Natural and Induced Clairvoyance
Natural and Induced ClairvoyanceINTRODUCTIONCHAPTER I. THE SCIENTIFIC POSITIONCHAPTER II. MATERIALS AND CONDITIONSCHAPTER III. THE FACULTY OF SEERSHIPCHAPTER IV. PRELIMINARIES AND PRACTICECHAPTER V. KINDS OF VISIONCHAPTER VI. OBSTACLES TO CLAIRVOYANCECHAPTER VII. SYMBOLISMCHAPTER VIII. ALLIED PSYCHIC PHASESCHAPTER IX. EXPERIENCE AND USECONCLUSION.Copyright
Natural and Induced Clairvoyance
Sepharial
INTRODUCTION
Few words will be necessary by way of preface to this book,
which is designed as an introduction to a little understood and
much misrepresented subject.I have not here written anything which is intended to
displace the observations of other authors on this subject, nor
will it be found that anything has been said subversive of the
conclusions arrived at by experimentalists who have essayed the
study of clairvoyant phenomena in a manner that is altogether
commendable, and who have sought to place the subject on a
demonstrable and scientific basis. I refer to the proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research.In the following pages I have endeavoured to indicate the
nature of the faculty of Second Sight or Clairvoyance, the means of
its development, the use of suitable media or agents for this
purpose, and the kind of results that may be expected to follow a
regulated effort in this direction. I have also sought to show that
the development of the psychic faculties may form an orderly step
in the process of human unfoldment and perfectibility.As far as the nature and scope of this little work will
allow, I have sought to treat the subject on a broad and general
basis rather than pursue more particular and possibly more
attractive scientific lines. What I have here said is the result of
a personal experience of some years in this and other forms of
psychic development and experimentation. My conclusions are given
for what they are worth, and I have no wish to persuade my readers
to my view of the nature and source of these abnormal phenomena.
The reader is at liberty to form his own theory in regard to them,
but such theory should be inclusive of all the known facts. The
theories depending on hypnotic suggestion may be dismissed as
inadequate. There appear to remain only the inspirational theory of
direct revelation and the theory of the world-soul enunciated by
the Occultists. I have elected in favour of the latter for reasons
which, I think, will be conspicuous to those who read these
pages.I should be the last to allow the study of psychism to usurp
the legitimate place in life of intellectual and spiritual
pursuits, and I look with abhorrence upon the flippant use made of
the psychic faculties by a certain class of pseudo-occultists who
serve up this kind of thing with their five o'clock tea. But I
regard an ordered psychism as a most valuable accessory to
intellectual and spiritual development and as filling a natural
place in the process of unfoldment between that intellectualism
that is grounded in the senses and that higher intelligence which
receives its light from within. From this view-point the following
pages are written, and will, I trust, prove helpful.
CHAPTER I. THE SCIENTIFIC POSITION
It would perhaps be premature to make any definite
pronouncement as to the scientific position in regard to the
psychic phenomenon known as "scrying," and certainly presumptuous
on my part to cite an authority from among the many who have
examined this subject, since all are not agreed upon the nature and
source of the observed phenomena. Their names are, moreover,
already identified with modern scientific research and theory, so
that to associate them with experimental psychology would be to
lend colour to the idea that modern science has recognized this
branch of knowledge. Nothing, perhaps, is further from the fact,
and while it cannot in any way be regarded as derogatory to the
highest scientist to be associated with others, of less scientific
attainment but of equal integrity, in this comparatively new field
of enquiry, it may lead to popular error to institute a connection.
It is still fresh in the mind how the Darwinian hypothesis was
utterly misconceived by the popular mind, the suggestion that man
was descended from the apes being generally quoted as a correct
expression of Darwin's theory, whereas he never suggested any such
thing, but that man and the apes had a common ancestor, which makes
of the ape rather a degenerate lemur than a human ancestor. Other
and more prevalent errors will occur to the reader, these being due
to the use of what is called "the evidence of the senses"; and of
all criteria the evidence of sensation is perhaps the most faulty.
Logical inference from deductive or inductive reasoning has often
enough been a good monitor to sense-perception, and has, moreover,
pioneered the man of science to correct knowledge on more than one
occasion. But as far as we know or can learn from the history of
human knowledge, our senses have been the chiefest source of error.
It is with considerable caution that the scientist employs the
evidence from sense alone, and in the study of experimental
psychology it is the sense which has first to be corrected, and
which, in fact, forms the great factor in the equation. A person
informs me that he can see a vision in the crystal ball before him,
and although I am in the same relation with the "field" as he, I
cannot see anything except accountable reflections. This fact does
not give any room for contradicting him or any right to infer that
it is all imagination. It is futile to say the vision does not
exist. If he sees it, it does exist so far as he is concerned.
There is no more a universal community of sensation than of
thought. When I am at work my own thought is more real than any
impression received through the sense organs. It is louder than the
babel of voices or the strains of instrumental music, and more
conspicuous than any object upon which the eye may fall. These
external impressions are admitted or shut out at will. I then know
that my thought is as real as my senses, that the images of thought
are as perceptible as those exterior to it and in every way as
objective and real. The thought-form has this advantage, however,
that it can be given a durable or a temporary existence, and can be
taken about with me without being liable to impost as "excess
luggage." In the matter of evidence in psychological questions,
therefore, sense perceptions are only second-rate criteria and
ought to be received with caution.Almost all persons dream, and while dreaming they see and
hear, touch and taste, without questioning for a moment the reality
of these experiences. The dreaming person loses sight of the fact
that he is in a bedroom of a particular house, that he has certain
relations with others sleeping in the same house. He loses sight of
the fact that his name is, let us say, Henry, and that he is famous
for the manufacture of a particular brand of soap or cheese. For
him, and as long as it lasts, the dream is the one reality. Now the
question of the philosopher has always been: which is the true
dream, the sleeping dream or the waking dream? The fact that the
one is continuous of itself while the other is not, and that we
always fall into a new dream but always wake to the same reality,
has given a permanent value to the waking or external life, and an
equally fictitious one to the interior or dreaming life. But what
if the dream life became more or less permanent to the exclusion of
all other memories and sensations? We should then get a case of
insanity in which hallucination would be symptomic. (The dream
state is more or less permanent with certain poetical temperaments,
and if there is any insanity attaching to it at all, it consists in
the inability to react.) Imagination, deep thought and grief are as
much anaesthetic as chloroform. But the closing of the external
channels of sensation is usually the signal for the opening of the
psychic, and from all the evidence it would seem that the psychic
sense is more extensive, acuter and in every way more dependable
than the physical. I never yet have met the man or woman whose
impaired eyesight required that he or she should use glasses in
order to see while asleep. That they do see is common experience,
and that they see farther, and therefore better, with the psychic
sense than with the physical has been often proved. Emanuel
Swedenborg saw a fire in Stockholm when he was resident in England
and gave evidence of it before the vision was confirmed by news
from Sweden. A lady of my acquaintance saw and described a fire
taking place at a country seat about 150 miles away, the incident
being true to the minutest details, many of which were exceptional
and in a single instance tragic. The psychic sense is younger than
the physical, as the soul is younger than the body, and its faculty
continues unimpaired long after old age and disease have made havoc
of the earthly vestment. The soul is younger at a thousand years
than the body is at sixty. Let it be admitted upon evidence that
there are two sorts of sense perception, the physical and the
psychical, and that in some persons the latter is as much in
evidence as the former. We have to enquire then what relations the
crystal or other medium has to the development and exercise of the
clairvoyant faculty. We know comparatively little about atomic
structure in relation to nervous organism. The atomicity of certain
chemical bodies does not inform us as to why one should be a deadly
poison and another perfectly innocuous. We regard different bodies
as congeries of atoms, but it is a singular fact that of two bodies
containing exactly the same elements in the same proportions the
one is poisonous and the other harmless. The only difference
between them is the atomic arrangement.The atomic theory refers all bodies to one homogeneous basic
substance, which has been termed protyle (proto-hyle), from which,
by means of a process loosely defined as differentiation, all the
elements are derived. These elements are the result of atomic
arrangement. The atoms have various vibrations, the extent of which
is called the mean free path of vibration; greatest in hydrogen and
least in the densest element. All matter is indestructible, but at
the same time convertible, and these facts, together with the
absolute association of matter and force, lead to the conclusion
that every change of matter implies a change of force. Matter,
therefore, is ever living and active, and there is no such thing as
dead matter anywhere. The hylo-idealists have therefore regarded
all matter as but the ultimate expression of spirit, and primarily
of a spiritual origin.