For all their power, however, Ossowiecki's psychic skills were erratic and, by his own admission, would have been "wasted" on little more than parlor shows if the Russian railway schedules had been different. In 1898, when he was twenty-one years old and in his fourth year at the St. Petersburg Institute, one of his final assignments was to study the making of paper. Oddly, the subject held a real interest for him, sufficient, in fact, for him to write another Pole living in Russia, Antoni Stulginski, the director of a paper factory, and ask if he might visit his plant in Dobruz. Because no train ran direct from St. Petersburg to Dobruz, Ossowiecki found himself in the railway station of the town of Homel with several hours at his disposal.
In answer to his query, "What is there to see in Homel?" the stationmaster had only two suggestions: a statue and a visit to "a locally famous person to whom the greatest dignitaries of Russia came for advice." Ossowiecki took this last as typical civic hyperbole, but was intrigued enough to ask further questions, thus learning that the man's name was Wrobel, and that he was "an old Jewish yoga who had spent all of his life in India studying secret knowledge" before he "returned to the city of his birth at a very advanced age to `die at home."'
Surprisingly, Ossowiecki had no real interest in meeting this man. Despite his youth, he had no burning questions about life he wanted answered, nor did he feel the need for guidance. He knew who he was, how he fitted into the social scheme, and what he wanted to do. It never occurred to him to ask about his unusual abilities. But "for lack of anything to do," he decided to go into Homel's suburbs in search of the house where the mystic lived. He took the matter more seriously when he got there and opened the door to the small wooden house. The stationmaster had not been exaggerating; there in the foyer were "two very famous personages" who had come for consultations.
Looking at Ossowiecki, they saw a rather handsome six-foot-tall blue-eyed young man with light-colored hair. From his clothes and manner it was obvious that he was a gentleman and so they spoke to him, learned he was just passing through, and "gallantly allowed me to go ahead of them. I shall never forget that moment."
"I enter. On the bed there rests an ancient man. Head of a patriarch. Subtly chiseled Semitic features. Spirituality manifesting itself through the eyes. Long, white beard."
Despite his psychic abilities, Ossowiecki in those days did not believe in clairvoyance, and though impressed by Wrobel's appearance, he admitted his whole posture "was that of skepticism." He was completely unprepared for what the old man did.
"Upon seeing me—even before I had a chance to introduce myself—he extended a skinny arm toward me ... looked me straight in the eye and said, simply, `Your name is Stefan.'
Then he proceeded to describe "my past and future in minute detail. You must realize this was before the war [World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917], in a completely different political system. Then much of what he said seemed improbable ... it created a feeling of some dreadful nightmare. And yet, he saw all that happened later: the fall of then unquestioned powers, the oceans of blood, heroism, sacrifice of human lives, terror, fear and separation. He sketched for me the whole skeleton of political games, nationalistic battles, and victory. He talked about all this which I later encountered, took part in, and was shocked by. All that affected the fate of my life ... foreseeing even my inner reactions which I myself could not have then predicted ... Without any information forthcoming from myself he said then, `You see auras around people.' I asked naively, `What is an aura?'
By the time he had to leave to catch his train, "in an old man, demolished by an ascetic life," Ossowiecki had found his first and only real teacher.
To complete his degree in chemical engineering Ossowiecki had to put in a period of practical work. There was never any question of what he would do. He moved to Dobruz and began assisting Stulginski in his paper factory. But, as would be true all his life, his outward work was entirely secondary. His real motivation was spiritual and sometime in 1899 he apprenticed himself without reserve to the dying Jew.
"I would spend every free moment with him, not to mention all Sundays, ... which passed almost unnoticed in long ... discussions ... and exercises ... the concentration of thought and will .. . which bridged the way from the conscious to the superconscious state."
Under Wrobel's tutelage Ossowiecki learned the yoga skills of visualization and concentration on a single object. It was a torturous experience but exhilarating at the same time and gradually "I conquered time and space" and finally reached a stage when "myself as myself seemed not to exist. I understood, then, that I had crossed the border of average human consciousness. My visions were `super- conscious.
His teacher explained to him that the superconscious was very different from the subconscious, which "is a state in which our will does not participate. Our dreams, for instance, are a manifestation of the subconscious and sometimes they have an almost prophetic character.... Superconsciousness, however, is a higher level of organization. It requires the necessary presence of a new element—the element of spirit, of trained will. For superconsciousness the barriers of time and space do not exist...."
From Wrobel Ossowiecki also learned the arts of psychometry, the use of objects to focus the superconscious mind so that the object becomes a kind of psychic bannister allowing the sensitive to move along a single thread in time's skein.
For two months, and possibly longer, the man he called "my Master" worked with Ossowiecki. Although the actual time was short, it had an almost unworldly intensity. More than that—it was effective: A wild powerful native talent was transformed into a coherent highly disciplined skill whose limits were never fully explored. It had been for Ossowiecki the major spiritual experience of his life, and what he became under Wrobel's guidance was to make his experiments in psychic archaeology, four decades later, unequaled in the history of this method of searching man's past.
Surprisingly, however, Ossowiecki did not become outwardly esoteric or mystical and for many years only practiced his skills intermittently. He moved back to Moscow, probably shortly after the beginning of the new century, and took his place as a regular member of the city's society. Before he was thirty he had established the external pattern he would follow all his life. He loved good food (indeed, soon became stout as a result), good wine, lovely women, creative artists in any field, but particularly writers, and parties where there was lively conversation. He knew everyone. Though the capital was in St. Petersburg and he was mostly in Moscow, he became close to the Czar, the Imperial family, men like Tolstoy, as well as unknown artists, dukes, even workmen in the chemical industry.
And, if prevailed upon, he would exhibit his psychic abilities, particularly his telekinetic strength, moving all manner of things—including a grandfather clock. The feats were so unprecedented that "while I moved these objects, there were many cases of common hysteria ... even among men." Such reactions are not hard to understand when one pictures the scene: a relaxed gathering of Moscow society, replete with food, a little tight on vodka and wine, standing around Ossowiecki, the men in white tie or dress uniform, the women in sumptuous gowns and jewels, all of them watching an event that contradicted everything they had ever learned of nature and reality.
For all the public acclaim these performances brought him, Ossowiecki himself in later years had little interest in such feats. He talked little of these early paranormal demonstrations, and much else of this period is also blank. One can only speculate, for instance, that since he was close to the imperial family he must at least have met the most famous psychic ever to come out of the Russian Empire, Grigori Efimovich, known to the world as Rasputin. But Ossowiecki is silent. All that is certain is that his father died in 1915 and that Stefan, at the age of thirty-eight, became the owner and principal director of what had developed into a very large chemical works. He was now a genuinely rich man, but strangely his entire Russian period appears like an interlude—a pleasant space between his time with Wrobel and what was to come. The revolution that ended the Romanov dynasty freed Ossowiecki of the encumbrance of wealth. Nothing was left to tie him to Russia. Although outwardly everything had gone to pieces and worse was yet to come, to Ossowiecki, whose real life was entirely within, this was the second great awakening.
"A tremendous breakthrough in my psyche, a breakthrough which increased my spiritual awareness and consequently my powers.... I was arrested in Moscow toward the end of the year 1918 [the reasons probably being his wealth, ownership of an industry, and friendship with the Czar and his court]. This brought with it a long term in prison with the prospect of execution by firing squad."
Wrobel had told him this would happen, but not the final outcome, perhaps because such things are not predestined but affected by the consciousness and will of the participants. Thus the experience and the possibility of death were both frighteningly real to Ossowiecki:
"The forced isolation brought the opportunity to think through many things; to ponder the broadness of spiritual horizons; to deepen one's spiritual personality in order to gain solace on the threshold of death.
"Death passed me by but what did remain was the faith, the understanding of higher, immortal life for which, unconsciously perhaps, all yearn. Even those without faith. It was then that I began to fully value this gift given me by the creator and I understood that by utilization of it I could help others."
Sometime in 1919, at the age of forty-two, almost penniless after confiscation of all his Russian holdings, having nothing but his profession, his mother, and his sister Victoria, his surviving friends, and most important, his psychic gifts, Stefan Ossowiecki left Moscow to return to a Poland he knew only as a visitor, whose language he spoke ungrammatically and with a heavy Russian accent. Poland, which itself had been barely restored to nationhood, for the first time since 1795. Left behind in Russia, along with all his possessions, were his telekinetic powers; he had transformed them while in prison to the almost unequaled powers of clairvoyance that were soon to make him the first scientifically studied traveler in time.
By 1920, thanks to his personality, friends, and training, Ossowiecki had found his place in Warsaw, and although he would never again be wealthy, he had enough to live comfortably. For the rest of his life money was of secondary interest. And even when he had it, he seemed little interested in keeping it. Always an easy touch, if he had funds, he would invest in a company to help a friend or just lend the money outright. Usually the company failed or the loan went unrepaid.
What he specifically would not do was charge for his psychic skills, which were now so much in evidence. Wrobel had warned him of this years before. At the time the words had been largely meaningless; there was no temptation, for his family was rich. To make money from psychic talents would have been unnecessary and, worse, unseemly. During his stay in prison when he was faced with poverty, however, this appears to have been one of the issues Ossowiecki considered. When all had been lost, the temptation was suddenly there, particularly since he now had developed such extraordinary clairvoyant abilities. But after his release, even in his first weeks in Warsaw, he did not succumb. He would say later, "I am of the opinion that the domain of the spirit cannot be mixed with monetary considerations because the pure, abstract value would be lessened.... I have a vocation which gives me work and assures my existence. I strictly separate these two areas of myself and professional engineer Ossowiecki, the man of business, has nothing in common with Ossowiecki, the spiritual seer."
Just how strongly he felt about this issue is revealed in a story told by Marian Swida, the man who became his stepson. "In 1938, when things were becoming unsettled and finances were not so good, Eugene Rothschild of the Vienna line, the family of bankers, financiers, came to him ... secretly, very privately, in a private airplane ... a rare thing in those days. He asked Ossowiecki to make an experiment, to see if he could locate some family papers. I do not know all the details ... only that Ossowiecki said that there were millions and millions involved. Rothschild asked only, `Was it stolen?' Ossowiecki said `yes.' He next asked, `By whom?' Ossowiecki replied, `By a daughter of your butler and they are in London.' He then said where they were in London, where the papers were. They checked ... everything was found, just as Ossowiecki had said! A check arrived, signed by this Rothschild, to my stepfather, to write himself any amount. The money would have been helpful at that time. But he would not do such a thing as this. He returned the check saying money was not the purpose for which he performed such experiences."
But if Ossowiecki was uninterested in using his gift to make money, he was most interested in using it to help others. He scheduled his business life so that he had time between engineering consulting assignments to meet with those whose problems might be eased by his insight. Always using an object as a psychic focal point, he would answer queries and offer guidance. Although he would not take money, there was one thing he would accept, often just to get grateful people to give up on the matter of payment. He liked a souvenir, a memento of the experience, particularly the guide object he had used.
These personal consultations though were not enough. Also as a result of his prison experience Ossowiecki felt a need to be scientifically tested-not because he had any doubts about his ability to show off for scientists, but because he hoped that in testing him these researchers would alter their view of the world. Consequently, in Warsaw and in Paris, to which he traveled every year throughout the 1920s, and in Germany, which he also visited frequently, he let it be known that he would entertain any request seriously presented to him by a responsible scientist. This sentiment went out through what had become a truly astonishing network of friends, a list of virtually all the leading minds in the arts, sciences, and aristocracy. (Only politicians were not well represented; Ossowiecki was never politically oriented, perhaps because Wrobel had described in detail how ephemeral European political fortunes would be during the psychic's lifetime—and how irrelevant in any case.) The response was immediate. As early as 1920 he met Professor Gustave Geley, one of the great French pioneer parapsychologists. This meeting was soon followed by others such as (a partial list): Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Professor Dr. Charles R. Richet, also of France; Theodore Besterman, Lord Charles Hope, Miss A. Reutiner, E. J. Dingwall, all of Great Britain; Baron Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing and Dr. M. Gravier of Poland.
There were many experiments; indeed, the studies conducted with Ossowiecki, if collected between covers without commentary, would make a substantial volume. Basically, however, they fell into the two major categories of research being done in Europe at that time: astral projection, the movement of one's consciousness to a point different from the body's point of view; and reading messages secreted in sealed envelopes, metal tubes, and boxes. What all this determined was that Ossowiecki was not in any way a medium (a spiritualist), nor was he ever fraudulent. Most important of all, it was found that Ossowiecki, unlike most other psychics, had absolute control over his talents and could turn them on and off at will, as well as provide a uniformly high standard of performance. This was (and is) so rarely encountered that the researchers studying him had no explanation as to why he could do this and other psychics could not. Ossowiecki, however, gave them an answer.
He made it clear to anyone who would listen that he was not so much a psychic as a man deeply committed to a spiritual pilgrimage in his inner life.' Because of this, he happened to be psychic. He explained that there was a difference between being a man seeking enlightenment, for whom the psychic is a kind of byproduct, and being a person seeking psychic ability as an end in itself. He himself was obsessed not with the psychic but with the true nature of consciousness, the human will, and the relationship these had to man's destiny. Unfortunately, such words apparently had little impact on those who heard them, and it would have been a violation of his principles for Ossowiecki ever to push his philosophy on anyone else. It would also have been out of character.
Ossowiecki had built the public persona of a slightly eccentric gentleman who enjoyed the best that was offered in a Warsaw rapidly becoming one of Europe's most sophisticated cities—"the Paris of Eastern Europe." He wore his father's large gold pocket watch, but never remembered to wind it. And he could (and more than once did) invite a prince for dinner, forget he had done so, show up uninvited at a friend's, under the mistaken assumption that they expected him, be happily invited in anyway, only to receive a call from a second friend asking where he was, go there, and just be sitting down to table when his maid called saying the prince had gotten tired of waiting and had gone off before the master could be located.
And when he did do an experiment, more often than not it was after dinner dishes had been cleared. He did not like people to stare, or treat him with awe, and if they did so, he would stop and tell them to talk or play the piano. Nor, except with very few people, could he be dragged into a discussion about spiritual philosophy—a popular topic among the upper classes of the day. But if he appeared a "hail fellow," he still always made sure to provide serious researchers with what they needed: results. And these were such that in the book Our Sixth Sense, which the Nobel laureate Professor Richet would write about his years as a parapsychologist, after describing many other psychics, he would say, "It would seem . .. that there would be nothing more to add, or rather it would be impossible to find better.
"Well! There is better.
"If any doubt concerning the sixth sense remains ... this doubt will be dissipated by the sum total of the experiments made by Geley, by myself, and by others, with Stefan Ossowiecki ... the most positive of all psychics."
Surprisingly, however, although he was studied by every leading researcher in the field (indeed, no psychic has ever been studied so thoroughly and by so eminent a group of men and women as Ossowiecki), only a few brief and superficial experiments into the past were ever tried in this period from 1920 to 1935.
The reason for this lapse is both simple and revealing of how psychic researchers approach the psychic. Clairvoyance was then explained as some form of telepathy and telepathy was considered nothing more than an unknown form of radio waves. Strange, admittedly, but to science, the explanation least harmful to its world view. Similarly, psychometry was seen as only a variation of telepathy in which, for a short space of time, the thought waves of a person were impressed upon an object in some way, much as an iron
bar can be magnetized. The sensitive was just that; he read the object by being sensitive to its thought impregnations. Obviously, with this theoretical base, experiments involving actual movement in time, which would have been devastating to science's assumptions, were not often attempted. And the few experiments carried out in contacting the past seemed to support this theoretical position. If the length of time was greater than a few decades, the information always seemed to come from spiritualist sources.
Survivalism, which until the 1940s was the third great interest of psychic research, was not paranormal time travel. It involved an entirely different issue—whether the personality survived corporeal death. Thus it was not exceptional to find parapsychologists who believed on the one hand that it was impossible for a living man to travel backward in time beyond, say, a normal life expectancy (traveling forward involved living people and thus could be explained as telepathy) while, on the other hand, believing with equal conviction that there was personality survival after death. It was for them an apples and oranges proposition.
Ossowiecki, since he was primarily a seeker of nonintellectual supersensible knowledge as opposed to being a kind of paranormal technician, did not agree with this. He "knew" that while the theory of survivalism was valid, the accepted explanation for telepathy was not. Time and space were not the limitations science thought them to be. But he could not think of an experimental protocol that would make this point, one that could withstand the charge of the thought-wave explanation. In 1935, however, he found he didn't have to think up an experiment; it was presented to him already set up, and its results would set in motion the last and greatest research epoch of his life.
A wealthy Hungarian by the name of Dionizy Jonky had died in 1927, leaving among his effects a small package measuring 7 by 4.5 by 4 centimeters. It weighted 59.5 grams (just a little over 2 ounces) and was about as big as a man's fist. To add to the mystery, its contents had obviously been carefully sealed against observation. The package was wrapped in fabric, sewn tight, tied in cruciform fashion with string, and the seams and ends of the string were secured with sealing wax.
Only when Mr. Jonky's will was opened did the purpose of this odd little bundle come to light. The Hungarian had always been interested in the psychic, and he too questioned whether there might not be more to paranormal awareness than the wave theory. Consequently, he had prepared an experiment. To test the wave explanation, he stipulated that the package should remain sealed and that no psychic attempt to determine its contents should be carried out until eight years after his death. By then, any putative wave energy should have dissipated. And if the information source was a dead person, presumably the kind of psychic to discover its contents would be a medium. In any case, Jonky said in his will that no one had seen what he had put inside the package, and after eight years any psychic who wished to could try to divine what the box held, as long as his answers were carefully witnessed and recorded. Those charged with seeing that these terms were carried out followed them scrupulously; not until 1935 did the research begin.
Ossowiecki was approached last on the matter, after "the best of Europe's clairvoyants" had already tried. A committee of researchers came to him that January and he, of course, consistent with his policy, immediately accepted. He was told nothing of the package's background, not even Jonky's name. The question: Can you determine what is inside this? was his only information. Fifty people, mostly scientists, were present when he made his attempt, beginning the proceedings by looking at fourteen photographs arranged on a table and selecting the one of Mr. Jonky, "a man whom I had never met," he would say later.
Six individuals then stationed themselves next to Ossowiecki, and never moved beyond arm's distance of his side until he was through. Everything he said was "taken down and later signed by the whole committee."
"After ten minutes of concentration I stilled my consciousness and moved to the realm of the superconscious. I began to speak." The following are his exact words.
"Interesting and convoluted story. I see the owner of this object. He's long dead now. He was successful in life; he had his own house. It was a man of advanced years, with a white beard ... worried. A man of large spiritual seances, read, wrote, traveled a lot. This package found its way into the hands of another older gentleman who looks like Professor Gravier [Ossowiecki's friend]. "But you had it!" Ossowiecki said, addressing Professor Grav¬ier, who was one of the committee. "I see it in your place on top of a wardrobe with some boots.
"There are some pieces here ... several ... two ... three .. more. They are minerals of some sort. Stone .. . metal. Color is gray-brown, something like lime and iron ores ... volcanic minerals. All this was once in the hands of some young girl.
"There is something here that pulls me to other worlds ... to another planet.... It's a great world ... it has no similarities to ours. It hurtles with dizzying speed through endless space. Much fire .. . it collides with another body ... cosmic catastrophe. Tears away ... tears apart. Showers into small fragments. They fly ... they speed, they fall in many places on earth. These are fragments of a meteorite.
"This experiment was thought up especially for me. Perhaps it was at one time intended as two experiments because it draws me in two directions. The elderly gentleman had some sugar ready and nearby was a box of minerals. In one sugar ... in the other meteorites. At first, I clearly felt meteorites but also the presence of sugar. I can't say anything more."
Ossowiecki had been asked only for a prediction of what was in the package; he had given that, plus a re-creation of the events leading up to its preparation, and what had taken place up to the time he was first shown the target object. If he was right, the theory espoused by Richet and others was demolished. Without further delay the seals and wrappings were broken.
The report concludes by saying, "All this from beginning to end was verified. Indeed, the package contained meteorites and the paper in which it was wrapped was originally confectionery wrap and still had traces of powdered sugar and a Hungarian word meaning bonbons.
"Mr. Ossowiecki recreated then not only the nucleus of the package but also its surroundings.
"Because of the prolonged time since the death of Mr. Jonky until the experiment took place, the notion that clairvoyance is a sort of telepathy must be abandoned." Twenty psychics of various nationalities had tried to solve the riddle but only the Polish seer "was able to unlock this secret with 100 percent success."
The implications of this were not lost on those concerned with studying the past. Within months Ossowiecki was approached by a committee of historians and other scholars and asked to perform an experiment that was to take him the final step toward psychic archaeology. Their question: Could Ossowiecki determine what Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), the most famous Pole in history,
looked like? Surprisingly, up until 1935 no one knew the lineaments of the remarkable Pole. There were a number of portraits identified as Copernicus, but they did not agree.
Ossowiecki asked that the available paintings and drawings be brought to him and he made a selection. The scholars would have been happy with just that but, using the portrait that he said was the correct one, and that he further indicated had been painted by Copernicus himself, he went on to re-create the life of this physician, administrator, and mathematician—the man whose work on astronomy, De Revolutionzbus, had caused one of the major scientific revolutions in history. It was all taken down and the scholars left to check Ossowiecki's words. Every detail that could be traced proved to be absolutely accurate, including the fact that the scientist had had a sister.
This validated psychic venture, back almost five hundred years in time, did more than solve a specific problem about Copernicus. It established that Ossowiecki truly was a psychic time traveler; thus his claim that time and space did not exist in the superconscious state had to be taken seriously. Here was a phenomenon very different from the Bond experiments, which the Poles may well have known about since Bond's books had been in print for some years and Bond had known the parapsychologists, particularly the English ones, who had studied Ossowiecki, Bond had gotten his information from a source apparently other than himself, much as a man who tunes into a radio station. Ossowiecki, on the other hand, actually seemed personally to go back in time, even as his physical body sat in a twentieth-century room.
He told his friends that while he did not go into a trance, when he moved into his superconscious mind, this became his primary level of awareness and the room, even his own body, faded to a kind of shadow state. When the shift occurred, it was as if he were looking at a movie running in reverse; that is, from most recent to more distant events of the past. When he chose, he could freeze this reverse action. As that happened, it was as if he were suddenly in an airplane, first seeing a sort of broad overview, and then going lower until he was approximately at a point of view where his eye would normally be if he were physically standing on the spot he had chosen in the past. At this stage the action would begin again, only now going forward as it should. From then on, it was as if Ossowiecki were some kind of science fiction spy-eye under long-distance control. He could go anywhere he wanted and see anything in the scene he desired; all the while a part of his mind knew that he was sitting in his study or someone's house in Warsaw.
At first the potential Ossowiecki offered was too awesome; no one quite knew what to make of this opportunity, the parapsychologists least of all. Finally, Witold Balcer, an old friend who was not a psychic researcher but an engineer like Ossowiecki, became interested in the idea. It was he, and not one of the many scholars around Ossowiecki, who was to make the first rudimentary usage—excepting the relatively modern and limited experiment on Copernicus—of the seer's skills in psychic archaeology. Balcer himself, though, did not really expect success. He had talked with Ossowiecki about the matter, and he knew from the psychic about the commentaries of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, scientist, and founder of the General Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. Steiner had spoken at length, but only in a general philosophic way, about past cultures based on knowledge that he said derived from supersensible awareness. Because of these conversations Balcer was willing to accept the idea that some sort of generalized record along the lines of racial memory might exist. But that was quite another thing from psychic time travel, in which the sensitive actually viewed an event that had taken place thousands of years in the past in the same detail as if he were physically present. Balcer believed—but he still wasn't sure. Nor, for this reason, was he entirely clear about how to conduct the experiment.
He finally settled on a kind of hybrid protocol. He decided to have a friend prepare another of those sealed boxes that litter the psychic research landscape of the period. Balcer was to be aware in an overall way of the content, but was not to have seen it, nor have any specific details on the matter. In this way, even if Ossowiecki could not provide a reconstruction, if he could successfully name the artifact and describe it, the event would still qualify as a responsible double- blind experiment.
On the appointed night, Thursday, February, 14, 1935, Ossowiecki and a small group of friends journeyed out to the Saska Kepa suburb of Warsaw on the east bank of the Vistula River for a dinner at No. 21 Obroncow Street. Ossowiecki had not felt well that day and wasn't sure he could do the experiment, but finally, at 11 P.M., as dinner was being finished, he said he would give it a try. He took the paper-wrapped box in his right hand, cautioned his friends to continue their conversation, and while they went through the motions of casual chatter, for about fifteen minutes Ossowiecki appeared lost in thought. Suddenly he began to speak. What transpired was carefully recorded by Balcer:
"I see a metal foil box. Its surface is reflective. The inside is brownish, wrapped in paper and cotton. Something like wood or stone. Something petrified. This is something very old and it originated several thousand years ago. Before the birth of Christ. This was unearthed by some scientific expedition. I see people in white pith helmets directing this excavation. Around sand and rocks. This is in some hot country. This object was a portion of some bigger object and served or was connected with some cult or religious procedure ... wedding ... or funeral. Yes, this was connected with a funeral. But what is it in fact? It's some figure ... or idol. I don't understand. I see some fires, like torches, some strange people who bow in front of this or are praying. What is it? This object has some fibers, knots, in places as though it were covered with strips of fabric.”
Ossowiecki seemed to retreat into himself, then said distinctly, "I can see now what this is ... it is a petrified human foot!"
When he had regained his normal consciousness he found a roomful of people visibly straining to unwrap the box. Balcer took it from the psychic's hands and unpacked it. "Revealed to our eyes," said Balcer "was a shiny metal box and inside it, carefully wrapped in cotton and white tissue, a mummy foot. Rather small, most likely female, brownish in color. In some places tendons were visible and toe bones as well as traces of the fabric bandage in which it had once been wrapped." Suddenly the room erupted in conversation. Balcer explained that he had known only that it was part of a mummy that a friend of a friend had recovered in Egypt around 1927 almost eight years earlier.
Ossowiecki had been accurate again on every point, but was so curious that he wished "once more to lift at least the corner of the mysterious veil which covered a happening thousands of years old." Another experiment with the mummy's foot was arranged for a little over a month later, March 18, 1935. Again, Balcer kept his careful record:
"Mr. Ossowiecki felt very good that evening. He took the box (unwrapped, of course) with the mummified foot and after just a few minutes crossed the border of normal seeing but did not seem removed from us. His face assumed the look of highest concentration and appeared inspired, as though illuminated by some inner light. I had never seen him look quite like this. I was under the impression that his face really emanated light of some kind.
"After a while he began to talk... .
"`I'm now entering this far, unknown world. Ah! This is so long ago. Thousands of years divide us. I see clearly this woman, her whole life. She is olive-skinned, young, pretty. She has a slightly hooked nose, a pleasant facial expression. She's dressed in a white ... translucent ... long garment. On her ankles and wrists she wears gold bracelets. Around the neck decorations of gold and silver. Hair ... plaited ... into small black braids under a high tiara culminating in a square shape. She is a daughter of a high dignitary ... as though a prince ... but not pharaoh. She lives in a huge stone palace. The courtyard of this palace is landscaped with trees and bushes. In the center there is a stone pool with a fountain. The princess has a husband. I can see him too. He is slender ... wears black sandals made as though from wood. His garments are white fabric.
He has no tiara on his head ... and braids fall down on both sides of his face. Precisely ... they are not ... braids, but a great many smaller braids. On his forehead a head band either soft or rigid … golden.
'She dies during childbirth ... in great suffering. The child died also. I see now ... they are taking her body out on a stretcher. The stretcher is gilded. They are carrying her to some house by the river. That's where embalming takes place. Ah! This is interesting. They are taking out the intestines ... taking the brain out, using some long implements ... through the nose. They rub the body with oils and continuously sprinkle it with some powder. Now I see the funeral. Many people. Some people dressed in gray-black garb are walking in rows of six. They jump every so often. The husband and father are not present at the funeral ... they do not walk behind the coffin. They remain at home ... they are kneeling on the floor with heads down, covered with a shroud.
"`I see an opening in a rock and a corridor that leads deep inside. Further there are steps leading down. At the end of the corridor there is a fair-sized chamber hewn out of the rock. That's where they place the coffin with the corpse. Nearby they arrange various objects of daily use ... and food ... on terra cotta plates. Rice, wine, berries, resins ... something else. All these things were brought in leather sacks.
"`I see a black urn. Something is being burned there. That's the entrails of the embalmed person. They are being burned here on the spot ... next to her. All the group around the urn pray. Husband and father are not here. They stayed at the house. All in the tomb now pray and cry. I see some women who are hired mourners. They weep. They wear long veils and black garments. Now everyone files out, their arms crossed on their chests. I see the entrance of the chamber walled over and again another wall erected at the turn of the corridor ... and yet a third one at the end ... near the exit. The exit is blocked with huge rocks and filled with soil.
"`All this is happening quite far from the big pyramid and the Sphinx ... near some mountain on which I observe carved bas-
reliefs....'
"With those words we interrupted the experiment," concluded Balcer. He had noticed that the "glow" he had seen on Ossowiecki's face at the beginning of the session had faded and the man seemed slumped in exhaustion as if caught and mesmerized by what he was seeing. It took more than fifteen minutes for the psychic to become fully and normally conscious, and then only after drinking a glass of wine. Even after he was again alert no one said very much for a while. It was obvious to everyone present, and particularly to Ossowiecki and Balcer, that they had touched something far beyond their ability to explore. To each observer, the experience, even though shared secondhand, was so immediate and profound that frivolous conversation was no more appropriate than it would have been in a cathedral—or a forest.
Ossowiecki, although interested in doing experiments about the past, knew virtually nothing about ancient history, let alone the epochs of prehistory; Balcer's position was much the same. It was decided that they needed to consult with a specialist, but neither man knew an archaeologist or ethnologist who was also interested in the psychic. The problem was shelved for the moment, however, since in prewar Warsaw those who could do so left for the country or to travel when the warm weather began. Social life ended sometime in March or early April, not to resume again until September. It was agreed between Ossowiecki and Balcer that they would try to find a prehistorian in the hope of making further experiments during the coming fall season.
As if in preparation for this, sometime during the spring or summer of 1935 Ossowiecki ended what had been his major business connection for almost fifteen years. As a result he was no longer compelled to travel large portions of the year as he had done since the 1920s. But this was only one of several seemingly unrelated events that, taken together, marked the end of an epoch in the psychic's life. Before the year was over his great friend Professor Richet would be dead in Paris at the age of eighty-five. The other parapsychologists who had been studying Ossowiecki since 1920 turned to other work, retired, or also died. Their research, which had involved classic tests to see whether his psychic talents were genuine, had established that they were, and so was finished. It was the end of another fifteen-year cycle and, with one or two minor exceptions, Ossowiecki would never again perform an experiment that did not have a practical purpose.
Secret Vaults of Time
S. A. Schwartz
