Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00972)

Pedro wrote:

> Perhaps the list members who are in New Zealand could comment of
> Geoffrey Hodson and his work as a clairvoyant.
and Paul Johnson wrote:

> In what sense can Adyar Theosophists whose clairvoyant
> investigations confirmed CWL's be considered "three independent
> investigators"? Not in any meaningful sense I can think of.
> Suggestibility plays far too large a role in such "perceptions" for
> me to accept any of these three as independent of CWL. Don't know
> anything about Bendit but surely Kunz and Hodson were as
> Leadbeaterian as any modern Theosophist could be. They saw what
> they were looking for.
It's not that simple, Paul. In the clairvoyant research on aspects of 
Occult Chemistry that I assisted Hodson with between 1978 and 1980, it 
would have been all over in half an hour if he'd short-circuited into the 
pre-existing CWL images of benzene molecules. In fact, the work spread over 
about 10 sessions of more than an hour each, revealing all sorts of 
structural features, but, to my recollection, he never once saw the benzene 
shapes that CWL saw in all that time. He certainly had, previously, seen 
some of the forms like the oxygen spiral, that CWL had described; it's not 
as if he couldn't see these things. He has seen stuff that CWL hadn't 
recorded, like spiral forces around the electrons travelling in a cathode 
ray tube - a relative of the ones used in TV and computer monitors. Such 
spiral forces are quite consonant with the ideas of electromagnetism.

Hodson would get quite vague about previous knowledge when he was focused 
in his research state, not more aware of it, as you'd expect if it had been 
the source of his perceptions. He had a practice of creating a "blank 
white sheet of the mind" before he began, and it certainly looked as if he 
had succeeded in doing it, from all his responses. He worked hard to 
maintain independence, and didn't want to be told what previous 
theosophists had found, before or during the work.

This research revealed the huge variety and complexity of reality when you 
open up other senses. Far from seeing what he was looking for, Hodson would 
ask his co-investigator what to look for, to the extent of what direction 
to take the search.

In any case, Hodson was no kid in this matter; he was totally aware of the 
tendency for the brain-mind to put pre-existing images around the primary 
hyper-sensory input, and I recall taking part in a 3-way discussion that 
Hodson had with his doctor and research assistant, David Lyness, about the 
role of the brain-mind in clairvoyance, about this very phenomenon.

In short, the dominant impressions I got of Hodson were:

1 Well aware of his own limitations and not claiming infallibility.
2 Relentless integrity, well beyond the point where most would be 
satisfied.
3 Total dedication to finding, as best as possible, the truth of a 
matter.
4 Willingness to admit being wrong and having another go.
5 A great funneling or reduction of the primary information in its path
first into the brain, then into language.
6 Caution in stating his findings, because experience had shown him
how the theosophical mob can both put a person with extended abilities
up on a pedestal, and pull them down - both far from the truth.
Reminds me of some of the discussions on this list.

I certainly revised my ideas about him, on spending time with him. It's 
inevitable.

Murray