1995, p. 262).
Camille Flammarion (astronomer)
camille flammarion (1842–1925) was a french astronomer, famous for his work on double stars and the topography of Mars. In 1861, he joined the Society for Psychologic Studies, beginning a long career of investigation into paranormal phenomena. In 1870 he was invited to submit a report to the dialectical Society of London, which had convened a commission to study “phenomena alleged to be spiritual manifestations” (flammarion 1909, p. 289). In his letter to the commission, flammarion (1909, p. 302) admitted that investigations into the paranormal were complicated by fraud and the capricious nature of the phenomena. But such investigation was also hampered by those who considered such things impossible. flammarion said that any scientific investigator free from such prejudice could assure himself of their reality. He himself had verified them through personal observation.
In the second volume of his masterpiece Death and its mystery (1922), flammarion documented evidence for apparitions of persons living as well as on the verge of dying. flammarion (1922, p. 37) explained: “It would seem that we are here concerned with a transmission of images by psychic waves between two brains harmoniously attuned, one serving as a wave-transmitter, the other as a receiver.”
flammarion (1922, p. 47) gave the following account of an apparition of a living person. The report originally appeared in English newspapers, including the Daily news of May 17, 1905. A member of parliament, Major Sir carne Raschse, was stricken with influenza, and he could not come to an evening session, although he very much desired to be there to support the government on a crucial vote. Sir Gilbert Parker, a friend, was surprised to see him. Sir Gilbert said, “My gaze fell upon Sir carne Raschse, seated near his usual place. As I knew that he had been ill, I waved to him in a friendly way, and said: ‘I hope you are better.’ But he gave me no sign of recognition, which greatly astonished me. His face was very pale. He was seated, his head resting, motionless, on one hand; the expression of his face was impassive and hard. for a moment I wondered what I had better do; when I again turned toward him, he had disappeared. I regretted this, and at once went to seek him, hoping to find him in the vestibule. But Raschse was not there, and no one had seen him.” Sir Arthur Hayter claimed also to have seen Raschse, pointing him out to Sir Henry Bannerman. flammarion (1922, p. 48) noted that Raschse himself “did not doubt that he had really gone in spirit to the House, for he had been extremely preoccupied with the thought of attending the session for a debate which interested him particularly.”
Another example given by flammarion (1922, p. 87) concerned an English physician, dr. Rowland Bowstead. Once, when playing cricket, he and another player followed a ball to a hedge. On the other side, he saw his brother-in-law dressed in hunting clothes and carrying a gun. He smiled and waved to dr. Bowstead. But his friend saw nothing. And when Bowstead looked again, he could not see his brother-in-law. depressed, he went to his uncle’s house and told him what he had seen. It was ten minutes past one. Bowstead stated: “Two days afterward I got a letter from my father, telling me of the death of my brother-in-law, which had occurred at precisely that time. His death came about in a curious way. The morning of that very day, since he was feeling fairly well, after an illness, he had declared that he was able to go hunting. Then, having taken up his gun, he had turned toward my father and had asked him if he had sent for me. My father having answered in the negative, he had flown into a rage, and had said that he would see me, in spite of everything. Suddenly he fell down as though struck by lightning, a bloodvessel in his lungs having burst. He was wearing at that time a huntingcostume and had a gun on his arm, exactly as in the apparition that had startled me.”
On november 10, 1920, Monsieur Agniel, a member of the Morocco branch of the Astronomical Society of france, wrote to flammarion about an eclipse of the sun that had occurred on that day. He added to his letter an account of a telepathic experiment. In 1906, Agniel was living in nice. He decided to pay a surprise visit to his sister in nimes. Because his sister liked orange blossoms, Agniel brought some with him on the train. Agniel wrote: “Alone in my compartment, I tried an experiment while the train was rushing along at full speed between Golfe-Juan and cannes. concentrating my thoughts on the flowers and then closing my eyes, I sent myself, mentally, into my sister’s room in nimes, and spoke to her thus: ‘I am arriving. I am coming to see you and to bring you the flowers you love.’ I imagined myself at the foot of her bed, showing her my bunch of flowers, of which I formed a mental image” (flammarion 1922, pp. 98–99). When he met his sister the next morning, she said, “It’s very odd. I dreamed last night that you were coming, and that you were bringing me orange-blossoms!” (flammarion 1922, p. 99).
In the third volume of Death and its mystery, flammarion (1923) gave reports of apparitions that took place just before the death of the transmitting person. One such report was published in the year 1905 in the journal luce e ombra. In 1882, two Italian army officers made a pact. If one of them were about to die, he would signal this to his comrade by mentally tickling his feet. On August 5, 1888 one of the officers, count charles Galateri, was in bed with his wife, who suddenly said to him, “don’t tickle my feet.” Galateri said he was not doing any such thing, but his wife continued to feel the tickling. Thinking it might be an insect, they got a candle and searched under the covers, but found nothing. Shortly thereafter, as they again tried to go to sleep, the countess Galateri exclaimed, “Look! Look at the foot of the bed!” The count saw nothing. The countess said, “Yes, look; there’s a tall young man, with a colonial helmet on his head. He’s looking at you, and laughing! Oh, poor man! What a terrible wound he has in his chest! And his knee is broken! He’s waving to you, with a satisfied air. He’s disappearing!” The countess told friends and relatives about the incident the next day. Over a week later, on August 14, the newspapers announced that Lt. virgini, the count’s old friend, had died during an Italian army action in Ethiopia. He had first been wounded in the knee and then struck by a bullet in his chest (flammarion 1923, p. 59).
could such apparition reports be explained by chance? flammarion (1922, p. 167) thought not: “In ‘Les Hallucinations télepathiqués’ Monsieur Marrillier has made, on his own account, certain calculations, from which it appears that the part played by chance is reduced . . . for visual hallucinations to 1/40,000,000,000,000; that is to say, in forty trillion visual hallucinations there would be only one that could be explained by chance coincidence. Plainly, this reduces the hypothesis of chance to a number equivalent to zero.”Flammarion believed that some kind of vibration was transmitted from the dying person to a sympathetic person, whose organism converted the vibration into a perception, just as a radio receiver converts electromagnetic waves into sound. flammarion (1922, p. 369) said: “All these observations prove that a human being does not consist only of a body that is visible, tangible, ponderable, known to every one in general, and to physicians in particular; it consists, likewise, of a psychic element that is imponderable, gifted with special, intrinsic faculties, capable of functioning apart from the physical organism and of manifesting itself at a distance with the aid of forces as to the nature of which we are still ignorant. This psychic element is not subject to the every-day restrictions of time and space.” In my system, this psychic element would correspond to the mind element.