The following is an experiment in the transmission of thought which Dr. Maxwell tried with the medium:—
“I gave my hand to M. Meurice, to hold, and said to him—we had been talking, in a vague, general manner of the plurality of existences—‘Try and see how I died in my previous existence.’
“Unknown to the medium, I wrote down on paper the words:—Fall from a horse!
“M. Meurice answered: ‘I see your life, then you fade away into nothingness; you die from an accident; a carriage—no, a horse accident. I see you wearing a shield. You fall from your horse, he crushes you to death.’”
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The medium very often sees the same vision repeat itself in the crystal. This is the vision of a procession of individuals clothed in flowing robes; they follow a long narrow path, which loses itself in a tunnel, into which the procession passes. The vision never varies, save that at times after the procession has disappeared into the tunnel, the path seems to be strewn with the bones of skeletons.
This vision has also been seen, in the same crystal, by our medium’s youngest sister, a girl of twenty, who is absolutely ignorant of spiritistic phenomena. She attributed her vision to an optical illusion.
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It has been observed with M. Meurice that the last vision sometimes precedes veridical hallucinations.
This and other facts would lead one to think that very probably, for a medium, there is no test which can discriminate between falsidical and veridical hallucinations. The psychological process appears to be the same, viz. dramatisation and concrete images, instead of abstract concepts or ideas.