900. Possession may be defined as a development of Motor Automatism, resulting at last in a substitution of personality; there has recently been a great advance in the evidence for this theory.

901. Further, it coheres with modern notions of personality, - of the control of organism by spirit. It implies that the spirit of the entranced automatist partially quits his organism, and allows an invading spirit to occupy and use it.

902. The conception - similar as it is to primitive beliefs - will be found to co-ordinate and explain many of our earlier groups of phenomena.

903. First, the alternating use of brain-centres by alternate personalities seems to form a link in the series which ends in possession.

904. Genius suggests a possession of the brain-centres by the subliminal self.

905. In sleep it appears that the spirit may sometimes travel away from the body and perceive distant scenes clairvoyantly.

906. In the hypnotic trance or in spontaneous somnambulism, we often find a quasi-personality occupying the organism, while the sensitive's own spirit often claims to have been absent elsewhere, and sometimes exhibits real clairvoyant power. Telepathic intercourse, if carried far enough, corresponds to possession or to ecstasy.

907. In telepathy we encounter an influence which suggests an intelligent and responsive external presence, and telepathy between the living leads on to telepathy from the dead; which implies that the communication does not depend on vibrations from a material brain.

908. When motor automatism develops into possession, there is apparently no communication between the discarnate mind and the mind of the automatist, but rather with the latter's brain.

909. Even in ordinary cases of telepathy, the percipient's brain may sometimes be influenced by his own mind, and sometimes directly by the agent's; in the latter case, the influence may be termed telergic. Veridical apparitions also show traces of the spiritual and the physical elements mingling in various degrees as we pass from clairvoyant visions to collective apparitions.

910. The same stages are to be seen in the case of apparitions of the dead - leading up to complete possession of the automatist's brain by an extraneous spirit.

911. Possession by spirits is difficult to distinguish from cases of secondary personality, where the organism is controlled by another synthesis of its own spirit. We must not ascribe to spirit-control cases where no new knowledge is shown in the trance state.

912. In reputed savage cases of possession, the hostility of the control to the automatist is no proof of its being other than a secondary personality. 912 A. Dr. Nevius on demon possession in China.

913. It is sometimes claimed that these controls show supernormal knowledge, but the cases recorded may generally be explained by heightened memory, with possible traces of telepathy. In cases where there is good evidence of supernormal knowledge, the controls have always been both human and friendly.

914. We should expect spirit-control to be subject to the same limits that we find in controls by secondary personalities; e.g. the external spirit is not likely to be able to produce utterance in a language unknown to the automatist.

915. In both cases, and also in dreams, memory seems to fail and change in a capricious way.

916. Again, it is hard to get into continuous colloquy with a somnambulist, who generally follows his own train of ideas, and similar difficulties seem to occur in conversing with spirit-controls.

917. Our expectations will thus be very different from the commonplace or even the poetic notion of what communication with the dead is likely to be.

918. The actual phenomena fail to comply either with the orthodox or traditional line of expectation, or with romantic anticipations, or with the notion that they should subserve some practical purpose.

919. The problems of possession, on the other hand, form the natural sequence of our earlier problems; the actions of the possessed organism show the furthest stage of motor automatism; the incursion of the possessing spirit is the completest form of telepathic invasion.

920. We must now briefly consider the relation of spiritual influences to the world of matter. In some telergic cases, it appears that the agent's spirit acts directly on the percipient's brain.

921. In cases of possession, it is possible that the controlling spirit may impel the organism to more forcible movements than its usual ones.

922. It may also be able to use the organism more skilfully and emit from it an energy which can move objects not in contact with it; this phenomenon is termed by Aksakoff telekinesis.

923. The interest excited in the ordinary public by the "physical phenomena of spiritualism," or telekinesis, has, as is well known, fostered much fraud, to expose and guard against which has been one of the main tasks of the S.P.R. 923 A. References to exposures of Madame Blavatsky. 923 B. References to exposures of other spiritualistic frauds.

924. In this work, telekinesis is only dealt with where it appears as an element in spirit-possession, especially in the cases of D. D. Home and Stainton Moses.

925. Telekinesis may begin as a form of automatism, initiated by the subliminal self, and there may occasionally, though not provably, be an element of it in table-tilting or automatic writing. This may develop into raps or into movements of distant objects. 925 A. Case of Mr. Vaughan.

926. The right comprehension of telekinetic phenomena must depend on a knowledge greater than we at present possess of the relations between matter and ether. A tentative sketch of what may be done by future inquiries is given in a "Scheme of Vital Faculty" (926 A). 926 B. References to accounts of telekinetic cases.

927. Sporadic cases of ecstacy or possession seem not infrequent in some private circles. 927 A. Mr. O.'s case. Cases of: 927 B. Miss White; 927 C. Miss Lottie Fowler.