing, and seems specially applicable to Mrs.

Taunton's words: ”The appearance was not transparent or filmy, but perfectly solid-looking; _and yet I could somehow see the orchestra, not through, but behind it_.” There are a few cases where the percipient seems to see a hallucinatory figure _behind_ him, out of the range of optical vision.[120] There is of course no reason why this should not be so,--even if a part of s.p.a.ce external to the percipient's brain should be actually affected.

Mr. Searle's case also is very interesting.[121] Here Mrs. Searle faints when visiting a house a few miles from Mr. Searle's chambers in the Temple. At or about the same time, he sees as though in a looking-gla.s.s, upon a window opposite him, his wife's head and face, white and bloodless.

Gurney suggests that this was a transference from Mrs. Searle's mind simply of ”the _idea_ of fainting,” which then worked itself out into perception in an appropriate fas.h.i.+on.

Was it thus? Or did Mr. Searle in the Temple see with inner vision his wife's head as she lay back faint and pallid in Gloucester Gardens? Our nearest a.n.a.logy here is plainly crystal-vision; and crystal-visions, as we have observed, point both ways. Sometimes the picture in the crystal is conspicuously symbolical; sometimes it seems a transcript of an actual distant scene.

There are two further problems which occur as we deal with each cla.s.s of cases in turn,--the problem of time-relations and the problem of spirit-agency. Can an incident be said to be seen clairvoyantly if it is seen some hours after it occurred? Ought we to say that a scene is clairvoyantly visited, or that it is spiritually shown, if it represents a still chamber of death,[122] where no emotion is any longer stirring; but to which the freed spirit might desire to attract the friend's attention and sympathy?

Such problems cannot at present be solved; nor, as I have said, can any one cla.s.s of these psychical interchanges be clearly demarcated from other cla.s.ses. Recognising this, we must explain the central characteristics of each group in turn, and show at what points that group appears to merge into the next.

And now we come to that cla.s.s of cases where B invades A, and A perceives the invasion; but B retains no memory of it in supraliminal life. From one point of view, as will be seen, this is just the reverse of the cla.s.s last discussed--where the invader remembered an invasion which the invaded person (when there was one) did not perceive.

We have already discussed some cases of this sort which seemed to be _psychorrhagic_--to have occurred without will or purpose on the part of the invader. What we must now do is to collect cases where there may probably have been some real projection of will or desire on the invader's part, leading to the projection of his phantasm in a manner recognisable by the distant friend whom he thus invades--yet without subsequent memory of his own. These cases will be intermediate between the _psychorrhagic_ cases already described and the _experimental_ cases on which we shall presently enter.

In the case of Canon Warburton--in Chapter IV.--the person undergoing the accident did recollect having had a vivid thought of his brother at the moment;--while his brother on the other hand was startled from a slight doze by the vision of the scene of danger as then taking place;--the steep stairs and the falling figure. This is an acute crisis, much resembling impending death by drowning, etc.; and the apparition may be construed either way--either as a scene clairvoyantly discerned by Canon Warburton, owing, as I say, to a spasmodic tightening of his psychical link with his brother, or as a sudden _invasion_ on that brother's part, whose very rapidity perhaps helped to prevent his remembering it.

The case given in Appendix VI. E is interesting, both evidentially and from its intrinsic character. The narrative, printed in _Phantasms of the Living_, on the authority of one only of the witnesses concerned, led to the discovery of the _second_ witness--whom we had no other means of finding--and has been amply corroborated by her independent account.

The case stands about midway between psychorrhagic cases and intentional self-projections, and is clearly of the nature of an _invasion_, since the phantasm was seen by a stranger as well as by the friend, and seemed to both to be moving about the room. The figure, that is to say, was adapted to the percipient's environment.

Cases of this general character, both visual and auditory, occupy a great part of _Phantasms of the Living_, and others have been frequently quoted in the S.P.R. _Journal_ during recent years.[123]

Of still greater interest is the cla.s.s which comes next in order in my ascending scale of apparent _intensity_; the cases, namely, where there is recollection on both sides, so that the experience is _reciprocal_.[124] These deserve study, for it is by noting under what circ.u.mstances these spontaneously reciprocal cases occur that we have the best chance of learning how to produce them experimentally. It will be seen that there have been various degrees of tension of thought on the agent's part.

And here comes in a small but important group--the group of what I may call death-compacts prematurely fulfilled. We shall see in the next chapter that the exchange of a solemn promise between two friends to appear to one another, if possible, after death is far from being a useless piece of sentiment. Such posthumous appearances, it is true, may be in most cases impossible, but nevertheless there is real ground to believe that the previous tension of the will in that direction makes it more likely that the longed-for meeting shall be accomplished. If so, this is a kind of _experiment_, and an experiment which all can make.

Now we have two or three cases where this compact has been made, and where an apparition has followed--but before and not after the agent's death--at the moment, that is to say, of some dangerous accident, when the sufferer was perhaps all but drowned, or was stunned, or otherwise insensible.[125]