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It is remarkable how the very slightest occurrence can determine the whole course of a lifetime. So often we are unaware of the tiny cause that produces the enormous effect. So seldom do we trouble to trace the web of connection between the two. A man's hat blows away in the street, and ten years later he is a millionaire. A fiction writer would have little difficulty in building up a sound, plausible story from that skeleton of a theme. Such things occur, I am convinced, far more often in life than in fiction.
So it was that a short newspaper article caught my eye and launched me upon a road vastly removed from the realms of gold and promissory notes. The article concerned a man in Vienna who had aroused the interest of several progressive scientists. His name was Rubini, and it was claimed that he had the power of finding an object concealed within a certain limited radius, without knowing what the object was or in what way it had been hidden.
It struck me quite simply that I could carry out exactly the same feat - but in an unlimited radius. It was not a matter of pondering upon the subject and slowly making up my mind that I might be able to achieve success in this line. I just glanced through the article, thought - 'Well, I could do that, and probably better,' and immediately forgot the matter and returned to my depressing reflections concerning bankers and kindred souls.
The rendezvous of my circle of student friends was the Cafe Orient, over which presided a pleasant character called Tuma. He knew me very well and had often witnessed some of the experiments I carried out.
That evening a discussion arose concerning the Rubini article, and I casually remarked that it would be easy for me to perform the same feat, even if the conditions were far more complicated. The discussion developed into an argument and the argument grew very heated. Tuma joined in and was the most sceptical of all the sceptics. Annoyed, perhaps, by what he considered to be my youthful bumptiousness, he bet me one thousand crowns (about one hundred pounds sterling) that I could not make good my claim.
I took the matter only half seriously, but not so my friends. The story spread. Newspapers made a splash of the challenge. Sides were taken. There were many who knew of my unusual abilities, and I found no lack of supporters.
looking back, I find that I was not unduly concerned about the possibility of having to go through with the challenge. I had no doubts whatever that I should win. The incident grew in local news value, and one day I broached the matter to Tuma, putting it to him that I would accept his bet. We worked out a practical plan of campaign agreeable to both of us. Briefly it was this: I undertook to find, in a certain stipulated time, one or more specified objects within the periphery of Prague. I would also carry out certain actions with the objects, as laid down by a committee which would govern the whole proceeding.
Members of the Prague police and several town personalities were asked to form this committee. Tuma himself was not a member of it. A day was fixed for the whole committee to meet in the Cafe Orient, and there they would decide upon the objects I must find and the action I must take. This would be documented, sealed in an envelope and handed over to Police Headquarters, Prague.
A day and time were agreed upon for the experiment, and all the preliminaries dealt with according to the secret plan of the committee. On the day appointed I arrived at the Cafe Orient, which was to be the starting-place, and found a fleet of cars waiting outside. There was also a crowd of immense size, and for the first time I realized what I had let myself in for. Somewhat shaken, I left the cafe at the minute stipulated and entered the first car, accompanied by the chairman of the committee. Others piled into the remaining cars, and the procession began.
The chauffer had been
instructed to follow my directions exactly, and I'm afraid the unfortunate man
had a most harassing time, worming his way slowly through the crowds which
blocked the narrow streets and innumerable cross-roads of Prague. Extra police
had to be called out to control the situation. I cannot reproach myself with the
fact that I had some difficulty in establishing the necessary state of
concentration to carry out my task.
These conditions, after all, were not conducive to mental tranquillity. Very soon, however, all conception of the physical situation disappeared from my mind, and my telepathic intuition came into play. I made a few false moves to begin with, but eventually directed the chauffer to Strnad, a famous florist's. Arriving there, I left the car and went inside. At the far end of a long counter there were several bouquets of flowers. I picked out a particular one of these and returned to the car, almost having to fight my way through the multitude of spectators crowding the pavements.
Once safely in the car, I directed the chauffer to head for one of the bridges across the river Moldau and on to the National Park on the other side. Stopping there, I carried the bouquet into the park and laid it at the foot of the national poet Zeyer.
My mental faculties were now thoroughly warmed up, and without hesitation I gave instructions which brought us to a certain restaurant. Here I entered and took a particular roll from one of the tables, then returned to the car once again. The chauffer headed back to the centre of the city, at my instructions, and we made for St. Wenceslaus Square. There I told him to drive three times round the monument in the centre of the square and then to continue back to the Cafe Orient. In the cafe there stood a piano. Approaching this, I touched the soft pedal with my right hand, then put the roll on the keyboard.
I stood for a few moments in a state of deep concentration, and finally declared that I had completed my allotted task.
Amid considerable excitement, the sealed envelope was brought to the cafe by the Chief of Police. There he opened it and read the contents aloud. As he read, it was revealed that young Marion had carried out, exactly and to the letter, all the instructions as laid down by the committee. Every detail had been correct and nothing had been omitted.
News of the success spread rapidly from those who were able to hear the reading to the very fringes of the crowd. It was a popular result, possibly because it gave an ever-welcome excuse for wine to flow and for a good time to be had by all (as I believe the phrase is).
For myself, I left in a hurry in order to recuperate from the state of exhaustion in which I found myself. There was nothing particularly mysterious about this experiment. It depended upon telepathy. I received my impressions from the chairman of the committee, who sat with me in the car. The success of this telepathic experiment in Prague made me a local celebrity overnight. Thousands of letters poured in. I was pestered hourly for interviews. Various commercial firms invited me to swallow their pills and wear their trousers and to announce that therein lay the basis of my mental powers.
I was only nineteen and fame was sweet; yet even at this age I was a little embittered by the fact that not one of the hundreds of people who sought contact with me was a scientist, seeking to gain knowledge from a study of my faculties.
Throughout my life I have found this same attitude. The world of entertainment was glad to display my abilities in the same way that it likes to display two-headed giants and human hairpins; but the scientific world, with few exceptions, made no effort to formulate fresh ideas and new theories from the phenomena that I, and others like me, are able to demonstrate.
In Prague at that time the newspapers took me up and I became something more than a nine-days' wonder. Whether I desired it or not, I was dubbed a 'miracle-man' - a mental freak.
Confound it, I am not a mental freak.
My abilities are not supernatural. they are, as every human achievement must be, entirely natural. It is up to Science to unveil the nature of them, for then we shall know very much more about many things. Everything in this universe is governed by certain unchanging laws. My powers, therefore, are governed by these same laws. The fact that comparatively few people possess such powers in high degree is no reason to cast them aside as unimportant. Surely they must be of immense importance in our decisions upon the nature of Time and Space.
At the age of nineteen, however, I was poorly equipped to combat the miracle-man idea, and so I became, against my inner desires, an entertainer. In later years I made many attempts to interest scientific investigators in my faculties. I wanted to know so much. I wanted to understand how it was that I could do these things, and I knew that there were very few people as suitable as I am for serious research in the field of mental phenomena.
It would be unfair to say that at no time during the next ten or fifteen years did I manage to interest the scientists, but no really serious interest was ever taken by them.
It is still incredible to me. Science - all branches of science - elects to investigate nature, material and being, and from those investigations to deduce certain universal laws. Yet here was a youth whose capabilities were beyond contemporary understanding and known laws; those capabilities were not supernatural, for true science cannot admit of such a term, and they must have been guided and controlled by some laws, even if those laws were unknown. Here, indeed, was a field for research, for I was eager to serve the cause of progress and science.
One word of
encouragement, one attempt to develop me in the right direction, and I would
have devoted myself to the mission with unwavering fidelity.
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