o birth and extending beyond death. He
calls it the subjective or Spiritual World.

The realm of his consciousness is related to it, as the body is related to
the physical plane and the things of sense and time. His consciousness
seems _aware_ of both planes or both worlds, though ignorant of the real
nature and meaning of both, and capable of interpreting neither
correctly.

Man feels his way through the life on the outer plane guided by his
experience of weight, measure, distance, resistance, and the like.

The other world--the inner, or subjective--seems distant, evasive, and
unreal, and in contemplating it he is filled with uncertainty, dread,
fear, and superstition.

Our friends die and disappear; we miss them, and mourn for them. Where are
they? What will become of us when we die? Shall we ever meet them again?

Passing by religion and revelation, as we are dealing with facts and
phenomena in the natural life of man, rather than with creeds and dogmas
that undertake to cut the "Gordian Knot," these questions stare everyone
in the face, and in every age man has tried to solve them by actual
knowledge.

Belief in ghosts, angels and demons is practically universal; and just
here comes in the whole range of psychical phenomena, facts and fantasies,
illusions, hallucinations and delusions, rational volition, reason
dethroned, and the Will in Subjection, already referred to.

As individual experiences, subjective or objective, all are real. The fear
incited by illusions and hallucination, or by "seeing a ghost," regardless
of the fact of its actual existence, is as real to the individual as that
of meeting a serpent in the grass, or a tiger in the jungle.

Soothsayers, diviners, prophets, mediums, conjurers, and seers
consequently have been found in every age and among every people.
Ignorance, fear, dread of death, desire to know, have always provided them
with patrons, followers, or disciples.

They have often reaped a rich harvest, and not unfrequently dominated a
race or a people, as the Papacy does to-day.

Where they have failed to create belief, they have often triumphed through
fear and anathema, and often supplemented these weapons by persecution,
imprisonment, torture, and death, and so held sway.

Revelation begs the question; dogma forces the conclusion; and both
dominate the soul without convincing and without _knowledge_.

CHAPTER III

MEDIUMSHIP, SEERSHIP, AND HYPNOSIS

Into this a