Telepathy

Have you ever thought about a friend you haven’t heard from in a while and then received his call? Have you ever finished a sentence someone else started? Have you ever experienced anxiety, believing that something terrible happened to parents, children or a loved one? If you have, you have simply experienced reflections in a spiritual mirror – telepathy. “Mirror, mirror on the wall..” and just like in the brothers Grimm’s fairy tale we look in the mirror expecting our thoughts to reflect together with our image.

The phenomenon falls between spirituality and science, adopted by neither, suspected by both. Telepathy is an orphaned phenomenon.

The word telepathy is of Greek origin (tele means “distant” and pathe or patheia means “feeling” or “perception”). It is the transmission of information from one person to another without any physical contact between the two. Telepathy is one of those atrophied skills possessed by all humans and animals, or to be more exact – by their spirits. Again – spirits. Humans are spirits wrapped in, or suffusing bodies and not vice versa. This insight is accepted by many world faiths but its implications are rarely considered. Telepathy is the least understood implication - the ability of spirits to communicate in a non-physical manner as if you are mirroring someone else’s thoughts.

In recent times telepathic abilities have been considered either a mental disorder (such as schizophrenia) or a form of magic. People claiming to be able to connect to other spirits, see the future or the past and thus travel in time were thought to be insane and even dangerous. Since this kind of communication has nothing to do with the material world and cannot be easily analyzed, it is not seriously considered by mainstream science.

The first scientist who dared to look in the mirror of telepathic abilities and hypnosis was a Russian

neurologist Vladimir Bechterev. Bechterev’s work resulted in a breakthrough in neurological science. In 1886 he established the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Russia to study the nervous system and the structures of the brain. Later Bechterev became the head of the department of nervous and mental diseases at the Saint Petersburg Military Medical Academy. In Saint-Petersburg he continued his neurological research and started specializing in neurosurgery. The Russian scientist published over 600 papers in which he, for the first time, wrote about the experiments proving telepathic abilities.

But what was of greater interest in Bechterev’s work was his experiments designed to influence the behaviour of others from a distance – hypnosis. He started with dogs, practising his ability to influence their thoughts. His friend, a famous animal trainer, Vladimir Durov, participated in those experiments. Durov was given a list of tasks for dogs to perform, which he would transmit to them by looking in their eyes and trying to send his thoughts. Dogs, after being given a telepathic task, would perform exactly what Durov would “ask” them to do. Having achieved successful results with dogs, Bechterev continued his telepathic experiments with humans. During one of them he hypnotized a large group of people. Each of the participants was given a glass of water; Bechterev convinced them it was vodka and then asked them to drink the whole glass. After the experiment the participants said they actually felt the taste of vodka and felt drunk.

Bechterev not only laid the groundwork for neurological science, his studies in behaviourism were of immeasurable importance to the future development of psychology studies. Bechterev’s experiments in hypnosis were of great interest to the Communist party and Joseph Stalin, in particular. His strained relationship with Stalin was surely connected to his mysterious death. It is widely believed that Bechterev was poisoned on Stalin’s orders. However, according to the official report Bechterev died of “heart paralysis”. The strange relationship with Stalin would also explain why Bechterev’s son and daughter-in-law were arrested and sentenced to “10 years in prison without the right to correspondence”. Later, Bechterev’s son was executed and his wife died in the prison camp, leaving their children orphans. Bechterev’s studies in neurology were continued by his granddaughter, Natalia Bechtereva and her son Svyatoslav Medvedev.

Another important figure in science who made a significant contribution to the study of telepathy and other psychic abilities was the Soviet scientist Nikolai Kozyrev. Using his knowledge of astronomy and physics, Kozyrev invented something unique. Mirrors. He installed aluminium mirrors, creating an enclosed space in which there was a weakening of the magnetic field of the earth and which thereby provided more human access to solar and galactic information. Kozyrev’s “mirrors” were in practice two hollow, metal, person-sized tubes made of aluminium. The surface was perfectly smooth and shiny, so that it had the same reflecting properties of a mirror. Through numerous experiments using the mirrors, he focused studies in such areas as human psychophysiology, pathology of disease and health and the evolution of telepathic fields’ remote sensing.

Kozyrev’s mirrors reflect the energy of a human thought in space, where it can be stored in “the universal bank of information” or shared between “spirits”. Within the mirrors “the flow of time”— present, past and future — all exist at the same time and in every place. The scientists who worked on these experiments, including Kaznacheev and Trofimov, realized that human consciousness was enhanced when a person was placed in the mirror tube. The experiment involved two people communicating through telepathy. These two people were placed in identical mirror tubes 6 000 km apart. In the course of experiment, that involved hundreds of pairs of individuals communicating at a distance, Kaznacheev and Trofimov found that the information sent telepathically was received correctly by the participants in 95 per cent of cases.

The technique was simple. A person inside the mirrors was given symbols to project and others in different parts of the world were able to receive them. The experiments made with the apparatus invented by Kozyrev proved that distant communication was possible. This is how Trofimov defined the importance of “the mirrors”: “As we investigate brain activity – either with an electro-encephalogram or by assessing brain functions like intellect level, memory and other functions, we realize that we currently use only 5% of the capacity of our brains throughout our whole lives. And, after some time we spend inside the apparatus we see that our mind’s additional reserves and abilities are activated. We can see an increase in memory capacity, increased IQ and changing zones of electric activity of the brain”.

Another peculiar thing that happened inside “the mirrors” was the possibility of the participants “travelling” in time and space. Most of them witnessed “the time machine” effect. Just like in H. G. Wells’ novel, these people claimed to be able to go back in time and see important historic events, or they could travel to the future and foresee it. Some of these people said that they clearly saw answers to the most important questions of their lives, or saw signs of Mayan or Egyptian origin. Certain people were influenced more than others – ‘the mirrors’ revealed knowledge of foreign languages they hypothesised they once spoke in past lives.

The implication of all this is extraordinary: The human intellect, as we understand it now, is not only a tool of communication but also a peculiar cosmoplanetary phenomenon. Bechterev, Kozyrev, Kaznacheev, Trofimov and many other scientists using different approaches, proved one important thing: all beings (spirits) are interconnected not only with each other but also with the planet earth and its electromagnetic field. Everything that happens, will happen or ever happened somewhere in the universe is mirrored in a way to influence other events or other people.

Something to reflect on the next time you look in the mirror.

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a Love story: Anna Achmatova and Amedeo Modigliani

Of all the famous love stories the most intriguing and unclear to me remains the encounter between a Russian poet Anna Achmatova and an Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.

This love story started in the beginning of the twentieth century in the pre-war Europe. During those years the intellectual class was starting to grow but still was very restricted due to the prevalence of the working class and inaccessibility of education. Writers, poets and artists made a very small group of people who met routinely in Paris (the world capital of art of the time).

Achmatova and Modigliani first met in Paris in 1910. It happened during her honeymoon trip with the husband, a famous Russian poet, Nikolai Gumilev. Amedeo Modigliani had moved to Paris in 1906; he was taking lessons of art, striving to gain recognition of an artist. In her diaries Modigliani’s mother often described him as a very spoiled young boy who had an angelic face and a great talent in painting. However his mother not only predicted a great career of an artist, the woman was also right about her fear of his early death.

Anna Achmatova and Amedeo Modigliani met in a very particular moment of their lives: he was an unknown Italian Jew who just moved to Paris and barely made his ends meet; she was a young poet who had just published her first book of collected poems. They both were very good-looking, intelligent and ambitious, they both had similar interests: they loved Paris, Baudelaire and Shakespeare. As Achmatova defined it herself “everything that happened was for both of us a prehistory of our future lives: his very short one, my very long one”.

In 1910 Anna Achmatova was a charming, young lady with a beautiful slender figure and magnetic eyes. Nikolai Gumilev was aware of his wife’s beauty and what effect it produced on other men, especially during their honeymoon in Paris. She was always surrounded by groups of artists and writers, but her husband was never bothered or jealous until one day they met a charming Italian Jew, Amedeo Modigliani. Half a century later Achmatova wrote in her memoirs: “As I understand it now, what he must have found astonishing in me was my ability to guess rightly his thoughts, to know his dreams and other small things – others who knew me had become accustomed to this a long time before… Everything divine in Modigliani only sparkled through a kind of darkness. He was different from any other person in the world. His voice somehow always remained in my memory. I knew him as a beggar and it was impossible to understand how he existed – as an artist he didn’t have a shadow of recognition.”

When the honeymoon trip was over Anna Achmatova and Nikolai Gumilev returned to Russia. Achmatova mentioned in her memoirs she met Modigliani in the spring of 1910 and only saw him a couple of times but later that year during the winter he wrote her letters. One of his letters was engraved in her memory: “Vous etes en moi comme une hantise”. However it was not until his death that she learned he also wrote her poetry.

After a winter-long correspondence with Amedeo, in summer 1911 Anna abandoned her husband and went to Paris where she stayed for three months. They met again in Paris and at that time Modigliani lived at Impasse Falquiere. Achmatova wrote that she found him so poor that when they sat in the Luxembourg Gardens they always sat on the bench, and not on the paid chairs, as was the custom. “On the whole he didn’t complain, nor about his completely evident indigence, nor about his equally evident nonrecognition. He seemed to me encircled with a dense ring of loneliness. I don’t remember him exchanging greetings in the Luxembourg Gardens or in the Latin Quarter where everybody more or less knows each other. I never saw him drunk or smell wine on him. Apparently, he started to drink later.”

In those years Modigliani was obsessed with the Egyptian culture and Egypt. He would take Anna to the Louvre to spend the whole day at the Egyptian department. He often told her that her long neck and elongated body reminded him of Egyptian tsarinas and dancers. As we learn it from Modigliani’s later works, Anna’s body completely answered to his vision of a woman’s body. We might even suppose, that his particular style was shaped thanks to her.

During her stay in Paris, Modigliani made several nude portraits most of which were destroyed during the Revolution in Russia. One of Modigliani’s drawings is still kept at Achmatova’s house in Saint-Petersburg which is now her apartment-museum.

My breast grew helplessly cold,
But my steps were light.
I pulled the glove from my left hand
Mistakenly onto my right.
It seemed there were so many steps,
But I knew there were only three!
Amidst the maples an autumn whisper
Pleaded: 'Die with me!
I'm led astray by evil
Fate, so black and so untrue.'
I answered: 'I, too, dear one!
I, too, will die with you…'
This is a song of the final meeting.
I glanced at the house's dark frame.
Only bedroom candles burning
With an indifferent yellow flame.

“Song of the Final Meeting” - a poem about the love story with a young Italian artist that was not meant to be. It became so popular that Achmatova started hating all the poems she wrote during that period. In 1911 she left Paris and her Italian lover to never return and never see him again. The truth lay in Achmatova’s jealousy and irritation with all his other women, especially Beatrice Hastings. The love affair between Modigliani and Hastings lasted for nearly 2 years.

Achmatova always remembered about Modigliani and from her poetry we might suggest she loved him until her death. In late 1940 Anna started a monumental “Poem without a Hero”. In one of the working variants she has the following lines:

Paris is in dark mist
And probably again Modigliani
Imperceptibly follows me.
He has a sad virtue
To bring disorder even to my dreams
And be the reason of my many misfortunes.

Achmatova was always very reserved about her private life. Only some of her close friends, such as Joseph Brodsky or Boris Pasternak knew everything. Her memoirs written at the age of 70 give us only an idea, a hint to real feelings. She never dared to reveal her true feelings to Modigliani. It is only from her poetry that we learn how deep and how suffered that love was.

A young married woman, a stranger, who couldn’t leave her loving husband and a son and a young poor artist at the beginnings of his career, a Casanova in Paris. What could they have had in common? And why is there so much interest in such a brief love story? Maybe because it was the kind of love that changed them both and influenced their style in art. Maybe because we like to believe that certain love stories are destined to be. Who knows if Anna Achmatova and Amedeo Modigliani will have a happier ending in the next life?

*All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without a permission.