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The Power of the Sub-conscious Mind – Professor Alexander Erskine

It is from the sub-conscious mind that we learn particles of knowledge from one another, comparing differences-that we come to the determining of things which cannot be reasonably denied.  The clairvoyant state of consciousness, of which I can speak by experience, is full of interest to the scientific man.

I placed a youth of sixteen years of age into a trance state of hypnotic sleep, and made him, through suggestion, while in this state, follow his father for some hours of the day out of doors, the youth stating at each five minutes exactly where his father was, and to whom he spoke, whether a man or a woman, until his father returned home.

The youth never left the chair from the time his father left the house until he returned ; neither father nor son were aware of my intention until I mentioned the same to both after it had occurred.

The youth, as has been stated, did not even remember that he had been asleep, and his father had no knowledge that he was being followed by the invisible mind of his son, who saw him without the aid of ordinary normal vision-" eyesight."

The father was greatly surprised, and asked me never to send his son in the "spirit state " after him again, as it would make him (the father) feel nervous, and said what his son had stated was absolutely correct.

Had one ever doubted the state of clairvoyance one would never do so again, after such an extraordinary manifestation: It was clear evidence, showing that the youth was in an abnormal state of consciousness, his ordinary, normal consciousness being suspended while in the hypnotic sleep. I only show just how far I travelled, as it were, in the subject's sub-conscious mind, and I do not intend to go into imaginary fairyland or heroics, but to keep rigidly to facts that have come under my own personal notice and experience.

Wisdom is only understood when the mind is large enough to acknowledge that we know nothing, as the genius of man is only manifested in accordance with his taste and requirements, since before the so-called Stone Age to the present day.

The Mystery of the Human Double – Ralph Shirley

A youth of about sixteen, the son of an old friend of Mr. Erskine's, came to see him one day, and Mr. Erskine, in the course of conversation, chanced to ask him where his father was. The boy replied that he did not know. It then occurred to the hypnotist to wonder what his answer would have been if he had put him into the mesmeric sleep. Accordingly he asked the boy if he was willing to be hypnotized.

The boy readily consented, and was soon off. Mr. Erskine proceeded to put to him the identical question that he had asked him before, and he thereupon answered him at once, giving the minutest details of what his father was doing.

Mr. Erskine took down what he said then and there. For three hours the boy in his trance condition followed his father through the streets of London and described him as making various calls on his way. Neither the father nor the boy knew beforehand of Mr. Erskine's experiment, which was entirely unpremeditated, and the boy, when awakened, knew nothing of the answers which he had given.

At this point Mr. Erskine got into touch with the father and asked him to come round to see him. This is the story of the interview as he tells it:

"I saw him privately" (he tells us) "and he had rather a shock when at my first question I asked him if he had felt the invisible eye of his son following him He had not. I showed him what I had written down He was staggered. For a few moments he did not speak. Then he asked for an explanation. I gave it to him. He could not believe it. Then he admitted that his son's accounts of his movements, of the people he had spoken to, and of the scenes described were accurate. Every note I had made was correct in the minutest detail. "Two promises he asked-and these I readily gave -one that I would never divulge what I had written, the other that I would 'never send his son's spirit floating after him again.' “Try it with someone else,’ he laughed.