Free The Search for Bridey Murphy by Morey Bernstein

one mind to another without the use of the senses.
    C LAIRVOYANCE : the awareness of objects or events without the use of the senses—any direct apprehension of external objects, (In short, telepathy involves communication between mind and mind; clairvoyance involves communication between mind and object.)
    This is a good point at which to distinguish, by means of examples, between telepathy and clairvoyance, and to become acquainted at the same time with still other terms and principles which we shall encounter later.
    If one person thinks of a number between one and five, and another person correctly perceives that number—and if this test is repeated without failure (and without trickery) for, say, one hundred trials—then we would certainly have a clear-cut example of telepathy.
    In such a telepathic experiment the one who concentrates on the number is the “sender.” The person trying to perceive the number is known as the “receiver,” and the number is referred to as the “target.” The receiver’s response, in trying to name the target, is termed his “call,” whether it be graphically recorded or merely oral. His correct calls are labeled as “hits.”
    In this instance, as with all cases of telepathy, the target is the thought or mental activity of another mind. But clairvoyance is the awareness, without use of the senses, of objects or objective events. A good example of clairvoyance is found in the book
Phantasms
of the Living
, in which the experience of a ten-year-old girl is reported.
    The girl was walking along a country lane when she suddenly had a “vision” of her mother lying on the floor at home. The perception was particularly clear and poignant—clear enough to include a lace-bordered handkerchief on the floor near her mother and sufficiently poignant to impel the girl to summon a doctor even before returning home.
    It was not easy to convince the doctor that he should rush home with her, because her mother had apparently been in good health and was, furthermore, supposed to have been away from home that day. But the doctor followed the girl and, sure enough, there was the mother lying on the floor of the room the girl had described; and all the details, including the lace-bordered handkerchief, were just as the child had envisaged.
    The doctor found that the mother was a victim of a heart attack and was of the opinion that she would not have survived if they had not arrived when they did.
    This case would seem to be an especially good example of clairvoyance, rather than telepathy, because no one had witnessed, or even had reason to suspect, the event that took place. Yet the little girl had somehow “seen” the whole episode while she was walking along a country lane.
    P RECOGNITION : prophecy; it is awareness of a future event which could not be inferred through the power of reasoning. This strange human faculty has also been the subject of recent scientific investigation, the findings of which will be discussed shortly.
    P SYCHOKINESIS : the imposing term for what is more popularly known as “mind over matter.” Taking the word apart, we have “psycho,” which refers to the mind, and “kinesis,” which is the Greek word for movement or motion. Can a man’s mind directly influence the motion of material objects? Is it really possible for a dice player to “influence” those rolling bones? Researchers have an answer. 2
    P ARAPSYCHOLOGY : the science concerned with the study of those mental manifestations—such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis—which appear to transcend recognized principles. It is, in short, a division of psychology dealing withpsychical research. The “para” standing in front of psychology (the study of the mind) means “beyond.” So the literal translation is “beyond psychology.”
    Returning now to the matter of telepathy and clairvoyance, I was amazed to learn how much evidence there is for extrasensory perception—and