of the messages received, and there is always a choice. This fact sharpens the wits and develops more brain power, and anything which does this is practical.

We read in the New Testament that we have a celestial body as well as a terrestrial one, and it may be that psychics see the spiritual ones—fleshy inhabitants of the circumambient ether to whom the great leveller, death, will introduce us. Once I saw clairvoyantly the figure of a man holding a fencing rapier in his hand. This weapon he plunged repeatedly into the stomach of my sister. It looked like a murderous attack and it was necessary to repeat the pantomime for quite a while before I understood the meaning. My sister had had chronic indigestion and the pains were like the thrusts of a knife. The spirit recommended a remedy which was a successful cure.

Great mental agility is required in order correctly to translate and apply the psychic symbols. It is difficult to describe the abstract in terms of the concrete, and clairaudience and clairvoyance are not really hearing and seeing. They are more like extensions and intensifications of those faculties, in a field of activity beyond the scope of the so-called normal. A good comparison would be the head of a turtle, which projects to reconnoitre and is withdrawn at will.

Once, at the request of a friend, I described persons in France and told what I saw them doing at a given moment. This was verified three weeks later in New York City. It is amusing to psychics to see the most brilliant minds skirmish around to find some far-fetched reason for their performances. The truth is far simpler.

Clairaudience was more difficult to develop than clairvoyance and required a great deal more patience. Sometimes one word would come through and then there would be long intervals of waiting for the next one. The process is no more mysterious than when one thinks out any problem in life; for then it is necessary to concentrate upon it and exclude irrelevant thoughts from the mind. It is more arduous to do this, than it sounds, because the active consciousness is continually manufacturing chatter to monopolize the attention. Mystics call it “going into the silence.” I call it going into the subconsciousness. Others say “let me think.”

This compartment of the mind is plastic and receptive to outside, as well as inside, impressions, and it is there that psychic activity