Part 5 (2/2)
de Vaux-Royer a letter fro to some ht (the 7th), while I was praying, I saw, hovering above radually floated away until I could no longer see the to me: 'Mother! Mother! Sister Minnie!' Then the circles floated back, approaching until they almost touched my head Oh, how oodness and happiness!”
From this it is manifestly only a step to the experimental production of telepathic phantasiven in the previous chapter (the Wesermann and Sinclair experiments), and in numerous other instances, of which one or two additional may well be narrated here In one, a Harvard professor, an acquaintance of Professor Ja heard of the possibility of telepathic hallucinations, deter that he would try tolady who lived half a mile from his home He did not mention his intention to her or to anybody else The next day he received a letter, in which she said:
”Last night about ten o'clock I was in the dining-roo in through the crack of the door at the end of the roo I said to B: 'There is Blank, looking through the crack of the door!' B, whose back was toward the door, said: 'He can't be there He would coot up and looked in the other roo last night, at that time?”
At that precise moment, as he told Professor Ja alone in his roo ”whether I could project my astral body to the presence of A”
Possibly had the young lady been alone, and not actively engaged, she ht have had a more definite view of the phantasm of her absent friend, for experience has shown that solitude and quiet are favoring conditions for the perception of telepathic apparitions In nearly every instance reported to the Society for Psychical Research the percipient of the phantasm is alone and in a more or less passive, quiescent frame of mind Such a condition usually obtains immediately before or immediately after sleep, and it is then that experih occasionally they are vividly experienced when the percipient is in a state of thecase, reported by the agent--that is, the person sending the telepathic yman now dead, the Reverend W Stainton Moses
”One evening,” runs the agent's account, ”I resolved to try to appear to Z, at some miles distance I did not inform him beforehand of the intended experihts intently fixed on Z, hose roos, however, I was quite unacquainted I soon fell asleep, and awoke nextZ a few days afterward, I inquired:
”'Did anything happen at your rooreat deal happened I had been sitting over the fire with M, s About twelve-thirty he rose to leave, and I let him out myself I returned to the fire to finishin the chair just vacated by him
”'I looked intently at you, and then took up a newspaper to assureit down I saw you still there
While I gazed without speaking, you faded away'”
Of course in the case of all single experiht plausibly fall back on the theory of chance coincidence But it is impossible seriously to entertain this hypothesis in cases where experiments in the telepathic transmission of ideas have been carried on repeatedly and with an astonishi+ng measure of success
[10] Accounts of other experiments of the same type will be found in my book, ”The Riddle of Personality,” pp 140-142
To mention only the most notable experiments of this systematic kind, I would call attention to the results obtained by two sets of English investigators, the first co two ladies naentlemen, F R Burt and F L Usher
As I see it, indeed, the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments have the additional interest that they not only ht transference, but also show just why it is that we can never hope to obtain such absolute control of the telepathic process as to be able to send es from one to another with the sara been a stock objection against belief in telepathy, especially a the scientifically trained ”Not until we can repeat at will, and with invariable success, the experiht, e accept telepathy as established,” say these scientific skeptics ”We know that if, in our che such and such eleether, such and such action will always follow We must be able to do as much with telepathy before ill accept it” But the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experi that telepathy is a fact, and that nevertheless its processes cannot be governed with the certitude possible in the case of chemical and physical processes There are factors involved which elude, and must always elude, the directive control of the experimenter
In the experied that, at a stated hour of a stated evening in each week, Miss Rahout as the percipient, or receiver of the telepathic es--was to remain for a few minutes in a condition of complete passivity, and immediately afterwards was to note on a post-card whatever ideas ca that time The post-card was then to be mailed to Miss Miles, who, for her part, was to think of Miss Rareed on, and in the evening was to make a post-card entry--to be mailed to her friend forthwith--of the idea or ideas she had tried to convey to her telepathically Thus, in the event of achieving any degree of success, they would have a perfect documentary record to substantiate their claied from a few score to several hundred miles They made, in fact, three distinct series of experiments, with about a year's interval between each series During the first they were at their hoha the second, Miss Ramsden was in Inverness, in northern Scotland, and Miss Miles visiting friends in various parts of England The third series was carried on while Miss Miles was ion of France and Belgiuain in the Scottish Highlands
Thus there was a progressive increase in the distance between them for each series, but this seems to have made no difference in the result
In each, as the attested record shows, Miss Ra, completely or in part, no fewer than two out of every five of the es her co-experimenter tried to ”telepath” to her Such a proportion is clearly too high to be explained away on the theory of chance coincidence, and this theory is rendered still more untenable by the attendant circumstances which the record reveals
On one occasion Miss Miles, who is an artist, had been busy in the afternoon painting acame, and determined to endeavor to impress Miss Ramsden with the idea ”hands” In her post-card, written at seven o'clock the sa, Miss Ramsden stated that of several ideas which had come into her mind at the experiment-hour the ”most vivid” was ”a little black hand, quite sers straight This was the chief thing
Si in London a curious pair of spectacles worn by a gentle ho, wrote down the word ”spectacles,” with the idea of ”telepathing” it to Miss Ra noted that ”spectacles” was ”the only idea that caain, while on a sketching expedition to an English village, Miss Miles wasShe selected this pig as the subject of her next telepathic co as alht of the experiment, thus reported:
”You were out of doors rather late, a cold, raw evening, near a railway station; there was a pig with a long snout, and so dark”
On the other hand, in several instances Miss Ramsden's impressions contained ht to convey to her And this brings us to what is unquestionably the most important feature of the experies were correctly received, in whole or in part But it frequently happened in the case of the seeet the ideas which Miss Miles was endeavoring to send to her, she did get ideas relating to people, things and events much in Miss Miles's mind at thatthe day of the experiment
To illustrate, Miss Miles once tried to make Miss Ramsden think of ”pussies, or cats” What Miss Ramsden did think of was ”a manuscript, pinned by a patent fastener in one corner” And, oddly enough, Miss Miles had spent a good part of that afternoon reading to a friend froether,” as the friend has testified, ”with a patent fastener” Sie above mentioned, Miss Ramsden's report for one experiment ran: