Читать книгу Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 7

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IT was about four o'clock when I left Randolph's house that night. I was in a grand state of mystification. I went home resolved that I would make an experiment similar to his. Before I went to bed, I tried to project my thoughts to some remote spiritual source, but was conscious of no reaction whatsoever. In the morning I decided that I had been most outrageously imposed upon by an eccentric and scowled at my own reflection in my shaving-mirror. Nobody but a visionary could do these things with any hope of success, and I was, by training and temperament, a materialist and a very cold-blooded one, at that. All that day, however, I was aware of being on a quiet, unrelenting search for some suitable clinical material to be used for an experiment in the dynamics of personality-projection... The strangest feature of my mood, however, was the fact that the power I had begun, rather vaguely, to grope for—under Randolph's urging—was not the mere satisfaction of an ambition to make myself important or minister to my own vanity... For the first time, my profession seemed to me not as a weapon of self-defence but a means of releasing myself!

The last thing Randolph said to me, at the door, was this caution: "Be careful how you go into this, my friend! I do not know the penalties this energy exacts when misused... I've no notion what dreadful thing might have happened to the Galilean if he had turned those stones into bread!... But, I warn you!... If you're thinking of going into this to feather your own nest, you'd better never give it another thought... I'm not sure—but I think it's terribly dangerous stuff to fool with!"

My own experiences are hereinafter set forth as possible aids to whoever has had the curiosity to translate this journal. I trust I have made it quite clear why I have chosen this peculiar method of passing it along. Had I ventured to report my experiments, it would have been at the expense of my reputation for sanity. I do not know of a single friend to whom I could have told these things without putting an unpleasant constraint between us. It has been a hard secret to keep. It is equally hard, I am discovering, to confide—even with the realization that these words are unlikely to be read during my lifetime. I dislike the idea of being thought a fool—dead or alive.

You—whoever you are—may be inclined to read on;—perhaps personally interested in making an experiment; perhaps just curious. I wonder—would it be asking an unreasonable favour—if you would not consent to stop, at this point, if you are smiling?... You see, some of these experiences of mine have meant a great deal to me, emotionally. I don't believe I should want them laughed at... If the thing hasn't gripped you a little by now, put it down, please, and think no more about it... If however you seriously wish to proceed, let me counsel you, as Randolph counselled me, that you are taking hold of high tension! Once you have touched it, you will never be able to let go... If you are of the temperament that demands self-indulgence to keep you happy and confident enough to do your work—and many inestimably valuable people are so built and cannot help it any more than tall men can help being tall—leave all this alone, and go your way!... For if you make an excursion into this, you're bound! It will plaster a mortgage on everything you think you own, and commandeer your time when you might prefer to be using it for yourself... It is very expensive... It took the man who discovered it to a cross at the age of thirty-three!