Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual faculty comes into operation, and sets them en rapport with their client's subconscious mentality. This becoming objective to them, those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects' character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind, being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations of The Natural, in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that which Is-to-be already Has Been.
"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are (when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which, owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become objective to them.
It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by the Supra or the Subconsciousness, that apparitions and telepathic impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices."
Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives," which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual "spirit" of the murdered.
It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who—perhaps, for a fee—should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant nonsense.
On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief period after death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to one in close sympathy with it.
VIII
In an article by me, "Is Man an Electrical Organism?" which appeared in The Nineteenth Century, July, 1914, I showed—on the evidence of careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert—that the two sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different electrical potential. The active, right side is positively electrified, while the passive, left side is negatively electrified.
Mental Telepathy and Telæsthesia prove, surely, that brain and nerve-currents are electrical—one brain-hemisphere operating as transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs one Law only to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ two laws for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?
The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.