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

VI. OBSTACLES TO CLAIRVOYANCE

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The attitude of the would-be seer should not be too expectant or over-anxious about results. All will come in good time, and the more speedily if the conditions are carefully observed. It is useless to force the young plant in its growth. Take time, as Nature does. It is a great work and much patience may be needed. Nature is never in a hurry, and therefore she brings everything to perfection. The acorn becomes the sturdy oak only because Nature is content with small results, because she has the virtue of endurance. She is patient and careful in her beginnings, she nurses the young life with infinite care, and her works are wonderfully great and complete in their issues. Moreover, they endure. Whoever breathes slowest lives the longest.

This statement opens up a very important matter connected with all psychic phenomena, and one that deserves more than casual notice. It has been long known to the people of the East that there is an intimate connection between brain and lung action, and modern experiment has shown by means of the spirometer that the systole and diastole motion of the hemispheres of the brain coincide exactly with the respiration of the lungs. The brain as the organ of the mind registers every emotion with unerring precision. But so also do the lungs, as a few common observations will prove. Thus if a person is in deep thought the breathing will be found to be long and regular, but if the mind is agitated the breathing will be short and stertorous, while if fear affects the mind the breathing is momentarily suspended. A person never breathes from the base of the lung unless his mind is engrossed. Hard exercise demands deep breathing and is therefore helpful in producing good mental reactions. It is said that the great preacher De Witt Talmage used to shovel gravel from one side of his cellar to the other as a preliminary to his fine elocutional efforts. It is this obvious connection between respiration and mental processes which is at the base of the system of psycho-physical culture known as _Hatha Yoga_ in distinction from _Rāj Yoga_, which is concerned solely with mental and spiritual development. The two systems, which have of late years found frequent exposition in the New Thought school, are to be found in Patanjali's _Yoga sutrā_. Some reference to the synchronous action of lung and brain will also be found in Dr. Tafel's translation and exposition of Swedenborg's luminous work on _The Brain_. In this work the Swedish seer frankly refers his illumination regarding the functions of the brain to his faculty of introspective vision or second sight, and it is of interest to observe that all the more important discoveries in this department of physiology during the last two centuries are clearly anticipated by him. The scientific works of this great thinker are far too little known by the majority, who are apt to regard him only as a visionary and a religious teacher.

_Ad rem_. The vision is produced. The faculty of clairvoyance is an established fact of experience and has become more or less under the control of the mind. There will yet remain one or two difficulties connected with the visions. One is that of time measure, and another that of interpretation. The former is common to both orders of vision, the direct and the symbolic. The difficulty of interpretation is, of course, peculiar to the latter order of vision.

The sensing of time is perhaps the greatest difficulty encountered by the seer, and this factor is often the one that vitiates an otherwise perfect revelation. I have known cartomantes and diviners of all sorts to express their doubt as to the possibility of a correct measure of time. Yet it is a question that follows naturally upon a clear prediction--When?

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