part in physical events or conversations at a distance,

and to show himself to an absent friend at will.
Again, he has the additional power of being able to hunt about for what he wants. By means of the varieties of clairvoyance previously described, for all practical purposes he could find a person or a place only when he was already acquainted with it, or when he was put en rapport with it by touching something physically connected with it, as in psy- chometry. It is true that by the third method a cer- tain amount of motion is possible, but the process is a tedious one except for quite short distances.
By the use of the astral body, however, a man can move about quite freely and rapidly in any direction, and can (for example) find without difficulty any place pointed out upon a map, without either any previous knowledge of the spot or any object to establish a connection with it. He can also readily rise high into the air so as to gain a bird-eye view of the country which he is examining, so as to ob- serve its extent, the contour of its coast-line, or its general character. Indeed, in every way his power and freedom are far greater when he uses this method than they have been in any of the previous cases.
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A good example of the full possession of this power is given, on the authority of the German writer Jung Stilling, by Mrs. Crowe in The Night Side of Nature (p. 127). The story is related of a seer who is stated to have resided in the neighborhood of Phil- adelphia, in America. His habits were retired, and he spoke little ; he was grave, benevolent and pious, and nothing was known against his character, except that he had the reputation of possessing some secrets that were considered not altogether lawful. Many extraordinary stories were told of him, and amongst the rest the following: —
"The wife of a ship captain (whose husband was on a voyage to Europe and Africa, and from whom she had been long without tidings), being over- whelmed with anxiety for his safety, was induced to address herself to this person. Having listened to her story he begged her to excuse him for a while, when he would bring her the intelligence she re- quired. He then passed into an inner room and she sat herself down to wait; but his absence continuing longer than she expected, she became impatient, thinking he had forgotten her, and softly approach- ing the door she peeped through some aperture, and to her surprise beheld him lying on a sofa as motion- less as if he were dead. She of course did not think it advisable to disturb him, but waited his return, when he told her that her husband had not been able to write to her for such and such reasons, but that he was then in a coffee-house in London and would very shortly be home again.
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"Accordingly he arrived, and as the lady learnt from him that the causes of his unusual silence had been precisely those alleged by the man, she felt extremely desirious of ascertaining the truth of the rest of the information. In this she was gratified, for he no sooner set his eyes on the magician than he said that he had seen him before on a certain day in a coffee-house in London, and that he told him that his wife was extremely uneasy about him, and that he, the captain, had thereon mentioned how he had been prevented writing, adding that he was on the eve of embarking for America, He had then lost sight of the stranger amongst the throng, and knew nothing more about him."
We have of course no means now of knowing what evidence Jung Stilling had of the truth of this story, though he declares himself to have been quite sat- isfied with the authority on which he relates it; but so many similar things have happened that there is no reason to doubt its accuracy. The seer, however, must either have developed his faculty for himself or learnt it in some school other than that from which most of our Theosophical information is derived; for in our case there is a well-understood regulation ex- pressly forbidding the pupils from giving any mani- festation of such power which can be definitely proved at both ends in that way, and so constitute what is called "a phenomena. " That this regula- tion is emphatically a wise one is proved to all who know anything of the history of our Society by the
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disastrous results which followed from a very slight temporary relaxation of it.
I have given some quite modern cases almost exactly parallel to the above in my little book on Invisible Helpers. An instance of a lady well-known to myself, who frequently thus appears to friends at a distance, is given by Mr. Stead in Real Ghost Stories (p. 27) ; and Mr. Andrew Lang gives in his Dreams and Ghosts (p. 89), an account of how Mr. Cleave, then at Portsmouth, appeared intentionally on two occasions to a young lady in London, and alarmed her considerably. There is any amount of evidence to be had on the subject by any one who cares to study it seriously.
This paying of intentional astral visits seems very often to become possible when the principles are loosened at the approach of death for people who were unable to perform such a feat at any other time. There are even more examples of this class than of the other; I epitomize a good one given by Mr. Andrew Lang on p. 100 of the book last cited — one of which he himself says, "Not many stories have such good evidence in their favor."
"Mary, wife of John Goffe of Rochester, being afflicted with a long illness, removed to her father's house at West Mailing, about nine miles from her own.
"The day before her death she grew very im- patiently desirous to see her two children, whom she had left at home to the care of a nurse. She was too ill to be moved, and between one and two o'clock in
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the morning she fell into a trance. One widow Turner, who watched with her that night, says that her eyes were open and fixed, and her jaw fallen. Mrs. Turner put her hand upon her mouth, but could perceive no breath. She thought her to be in a fit, and doubted whether she were dead or alive.
"The next morning the dying woman told her mother that she had been at home with her children, saying, 'I was with them last night when I was asleep.'
"The nurse at Rochester, widow Alexander by name, affirms that a little before two o'clock that morning she saw the likeness of the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay in a bed by itself), the door being left open, and stood by her bedside for about a quarter of an hour ; the younger child was there lying by her. Her eyes moved and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, moreover, says that she was perfectly awake ; it was then daylight, being one of the longest days in the year. She sat up in bed and looked steadfastly on the apparition. In that time she heard the bridge clock strike two, and a while after said: 'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, what art thou?' Thereupon the apparition removed and went away ; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became on't, she cannot tell."
The nurse apparently was more frightened by its disappearance than its presence, for after this she was afraid to stay in the house, and so spent the rest of the time until six o'clock in walking up and
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down outside. When the neighbors were awake she told her tale to them, and they of course said she had dreamt it all; she naturally enough warmly re- pudiated that idea, but could obtain no credence until the news of the other side of the story arrived from West Mailing, when people had to admit that there might have been something in it.
A noteworthy circumstance in this story is that the mother found it necessary to pass from ordinary sleep into the profounder trance condition before she could consciously visit her children; it can, however, be paralleled here and there among the large num- ber of similar accounts which may be found in the literature of the subject.
Two other stories of precisely the same type — in which a dying mother, earnestly desiring to see her children, falls into a deep sleep, visits them and returns to say that she has done so — are given by Dr. F. G. Lee. In one of them the mother, when dying in Egypt, appears to her children at Torquay, and is clearly seen in broad daylight by all five of the children and also by the nursemaid. (Glimpses of the Supernatural, vol. ii., p. 64.) In the other a Quaker lady dying at Cockermouth is clearly seen and recognized in daylight by her three children at Settle, the remainder of the story being practically identical with the one given above. (Glimpses in the Twilight, p. 94.) Though these cases appear to be less widely known than that of Mary Goffe, the evidence of their authenticity seems to be quite as good, as will be seen by the attestations obtained by
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the reverend author of the works from which they are quoted.
The man who fully possesses this fourth type of clairvoyance has many and great advantages at his disposal, even in addition to those already mentioned. Not only can he visit without trouble or expense all the beautiful and famous places of the earth, but if he happens to be a scholar, think what it must mean to him that he has access to all the libraries of the world! What must it be for the scientifically- minded man to see taking place before his eyes so many of the processes of the secret chemistry of na- ture, or for the philosopher to have revealed to him so much more than ever before of the working of the great mysteries of life and death ? To him those who are gone from this plane are dead no longer, but living and within reach for a long time to come ; for him many of the conceptions of religion are no Longer matters of faith, but of knowledge. Above all, he can join the army of invisible helpers, and really be of use on a large scale. Undoubtedly clairvoy- ance, even when confined to the astral plane, is a great boon to the student.
Certainly it has its dangers also, especially for the untrained ; danger from evil entities of various kinds, which may terrify or injure those who allow them- selves to lose the courage to face them boldly; dan- ger of deception of all sorts, of misconceiving and misinterpreting what is seen; greatest of all, the danger of becoming conceited about the thing and of thinking it impossible to make a mistake. But a
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little common-sense and a little experience should easily guard a man against these.
5. By travelling in the mental body. — This is sim- ply a higher and, as it were, glorified form of the last type. The vehicle employed is no longer the astral body, but the mind-body — a vehicle, therefore, belonging to the mental plane, and having within it all the potentialities of the wonderful sense of that plane, so transcendent in its action yet so impossible to describe. A man functioning in this leaves his as- tral body behind him along with the physical, and if he wishes to show himself upon the astral plane for any reason, he does not send for his own astral ve- hicle, but just by a single action of his will mater- ializes one for his temporary need. Such an astral materialization is sometimes called the mayavirupa, and to form it for the first time usually needs the assistance of a qualified Master.
The enormous advantages given by the possession of this power are the capacity of entering upon all the glory and the beauty of the higher land of bliss, and the possession, even when working on the astral plane, of the far more comprehensive mental sense which opens up to the student such marvellous vistas of knowledge, and practically renders error all but impossible. This higher flight, however, is possible for the trained man only, since only under definite training can a man at this stage of evolution learn to employ his mental body as a vehicle.
Before leaving the subject of full and intentional clairvoyance, it may be well to devote a few words to
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answering one or two questions as to its limitations, which constantly occur to students. Is it possible, we are often asked, for the seer to find any person with whom he wishes to communicate, anywhere in the world, whether he be living or dead?
To this reply must be a conditional affirmative. Yes, it is possible to find any person if the experi- menter can, in some way or other, put himself en rapport with that person. It would be hopeless to plunge vaguely into space to find a total stranger among all the millions around us without any kind of clue ; but, on the other hand, a very slight clue would usually be sufficient.
If the clairvoyant knows anything of the man whom he seeks, he will have no difficulty in finding him, for every man has what may be called a kind of musical cord of his own — a chord which is the ex- pression of him as a whole, produced perhaps by a sort of average of the rates of vibration of all his different vehicles on their respective planes. If the operator knows how to discern that chord and to strike it, it will by sympathetic vibration attract the attention of the man instantly wherever he may be, and will evoke an immediate response from him.
Whether the man were living or recently dead would make no difference at all, and clairvoyance of the fifth class could at once find him even among the countless millions in the heaven-world, though in that case the man himself would be unconscious that he was under observation. Naturally a seer whose consciousness did not range higher than the astral
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plane — who employed therefore one of the earlier methods of seeing — would not be able to find a per- son upon the mental plane at all; yet even lie would at least be able to tell that the man sought for was upon that plane, from the mere fact that the strik- ing of the chord as far up as the astral level pro- duced no response.
If the man sought be a stranger to the seeker, the latter will need something connected with him to act as a clue — a photograph, a letter written by him, an article which has belonged to him, and is impreg- nated with his personal magnetism; any of these would do in the hands of a practised seer.
Again I say, it must not therefore be supposed that pupils who have been taught how to use this art are at liberty to set up a kind of intelligence office through which communication can be had with missing or dead relatives. A message given from this side to such an one might or might not be handed on, according to circumstances, but even if it were, no reply might be brought, lest the transac- tion should partake of the nature of a phenomenon — something which could be proved on the physical plane to have been an act of magic.
Another question often raised is as to whether, in the action of psychic vision, there is any limita- tion as to distance. The reply would seem to be that there should be no limit but that of the respective planes. It must be ' remembered that the astral and mental planes of our earth are as definitely its own as its atmosphere, though they extend considerably
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further from it even in our three-dimensional space than does the physical air. Consequently the pas- sage to, or the detailed sight of, other planets would not be possible for any system of clairvoyance con- nected with these planes. It is quite possible and easy for the man who can raise his consciousness to the buddhic plane to pass to any other globe be- longing to our chain of worlds, but that is outside our present subject.
Still a good deal of additional information about other planets can be obtained by the use of such clairvoyant faculties as we have been describing. It is possible to make sight enormously clearer by pass- ing outside of the constant disturbances of the earth's atmosphere, and it is also not difficult to learn how to put on an exceedingly high magnifying power, so that even by ordinary clairvoyance a good deal of very interesting astronomical knowledge may be gained. But as far as this earth and its immedi- ate surroundings are concerned, there is practically no limitation.
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