(Here, I compile several of the
anecdotes that Franz Hartmann narrated in his articles about the experiences he
had in relation to telepathy.)
MY EXPERIENCES IN TELEPATHY
« The mutual action of thought in the distance between souls in
sympathy with each other, has been known for centuries, if not for thousands of
years, to almost everybody except to the representatives of modem orthodox
science.
There are probably few persons
who have not had some experience in this line; they have known, for example,
that such and such a letter from a friend would come, and the letter has
arrived; or they have answered questions which were asked in a letter even
before the questions came.
To me and to many of my
acquaintances these things are of almost daily occurrence; but the following
case goes to show that this “telepathy” may be made of some practical use and
that the length of distance between the sender of a message and the receiver is
of no importance.
Writers of books sometimes
receive letters from some unknown admirers of their works, and as I am no
exception to this rule, I received, among other communications in 1894, while
at Hallein in Austria, a very interesting letter from a lady, Miss A. of
Philadelphia, and answered it.
The consequence was a frequent
correspondence between us, and very often the questions which Miss A. asked
were already answered in my letter to her, before her own arrived.
This led us to try whether a
direct communication of thought could be established, and we agreed that every
Sunday at 5 p.m. Miss A. would keep her mind passive, while I at 11 a.m. (the
difference of time between Hallein and Philadelphia being about six hours)
would try to send her some thoughts.
I am not “clairvoyant" in
the ordinary sense of that word, but on the first Sunday, after projecting my
thoughts to Philadelphia, I knew that Miss A. was sitting in a rocking chair in
her parlor, that she wore a morning gown and that her hair was braided and tied
on the top of her head. I willed her to unfasten the braid and let her hair
fall upon her shoulders.
About ten days afterwards I received
a letter from Miss A. which had been written on the evening of that Sunday, and
in which she said:
-
“This afternoon, at the
appointed time, I sat in a rocking chair in my parlor. I wore a morning gown
and had my hair tied up on the top of my head.
Suddenly the thought struck me to unfasten my hair and let it fall over
my shoulders. This I did.”
On the next Sunday I could not
find anybody in that parlor; but I knew (intuitively) that there was a bedroom
attached to it. Into this bedroom I went in my thoughts and saw therein some
medicine bottles upon a table. In due
time I received a letter from Miss A., written on the following Monday, in
which she said:
-
“I could not come to
our meeting yesterday, because I was ill and had to take medicine.”
After that I willed Miss A. to
send me an illustrated journal from America, and by the next mail I received a
copy of the Arena. Thus things continued for a while, but having sufficiently
convinced ourselves of the possibility of such mental communication we
abandoned the experiments.
Now my explanation is that the
thought of a person is a part of that person himself, and the mental vibrations
of which it consists may be endowed with a certain amount of consciousness and
perception.
A ray of light issuing from a
candle does not become separated from its source, however great the distance
which it travels may be, and the thought of a person does not become separated
from the mind from which it originates, even if it travels across the ocean.
Thus thought constitutes, so to
say, an organ by means of which the mind may reach from one continent to
another and perceive what takes place there, according to the extent to which
one has been able to endow that thought-ray with consciousness and the faculty
of perception.
It seems to me idle to dispute
whether or not thought-transfer is possible. It is possible for those who can do
it consciously and it takes place unconsciously everywhere. Thoughts are, as
the ancients said, like birds. We do not
know wherefrom they come, nor where they will roost.
Every human brain may be compared
to a flame or a storage battery from which currents of thought stream out in
all directions and enter into receptive minds, where they leave their
“eggs," to be hatched out by the receiver and perhaps give birth to a
corresponding act.
People do not create their own
thoughts out of nothing; they only elaborate the ideas which they receive, and
in this way some person may receive and carry out an idea born in the brain of
another unknown to him. A serious consideration of this law might perhaps be in
different ways of great utility for the progress of civilization. »
(Occult Review, May 1907, p.284-286)
LIFE SAVED BY TELEPATHIC IMPRESSION
« In the year 1871, I was practicing medicine in the State of
Louisiana. It was a beautiful winter night with the full moon shining in the
cloudless heavens, and I was sitting on a chair in front of my office, enjoying
the sight of the starry sky and smoking a cigarette.
The night was cool and I wore
over my shoulders a short cloak without sleeves, such as is called an
“officer’s cape.” It was after eleven o’clock, when a man came and asked me to
go to see a patient living a short distance from the town.
I was not averse to taking a walk
and went with him. He led me out of town towards a short tunnel over which the
railway track was laid. We were about ten yards from this tunnel when I heard
an interior voice speaking to me, which exclaimed:
“Look out!”
Instinctively I put my hand in my
pocket and grasped a small pistol, which I used to carry therein. The next
moment we entered the mouth of the dark tunnel and as we did so my guide ran away,
while at the same time three masked fellows fell upon me, the first one
grabbing me at the shoulders and saying he wanted to speak to me.
As my coat was without sleeves
and unbuttoned, it remained in his hands as I turned around, and pulling my
pistol I pointed it at his head, ordering the three men to step back.
They were not prepared for my
resistance; the coat was dropped and they fled, while I returned home by
another road.
Only two years afterwards I found
out who these fellows were and what was their object.
They were hired to kill me and
put my body upon the railroad track, so as to make it appear as if I had been
run over by the train during the night.
I was at that time a great
believer in communications with “spirits,” “invisible helpers,” etc., and
attributed my salvation to the interference of some of my spirit friends ; but
it seems to me now more plausible that the concentrated thought of the three
men in the tunnel, whose full attention would naturally be directed towards my
person, was by their will power, although without their intention, projected
towards myself and entering into my subconsciousness awakened therein the sense
of impending danger, which communicated itself to my external consciousness,
and as words are the natural expressions of feelings, my hearing of the words
“look out” may thus be explained. If, however, a more plausible explanation is
presented to me, I shall be ready to accept it. »
(Occult Review,
November 1906, p.246-247)
THOUGHTS OF THE DYING ACTING AT A DISTANCE
« In the year 1877 I was at Llano (Texas); while an intimate friend of
mine, Mrs. Th. W. was at Galveston, several hundred miles away. Some months had passed without my having
received any letter from her; but as I had left her in perfect health, I had no
cause for uneasiness.
On the evening of November 10 I
went to bed as usual after 10 p.m., but after extinguishing the candle I had a
feeling as if somebody were in my room and wanted me to get up and write.
I, therefore, rose again and went
to my table, where I took a paper and pencil and wrote what came into my
mind. I was not unconscious, but knew
very well what I was writing. It was as
if the words were dictated to me.
It proved to be a letter from my
friend Mrs. W., addressed to me, in which she told me that she had died.
She also told me the nature of
her disease, which was loss of vitality and exhaustion of nervous power from
overexertion of “mediumship.”
She expressed herself to be very
glad to be rid of her suffering body, and among other things she said that she
had asked her husband to cut a lock of hair from her head and to send it to me.
Four days afterwards, I received
a letter from her husband, containing the death notice and the promised lock of
hair and confirming in all details the contents of that writing.
My explanation of this case is
that as the sympathy between that lady and myself was very strong, the mental
vibrations caused by the thoughts of her dying brain were caught by my brain in
a manner comparable to the reception of relative waves by means of wireless
telegraphy.
As to my feeling the presence of
some invisible entity in the room, it may be accounted for by the fact that the
spirit emanating from a person, i.e. his thought and will, is a part of the
essence of the person from whom it emanates and bears the characteristics of
that person, so that if I had been in a clairvoyant state, or if these thought
vibrations had become more condensed or materialized, I might have seen the
apparition of Mrs. W. herself.
This view may be confirmed by the
following occurrence:
2. When my father was at one time
a medical student at University, his father was at that time at 100 miles away,
where he was lying ill of typhus fever. While he was in a delirious condition
his nurse went for a moment out of the room.
During the absence of the nurse
my grandfather arose and fell through the window out into the street, where he
died. At the very moment when this happened my father saw the apparition of his
father walking solemnly through his room. Evidently the last thoughts of the
dying man were directed toward his son. »
(Occult Review,
November 1906, p.247-248)
GLIMPSES OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
« The following
experience seems to me highly instructive:
My mother died on October 26th,
1881 in Germany, while I was at that time in Colorado. On December 27th, 1881, while
riding through a gorge of the Rocky Mountains, my interior vision became
suddenly opened and I saw her surrounded by friends and relations who had died
some years before. They all seemed to be bright spirits in luminous forms, and
appeared to welcome her to a new and glorious life.
The whole scene was most
beautiful and of a character which I cannot describe. I may add that I had not
been thinking of her and that this vision was unexpected and very surprising to
me.
It was afterwards explained to me that the post-mortem
unconsciousness sometimes lasts for months before the soul of the dead awakens to
the realization of its higher existence. It was this awakening which I was
permitted to witness; the impressions which the soul of my mother received were
communicated to me, owing to the bonds of sympathy existing between us. »
(Occult
Review, July 1907, p.14)
THOUGHTS OF THE LIVING ACTING AT A DISTANCE
« This year I stayed as a guest at the house of the Princess M. de
R. at R a suburb of the city of Florence. One morning at 10 a.m. the Princess
drove to the city, while I was occupied with writing.
At about 1 p.m. I suddenly heard
the Princess in a loud voice, calling twice my name at the door of my room, as
if she were calling for help. I immediately jumped up from my desk and opened the
door, but no one was there. I asked the servants whether the Princess had
returned, but received a negative answer.
Half an hour afterwards, the
Princess drove up in her carriage; I went to meet her and asked her whether she
had met with an accident, whereupon she answered that the horses had run away
and that she had been terribly frightened and was thinking of me. However she had not pronounced my name.
This would go to indicate that
the inner personality has a consciousness and faculties separate from those of
the outer one, and although the two are as one, nevertheless the inner man may
exercise functions and send out vibrations without their coming to the
consciousness of the external personality.
That hearing my name called was a
subjective experience is proved by the fact that none of the servants heard it,
although they were near enough to hear it, if the sound had been physical
instead of being astral. »
(Occult Review, March 1907, p.138)
THE TELEPATHIC SOURCES OF INSPIRATION
« The following experience may seem to be insignificant, but to me
it appears very instructive: Some years ago my friend Hugo Wolf of Vienna, the
well-known composer of music, asked me to write for him the libretto of a comic
opera.
I began this work and after
having finished the first act, I read the same to a gentleman of my
acquaintance, Dr. K., who happened to come and see me.
A few days afterwards I met Dr. K.
again and he said to me:
-
“I would advise you
to go this evening to the Leopoldstadt theatre, where they are playing your
opera.”
This I did, and to my great
surprise I found them playing a comic opera entitled "Madame Venus,” in
which was represented the very piece that I was writing. The words were not
exactly the same, but the action was identical. Of course my manuscript was
consigned to the fire.
Now this may be called a case of
unconscious reading in the astral light and goes to show that a person may be
deemed guilty of plagiarism, though innocent in all respects, and such things
happen perhaps oftener than may be supposed.
It is known that among the poems
of Goethe there is one which was originally written by another poet and of
which Goethe knew nothing.
There are many inventions and discoveries
which have been made almost simultaneously by different persons unknown to each
other. To such belong the invention of the sewing machine and telephone, the
discovery of certain planets and satellites, etc.
H. P. Blavatsky has been accused
of plagiarism, although I am certain that she never was in possession of the
books from which she was said to have copied. She had simply the power of
reading consciously the records existing in the astral light, proof of which I
received many times during my two years’ intercourse with her.
Moreover, this case may furnish a
clue to the understanding of certain phenomena which are still a puzzle to
psychological science.
Whenever a person in a trance
speaks a language unknown to him in his normal condition, or discourses
learnedly about subjects of which he has learned nothing, it is usually
believed by scientists that he must have somehow or somewhere heard of such
things and that they impressed themselves upon his memory.
If, for instance, an uneducated
person in a trance delivers a discourse in Latin and it is afterwards found out
that he has heard here or there a few Latin words, the secret is believed to
have been explained, however inexplicable this explanation may be.
Would it not be far more
reasonable to seek a solution in the fact that every thing which takes place on
this physical plane makes an impression and is recorded and retained in the
"astral light,” the sensorium of the world, and that the things existing
there may be reflected and their images mirrored forth in sensitive minds,
capable of receiving corresponding vibrations? »
(Occult Review, June
1907, p.330-331)
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