ains altogether to that
higher plane, yet flashes or reflections of it frequently show
themselves to purely astral sight, more especially among simple-minded
people who live under suitable conditions--what is called
"second-sight" among the Highlanders of Scotland being a well-known
example.

Another fact which must not be forgotten is that any intelligent
inhabitant of the astral plane is not only able to perceive these
etheric vibrations, but can also--if he has learnt how it is
done--adapt them to his own ends or himself set them in motion.

[Sidenote: Astral Forces.]

[Sidenote: Etheric Currents.]

[Sidenote: Etheric Pressure.]

[Sidenote: Latent Energy.]

[Sidenote: Sympathetic Vibration.]

It will be readily understood that superphysical forces and the methods of
managing them are not subjects about which much can be written for
publication at present, though there is reason to suppose that it may not
be very long before at any rate some applications of one or two of them
come to be known to the world at large: but it may perhaps be possible,
without transgressing the limits of the permissible, to give so much of an
idea of them as shall be sufficient to show in outline how certain
phenomena are performed. All who have much experience of spiritualistic
_seances_ at which physical results are produced must at one time or
another have seen evidence of the employment of practically resistless
force in, for example, the instantaneous movement of enormous weights, and
so on; and if of a scientific turn of mind, they may perhaps have wondered
whence this force was obtained, and what was the leverage employed. As
usual in connection with astral phenomena, there are several ways in which
such work may have been done, but it will be enough for the moment to hint
at four. First, there are great etheric currents constantly sweeping over
the surface of the earth from pole to pole in volume which makes their
power as irresistible as that of the rising tide, and there are methods by
which this stupendous force may be safely utilized, though unskilful
attempts to control it would be fraught with frightful danger. Secondly,
there is what can best be described as an etheric pressure, somewhat
corresponding to, though immensely greater than, the atmospheric pressure.
In ordinary life we are as little conscious of one of these pressures as we
are of the other, but nevertheless they both exist, and if science were
able to ex