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Supernormal faculties in Man- Dr Eugene Osty

By thinking over the many ways by which            different percipients obtain cognition of a person distant in space, comparisons are drawn which shed no light on one another, and the experimenter can only avow his complete inability to understand the fact. I might be myself in this state of discouragement if I had not met, in Mme Morel, a percipient with whom the study of the part played by the intermediary object is really fertile in results. This study is assisted both by the state of deep hypnosis in which her faculty acts, and by the fact that it is specially excited by that modality of energy whereby each of us impregnates whatever he touches or things about him, which is the stimulus to metagnomic perception of distant persons. At this stage of our exploration of supernormal cognition I cannot delay to set out in detail the series of experiments instituted with the limited view of discovering exactly what sort of stimulus an object touched by a human being affords to metagnomic subjects. I can only summarize the results, whose accuracy can be checked by repeating the experiments. They are true for that particular percipient, and are of value also as bearing on the intelligibility of the behaviour of metagnomic subjects in their differing use of intermediary objects.

I. Any object placed in the hands of Mme Morel almost immediately arouses the mental perception of one of the persons who have previously touched it, and allow of her receiving knowledge concerning that person's life.

II. Each human individual who has touched the object may be evoked and cognized. The experimenter cannot know in advance which of the personalities will first come up. To reach the personality on whom investigation is desired it is sometimes necessary to dismiss a varying number of those that are not required.

III. Human individuals connected with the lives of the persons who have touched the object may also, though more rarely, be cognized. This fact has caused some persons to take for errors revelations that were only misdirection of the faculty.

IV. Each of the persons thus evoked is perceived distinctly, without there ever being transpositions or confusion of the physical states of the different persons who have touched the object

V. As soon as mental evocation of the personality has been obtained the object that called it up may be taken from the percipient and destroyed. The percipient, nevertheless, continues to describe the states of life in the distant person just as if he were present, or at any rate as if the object were still being held.

VI. Every one of the personalities which have been evoked by contact can be cognized with reference to the totality of his being, in its whole duration and extension; at whatever moment in the life contact may have been made. For instance, with an object touched twenty years before and never since, the percipient can cognize the life as it is at present and can recognize its course.

VII. The physical and chemical nature of the objects is not a perceptible factor in their usefulness. With Mme M., however, the objects that stimulate best are those with which contact has been frequent and prolonged, and which have not been touched by others.

VIII. Duration of contact between an object and a human being does not give to the former a proportional degree of stimulating power. The effectiveness of the object practically resides in its having been touched; but the preponderant factor in its effect would seem to lie in the quality of the person who has touched it, and also in some kind of physical sympathy between the sensibility of the subject and some emanation included in the object. The same object that has been touched by several persons does not arouse perception of any one preponderant individuality in various percipients.

IX. Lapse of time does not seem to lessen the stimulative power of an object, as far as can be judged by experiments that admit of real check.

X. Placing in contact diverse things intended to serve as objects for experiment on different persons at a distance does not in any way modify their respective values as means of evocation. Practically objects do not communicate to one another whatever it is that we communicate to them, that eventually puts us in relation with the metanormal faculty.

XI. Errors in a metagnomic experiment on a present person may recur in the same form in further experiments made with an intermediary object and by an experimenter who knows neither the personality described nor the revelations previously made.