Psychic Fields
LAURENCE BENDIT is a practising psychiatrist, Phoebe Payne is clairvoyant, and the product of this parmership is a remarkable book. The authors make many statements dogmatically which will be rejected offhand by a large number of readers ; they state that the body is surrounded by an " electric or magnetic field" which they term the Psycho-Physical Bridge. After describing this etheric mechanism as a bridge between the physical waking consciousness and what psychologists call the psyche, or mind, namely, " that part of the individual in which mental processes such as thinking and feeling decor," an elaborate description not only of the appear- ance of this bridge but of its functions in physical life is given. I do not find it difficult to accept this account in general because I have had direct evidence of Phoebe Payne's extraordinary faculty for seeing what is wrong with the hidden organs or processes of the body. In one of these cases known to me her clairvoyant diagnosis was in direct opposition to the diagnosis of the physician in charge, who had advised an immediate operation. Her descrip- tion of what was wrong and how it could be treated without an operation was accepted and proved perfectly correct. This is not the only case of which I have had personal knowledge of her extra- ordinary faculty, which is why I am prepared to accept her descrip- tion of the appearance and movements of the " Psycho-etheric bridge." Another reason makes me treat her and Laurence Bendit's descriptions with respect. Much of the functioning of the psychic organism is familiar to me, even down to the localisation of actual pain after certain experiences. Not being clairvoyant I have not seen the etheric body as described in this book, but I am well aware of some of the faculties attributed to it.
The authors have made an essentially sane and balanced estimate of the significance of the psychic sense. They contend that everyone is possessed of it, though few are aware of this. They decry vigorously attempts by exercises and meditations to develop super- normal perceptions in the hope of acquiring what is called medium- ship. They hold that the utterances of mediums, often in no sense fraudulent, are perceptions by the human being of a region beyond his physical consciousness—supposed messages from the dead are a common example—but the wise know well that what may have been psychlally felt can be only a symbol of a reality beyond human reach.
To anyone who has, however dimly, after putting aside the revela- tions of religion, reached the conviction that man is greater than he knows, and is possessed of a soul, • this book will be deeply interesting.
EDITH LYTTELTON.
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