POSSESSION

The temporary possession of a person’s body, or some member of that body, by an alien will, as exemplified in automatic writing and obsession.

It would doubtless amaze the scientifically orthodox to know how many people habitually and successfully practice the dubious art of automatic writing—­not mediums, so-called, but people of refinement and intelligence.  Although the messages received in this way may emanate from the subconscious mind of the performer, there is evidence to indicate that they come sometimes from an intelligence discarnate, or from a person remote from the recipient in space.

If such is indeed the case, if the will is extraneous, how does it possess itself of the nerves and muscles of the hand of the writer?  The Higher Space Hypothesis is of assistance here.  It is only necessary to remember that from the fourth dimension the interior of a solid is as much exposed as the interior of a plane figure is exposed from the region of the third dimension.  A four-dimensional being would experience no difficulty, under suitable conditions, in possessing itself of any part of the bodily mechanism of another.

The same would hold true in cases of possession and obsession; for if the bastion of the hand can thus be captured, so also may the citadel of the brain.  Certain familiar forms of hypnotism are not different from obsession, the hypnotizer using the brain and body of his subject as though they were his own.  All unconsciously to himself, he has called into play four-dimensional mechanics.  Many cases of so-called dual personality are more easily explicable as possession by an alien will than on the less credible hypothesis that the character, habits, and language of a person can change utterly in a moment of time.

CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE

Vision at a distance and the exercise of a superior power of sight.

Clairvoyance in space is of various kinds and degrees.  Sometimes it consists in the perception of super-physical phenomena—­the unfurling of a strange and wonderful land; and again it appears to be a higher power of ordinary vision, a kind of seeing to which the opacity of solids offers no impediment, or one involving spatial distances too great and too impeded for normal physical vision to be effective.

That clairvoyance which consists in the ability to perceive not alone the superficies of things as ordinary vision perceives them, but their interiors as well, is analogous to the power given by the X-ray, by means of which, on a fluorescent screen, a man may behold the beating of his own heart.  But, if the reports of trained clairvoyants are to be believed, there is this difference:  everything appears to them without the distortions due to perspective, objects being seen as though they were inside and not outside of the perceiving organ, or as though the observer were in the object perceived; or in all places at the same time.