Strange Powers by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

crossed a spot where we knew there was an underground pipe. As we crossed the pipe, the rod in Robert's hand twisted to indicate water. He had 'tuned in' to our minds. At The Beacon House, he had showed me photographs and business letters in connection with divining minerals from an aeroplane , and it was apparent that he had been successful. There could be no doubt that he possessed unusual powers. What I now wanted to understand was the nature of these powers, how he came to possess them, and their relation to his total personality.
    At this point, I must temporarily leave Robert Leftwich, and speak more generally of the subject of dowsing.
    In its simplest form, there is nothing 'supernatural' about dowsing—any more than there is about radio, or the way iron filings shape themselves along a magnet's field of force. Dowsing has been scientifically tested. (Descriptions of experiments can be found in Sir William Barrett's book The Divining Rod (1926).) In 1968, Robert Leftwich performed under controlled test conditions on a TV program compered by Brian Inglis, successfully completing the first part of the experiment involving six drums, five of which contained salt. In the second part, he located three cans of water that had been buried in a certain area of waste ground. Although he converted a skeptic—Professor John Cohen—Leftwich himself was disappointed; five cans of water and a knife had been buried, and he failed to locate all these.
    T. C. Lethbridge asserts {in Ghost and Divining-Rod) that all objects have a field of force around them, like a magnetic field, and that the exact size of this field indicates the nature of the object: for example, a piece of brass or copper has a field exactly 61 inches across at ground level. Lethbridge adds that if you try to get above the field—by climbing on something—you cannot do it; the field extends upwards. He says: 'You cannot do so without a fireman's ladder,' and adds 'and perhaps you cannot do so then,' indicating that he hasn't tried it. In fact, if Robert Leftwich can dowse from an aeroplane, it seems probable that the field extends upwards for a very great distance—although, admittedly, he was dealing with vast quantifies of mineral deposits. Lethbridge remarks that the size of the object seems to make no difference to the size of the field; a brass pinhead or a brass coin would still create a 61-inch field. This again suggests the need for further investigation, for it seems unlikely that a brass mountain would have a 61-inch field.
    The dowser 'picks up' this field, as if he were a radio receiver. In an article 'More In Heaven and Earth', published in the magazine of the British Society of Dowsers, Leftwich suggests that dowsing depends on 'high frequency electromagnetic waves' sent out from the dowser's brain like radar waves. In a second article in the same journal, he suggests that objects also emit waves, which are picked up by the dowser, and his final view would seem to be that the brain can emit 'radar' waves and that objects possess their own force field, hovering around it like the smell of gorgonzola cheese. (I will discuss his most recent thoughts on dowsing later in this chapter.)
    Now this matter of 'fields' is of considerable interest, and it seems likely that this will be the direction of the real breakthrough in 'occult' researches. In 1845, Baron Karl yon Reichenbach published a book whose shortened title is The Dynamics of Magnetism. He was not discussing iron magnets, but the human magnetic field. Like the physician Anton Mesmer, Reichenbach believed that magnets {iron ones) might have healing properties. Neurasthenic patients—what he called 'sick sensitives'—were able to see light radiating from the poles of magnets—bluish from the north pole, reddish from the south. They lost this power when their health improved. As Reichenbach tested an increasing number of materials on his 'sick sensitives'—crystals, other metals—he found that