Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter V visions of the dead after considering these out-of-the-body experiences, and assuming for the moment that they represent something real, it is natural to suppose that death is the same thing, save that the withdrawal becomes permanent. Thus we no longer have the testimony of the one who has had the experience. He does not return to the body to tell the tale. But may it not be that someone left on this side, happening to have the "sixth sense," or whatever it is that is required, may see the departed spirit, or its spiritual body, or astral vehicle, or whatever we like to call it, as the returning experient saw his own in the first-hand cases? Such visions are fairly common. I will quote a few, first discussing shortly the question of terminology. There is no completely satisfactory word for the kind of phenomena which we now come to. "Visions" will do for some of them, but they are not limited to things seen; sometimes they are things heard. "Sensory Automatisms" prejudges the question, involving the assumption that the phenomena are self-produced. "Hallucination" is almost equally objectionable, for to most people it implies subjectivity. Some attempt has been made to remove this impression, and, as used by some S.P.R. workers, it is non-committal; but Gurney's definition supports the popular view, for he calls a hallucination a "percept which lacks, but which can only by distinct reflection be recognized as lacking, the objective basis which it suggests." But that is just the point. Some hallucinations, though lacking a basis material enough to impress other people's senses, do undoubtedly point to an objective basis of some sort, as Myers himself thought. They are not entirely subjective. Yet it is not always possible to...