On this matter, William
Judge noted the following:
Time and distance are said to make
no difference, for the wrapping from a mummy has been psychometrized by one who
knew nothing about it, and the mummy with its supposed history accurately
described. Letters also have been similarly treated without reading them, and
not only their contents given but also the unexpressed thoughts and the
surroundings of the writers.
Clairvoyants have also on innumerable
occasions given correct descriptions of events and persons they could never
have seen or known. But other innumerable times they have failed.
Without doubt if the city
government, or any body of people owning property that can be stolen, had in
their employment a man or women who could declare beyond possibility of ever
failing where any stolen article was, and who stole it, and could in advance
indicate a purpose on the part of another to steal, to trick, to lie, or
otherwise do evil, one of two things would happen. Either criminals or
intending offenders would abide elsewhere, or some means of getting rid of the
clear-seer would be put into effect.
Looking at the alluring
possibilities of clairvoyance so far as it is understood, many persons have
sighed for its power for several different reasons. Some would use it for the
purposes described, but many another has thought of it merely as a new means
for furthering personal ends.
Its delusions are so manifold that,
although mystical and psychical subjects have obtained in the public mind a new
standing, clairvoyance will not be other than a curiosity for some time, and
when its phenomena and laws are well understood no reliance greater than now
will be placed upon it. And even when individual clairvoyants of wonderful
power are known, they will not be accessible for such uses, because, having
reached their power by special training, the laws of their school will prohibit
the exercise of the faculty at the bidding of selfish interest, whether on the
one side or the other.
If it were not always a matter of
doubt and difficulty, natural clear-seers would have long ago demonstrated the
unerring range of their vision by discovering criminals still uncaught, by
pointing out where stolen property could be recovered, by putting a linger on a
moral plague-spot which is known to exist but cannot be located. Yet this they
have not done, and careful Theosophists are confirmed in the old teaching that
the field of clairvoyance is full of delusions. Coming evil could in the same
way be averted, since present error is the prelude and cause of future painful
results.
Why does clairvoyance fail so much?
1. The prime cause for delusion is
that the thought of any thing makes around the thinker an image of the thing
thought about. And all images in this thought-field are alike, since we
remember an object by our thought-image of it, and not by carrying the object
in our heads. Hence the picture in our aura of what we have seen in the hands of
another is of the same sort —for untrained seers— as our ideas on the subject
of events in which we have not participated.
So a clairvoyant may, and in fact
does, mistake these thought-pictures one for the other, thus reducing the
chances of certainty. If an anxious mother imagines her child in danger and
with vivid thought pictures the details of a railway accident, the picture the
seer may see will be of something that never happened and is only the product
of emotion or imagination.
2. Mistakes in identity come next.
These are more easily made in the astral plane, which is the means for
clairvoyance, than even upon the visible one, and will arise from numerous
causes. So numerous and complex is this that to fully explain it would not only
be hopeless but tedious. For instance, the person, say at a distance, to whom the
clairvoyant eye is directed may look entirely different from reality, whether
as to clothing or physiognomy.
He may, in the depths of winter,
appear clad in spring clothing, and your clairvoyant report that, adding
probably that it symbolizes something next spring. But, in fact, the spring
clothing was due to his thoughts about a well-worn comfortable suit of this
sort throwing a glamour of the clothing before the vision of the seer.
Some cases exactly like this I have
known and verified. Or the lover, dwelling on the form and features of his
beloved, or the criminal upon the one he has wronged, will work a protean
change and destroy identification.
3. Another source of error will be
found in the unwitting transfer to the clairvoyant of your own thoughts, much
altered either for better or worse. Or even the thoughts of some one else whom
you have just met or heard from. For if you consult the seer on some line of
thought, having just read the ideas on the same subject of another who thinks
very strongly and very clearly, and whose character is overmastering, the
clairvoyant will ten to one feel the influence of the other and give you his
ideas.
4. Reversion of image is the last I
will refer to. It has been taught always in the unpopular school of Theosophy
that the astral light reverses the images, just as science knows the image on
the retina is not upright. Not only have the Cabalists said this, but also the
Eastern schools, and those who now have studied these doctrines along
Theosophical lines have discovered it to be a fact. So the untrained
clairvoyant may see a number or amount backwards, or an object upside down in
whole or in part.
Conclusion
The reliance we can place on the
observations of untrained people in ordinary life the scientific schools and
courts of law have long ago discovered; but seekers after the marvellous
carelessly accept the observations of those who must be equally untrained in
the field of clairvoyance. Of course there are many genuine cases of good
clear-seeing, but the mass are not to be relied on. The cultivation of psychic
senses is more difficult than any physical gymnastics, and the number of really
trained clairvoyants in the Western world may be described by a nought written
to the left.
("Delusions of clairvoyance," Path, July 1892, p.106-108)
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