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Authors: Colin Wilson
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excreted exactly thirty-three worms.
Another curious phenomenon that I came to accept as a fact was called ‘community of sensation’. When Alfred Russel Wallace — co-founder of the theory of evolution — was a young teacher he became interested in hypnotism and experimented with a number of his pupils. When one of these pupils was in a trance he could share Wallace’s sense of taste and smell. When Wallace sucked a lump of sugar, the boy went through sucking motions; when Wallace tasted salt, he grimaced; when Wallace stuck a pin in himself, the boy jumped and rubbed the appropriate part of his body. Years later, when Wallace was chairman of a scientific committee, he received a paper from a young Irish professor named William Barrett who had taken part in similar experiments and seen a young girl distinguish between various substances that the hypnotist put into his own mouth. So Wallace had no doubt that Barrett was telling the truth. The rest of the committee lacked Wallace’s experience, and the paper was never published. But Wallace was so convinced that such matters deserved to be investigated that he became a founder member of the Society for Psychical Research. Since that time ‘community of sensation’ has been observed again and again by open-minded investigators. For example, Dr Gustav Pagenstecher, a German physician working in Mexico City, began to treat a patient called Maria de Zierold soon after the First World War and discovered that he could cure her insomnia with hypnosis. When in a trance Maria de Zierold’s senses were apparently transferred to the hypnotist so that she could taste substances he put into his mouth, feel the burning of a match he held underneath his hand and hear the ticking of his watch. And even though her eyes were closed she could see him quite normally and describe the things he was doing, even in the next room. On the whole, then, most open-minded enquirers would agree that ‘community of sensation’ is a scientifically established fact. Only scientists continue to regard it as a myth.
The same applies to psychometry, the ability possessed by certain people to hold some object in their hands and ‘read’ its history. In 1843 an American doctor named Joseph Rodes Buchanan met Bishop Leonidas Polk, who told him that he could always distinguish brass, even in the dark, because when he touched it he felt a ‘brassy’ taste in his mouth. Buchanan decided to try this out on his pupils and was fascinated to discover that many of them could detect various substances with their fingertips, even when the substance had been swathed in thick brown paper. But his greatest surprise came when some of his best ‘sensitives’ showed themselves able to hold a sealed letter in their hands and describe the person who had written it in precise detail. They were also able to ‘sense’ the writer’s mood. A disciple of Buchanan named William Denton, a professor of geology in Boston, began his own series of tests with geological specimens — rocks, meteorites, prehistoric bone fragments and so on — and found that his best ‘sensitives’ had very precise ‘visions’ of the place where the object originated. Both Denton and Buchanan wrote long books describing their experiments, which excited widespread interest at the time. But scientists quickly lost interest in these wonders, particularly when ‘psychometry’ (Buchanan’s coinage, meaning ‘soul-measurement’) was taken up by spiritualists and occultists. Hundreds of well-documented cases * leave little doubt that psychometry is one of the commonest ‘paranormal faculties’. But science continues to ignore the subject, and even serious investigators of the paranormal seem to regard it with a kind of embarrassment. (For example, Brian Inglis does not even refer to it in his comprehensive history of the paranormal,
Natural and Supernatural
.)
All this should make it clear why, when I had finished writing
The Occult
in
Another curious phenomenon that I came to accept as a fact was called ‘community of sensation’. When Alfred Russel Wallace — co-founder of the theory of evolution — was a young teacher he became interested in hypnotism and experimented with a number of his pupils. When one of these pupils was in a trance he could share Wallace’s sense of taste and smell. When Wallace sucked a lump of sugar, the boy went through sucking motions; when Wallace tasted salt, he grimaced; when Wallace stuck a pin in himself, the boy jumped and rubbed the appropriate part of his body. Years later, when Wallace was chairman of a scientific committee, he received a paper from a young Irish professor named William Barrett who had taken part in similar experiments and seen a young girl distinguish between various substances that the hypnotist put into his own mouth. So Wallace had no doubt that Barrett was telling the truth. The rest of the committee lacked Wallace’s experience, and the paper was never published. But Wallace was so convinced that such matters deserved to be investigated that he became a founder member of the Society for Psychical Research. Since that time ‘community of sensation’ has been observed again and again by open-minded investigators. For example, Dr Gustav Pagenstecher, a German physician working in Mexico City, began to treat a patient called Maria de Zierold soon after the First World War and discovered that he could cure her insomnia with hypnosis. When in a trance Maria de Zierold’s senses were apparently transferred to the hypnotist so that she could taste substances he put into his mouth, feel the burning of a match he held underneath his hand and hear the ticking of his watch. And even though her eyes were closed she could see him quite normally and describe the things he was doing, even in the next room. On the whole, then, most open-minded enquirers would agree that ‘community of sensation’ is a scientifically established fact. Only scientists continue to regard it as a myth.
The same applies to psychometry, the ability possessed by certain people to hold some object in their hands and ‘read’ its history. In 1843 an American doctor named Joseph Rodes Buchanan met Bishop Leonidas Polk, who told him that he could always distinguish brass, even in the dark, because when he touched it he felt a ‘brassy’ taste in his mouth. Buchanan decided to try this out on his pupils and was fascinated to discover that many of them could detect various substances with their fingertips, even when the substance had been swathed in thick brown paper. But his greatest surprise came when some of his best ‘sensitives’ showed themselves able to hold a sealed letter in their hands and describe the person who had written it in precise detail. They were also able to ‘sense’ the writer’s mood. A disciple of Buchanan named William Denton, a professor of geology in Boston, began his own series of tests with geological specimens — rocks, meteorites, prehistoric bone fragments and so on — and found that his best ‘sensitives’ had very precise ‘visions’ of the place where the object originated. Both Denton and Buchanan wrote long books describing their experiments, which excited widespread interest at the time. But scientists quickly lost interest in these wonders, particularly when ‘psychometry’ (Buchanan’s coinage, meaning ‘soul-measurement’) was taken up by spiritualists and occultists. Hundreds of well-documented cases * leave little doubt that psychometry is one of the commonest ‘paranormal faculties’. But science continues to ignore the subject, and even serious investigators of the paranormal seem to regard it with a kind of embarrassment. (For example, Brian Inglis does not even refer to it in his comprehensive history of the paranormal,
Natural and Supernatural
.)
All this should make it clear why, when I had finished writing
The Occult
in
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