SPEAKING WITH THE UNSEEN.

This long article appeared in a regional Australian Newspaper in 1907, one of the great shames of our current situation as a movement is that we have neither the people to engage the press at this level nor apparently the material. Or maybe it was because it was the age of wonders.

SPEAKING WITH THE UNSEEN.
REMARKABLE BELIEF OF AN EMINENT ASTRONOMER.
West Gippsland Gazette (Warragul, Vic. : 1898 - 1930) Tuesday 24 September 1907

It is only about two years ago that the "Age" in writing upon the psychic phenomena produced at Mr Stanford's sittings in Melbourne, with the medium Charles Bailey, virtually characterised the whole proceedings as chicanery and imposition. The remarkable Egyptian tablets and coins and "apports" which were brought by psychic agency were alluded to in terms of ridicule, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Stanford possesses quite a museum of these ancient relics, besides other rare objects from different and little known parts of the world. His collection in fact is absolutely unique.

Since that time, however, the " Age " writer has made some a study of the subject with the result that he has discovered to his astonishment that the thing is true, several paragraphs have appeared since that date bearing on psychic phenomena, but they were altogether devoid of ridicule, and the writer has evidently realised the folly of sneering at facts simply because they happened of to be beyond his comprehension.

This deep subject is now engaging the attention of the greatest intellects in the world, and the phenomena are frankly admitted to be real, although the psychic process by which they are brought about is not yet fully understood. In Europe and especially in Italy the great dailies of Rome and Venice devote special lead ing articles to the elucidation of the mystery, and discuss the marvels of psychic phenomena from the new point of the scientific investigator. We have not yet advanced as far as this in Australia, but the time is coming and that soon, when men with any pretensions to spiritual and intellectual attainments, will dispassionately discuss the marvellous processes of spiritual communication and other phenomena.

Reverting again to the "Age" it is interesting to read in a recent issue (7th September) an extract with the heading which precede this article, on the scientific investigations of the eminent French astronomer, Royal Mons. Camille Flammarion.

It is absolutely certain, says Camille Flammarion, that one soul can influence another soul at a distance and without the aid of the senses. Many dead people, I know, have been told by telepathic communications, by apparitions, subjective or objective, called by voices they distinctly heard, by songs, noises and movements and impressions of different kinds. We can have no doubt on this point-the soul can act at a distance. Mental suggestion seems equally certain. Psychic communication between persons who are living is also proved by a large number of cases they have been observed and reported. There are psychic currents as well as aerial and electric currents.

Telepathy is nothing new; it held a fore most place in ancient literature. The works of Homer, Euripides, Ovid Virgil and Cicero often bring forward cases of manifestations from the dying and the dead. We may see without eyes and hear without ears, not by unnatural excitement of our sense of vision of our hearing, but by some interior sense, psychic and mental. The soul, by its interior vision, may see not only what is passing at a great distance, but it may also know in advance what is to happen in the future. The future exists potentially, determined by causes which bring to pass successive events. Positive observation proves the existence of a psychic world, as real as the world known to our physical senses, and I shall never give up the exploration of this world, which I hope to carry to an end if the time indispensable to the work shall be allowed me.

But, on one hand, it is proper and prudent not to give one's self up exclusively to occult subjects, for one might lose the independence of mind necessary to form an impartial judgment. It is better to look upon such studies as not one's main object in life, but as recreation of a superior order, most curious and interesting. These are foods and drinks which it is most wholesome to take only in small quantities. 'On the other hand, our earth turns very quickly, and days pass away like dreams. I hope, nevertheless, to give myself the scientific pleasure of studying a portion of these mysteries, and perhaps what one man cannot do may be done by others. Everyone may bring his little stone to assist in the construction of a future a pyramid.

I ask my readers and friends to lay up knowledge, to work and hope. We live in the midst of an invisible world, in which forces are at work of which we know very little and this agrees with what we know about the limitation of our physical senses and the phenomena of nature."