Part 8 (2/2)

Indeed, this power of subconscious perception is of itself sufficient to explain enuine instances of clairvoyance There is obviously no need to go beyond it to account for such a clairvoyant drea, reported by a lady who has declined to allow her nao I was invited to visit a friend who lived at a large and beautiful country seat on the Hudson Shortly after uests, to rounds We walked for an hour or hly explored the place Upon old cuff-stud, which I valued for association's sake I merely remembered that I wore it e started out, and did not think of or notice it again untilAs it was quite dark, it seemed useless to search for it, especially as it was the season of auturound was covered with dead leaves

”That night I drea to a wall, and with a pile of dead leaves at its base Underneath the leaves, inthe previous afternoon if they re any such wall and vine, as I did not They replied that they could not recall anything answering the description I did not tell them why I asked, as I felt so, I rounds alone I walked hither and thither, and, after a long time, I suddenly came upon the wall and vine exactly as they looked in htest recollection of seeing the by the heaped up, as inrather uncomfortable and decidedly silly, and pushed theleaold struck my eye, and there lay the stud, exactly as in s of the American Society for Psychical Research_, vol i, pp 361-362

Akin to this is an exceptionally interesting case that was reported to e at Greeley, Colorado Her father, it appears, had sent her a check, which for a day or two she delayed cashi+ng Then, being without money, she looked for it in the place where she supposed she had put it, but, to her dish search of her rooht, and, as it was not a personal check of her father's, she was greatly worried, thinking that it hts later she had a curious drea in front of a bookcase in the college library On a certain shelf were five books, one bound in blue, another in yellow, and between the She took down one of the white-covered volumes, opened it idly, and in theshe aith no memory of the dream, nor did she recall it when, later in the day, she visited the college library and ca of books It recurred to her only when she glanced into one of the white-covered volu rather ”foolish,”

and also not a little apprehensive, she took down a second voluh, was thecheck!

She then remembered that the book in which it was found had been in her room for some hours the day she received her father's letter What happened, I have no doubt, was that she absentmindedly slipped the check into the book, and then, so far as her upper consciousness was concerned, forgot all about it But subconsciously she would remember and subconsciously would be ree library, she happened to see the sae of seeing it That night, in sleep, hercheck, this tiood purpose

Very si, who got it froentleman had sat up late to write letters, and about half-past twelve went out to post thee a the day He searched everywhere in vain, went to bed, and soon fell asleep Then he drea not far froh it was not yet daylight, he got up, dressed, walked out of the house, and found the check at the spot indicated by his drea in Sullivan County, New York, lost a gold ring given hi in the sand beneath a swing, in which he had been sitting in the afternoon It was actually there, as he ascertained by looking next day Similarly, a clerk in a customs house recovered a valuable document, the loss of which would have cost hiyman, the Reverend W F Brand, of E-place of a sum of money which, six months before, she had put away at her husband's request, but had afterward accidentally slipped into a bundle of shawls

Decidedly, we not only see more than we are aware of, but we also reer tis reat importance to the student of clairvoyance and other psychical problems, and also, as will appear in a later chapter, of trenificance in affairs of everyday life The tenacity of otten It ion of the mind, whence, days and months and even years afterward, it may be recalled Of this we have incontrovertible proof in the pheno, a species of clairvoyance in which, by gazing into a crystal or a glass of water, or any s surface, it is sometimes possible to perceive hallucinatory pictures of people and places situated far beyond the gazer's nor events occurring at the moment they are seen in the crystal

Occultists, as will readily be understood, set great store by crystal-gazing, finding in it positive proof of spirit action But again it is unnecessary, even in the most extraordinary instances recorded, to adopt any other explanatory hypothesis than that of telepathy, and in most cases the source of the visions can be traced directly to latent azer's own mind

This has been beautifully demonstrated by Miss Goodrich-Freer, a lady who developed the faculty of crystal-gazing for the express purpose of studying and analyzing its hallucinatory iree ofpictures in the crystal, but fortunately for the cause of scientific progress, Miss Goodrich-Freer was eminently successful

With the aid of her crystal, Miss Goodrich-Freer has frequently recalled dates and other inforotten and wished to remember; and on at least one occasion, under exceptionally peculiar circumstances, she was enabled to supply an address which was of no special interest to her, but was of special interest to a relative Here is her own account of the episode:[21]

[21] In the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol viii, p 489

”A relative ofone day with a caller in the roo that they were _farther_, I paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared positively that I did not hear a word Next day I saw in a polishedHill' I had no idea whose this address ht be; but some days later my relative reton She told me her address the other day, but I did not write it down' It occurred to me to ask: 'Was it, 1, Earl's Square?' And this turned out to be the case”

On another occasion, she says in the long report she has made on the subject to the Society for Psychical Research, she saw in the crystal the picture of a dark-colored wall, covered hite jessah the streets of London, and she thought that perhaps the crystal ih this see seen such a wall, and because jessamine-covered walls are by no means common in London streets But the next day she retraced her steps, and presently caht of it bringing the immediate recollection that at the aged in absorbing conversation with a friend, and her attention holly preoccupied The fact, however, of its reproduction in the crystal made it evident that, by the subtle power of subconscious perception she had obtained a perfect e of it

Similarly, while busied one day with household accounts, she opened the drawer of her writing table to get her bank-book, and her hand caestion of a change in occupation, she took it up, and began to gaze into it But, she says:

”Figures were still upper more attractive to showthis as probably the nu of the figures hich I had been occupied, I laid aside the crystal and took up my bank-book, which I certainly had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the nuures, I should, without doubt, have failed, and could not even have guessed at the nuure”

It is not surprising to find Miss Goodrich-Freer adding:

”Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb 'to forget' in all its moods and tenses”

Still it is possible that in the act of opening the drawer, she caught a gli it, of the nuh, in her experience and in the experience of other crystal-gazers, proving absolutely that latentback even to childhoodfrom hallucinations experienced without the aid of a crystal A ”psychic” hom Professor Hyslop has often experimented, and whose home is in Brooklyn, used to have a recurrent visual hallucination of a bright blue sky overhead, a garden with a high fence, and a peculiar chain puarden, situated at the back of the house

Soirlhood home in Ohio, where she met a lady who invited her to tea After tea they went into the garden, and there, to her ah fence and the chain pump of her hallucination She felt quite sure that she had never been in the place until that day, and it looked very iven a supernatural revelation of it But theher ht there was any possibility she could have visited that particular house and garden in her younger days