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James, William, 1842-1910

"Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature"

This may provoke
a smile, but I can only tell you the facts as they occurred to
me. I do not know how to better describe my sensations than by
simply stating that I felt a consciousness of a spiritual
presence. . . . I felt also at the same time a strong feeling of
superstitious dread, as if something strange and fearful were
about to happen."[25]
[25] E. Gurney: Phantasms of the Living, i. 384.

Professor Flournoy of Geneva gives me the following testimony of
a friend of his, a lady, who has the gift of automatic or
involuntary writing:--
"Whenever I practice automatic writing, what makes me feel that
it is not due to a subconscious self is the feeling I always have
of a foreign presence, external to my body. It is sometimes so
definitely characterized that I could point to its exact
position. This impression of presence is impossible to describe.
It varies in intensity and clearness according to the personality
from whom the writing professes to come. If it is some one whom
I love, I feel it immediately, before any writing has come. My
heart seems to recognize it.


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