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Second Sight: A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance by Sepharial

IV. PRELIMINARIES AND PRACTICE

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When the sitting is over it will be found useful to repair to another place and fully discuss the results obtained, the impressions and feelings of the seer during the seance, and matters which appear to have a bearing on the facts observed.

A person should not be disheartened if at the first few sittings nothing of any moment takes place, but should persevere with patience and self-control. Indeed, if we consider the fact that for hundreds of generations the psychic faculties latent in man have lain in absolute neglect, that perhaps the faculty of clear vision has not been brought into activity by any of our ancestors since remote ages, it should not be thought remarkable that so few find the faculty in them to be practically dormant. It should rather be a matter of surprise that the faculty is still with us, that it is not wholly irresponsive to the behests of the soul. While in the course of physical evolution many important functions have undergone remarkable changes, and organs, once active and useful, have become stunted, impotent, and in some cases extinct, yet on the other hand we see that seeds which have lain dormant in arid soil for hundreds of years can spring into leaf and flower under the influence of a suitable climate.

The vermiform appendix, so necessary to the bone eaters of a carnivorous age, has no part in the physical economy of a later and more highly-evolved generation. The pineal gland and the pituitary body are adjuncts of the brain whose functions have long been in latency. The _Anastatica hierochuntica_, commonly called the Rose of Jericho, is a wonderful example of functional latency. The plant will remain for ages rolled up like a ball of sun-dried heather, but if placed in water it will immediately open out and spread forth its nest of mossy green fronds, the transition from seeming death to life taking place in a few minutes. The hygrometric properties of the plant are certainly exceptional. They illustrate the responsiveness of certain natures to a particular order of stimulus, and in a sense they illustrate the functions of the human soul. The faculty of direct vision is like the latent life of the vegetable world. It waits only the conditions which favour its activity and development, and though for generations it may have lain dormant, yet in a few days or weeks it may attain the proportions of a beautiful flower, a thing of wonder and delight, gracing the Garden of the Soul.

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