Clairvoyance and Telepathy
Clairvoyance is that abnormal awareness which enables one to know a fact or perceive a scene which ordinarily could not be known or perceived at all. Such a state may or may not be accompanied by reverie. It may operate in time, as when past or future are read. It may operate in space, as when scenes or persons in some remote city or land are seen. Its mildest form is the sensing of someone's presence; its fullest form is vivid vision.
The scientific rationale of both clairvoyance and telepathy will now be exposed and from this it will be seen how superstitious are many occult theories on the one hand and how materialistic are many sceptical theories on the other hand. What happens in the case of clairvoyance is that the act of concentration, whether voluntary or involuntary, induces an activity in the subliminal mind which in turn presents the result of this activity as an impression of the scene or person concentrated on. This subconscious impression is then made to appear to the waking consciousness as a mental image. In the practical technique, attentive concentration is usually followed by the shutting down of waking consciousness, thus inducing a dreamlike state. It is in such a state, resembling half-trance, that most occult powers, visions, and so on usually become active.
If it be asked how it is possible to become aware of distant scenes and far-off persons, unuttered thoughts and the projection of personal atmospheres, the answer is that quite obviously there must exist some connecting medium between both seer and seen, sender and receiver. And mentalism asserts that this medium is and can be none other than the same mind whose universal existence makes us all percipients of the world-show and recipients of the divine World-Idea.
These strange phenomena are possible because one man's mind is connected with another and all form part of a unitary whole. None exists in isolation. There is an inclusive mind which subsists beneath them all, a thread-Mind which runs through all minds. When we work out the implications of these cases we find that they suggest a larger mind whose limits we cannot trace. Each individual mind is like a bubble on the surface of a lake. The water in the lake brings all the separate minds into connection with one another. There is not only an individual subconsciousness but also a collective and comprehensive subliminal mind, a cosmic consciousness.
The deeper layers of the mind in which one man abides are indissolubly the same as the deeper layers of the mind in which his neighbour abides. Thus the link among all the finite egos of mankind cannot from its very nature be cut. This ultimate unity of the unconscious renders possible a reasonable explanation of those mysterious happenings called telepathy, occultism, prevision, and clairvoyance. Whoever can succeed in withdrawing his attention from the surface consciousness--however involuntarily or momentarily--to that substratum which underlies it, will naturally find in himself the possibility of closer touch with other finite minds irrespective of the distance between their bodies.
All genuine occult happenings find their basis in the fact that Mind is the single and supreme principle of the world and that all things are primarily mental things. All those strange happenings like clairvoyance, second-sight, premonitions, and telepathy testify also that the existence of this mind is free from space-time limitations. When we understand that Mind is itself a reality apart from the fleshly brain, we can also understand why telepathy between two persons is perfectly possible. When we perceive that time and space are not absolutes but forms of mental experience, we can also perceive why reading the past, foretelling the future, and seeing something far distant from the body are likewise possible.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 14 : The Sensitive Mind > # 85
