SUBJECTIVE CLAIRVOYANCE
is that phase which enables the sensitive to perceive things and ideas on the spiritual or subjective plane. The late Rev. Stainton Moses, well known in literary circles as “M.A., Oxon,” once asked the following pertinent questions:—“Is there conceivably a mass of life all round us of which most of us have no cognisance? One gifted lady I know sees clairvoyantly the spirit-life of all organised things, of a tree or plant for example. I have heard her describe what her interior faculties perceive. Is it a fact that spirit, underlying everything, can be so perceived by the awakened faculties?” I should say yes. If this lady’s clairvoyance has been of a high order in other respects—why not in this? This type of psychic vision is of the subjective order.
There are necessarily an infinite variety of phases, pure and mixed, which the investigator will meet in practice. These phases may be called far, such as seeing objects, etc., at a distance—prevoyance, predicting events; retrovoyance, reading the past; introvoyance, seeing internally, or examining bodies, as in disease; external introvoyance, seeing into lockets, packets, letters, safes, and discovering hidden, known or forgotten, or lost objects. Lastly, there is pseudo-clairvoyance. For one case of direct there are hundreds of well authenticated cases of indirect clairvoyance, and again for one of the latter there are thousands of pseudo-clairvoyance, which are the outcome of states similar to hypnosis, and are nothing more than an incongruous medley of suggested ideas and fancies. Thus a strong and positive willed person can impinge his ideas through the thought-atmosphere of the sensitive and distort or deflect the psychic vision, and render abortive any attempts to get beyond the circle of the dominating influence. Again, the sensitive may enter a realm of fancy—a veritable dreamland of coherent and incoherent ideation, either the product of the sensitive’s own condition, or of suggestion—accidental, spontaneous, and determined—in the sensitive’s surroundings. Of course any classification of the numerous phases of clairvoyance must be purely arbitrary.