The Making of Religion by Andrew Lang
page 115 of 453 (25%)
page 115 of 453 (25%)
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beginning by accident, like George Sand, when a child.
The hallucinations which appear to her eyes in ink, or crystal, are: 1. Revived memories 'arising thus, and thus only, from the subconscious strata;' '2. Objectivation of ideas or images--(a) consciously or (b) unconsciously--in the mind of the percipient; '3. Visions, possibly telepathic or clairvoyant, implying acquirement of knowledge by supernormal means.'[9] The examples given of the last class, the class which would be so useful to a priest or medicine-man asked to discover things lost, are of very slight interest.[10] Since Miss X drew attention to this subject, experiments have proved beyond doubt that a fair percentage of people, sane and healthy, can see vivid landscapes, and figures of persons in motion, in glass balls and other vehicles. This faculty Dr. Parish attributes to 'dissociation,' practically to drowsiness. But he speaks by conjecture, and without having witnessed experiments, as will be shown later. I now offer a series of experiments with a glass ball, coming under my own observation, in which knowledge was apparently acquired in no ordinary way. Of the absence of fraud I am personally convinced, not only by the characters of all concerned, but by the nature of the circumstances. That adaptive memory did not later alter the narratives, as originally told, I feel certain, because they were reported to me, when I was not present, within less than a week, precisely as they are now given, except in cases specially noted. |
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