Mental tendencies set in motion cast their shadows before them; and a psychic often sees the complete manifestation of an idea before it has had the time to materialize in the objective world.
This is what constitutes the average spirit of prophecy; for prophecy is the reading of subjective tendencies, and seeing them as already accomplished facts. The subjective mind can deduce only, but its power of logic and sequence appears to be perfect.
EXPLANATION
For illustration, suppose that there is a window one mile away; I am throwing a ball at this window, and the ball is halfway to it, going at the rate of one mile a minute. Now you come in, measure the distance, compute the speed with which the ball is passing through the air and say, "The ball is halfway to the window; it is traveling at the rate of one mile a minute; in just one half a minute the window is going to be broken by the ball passing through it." Let us suppose that you are the only one who sees the ball, for the rest are looking at the window; and in half a minute it is broken. How did you prophesy that the window was to be broken? By drawing a logical conclusion of an already established premise.
This is much like what happens when a psychic exercises a spirit of prophecy. They are generally unconscious as to why they do what they do, because they are getting their own subjective contact with the condition and simply interpreting what comes to them. But this is the logical, deductive, conclusive power of their subjective thought, seeing a thing completed, by first seeing a tendency set in motion, and computing the time that it will take to complete it. There are but few, however, who have any reliable spirit of prophecy.
Let us carry this thought further; the race has its subjectivity, from an individual to a nation. This is its karma, its subjective law set in motion. Each nation has its subjective causation, and the prophet of a nation could, and would, read its subjective tendency; and this is what the old prophets
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