The Open Vision

The "Open Vision," by Dr. Horatio W. Dresser, is a book about relations with the dead. It is also a book about the life of God in the human spirit. Its art lies in the combination of these elements. The occupancy of the human soul by the divine spirit is the highest conception of the highest religions, a conception that may almost be said to attain the grandeur of the superhuman without falling into the cheapness of the miraculous. Spiritism rests on a far lower plane. Communication with the dead merely as the dead is neither high nor low; it is neutral with the same neutrality that attaches to communication with the living. But historically the instrumentalities, human and mechanical, which have furthered the alleged communication have been sordid. Dr. Dresser's object is to clear spiritism of its dross, and to raise it to a level where it can act on equal terms and in close conjunction with the life in God. Accordingly, he throws away the mediums, and what we may call for brevity the media. He has no interest in tables, no faith in experiments. In his scheme for exchanges between the two worlds, spirit is to act upon spirit without the intervention of a medium, and mind is to influence mind without the intervention of the senses.