Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of DiseaseWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing
At the moment his train went down the bank the thought of his wife and
daughter came very vividly to his mind. For a moment the awful
position in which they would be placed if anything serious happened to
him occupied his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. As soon
as he could, he telegraphed home that he was unhurt, with the
understanding that the telegram should not be delivered before the
following morning.
During the night mother and daughter sleeping in adjoining rooms were
wakened at the same moment, and very seriously disturbed, by
something, they knew not quite what. They rose at once to go to each
other and met at the door. They felt vaguely that father was in some
way connected with their awakening and disturbance of mind. After they
received his telegram they were sure that what disturbed them during
the night was the telepathic communication of father's danger. Each
had, however, deliberately kept from speaking of her impression. When
they found that he had passed through the danger unhurt, they were
sure that it was a call from him that each had heard.
This bears most of the ear-marks of a genuine case of telepathy. Here
are minds whose cells by custom and inheritance are finely attuned to
those of a distant mind that is suddenly very much disturbed. If the
perturbations of that first mind were carried through the ether by a
sort of wireless telegraphy, it would apparently not be very
surprising. So carried, they woke the receptive cells of similar minds
at a long distance, and mother and daughter felt the thrill at the
same instant. Vague though it was, there was a telepathic message.
But there were other passengers in this train who had near and dear
relatives, yet none of them received communications. There have been
literally hundreds of thousands of other accidents in the past fifty
years of railroading in which passengers who have been put in very
serious danger, have thought intensely of their loved ones, and yet,
there has been at most only a dozen or so examples of vague telepathy
of this class. Similar cases to this are extremely rare, though
accidents in America are very frequent. At most, then, we are in the
presence of a very exceptional case. Such cases would mean nothing as
evidence for a scientific law, since they occur so rarely as to aptly
exemplify the old adage that the exception proves the rule. The rule
evidently is that there is no communication at a distance, hence the
surprise when there seems to be some reason for thinking that a
communication has actually taken place. Instead of proving that
telepathy occurs, such cases make it clear, to the limit of
demonstration, that telepathy does not occur unless some extremely
special conditions intervene to make it possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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