Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death Part 18

its aspect is not _determined_ by optical laws (it may even seem to stand _behind_ the observer, or otherwise _outside_ his visual field), but it will more or less _conform_--by my mere self-suggestion, if by nothing else--to optical laws; and, moreover, it will still seem to be seen from a fixed point in s.p.a.ce, namely, from the stationary observer's eyes or brain.

All this seems fairly plain, so long as we are admittedly dealing with hallucinatory figures whose origin must be in the percipient's own mind.

But so soon as we come to quasi-percepts which we believe to exist or to originate somewhere outside the percipient's mind, our difficulties come thick and fast.

If there be some external origin for our inward vision (which thereby becomes _veridical_) we must not any longer a.s.sume that all veridical inward vision starts or is exercised from the same point. If it gets hold of _facts_ (veridical impressions or pictures, not mere subjective fancies), we cannot be sure _a priori_ whether it somehow goes to find the facts, or the facts come to find it. Again, we cannot any longer take for granted that it will be cognisant only of phantasmal or immaterial percepts. If it can get at phantasmal percepts outside the organism, may it not get at _material_ percepts also? May it not see distant houses, as well as the images of distant souls?

Hazardous as these speculations may seem, they nevertheless represent an attempt to get our notions of supersensory things as near down to our notions of sensory things as we fairly can. Whatever may be our ultimate conception of an ideal world, we must not for the present attempt to start from any standpoint too far removed from the temporal and spatial existence which alone we know.

As telepathy is a conception intermediate between the apparent isolation of minds here communicating only as a rule through material organs, and the ultimate conception of the unity of all mind, so the conception which I am about to propose, of a recognition of s.p.a.ce without our concomitant subjection to laws of matter, is strictly intermediate between man's incarnate condition and the condition which we may imagine him ultimately to attain. We cannot possibly infer _a priori_ that all recognition of s.p.a.ce must needs disappear with the disappearance of the particular bodily sensations by means of which our conception of s.p.a.ce has been developed. But we can imagine that a spirit should be essentially _independent_ of s.p.a.ce, and yet capable of recognising it.

Provisionally admitting this view, let us consider what range we are now led to a.s.sign to inner vision, when it is no longer merely subjective but veridical; bringing news to the percipient of actual fact outside his own organism.

We infer that it may represent to us (1) material objects; or (2) symbols of immaterial things; (3) in ways not necessarily accordant with optical laws; and (4) from a point of view not necessarily located within the organism, by means of what I have called a _psychical excursion_. I will take an ill.u.s.tration from a case which is recorded in detail in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 41 [666 C].

A Mrs. Wilmot has a vision of her husband in a cabin in a distant steamer. Besides her husband, she sees in the cabin a stranger (who was in fact present there), with certain material details. Now here I should say that Mrs. Wilmot's inner vision discerned material objects, from a point of view outside her own organism. But, on the other hand, although the perception came to her in visual terms, I do not suppose that it was really _optical_, that it came through the eye.

Mrs. Wilmot might believe, say, that her husband's head concealed from her some part of the berth in which he lay; but this would not mean a real optical concealment, but only a special direction of her attention, guided by preconceived notions of what would be optically visible from a given point.

As we proceed further we shall see, I think, in many ways how needful is this _excursive_ theory to explain _many_ telepathic and _all_ telaesthetic experiences; _many_, I mean, of the cases where two minds are in communication, and _all_ the cases where the percipient learns material facts (as words in a closed book, etc.) with which no other known mind is concerned.

Another most important corollary of this excursive theory must just be mentioned here. If there be spiritual excursion to a particular point of s.p.a.ce, it is conceivable that this should involve not only the migrant spirit's perception _from_ that point, but also perception of that point by persons materially present near it. That point may become a _phantasmogenetic centre_, as well as a centre of outlook. In plain words, if A has spiritually invaded B's room, and there sees B, B on his part may see A symbolically standing there; and C and D if present may see A as well.

This hint, here thrown out as an additional argument for the excursive theory, will fall to be developed later on. For the present we must confine our attention to our immediate subject: the range of man's inner vision, and the means which he must take to understand, to foster, and to control it.

The first and simplest step in the control of inner vision is the repression by hypnotic suggestion of degenerative hallucinations. It is a noteworthy fact that such of these as are at all curable are much more often curable by hypnotism than in any other way.

The next step is one to which, as the reader of my chapter on hypnotism already knows, I attribute an importance much greater than is generally accorded to it. I refer to the hypnotiser's power not only of controlling but of _inducing_ hallucinations in his subject.

As I have already said, the evocation of hallucinations is commonly spoken of as a mere example of the subject's _obedience_ to the hypnotiser. "I tell my subject to raise his arm, and he raises it; I tell him to see a tiger in the room, and he sees one accordingly." But manifestly these two incidents are not on the same level, and only appear to be so through a certain laxity of language. The usage of speech allows me to say, "I will make my subject lift his arm," although I am of course unable to affect the motor centres in his brain which start that motion. But it is so easy for a man to lift his arm that my speech takes that familiar power for granted, and notes, only his readiness to lift it when I tell him--the hypnotic complaisance which prompts him to obey me if I suggest this trivial action. But when I say, "I will make him see a tiger," I take for granted a power on his part which is _not_ familiar, which I have no longer a right to a.s.sume. For under ordinary circ.u.mstances my subject simply _cannot_ see a tiger at will; nor can I affect the visual centres which might enable him to do so. All that I can ask him to do, therefore, is to choose this particular way of indicating that in his hypnotic condition he has become able to stimulate his central sensory tracts more powerfully than ever before.

And not only this. His hallucinations are in most cases elaborate products--complex images which must have needed intelligence to fashion them--although the process of their fashioning is hidden from our view.

In this respect they resemble the inspirations of genius. For here we find again just what we found in those inspirations--the uprush of a complex intellectual product, performed beneath the threshold, and projected ready-made into ordinary consciousness. The uprushing stream of intelligence, indeed, in the man of genius flowed habitually in conformity with the superficial stream. Only rarely does the great conception intrude itself upon him with such vigour and such untimeliness as to bring confusion and incoherence into his ordinary life. But in the case of these induced hallucinations the incongruity between the two streams of intelligence is much more marked. When a subject, for instance, is trying to keep down some post-hypnotic hallucinatory suggestion, one can watch the smooth surface of the supraliminal river disturbed by that suggestion as though by jets of steam from below, which sometimes merely break in bubbles, but sometimes force themselves up bodily through the superficial film.

It is by considering hallucinations in this generalised manner and among these a.n.a.logies, that we can best realise their absence of necessary connection with any bodily degeneration or disease. Often, of course, they accompany disease; but that is only to say that the central sensory tracts, like any other part of the organism, are capable of morbid as well as of healthful stimulus. Taken in itself, the mere fact of the quasi-externalisation of a centrally initiated image indicates strong central stimulation, and absolutely nothing more. There is no physiological law whatever which can tell us what degree of vividness our central pictures may a.s.sume consistently with health--short of the point where they get to be so indistinguishable from external preceptions that, as in madness, they interfere with the rational conduct of life. That point no well-attested case of veridical hallucinations, so far as my knowledge goes, has yet approached.

It was, of course, natural that in the study of these phantasms, as elsewhere, the therapeutic interest should have preceded the psychological, but in the newer practical study of _eugenics_--the study which aims at improving the human organism, instead of merely conserving it--experimental psychology is indispensable, and one branch of this is the experimental study of mental visions.

Let us consider whether, apart from such a rare and startling incident as an actual hallucination, there is any previous indication of a habit of receiving, or a power of summoning, pictures from a subliminal store-house? Any self-suggestion, conscious or unconscious, which places before the supraliminal intelligence visual images apparently matured elsewhere?

Such indications have not been wanting. In the chapter on Genius, and in the chapter on Sleep, we have traced the existence of many cla.s.ses of these pictures; all of them ready, as it would seem, to manifest themselves on slight inducement. _Dream-figures_ will rise in any momentary blur of consciousness; _inspirations_ will respond to the concentrated desire or the mere pa.s.sing emotion of the man of genius; _after-images_ will recur, under unknown conditions, long after the original stimulus has been withdrawn; _memory-images_ will surge up into our minds with even unwished-for vividness; the brilliant exactness of _illusions hypnagogiques_ will astonish us in the revealing transition from waking to sleep.

All is prepared, so to say, for some empirical short-cut to a fuller control of these subjacent pictures; just as before Mesmer and Puysegur all was prepared for an empirical short-cut to trance, somnambulism, suggestibility.

All that we want is to hit on some simple empirical way of bringing out the correlation between all these types of subjacent vision, just as mesmerism was a simple empirical way of bringing out the correlation between various trances and sleep-waking states.

_Crystal-vision_, then, like hypnotic trance, might have been gradually evolved by a series of reasoned experiments, along an unexceptionable scientific road.

In reality, of course, this prehistoric practice must have been reached in some quite different way. It does not fall within the scope of this book to trace the various streams of divination which converge into Dr.

Dee's magic, and "the attracting of spirits into the ball." But it is really to the Elizabethan Dr. Dee--one of the leading _savants_ of his time--that the credit must be given of the first systematic attempt to describe, a.n.a.lyse, and utilise these externalised pictures.[104]

I will describe briefly the general type of the experiment, and we shall see how near we can get to a psychological explanation.

Let the observer gaze, steadily but not fatiguingly, into some speculum, or clear depth, so arranged as to return as little reflection as possible. A good example of what is meant will be a gla.s.s ball enveloped in a black shawl, or placed in the back part of a half-opened drawer; so arranged, in short, that the observer can gaze into it with as little distraction as may be from the reflection of his own face or of surrounding objects. After he has tried (say) three or four times, for ten minutes or so at a time--preferably in solitude, and in a state of mental pa.s.sivity--he will perhaps begin to see the gla.s.s ball or crystal _clouding_, or to see some figure or picture apparently _in_ the ball.

Perhaps one man or woman in twenty will have some slight occasional experience of this kind; and perhaps one in twenty of these seers (the percentages must as yet be mainly guess-work) will be able by practice to develop this faculty of inward vision up to a point where it will sometimes convey to him information not attainable by ordinary means.

How comes it, in the first place, that he sees any figure in the crystal at all? Common hypnotic experiments supply two obvious answers, each of which no doubt explains some part of the phenomena.

In the first place, we know that the hypnotic trance is often induced by gazing at some small bright object. This may or may not be a mere effect of suggestion; but it certainly sometimes occurs, and the "scryer"

consequently may be partially hypnotised, and in a state which facilitates hallucinations.

In the second place, a hypnotised subject--hypnotised but in a fully alert state--can often be caused by suggestion to see (say) a portrait upon a blank card; and will continue to see that portrait on that card, after the card has been shuffled with others; thus showing that he discerns with unusual acuteness such _points de repere_, or little guiding marks, as may exist on the surface of even an apparently blank card.

Correspondently with the _first_ of these observations, we find that crystal-vision is sometimes accompanied by a state of partial hypnotisation, perhaps merging into trance. This has been the case with various French hysterical subjects; and not only with them but with that exceptionally sound and vigorous observer, Mr. J. G. Keulemans. His evidence (in _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 516-521) is just what one would have expected _a priori_ on such a matter.

Correspondently with the _second_ of the above observations, we find that _points de repere_ do occasionally seem to determine crystal visions.

This, again, has been noticed among the French hysterical subjects; and not only with them, but with another among our best observers, Mrs.

Verrall.

These things being so--both these causes being apparently operative along the whole series of "scryers," or crystal-gazers, from the most unstable to the most scientific--one might be tempted to a.s.sume that these two clues, if we could follow them far enough, would explain the whole group of phenomena. Persons who have not _seen_ the phenomena, indeed, can hardly be persuaded to the contrary. But the real fact is, as even those who have seen much less of crystal-gazing than I have will very well know, that these explanations cannot be stretched to cover a quarter--perhaps not even a tenth--of the phenomena which actually occur.

Judging both from the testimony of scryers themselves, and from the observations of Dr. Hodgson and others (myself included), who have had many opportunities of watching them, it is very seldom that the gaze into the gla.s.s ball induces any hypnotic symptoms whatever. It does not induce such symptoms with successful scryers any more than with unsuccessful. Furthermore, there is no proof that the gift of crystal-vision goes along with hypnotic sensibility. The most that one can say is that the gift often goes along with _telepathic_ sensibility; but although telepathic sensibility may sometimes be quickened by hypnotism, we have no proof that those two forms of sensitiveness habitually go together.

The ordinary att.i.tude of the scryer, I repeat, is one of complete detachment; an interested and often puzzled scrutiny and a.n.a.lysis of the figures which display themselves in swift or slow succession in the crystal ball.

This last sentence applies to the theory of _points de repere_ as well.

As a general rule, the crystal vision, however meaningless and fantastic, is a thing which changes and develops somewhat as a dream does; following, it may be, some trivial chain of a.s.sociations, but not maintaining, any more than a dream maintains, any continuous scheme of line or colour. At the most, the sc.r.a.ps of reflection in the crystal could only _start_ such a series of pictures as this. And the start, the initiation of one of these series, is often accompanied by an odd phenomenon mentioned above--a _milky clouding_ of the crystal, which obscures any fragments of reflected images, and from out of which the images of the vision gradually grow clear. I cannot explain this clouding. It occurs too often and too independently to be a mere effect of suggestion. It does not seem to depend on any optical condition--to be, for instance, a result of change of focus of the eye, or of prolonged gazing. It is a picture like other pictures; it may come when the eyes are quite fresh (nor ought they ever to be strained); and it may persist for some time, so that the scryer looks away and back again, and sees it still. It comes at the beginning of a first series of pictures, or as a kind of drop scene between one series of pictures and another. Its closest parallel, perhaps, is the mist or cloud out of which phantasmal figures, "out in the room," sometimes seem to form themselves.

Moreover, the connection, if one can so call it, between the crystal and the vision is a very variable one. Sometimes the figures seem clearly defined within the crystal and limited thereby; sometimes all perception of the crystal or other speculum disappears, and the scryer seems clairvoyantly introduced into some group of life-sized figures. Nay, further, when the habit of gazing is fully acquired, some scryers can dispense with any speculum whatever, and can see pictures in mere blackness; thus approximating to the seers of "faces in the dark," or of _illusions hypnagogiques_.

On the whole it seems safest to attempt at present no further explanation of crystal-gazing than to say that it is an empirical method of developing internal vision; of externalising pictures which are a.s.sociated with changes in the sensorial tracts of the brain, due partly to internal stimuli, and partly to stimuli which may come from minds external to the scryer's own. The hallucinations thus induced appear to be absolutely harmless. I at least know of no kind of injury resulting from them; and I have probably heard of most of the experiments made in England, with any scientific aim or care, during the somewhat limited revival of crystal-gazing which has proceeded for the last few years.

The crystal picture is what we must call (for want of knowledge of determining causes) a _random_ glimpse into inner vision, a reflection caught at some odd angle from the universe as it shines through the perturbing medium of that special soul. Normal and supernormal knowledge and imaginings are blended in strangely mingled rays. Memory, dream, telepathy, telaesthesia, retrocognition, precognition, all are there.

Nay, there are indications of spiritual communications and of a kind of ecstasy.[105]

We cannot pursue all these phenomena at once. In turning, as we must now turn, to the _spontaneous_ cases of sensory automatism--of every type of which the _induced_ visions of the crystal afford us a foretaste--we must needs single out first some fundamental phenomenon, ill.u.s.trating some principle from which the rarer or more complex phenomena may be in part at least derived. Nor will there be difficulty in such a choice.

Theory and actual experience point here in the same direction. If this inward vision, this inward audition, on whose importance I have been insisting, are to have any such importance--if they are to have any validity at all--if their contents are to represent anything more than dream or meditation--they must receive knowledge from other minds or from distant objects;--knowledge which is _not_ received by the external organs of sense. Communication must exist from the subliminal to the subliminal as well as from the supraliminal to the supraliminal parts of the being of different individual men. Telepathy, in short, must be the prerequisite of all these supernormal phenomena.

Actual experience, as we shall presently see, confirms this view of the place of telepathy. For when we pa.s.s from the induced to the spontaneous phenomena we shall find that these ill.u.s.trate before all else this transmission of thought and emotion directly from mind to mind.

Now as to telepathy, there is in the first place this to be said, that such a faculty must absolutely exist somewhere in the universe, if the universe contains any unembodied intelligences at all. If there be any life less rooted in flesh than ours--any life more spiritual (as men have supposed that a higher life would be), then either it must not be _social_ life--there can be no exchange of thought in it at all--or else there must exist some method of exchanging thought which does not depend upon either tongue or brain.

Thus much, one may say, has been evident since man first speculated on such subjects at all. But the advance of knowledge has added a new presumption--it can be no more than a presumption--to all such cosmic speculations. I mean the presumption of _continuity_. Learning how close a tie in reality unites man with inferior lives,--once treated as something wholly alien, impa.s.sably separated from the human race--we are led to conceive that a close tie may unite him also with superior lives,--that the series may be fundamentally unbroken, the essential qualities of life the same throughout. It used to be asked whether man was akin to the ape or to the angel. I reply that the very fact of his kinship with the ape is proof presumptive of his kinship with the angel.

It is natural enough that man's instinctive feeling should have antic.i.p.ated any argument of this speculative type. Men have in most ages believed, and do still widely believe, in the reality of prayer; that is, in the possibility of telepathic communication between our human minds and minds above our own, which are supposed not only to understand our wish or aspiration, but to impress or influence us inwardly in return.

So widely spread has been this belief in prayer that it is somewhat strange that men should not have more commonly made what seems the natural deduction--namely, that if our spirits can communicate with higher spirits in a way transcending sense, they may also perhaps be able in like manner to communicate with each other. The idea, indeed, has been thrown out at intervals by leading thinkers--from Augustine to Bacon, from Bacon to Goethe, from Goethe to Tennyson.

Isolated experiments from time to time indicated its practical truth.