A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its ApplicationsSmith, W. Whately (Walter Whately)
Philosophy
A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications
Smith, W. Whately (Walter Whately)
Fourth dimension; Parapsychology
In advancing this explanation of the third form of clairvoyance, I do
not wish it to be thought that I attribute an objective origin to all
visions of objects which have no obviously physical reality.
Hallucination is often a _vera causa_ and indeed it is comparatively
seldom that we can eliminate it with certainty.
But I do not think it can legitimately be applied to all visions of
this class.
The point is of some interest and worthy of a moment's thought even
though it involves a digression from the main topic.
The essence of hallucination is that it should have a purely subjective
origin and be unfounded on objective reality.
If I were to look round and find my sofa occupied by three green
cassowaries playing nap I should, I think, be justified in assuming
that I was the victim of an hallucination having no foundation in
objective fact. It would, presumably, have arisen from a simultaneous
excitation of the memory centres associated with the game of nap,
cassowaries, the number three, and the sensation of greenness,
occasioned, more or less fortuitously, by over-work or alcoholic excess.
On the other hand if I were to see the figure of an old man with a
long white beard, one front tooth missing, shaggy eyebrows, black
velvet smoking jacket, gold watch and chain, and so forth and were
subsequently to find that such a person, answering the description in
every detail, and previously entirely unknown to me, had really once
lived, or was still living, then the view that this vision was the
result of pure hallucination, would be untenable.
The probabilities against any chance stimulation of memory centres
giving rise to precisely that combination of characteristics, are
immeasureably large.
In such cases--and they are by no means unknown--we must attribute some
degree of objectivity to the origin of the vision.
This is of importance in view of the tendency in some quarters to
dismiss all such visions as purely hallucinatory.
We shall see later that the problems connected with Prevision and
Postvision are also, if not completely explained, at least rendered
less utterly incomprehensible by the introduction of the higher space
hypothesis.
With the third class of clairvoyant phenomena is closely associated
that group of facts known as "Phantasms of the Living, of the Dying,
and of the Dead."
Certain aspects of the dream state, again, seem to be related to
clairvoyance at a distance and are conveniently dealt with here.
Let us follow up the idea of a four-dimensional vehicle and see what
light, if any, it throws on these questions.
Let us suppose that the four-dimensional vehicle becomes detached
from, and loses touch with, the three-dimensional physical body
during unconsciousness; or rather that unconsciousness is due to this
detachment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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