Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science.

by Hudson Tuttle.

a.n.a.lYSIS.

There is a Psychic Ether, related to thought, as the luminiferous ether is to light.

This may be regarded as the thought atmosphere of the universe. A thinking being in this atmosphere is a pulsating center of thought-waves, as a luminous body is of light.

There is a state of mind and body known as sensitive, or impressible, in which it receives impressions from other minds. This state may be normal, or induced by fatigue, disease, drugs, or arise in sleep. The facts of clairvoyance, trance, somnambulism and psychometry prove the existence of this ether, and are correlated to it.

Thought transference is also in evidence, as well as that vast series of facts which give intimation of an intelligence surviving the death of the physical body.

This sensitiveness may be exceedingly acute, and the individual unconscious of it, and then it is known as genius, which is acute susceptibility to the waves of the psychic atmosphere.

Sensitiveness explains the true philosophy of prayer.

All the so-called occult phenomena of mesmerism, trance, clairvoyance, mind reading, dreams, visions, thought transference, etc., are correlated to and explained by means of this psychic ether.

All these phenomena lead up to the consideration of immortality, which is a natural state, the birthright of every human being.

The body and spirit are originated and sustained together, and death is their final separation.

The problem of an immortal future, beginning in time, is solved by the resolution of forces at first acting in straight lines, through spirals reaching circles which, returning within themselves, become individualized and self-sustaining.

Spiritual beings must originate and be sustained by laws as fixed and unchanging as those which govern the physical world.

Sensitiveness gives great pleasures and may give pain; the author's experience as a sensitive, related, shows this.

And, finally, a communication from a spirit whose life had been n.o.ble and unselfish, given while the recipient was in a sensitive and receptive state, detailing an account of the phenomena called death, but which is really birth into the spirit realm, the meeting of friends, and the knowledge of a quarter of a century of its joys, together with "the poet's story," it being an account given by one whose earth-life had been selfish, and whose selfish thoughts had formed themselves into phantom companions, following him into the realm of the future world, and making his life there one of despair, and how he escaped these legitimate children of his brain by heroic acts of unselfishness, complete the story. These last are no fictions of the imagination, written to amuse the reader; but the author is firmly convinced, yes, knows they are the words of actual living beings who have once lived on earth like ourselves.

H. T.

Matter, Life, Spirit.

NECESSITY OF KNOWLEDGE, NOT FAITH.--Guizot forcibly expresses the value of a knowledge of future life when he says: "Belief in the supernatural (spiritual) is the special difficulty of our time; denial of it is the form of all a.s.saults on Christianity, and acceptance of it lies at the root, not only of Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever."

He stands not alone in this conclusion. The difficulty, to a great majority of men of science and leaders of thought, appears insurmountable, and they no longer feel a necessity for defending their want of belief, but smile at the credulity of those who believe anything beyond what their senses reveal.

Not only the infidel world perceives this difficulty; it is well understood by the leaders of Christianity, for they have been taught its strength by the irrepressible conflict which has culminated in the want of belief at the present time. With this result before them, it is idle for the church leaders to a.s.sert that revelation in the Bible is sufficient to remove this difficulty, which has grown in the very sanctuary, in the shadow of biblical teachings. While the value of the Bible, as interpreted by theologians, depends on the belief in immortality, it has not proved the existence of man beyond the grave in such an absolute manner as to remove doubt; and yet, of all evidence it is designed to give, that on this point should be the most complete and irrefutable.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves nothing, even admitted in its most absolute form. If Christ was the Son of G.o.d and G.o.d himself, he was unlike ordinary mortals, and what is true of him is not necessarily so of them.

His physical resurrection does not prove theirs. Admitting similarity, his bodily resurrection after three days, while his body remained unchanged, does not prove theirs after they have become dust, and scattered through countless forms of life for a thousand ages. If, with some sects, the resurrection of the body be discarded, then the resurrection of Christ has no significance, for it is expressly held that his body was revivified and taken from the tomb.

Skepticism has increased, because the supporters of religion have not attempted to keep pace with the march of events, but, on the contrary, a.s.serted that they had all knowledge possible to gain on this subject, and that anything outside of their interpretation was false.

Instead of founding religion on the const.i.tution of man, and making immortality his birthright, they have regarded these as foreign to him, and only gained by the acceptance of certain doctrines. They removed immortality from the domain of accurate knowledge; and those who pursued science turned with disgust from a subject which ignored present research for past belief.

Hence, there has been, unfortunately, the great army of investigators and thinkers, in the realm of matter, studying its phenomena and laws, never approaching the threshold of the spiritual; and, on the other hand, the more important knowledge of spirit, of man's future, which retrospects his present life and all past ages, and reaches into the infinite ages to come, was the especial care of those who scorned nature and abhorred reason. Hence the antagonism, which can only be removed by the priest laying aside his books as infallible authority, discarding beliefs, dogmas, and metaphysical word legerdemain, and studying the inner world in the same manner that the outer has been so advantageously explored. When this has been done, it may be found that physical investigators have not the whole truth, even when they have been the most exact.

It may be found that, having omitted the spiritual side in all their investigations, their conclusions are erroneous to the extent of that factor, which may be one of the most important. It may be found that in order to have a complete and perfect knowledge of the external world, the internal or spiritual must be understood.

Here we face the time-old questions: What is matter? What is spirit? The philosophy of nature here rests. There is no middle ground. The materialist starts from the atom, which, he says, has in itself all the possibilities of the universe and outside of which there is nothing.

THE ATOM.--But who knows of the atom, into which matter, at last a.n.a.lysis, is resolved? No one. Aside from the active forces which apparently flow from it, we know nothing, and speculation takes the place of knowledge. That speculation, unfettered by the requirements of accurate science, grew rankly in the minds of the sages of antiquity, and bore the strangest fruits. From that time to the present, speculative thought has not ceased in activity, nor arrived at any certain conclusion.

The atomic theory is one of the most splendid generalizations in the whole circle of sciences. As a working hypothesis its aid is invaluable, and the solution it affords of the most intricate combination of the elements, truly marvelous. Yet it is a conjecture; the existence of the atom a guess. No one ever saw, tasted, or felt the atom. It is absolutely beyond the senses, as it is beyond any instrumental aid thereto. The entire structure of physical science, as expounded to-day, rests on conjecture, the only evidence in support of which is that it explains the phenomena. There is no a.s.surance that other conjectures might not explain them quite as well.

It would be a waste of time to explore this field, wherein the baseless dreams of philosophers and scientists have grown like Jonah's gourd, over-shadowing the barren sands.

The manner in which the nature of the distinct and indestructible atom was arrived at, shows the puerility of the theory. If we take a fragment of matter, we can break it into distinct pieces; these are again divided, and so on, until we reach a point where further division is impossible.

One of these indivisible particles, says the Materialist, is an atom; a conclusion derived from the gross conception of material division, and the limitation of the mind.

Endow this atom with force, or call it a center for the propagation of force, and the materialistic system is complete; yet these conclusions are but dreams. With equal arrogance, the Materialists lead to the higher ground of vitality, of mind and of morals, forgetting that the fundamental proposition on which this system rests is a guess, a surmise, and nothing more.

But investigation by other means than the primitive experience of mechanical division, shows that the atom has no existence as a fixed ent.i.ty. Professor Crookes has demonstrated that matter has properties unknown to the present race of philosophers.

By way of ill.u.s.tration: If a certain vessel be closed, and the air exhausted, until only one hundred atoms remain, that hundred leave no s.p.a.ce, but occupy the entire vessel. If the vacuum be made more perfect, and only ten atoms remain, the ten still occupy the whole s.p.a.ce; and if the process could be carried so far that only one remained, it would still fill the s.p.a.ce. The atomist might divide it indefinitely, and yet each division fill the s.p.a.ce. In short, were there but one atom in the universe, that atom would fill all s.p.a.ce.

NEW PROPERTIES.--When matter is thus rarified, or in other words, when the pressure is removed, new properties appear, and the tangible fades into the intangible. The qualities of pure force begin to be manifested.

The intimation is made that were it possible to make the vacuum more perfect, there would arise out of this invisible gas, spontaneous manifestation of energy; or matter would be resolved into force.

WHAT IS MATTER?--Having seen that the conception of the atom is immature, and incapable of demonstration, we find matter, of which the atom is supposed to be the foundation, equally incapable of definition.

With matter we never come in sensuous contact; we only know its forces, as expressed in phenomena.

The succession of seasons, the recurrence of day and night, the teeming earth, the starry heavens--these are manifestations of matter. Matter here is revealed to us as an appearance. Matter is appearance; phenomena are concrete expressions of force. It may be asked: Do these phenomena create themselves? Do bodies become organic by the confluence of atoms?

Rather are they not molded by the force which through them gains expression? What is this force? Is it independent? On ultimate a.n.a.lyses, force resolves itself into motion, which is discernable to the senses only as expressed in phenomena. If we were obliged to explain the phenomena of matter only, some theory might be plausibly maintained; fronting one world we might understand it, but we are fronting two worlds. There is constantly the caused and the cause. We never are satisfied that the caused caused itself. We may receive the beautiful exposition of the doctrine of evolution, and yet we have only the road over which life has been irresistibly forced. Why? Wherefore? By what power? Instinctively we turn to the realm of spiritual causes.

Material science, with all its boasted accuracy and infallibility, breaks down, and utterly fails, when called to explain mental and spiritual phenomena. It boasts of infallibility, when its fundamental theories are conjectures that the advance of thought may to-morrow show to be vagaries of fancy. We must look to the eternal activities of spirit for the final solution of the grossest manifestation of matter.

NATURE A WITCHES' POT.--The present conception of nature, by material science, is a witches' pot, into which, by some unknown process, matter and force were placed. The pot seethes, and out of the seething conflict foams up to the surface in kaleidoscopic changes, organic beings. The savans stand around its rim like Shakespeare's witches and chant a technical gibberish about laws; the pre-existence and correlation of force; the indestructibility of energy; the eternity of matter; the potentialities of the atom; the struggle for existence; the survival of the fittest, and in admiration praise each other's profundity of sight, while the sharpest eyed see nothing beneath the foaming sc.u.m. They pride themselves on explanations, of causes, while really they play with words.

At the threshold of this discussion of the problem of mind and spirit we have that of life. The living being is the most wonderful achievement of force in its mult.i.tudinous forms. Life is the gateway to the realm of spirit, and beyond that gateway lie the questions we seek to solve.

The living being, by the fact of its being such, has new and hitherto undetermined relations. It has escaped from the hold of the forces in part from the common lot of matter, and a new horizon uplifts before it.

New and mysterious forces intrude, the sum of which we call vital energy. Well we know that here the material scientist will smile or sneer, for he has already settled the question in his own mind and that of his confreres, that there is nothing beyond the properties of matter.