alogy of a traveller
in a railway train is useful; if he could never leave the train nor alter
its pace he would probably consider the landscapes as necessarily
successive and be unable to conceive their co-existence * * * We perceive,
therefore, a possible fourth dimensional aspect about time, the
inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part of our present
limitations. And if we once grasp the idea that past and future may be
actually existing, we can recognize that they may have a controlling
influence on all present action, and the two together may constitute the
'higher plane' or totality of things after which, as it seems to me, we
are impelled to seek, in connection with the directing of form or
determinism, and the action of living being consciously directed to a
definite and preconceived end."

Sir Oliver's illustration is somewhat akin to that of a person who sees a
moving-picture show for the first time, and does not know how it is
produced. To him it looks as if the events of the pictured story actually
were developing and happening in time, whereas, in reality the whole
picture is existing at one time. Its past, present and future is already
pictured, and may be seen by one who knows the secret and how to look for
the past or future scene; while, to the ordinary observer, the scene
progresses in sequence, the present being followed by something else which
is at this moment "in the future," and therefore, unknowable. To the
senses of the ordinary observer only the present is in existence; while,
in fact, the "future" is equally truly in existence at the same time,
although not evident to the senses of the observer. Think over this a
little, and let the idea sink into your mind--it may help you to
understand something concerning the mystery of future-time clairvoyance,
prevision, or second-sight.

Time, you know, is far more relative than we generally conceive it. It is
a scientific fact that a person in the dream state may cover years of
time in a dream that occupies only a few seconds of time. Persons have
nodded and awakened immediately afterwards (as proved by others present in
the room), and yet in that moment's time they have dreamed of long
journeys to foreign lands, great campaigns of war, etc. Moreover, a loud
sound (a pistol shot, for instance) which has awakened a sleeping person,
has also set into effect a dream-state train of circumstances,
constituting a long dream-state story which, after