Across the Unknown

WE ARE here recommending to you a country beyond. We think you will find
its exploration rewarding. But we shall not be able to go along. We must
merely tell you about it; and thus, perhaps, help you to find your own
way.

This country is not something brand-new that we have been the first to
discover. Others have passed this way before us. But they have been too
few. The topography is not yet well understood, nor is travel there
secure. Safe, well-made trails do not exist--only ways-through along
which predecessors have here and there erected markers. And these routes
are only for the sure-footed, for they are slippery and dangerous. Their
exploration is not a tour, but an adventure.

This is a fact. But I think we are often told so in the wrong way. Mostly
we are warned off. Stay out, is the cry, for this is a land of bugaboos!
Some of the warnings, especially in symbolism, are terrifying. And, to my
mind, somewhat misleading. Astral entities, dugpas, incubi and succubi,
obsessing diabolisms, black magics of all sorts--if we listen to the
East; queerness, crankiness, separateness, illusion, split personality,
all the mental aberrations right up to actual insanity--if we listen to
the West: these are the perils which we must undertake if we are to dare
in venturing. Pause and consider, they tell us solemnly; you need not
venture, but if you do, make up your mind to face these enemies and
dangers.

The dangers are real enough, I believe, in whatever terms they are
stated. But they should not be terrifying, and certainly not deterring.

Did you ever read a pilot book of the Pacific Northwest Coast? It was
written by a pessimist. His favorite phrase is "should not be attempted
without local knowledge." Scattered through his pages are gems of
description telling of the masses of ice "grinding together in tide
whirls of great velocity." A winter fireside perusal could easily
convince a suggestible man that only a miracle could keep him from
disaster. And the author tells the truth. These perils of sunken ledge
and treacherous current, compelling tide whirl, clashing ice, are all
there. But to a man with ordinary foresight and common sense they are
slight menace-provided he meets them well-informed and well-prepared.

Just so, I conceive, these great and very real dangers to irresponsibles,
in this country beyond, are not of the sort among which one must walk in
dread--provided he is suitably equipped for the journey. Was it
Stefansson who defined the usual "adventure" as merely a lack of
preparation? That is what I am trying to emphasize here: the importance
of a little careful preparation.

2.

Before proceeding further, we must first of all agree on the matter of
words. Unfortunately some of the words we must use are pretty well
tattered by careless use. They have frayed out into numerous rags of
connotation. They have been spread thin to cover too many aspects, each
of which really should have a word of its own. If we could find, or make,
fresh words, we should get on much better. But there are none; and the
results of our fabrication are both clumsy and cold. So we must do our
best in freshening, defining, limiting.

First, we must retread the term "psychic." That has become a very skiddy
word; but it is the only one we have.

For this adventure into another region of consciousness is psychic; and
it uses psychic faculties. Only, unfortunately, the term covers too many
things. With some of them we have no concern at all. Some of them we
utilize as a means to the end we are after. All of them are more or less
disputed territory.

Broadly speaking, they present two aspects. Into one general
classification we may crowd that great mass of astonishing and debated
phenomena: ectoplasm and all its varied manifestation, clairvoyance,
telepathy, direct voice, apport, spiritism, clairaudience, levitation,
and such. By most of us these have always been regarded with suspicion or
downright disbelief. Nevertheless, such a weight of evidence has
accumulated that they can no longer be dismissed by a mere scornful wave
of the skeptical hand.

Across the Unknown