LOSING HIMSELF WITHIN THE ASTRAL CLAIRVOYANCE

 

 

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.