Article #10 of 13
Can Some People Read Minds?
It used to be believed that if one person wanted to put an idea into the mind of another person, he could do so only by making use in some way of that other person's bodily senses. He would either have to speak words reaching that other person's ears or put his ideas before the other person's eyes in writing.
But is it true that one person can get at the mind of another only through that other's bodily senses? Men are by no means as sure as they once were of that. Scientists now say that the unconscious mind of one person can make the unconscious mind of another have exactly the same thoughts. No words need be spoken for the other person to hear, no signs made that he can see with his eyes, no letter written that must be read.
Nor is it done by brain-waves, as a broadcasting station sends out wireless waves. Brain-waves would require a transmitting apparatus in the senders' head and a receiving apparatus in that of the other. But the human brain is not equipped with special valve-cell for the transmission of such impulses to other human brains, or the reception of such impulses from them. Also radio-beams get weaker and weaker the farther they go, whilst distance makes no difference to the power of one person's subconscious mind to influence that of another.
This strange psychical rather than physical power is called telepathy, the power to give thoughts to other people at a distance or to read other people's minds quite independently of all ordinary means of communication.
Unbelieving rationalists and materialists, of course, deny the existence of telepathy and ridicule the whole idea of any subconscious activities of the soul independently of the physical brain and the bodily senses. For them, thoughts are only changes taking place in material brain-cells, changes of which we become aware in some way, much as we might hear the ticking of a clock. They deny that man has a spiritual soul, and that there is any next-life for that soul. In fact, according to them, no spirit-world exists, no angels, no God. The material universe we see is all that there is. To admit telepathy, or any spiritual activities breaking through the ring-fence of our material bodily organism would be the end of their theories.
As Professor H.H. Price, of Oxford, has said: "Telepathy is something that ought not to happen at all if the materialistic theory were true. But it does happen. So there must be something wrong with the materialistic theory."
An urgent ringing brought the doctor to his feet, and he hurried to see who was there. A small girl of about ten, clutching her school-books, stood confronting him when he opened the door, her worried face and still more anxious voice telling him at once that there was something seriously wrong.
"Doctor," she gasped breathlessly, "come quickly."
He recognised her, the little Gwynne girl.
"But whatever is the matter?" he asked.
"Oh, doctor," she appealed, "come with me at once. It's mother. Something has happened to her. Please come, doctor. I'll tell you as we go."
It was not far. Only a block or two away. In a matter of moments the doctor had his hat and bag, and was hurrying along the street with the child.
"Did mother have an accident?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "I haven't been home. I was only on the way there, and I just had to get you to come with me."
"But if you haven't been home, how do you know your mother needs me?" asked the astonished doctor.
"I just know," the girl answered. "Doctor, I was walking along the back lane from the school reading a geometry book when suddenly every-thing around me seemed to fade away and disappear. The road and the hedges and the trees at first went dim, and gradually my mother's room at home took their place. For a few moments I really stood in the room. My mother was lying on the floor as if dead. She had dropped her handkerchief, the one with the nice lace border, and it was there beside her at her feet. But after a minute or two, all that began to fade and the road and the hedges and the trees came back. I knew that something had happened to mother and that I must bring you."
"Was she unwell when you left home this morning?" asked the doctor.
"No. There was nothing wrong with her then."
"Perhaps you were worried about her. I mean, you had not been thinking of her?"
"No. When I left school, I thought I would look over my geometry on the way home, and all I was thinking about when this happened to me was what I was reading. Everything I then saw was so real that I knew it must be true."
Precisely as the little girl and the doctor came to the house, Mr S.G. Gwynne himself arrived home.
Surprised by the sight of the doctor, he asked: "Who is ill?"
"Mother," replied the child, as she ran towards the door.
Mr Gwynne and the doctor quickly followed, and when they came to the bedroom they found Mrs Gwynne lying unconscious on the floor, with the lace-bordered handkerchief near her feet just as her daughter had noted in her transitory vision of the scene.
The doctor at once attended to the patient, who had been seized suddenly by a heart attack, from which he said she would almost certainly have died but for his timely arrival.
Some time later, after her recovery, an account of the whole remarkable episode was written by the daughter and signed by both the father and mother. Later still, some years afterwards, in response to inquiries by investigators of the Society for Psychical Research, the father, Mr S.G. Gwynne, and the daughter, who had by then married a Mr Bettany, confirmed the details of the extraordinary occurrence, the incident being known thenceforward as 'The Mrs Bettany Case."
Psychical researchers explain this case by saying that the unconscious mind of the mother was the agent, exerting a telepathic influence which caused an impression of the desperate situation in the unconscious mind of the child, from which a vivid picture of the scene momentarily took possession of her unconscious mind, blotting out everything else.
To follow their explanation, let us try to see again, in simpler terms, what their theory is. The very mention of simpler terms, of course, would probably make scientists reject the whole effort. But this isn't being written for them.
Experts who have devoted themselves to psychical research say that there is a kind of upstairs and downstairs in the human mind; and that, while we can be aware of what is going on upstairs, we don't know what is going on downstairs, except on rare occasions when something seems to find its way up from down below.
In other words, we have a conscious self and a subliminal self, the latter acting through an unconscious part of the mind below the threshold of consciousness. This subconscious mind is said to contain a lot more than our conscious mind. In fact, the mind is to be compared to an iceberg floating in the sea, with only one-tenth above the water and nine-tenths below the surface.
Not only, however, is there far more of the mind with a host of stored-up experiences we cannot always remember — although at times they come to the surface in dreams during sleep — but there are all kinds of activities going on in our unconscious mind independently of the senses, and even of the physical brain, as if our intelligence were on the same level as that of a pure spirit or angel, who possesses no material body at all.
In the "Mrs Bettany Case", psychologists say that such activities in the mind of the mother, by a telepathic relationship at unconscious levels, built up a picture of the scene in the mind of the child. That explanation is not impossible; but it is no more than a theory, and if one is bent on having a merely natural explanation it is the only one at all likely.
But for reasons it would take too long to develop fully here, it seems to me more likely that a supernatural explanation is necessary, and that the Guardian Angel of the little girl — or of the mother, for that matter — caused the impressions in the child's mind which led to such happy results.
Needless to say, neither of these explanations would be more acceptable than the other to crass materialists, whose idea of the universe leaves no room for such occurrences.
From "Annals Australasia," formerly "Annals Australia" - July 1994
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