gainst attempting to develop
their psychic powers by unnatural and harmful practices, such as
self-hypnotism, self-stupefication, etc., gives the following excellent
advice concerning the normal development of clairvoyant and other high
psychic powers and faculties: "There is one practice which if adopted
carefully and reverently can do no harm to any human being, yet from
which a very pure type of clairvoyance has sometimes been developed--and
that is the practice of Meditation. Let a man choose a certain time
every day--a time when he can rely upon being quiet and undisturbed,
though preferably in the daytime rather than at night--and set himself
at that time to keep his mind for a few minutes entirely free from all
earthly thoughts of any kind whatsoever; and, when that is achieved, to
direct the whole force of his being towards the highest ideal he happens
to know. He will find that to gain perfect control of thought is
enormously more difficult than he supposes, but when he attains it this
cannot but be in every way more beneficial to him, and as he grows more
and more able to elevate and concentrate his thoughts, he may gradually
find that new worlds are opening before his sight. As a preliminary
training towards the satisfactory achievement of such meditation, he
will find it desirable to make a practice of concentration in the
affairs of daily life--even in the smallest of them. If he writes a
letter, let him think of nothing else but that letter until it is
finished; if he reads a book, let him see to it that his thought is
never allowed to wander away from his author's meaning. He must learn to
hold his mind in check, and to be master of that also, as well as of his
lower passions; he must patiently labor to acquire absolute control of
his thoughts, so that he will always know exactly what he is thinking
about, and why--so that he can use his mind, and turn it or hold it
still, as a practiced swordsman turns his weapon where he will."

PART V

CLAIRVOYANCE: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

As we have said in the preceding chapter, in our consideration of the
general subject of Clairvoyance, there is possible a general
classification of clairvoyant phenomena according to general
distinctions, as follows: (1) PRESENT CLAIRVOYANCE, in which the objects
perceived by the clairvoyant are present in time and in space, although
invisible to normal sight; (2) SPACE CLAIRVOYANCE, in which the
clairvoyant vision incl