CHAPTER 6
CLAIRVOYANCE
IN SPACE: UNINTENTIONAL
Under this heading
we may group together all those cases in which visions of some even 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 he 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 superphysical 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 kind assigned to our fourth subdivision of clairvoyance
in space, 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 assortment 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 space.
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 class, 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 (page 14).
"About six or
seven years previous, in a midwinter'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 treetops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he distinguished
the very features of the persons and the look of their particular distress.
"He awake 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 which 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 Pass, and declared that a spot in the Pass 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 this 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 Pass. 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 haven 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 going 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 (Volume II, page 160).
"Mrs. Broughton
awoke one night in 1844, and roused her husband, felling him that something
dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again, and not
trouble him. She assured 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 (se 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 passed 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 the electric telegraph, and two or more days passed 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 illustrative example is quoted from the same
Proceedings (volume I, page 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 this 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 of of my mind.
"'In due time
I heard of General R---- having been severely wounded in the assault 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 class 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 class 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 W.T.Stead's Real Ghost Stories (page
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 shore 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
resemble 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-glass; 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 picture
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 glass
at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had my peep, and then it
passed, 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 entity 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.