Metapsychical Phenomena: Methods and ObservationsMaxwell, J. (Joseph)
Philosophy
Metapsychical Phenomena: Methods and Observations
Maxwell, J. (Joseph)
Parapsychology -- Investigation
The following is an experiment in the transmission of thought which Dr.
Maxwell tried with the medium:—
“I gave my hand to M. Meurice, to hold, and said to him—we had been
talking, in a vague, general manner of the plurality of existences—‘Try
and see how I died in my previous existence.’
“Unknown to the medium, I wrote down on paper the words:—_Fall from a
horse!_
“M. Meurice answered: ‘I see your life, then you fade away into
nothingness; you die from an accident; a carriage—no, a horse accident.
I see you wearing a shield. You fall from your horse, he crushes you to
death.’”
* * * * *
The medium very often sees the same vision repeat itself in the
crystal. This is the vision of a procession of individuals clothed in
flowing robes; they follow a long narrow path, which loses itself in a
tunnel, into which the procession passes. The vision never varies, save
that at times after the procession has disappeared into the tunnel, the
path seems to be strewn with the bones of skeletons.
This vision has also been seen, in the same crystal, by our medium’s
youngest sister, a girl of twenty, who is absolutely ignorant of
spiritistic phenomena. She attributed her vision to an optical illusion.
* * * * *
It has been observed with M. Meurice that the last vision sometimes
precedes veridical hallucinations.
This and other facts would lead one to think that very probably, for
a medium, there is no test which can discriminate between falsidical
and veridical hallucinations. The psychological process appears to be
the same, viz. dramatisation and concrete images, instead of abstract
concepts or ideas.
Mediums, as a rule, possess parasitic personalities which act in the
same way as the normal personality; this feature of hallucinatory
phenomena is difficult to analyse, and introduces into the problem a
number of unknown factors.
In the case of the medium in question, the secondary personalities are
weak. They are always felt and objectived by the normal personality,
which is never expelled from the scene—a circumstance which is precious
for the observer as the visions are sometimes vivid to a degree. With
M. Meurice the unknown factors, though existing, are reduced to a sort
of minimum, and the psychological analysis is perhaps less difficult
than in the generality of cases. In this fact lies the value of his
intellectual phenomena, though it is a drawback indeed from another
point of view, the persistency of the normal consciousness, of the
normal will, and even of the normal powers of attention, being probably
the cause of the impurities which so frequently stain his intellectual
phenomena.
NOTES ON THE PERSONIFICATION ‘H. B.’
_By Dr. Maxwell_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account