1
Arrange to Explore the Mind
A PALE OLD MAN sat in a small room in a remote village in Poland. Before him was a chart of the North Polar Regions. He was, apparently, staring into space. Suddenly he was moved to action.
?Ice, ice, ice,? he shouted, ?ice everywhere. What enormous spaces! My Lord, what greatness! What a wonderful scene! Immense fields of ice in white and bluish shades. There they are,? and he marked with his pencil a small circle on the map. ?The ice is moving rapidly, something is forcing it about, shoving it away. But men are there?all of them?alive. Their radio has failed and they are unable to let us know. Some kind of animal is there with them. Did they have a dog? Two men are injured?one seriously. Their airplane gives the impression that the landing gear is out of order. Levanevsky is holding up the morale of the whole crew, he is unusually active. One of them is trying to repair the radio. Their greatest danger is the rapid movement of the ice. They are now about Longitude 170 E., but they landed at about Longitude 165 W. Those who are well refuse to leave the plane and their sick comrades. The radio operator is the jolliest. He tries to keep the company in good spirits. Pobeshimov has taken over the household duties; he rations the food. Others are sitting near the camp smoking cigarettes and talking. Levanevsky keeps a cool head?he guides them, but realizes that, if they are to be saved, early help is needed.?
Another man in Manitoba, Canada, sat in contemplation. ?Levanevsky and his companions landed at Longitude 140. The plane is visible on the ice, facing north. All the crew have passed on. They are dead,? he said.
In Winnipeg, still another man interested in the lost Russian aviators said he received ?from space? this message: ?The Russian airplane is badly smashed. A party with it is trying to attract attention. Two others, the most able, are heading southward. Their position is far to the west of their proposed route which was along the 148th West Meridian.?
From another part of Canada came another message; ?I feel it my duty to let you know where I am sure you will find the lost Russian flyers. I have ?seen? their plane three times?each time in rough ice between two islands, long ones, almost straight north of Winnipeg, a position east of their proposed line of flight.?
A note received from a man in California said, ?You will never find the lost Russian flyers by searching over the Arctic Ocean. They landed on terra firma. Four are living, and some may now be found to the west of the Great Bear Lake.? Another Californian wrote, ?The Russian airplane is east of Greenland, four hundred kilometers east of Shannon Island. Some people may not believe this, but 90 per cent of the human animals are morons, thick-skulled, and have no conception of the powers of the human mind.?
Before me as I write is this variety of conceptions of the human mind in relation to the whereabouts and condition of Sigismund Levanevsky and his five companions. Obviously, all of the ?conceptions? cannot be right. I had laid them aside, and would have paid no further attention to them had it not been for the facts I am about to relate.
In June, 1937, a plane whipped out of Moscow and landed, almost before the world knew that it had started, in the state of Washington. It had flown across the Arctic Ocean, Alaska, and had spent some hours flying over the Rocky Mountains before it could locate its position and find a landing field.
A few weeks later another plane winged its way over the North Pole to cover a record distance, and landed at San Jacinto, California. Both were marvellous flights made by skillful and well-trained Russian crews. The air heroes of the Soviet Union thought they had the North Pole air route taped. The world seemed to think so too.
The first two flights had been made with specially constructed, long-range planes. Then, it seemed to many, it remained necessary to make only one more flight, carrying passengers and cargo in a conventional, multi-motored machine across the Arctic Ocean to put the seal of success and dependability on trans-arctic air routes.
To do this Sigismund Levanevsky and five companions set out from Moscow on August 12, 1937, in a multi-motored plane en route to the United States, intending to make the first stop at Fairbanks, Alaska. Much organization of meteorologists and radio personnel had taken place along the route, and while the weather at Moscow and for the first few hundred miles of the way was not propitious, it was believed that, in general, conditions were as good as might be expected at that time of the year. Levanevsky started in rain, but reported good progress hour by hour.
Nearing the North Pole, he was forced to a high altitude, and above the clouds. He had passed the Pole, and was on the Alaskan side, when he asked to be given a radio direction of his bearing. Then came the beginning of a message?message number 19. It was partly in code and said, ?Motor 34 flying heavily against 100 kilometer wind, losing altitude 6000 meters to 4300 meters 48 . . .??then came some signals which were listed as ?3400? and the code signature ?93.? Decoded it read : MOTOR ON RIGHT SIDE GIVING TROUBLE. WE ARE FLYING AGAINST A HUNDRED KILOMETER AN HOUR WIND VELOCITY AND HAVE LOST ALTITUDE FROM 6000 METERS TO 4300 METERS . . . WE ARE GOING TO LAND IN . . .?; the jumble which followed was read as ?3400.? This was not part of the code. The signal was probably an indication of a condition, or a position, but what the latter part of the message was no one living may ever know; 93 was the code signature of Leichencko, one of the crew.
On August 13th the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., issued the following statement: ?The plane piloted by Sigismund Levanevsky on flight from Moscow across the North Pole to the United States with an intermediate stop in Alaska is overdue. There is no real anxiety so far for the safety of the crew of the plane. It is thought that a forced landing may have been made between the North Pole and Alaska.?
On the l5th, this bulletin was issued: ?The Soviet Government commission on organization of trans-polar flights from Moscow to the United States yesterday issued instructions for the search to be undertaken for Sigismund Levanevsky and the crew of the trans-polar plane on August 17th. Moscow reports that various Siberian radio stations heard indistinct signals from an irregularly working radio station, considered likely to be that of Sigismund Levanevsky?s airplane. The position could not be established. There is belief that the plane made a forced landing between the 82nd and 83rd parallels, some four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole on the American side.?
On Sunday the 16th, through the agency of Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, then President of the Explorers Club of New York, with whom the Soviet Embassy in Washington was working in close cooperation, I was asked if I would participate in the search. I volunteered my services, and on Tuesday received authority from Moscow to procure for my use a Consolidated Flying Boat known as type P.B.Y. This machine had been the property of Richard Archbold, a member of the Explorers Club. With the help of Major Anthony Fiala and Burt McConnell, an old friend and fellow worker with me on the Stefansson Canadian Arctic Expedition, I was able to assemble from New York all Arctic equipment required while the aircraft was being put in order by Archbold?s crew and the O. J. Whitney Aircraft Company.
Air-Commodore Herbert Hollick-Kenyon of Toronto and Alderman Al Cheeseman of Port Arthur, Canada, had responded to my telegraphed request to join me in the search, and to act as pilots while I looked after the navigation of the plane.
On Thursday, thirty-nine hours after I had begun my preparation, we were in the air, flying out of New York toward the Arctic. Within the next ten days we had flown more than ten thousand miles over the Arctic Ocean?more than the equivalent of four trans-arctic flights?yet we had found no trace of Levanevsky. We continued our search in that machine for thirty days, flying a total of over thirty thousand miles. Of the thirty nights we spent twenty-three either flying or sleeping aboard the flying boat; we were only seven nights ashore. Some of the flights were of long duration, the longest being two thousand nine hundred and ninety-two miles over the Arctic Ocean, zigzagging back and forth over the area in which Levanevsky was supposed to be. Still we found no trace of the missing men.
The only indication that they might be still alive was received one day when our radio operator heard on his receiver a signal which might have come from some other operator at close quarters, tuning in on the same wave length. But this could have been a signal emitted from some Soviet airplane conducting a search from the Siberian side of the Pole.
The season for using flying boats in the Arctic came to a close as the temperature lowered to the point at which a skin of ice would soon form over the surface of the lakes and rivers which we were using for our landings. We were then forced to return to lower latitudes.
Although I had volunteered my services, and many governments and individuals had largely contributed toward the effort, the Soviet Government had been put to great expense in carrying out the search. However, unwilling to leave any possibility uninvestigated, and with the hope that the flying activities in connection with the search would prove as valuable as the information Levanevsky might have brought back had he completed his flight to the United States, the Soviet Government asked me to continue the search throughout the winter. To do this would require equipment other than that which I had used throughout the period from August to mid-September, and I began to look about for another machine.
I soon located the best one available. It was the ?Good Will? airplane which Mr. Richard Merrill had flown from the United States across the Atlantic to Liverpool and back during the activities in connection with the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It was a Lockheed 10E airplane equipped with extra tanks to give it a range of nearly four thousand miles. It had all available instrument aids to blind flying, and I equipped it with the most up-to-date in radio.
Our search with the Consolidated Flying Boat had been carried out in a period of almost continuous daylight; but the search, if carried on throughout the winter, would have to depend upon moonlight, the light of the stars, and the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) as aids to visibility. This, in a measure, complicated the difficulties in connection with navigation. To be effective, every one of our flights would have to be over a distance of more than fifteen hundred miles. If we were to cover all the area allotted to us, we would have to make some flights of more than three thousand miles. To fly from a northern base out over the Arctic Ocean and return?over an area where no known fixed features are marked out on the chart, following a zigzag course, and in a section in which the compass indication in relation to true north varies as much as 100 degrees within a range of three hundred miles?was no easy matter even in summer time when one could expect to be able to get some indication of one?s position by taking sextant observations of the sun. It would be much more difficult during winter, when one had to work in a restricted cockpit, behind frosted windows, and in a temperature ranging to 60 degrees below zero, with only the moon or stars to observe as astronomical points of reference.
About four months had passed since Levanevsky had set out on his flight. Many people had given him up as lost. Many thought the proposal to seek the missing flyers by moonlight was fantastic, and they classed those of us who proposed to carry out the search as romantic optimists who believed in miracles. They pointed out the extraordinary danger involved, and believed that it would be impossible to see anything on the ground from an airplane flying high above the Arctic in the depth of winter.
As is often the case, these people based their conclusion upon observations within their own knowledge and personal experience?a habit even civilized man is prone to form. They knew nothing of Arctic winter conditions, nor the history of Arctic rescues. They could not comprehend that the vast and almost totally snow-covered area would act as a splendid reflector for the moonbeams, and that the relatively clear polar air permits more light from the heavenly bodies to reach the Arctic surface than would be the case in the neighborhood of smoke-hazed cities and dusty countries in low latitudes.
The elapsed time since Levanevsky had been last heard from was comparatively short. There was no real reason to believe that if they had landed safely they would not be still alive. Sir John Franklin with his expedition was lost in the Arctic in May 1845, and he did not die on his ice-gripped ship, the Erebus, until June 1847. No one from the Franklin Expedition ever returned alive. Yet the search for the missing men kept up for seven years by the British Admiralty, and for two more years by Lady Franklin. The world gained no certain knowledge of the fate of the Franklin Expedition until 1859, fourteen years after it was last heard from.
In 1871 Francis Hall, leader of an Arctic expedition died, and some members of his expedition abandoned the ship which was moored to a floe; in a whale boat they drifted for five months, and for a distance of thirteen hundred miles before they were picked up off the coast of Labrador. They lived on seal meat for much of the time, and had hardly any equipment to stave off the rigors of the Arctic regions.
Levanevsky and his companions set out with full rations for a period of eight weeks. Stretched, these might have lasted twelve weeks; eked out by food obtained by hunting seals, it might have enabled them to live for many years on the Arctic floe ice, drifting with the pack, and, perhaps, covering many hundreds of miles before coming within sight of land.
That is the difficulty, it was said. Wilkins must range over thousands of square miles of snow and ice without even a landmark or indication of the position of the men to guide him. For four months of the time there will be no really bright daylight. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, that period of the year would, perhaps, be better than any other in which to carry out the search. It was not expected that it would be possible to search every day throughout the dark period. We would restrict our efforts to possibly not more than eight days, or rather eight twenty-four hour nights a month?the four days before full moon and the four days after.
During such time, if the weather were clear, it would be possible, from not too great a height, to see by moonlight a small dark camp silhouetted against the snow.
In the Arctic the moon rises and sets much like the sun in high latitudes. The moon lies completely below the horizon part of the month; the sun part of the year. About the full-moon period there is good light for much of the twenty-four-hour cycle?enough to see objects silhouetted against the snow. It would be easier to detect a flashing light in the moonlight period than it might be to see an object such as a tent on the snow in daylight; and the lost men, if they heard the noise of the motors, during winter, would be sure to flash a light?an action they might not think of carrying out in the sunlighted summer.
There were other considerations. Fog offers great difficulty to the Arctic traveler. Reports based on the experience of Nansen, Sverdrup, Amundsen, and Stefansson, all men who have traveled over the Arctic ice far from shore, indicate that, as a general average, there are twenty-two foggy days in July, seventeen in August, eleven in September, four to five in October, one to three in November, and rarely any from December to March. These estimates are for the Arctic Ocean hundreds of miles from shore, and not for shore areas.
We would, of course, operate from a base on shore; and the fogs there might cause some interference, not only at the start of the flight, but especially when we tried to find our base on the way home. But far from shore, where Levanevsky was supposed to be, we could expect to find a great percentage of the winter weather clear.
However, because of the practical difficulties, restricted cockpits, frosted windows, and the fogging of instruments and lenses due to condensation of the breath, I realized that it would be advisable to use every means known as an aid to my navigation. I proposed to establish two radio direction-indicating stations several hundred miles apart.
The personnel at one station, checking the strength of the airplane?s radio signal against that reported at the other station, and interpreting those signals in degrees of arc, could, by triangulation, get some idea of my position at the time the signal was sent. Then, by means of short-wave radio, they could communicate that position to me with comparative exactitude.
Such radio direction-indicators were not only few in number, but also expensive and difficult to get. I had not succeeded in locating two of them before I was ready to fly north with the machine. So I decided to do without them. This was disappointing, for it meant that if we came down on the ice, and, because of the weather or other difficulties, found it impossible to locate our exact position, others might have the same difficulty in locating us that we were having in our effort to locate Levanevsky.
At about that time I happened to meet Mr. Harold Sherman, whom I had casually known for several years, and with whom, at the City Club of New York, I had sometimes discussed the mystery of the mental processes. I had explained to Mr. Sherman the difficulty I was having in regard to the radio direction-indicators, and he suggested that, since it seemed possible that I would have no radio means of informing the world of my position, we might carry out an experiment.
He told me that for many years he had been interested in the possibility of receiving without written or vocal word, or any ordinary mechanical means, an impression from thoughts of individuals who might be some distance away.
?Working at short distance,? he said, ?from people in the next room or facing me, and sometimes from people at even a greater distance, I have received impressions which give me an indication of what the other person is doing, and of what he is thinking. It would be great if, when you are in the Arctic, I could receive impressions from you?especially in case you are forced down, and find your radio ineffective.?
The idea interested me. For many years, even in my boyhood, I had been conscious of the ability of certain individuals to receive directly within their mind, without mechanical aid, impressions of conditions and events happening far away.
The aborigines of Australia, with whom I associated as a boy, would often give evidence of knowing of some event which was taking place miles beyond their range of sight or hearing. Sometimes, their knowledge of unexpected happenings would be given at such a time as to exclude all possibility that they had heard of them by means of ?bush telegraph,? or smoke signal?rapid as those means have been found to be.
With an interest in such things early awakened within me, I had often pondered over the possibility of the cultivated, civilized mind, after determined exercise and development along those lines, responding at will to thought forms, thought waves, or thought influences originating in others. I reasoned that if the influence of thought could be directly felt or responded to without the aid of sight, sound, touch, or smell, there need not be any distance limit, if the original thought was emotional, forceful or of sufficient ?strength,? in ?connection with the power. I had myself been a party, as have many people, to curious ?coincidences??such as telephoning others who were about to telephone me in respect to a subject which for no logical reason had flashed into my mind.
I have also found my mind occupied with subjects about which no physical experience of mine, or any amount of reading I have done, would have stored up memories which might have emerged from a mental chamber to occupy my attention.
I have often wondered about the possibility of determining the stimuli of such thoughts, and whether they might not be prompted by, or be a ?recording of,? thoughts which have been emitted ?strongly? from the minds of others.
Since some of the so-called ?original? subjects with which I have found my mind occupied were of a nature and in relation to things not previously within my knowledge, and not the result of recent research by living persons, it occurred to me that the thoughts of even those who have passed from physical life might be revolving about our sphere, might still be capable of stimulating the thoughts of others, or of being ?recorded? by a section of the mental processes of the so called ?sensitives.?
Through an acquaintance with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I had had some little experience with ?spirit? demonstrations and clairvoyance, but I was not much interested in either of these phenomena. But I was interested in the possibility of dependable and willed thought transference from one living individual to another.
If this quality could be acquired, or developed by individuals specializing in the subject, they, as specialists, might serve a useful purpose in the development of civilization.
All things are relative, and nothing, apparently, whether it be animate or inanimate, can move or be moved without a stimulus or impulse. What was the impulse which had moved me to ?original? thoughts, and which had stimulated in the minds of others the impression they had received of realities which were happening at points far beyond the distance from which they may be sensed by means of the ear, eye, or hand?
It might not be illogical to assume that certain parts of the human brain, dormant in most humans but active in some, might be cultivated and developed to a supersensitiveness, and in that condition respond to ?thought forms.?
Throughout a life filled largely with hard, practical, and physical experiences in great variety and under many unusual conditions, I have had little time to study such possibilities, or to spend in the development of a supersensitiveness within myself of such a brain process?if such a process does exist. But with an accumulation of striking experiences in relation to the possibilities of the mind, and as a result of the fact that many predictions, volunteered to me by ?sensitives? each time I am about to set out on an expedition, have proved correct, I am firmly convinced that the subject may not be put aside as entirely irrational.
In fact, and partly because of circumstances which often keep me many miles away from my friends and without mechanical means of communication, I have often directed my thoughts in the form of a mental message to my friends. I have not enquired of my friends if they have sensed my mental greetings as concrete messages, for I did not believe that such would be possible. But I had faith, and I did believe that my friends would be assisted by my thoughts to keep their memory of me alive. I have been encouraged in the habit by the fact that often when I return from a long absence my friends have said, perhaps without knowing why they said it, ?We did not hear from you, but we knew that you were thinking of us.? A habit of speech, maybe, but perhaps not merely such.
I could give many records of astonishing predictions fitting exactly the happenings on my expeditions, but I am not particularly interested in those things which savor of clairvoyance or modern prophecy. These are phenomena which were not admitted by those from whom I received my early training?in spite of the fact that these very people were deeply religious, and admitted and accepted the genuineness of the prophecies detailed in the Holy Bible.
I was interested in the possibility of ?sensitives? who might respond directly to thought; for if such a quality were to be definitely and genuinely cultivated, that generally unused section of the brain might acquire an ability to serve humanity, and be instrumental in the development of human progress from barbarism toward refinement.
It seems to me that it is unlikely that every person will be capable of developing the same degree of sensitiveness or reaction to thought form or thought waves, any more than every person is capable of developing the same degree of sensitiveness in the perception of tone and color differences, in nervous reaction to touch, or in astuteness in comprehending finenesses in speech and in the written word. But individuals with a conscious reaction to mental stimuli might, with practice and under strictly rational control, aid in the provision of evidence which would eventually throw some enlightenment upon the subject.
So, when Mr. Sherman voiced his opinion as to the possibility of his reacting to mental stimuli which I might induce, I was more than willing to listen to his proposal.
He said, ?Do you think we might work along these lines? If it should happen that you come down and find your radio equipment inoperative, will you concentrate on the figures expressing your latitude and longitude? Let us set a time based on Eastern Standard time, say 11:30 P.M. to midnight, on three days of the week when you will consciously and determinedly, with me personally in mind, try to pass on to me your thoughts.?
The final arrangement was simple. My task was to search only in west longitudes between 120 and 170 and my travel would take me between latitudes 72 and 87?just five figures. The two immediately following a 1 would be associated with longitude, and that following 7 or 8 would refer to latitude. Another advantage was that lines of longitude in high latitudes are quite close together, and a strip of territory thus designated in five figures would be only a few miles wide and not more than sixty miles long?a comparatively small area to search in case we should be lost and Sherman able to get the message.
Then we began to work out other formul?, some to be expressed in color. Sherman had had considerable experience, he said, in visualizing both figures and color forms in response to thoughts formed by others nearby. If either my companion or myself were injured I would think of red. If my companion was killed, I would think of black; if both were well, I would think of white. To enable me to fix my attention upon any one of these symbols, I was to imagine that I was looking at the colors as I might see them upon a moving-picture screen. I would imagine that I could see the figures as if written with white chalk upon a blackboard, and vocalize the numbers. The first scene would be two numbers between 72 and 87, the second scene three numbers between 120 and 170, and the third scene red or black or white.
In the event of my being lost, without means of radio communication, the receipt of such information would be of great assistance to anyone searching for me. Even if the result of Sherman?s efforts gave an entirely false position and a false indication of condition, it could do no harm; for without any other indication as to where to search, the searchers might just as well look in the position indicated by Sherman as in any other.
I was pleased with the opportunity to carry out the experiment, but hoped that we would not be forced to depend upon it for our succor in case succor was necessary. I planned, if I got into difficulties, to keep a careful record of conditions, surroundings, and of my conscious efforts to get in touch with Sherman by means of thought influence.
Since I am convinced that few human abilities are highly developed without considerable practice, it was arranged that Sherman and I would, in any case and before there was any great emergency, try three times a week to make contact and, if possible, gain some evidence of our ability or inability to communicate. To these efforts I will refer as I proceed with the general account of our winter search for Levanevsky.
Continues...
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