GATES OF THE MIND
By Joseph Sadony
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NO MAN can
contribute to the world more than his own personal experience, the harvest of
his own research and experiment, unless it be the
fruit of inspiration or prophetic insight.
The works of Joseph Sadony contain a rich store of both.
Gates of the
Mind is one of a number of manuscript volumes thus far withheld form
publication by the author. Though its
subtitle is Proven Psychic Discoveries, various digressions from the narrative
reveal that its purpose is not autobiographical. It is an introduction of the anatomy of
prophetic intuition. The small book here
privately printed is rather less than a “condensation”; it contains but a small
portion of the first volume of this unpublished work.
Underlying and
eclipsing the narrative is a rational of the physiological foundations and
scientific investigation of mental phenomena considered as tele-empathic and
telepathic phenomena of the human nervous system.
It is a
conclusion of the author and his associates in research that most mystic,
psychic, and occult terms used in describing mental phenomena are misleading,
that there exist no mysterious “faculties” of a mystic or occult nature, but
that the imagination, if used correctly, is capable of portraying past,
present, or future events within the limitations imposed by the fact that the
imagination is dependent entirely on memory of past sensory experience to
provide the elements of its portrayal.
For example,
the author claims that the term “thought transference “ is
a misnomer, that it is impossible for what is usually designated a “thought” to
be transferred from one mind to another mind, but that it is possible and of
common occurrence to induce in another mind a thought that is similar to one
experienced in your own mind, or vice versa. The exact degree of similarity
will depend upon the similarity of past experience. The induced thought,
however, is entirely the product of the selective simulation of memory elements
in an activity of the imagination. The thought is your own, and has not been “transferred”
from another mind, even though it be similar in every
respect. A phenomenon has taken place, but it is one of thought induction, not
thought transference.
We are living
through a crisis the full extent and meaning of which is realized by only a
few. We are and have been witnessing periods of confusion and revolution, not
only in world politics, in science, education, industry, and art, but also in
psychology, philosophy, and religion.
We are witnessing
and shall witness the collapse of theories and concepts in all fields of
thought. No science can continue to stand on its present foundations without
adjustments made necessary by the confusion and poverty of existing verbal
organization. Neither the philosophies nor the psychologies can withstand the
critical application of the operational view with any greater success than the
physical sciences. They will be forced to more strict correlation of Language,
Logic, and Life.
Thus we have
undergone and are still undergoing a revolution in the physical sciences. Even
now new foundations are being lad to complete the bridge extending from atomic
to organic, thence to astronomic dimensions. The biologist must know his
physics and chemistry as well as his psychology; and a psychologist without knowledge
of the former is not worthy of the name. The philosopher who does not know by
first-hand research and experimentation these fundaments of life and the
physical universe must resign himself to his own amusement, for his mental
structures can be only dialectic castles in the air.
The confusion of
the age was manifest in the first few sessions of the Conference on Science,
Philosophy and Religion at the opening of World War II. The scholars admitted
that they were confused, and that they did not know how to “think with a view
to action,” or how to teach each other to the end of reaching mutual
understanding and agreement. As a result they were forced to agree to disagree,
to predict a pluralistic instead of a monolithic civilization.
Gates of the Mind
is the beginning of an answer to the scholars on the part of a student of life
and human nature, a seeker for truth and an independent investigator on an
experimental basis of the operations of the human mind in relation to
physiological and psychological consequences. Here for the first time is the
beginning of a detailed account of a personal adventure in the deliberate and
purposive development of prophetic intuition, and its application to problems
of nature and human nature, science, philosophy, religion, education, industry,
war, and peace.
There has been need
for an effort on the part of someone capable of experiencing and demonstrating
as well as observing so-called psychic and mental phenomena to separate the
wheat from the chaff, to paint the picture of just what can and cannot be
expected of it in the present state of man’s development; to function of man’s
sympathetic sensitivities from all the technical and psychic “racketeering”; to
encourage the individual development of these sensitivities along healthy and
constructive lines, and to discourage the authoritarian capitalization of
psychological or spiritual truths and the subjugation of peoples by
psychological tricks. In this small book is the beginning of Mr. Sadony’s
answer to this need.
And in answer to
those who may ask “Who is Joseph Sadony?” we quote data contained in Who’s Who
in
SADONY, Joseph A. Founder and director, Educational Research
Laboratories, Montague, Michigan; columnist, Muskegon Chronicle (Mich.) since
1929 Home: “Valley of the Pines,”
Montague, Michigan; b. Montabaur, near Ems, Germany, Feb. 22, 1877; s.
Alexander Nichols and Apollonia Reipert) S.; m. Mary Lillian Kochem, in 1906;
ch. Joseph Jr. (1909). Came with parents to
From the view of
some, a greater importance should be attached to the application of prophetic
intuition to fundamental problems of science, philosophy, education, and religion,
rather than to elements of mere personal experience. But to the laymen there
can be nothing more important than how he can benefit by personal experience,
rather than by the acquisition of knowledge or theory concerning the more
abstruse problems of science or philosophy.
For his benefit,
then, who cares little for the deeper problems
that might be discussed at greater length, we may conclude this
introduction by assuring him that so far as mental phenomena are concerned, together
with the conclusions expressed in Mr. Sadony’s comments in Gates of the Mind,
we are only a few of many who will agree that they have been established with
as much certainty for those of us who have participated in the experimental
investigation of this subject as the results of our research in the fields of
radionics, electrostatics, electro-magnetism, and gravitation.
Educational Research Laboratories
It matters not who in the world of time the
mind may be; Truth imprints upon its tablet its
own law. If that mind is so constituted, it
can no more help reflecting the fact than a mirror can
help reflecting the rays of the sun if at just
that angle to catch the eye as well as to send the
reflection that will come to the human eye
that receives it. The receiver is just as important as the sender.
JOSEPH SADONY
INTRODUCTION
PERIODICALLY in the history of the world it becomes essential
for men mentally akin to find each other, to know each other, and in unison
deliver a message of truth to enlighten, to strengthen, to correct mistakes, in
an effort to avoid just what has happened to us all. But how is this to be
done, if not by education? Not to condemn the methods of others, but to
substitute a better way that will defend itself.
All religions
embody good and have bettered the world. There are still two factors: Faith and Science; two rules, and both are
evidently right. Is it expecting too much that Religion and Science together
create the third principle, resulting in the transformation of the world into
one human family of many children, each to his own? With Science to preserve
order by eliminating fraud and trickery, there would be no fear of judging the
innocent as guilty.
As man is inclined
toward superstition, he naturally falls an easy prey to those clever enough to
deceive his eye. In fact, some of the brightest minds of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries have been completely deceived in this way. The possibility
of our loved ones returning after having passed away, or at least of sending us
some message or thought, cannot be doubted. But it is the unreliability of the
method used to receive these messages, as well as the unreliability of the
person receiving them, that gives rise to a question. The truth is often
exaggerated, and the open-minded victim easily duped.
Within mankind
there is a power so great that it would be dangerous to know it until we are perfect
in humility and self-control. Until then it is hidden from us by our selfish,
animal nature, which causes the mind to become cloudy and discontented.
Even as trees sleep
in the winter and blossom again in the spring, so also does humanity alternately
sleep and blossom: periodically come the
fruits of genius, great minds and sensitive souls who give voice, as “human
radios,” to the great broadcasting of the ages, the Song of Truth. And with
their passing, humanity gradually falls asleep again until the next “wave” or
cycle.
In this spiritual
sleep, this ebb of the soul, is the heyday of false prophets: therein will be found the origin of
superstition, in “imitation” of what did hold some truth, but is now a word
without meaning, a body without a soul.
Why do supposedly
great but false prophets and teachers flourish for a day and then die in
obscurity, leaving no flourishing field to prove the fertility of their
teaching?
The shell of the
wheat was there; the worlds and phrases-all borrowed to feed people who do not
think for themselves; and even when planted, gave up no fruit because the
spirit of God was lacking, and because they who professed, denied the
simplicity which was the soul itself.
Man slowly
approaches the epoch of the human radio. His antenna of imagination opens that
inner ear that hears the silent broadcast of the ages. It still vibrates in the
atmosphere. Man’s mortal ear already hears the music and the words…
We may view this
psychologically rather than from a spiritual or religious point of view;
nevertheless, it is clear that an even greater revelation will accompany the
discovery of a ”radio” in the human mind than what took place industrially,
internationally, and domestically with the invention and introduction of radio
into our homes.
The entire
universe is within the human head in the same manner that music broadcast from
various cities all over the world is within the radio, or within the room in
which its is being received.
We forget that a
well-governed and trustworthy imagination contains the tools that make
education from the specifications of wisdom; that therein also are the antennae
of man with which he searches for God:
that aerial to receive the message; the chamber of transformation in which
the “word is made flesh’; where thoughts are dramatized in symbols that are
revelations if they be attuned to “facts.”
We still have more
to learn of the rooms of man’s mind, to find the doors leading to that
religious ecstasy, the mystery, the frenzy of the aborigines, the bliss of
divinity felt by martyrs and saints, the hypnotic power of our professional
men-all still in its infancy.
No one will deny
facts, unless he has a subtle purpose to use opportunities for selfish purposes.
Truth is self-evident, and needs no support. It supports itself. And if the
pillars of a structure are lies, it will collapse. Still, the spirit of true
support is ever present, so that a new permanent structure shall rise from the
ashes and dust of falsehood. There are ever present health germs to continue
life, even among death germs. That is the law of adjustment, compensation, and
growth, the manifestation of life.
All that matters
most to man is back of his own eyes, and there he flounders in the dark,
thinking he thinks a thought, but unaware of the origin of that thought, or of
its fruits; “imagining’ things without the slightest conception of the power
and mechanism that he is using.
Surely we may learn
much by watching the insect with its antennae moving in every direction,
sensing the danger we cannot see. It protects itself without the great gift to
man: imagination. It only acts upon its
inherent power of instinct. It uses its antennae to sense approaching danger,
which it avoids, but knows not its source, without reason. Why should not man
have a more highly developed sense by the protection of reason, or the cause
with its effect?
If the same amount
of energy and education had been utilized for psychological, mental, and spiritual
power as for the comforts of economic, mechanical, and electrical power, what
would have been accomplished to further the progress of humanity?
There is no excuse
for man to underestimate the power of the mind at the loss of his inheritance
from God or Nature, from ancestry, or self-acquired. If we refuse to use reason
and logic as a foundation to intuition, whom can we blame for the failure in
evolution? whom but our own negligence? Nature offers us her fruits. Why are
men ashamed to admit their belief for or against spirituality?
How can anyone judge or give an opinion of
the power of prayer, of Christianity, or of the prophets, unless he has given
it a lifetime of experience to see the answer, and then left us the records, by
which we may judge?
There is much that
might be said of certain facts and truths that would by compel us to search the
Book of Mistakes made by those who were sincere, but too enthusiastic to allow
Nature to grow in its own good time; where swords have been unsheathed without
provocation, only in fear of apparently losing opportunities. If there be any
loss, let us go back and see whether the purse had a hole in it: whether the compass was influenced by a nail;
whether the watch kept good time as it should, or whether we were controlled by
our stomach, our heart, or our mind…
We are ever
traveling toward the future, where all truth is born. Should we waste time in
disputing the possibility of truth we think we have not, or be open to the
possibilities that the world shall know tomorrow, as yesterday gave us for
today?
We have a duty we
owe to humanity-to those who have knocked upon doors of empty churches,
temples, and schools, but not prisons. We must help men and women who can do
work, not as missionaries; nor under the flags of politics, cults, or isms, but
just pure, cleanhearted leaders who are handicapped, discouraged, held
back--being used as steppingstones to respectability by the profane.
Why waste time,
paper, and ink analyzing flavors, the taste of fruit? Let us eat what Nature
has given for thousands of years; and turn it into good health, joy, long life,
and normal appreciative thoughts, so that the real knowledge of life may be
born normally for today and tomorrow, and not for thousands of years hence.
We cannot afford to
spend much time considering the opinions or methods of yesterday; nor stop to
harvest their fruits today, when we must plant for a new generation, knowing
that all those who do not now understand will gradually do so as time passes,
for “Time proveth all things.”
The individual
awakening and cultivation of intuition is the foremost concern of all leaders
and teachers who may be pioneering in the prevenience of a new era; until all
education is “Prevenient education” our problems as a nation shall not be
solved.
Written history
contains no records of a nation in the position in which the United States of
American now stands, with the possibilities in its hands for the manifestation
of a spirit of prevenience that would enable it to become the dominating
culture of a new epoch by demonstrating a new level of revolutionary “warfare”:
without muscle and bloodshed, as an example to set before the other nations of
the world.
Who shall plant the
seeds of the new viewpoint in the ground thus made ready; who but those
thinkers and leaders who prove by their stability, adaptability, reliability,
and endurance that they have been chosen by their own fertility to survive as
the foundations for new structures and the roots of a new generation?
As Americans should
we not fight for what America represents, as the melting pot of the world, with
many laws inherited, yet obeying but one law, that of our pioneering
forefathers for freedom of thought, speech, and religion founded on logic,
reason, and reality, as well as (and above all) one Supreme Being of power that
may be clothed in any raiment desired, but internally one and the same hub of
that Wheel of Truth, where the spokes are teachers and exemplifiers; the rim,
those whose personal responsibility is to protect those who teach; the steel
hoop, the beasts of burden; and the movements, of the combined machinery of the
world?
Things have only
been partly done. The mansion is still in process. We are all but workers at
the scaffolding (parties and divisions) of American as well as Christianity.
When a mansion is done, what happens to the scaffolding? It is torn down,
revealing the completed examples as models for a Universal Christianity and a
United Nations of the World.
The two are
inseparables, the north and south poles of each other, the spirit and the body,
the ideals and the nation, the way of life and the government to make it
possible.
Can we expect to
crystallize Utopia and usher in the long-heralded Millennium? That’s not the
question. It is the dream and the vision that point down the highway. Though we
fall by the wayside and never reach it, we must believe in it. Otherwise we
travel in a vicious circle. It is only the hope that leads us on.
The problems of the
ages still face us, but today we are better equipped than ever before to
understand them, if we will only discard the limiting thought habits of
ancestral education, and adopt the mental tools and implements offered us
today, with which to understand and shape tomorrow.
What excuse have we
to neglect a progress that we may further in our own way? Who should be to
blame in the misunderstanding of a bugle call-the wounded lips that fail to
shape the notes, the bugle, or the man who is supposed to know the signal and
fails to execute it?
Someone must hit
the gong so the blind may hear the hour. Another must turn the hands for the
deaf, so they may see. Why the slate and chalk, memory’s purpose and traces of
the blueprint? Surely there must be many laborers to one architect or overseer.
Why should we deny our destiny? If there be an effect, surely there has been a
cause. If we hear an echo there must have been a voice to send it. If you or I
have an ideal to express, whence came its cause? Others may try to play music
and fail. Why? Is it for the want of a piano, a melody, or trained fingers?
If you have dreams
and visions only, without framing them exposed to eyes that seek them, you
speak a language that you alone understand. It is useless to those called to
cooperate with you-workmen of the temple idle, waiting for your designs while
you sleep, and they vanish. Whom do you think shall spin, weave, work in the
quarries, or gather timber to materialize dreams given you, if you fail to sing
your melody?
Why cannot more men utilize the gifts they
really possess, but which they do not seem to realize are in their possession?
Why carry the newly felled trees to be made into lumber, when beasts of burden
would gladly carry them for a cast-off meal? Why all the spiritual confusion
throughout the world, when there is no discord where truth exists?
How many fine minds
are there hidden in obscurity at the front line of commercialism, shackled to
an organization because of wages and an inferiority complex; while if but
allowed to dream, away from the grinding note of gears, a new musician, poet,
or scientist may be born. Give men a change to spread their shallow or clay
roots. The top can always be pruned from faults. But let their roots alone, to
allow character to prove their value before we forget why we live, and how.
Why do not men of
learning come together to exchange views, as pugilists do blows; wrestlers,
holds; athletes, feats of endurance, so that monuments of knowledge may be like
large, fine trees as landmarks to the wayfaring man who is traveling through
unknown lands, the labyrinth of the world’s paths, to his home and loved one,
whether mortal or immortal, and do those things of the sake of truth instead of
wealth and glory? Truth itself if glorified, and so are they who dispense it.
The progress of the
world’s education, research, and understanding would be so much more enhanced
if we allowed thinking men to do their thinking without a handicap. Let them be
able to think and do their best while the man with muscle removes stumbling
blocks so the dreamer may dream visions governed by thinkers for the doers to
give it life.
If each man or
personality in the entire world represented an individual key to his greatest
treasure vault, we would not need to fear a burglar picking our lock, for no
two keys would be alike. Still, all are expected to eat from the same plate the
same amount, dress alike, be punished alike, be rewarded alike, and die alike.
Why not examine the tumblers of these human locks and see who should be trusted
most, and with what responsibility, so that we will find geniuses to teach us
short methods, instead of waiting for them every century or so?
The trouble with
most of us is that we shape things to suit ourselves, according to past
acquirements; whereas we should permit truth to come to us, crystallizing in
its own shape; we should then try to figure out what the shape its.
The seed of truth must
preserve itself for future generations in a vocabulary untainted by those words
that have attracted to themselves all the odium of a confusion of fraudulence,
fakery, trickery, and overgrown superstition.
The world is
waiting for someone to come to teach them; all looking in different directions
for another coming, save those who believe that He has already come. Does one
appear upon a crest of notoriety? Then it is not He. Does he found a cult or a
“system”? The Maser himself comes not in these ways-but as a breeze across a
prairie where labor all notions, all races, sects, and creeds…each fanned by
the breeze, and differently; each giving expression to his reception and
appreciation of the One Gentle Breeze through this world: each clothing a Christ in virtues thus
conceived. One is wet, and the breeze dries him. One is covered with dust, and
it blows away this dust, fanning the hair from his eyes. One draws a bow at his
enemy, and the breeze prevents, carrying it back to the sender. One aims with
the breeze a dart just to warn, and fall short of its mark, but the breeze
carries it on to the heart of him who deserved the death-blow that it was…
At best we are but
cogs in the Wheel of Time, and call it “history”-which is but the echo for
philosophers: the flames, and the smoke
rolling away; cause and effect, blinded by the blindness of man to know neither
the beginning nor the end, nor what is one; thinking mortal what is immortal;
feeling the heat; seeing the smoke; combining nothing as one cause-thinking
only in jets, as the beating and breathing of heart and lungs. Is it not true?
The only cause a
man has for not realizing his power as a man, is that he never has tried to
select the mental food his brain should digest to prove how in all simplicity
his ideals lie at his feet if he will but select the mental food to accomplish
all his desires that but cast their shadow before him. Let him but cast their
shadow before him. Let him but awaken his gift of logic and reason to realize
that to think a thing is to shape action, energy, and influence to that
creation thought. For we only want those things made manifest by what we have
allowed our brain to consume.
Thus we arrive at
the purpose of these prefatory and fragmentary paragraphs, which is to provide
a few samples of the food for thought that has sustained me in the continuation
of that quest of which the beginning is subjected to both chronicle and
commentary in Gates of the Mind.
JOSEPH SADONY
Valley of the Pines
January, 1948
WE are not so
alone today [1948] as we were
forty-five years ago. Turn on your radio and
see.
And what will you say within forty-five years
more? May you not then hear the whispering
thoughts of loved ones gone before you within
their past silence, as it was half a century
before
--only waiting for us to find the spiritual
dial,
as we found the material one, within the mind
and hand of man who did seek, and who found
it-but shadow of the real yet to come?
JOSEPH SADONY
CHAPTER 1
My mother was showing me a
picture. She said, “That is where I was
born, Joseph.” For a minute I looked at
it, and it didn’t seem right. I said,
“But, Mother, shouldn’t there be a river over here?” I pointed to the right.
“And shouldn’t there be a barn besides just a house?”
“What makes you say that, Joey? The
artist made this just like it was. No, We were away from the river. We had no
barn. What makes you say that?”
“Well, anyway,” I said, “I remember the
river, and a barn and a bridge.”
Mother said, “Joseph, you mustn’t talk
like that. You never went as far as the
river. You couldn’t possibly remember
it. Besides, that’s where your father was born. It was his father who had a—“
Suddenly my mother stopped and looked at me biting her lower lip. For a moment she seemed not to see me, though
looking right at me.
I said, “Mother! What’s the matter? ”She said, “Joseph, you
couldn’t possibly remember that, because you were never there, but that’s where
your father was born, by the river, near a bridge. And your grandfather had a
barn, because he had horses. That was on the
It was spring, and we were watching a
robin build a nest outside the window.
I said, “Do you think that’s the same
one that built there last year, the nest that fell down when the wind blew this
winter?”
Herman said, “I think it’s maybe one
of the young ones that was born in the old nest.“
I said, “But how would it know? If it
was born in the old nest, how would it know how to build a new one? Can a
mother robin teach it?”
“But how?” I insisted.
“Well, they call it instinct, Joey,
but what that is I can’t tell you. I guess it’s born in them because the mother
and father knew; back and back so far that nobody knows anything about it.”
“Herman, do you think we know things
because Mother and Father knew them, even if they don’t tell us?”
“Well, I think maybe we feel things
and do things like they did, Joey. I’ve
heard Father say you are sometimes just like Grandpa Jean Marie Felix
Reipert. He was a bookbinder, like
Uncle, and an artist too, always working with his hands, making things like you
do.”
I said, “Herman, sometimes I feel as
if I could almost remember things before I was born. But just when I think I do, I forget it
again. Do you ever feel that way?”
Herman said, “Well, I know what you
mean. It’s like a dream. When you wake
up you can’t remember it, but you know you were dreaming.
I said, “Yes, only it’s
not when I’m asleep, Herman. It’s when I’m awake, and when I’ve been thinking
and then stop thinking for a minute. When I start thinking again, it’s gone.”
Herman looked at me a minute and said, “You’ve always been funny that
way, Joey. When you say things without thinking you are usually right, and
everyone wonders how you know. But when you think about thins you act as if you
didn’t know anything at all. I suppose you know that sometimes worries Mother,
because she’s afraid Father won’t understand it. He doesn’t like that sort of
thing one little bit.”
“But what can I do about it, Herman?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say too much without thinking when Father is around.
It’s better when he thinks you’re dumb than when he worries, wondering what’s
got into you. Some day I’ll tell you why he worries about it.”
“Tell me, Herman! Please tell me!”
“Ssh! Joey, they’ll hear us. I’ll
tell you sometime when nobody’s home but you and me.”
It was pitch dark and I woke from a nightmare in a cold sweat. I must
have cried out in my sleep because Mother had her hand over my mouth,
whispering, “Be quiet, Joseph! Don’t wake your father. What were you dreaming?”
I said, “I dreamed that Herman was hanging on the wall with his arms
out, like on a cross. He was nailed there.”
My mother gasped and said, “Joey! Promise me you won’t tell anyone that!
Don’t tell your father, and don’t tell Herman or your sisters.”
I promised, and then asked, “Why?”
“Because,” she said, “your father doesn’t like such things, and we
mustn’t think of the or tell about them. But you frighten me.”
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
“I’m not blaming you, Joseph. You can’t help how strange it is. I
dreamed a dream like that about Herman the night you were born, and I didn’t
dare say anything about it. Because eight months before you were born I started
dreaming strange dreams, and they all came true. That never happened to me
before, and it has never happened since you were born. But during that time all
my dreams came true except that last one about Herman. You’re the first I’ve
told, because now you dream it too! Let us say a prayer, Joey, and not tell
anyone.”
So Mother left me, but I didn’t sleep. Something troubled me, but I did
not know what it was. It was something more than my dream about Herman;
something that made me feel all alone in the world, even with a large family.
I lay in the dark; then suddenly something happened to me that I did not
comprehend until years later, in memory. The vague distress of an internal
conflict I could not understand suddenly vanished. In that moment I gained a
new sense of identity. Yet I felt like a stranger in the bosom of my own
family. Suddenly I didn’t know who I was, and lay there in the dark asking
myself, “Who am I? Where am I? How did I get here?”
But there was no uneasiness in the sensation; rather a sense of impending
excitement, as if I had entered a new world and could hardly wait to explore
it. Somewhere in this new world a treasure was hidden, and I would find it. For
some reason my heart was glowing as if I had fallen in love with something I
couldn’t see. All my inner senses were affected by this, so that strong, tender
arms picked me up, but I could see no face because I was suddenly tired, and
suddenly safe. When I woke it was morning.
The world was the same, after all; but something inside of me was
different. I felt happy about something and didn’t know why, I saw more than I
usually did. I stopped to look at things that I usually passed by; and when I
looked at the same old things I had seen every day, I now saw something I
hadn’t before, and identified them in my mind. I heard sounds and knew what
they meant without turning my head to look. I felt the urge to go out
exploring, but suddenly felt the need of sharing all this new world with
someone who would understand it. I though of Herman, but he was crippled and
couldn’t go with me.
So I stayed home with Herman, I couldn’t tell him about my dream, so I
asked him, “Herman, can’t you tell me now why Father worries about what gets
into me? Mother is
Page 3
outside now. No one will hear us. The girls have gone too. What is
Father worried about? What does he think is going to happen to me?”
“Well, he thinks something gets into you, Joey. And he doesn’t know
whether it’s a devil or an angel. Sometimes he’s sure it’s a devil, and that
it’ll lead you to no good end. Remember
how one time you would run off with his gun and go shooting by the castle on
the
“Do I have to be the same all the time, Herman?”
“Not for my part, Joey. That’s what I like about you. One never knows
what you are going to say or do next.”
“Doesn’t Father like that?”
“Well, it isn’t just that. It’s when you say things about the future, or
when you seem so positive about something you couldn’t possibly know. And when
things happen to you that are mysterious.”
“But nothing mysterious happens to
me, Herman.”
“Do you remember the time you had Uncle take you coasting on Montabaur
hill? You didn’t have a sled, so you took a ladder instead. The hill was all
ice, and at the bottom was the crossroad. Uncle said a team of horses was
coming, but it was too late for him to stop you, and you could not stop
yourself. He said there was nothing on earth could keep you from being killed
or badly hurt.”
“But I wasn’t hurt a bit, Herman.”
“That’s just the thing, Joey. Ladder and all, you shot right through
between the legs of the horses, entirely unhurt. How did you do it? You didn’t
know. No one knew. That was a mystery. And then when they asked you if you
weren’t frightened when you saw the team ahead of you, you said no, you weren’t, because the minute
you saw them you thought about something
else and forgot all about them.”
“Well, I did, Herman, I closed my eyes, and saw the picture in the
church.”
“Yes, I know, Joey. But you said you knew you weren’t going to be hurt.”
“I did know it. I wasn’t hurt.”
“Well, all right. I believe you. But I’m showing you what worries
Father. When they asked you how you knew you weren’t going to be hurt bad or
killed, you said it was because you were going to marry a girl named Mary, with
black eyes and dark hair when you were twenty-seven years old, so that’s how
you knew you weren’t going to be killed before then.”
“That’s how I did know, Herman.”
“Well, that’s what Father doesn’t like. It’s either nonsense, or you
know. And if you know, how do you know? He doesn’t like it either way, Joey.”
So that night I lay there again in the dark feeling like a stranger, I
tried to remember how it all came about that I was there, and why I felt like I
sometimes did. It was the “feeling” that made me say things and think things
like Herman said Father didn’t like, and Mother seemed to understand but hushed
me up so he wouldn’t hear me.
I was six years old we were still in Montabaur, when there began to be
talk in the family about going to
We all had on light, flexible suits of armor, like fish scales made of
metal. There was a bright red cross on each breast, a sword in one hand and a
Bible in the other.
It was fifty years before I found out, inadvertently, that the village
of Montabaur and the hill I climbed that day were originally called Humbach;
and that centuries before met the Crusaders had climbed that hill and looked
down over the beautiful country, calling it “The Holy Land.” The hill reminded
them of that Mount that Christ had ascended to pray, with Peter, James and
John, where He was transfigured before them. So they christened it
I did not know this as I
trudged along that day, surrounded by the creation of my own imagination, a
company of Christian warriors with swords and Bibles.
When I reached the top I still could not
see
So far as I know now I
had no knowledge of the Crusaders, or in any case of
their relation to the hill at Montabaur. Of course it is possible there was a
foundation for the “image play” with my remembering it. The fact is here
unimportant as the purpose of these early recollections is more to provide the
background and to portray the general nature of early thought elements as based
on experience.
At present his is merely
illustrative of a later problem: What
distinguishes a “true” imagination from a “false” one as an element of
imaginative experience when it is regarded as an established fact that we can think only with what we have acquired to
think with? In other words, all imaginative experience is made up of
combinations and recombinations of elements of sensory experience with a
physiological foundation. Nevertheless it has been established by experiment
that the separate parts or memory elements may be put together correctly or
incorrectly to form a true or false internal representation of external events
or conditions. What distinguishes between the
true” and the “false” when immediate verification by observation or experiment
is impossible?
The answer, later to be
set forth more fully, is that the distinguishing characteristic of a “true”
imagination is a “feeling” that must be felt in order to understand its nature.
I did not at first
comprehend this, but now in looking back at many thousands of imaginative
experiences of childhood and youth, I see that when the exercise of the
imagination is either unaccompanied by any feeling whatsoever, or when the
imagination produces a feeling as a result of its exercise (e.g. imagining
Indians is followed by a feeling of excitement and anticipation), the
imagination is not to be trusted unless a train of thought is followed back to
determine its origin, and unless the logic and reason are sufficiently matured
and trained to adjust and retouch the picture in accordance with experience, or
reason based on observation and experiment.
On the other hand, if a
certain type of “feeling” (which is a dominant experience throughout this
record) precedes the exercise of the imagination, and in fact produces the
imagination by selective stimulation and blending of memory elements to
express, to clothe, to embody, or to interpret the “feeling,” we have then a type
of spiritual inspiration and mental phenomena that merits further
investigation, to which an introduction will be found in these pages.
My first experiences of
a distinction in feeling associated with imagination were largely unrealized at
the time, but preserved in memory. In climbing
I did not then realize
that these details characterized the Crusaders, who gave the hill historic
background and a name. All the elements were familiar to me, but not the
history. My memory contained swords, Bibles, Crosses, metal armor, and the idea
of men who would use these things. Emphatically, I did not see the “spirits” of
Crusaders walking up the hill with me. What I “saw” was entirely the product of
my own imagination in which was composited various elements of memory acquired
by previous sensory experience.
But these memory
elements were selectively stimulated, assembled, and imbued with life by a
“feeling” at a particular time, under a particular condition, at a particular
place, which invested them with a meaning I did not myself comprehend until
fifty years later. Whence and what the
“feeling”? Why the particular
mental imagery evoked by the feeling? Not in these few childhood cases alone,
but in thousands upon thousands of cases extending through a lifetime: my own
and the lives of many others whose experiences I have investigated.
That was the quest in which, symbolically at least, I set forth with a
sword in one hand and a Bible in the other, to find the answer. I sought the
truth, and as time went on I found that my imagination provided the truth in
one instance and deceived me in another. It deceived me when I used my own
reason and memory to speculate on things I didn’t know enough about. It
deceived me when I concentrated or “tried.” It never deceived me when I didn’t
try, and didn’t care, and had a “feeling” first that started my imagination
going to piece together in a flash what was aroused from my memory by the
feeling. What was the feeling?
I stress this because as time went on people who knew more about such
things than I would say, “ The boy is psychic, “ or “He is clairvoyant.” “It
must be telepathy or psychometry,” and so on.
And I knew they were all wrong. I possess no
special, mystic, or occult sense that other men do not possess. My mental
operations are limited entirely to what I have acquired and recorded by sensory
experience. My imagination has only my own memory to draw on. I visualize something spontaneously past,
present or future, near or far; it proves correct, with witnesses to verify
it. My records contain thousand of such
witnessed cases in which I was correct 98% of the time. What did I “see”? Nothing but a composite of my own memory
elements of past experience.
Truly and literally it was “nothing but my imagination.” Still it
corresponded with the truth. Why? Was
it a good guess? Was it “coincidence”? Was it “chance”? These were questions to
be answered by experimental research. At first I did not know. But time ruled
out chance beyond all dispute. And I did soon find out that man’s most
important thinking does not take place in the brain alone, but with the entire
body and nervous system.
Truth is not to be found in man’s memory of words or his reflective
visual or oral thinking. Words and memories of sights and sounds may be woven
together into endless combinations. What
gives them meaning? What
determines the exact word or memory elements that will be combined in any given
concept or idea or train of thought? What assurances have we that our ideas
have any correspondence with reality at all?
Our only assurance from a scientific point of view is one based on
experience, observation and experiment. How then is it possible to know things
in the future, at a distance in the present and in the past, without
opportunity for experience, observation, or experiment? I can only say that I
have established this fact for myself, that I am writing this commentary on my
early experience to introduce you to what I did and how I did it, so you too
may establish the facts for yourself, without taking anyone’s word for it; mine
or that of anyone else.
It requires not the use of some mysterious faculty you do not possess,
but rather the suspension of the use of your “intellect”(verbal memory, reason,
etc.) until after your feeling of intuition has clothed itself imaginatively.
Then harness it by “logic and reason,” by all means, if you can. But you must first
learn how to stop thinking at will. You must learn how to “deconcentrate”
instead of concentrating. You must make no strenuous “effort.” You can’t
“force” it. You can’t “play” with it. You can’t “practice” it. Spontaneity is
its most essential characteristic. It cannot manifest in the realm of habit or
“conditioned reflexes,” as in the case of instinct.
In the language of the New Testament, you must not try to move the
spirit; you must let the spirit move you. This means that you must let the truth
shape you, for the simple reason that you cannot shape the truth. Your relation
to truth is direct, and not by reflective or verbal representation. You will
find the truth neither in words nor in memories, but only in direct nervous
coordination of the whole of your immediate sensory experience, internal as
well as external.
Just as the law of crystallization and chemical combination in the
mineral kingdom and the inorganic world, so also the law of selective absorption
in the organic world and vegetable kingdom, preserving the species,
materializing the truth and meaning of the seed. And so also the selective
excitation and conditioning of reflexes in the formation and operation of
instinct in the animal kingdom. And there is evidence that a similar law is at
work in a more complicated system of self-conditioning reflexes as manifest in
the
Vastly superior nervous organization of man: a mechanism of
adaptation not only to so-called seen or visible environments, but also to
“unseen” environments such as those manifest in radiant energy and the
specifications of future growth as manifest in seeds.
All I knew as a child
was that I had some sort of relation with what I could neither see, hear,
smell, taste nor touch; and that relation was a “feeling.”
But I found that
“thinking” and “imagining” first created a false feeling that lied to me. It
was only when the feeling came first, without thinking, that the feeling was
right. And my thoughts and imaginations were right only if they were induced by
the feeling and not by association of thought resulting from what I saw or
heard. Sometimes there was nothing in my experience to fit the feelings that
came to me. Often I could not understand them at all in terms of word or ideas
familiar to me. Still I “knew”; but I couldn’t explain it.
I feel it necessary for
the sake of the intellect of those who have had no such experiences to explain
thus at length the view from which my own are regarded. None was regarded as
occult or mystic in nature; none involved mysterious unknown senses, nor were
they “extra-sensory” or “super-sensory.” Man’s relation with his environments,
the universe, the rest of mankind, Deity, or forms of energy or life beyond his
present understanding is regarded as a physiological, neurological, sensory
relation. No responsive or imaginative activity is regarded as possible without
a nervous organization with a physiological foundation. And I have established
to my own satisfaction by experiment that if I apparently “see” a vision or
dream, a dream that proves to be prophetic, there is no so-called faculty of
prevision, or second sight. The “third eye” employed in such experiences is
nothing more nor less than the “imagination” that every man, woman, and child
exercises to a greater or lesser degree. This “mind’s eye” of imagination has
never, does not, cannot, and never will “see” anything outside of one’s own
physiological organization. Its sensations are entirely “memory sensations.” It
is strictly limited to the momentary and fragmentary revival of past
experiences as recorded in memory. Its one and essential power, which
distinguishes the complicated nervous organization of man from the more simple
one of the animal, is the power of recombination by means of which the
imagination can make new creations out of the memory elements of old
experiences.
Thus we symbolize; we
indulge in fantasy; we speculate and theorize; we create works of art; we
invent; and thus we produce a culture and a civilization. But as we thus change
environments, we change our “destiny,” and we change the character of
adaptation that operates in the law of the survival of the fit. It becomes
necessary to adapt oneself to subtler and more complicated environments. It
becomes necessary to develop foresight, a knowledge of consequences; to plan,
to prepare, to prevent. We find that only those who do this survive.
So now we have a law of
the survival of the intuitively fit. But intuition
needs to be redefined, or we shall have to find a new word for it.
Possibly there was a
time when brute strength survived, but it soon became evident that a less
strong and more sensitive nervous organism better adapted itself to
environments in the survival of the instinctively fit.
With the appearance of
man there was anew element; intelligence. Neither brute strength nor instinct
could cope with it. The intellect that could make a trap, dig a pitfall for
mastodons, and invent a gun soon became king of the earth.
And then what, as men
fight each other as well as the elements of nature, to say nothing of man’s own
creations, which break his bones and blast him from the face of the earth? Do
the strong battle and kill themselves off so that the meek shall inherit the
earth?
Man now finds others
than himself to battle. He builds cities, and the earth trembles, opens great
jaws and swallows them up. Volcanoes belch forth and bury them. Winds blow and lay
them low. The rain falls and great floods sweep all before them. Lightning
strikes and burns his structures to the ground. He builds ships and they sink
at sea. He makes fast-moving engines and dashes to destruction. He digs in the
bowels of the earth for its riches and is buried alive. The sun dries up his
crops and he perishes in famine.
Pestilence breaks out and leaves a city of dead to be buried
unknown by the sands of ten
It is the last cycle;
the final “survival.” And is it the strong who survive? Is it the cunning? Is it the meek? Is it the tyrant? Is it the
selfish and arrogant? It is not. It is
they who feel the “feeling” and act on it. It is they who had a “hunch” not to
buy tickets on the ship that was going to sink. It is they who did not build a
city where Vesuvius would belch forth its lava and flames. It is they who do
not buy or build a house below the future flood-crest of a river. It is they
who packed their belongings and left the day before an earthquake shattered
their home. It is they who do these things without even thinking why.
What is the “feeling”? If we waited to use it until we knew
what it was, we would be like the farmer who still uses kerosene lamps because
he doesn’t intend to use electricity until he knows what it is. The wren does
not know why it flies south; but it flies,
and thus escapes cold and starvation. An animal obeys a “feeling” directly,
without translating it into words or thoughts of visual (imaginative)
representation. Man has so far lost his neural relation with reality (by having
substituted a world of words and symbolic representations) that he regards as
abnormal those who retain it or regain it. He invests it with an air of
mystery, and represents it by misleading words of special vocabularies, mystic,
occult, theosophical, theological, psychological, and psychic.
The mystery is no longer
in the physiological and nervous organization of man—not any more than in the
construction of the Geiger counter. The mystery is in the so-called cosmic rays
that act on the Geiger counter. What are they, and where are they from? The
mystery is in the source of energy or life that acts on the nervous
organization of man to produce the “feeling.” What is it, and where is it from?
There need be no other mystery. The organism upon which it acts is now fairly
well known. New ductless glands will be discovered. Many functions and
operations will be better understood. But in all its essentials the
physiological foundation and nervous organization is well enough understood, in
the light of developments in the field of electronics and radiant energy, to
know that man is capable of experiencing “feelings” (independent of seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, touching) that emanate from sources known or
unknown. Heat is but an obvious example, as well as electrical conditions of
the atmosphere.
Beyond this coordinated sensitivity of the entire nervous system no further or special sense is required. It is superfluous and absurd to postulate mysterious powers of vision, clairaudience, “psychic abilities,” and so on, when the normal powers and