The Ghost of Guir House

"Let me ask if what I saw was hypnotism?" repeated Henley. "I ask

this, first, because I know it is impossible to see through a brick

wall, even if there should be such a room in the house; and,

secondly, because I cannot believe that I was dreaming, consequently

the thing could not have been real."

"Hypnotism is a good enough word," answered Ah Ben; "but that which

men generally understand by the real, and that which they consider

the unreal, are not so far apart as they suppose. You say the room

was not real, and yet you saw it; had you wished, you might have

touched it, which is certainly all the evidence you have of the

existence of the room in which we are now sitting. Hypnotism is not a

cause of hallucination, as is commonly supposed, but of fact. Its

effects are not illusory, but real. Perhaps it would be more correct

to say that they are as real as anything else, and that all the

phenomena of nature are mere illusions of the senses, which they

undoubtedly are. But whichever side we take, all appearances are the

result of the same general cause--that of mental vibration. Matter

has no real existence."

Paul was meditating on what he had seen and what he was now hearing.

Ah Ben's words were endowed with an added force by the vision of the

mysterious room.

"When you tell me that there is practically no difference between the

real and the unreal, and that matter has no real existence, I must

confess to some perplexity," observed Henley.

Ah Ben looked up and smoothed the furrows in his withered cheek

thoughtfully for a minute before he answered: "Unfortunately, Mr. Henley, language is not absolute or final in its

power to convey thought, and the best we can do is to use it as

carefully as possible to express ourselves, which we can only hope to

do approximately. Therefore when I say that a thing is hot or cold,

or hard or soft, I only mean that it is so by comparison with certain

other things; and when I say that matter has no existence, I mean

that it has no independent existence--no existence outside of the

mind that brought it into being. I mean that it was formed by mind,

formed out of mind, and that it continues to exist in mind as a part

of mind. I mean that it is an appearance objective to our point of

consciousness on the material plane; but inasmuch as it was formed by

thought, it can be reformed by thought, which could never be if it

existed independently of thought. It is real in the sense of apparent

objectivity, and not real in the sense of independent objectivity,

and yet it affects us in precisely the same manner as if it were

independent of thought. What, then, is the difference between matter

as viewed from the Idealist's or the Materialist's point of view? At

first there is apparently none, but a deeper insight will show us

that the difference is vast and radical, for in the one case the tree

or the chair that I am looking at, owing its very existence to mind,

is governed by mind, which could never be did they exist as separate

and distinct entities. Therefore I say with perfect truth that matter

does not exist in the one sense, and yet that it does exist in the

other. I dream of a green field; a beautiful landscape, never before

beheld; I awake and it is gone. Where was that enchanting scene? I

can tell you: for it was in the mind, where everything else is. But

upon waking I have changed my mind, and the scene has vanished. Thus

it is with the Adept of the East, with the Yoghis, the Pundit, the

Rishis, and the common Fakir; through the power of hypnotism they

alter the condition of the subject's mind, and with it his world has

likewise undergone a change. You say this is not real, that it is

merely illusion; but in reply I would say that these illusions have

been subjected to the severest tests; their reality has been

certified to by every human sense, and when an illusion responds to

the sense of both sight and touch, when the sense of sight is

corroborated by that of touch, or by any other of the five senses,

what better evidence have we of the existence of those things we

are all agreed to call real? Yes, I know what you are about to say,

you object upon the ground that only a small minority are witnesses

of the marvels of Eastern magic; but you are wrong, for I have seen

hundreds of men in a public square all eye-witnesses to precisely the

same occult phenomena at once. Now if certain hundreds could be so

impressed, why not other hundreds? And with a still more powerful

hypnotizer, why could not a majority--nay, all of those in a certain

district, a certain State, a certain country, in the world--be made

to see and feel things which now, and to us, have no existence? In

that case, Mr. Henley, would it be the majority or the minority who

were deceived? All is mind, and the hypnotizer merely alters it."