Clairvoyance Part 4

Still a good deal of additional information about other planets can be obtained by the use of such clairvoyant faculties as we have been describing. It is possible to make sight enormously clearer by pa.s.sing outside of the constant disturbances of the earth's atmosphere, and it is also not difficult to learn how to put on an exceedingly high magnifying power, so that even by ordinary clairvoyance a good deal of very interesting astronomical knowledge may be gained. But as far as this earth and its immediate surroundings are concerned, there is practically no limitation.

CHAPTER V.

CLAIRVOYANCE IN s.p.a.cE: SEMI-INTENTIONAL.

Under this rather curious t.i.tle I am grouping together the cases of all those people who definitely set themselves to see something, but have no idea what the something will be, and no control over the sight after the visions have begun--psychic Micawbers, who put themselves into a receptive condition, and then simply wait for something to turn up. Many trance-mediums would come under this heading; they either in some way hypnotize themselves or are hypnotized by some "spirit-guide," and then they describe the scenes or persons that happen to float before their vision. Sometimes, however, when in this condition they see what is taking place at a distance, and so they come to have a place among our "clairvoyants in s.p.a.ce."

But the largest and most widely-spread band of these semi-intentional clairvoyants are the various kinds of crystal-gazers--those who, as Mr. Andrew Lang puts it, "stare into a crystal ball, a cup, a mirror, a blob of ink (Egypt and India), a drop of blood (among the Maories of New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), a pond (Roman and African), water in a gla.s.s bowl (in Fez), or almost any polished surface" (_Dreams and Ghosts_, p. 57).

Two pages later Mr. Lang gives us a very good example of the kind of vision most frequently seen in this way. "I had given a gla.s.s ball,"

he says, "to a young lady, Miss Baillie, who had scarcely any success with it. She lent it to Miss Leslie, who saw a large square, old-fashioned red sofa covered with muslin, which she found in the next country-house she visited. Miss Baillie's brother, a young athlete, laughed at these experiments, took the ball into the study, and came back looking 'gey gash.' He admitted that he had seen a vision--somebody he knew under a lamp. He would discover during the week whether he saw right or not. This was at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon.

"On Tuesday, Mr. Baillie was at a dance in a town some forty miles from his home, and met a Miss Preston. 'On Sunday,' he said, 'about half-past five you were sitting under a standard lamp in a dress I never saw you wear, a blue blouse with lace over the shoulders, pouring out tea for a man in blue serge, whose back was towards me, so that I only saw the tip of his moustache.'

"'Why, the blinds must have been up,' said Miss Preston.

"'I was at Dulby,' said Mr. Baillie, and he undeniably was."

This is quite a typical case of crystal-gazing--the picture correct in every detail, you see, and yet absolutely unimportant and bearing no apparent signification of any sort to either party, except that it served to prove to Mr. Baillie that there was something in crystal-gazing. Perhaps more frequently the visions tend to be of a romantic character--men in foreign dress, or beautiful though generally unknown landscapes.

Now what is the rationale of this kind of clairvoyance? As I have indicated above, it belongs usually to the "astral-current" type, and the crystal or other object simply acts as a focus for the will-power of the seer, and a convenient starting-point for his astral tube.

There are some who can influence what they will see by their will, that is to say they have the power of pointing their telescope as they wish; but the great majority just form a fortuitous tube and see whatever happens to present itself at the end of it.

Sometimes it may be a scene comparatively near at hand, as in the case just quoted; at other times it will be a far-away Oriental landscape; at others yet it may be a reflection of some fragment of an akashic record, and then the picture will contain figures in some antique dress, and the phenomenon belongs to our third large division of "clairvoyance in time." It is said that visions of the future are sometimes seen in crystals also--a further development to which we must refer later.

I have seen a clairvoyant use instead of the ordinary shining surface a dead black one, produced by a handful of powdered charcoal in a saucer. Indeed it does not seem to matter much what is used as a focus, except that pure crystal has an undoubted advantage over other substances in that its peculiar arrangement of elemental essence renders it specially stimulating to the psychic faculties.

It seems probable, however, that in cases where a tiny brilliant object is employed--such as a point of light, or the drop of blood used by the Maories--the instance is in reality merely one of self-hypnotization. Among non-European nations the experiment is very frequently preceded or accompanied by magical ceremonies and invocations, so that it is quite likely that such sight as is gained may sometimes be really that of some foreign ent.i.ty, and so the phenomenon may in fact be merely a case of temporary possession, and not of clairvoyance at all.

CHAPTER VI.

CLAIRVOYANCE IN s.p.a.cE: UNINTENTIONAL.

Under this heading we may group together all those cases in which visions of some event which is taking place at a distance are seen quite unexpectedly and without any kind of preparation. There are people who are subject to such visions, while there are many others to whom such a thing will happen only once in a life-time. The visions are of all kinds and of all degrees of completeness, and apparently may be produced by various causes. Sometimes the reason of the vision is obvious, and the subject matter of the gravest importance; at other times no reason at all is discoverable, and the events shown seem of the most trivial nature.

Sometimes these glimpses of the super-physical faculty come as waking visions, and sometimes they manifest during sleep as vivid or oft-repeated dreams. In this latter case the sight employed is perhaps usually of the kind a.s.signed to our fourth subdivision of clairvoyance in s.p.a.ce, for the sleeping man often travels in his astral body to some spot with which his affections or interests are closely connected, and simply watches what takes place there; in the former it seems probable that the second type of clairvoyance, by means of the astral current, is called into requisition. But in this case the current or tube is formed quite unconsciously, and is often the automatic result of a strong thought or emotion projected from one end or the other--either from the seer or the person who is seen.

The simplest plan will be to give a few instances of the different kinds, and to intersperse among them such further explanations as may seem necessary. Mr. Stead has collected a large and varied a.s.sortment of recent and well-authenticated cases in his _Real Ghost Stories_, and I will select some of my examples from them, occasionally condensing slightly to save s.p.a.ce.

There are cases in which it is at once obvious to any Theosophical student that the exceptional instance of clairvoyance was specially brought about by one of the band whom we have called "Invisible Helpers" in order that aid might be rendered to some one in sore need.

To this cla.s.s, undoubtedly, belongs the story told by Captain Yonnt, of the Napa Valley in California, to Dr. Bushnell, who repeats it in his _Nature and the Supernatural_ (p. 14).

"About six or seven years previous, in a mid-winter's night, he had a dream in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge, perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what appeared to be tree-tops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he distinguished the very features of the persons and the look of their particular distress.

"He awoke profoundly impressed by the distinctness and apparent reality of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and dreamed exactly the same dream over again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in shortly after with an old hunter comrade, he told his story, and was only the more deeply impressed by his recognizing without hesitation the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra by the Carson Valley Pa.s.s, and declared that a spot in the Pa.s.s exactly answered his description.

"By this the unsophistical patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company of men, with mules and blankets and all necessary provisions. The neighbours were laughing meantime at his credulity.

'No matter,' he said, 'I am able to do this, and I will, for I verily believe that the fact is according to my dream.' The men were sent into the mountains one hundred and fifty miles distant direct to the Carson Valley Pa.s.s. And there they found the company exactly in the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive."

Since it is not stated that Captain Yonnt was in the habit of seeing visions, it seems clear that some helper, observing the forlorn condition of the emigrant party, took the nearest impressionable and otherwise suitable person (who happened to be the Captain) to the spot in the astral body, and aroused him sufficiently to fix the scene firmly in his memory. The helper may possibly have arranged an "astral current" for the Captain instead, but the former suggestion is more probable. At any rate the motive, and broadly the method, of the work are obvious enough in this case.

Sometimes the "astral current" may be set going by a strong emotional thought at the other end of the line, and this may happen even though the thinker has no such intention in his mind. In the rather striking story which I am about to quote, it is evident that the link was formed by the doctor's frequent thought about Mrs. Broughton, yet he had clearly no especial wish that she should see what he was doing at the time. That it was this kind of clairvoyance that was employed is shown by the fixity of her point of view--which, be it observed, is not the doctor's point of view sympathetically transferred (as it might have been) since she sees his back without recognizing him. The story is to be found in the _Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society_ (vol. ii., p. 160).

"Mrs. Broughton awoke one night in 1844, and roused her husband, telling him that something dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again, and not trouble him. She a.s.sured him that she was not asleep when she saw what she insisted on telling him--what she saw in fact.

"First a carriage accident--which she did not actually see, but what she saw was the result--a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure gently raised and carried into the nearest house, then a figure lying on a bed which she then recognized as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually friends collecting round the bed--among them several members of the French royal family--the queen, then the king, all silently, tearfully, watching the evidently dying duke. One man (she could see his back, but did not know who he was) was a doctor. He stood bending over the duke, feeling his pulse, with his watch in the other hand.

And then all pa.s.sed away, and she saw no more.

"As soon as it was daylight she wrote down in her journal all that she had seen. It was before the days of electric telegraph, and two or more days pa.s.sed before the _Times_ announced 'The Death of the Duke of Orleans.' Visiting Paris a short time afterwards she saw and recognized the place of the accident and received the explanation of her impression. The doctor who attended the dying duke was an old friend of hers, and as he watched by the bed his mind had been constantly occupied with her and her family."

A commoner instance is that in which strong affection sets up the necessary current; probably a fairly steady stream of mutual thought is constantly flowing between the two parties in the case, and some sudden need or dire extremity on the part of one of them endues this stream temporarily with the polarizing power which is needful to create the astral telescope. An ill.u.s.trative example is quoted from the same _Proceedings_ (vol. i., p. 30).

"On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R----, C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely and dangerously wounded; and, supposing himself to be dying, asked one of the officers with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at the time was fully one hundred and fifty miles distant at Ferozepore.

"'On the night of September 9th, 1848,' writes his wife, 'I was lying on my bed, between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband being carried off the field seriously wounded, and heard his voice saying, "Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife."

All the next day I could not get the sight or the voice out of my mind.

"'In due time I heard of General R---- having been severely wounded in the a.s.sault of Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was not for some time after the siege that I heard from General L----, the officer who helped to carry my husband off the field, that the request as to the ring was actually made by him, just as I heard it at Ferozepore at that very time."

Then there is the very large cla.s.s of casual clairvoyant visions which have no traceable cause--which are apparently quite meaningless, and have no recognizable relation to any events known to the seer. To this cla.s.s belong many of the landscapes seen by some people just before they fall asleep. I quote a capital and very realistic account of an experience of this sort from Mr. W. T. Stead's _Real Ghost Stories_ (p. 65).

"I got into bed but was not able to go to sleep. I shut my eyes and waited for sleep to come; instead of sleep, however, there came to me a succession of curiously vivid clairvoyant pictures. There was no light in the room, and it was perfectly dark; I had my eyes shut also.

But notwithstanding the darkness I suddenly was conscious of looking at a scene of singular beauty. It was as if I saw a living miniature about the size of a magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can recall the scene as if I saw it again. It was a seaside piece. The moon was shining upon the water, which rippled slowly on to the beach. Right before me a long mole ran into the water.

"On either side of the mole irregular rocks stood up above the sea-level. On the sh.o.r.e stood several houses, square and rude, which resembled nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture. No one was stirring, but the moon was there and the sea and the gleam of the moonlight on the rippling waters, just as if I had been looking on the actual scene.

"It was so beautiful that I remember thinking that if it continued I should be so interested in looking at it that I should never go to sleep. I was wide awake, and at the same time that I saw the scene I distinctly heard the dripping of the rain outside the window. Then suddenly, without any apparent object or reason, the scene changed.

"The moonlit sea vanished, and in its place I was looking right into the interior of a reading-room. It seemed as if it had been used as a schoolroom in the daytime, and was employed as a reading-room in the evening. I remember seeing one reader who had a curious resemblance to Tim Harrington, although it was not he, hold up a magazine or book in his hand and laugh. It was not a picture--it was there.

"The scene was just as if you were looking through an opera-gla.s.s; you saw the play of the muscles, the gleaming of the eye, every movement of the unknown persons in the unnamed place into which you were gazing. I saw all that without opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have anything to do with it. You see such things as these as it were with another sense which is more inside your head than in your eyes.

"This was a very poor and paltry experience, but it enabled me to understand better how it is that clairvoyants see than any amount of disquisition.

"The pictures were _apropos_ of nothing; they had been suggested by nothing I had been reading or talking of; they simply came as if I had been able to look through a gla.s.s at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had my peep, and then it pa.s.sed, nor have I had a recurrence of a similar experience."

Mr. Stead regards that as a "poor and paltry experience," and it may perhaps be considered so when compared with the greater possibilities, yet I know many students who would be very thankful to have even so much of direct personal experience to tell. Small though it may be in itself, it at once gives the seer a clue to the whole thing, and clairvoyance would be a living actuality to a man who had seen even that much in a way that it could never have been without that little touch with the unseen world.

These pictures were much too clear to have been mere reflections of the thought of others, and besides, the description unmistakably shows that they were views seen through an astral telescope; so either Mr.

Stead must quite unconsciously have set a current going for himself, or (which is much more probable) some kindly astral ent.i.ty set it in motion for him, and gave him, to while away a tedious delay, any pictures that happened to come handy at the end of the tube.