But
it would clearly not have been unnatural to interpret them as a
revelation of the deity's existence. When we reach the subject
of mysticism, we shall have much more to say upon this head.
Lest the oddity of these phenomena should disconcert you, I will
venture to read you a couple of similar narratives, much shorter,
merely to show that we are dealing with a well-marked natural
kind of fact. In the first case, which I <61> take from the
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the sense of
presence developed in a few moments into a distinctly
visualized hallucination--but I leave that part of the story out.
"I had read," the narrator says, "some twenty minutes or so, was
thoroughly absorbed in the book, my mind was perfectly quiet, and
for the time being my friends were quite forgotten, when suddenly
without a moment's warning my whole being seemed roused to the
highest state of tension or aliveness, and I was aware, with an
intenseness not easily imagined by those who had never
experienced it, that another being or presence was not only in
the room, but quite close to me.
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