PHYCHIC DISCOVERIES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 242, 26 September 1922, Page 3

PHYCHIC DISCOVERIES.

MYSTERY OF DEATH. SOLUTION NOT FAR OFF. Ihe veteran French astronomer, so widely known by his popular writings on his own subject, here (“At the Moment of Death,” by Camille Flamni a non; second volume of a series of three on “Death and Its Mystery”) appears in a role which is new to most readers. For most of his long lifetime he has been collecting and investigating evidence bearing upon the problems of telepathy and spiritualism, and especially upon manifestations occurring near the moment of death, writes Prof. Julian Huxley, Britain's brilliant young biologist. It must he admitted that the collection in the present volume is impressive. sou may take your choice; there are apparitions of" still living, but distant men and women becoming visible to a whole company; others which are perceived by one alone, while the rest of those present see nothing. There are voices heard announcing death; there are fits of gloom, best explicable as premoiMtfons; there artextraordinary noises or other physical phenomena—the banging of furniture, the ringing of a liell, a gust of wind on a calm night—at the moment of dissolution. If the occurencies were isolated they could be discounted; it would be easy to say that this was a coincidence, a hallucination, a third tho results of auto-suggestion. INSTANCE CITED. “Listen, professor,” said Gastan Re David, a lawyer, “my mother died 41 ’ years ago and never have I dreamed of her. But last night slie appeared I to me. and 1 saw her approach me with I open arms; we embraced and kissed each other. This dream gave rise in ; my mind to the conviction that my • mother is summoning mo, and that L my death is near, very near. What do you sav to that, professor?” “Dreams.” I answered. Three or four days afterwards ho was dead—From ’ Professor Salvatore Filiori. a priest of Bari, Italy. I But they are cumulative ; the same > sort of happening tends to be repeated ? again and again, with strange minor . variations* until after a time the most . sceptical begins to feel doubtful. REAL PHANTASM-BODY. 1 F. W. H. Myer’s famous “Phan- - tasnis of the Living” contained a very i similar collection of occurrences, which made a very similar cumulative imi pression. It is all tho more interesting to find the same kind of happen- • ings in another country, collected by another hand. M. Flannnarion has done us a service in focussing attention again on the subject. Most of the apparitions boro recorded are perceived by one person only at the precise moment of death. But it is most important to note that a considerable number occur some time before death, others again in connec- ( tion with some danger that does not. prove fatal or, indeed, is whollv averted. The general conclusion which one would like to draw is that in certain states of great mental activity, preeminently at or near the moment of death, but also nt other times, the human mind is capable of action at a distance. When it does so it usually acts telepathically upon the mind of a single person. This person is usually one that is near and dear, hut need not be hound by any special mental ties to the transmitter —apparitions of distant persons appear often to he perceived hy (inite young children. It may in other cases be capable of what seems to be a higher grade of activity—it proiects (it would seem) i an image of the distant person not to ’ one. but to several people simultanei ously. a real phantasm-hody, capable i of being viewed from diffedent angles , nt tho same moment. Finally, it may > he unable to make contact with tho ■ minds directlv. and can onlv attract ; attention by playing apparently mean- > ingless tricks with material objects, bv hangs or raps, flashes of light, puffs of air, and so forth. CURIOUS NEW HAPPENINGS The mass of documents is impressive: but is it to he accepted as provi ing the author’s case, as establishing • that mind or spirit can in certain circumstances act at a distance on other minds or on matter? It is perhaps relevant to remind ourselves that there in nothing inherently impossible in such a view. As > Biology progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that probably all living matter, certainly all the living matter which is connected in the hratn with mental processes, has two sets of wholly distinct properties —those that we usually call material, which are dealt with by physics and chemistry, and those that we call mental, which are dealt with by psychology. These two sets of properties are both properties of tho single stuff of which living things are made. If this is so. what is there to prevent intense activity of the mental processes from having an effect upon other mental happenings at a distance, or even upon physical, material happenings—especially as we know’ that material hap penings can have very marked effects upon the mind?