Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science

Part 1

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STUDIES IN THE OUT-LYING FIELDS OF PSYCHIC SCIENCE

By HUDSON TUTTLE

AUTHOR OF ARCANA OF NATURE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MAN ETC

New York M L HOLBROOK & CO

COPYRIGHT BY HUDSON TUTTLE, 1889.

TO ALFRED E. GILES, OF HYDE PARK, MASS.,

AN ERUDITE SCHOLAR, A FEARLESS INVESTIGATOR, AN UNSHRINKING ADVOCATE OF HIS CONVICTIONS, HONEST AND TRUE TO HIMSELF AND OTHERS; IN RECOGNITION OF A MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP OF MANY YEARS THIS VOLUME IS FRATERNALLY DEDICATED.

ANALYSIS.

There is a Psychic Ether, related to thought, as the luminiferous ether is to light.

This may be regarded as the thought atmosphere of the universe. A thinking being in this atmosphere is a pulsating center of thought-waves, as a luminous body is of light.

There is a state of mind and body known as sensitive, or impressible, in which it receives impressions from other minds. This state may be normal, or induced by fatigue, disease, drugs, or arise in sleep. The facts of clairvoyance, trance, somnambulism and psychometry prove the existence of this ether, and are correlated to it.

Thought transference is also in evidence, as well as that vast series of facts which give intimation of an intelligence surviving the death of the physical body.

This sensitiveness may be exceedingly acute, and the individual unconscious of it, and then it is known as genius, which is acute susceptibility to the waves of the psychic atmosphere.

Sensitiveness explains the true philosophy of prayer.

All the so-called occult phenomena of mesmerism, trance, clairvoyance, mind reading, dreams, visions, thought transference, etc., are correlated to and explained by means of this psychic ether.

All these phenomena lead up to the consideration of immortality, which is a natural state, the birthright of every human being.

The body and spirit are originated and sustained together, and death is their final separation.

The problem of an immortal future, beginning in time, is solved by the resolution of forces at first acting in straight lines, through spirals reaching circles which, returning within themselves, become individualized and self-sustaining.

Spiritual beings must originate and be sustained by laws as fixed and unchanging as those which govern the physical world.

Sensitiveness gives great pleasures and may give pain; the author's experience as a sensitive, related, shows this.

And, finally, a communication from a spirit whose life had been noble and unselfish, given while the recipient was in a sensitive and receptive state, detailing an account of the phenomena called death, but which is really birth into the spirit realm, the meeting of friends, and the knowledge of a quarter of a century of its joys, together with "the poet's story," it being an account given by one whose earth-life had been selfish, and whose selfish thoughts had formed themselves into phantom companions, following him into the realm of the future world, and making his life there one of despair, and how he escaped these legitimate children of his brain by heroic acts of unselfishness, complete the story. These last are no fictions of the imagination, written to amuse the reader; but the author is firmly convinced, yes, knows they are the words of actual living beings who have once lived on earth like ourselves.

H. T.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

Dedication 3

Analysis 5

CHAPTER I.

Part 2

Matter, Life, Spirit 9

CHAPTER II.

What the Senses Teach of the World and the Doctrine of Evolution 20

CHAPTER III.

Scientific Methods of the Study of Man, and its Results 31

CHAPTER IV.

What is the Sensitive State 37

CHAPTER V.

Sensitive State: Its Division into Mesmeric, Somnambulic and Clairvoyant 44

CHAPTER VI.

Sensitiveness Proved by Psychometry 64

CHAPTER VII.

Sensitiveness During Sleep 75

CHAPTER VIII.

Dreams 86

CHAPTER IX.

Sensitiveness Induced by Disease 93

CHAPTER X.

Thought Transference 99

CHAPTER XI.

Intimations of an Intelligent Force 117

CHAPTER XII.

Effects of Physical Influences on the Sensitive 147

CHAPTER XIII.

Unconscious Sensitiveness 151

CHAPTER XIV.

Prayer in the Light of Sensitiveness and Thought Waves 165

CHAPTER XV.

Part 3

Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith Cure--their Physical Relations 178

CHAPTER XVI.

What the Immortal State Must Be 188

CHAPTER XVII.

Personal Experience--Intelligence from the Sphere of Light 217

Matter, Life, Spirit.

NECESSITY OF KNOWLEDGE, NOT FAITH.--Guizot forcibly expresses the value of a knowledge of future life when he says: "Belief in the supernatural (spiritual) is the special difficulty of our time; denial of it is the form of all assaults on Christianity, and acceptance of it lies at the root, not only of Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever."

He stands not alone in this conclusion. The difficulty, to a great majority of men of science and leaders of thought, appears insurmountable, and they no longer feel a necessity for defending their want of belief, but smile at the credulity of those who believe anything beyond what their senses reveal.

Not only the infidel world perceives this difficulty; it is well understood by the leaders of Christianity, for they have been taught its strength by the irrepressible conflict which has culminated in the want of belief at the present time. With this result before them, it is idle for the church leaders to assert that revelation in the Bible is sufficient to remove this difficulty, which has grown in the very sanctuary, in the shadow of biblical teachings. While the value of the Bible, as interpreted by theologians, depends on the belief in immortality, it has not proved the existence of man beyond the grave in such an absolute manner as to remove doubt; and yet, of all evidence it is designed to give, that on this point should be the most complete and irrefutable.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves nothing, even admitted in its most absolute form. If Christ was the Son of God and God himself, he was unlike ordinary mortals, and what is true of him is not necessarily so of them.

His physical resurrection does not prove theirs. Admitting similarity, his bodily resurrection after three days, while his body remained unchanged, does not prove theirs after they have become dust, and scattered through countless forms of life for a thousand ages. If, with some sects, the resurrection of the body be discarded, then the resurrection of Christ has no significance, for it is expressly held that his body was revivified and taken from the tomb.

Skepticism has increased, because the supporters of religion have not attempted to keep pace with the march of events, but, on the contrary, asserted that they had all knowledge possible to gain on this subject, and that anything outside of their interpretation was false.

Instead of founding religion on the constitution of man, and making immortality his birthright, they have regarded these as foreign to him, and only gained by the acceptance of certain doctrines. They removed immortality from the domain of accurate knowledge; and those who pursued science turned with disgust from a subject which ignored present research for past belief.

Hence, there has been, unfortunately, the great army of investigators and thinkers, in the realm of matter, studying its phenomena and laws, never approaching the threshold of the spiritual; and, on the other hand, the more important knowledge of spirit, of man's future, which retrospects his present life and all past ages, and reaches into the infinite ages to come, was the especial care of those who scorned nature and abhorred reason. Hence the antagonism, which can only be removed by the priest laying aside his books as infallible authority, discarding beliefs, dogmas, and metaphysical word legerdemain, and studying the inner world in the same manner that the outer has been so advantageously explored. When this has been done, it may be found that physical investigators have not the whole truth, even when they have been the most exact.

It may be found that, having omitted the spiritual side in all their investigations, their conclusions are erroneous to the extent of that factor, which may be one of the most important. It may be found that in order to have a complete and perfect knowledge of the external world, the internal or spiritual must be understood.

Here we face the time-old questions: What is matter? What is spirit? The philosophy of nature here rests. There is no middle ground. The materialist starts from the atom, which, he says, has in itself all the possibilities of the universe and outside of which there is nothing.

THE ATOM.--But who knows of the atom, into which matter, at last analysis, is resolved? No one. Aside from the active forces which apparently flow from it, we know nothing, and speculation takes the place of knowledge. That speculation, unfettered by the requirements of accurate science, grew rankly in the minds of the sages of antiquity, and bore the strangest fruits. From that time to the present, speculative thought has not ceased in activity, nor arrived at any certain conclusion.

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