50 A DESIRE OF THE MIND 



frequently, in the agonies of death: the percipient 

 as a rule being one closely connected with the sufferer 

 by ties of relationship and affection. Furthermore, it 

 is known or assumed that the sufferer is passionately 

 thinking of the absent and loved one at the moment, 

 and that the thought finds its objective over long 

 distance, and appears as a wraith or phantasm. 



Now we know that this faculty, this power of the 

 mind of projecting itself in such moments of violent 

 disturbances, is a useless one, seeing there can be 

 no response, no helpful action, nor even a return 

 message, and that its only effect is anxious doubt 

 or keen distress in the percipient. Is it not then 

 curious to think that this useless sense, or faculty, 

 which is in some if not all of us, and of which we are 

 unconscious, is the very one which all men desire 

 to possess, only with this difference, that they want 

 to be conscious of it and able to control and direct 

 it ? There is a time in the life of a natural man when 

 his most ardent, most burning wish is for some 

 undiscovered way, some unknown faculty by means 

 of which he can communicate with the absent or lost 

 loved one. Often enough this passion that feeds on 

 the heart, that makes life a torment and darkens the 

 reason, actually brings the sufferer to the belief, or 

 the brink of it, that it is not impossible that in a 

 dream, or by an effort of the will, or in some other 

 unknown way, the miracle can be brought to pass. 

 And with this feeling there is sometimes the thought 

 that if it cannot be so long as both are alive, death 

 will yet make it possible to the craving soul. 



