These investigations are as thorough and as reliable as researches by material scientists, but not as easily demonstrable to the general public. Spiritual powers lie dormant within every human being, and when awakened, they compensate for both telescope and microscope, they enable their possessor to investigate, instanter, things beyond the veil of matter, but they are only developed by a patient application and continuance in well doing extended over years, and few are they who have faith to start upon the path to attainment or perseverance to go through with the ordeal. Therefore the occultist's assertions are not generally credited.

We can readily see that long probation must precede attainment, for a person equipped with spiritual sight is able to penetrate walls of houses as easily as we walk through the atmosphere, able to read at will the innermost thoughts of those about him; if not actuated by the most pure and unselfish motives, he would be a scourge to humanity. Therefore that power is safeguarded as we would withhold the dynamite bomb from an anarchist and from the well-intentioned but[pg 065]ignorant person, or, as we withhold match and powder barrel from a child.

In the hands of an experienced engineer the dynamite bomb may be used to open a highway of commerce, and an intelligent farmer may use gunpowder to good account in clearing his field of tree-stumps, but in the hands of an ill-intentioned criminal or ignorant child an explosive may wreck much property and end many lives. The force is the same, but used differently, according to the ability or intention of the user, it may produce results of a diametrically opposite nature. So it is also with spiritual powers, there is a time-lock upon them, as upon a bank safe, which keeps out all until they have earned the privilege and the time is ripe for its exercise.

As already said, the ether is physical matter and responsive to the same laws which govern other physical substances upon this plane of existence. Therefore it requires but a slight extension of physical sight to see ether, (which is disposed in four grades of density), the blue haze seen in mountain canyons is in fact ether of the kind known to occult investigators as “chemical ether.”Many people who see this ether, are unaware[pg 066]that they are possessed of a faculty not enjoyed by all. Others, who have developed spiritual sight are not endowed with etheric vision, a fact which seems an anomaly until the subject of clairvoyance is thoroughly understood.