PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4477, 9 October 1922, Page 3

PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES.

MYSTERY OF DEATH. SOLUTION NOT FAR OFF. The veteran French astronomer, so widely known by his popular writings on his owfi subject, here (“At the Moment of Death/’ by Camille Flammaripn ; second volume of a series of three on “Death ahd 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 Prpfessor Julian Hurley, Britain's brilliant young biologist. Tt must be admitted tihat the collection in the present volume is impressive. You 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 premonitions ; there are extraordinary noises or .other physical phenomena—the banging of furniture, the ringing "t, a bell a gust of wind on a calm night —at the moment of dissolution. If tfie occurrences were isolated they could be discounted ; it would be easy to say that this was a coincidence, a hallucination, a third the results- of auto-suggestion. When it does so it usually acts teleph,atically upon the mind of 1 a single person. This, person is usually one that is near and dear, but need not be bound by any special mental ties to the transmitter—apparitions of distant persons appear often to be perceived by quite young children. It may in other cases be capable of what seems to be a higher grade of activity—it projects (it would seem) an image of the distant person not to one. but to several people simultaneously, a real phantom-body, capable of being viewed from different angles at the same moment. Fihally, it may be unable to make contact with the minds directly, and can only attract attention by playing apparently meaningless tricks with material objects, by bangs or raps, flashes of lignt, puffs of- air, and so forth. Carious New Happenings. The mass of documents is impressive; but it is to be accepted as proving the author’s case as establishing that mind or spirit can in certain circumstances act at a distance on other minds or on matter ? rt is perhaps relevant to remind ourselves that there is'nothing inherently impossible in such a view. As biology progresses it becomes increasingly'dear that probably all the living matter' wlhich is connected in the ' brain with mental processes has two sets of wholly distinct properties - those that we usually call material, which are dealt with by physics an 1 chemistry, and those which we call mental, whic.h are dealt wih by psychology. These two sets of properties are both properties of the same 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 happenings can have very marked effects upon the mind ? Instance Cited. "Listen, professor,” said Gastan Re David, a lawyer., “my mother died 41 years ago and never have 1 dreamed of 1. “. But last night she appeared to me, and I saw her approach me with open arms; we embraced and kissed each other. This dream gave rise in my mind to the conviction that my mother is summoning me, anl that my death is near, very near. What do you say to that, professor ?” “Dreams ” I answered. Three or four days afterwards he was dead.—From Professor Salvatore Filiori, a priest of Bari, Italy. But they are cumulative ', the same sort of happenings 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. F. w. H. Myer’s famous, “Phantasms of the Living” contained a very similar collection of occurrences, which made a very similar comulative impression. It is all the more intenesting to find the same kind of happenings in another country, collected by another hand. M, Flammarion has done us a iservice in focusing attention again on the subject. Most of the apparitions here recorded are perceived by one person onlv at tihe precise moment of death. But it is most important, to note that a considerable number occur some time before death, others again in connection .with some danger that does not prove fatal, or, indeed, is wholly averted. The genera], conclusion which one would like to dr,aw is that in certain states of great mental activity, preeminently at or near the moment of death, but also at other times, the human mind is capable of action at a distance.