Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/307

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Messages Through Trance
287

his own impressions as if in full possession of his waking faculties. Some of the telepathic impressions cited in previous chapters appear to have been received when the percipient was in a reverie of this character.[1] Crystal visions, it is probable, generally imply some lapse from normal wakefulness. Indeed, as already said, some writers are of opinion that any subjective vision, whether or not attaining to the proportion of an actual hallucination, involves a greater or less degree of dissociation of consciousness. In case No. 50, Chapter X., the description would certainly imply marked divergence from the normal state; but as the experience recorded by Miss Whiting took place when she was in bed, after, as she supposes, she had been awakened from sleep, we should perhaps hardly be justified in regarding it as other than a dream. In the following case we have an example of self-induced reverie. The narrator is a member of the Society for Psychical Research who has long studied psychical phenomena, and is well known as an accurate and impartial investigator. He has for some years made a careful study of his own mental processes; and, for the purpose of receiving telepathic impressions, he has cultivated with some success a passive attitude which he has found favourable to their reception, whilst still permitting him to exercise his powers of observation and judgment. The following is one of many apparently veridical impressions in his experience.

  1. See. e. g., No. 15, Chapter III.