Coming nearer home, we hear of the mysterious visions at the Knock, and at Lourdes. Miraculous appearances of the Virgin and winged angels, to cheer the hearts of the faithful, and to cause the heads of the scornful to rejoice in sceptical derision. Then we have all the vagaries produced by the high nervous tension of modern revivalism, in which the visions seen are but a transformation of church and chapel dogmas into objective realities. These illusionary visions—mistaken for clairvoyance—possess less reality than the delusive fancies of the sensitive in the state of hypnosis.
Clairvoyance will be governed by its own spiritual laws, just as sight is affected or retarded by physical conditions. What these spiritual laws are we can only surmise, but this we may safely conjecture—viz., that soul-sight is not trammelled or limited by the natural laws which govern physical optics. Clairvoyance and physical vision are absolutely distinct, and possess little in common.
To illustrate a new subject, it is permissible to draw upon the old and the well-known. So I venture to illustrate clairvoyance by certain facts in connection with ordinary human vision. Although some children see better than others, the power to see, with the ability to understand the relative positions and uses of the things seen, is a matter of development. In psychic vision, we also see growth or development, with increasing power to use and understand the faculty. Some children are blind from birth, and others, seeing, lose the power of sight. Many are blind, although they have physical sight, they see not with the educated eye. Many, again, have greater powers of sight than they are aware of. As so it is with psychic vision.
What is true of the physical is also true of the psychic. From the first glimmerings, to the possession of well-defined sight, a period of growth and time elapses. From the first incoherent cry of infancy to well defined and intelligent speech of manhood, we notice the same agencies at work. Not only is clairvoyant vision generally imperfect at first, but the psychic’s powers of description are also at fault. St. Paul could not give utterance to what he saw, when caught up to the third heavens. His knowledge of things and powers of speech failed him to describe the startling, the new, and the unutterable. He had a sudden revelation of the state of things in a sphere which had no counterparts in his previous experience, in this—his known—world. Hence, although he knew of his change of state, he could give no lawful or intelligible expression to his thoughts.
Between the first incongruous utterances, and apparent fantastic blunderings, and the more mature period in which “things spiritual” can be suitably described in our language, to our right sense of things, or comprehension, a period of development and education must elapse. It is true some clairvoyants develop much more readily than others.
In the entrancement of the mesmeric and psychic states, there is a lack of external consciousness. The soul is so far liberated from the body as to act independently of the ordinary sensuous conditions of the body, and sees by the perception and light of the inner or spiritual world, as distinct from the perception and light of this external or physical world. Elevated, or rather, liberated into this new condition, the clairvoyant loses connection with the thrums and threads of the physical organism, and is unable, or forgets for a time, how to speak of things as they are, or as they would appear to the physical vision of another. It is not surprising that in the earlier stages of clairvoyant development, and consequent transfer of ordinary consciousness and sensuous perception to that of spiritual consciousness and perception, the language of the clairvoyant should appear peculiar, incongruous, and “wanting,” according to our ideas of clearness and precision.
One important lesson may be learned from this—viz., the operator should never force results, or strive to develop psychic perception by short cuts. Time must be allowed to the sensitive, for training and experience, and the development of self-confidence and expression.
Clairvoyance is not a common possession. Nevertheless, I believe there are many persons who possess the faculty unknown to themselves. By following out patiently, for a time, the requisite directions, the possession of this invaluable psychic gift might be discovered by many who now appear totally devoid of any clairvoyant indications. Its cultivation is possible and, in many ways, desirable.
“The higher attainment,” says Dr. John Hamlin Davey, “of occult knowledge and power, the development of intuition, the psychometric sense, clairvoyant vision, inner hearing, etc., etc., thus reached, so open the avenues to a higher education, and enlarge the boundaries of human consciousness and activity, as to fairly dwarf into insignificance the achievements of external science.”
Clairvoyance is as old as mankind, but the exhibition of clairvoyance, induced by mesmeric processes, was first announced by Puysegeur, a favourite pupil of Mesmer, in 1784. Since that time to the present not only have remarkable cases of clairvoyance cropped up, but there have been few mesmerists of any experience who have not had numerous cases under observation. Clairvoyance converted Dr. John Elliotson, F.R.S., one of the most scientific of British physicians, from extreme materialistic views to that of belief in soul and immortality. The same may be said of the late Dr. Ashburner, who was one of the Queen’s physicians. Dr. Georget, author of “Physiology of the Nervous System,”—who was at one time opposed to a belief in the existence of a transcendental state in man,—found upon examination of the facts and incidents of artificial somnambulism, that his materialism must go. In his last will and testament, referring to the above-mentioned work, he says:—“This work had scarcely appeared, when renewed meditations on a very extraordinary phenomenon, somnambulism, no longer permitted me to entertain doubts of the existence within us, and external to us, of an intelligent principle, altogether different from material existences; in a word, of the soul and God. With respect to this I have a profound conviction, founded upon facts which I believe to be incontestable.” Dr. Georget directed this change of opinion should have full publicity after his death.