Читать книгу A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications онлайн

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"Is there any scientifically valid reason for supposing that Individual Human Personality survives bodily death?"

"If so, under what conditions does it persist?"

"What is the relation between these new conditions and those with which we are acquainted?"

Any investigation into Human Personality of a scope less than this can be included under the heads of Physiology or Psychology which are prepared to investigate any conceivable intricacy in the mental or bodily states of the living.

It is only when the investigator refuses to be limited by bodily death that Psychic science differentiates itself as a separate study.

I do not propose to consider here whether psychical research has yet given any satisfactory answer to the above mentioned questions or even whether there is any considerable chance of its ever being able to do so.

I merely wish to point out the nature of the problems with which it is concerned and which alone distinguish it as a separate science.

It follows that any hypothesis advanced with a view to co-ordinating the observed facts may find itself called upon to give an intelligible explanation of discarnate personalities, that is to say of human personalities not functioning through the flesh and blood bodies in which we are accustomed to meet them.