Mr.
James Henderson Connelly related in this article the uneasiness in which he
fell due to no longer being able to clearly differentiate between what he
perceived in the physical world and in the astral world, and this because he
had developed a lot his clairvoyance.
I do not think any other man ever
found himself in so peculiarly annoying and embarrassing a position as mine, or
one that seemed so utterly hopeless of mitigation. And yet few will, I fear,
appreciate its seriousness or even comprehend the possibility of life being
made a burden by the mere indeterminateness of things. I might naturally expect
sympathy from Irene, if from anybody, but when I try to make her understand the
ocean of uncertainty that overwhelms me and the unreality at least probable in
everything surrounding me, she smiles sweetly and says — or at least I think
she smiles and says:
- "Why should you bother yourself
with such notions? Love is real, anyway, and you know you have me."
If I could be sure of that much, of
course I wouldn't care for anything else; but she brings me at once face to
face with my difficulty. Love real? But love, to be real, must have a real
object, and am I positive that Irene is real?
Not by any means.
Of course, I know she is a real
being, but is she the real being with whom I am in love? That is doubtful. Is
her voice the very soul of sweet and tender music, as it seems to me, or is its
melody only the inspiration of my self-deluding fancy?
What would I not give, were such a thing possible, to
hear her with another's ears!
And is she indeed as fair in the sight of others as
she is in mine?
I am inclined to believe that her
hair is of a soft brown tint, like oak leaves lightly touched by frost; but I
have seen it glow like burnished gold and black as the back of a crow, and once
it was white as molten silver freshly poured. Now, which of these is truly
hers?
I am more nearly certain about her
eyes than anything else, for in those twin heavens of blue —as mostly they
appear to me— lives such angelic purity and truth as exorcise the demon Doubt;
yet I have seen their color change to grey disdain, black anger, green-gleaming
cruelty and lurid passion, all within an hour and unknown to her. No emotion
stirred her. Those changes were not from within, but reflected, as the placid
crystal lake mirrors the sky, and it was my will that caused them, so much my
love assures me of.
But how am I to know what is inherent and not
reflection?
What is real?
That Irene is affectionate, gentle,
virtuous, noble-minded and beautiful, I do not question. But, you understand,
she might possess all those attributes and yet not be the one woman I should
love. My soul is full of passionate adoration for an ideal, of which she
appears to me the embodiment; but is she indeed so? May it not be that my
tyrannical fancy has colored her perfections to my desire?
That torturing, ever-recurrent doubt
is the fruit of my life's strange experience.
The development of clairvoyance during childhood
From my boyhood I had the faculty of
seeing by my will. I do not mean simply that I possessed a vivid recollection
of persons, places and things, but that upon closing my eyes to my actual
surroundings and willing to behold the face of an absent friend, the actors in
a past event fully known to me, or the features of a familiar landscape, the
person, the "incident or the scene would seem to present itself
objectively to my sight.
This power, I believe, inheres in
nearly all persons, but, through lack of use, is generally lost at an early
age. I, as it happened, unconsciously developed and strengthened it to what is
now perhaps an abnormal degree.
Circumstances, needless to detail,
made my boyhood rather a lonely one and restricted my social companionship to a
few persons much older than myself and of quiet, contemplative habits. I fell
naturally into their silent, reflective ways, and my principal pleasure was in
the exercise of that faculty — seeing by will with the mind's eye.
Seeing the Akashic Archives clearly
After a time I passed beyond the
limitation of evoking only pictures already familiar to my sight: I found that
I could call up scenes of which I had read or heard only, and, from that on,
lived most, as it seemed to me, in that phantom world made by myself.
How vivid it was!
How full of animation, adventure, color, achievement
and reward!
It was never night there; the
trammels of time and space fell off at its threshold; by-gone days became the
to-day, and with a thought I transported myself to the most remote lands. And
the strangest of all strange things to me then was this: that the scenes I
looked upon were real.
Banners, arms, faces, places and
events passed before me in that infinite panorama of which I had no previous
knowledge in my normal waking consciousness, but which I subsequently amply
verified to their nicest details by descriptions and pictures in books. For a
time this discovery made me afraid, but the fascination of indulgence was
irresistible.
Creating astral entities
The path upon which I was
progressing was, as I gradually began to realize, one from which opened
infinite vistas of amazing possibilities. I found that I could people my world
of wonders, at my will, not merely with the semblances of those who had been,
but with new beings, creatures who were simply the creations of my fancy.
At first they would be indistinct,
shadowy, vague; but upon my will exerting itself to make them more clearly
visible they readily became so and at each succeeding time of recall would
appear to approximate more nearly to actual life, until they exceeded in
distinctness and seeming reality those whom I now designated to myself as the
resurrected phantoms. And these beings of my own making would not willingly
vanish as did the others, but lingered persistently near me and even manifested
themselves without being summoned; though when they came unbidden they were
always less clearly defined, and it was not until they had attracted my thought
to them that they grew strong to sight.
The discovery of my possession of
this power of creation filled me with a wild exultation, and I reveled in its
exercise, peopling space with multitudes of the children of my fancy. At times
I devoted myself to imagining into existence the most beautiful creatures I
could conceive, and, again, those most horrible, fearful, or repulsive. Then,
summoning about me all I had called into being, I would review their hosts and
triumph, feeling only one keen regret — that I could not make them visible to
other men as my work.
This I indeed tried very hard to
accomplish, selecting certain of my creations that seemed most strong and
fixing my thought upon them intensely, to strengthen them still more; yet I
could never make them objective to any sight but my own, though I have so far
succeeded as to make their presence distinctly felt as the proximity of some
invisible, inexplicable horror to certain sensitive persons.
Continued exercise of this creative
power eventually brought its own peculiar punishment upon me, in making it so
facile that conscious employment of will was no longer necessary to bring my
thoughts in objective form before me. This may seem a light thing, but is not
so. No one can realize, until he has tried it, what ugly things untrammeled
thoughts are.
One hideous, abominable face that I
involuntarily called into being has ever since been a haunting horror to me.
The recollection evokes it and it glowers at me as I write.
A woman with a very repulsive, bad
countenance had been introduced to me one evening, and as I laid my head upon
my pillow that night I happened to think of her and wonder if she could be
uglier and live. Yes, at least she could be a little more indecently ugly, I
decided, and I thought how. Thereupon, straightway, uprising seemingly from the
floor and floating not a foot away from my eyes was the hideous head I
imagined.
The colorless hair, stony, malignant
eyes, lowering brow, slate-like complexion, broad drooping mouth, brutal lower
lip, fang-like teeth — all together made such a hideous combination that,
accustomed as I was to eerie things, I sprang up with an exclamation of mingled
affright and loathing. But I cannot banish it. The very intensity of my feeling
concerning it makes it one of my most constant and vividly perceptible
attendants.
Unable to separate the physical world from the astral
world
In this hurried resume of my strange
experiences covering the years from boyhood until I became a man I have only
touched the salient points, and much has necessarily been omitted, but enough
is told to show how this faculty of peering into the hidden world has been
developed in me and what it has resulted in thus far — that I am consciously
living a dual life, on two planes of existence, the material upon which I met
Irene, and the psychic in which I am overwhelmed by the myriads of my
will-evolved phantoms. And the mischief of my situation is that I am
momentarily liable to confound the denizens and belongings of the two worlds.
My thought creations now possess a
degree of objectivity that appeals to two of my senses — hearing as well as
sight. At times I have believed myself cognizant of them by a third sense also.
When I will them to appear wearing or carrying fragrant flowers the odor of the
scented blossoms seems to be perceptible to me.
But then, I debate with myself, is the scent real to
my abnormally developed perceptions, or is it only an illusion, my sixth sense
beguiled by my own will?
Cold reason inclines me to think the
latter correct. The sense of smell is only excited to action by certain of our
nerves of perception coming in contact with material particles much too gross
for the astral plane, where hearing and seeing are properly existent —
particularly the latter.
(Cid's observation: Connelly is wrong here because the esoteric instructors
explained that the vibrations produced by the smells are also perceived on the
astral plane, although in the case that he is pointing out, it is most likely
that it is the product of his imagination.
But
since what humans imagine is also created in the astral, it becomes difficult
to differentiate between what already existed and what we have unconsciously
created. And this difficulty of knowing what was created by one and what was not,
Connelly himself commented below.)
Listening to astral entities
I thus qualify my assignment of
those senses to that plane, because, to tell the truth, I am sometimes tempted
to question whether I actually do hear things originating there or if the
seemingly distinct tones are not purely subjective, an illusion of the primary
consciousness produced involuntarily by the force of my own will. Yet my ability
to hear them grew gradually as did my power of seeing.
Never shall I forget the thrilling
sensations with which I first heard a voice upon that astral plane! It seemed
softer, fainter, than the rustling together of the petals of a rose in a gentle
breeze; yet it reached me, and had it been a thunder tone I could not have been
more impressed and awed.
Sound seemed to have suddenly
entered into and vivified a world of form and color. Of course, when I thought
calmly upon it, I remembered the ancient occult teaching, now vaunted as among
the latest discoveries of modern material science, that sound and color —rates
of vibration— are manifestations of the same thing, and convertible each into
the other. But in the first emotions of a great surprise one does not
philosophize.
I had not missed the power of speech
in my astral beings, for their thoughts were known to me, as my own. Every
shade of desire, purpose and feeling that molded the expressions of their
mobile countenances, glowed in their eyes and prompted the movements of their
airy forms was understood by me without words. Naturally so, it will be said,
because the thoughts were, like the beings themselves, born in my own mind; but
that was not always so, particularly in those most established in existence of
recurrence and thought consolidation.
They, I felt assured, became
obsessed by entities belonging to the astral plane, ''elementals'' only capable
of manifesting to me through the creatures my own will had made. It was as if
an automaton made by a man should be vivified and utilized as a mask by a
demon. But, whatever the origination of the thoughts, no audible vibrations of
either atmosphere or akasha were needed to convey them to me; and it was a new
amazement when Pantomime in that shadow-world found a Voice, when the
mind-drawn figures of my will-woven-0anvas spoke to me in tones I heard, words
I had not thought. And use of the faculty gave them strength in its employment.
I have become accustomed to it, and,
as an indubitable fact, think no more of it than of the coldness of ice, the
sonorousness of bell-metal, or anything else we think we know. But two things
about it yet annoy me. Frequently I catch myself wondering that other persons,
in my company, do not hear the voices from the astral plane, which are often
very loud, particularly so in the utterance of things that would cause me much
embarrassment if heard by my friends as well as myself. But, worse yet, my part
of the conversations with those astral beings is carried on indifferently by
inaudible thought or vocal effort, and I have got myself into a simply
abominable habit of unconsciousness of vocalization in my ordinary intercourse
with corporeal beings.
Thinking out loud
Sometimes I fancy that I say to
persons things I merely think, and, still more provocative of confusion and
trouble, I say audibly things that I erroneously imagine myself simply turning
over in my mind, or, at most, confiding inaudibly to my invisibles. For
instance, a few evenings ago I sat in the parlor with Irene. She was at the piano,
and had just sung for me a deliciously dreamy, passionate, guachanauga love-song. I thought to myself: ''I should like to see
how Irene would look as one of the people out of whose fiery tropical souls
those songs sprang into existence. I will to see her so—''
Many times I bad so amused myself,
using her as a foundation for the rendering objective of my subjective
conceptions, blending them with her personality, and the change that now took
place in her appearance did not surprise me. Almost instantly the color of her
skin deepened to a golden bronze, through which the rich, red blood could be
seen like a crimson tide ebbing and flowing; great masses of wavy hair, so
black that it glittered, tumbled loosely away from her low, broad .brow and
fell in a tangled mass on her bare shoulders; her eyes grew very big and black,
with a lustrous, liquid light glowing in them, and her lips, thick and red as
blood, lay slightly opened, as if she were panting.
The Spaniard, the Carib and the
Indian were blended in her, and, marvelous as the fact may seem, though not one
feature in the combination at all resembled Irene in its single particular, the
total bore a wonderful likeness to her. I shuddered and thought:
- "Beautiful you are, of course, as
you cannot help being, but simply a sensuous animal, as much a beast as though
you walked on four legs. I prefer you as you were — less seductive, perhaps,
but safer to marry."
And, to my speedy confusion, I
unconsciously thought aloud. Imagine, if you can, Irene's astonishment, her
indignation and the trouble I had in making any satisfactory explanation. I did
not dare tell her the truth — that I was addressing an astrally objective
variation upon her very charming personality, the creation of my wayward fancy.
She would not have taken kindly to the idea if she had believed it, and the
probabilities were over-whelming that she would have deemed me crazy.
Irene is one of those excellent,
healthy, well-brought-up girls, to whom the abnormal is improper and the
inexplicable necessarily bad. Aside from any thought of fear, she would have
objected to a ghost, primarily because ghosts are not ''good form'' in society;
secondly, as a stranger not properly introduced.
Creating an astral rival
It is just possible, I suspect, that
in my nature there is a trace of pre-disposition toward jealousy; not the base
jealousy that springs from an unworthy distrust of the beloved one, but rather
a feeling that is the fruit of modest self-depreciation. From thinking how, if
I were better in mind and person than I am, I might be more pleasing to Irene,
worthier of her love, it was, of course, for me an easy thing to imagine a
being to my mind's eye free from all my defects, one that could not fail of
being the realization of her ideal of a man; and naturally, thinking about him,
I created him on the astral plane.
I was the only person who could see
him, fortunately, but to me he was the most intensely objective of all the
phantoms surrounding me, and beyond a doubt was one of the obsessed ones
animated by an "elemental." He used to threaten me with finding means
to incarnate himself and become really my rival. Many a time he would so annoy
me and grow to such alarmingly substantial appearance that I would actually
find comforting reassurances in poking a cane or my fist through him. As to
banishing him, that was quite out of the question. I had to remember him, and
my thought evoked him, as it does even at this moment.
One afternoon of last week I called
on Irene, and, not finding her in the front parlor, passed through to the rear,
where I caught sight of her in the conservatory. She was standing, with her
back toward me, looking at a plant. A tall, manly form stood beside her, with
an arm around her waist. I smiled to myself. It was, of course, my astral
rival, a thought of whom had crossed my mind as I came in, and he was trying to
exasperate me by this semblance of familiarity. I laughed at his folly, for did
I not know his diaphanous unsubstantiality?
At my utterance of my darling's name
she turned to greet me. He also turned, taking a step backward, which placed
him between her and me. The light was beyond them and their faces in deep
shadow; so of their features I could hardly see more than general outlines, but
I knew their forms — that was enough, and, ignoring him, strode eagerly forward
toward her in a line that would take me directly through him. Imagine, if you
can, the intense astonishment I felt at coming into violent collision with him
and finding him as solid flesh and bone as I myself. So, then, I thought, he
had discovered means for doing as he had threatened!
In the surprise, excitement and
sudden rage of the moment, I clutched his throat and he in return grasped me by
the neck, but before any actual blow passed between us Irene's voice recalled
me to myself and I began to realize that I had made an enormous blunder. It was
not my astral rival, nor any lover at all, but her half-brother, who had just
arrived home on a visit from Japan, where he had been living as the purchasing
partner of a big tea firm for ten years past. I had heard mention of him, but
that was all, and never gave a second thought to his existence, else it would
have been easy enough for me to call up his eidolon, or at least an astral
facsimile of it, and so know what he was like. Had I done so, this absurd
mistake, which it was almost impossible to explain away, could never have
occurred.
He is a shrewd, hard-headed,
practical man, and although he politely accepted my apologies, I could see that
I had not made a favorable impression upon him. The cold air of patient,
critical observation with which he silently listened to my explanation confused
me. I tried to tell him frankly that I had, for a moment, confounded him with
an immaterial gentleman whom I was accustomed to see near Irene, a harmless but
sometimes annoying being made by myself; but when I saw his eyebrows lift in
irrepressible surprise and manifest doubt of my sanity, I floundered in my
plain statement of fact and weakly tried to shift the burden of my error upon
the insufficient light, to which, with a frozen smile, he bowed assent.
Since then he has concerned himself
in my affairs to an extent that causes me to wish wearily a thousand times each
day that he had staid in Japan. He contrives that I shall not be alone with Irene
five minutes at a time. With a purpose so palpable that a child could see
through it, he has brought me into the company of Dr. H, the famous alienist,
who told me my liver was out of order, and advised me to leave my business and
give my brain a rest for a few months. I would bet my liver against his that of
the two mine is the best and my brain is no more in need of rest than his is.
I simply have a sixth sense,
abnormally developed, of the existence of which he and Irene and her brother
are all ignorant. That it involves me in a great deal of trouble, never
anticipated by me during its cultivation, and that I would fain be rid of it if
I could, I cheerfully admit; but my liver has no more to do with it than
Pharaoh's gall.
I very much fear that I shall lose
Irene because of it, and this dread makes me nervous, sets me to worrying,
increases the mixing up of the two worlds and enhances my feeling of the
overwhelming indeterminateness and unreliability of things in both. How intense
this is may be appreciated from the fact that, as I have already represented in
the opening of this plain statement, I am now actually capable of entertaining
doubts about Irene-doubts that not even all the fondness of her astral double
—which is now constantly with me— can altogether dissipate.
(“On
the astral plane,” Word, NY, vol 3, August 1906, p.279-287)
OBSERVATIONS
I could not tell you if Mr. Connelly really experienced this that he
related in his article, or if he just invented it, but from all that I have
studied I see it as feasible, and I suspect that he did experience it since that
precisely motivated him to become a member of the Theosophical Society in order
to better understand what was happening to him, and I also suspect that in his
previous life he very much wanted to have his clairvoyance developed and in
this life it was fulfilled. So be very careful what you wish for, because
wanting to have your hidden powers and faculties activated when you are not yet
able to control them can be more of a nightmare than a blessing as was the case
for Mr. Connelly.
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