Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/188

172 before one's mind, or inner sight, but the word may also appear, either visually or as if "heard." Yet, generally speaking, telepathy is in a picture language. Many complex questions are raised in regard to the manner in which the faculty of extrasensory perception (also called the "psi" ability) functions, or doesn't, but innumerable tests scrupulously made and analyzed prove that it exists.

Swedenborg knew the fact if not the name, and he had his own theories to account for it, but before examining these it is best to consult modern experimental psychical research.

Telepathy, so the experts agree, is not "something like radio." It differs in fundamental respects. The distance between the experimenter and the subject or percipient makes no difference in the quality of the reception, as it does in radiative phenomena. A radio has to have at least a condenser and an inductance coil.11 Such instruments have not been found in the human body, dissected as it now is down to its last millimeter.

Even more important, researchers have pointed out, is the question of code—acoustic disturbances, dots, dashes, etc.

"Are we to suppose that the ever-industrious 'subconscious' . . . translates into Morse (say) at one end and interprets at the other, without anyone being aware of the process or knowing what code is used?"

Whately Carington, who asks the question, prefers to suppose that telepathy can take place because mankind possesses a common subconscious. He does not claim this as an original idea (Jung's collective unconscious links into it, for instance), but he asks a searching question. Why if Mr. Smith thinks of Cat and draws a cat, sending it per telepathy to Mr. B, should the latter tend to think of Cat and not of Dog or Razor-blade or Pyramid?

His answer is that if minds have "underground" access to each other, making them in certain respects one mind, then the same psychological laws must apply to "it" as apply to the individual mind. With the individual mind, should two ideas be presented to it at the same time, there is a consequence when one of these ideas is presented to the mind again; the other is apt to accompany it. In a series of brilliant experiments, Mr. Carington has demonstrated that this "law of the association of ideas" with its sublaws, applies also to telepathy between minds.