XII. _Rapport. Mesmeric Relation. Psychical Attraction._—Without presuming to place absolute confidence in the preceding speculations, but, on the contrary, apologizing for their hypothetical character, on the plea that any theory is better than none, let me now recapitulatorily put in array the facts and principles to which the terms at the head of this section refer:—
1. I hold that the mind of a living person, in its most normal state, is always, to a certain extent, acting exoneurally, or beyond the limit of the bodily person; but, possibly, always in conjunction with some Od-operation.
2. I suppose that there must be laws of neuro-psychical attraction, or that there are definite circumstances which determine our exoneural apprehension to direct itself upon this or that object or person.
So, in common perception, the exoneural apprehension probably moves back along the lines of material impression, to reach the object perceived, which so attracts it.
So, in sudden liking or aversion at first sight—or, more properly, on all occasions of meeting strangers—an exoneural mingling of reciprocal appreciation takes place; different persons being differently gifted with intuitive discernment, as others or the same with powers of pleasingly affecting most they meet.
So Zschokke’s seer-gift would have been but the result of a greater exoneural mobility of his mind, whereby he was occasionally drawn to such mental affinity with a stranger, that he knew his whole life and circumstances.
So in panic fears, in all cases where impressions seem heightened by the sympathy of many, the power of psychical attraction we may presume to be increased by its concentration on one subject, and the participation of all in one thought. The Rev. Hare Townshend, in his interesting work on mesmerism, declares that he has more than once succeeded in the following fact of sympathetic mental influence. All the members of a party then present have conspired against an expected visiter; and when he came—carefully, at the same time, abstaining from alluding to some special subject agreed on—they have striven silently and mentally to drive it into his thoughts; and in a short time he has spoken of it.
3. For the most lucid persons in waking-trance (either of spontaneous occurrence, as in catelepsy, or when induced by mesmerism) the exoneural apprehension seems to extend to every object and person round, and to be drawn into complete intelligence of or with them. Such a patient is “en rapport,” or in trance-mental relation with any or every thing around, in succession or simultaneously.