Psychic force

“ So that the powerful subjectivity of the unconscious, where the self is all-in-all unto itself, active in strong desirous psychic assimilation or in direct repudiation of the contiguous universe; this first plane of psychic activity, polarized in the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion of each individual but established in a circuit with the corresponding poles of another individual: this is the first scope of life and being for every human individual, and is beyond question. ”

“ The physical phenomena of spiritism are in more senses than one the most interesting of all the manifestations of subjective power. They require, however, but a brief treatment at our hands, for the reason that the primary object of this book is to deal with the mental powers and attributes of mankind in their relations to psychic phenomena. ”

“ She developed the power subjectively without objective knowledge that it existed. One of the most striking of psychic powers is that of creating or assembling the substance called psychoplasm, causing it to assume various forms, and to move as if endowed with a mind of its own. ”

“ Such cases as the above are the most difficult of all to prove. What I contend for is, if it is demonstrated we can control a fellow-being, throw him or her into a trance state—in which the phenomena of the psychic state are evolved—and seeing such state is induced largely by the control of spirit over spirit in the body, why may not a disembodied spirit control, direct, or influence a suitable sensitive or medium in the body? If not, why not? There is abundant evidence of such controls. ”

“ In the following pages I shall prove that there exists a psychological technique by which dreams may be interpreted, and that upon the application of this method every dream will show itself to be a senseful psychological structure which may be introduced into an assignable place in the psychic activity of the waking state. I shall furthermore endeavour to explain the processes which give rise to the strangeness and obscurity of the dream, and to discover through them the nature of the psychic forces which operate, whether in combination or in opposition, to produce the dream. ”

“ Nevertheless, the whole of the great organs of the lower body are controlled from the two lower centers, and these organs work well or ill according as there is a true dynamic psychic activity at the two primary centers of consciousness. By a true dynamic psychic activity we mean an activity which is true to the individual himself, to his own peculiar soul-nature. And a dynamic psychic activity means a dynamic polarity between the individual himself and other individuals concerned in his living ”

“ These facts are sufficient to prove, however, that when in a condition of special psychical concentration, the brain can influence even the organic functions, which in the normal state seem but slightly amenable to the will. ”

“ If the soul is an actor in deep sleep, seeing, hearing and moving in a world of real energies, then we are justified in assuming a psychic body within the physical, for to see, to hear, to move are functions of an organism however ethereal. Is it the shining of the Psyche we perceive within ourselves when through aspiration the body becomes filled with interior light and consciousness is steeped in a brilliancy of many colours while the eyes are closed? ”

“ Thought moreover is simple, whilst the activities of the brain are compounded of the elementary activities of each of its parts. Furthermore, thought is spontaneous or free, whilst all material activity is determined ab extra; and the will can turn itself against all corporeal goods and appetites, which would be impossible were it a corporeal function. For these objective reasons the principle of psychic life must be both immaterial and simple as well as substantial, must be what is called a Soul. ”

“ In the first place, every thought process, every emotional activity, every creation of ideas, is accompanied by a manifestation of force—in fact, is the result of the manifestation of a force. Without entering at all into the question of what mind is, in itself, we may rest firmly on the natural fact that every manifestation of mental or emotional activity is the result of an action of the brain or nervous system, manifesting in a form of vibrations. ”

“ No material agent could thus turn round and grasp itself—material activities always grasp something else than the agent. And if a brain could grasp itself and be self-conscious, it would be conscious of itself as a brain and not as something of an altogether different kind. The Soul then exists as a simple spiritual substance in which the various psychic faculties, operations, and affections inhere. ”

“ To this power, this knowledge, we have indeed at all times accorded a certain varying recognition; we have given names to its manifestations, we have called them instinct, soul, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, reflex action, presentiment, intuition, &c. We credit it more especially with the indeterminate and often prodigious force contained in those of our nerves that do not directly serve to produce our will and our reason: a force that would appear to be the very fluid of life. ”

“ There is a distinct difference between the truly spiritual and what may be termed the psychic: there are hidden powers and latent possibilities which the specially sensitive are beginning to unfold. But the danger is exactly on a par with that which up-to-date chemists and scientists foresee in the physical world. ”

“ But we must not forget that great law:
"Reaction is equal to action, and opposite to it in direction." If spirit, through mentality, acts upon body, so, likewise, does body, through mentality, react upon spirit. And, also, the impulse to vibration being set up on the bodily plane, it is transmitted through mentality to spirit, resulting in a reaction from the apex of the sector outward again to the bodily plane.
Let us apply this philosophy to the marital relation. ”

“ All sight, all hearing, all function is in this psychic body, not in the physical one. What many of the psychologists call the subconscious mind is only the registered intelligence of the psychic self. This psychic self is in direct communication with the cosmic self and with the physical self, and it is through this we become cosmic in our human consciousness. ”

“ Our psycho-physical experiments have to do with the consciousness of the evoluted man; . . . we learn little of psychic development through them. Their application to psychic disturbances will be presumably a limited one; it sheds light upon the nature of the more profound disturbances less by direct investigation than by giving information about the changes which are associated with the condition and rise of these disturbances. ”

“ All our powers of inductive reasoning are strained to their highest tension in an effort to penetrate the secrets of physical Nature, and to harness her dynamic forces. Meantime, the normal exercise of that co-ordinate power in our mental structure is fast falling into desuetude, and its [Pg 54] manifestations, not being understood, are relegated to the domain of superstition. ”

“ The examination of the mental characteristics of the intelligence which controls the different manifestations is our only purpose, and we have shown that the same laws prevail in all. It is believed that enough has been said to enable the conscientious investigator, who wishes to test the correctness of our hypothesis, to apply its fundamental propositions to all psychic phenomena. ”

“ For instance, we can prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena, etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities, therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the mind. ”

“ In short, a consistent spiritualistic theory of the relations of mind and body is simply impossible, and we therefore turn to the only hypothesis which remains — the hypothesis according to which the physical series is the condition of the mental. This means that physical events take place independently, according to laws of their own, and that a few of them — namely, certain events in the cortex — are the indispensable condition for the occurrence of mental events. ”

“ The psychic body manifests through idea centers of the human brain and it is directly related with the cosmic currents through the solar plexus of the physical body. The higher concept centers of the mind are the switchboard where connections are made, and it is in this way that the psychic body registers its vibrations in the physical, and the physical registers in the psychic--there is a circle of consciousness established by the two minds. ”

“ Either this must be conceded, or else it must be asserted that our successive states of consciousness are self-created.” “Either mental energies as well as bodily ones are quantitatively correlated to certain energies expended in their production, and to certain other energies they initiate; or else nothing must become something and something, nothing. Since persistence of force, being a datum of consciousness, cannot be denied, its unavoidable corollary must be accepted.” ”

“ The conclusion to the whole matter is—the psychic, or soul-powers in some persons are less entrammelled by the senses than in others; that a high degree of organic sensitiveness always accompanies those who are recognised as psychics or sensitives; that this state of sensitiveness is natural to some, and in others may be developed by accident, disease, or induced by somnambulism and trance. ”

“ Now what we are concerned with in psychical studies is always unknown forces, and these forces must belong to the natural order, for nature embraces the entire universe, and everything is therefore under the sway of her sceptre. ”

“ In the more common forms of its manifestation, such mental force or power is known as Thought Force, Mental Influence, etc., and in its more pronounced and less common phases it is known as Telepathy, Thought Transference, etc., but the basic principle is precisely the same in all of such cases, simple or complex though their manifestations may be. ”

“ There is another psychic phenomenon which deserves a passing notice at our hands, not only because it is governed by the same laws which have been discussed, but because it is a matter of transcendent practical interest and importance. ”

“ The point to which I wish in this connection to call attention is that when a simple emotion-instinct, or an idea linked with an instinct (a sentiment) is awakened by any stimulus, its impulsive force is discharged in three directions: the first is toward the excitation of those articulated movements and ideas which guide and carry the instinct to fruition—to fight in the case of anger, to flee in the case of fear, to cherish in the case of love, etc. ”

“ How the subjective [Pg 152] mind controls the functions and sensations of the body, mortal man may never know. It is certain that the problem cannot be solved by reference to physiology or cerebral anatomy. It is simply a scientific fact which we must accept because it is susceptible of demonstration, and not because its ultimate cause can be explained.
The three foregoing fundamental propositions cover the whole domain of psycho-therapeutics, and constitute the basis of explanation of all phenomena pertaining thereto. ”

“ Thus, when we speak of nerve-force and mind as having a most intimate relation, no one is found to dispute it; whereas, when we talk about Brain and Mind having this intimate relation, and Mind being the function of the brain, there are a great many who will rise up against us and charge us with materialism, and atheism, and all the other deadly sins of that kind. ”

“ The knowledge that I have gained about the fact that psychic energy can be displaced from one idea to another along certain association channels, and about the almost indestructible conservation of the traces of psychic processes, have actually made it possible for me to attempt such a representation of the unknown. ”

“ Consciousness and Will, enter into all psychological phenomena such as Hypnotism and Mediumship, and into every form of mental alienation, insanity, obsession and the like.
Moreover, by building out of mental phenomena a distinct entity—largely independent of the self-conscious Intelligence, and almost equally so with consciousness—our “philosophies,” “metaphysics,” and explanations have become as confused and unreliable as the psychical phenomenon itself. ”

“ The third phase of Psychic Influence is that which may be called Indirect Psychic Influence, in which psychic induction is manifested in the minds of other persons coming in contact with the thought vibrations of the person manifesting them, although no deliberate attempt is made to influence the mind of any particular person or persons. ”

“ He considered that the whole hypothesis that an outer physical thing causes a change in one’s central nervous system, which again causes another change in one’s inner psychical system or soul, is a departure from the natural view of the universe, and is due to what he called “introjection,” or the hypothesis which encloses soul and its faculties in the body, and then, having created a false antithesis between outer and inner, gets into the difficulty of explaining how an outer physical stimulus can impart something into an inner psychical soul. ”

“ And this philosopher's well-known formula assumed: there exists a spiritual, non-extended, indivisible substance, an objective, immortal entity, superadded to and independent of brain, which thinks, feels, and wills—a substance cognizable by self-consciousness alone, and which is in fact the "thinking principle" or proper "soul." Mind thus becomes absolutely and wholly an extra-cerebral product, and the possible offspring of activity on the part of the "soul" alone. ”