The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen (1895):
...."Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it."
"And there is no danger at any other stage?"
"None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word. You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do tonight."
"I should like to believe it is all true." Clarke knit his brows, and looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. "Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that your theory is not a phantasmagoria—a splendid vision, certainly, but a mere vision after all?"
Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.
"Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things—yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."
Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.
"It is wonderful indeed," he said. "We are standing on the brink of a strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is absolutely necessary?"
"Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred. I don't want to bother you with 'shop,' Clarke; I might give you a mass of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a paragraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's discoveries. Theories and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the discovery that I alluded to when I said that ten years ago I reached the goal. After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights of disappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at an end. By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath. You will think this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot be set forth in plain and lonely terms. For instance, this world of ours is pretty well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places. Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought. As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may look in Browne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find that to the present day men of science are unable to account for the presence, or to specify the functions of a certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it were, land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of things. With a touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the current, with a touch I can complete the communication between this world of sense and—we shall be able to finish the sentence later on. Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that knife will effect. It will level utterly the solid wall of sense, and probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit will gaze on a spirit-world. Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!"
❖
The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson (1969):
....We experimented with mild currents of varying frequencies, fed into the brain directly by means of electrodes. These electrodes had to be extremely fine, of course, sometimes as little as a fiftieth of a millimetre in diameter. To begin with, we used insulated steel, until Littleway heard about the properties of 'Neumann's alloy', the metal discovered in 1931 by the Austrian brain physiologist Alois Neumann. It is an alloy of iron, copper, zinc, platinum and gallium, with a minute quantity of graphite. Neumann was interested in it mainly because of its 'delayed action effect'; with currents of less than a microvolt, it fails to conduct, but 'holds' the current for a fraction of a second, then suddenly releases it as a flash at higher voltage. Discovered accidentally by a chemist in the Krupp armament works in 1919, it has excited very little interest because it is of no particular use in science or industry. Neumann had started to use electrodes tipped with this metal in his investigation of the 'K complex' - the flashes of brain energy that occur when you are on the point of sleep, and which often jerk you awake. His researches were cut short by his death, and his son Gustav subsequently presented his papers to the University of Wisconsin.
I discovered them accidentally, and we decided to try to obtain a quantity of Neumann metal. It was a long process, but we eventually succeeded. It proved to be thoroughly worthwhile, for we soon discovered that the metal had variable properties as far as 'retaining' went, and could be used to interfere not only with delta rhythms, but with theta and gamma waves as well.
Its chief trouble is that it is a great deal softer than steel, so that it cannot be brought to so fine a point.
However, this didn't bother us. We stuck to steel electrodes for investigating motor areas, and used the Neumann alloy mainly for experiments with the frontal and prefrontal cortex. The results were extremely encouraging. The delayed 'flash' evidently stimulated some memory trigger process, so that subjects could recall events of childhood without the need for hypnosis. (To begin with, we used an old alcoholic patient who had figured largely in our hypnotic experiments, and whom we partly cured.) The process of insertion of the electrodes was simple - a local anaesthetic, then two fine holes drilled into the frontal bone of the skull. The subject sat upright, his head held in a well-padded frame, to prevent brain damage in the case of sudden movement.
A week after the commencement of our experiments, Littleway noticed that the cerebro-spinal fluid seemed to have some slight effect on the Neumann alloy; it had darkened slightly in colour. Careful tests showed that it was lighter, a mere fraction of a milligram. This seemed unlikely to do any damage, and as the experiments had reached a crucial stage, we pressed on.
After the experiment, the electrodes were again weighed. This time, one of them was almost a milligram lighter. Examined under a microscope, we discovered that a very tiny piece had snapped off the point.
Experiments were suspended, and the subject kept under observation for several days. There was no real cause for alarm. Obviously, if a man can survive after a crowbar has amputated most of his prefrontal lobes, the damage to be anticipated from a thousandth of a gram of soft metal is very small indeed. When, after several days, there were no ill effects, we decided to go ahead once again. (The patient was also eager for us to start; he was being well paid, and the effects of our 'electrical therapy' seemed to be entirely beneficial; he already looked several years younger, and seemed to have gained in intelligence.)
We applied the current - and the result startled us. We were both watching his face carefully, in case of ill effects. He was an oldish man - I mention his name here because of his place in the history of science -
Zachariah Longstreet, formerly of Grand Rapids, Illinois. When we had first met him, he was fifty-nine, and had just served three years in the penitentiary for incest. He was a confirmed alcoholic. He was still living with his wife, and at her request had gone to Harvey Grossman - our psychiatrist friend - for treatment. Hypnosis had proved beneficial, and the attention and interest he received from the three of us seemed to improve him in every way. His eyes lost the dull, rather resentful expression, and his theta wave pattern improved. However, left to himself for more than a month or so, he tended to relapse into alcoholism, and then into sexual exhibitionism.
He was sixty-one when we conducted the test using the Neumann electrodes, and in good general health.
When the current was turned on, his face became thoughtful, as if he was trying to remember a name that had slipped his memory. We watched carefully, expecting him to say something. But the lines of his face remained composed, his eyes staring past us, still concentrated. In previous experiments, he had become drowsy, almost as if hypnotised.
The expression of concentration deepened. Suddenly, he said clearly:
'Alright. Turn it down. It's too strong,'
Littleway did as he said automatically, adjusting the rheostat - with a glance of surprise at me. He said:
'How does it feel?'
'Interesting. Extremely interesting.'
Again, we looked at one another. It was simply not the kind of phrase Longstreet would normally use.
He would say, 'Pretty good', or sometimes incomprehensible slang phrases like, 'Ye're tootin'.
Littleway asked: 'In what way?'
Longstreet grinned at us, and said: 'I've found your bit of alloy.'
The tape recording of this session shows that neither of us bothered to ask him what he meant immediately. We were too fascinated by the obvious change that was taking place in him. I wish we had thought to film it as well as record it. From the expression on his face, neither of us had the slightest doubt that something important was taking place.
I was the first to grasp what this was. We had induced value experiences so often that I was used to the signs - relaxation, the glow of ecstasy, self-abandonment, sometimes violent tears or convulsions of emotion. In this case, it was nothing of the sort. The face seemed to become firmer. The eyes, very pale blue, and normally slightly bloodshot, stared past us with the intensity of a man observing something that grips his interest. He reminded me of something or someone - then I remembered who it was: a certain picture of Sherlock Holmes in one of the early illustrated editions, sitting, with his head against a cushion, playing a violin. The eyes had that aquiline, penetrating quality that Watson is always describing.
Suddenly, I knew what had happened. I said:
'My god, Henry, we're done it.'
'Done what?'
'Induced a real value experience. Contemplative objectivity. Other-ness.'
Then he saw it too. We both stared. It was almost frightening; although for me, it was perhaps less exhilarating than the afternoon of my 'dream' in Essex. I asked Longstreet:
'Can you describe what's happening?'
'No.'
'What did you mean about finding our piece of alloy?'
He made a slight movement of his heavily gloved hands towards his face.
'It's in here. It's lodged in this front part - what do you call it? The lobe...'
'What is it doing?' This was Littleway.
'Can't describe it. I'm opening up.'
'In what way?'
Longstreet only smiled. It was a pitying smile, but not patronising. He was simply condoling with us for not knowing what he meant.
His breathing became extremely calm and regular, then ceased to be noticeable, although he was obviously fully conscious. He ignored our questions. Only after Littleway had repeated several times
'What can you see?' he said briefly: 'Same as you.'
He gestured to us to push the rheostat closer to him - it was on a trolley. Littleway looked dubious, but I moved the trolley. Longstreet only wanted to turn down the current. He sat with it turned down for more than a quarter of an hour - so low that the rate of 'firings' must have been less than one every two seconds. Then he tried to turn it up again, jerked suddenly as if the effect was too violent, and turned it right down to zero. He said:
'Get these things outa my head.'
We did as he asked, sealed the holes in his skull with adhesive tape, and moved him to an armchair. His expression had relaxed; it now became very sad. We allowed him to rest for ten minutes without questioning him. Then he said:
'It's a funny thing. It didn't matter all the time.'
We could get nothing coherent out of him after that. He became sleepy. His face grew duller, and he made no objection when we suggested moving him back to bed. Before the nurse came with the stretcher, he was fast asleep, snoring gentry.
Littleway said:
'But what the hell caused it?'
I said: 'I'm going to make one wild guess. That tiny piece of alloy somehow worked its way into the prefrontal cortex.'
'But what would that do?'
'Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe closed a synaptic gap.'
'That's impossible. They're only a few Angstrom units wide. This metal would be a hundred times too big. Anyway, it wouldn't make any difference. Nerve impulses are pretty constant. If they're strong enough to cross a synapse, they don't lose strength anyway.'
At this point, we realised we were taping ourselves, and Littleway switched it off. When I listen to the tape, I am amazed by how quickly we grasped what had happened. Perhaps Longstreet's mention of finding our metal gave us the clue.
What, then, had happened? Littleway was mistaken as we discovered later, when Longstreet's head X-rays were blown up to fifty times their size. The piece of metal that had worked its way into the outer layer of the cortex was a minute fragment of the piece that had broken off the electrode - as tiny as that had been. It had lodged in the dendrites of a synapse, or very close to them And its effect was to delay the nervous stimulus, and then discharge it. In other words, it acted as an amplifier.
Then everything became clear. Poets develop by wanting to develop the ability for 'other-ness'. The prefrontal lobes contain vast reservoirs of memory and meaning, of a kind that is quite unnecessary for our daily survival - in fact, a nuisance, because it would distract us from the boring necessities of everyday living. But it is extremely hard for poets to divert brain energy from more practical areas of the brain to these great memory tanks; our animal caution refuses to allow it. So these strange moments of pure vision, of broad 'relational consciousness', only occur when there happens to be a lot of brain energy to spare - for example, when a crisis has led us to tense ourselves, to draw upon our reserve energy tanks, and then the crisis disappears.
The minute fragment of metal had amplified some nerve impulse, so as to produce a continual effect like the disappearance of crisis. The reason Longstreet could not describe his mental condition was that he had no way of describing it. And when he told us that he was seeing 'the same as you', he was being strictly accurate. Only he was really seeing it, like a wide angle camera, instead of the tiny lens through which most of us contemplate the world. He was getting a bird's eye view of his life - a god's eye view.
We had accidentally solved the problem I set out to solve - how to 'boost' the 'new faculty' that has begun to appear in man. Admittedly, we had no evidence that we could repeat the experiment. I suppose we also had no real evidence of what had happened to Longstreet - that it was not an ordinary V.E. But neither of us had the least doubt, having seen Long-street's face.
It seemed pretty clear that the most difficult part of the experiment would be the placing of a minute fragment of Neumann alloy at the right nerve junction in the cortex. We consulted a brain surgeon about this, and he confirmed that it would be difficult without damage to brain tissue. But again the solution proved unexpectedly simple.
Longstreet was eager for us to continue to experiment on him. We were altogether less eager, because it seemed likely that we would learn as little as on the first occasion. But we were both curious about one point: whether he would be able to learn the ability to induce 'relational consciousness' without the need for electrical stimulation. After the first occasion, he was totally unable to recall his state of intensity. He was not even able to remember what it had been like. He seemed inclined to believe that we had caused the intensity with the electric current. When I tried to explain what had really happened, he didn't seem interested - he only wanted to know how soon we would do it again.
We were not entirely happy about it. The skin punctures on his scalp were chafing; we wanted to allow them to heal up. But he was so persistent that we performed the same experiment forty-eight hours after the first one. The results were much the same, although this time he was more talkative. One of the things he said was: 'It's better than being drunk.' Another was: 'What's wrong with most people anyway?'
Littleway commented that he had re-discovered the doctrine of Original Sin for himself....
Jay
12 March 2020
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