Why Are We Like This?
(_Parts of a Hitherto Unpublished Manuscript by Mrs. Sinclair_)
There comes a time in the life of each of us when we begin to wonder
what it is all about—this life. I mean, to want, with all one’s
bewildered and troubled heart, to _know_. What is life, what is the
purpose of it, above all, what is the reason for the preponderance of
the pain of it? This brief earthly existence, with its series of cares
and sorrows and bafflements—what is the purpose of it? It seemed so full
of purpose in our youth—full, rather of purposes, for youth has no one
purpose. Youth’s purpose is to fulfill what seems to be the little
purposes of each day, such as evading unpleasant things and pursuing the
pleasant ones. But as we pass on through the days of our youth, toward
early middle-age, we realize that these eagerly, zestfully pursued
purposes of youth were thwarted, one by one. If achieved, they brought
some penalty, or disappointment.
Three years ago, being ill and not happy,[30] reached the crisis of
questioning. I wanted to know how to get well, and I wanted to know why
I wanted to get well. And so, I began to ask, where is the path toward
knowledge? In which little store-house will I find a clue to the answer?
I went to see the medical men who have access to one little store-house.
I went to the psychological healers who have access to another little
store-house. And I went to the only religious group in the world today
which seemed to have any real, or living religion.[31] From all three of
these sources, one clue, one hint, stood out as a real clue. From the
mass of purported knowledge it appeared to me to be the most
significant. It seemed to be the thing which produced results in all
these three domains, though the priests and priestesses of but one of
them seemed aware of the great significance of this hint.
It had to do with man’s mind, to begin with, but it seemed to lead into
the very heart of all the universe—into our “material bodies,” as well
as into our mental hopes and longings and joys and despairs. So I set to
work to experiment first with telepathy and clairvoyance. If
clairvoyance is real, I said, then we may have access to all knowledge.
We may really be fountains, or outlets of one vast mind. To have access
to _all knowledge_.
If telepathy is real, I said, then my mind is not my own. I’m just a
radio receiving set, which picks up the thoughts of all the other
creatures of this universe. I and the universe of men are _one_. I had
long known, of course, that my body was not my own—that it picked up
sun-rays, and cold-waves, and sound-vibrations, which shook the atoms of
my being into new forms; that I picked up iron and sulphur, and
phosphorus, and vitamines, and what not, when I ate the plants and
animals of my universe; in short, that I had to pick up the constituents
of a new body in the form of “fresh air” and “water” and “food” every
day of my life in order to maintain the hold I had on the thing I called
_my_ body. But somehow, in the vague way in which we think of the mind,
I had felt that mine was entirely my own. Surely it was not dependent
on, nor at the mercy of, outside forces—except in the one horrible,
inexorable way of its dependence on my own body. It was free, of course,
to accept ideas from other minds, if it wished; but it did not have to,
unless it wanted to. So I had believed. Now, with my new clue, I began
to wonder if all my life I had not been in error in my thinking, if I
had not got the scheme of things turned upside down. Had I been looking
at an image in a mirror, a reversal of the truth? Was my body dependent
on my mind when I had thought my mind was dependent on my body? Was it
sick when my mind was, and did it die when my mind died—of
discouragement? And was my mind my own, or did it receive and accept
thoughts constantly from all the other creatures of the universe without
my being able to prevent it, without my even knowing it? * * *
What is myself, anyway—body or mind, or both, or one and the same thing,
or—what? I must find out! Is my mind a hodge-podge of its own thoughts
and the silent, ever-changing thoughts of all other creatures, just as
my body is a hodge-podge of the elements of the plants and animals and
light-rays it is fed on and made of?
Here were a lot of questions which had become terribly important, and I
couldn’t answer them, I couldn’t really answer any of them. But I had a
clue—a new clue which might lead—anywhere—to heaven or to hell. * * *
Some of the best scientific minds of the world have experimented with
telepathy and believe that it is a proven fact. I have read much of this
evidence, and I have watched a “medium” demonstrate telepathy. But
perhaps he was deceiving himself—perhaps he used some trick without
realizing it, such as listening to the breathing of the sender of the
thoughts he received. I do not see how this could be, but it is
possible, so I am told by experienced investigators of psychic
phenomena. However, there is this mass of evidence, in books, written by
men of the highest scientific training who have made experiments in
telepathy and who are convinced that it is a fact. * * *
But despite all this evidence, I seem to be uncertain. And this is too
serious a matter to leave to uncertainty. So I set to work to make my
own experiments. I have experimented already with a “medium,” but I have
been warned about the mediumistic temperament. These psychically
sensitive persons are, thanks to the very quality of mind which causes
them to be sensitive, overly prone to unconscious thinking which is
supposed to take a form of conscious instability. So I must find a
hard-boiled materialistic-thinking person to experiment with—one who is
prone to object thinking, who can maintain a wide-awake consciousness
with which to watch his own thoughts to prevent any self-deception,
while I, by a trustworthy mechanical device, _i.e._, a writing pad and
pencil, protect my mind from deceiving itself. I find such a hard-boiled
object mind in the person of my brother-in-law, who is a most capable,
practical business man, and whose philosophy of life does not include
any “mysticism,” or unconscious knowledge. Being ill, however, and with
no better way to pass the time, he consents to act as sender of
telepathic messages to me. He is domiciled thirty miles away from me,
and so we cannot look over each other’s shoulders at drawings, nor
listen to each other’s breathing.
We proceed as follows: Each day at one o’clock, an hour which suits the
convenience of both of us, he sits at a table in his home and makes a
drawing of some simple object, such as a table-fork, or an ink-bottle, a
duck, or a basket of fruit.[32] Then he gazes steadily at his drawing
while he concentrates his mind intently on “visualizing” the object
before him. In other words, he does not let his mind wander one instant
from the picture of the fork, or the ink-bottle, or whatever he has
drawn. He may gaze at the original object instead of at his drawing, but
he must not think of anything else but how it looks. The purpose of the
drawing is for proof to me that this was actually what he thought of at
the appointed hour. If his mind wanders off to thoughts of something
else, which he has no drawing of, I may get these wandering thoughts.
Then he will forget these wandering, unrecorded thoughts, and I will
have nothing to prove that he ever thought them.
When he has finished the fifteen minutes of steady concentration on one
object, he dates his drawing and puts it away, until the time when we
are to meet and compare our records. At my end of the “wireless,” I have
done a different mental stunt. I have reclined on a couch, with body
completely relaxed and my mind in a dreamy, almost unconscious state,
alternating with a state of gazing, with closed eyes, into grey space,
looking on this grey background for whatever picture, or thought-form
may appear there. When a form appears, I record it at once. I reach for
my pad and pencil and write down what I have seen, and make a drawing of
it, and then I relax again and look dreamily into space again to see if
another vision will appear, or if this same one will return to assure me
that it is the right one. At the end of fifteen minutes, the period of
time we arbitrarily agreed upon for each day’s experiment, I date my
drawing and file it until the day comes to compare notes with my
brother-in-law.
Each day thereafter, for several days, my brother-in-law goes through
this same performance, varying it only by his choice of a different
object to draw and concentrate upon each time. Every three or four days
we meet and compare notes.
One day, while I lay passively waiting for a “vision,” a chair of a
certain design floated before my mind. It was so vivid that I felt
absolutely certain that this was the object my brother-in-law, thirty
miles away, was visualizing for me. Other objects on other occasions had
been vivid, but this one was not merely vivid; in some mysterious way,
it carried absolute conviction with it. I knew positively that my mind
was not deceiving me. I was so sure that this chair had come “on the
air” from my brother-in-law’s mind to mine, that I jumped up and went to
the telephone and rang him up. His wife was in the room with him and my
husband was in the room with me, and we called on them as witnesses—for
we had set out on the experiment determined that there was to be no
deception, of each other, nor of ourselves. I wanted the truth about
this matter—I was at life’s crisis, at the place where my whole soul
cried out, “What is the meaning of it all, anyway?” And my
brother-in-law knew my mood, and a painful, lingering illness was
rapidly bringing him to share it. My vision of the chair, and my drawing
of it, were entirely correct. This was our first thrilling success.
Others followed it, and in the meantime, my husband and I had made
together some similar experiments, with success. Before the summer was
over, four persons—my husband, my brother-in-law, his wife, and I—had
become convinced of the reality of telepathy. Then, having read a book
by an English physicist (_An Experiment With Time_, by J. W. Dunne), I
began keeping records of my dreams according to Mr. Dunne’s method, in
order to see if, as he thought, they would render evidence of
foreknowledge of future events. Clairvoyance is the usual term for this
form of psychic phenomena, but Mr. Dunne, being a physicist, is averse
to mixing it with psychic things to the extent of using the regular
language, so he calls it “an experiment with time” and writes a book
about it in the language of physics. Not being a physicist, I’m quite
willing to stick to the well-known word, clairvoyance, even at the risk
of repelling those ignorant persons who think that all psychic phenomena
is trickery. There are hordes of charlatans who call themselves mediums,
just as there are hordes of physicians who are charlatans, and of
Christians who are cheats, and of bankers who are dishonest. So, having
read Mr. Dunne’s useful book, I set out to record my dreams and to watch
for their “coming true.” Some of them did. Some which could not be
accounted for by coincidence. Some others came true which were clearly
due to telepathy between my husband’s mind and my own. I dreamed that I
was doing things which it turned out he was actually doing, at a
distance from me, and at the time at which I was having the dream. Also,
during these months, I made some experiments on a young hypnotist I
knew. I had no intention of letting him hypnotize me, but I asked him to
try to. I knew he would never consent to the telepathy experiment if he
suspected it; he would not want me reading his secret thoughts. But he
had played some tricks on me, so I felt justified. And so, when he
concentrated on the task of putting me into a hypnotic sleep, I
concentrated on “seeing” his thoughts. Again and again I succeeded in
this experiment. I discovered his sorrows, his sins, his hopes, his
daily adventures. And I recorded them and faced him with them and became
his “Mother Confessor,”—and most generously rewarded his unintentional
confidence. I am sure he will agree that I made a full return to him for
the knowledge he inadvertently enabled me to obtain—the knowledge of the
interaction of minds. * * *