A case again of a somewhat different type is the sudden waking vision of Mr. Gottschalk,[118] who sees in a circle of light the chalked hands and ruffled wrists of Mr. Courtenay Thorpe—a well-known actor—who was opening a letter of Mr. Gottschalk's in that costume at the time. Trivial in itself, this incident illustrates an interesting class of cases, where a picture very much like a crystal-vision suddenly appears on a wall or even in the air with no apparent background.
I know one or two persons who have had in their lives one single round or oval hallucinatory picture of this kind, of which no interpretation was apparent,—a curious indication of some subliminal predisposition towards this somewhat elaborate form of message.
Somewhat like Mr. Gottschalk's projection of his picture upon a background of dark air is the experience of Mrs. Taunton.[119] In this case the phantasm was perfectly external; yet it certainly did not hold to the real objects around the same relation as a figure of flesh and blood would have held; it was in a peculiar way transparent. Gurney regards this transparency as indicating imperfect externalisation of the hallucinatory image.
My own phrase, "imperfect co-ordination of inner with outward vision," comes to much the same thing, and seems specially applicable to Mrs. Taunton's words: "The appearance was not transparent or filmy, but perfectly solid-looking; and yet I could somehow see the orchestra, not through, but behind it." There are a few cases where the percipient seems to see a hallucinatory figure behind him, out of the range of optical vision.[120] There is of course no reason why this should not be so,—even if a part of space external to the percipient's brain should be actually affected.
Mr. Searle's case also is very interesting.[121] Here Mrs. Searle faints when visiting a house a few miles from Mr. Searle's chambers in the Temple. At or about the same time, he sees as though in a looking-glass, upon a window opposite him, his wife's head and face, white and bloodless.
Gurney suggests that this was a transference from Mrs. Searle's mind simply of "the idea of fainting," which then worked itself out into perception in an appropriate fashion.
Was it thus? Or did Mr. Searle in the Temple see with inner vision his wife's head as she lay back faint and pallid in Gloucester Gardens? Our nearest analogy here is plainly crystal-vision; and crystal-visions, as we have observed, point both ways. Sometimes the picture in the crystal is conspicuously symbolical; sometimes it seems a transcript of an actual distant scene.
There are two further problems which occur as we deal with each class of cases in turn,—the problem of time-relations and the problem of spirit-agency. Can an incident be said to be seen clairvoyantly if it is seen some hours after it occurred? Ought we to say that a scene is clairvoyantly visited, or that it is spiritually shown, if it represents a still chamber of death,[122] where no emotion is any longer stirring; but to which the freed spirit might desire to attract the friend's attention and sympathy?
Such problems cannot at present be solved; nor, as I have said, can any one class of these psychical interchanges be clearly demarcated from other classes. Recognising this, we must explain the central characteristics of each group in turn, and show at what points that group appears to merge into the next.
And now we come to that class of cases where B invades A, and A perceives the invasion; but B retains no memory of it in supraliminal life. From one point of view, as will be seen, this is just the reverse of the class last discussed—where the invader remembered an invasion which the invaded person (when there was one) did not perceive.