June 1, 2023 • 24 mins
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psychic abilities, paranormal phenomena, metaphysics, spirituality, intuition, extrasensory perception, divination, spiritualism, self-help, personal growth, meditation, clairvoyance, telepathy, astral projection, dream interpretation, chakras, energy healing, esotericism, cultural influence, human nature, self-awareness, spiritual practices, consciousness, psychic development, holistic living
psychic abilities, paranormal phenomena, metaphysics, spirituality, intuition, extrasensory perception, divination, spiritualism, self-help, personal growth, meditation, clairvoyance, telepathy, astral projection, dream interpretation, chakras, energy healing, esotericism, cultural influence, human nature, self-awareness, spiritual practices, consciousness, psychic development, holistic living
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(00:00):
Chapter four, the Subconscious. Inthis chapter I shall take up and try
to make plain to the student thenature and functions of the subconscious mind.
This is the greatest of all stumblingblocks to many spiritualists. Its possibilities and
at the same time its limitations shouldbe made clear to the student at the
(00:21):
beginning of his studies. Otherwise heis sure to get in trouble later on,
not only with himself and with thephenomena he is studying, but with
all persons who discuss these subjects withhim and try to persuade him that the
whole of spiritualism may be accounted forby the powers of a subconscious What is
the subconscious mind? First of all, what is the subconscious mind? We
(00:45):
do not know exactly, but agreat deal has been found out concerning it
within the past quarter of a century. Twenty years ago, when Thomson J.
Hudson wrote his famous work The Lawof Psychic Phenomena, very little was
known of the subconscious. Nearly everythingwhich has been discovered about it has been
learned since he wrote. His attitudeis doubtless well known to the majority of
(01:07):
my readers. It is that manhas two minds, the conscious and the
subconscious, or, as he preferredto express it, the objective and the
subject of minds. The first ofthese is the conscious mind, the every
day reasoning mind. The second isthat vast realm in which occur the phenomena
of dreams, hypnotism, insanity,hysteria, clairvoyance, telepathy, and all
(01:30):
kindred psychic phenomena. He placed theobjective mind in the cerebrum or fore part
of the brain, and the subjectivemind in the cerebellum or hinder part of
the brain. Two minds or one. But this dual conception of the mind
is to day given up by practicallyall psychologists. They admit that the mind
(01:52):
is in a certain sense dual,but it is believed that both minds are,
in reality, one a part ofwhich is conscious, and of the
greater part of which we know nothing. The analogy of the iceberg has often
been used. A small percentage ofthis emerges above the water, and this
we see and know. But thegreater part of the mountain of ice is
(02:13):
below the surface, and this wedo not know through our senses. Yet
it is all one iceberg. Inthe same way, there is only one
mind. But when the search lightof consciousness is turned upon certain areas,
those areas become illuminated, and weknow or are conscious of those parts.
All else remains in the dim obscuritybeyond, in the great storehouse of the
(02:35):
subconscious mind, the powers of thesubconscious. It may easily be proved that
the subconscious mind acquires far more information, even through the senses, than does
the conscious mind. The following simpleexperiment will prove this. Lead a person
into a strange room and ask himto observe as many things in it as
he possibly can. Suppose he remainsfive seconds in that room. He is
(03:00):
then quickly removed and the door shut. If now he is asked to tell
you all the things that he remembershaving seen, he will probably be enabled
to remember ten or fifteen of them. But if you were to hypnotize that
person, he would then describe toyou, under hypnotic influence, forty or
fifty things which were in the room. This shows us that the subconscious mind,
(03:21):
which we reached through hypnotism, hasbeen able to perceive or take in
many more things than the conscious mind. This happens to us every day dreams.
It is the same with dreams.If when out walking, we should
happen to drop a brooch, pinor a piece of money. We might
be totally unconscious of the fact,but the subconscious mind would perceive and record
(03:45):
it. That night, in sleepwe might have a dream in which a
figure appeared to us and told usthat the article had been lost, and
that it would be found in suchand such a place. On looking the
next morning, sure enough, thereit was. Here we see that the
subconscious has perceived a certain fact whichthe conscious mind did not notice. For
long, it was thought that thispower signifies some supernormal faculty of the subconscious
(04:08):
mind. But in most cases itis not necessary to suppose this, For,
as the last experiment showed us,the subconscious mind takes in many things
which the conscious mind does not,and only the most striking and interesting facts
rise into consciousness. Of the thousandsof events going on all around us every
day, we perceive but a few. All the rest are ignored, though
(04:30):
they are lodged within the great mentalstorehouse within us, the memory of the
subconscious. The powers of the subconsciousmind are indeed great. It forgets nothing,
and facts which have entirely slipped fromthe conscious mind are retained within it,
and may be recalled years later,or may suddenly flash into the memory
(04:53):
of their own accord. They maycome into the mind in the form of
some simple thought or memory, justas any their thought or memory would,
or they may come to us inmore startling form. They may be,
as we say, externalized, thatis, projected upward from the subconscious into
the conscious mind, forcibly and dramatically, as a bombshell might be exploded within
(05:15):
it. In these cases, thethought may strike us as coming wholly from
without, and not from within ourselvesat all. One or two examples will
make this clear. If you havemislaid a book you cannot remember where it
is, the natural process would beto recollect. In the case of an
individual who is psychic or mediumistic,the externalization may take more startling form.
(05:38):
He may hear a voice telling himto look under certain papers upon the library
table, and sure enough, uponlooking there, the book is found.
Or he may have a mental pictureof himself leaving the book in that place,
or he may feel the hand gentlypushing him in the direction of the
table, or he may see afigure standing before him and pointing to the
hidden book. In all these cases, it is improbable that the voice,
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the touch, and the figure werereal, that is, that they came
from some spirit friend. They mayhave done so, but it is true
that in many cases at least,they are methods by which the subconscious mind
externalizes or reproduces its hidden memories indramatic form, just as they are reproduced
in dreams or in visions of thecrystal ball. The psychic diaphragm. The
(06:25):
subconscious mind therefore may be looked uponas composed of a number of strata like
a layer cake, which are normallymore or less separated from one another by
a sort of psychic membrane or diaphragm, which is impervious. At times,
this psychic diaphragm becomes thinned. Inthat case, we remember our dreams of
the previous night, or we havewonderful constructions of genius, the productions of
(06:48):
musical prodigies, etc. The subconsciousmind works out the problems, and the
finished product is projected into the consciousmind in its completed form. That is
why it appears to us so marvelous. On the other hand, if a
part of the subconscious mind is diseased, as may sometimes happen, then we
have hysteria, obsession, and insanity. It will be seen therefore, that
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both good and evil may result fromthis thinning or puncturing of the psychic diaphragm
separating the conscious from the subconscious mind. If the mind be healthy and is
kept so, only good will result. Psychic powers will be cultivated, and
helpful advice will be given to thesubject thenceforward. If, on the other
hand, the mind becomes in anyway deranged or diseased, then harm may
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result, and the individual may besorry that he has ruptured this dividing diaphragm
instead of preserving it intact. Itis all the question of care, good
health, good judgment, and ahealthy psychic, mental and physical life.
Once this psychic membrane has been soto say, punctured, it is very
difficult to heal it up again,and great care must be exercised in developing
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the subconscious phenomena. We shall discussthis more fully, however, in the
chapter devoted to obsession. The subconsciousmind should be made our friend and not
our enemy. We should train itcarefully, for though it is a good
servant, it is a bad master. It should always be kept in check
and dominated and controlled by the consciousmind. When this is the case all
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goes well, how the subconscious reckonstime. The subconscious has, among other
faculties, the power of reckoning timein a most remarkable manner. Many of
my readers have doubtless conducted the followingexperiment for themselves. On going to bed,
you have said to yourself, nowI wish to wake tomorrow morning at
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seven o'clock, promptly because I havesuch and such a train to catch.
There is no alarm clock in thehouse, but promptly at seven you awake.
That this is no mere chance coincidencehas been proven by a number of
cases which have been collected, andthe fact has also been proven experimentally on
hypnotic subjects. Thus, they havebeen told that, in say, nine
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thousand, seven hundred fifty seconds,they would perform a certain action. Then
they were immediately awakened. As soonas awake, they knew nothing of the
suggestion which have been given to them, and nothing of the action they were
to perform. And yet precisely innine thousand, seven hundred fifty seconds they
performed the action in question. Wesee, therefore, that the subconscious mind
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has the faculty of reckoning time ina very remarkable manner. And this is
but one of its mysterious powers.The subconscious rules the body. Another of
its remarkable manifestations is the power whichit possesses over the bodily organization. By
means of suggestion, the pulse hasbeen raised or slowed, the temperature has
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been elevated or lowered, the varioussecretions of the body have been altered,
and many similar phenomena which are wellknown to any one who has read upon
this subject. One of the moststriking cases, doubtless is that of Mademoiselle
Ilma X. A pair of coldscissors was applied to her chest, and
it was suggested that these were redhot and that they were burning the flesh.
(10:09):
In a few moments, an angryred mark appeared corresponding to the shape
of the scissors, and the nextday a genuine blister had been created,
which took several days to heal.Here we see the power of the subconscious
mind in affecting the body and eventhe local tissues to a remarkable extent.
If this is true, and thebody can be harmed in this way,
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it can doubtless also be cured.We here enter the field of suggestion and
psychotherapy, which will be treated morefully. In chapter thirty how to give
your own subconscious mind suggestions. Oneof the best methods of treating yourself is
by suggesting certain desirable things just asyou are falling off to sleep. Thus,
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if anything is wrong with you physically, mentally, or spiritually, suggest
to yourself the last thing at night, as you are falling to sleep,
that all will be well, thatthe trouble will be removed during the night,
that you will wake up refreshed andinvigorated, that there be no pain,
no unpleasant feelings or emotions in themorning, et cetera. Suggest in
fact whatever you desire to have accomplished, and you will find that during the
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night this will have been effected,and that your bodily or mental ills will
have disappeared as the result of yourautosuggestion during the hours of sleep. Here
again we shall be enabled to seethe remarkable powers of the subconscious mind brought
into play and clearly demonstrated spirit messagesand the subconscious Now, these faculties of
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the subconscious mind explain a certain numberof spirit messages which are received at seances.
Let me illustrate this in the followingmanner. Just before leaving your home
to join a circle. You glanceat the evening paper. Your attention has
been attracted to the leading articles.Apparently you have seen nothing else. At
the seance that evening, the nameof a friend of yours is spelled out,
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and the announcement that this friend hasbeen killed that day by falling from
the fourth story of his residence.At first sight, this seems a very
good test message. But on goinghome and again looking at your evening paper,
you find a small article tucked awayin the corner of the paper stating
these facts. Therefore, probably whathappened was this your subconscious mind perceived and
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took in these facts without their evenrising to consciousness, and at the seance
they were given out, either byyourself or by the medium who obtained them
from your mind by telepathy. Inthis way, many messages have been explained
and shown to be due to theworkings of the subconscious mind, and not
to spirits at all. We musttherefore always be on our guard against these
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possibilities. The structure of the mind. The older conception of the human mind
was that it was a single entity, an individual thing, a sort of
sphere incapable of division. This wasin fact, one of plato main arguments
for the immortality of the soul.Unfortunately, modern science has destroyed this illusion.
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We now know that the human mindis a composite and not a simple
thing. To use a rough analogy, it has been proved that the mind
is somewhat like a rope composed ofa number of strands twisted together. Under
normal, healthy conditions, this roperemains one the strands are united, but
under certain abnormal states or conditions,these strands may be divided up into several
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groups, and they would all pullin different directions. What holds these strands
together normally? First good health,then cheerfulness, attention, concentration, will,
and an interest in objective things?What favors this disintegration process, this
dissociation of the mind, as itis called the exact opposite of all this
a run down or fatigued condition introspectionand particularly all continued subjective practices and the
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two passive attitude of the mind.If we lose contact with an interest in
the objective world, if we goinside our hands and spin romances and dream
day dreams to too great an extent, if we gaze blankly into space,
thinking of nothing in particular, ifwe allow the mind to become too passive
and do not exercise our intellect ina normal, healthy manner, this disintegration
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is likely to take place. Thestrands of the rope become separated, and
then the mind may go to piecesand spirit obsession and even insanity may result.
How to heal a sick mind?Of course, this is only a
crude analogy. The mind is notlike a rope and cannot be divided into
strands in the same way, butit is an analogy which will help us.
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The only way to heal and restorea mind in this condition is to
weave or well together these separate strandsand bind them up again into one solid,
single rope, as it were.This may often be done by hypnotism,
but great care must be exercised indoing this, for if it is
not rightly applied by an expert operator, the mind may become still more disintegrated,
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and the last state of that manshall be worse than the first.
Now, these separate strands of themind, to return to our analogy of
the rope, may form different selves. Each self may possess a certain identity
and individuality of its own, andthey may all pull in different directions.
That is, they may all exercisetheir own functions and powers, and think
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their own thoughts. There is noone self anymore. It has gone to
pieces. These various selves may alternateone with another in the same individual,
and then we have those interesting casesknown to us as alternating personality. If
there are two of these, wehave double personality. If there are three
or more of these personalities, wehave a case of multiple personality. There
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are sometimes six or seven of these, and in one case it was reported
that there were ten, all inthe same individual, all alternating with one
another, all having their own prejudices, likes, dislikes, interests, points
of view, and knowledge of personsand things. Many such cases have been
cured by welding together several of theseselves by hypnotic suggestion, when the original
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man was restored. The differences betweenspirits and subconscious selves. Now, if
this be true, and it hasbeen proved to be true by many well
authenticated cases, how distinguish these selvesfrom true spirits. This is a very
complex question which cannot be fully answeredin this place, because we must understand,
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first of all, more of thenature of the subconscious mind and its
powers. But one simple test canbe applied, which is this, All
these personalities or parts of selves derivetheir knowledge of men and things through the
same source, namely the five senses. None of them can possibly know any
fact which was not supplied to themthrough sight, hearing, touch, etc.
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So that if any of them manifestsupernormal knowledge, this proves to us
at once either that some external intelligenceis present, or that this personality,
whatever it may be, has acquiredthis knowledge in some occult manner by telepathy,
clairvoyance, et cetera. Which ofthese two interpretations is the correct one?
I shall endeavor to answer in anotherplace, personalities created by hypnotism.
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It may seem incomprehensible to many howthe human mind can become split up or
dissociated in this manner. They thinkthat this is rather a far fetched theory
and prefer to believe the simple theoryof spiritism as applied even to the most
simple facts. This might be admissible, but for the following consideration, we
can trace a gradual series of intermediatesteps all the way from normal states of
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mind to these dissociations. In daydreamingand absent mindedness. We see the first
of these steps when we hypnotize asubject and suggest to him that he is
Napoleon Bonaparte or Julius Caesar, andhe enacts the part with due gravity.
We can hardly suppose that Napoleon Bonaparteor Julius Caesar really returned to manifest through
him, And should any be inclinedto accept this view, it may be
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said that the hypnotic subject will justas easily carry out the suggestion that he
is a lion, or a bear, or a bird flying in the air.
And no one, we imagine,would contend that a lion, or
a bear or a bird really manifestedat such times. So therefore we see
that one part of the mind mayenact a little comedy by itself without the
knowledge of another part. And fromthis simple fact to the most striking phenomena
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of the subconscious we can trace adefinite chain of connection the picture forming faculty
of the mind. One of themost striking powers which the subconscious mind possesses
is its ability to reconstruct mental picturesor photographs of distant or imaginary persons.
Your mind contains a whole picture galleryof all your friends, which you see
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as it were in your mind's eye. This is limited not only to your
and relatives, but to heroes ofbooks you have read, and even to
imaginary personages. These pictures are notset and inert, but live and move,
and we place the characters in varioussituations and cause them to move,
act and talk as human beings woulddo. Thus, suppose your friend A
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or David Harem, or some imaginarypersonage were thought by you to be on
a journey, you would imagine themto be in various situations, and would
picture to yourself precisely how they wouldact in each situation, and would put
into their mouths arguments and conversations whichthey would carry on with those about them.
This faculty which the mind possesses isa very peculiar one, and its
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functions are technically known as spiritoid functions. They have a great bearing upon spiritism,
how dream personalities talk. These phenomenashow us how easy it is for
the subconscious to imagine that various personagesare present carrying on a conversation with us,
et c. Whereas, as amatter of fact, they are not
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present at all, but were inventedby us. If therefore, at a
seance, some exalted personage appears andclaims to communicate, We must always assure
ourselves, first of all, thatthis personage is not one of these semi
conscious or subconscious creations, and mustmake him give proof of his own identity.
This faculty of the mind is againseen in dreams. In dreams we
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create situations in a similar manner andimagine that other personages are present talking to
us. We have long debates andarguments with such personages, and sometimes they
beat us out. So you seehow important it is to be sure that
the intelligences which communicate at seances arenot creations, but are really individualities as
they claim to be. How todistinguish true from false? How are we
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to prove this and make this distinction? You may say, the following is
the first method. All our knowledge, whether it is conscious or subconscious,
is supposed to be obtained through thefive senses. The subconscious is built upon
the facts obtained by means of hearing, sight, touch, etc. Now,
if the communicating intelligence tells us manyfacts as proof of its identity which
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the mind of the medium never knew, we have fairly good proof of identity,
or at least that the knowledge givenwas obtained by some supernormal means,
but decisive proof is not yet obtained. We know that there are other methods
of obtaining supernormal information, for instance, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. Adding
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these powers to the subconscious faculties ofthe medium, we have often a difficult
task to prove that the intelligence whichcommunicates with us is really the personage it
claims to be. Repeated questions mustbe asked. Absolute proof of identity must
be insisted upon, and in thisway only can we be sure that we
have passed beyond the limitations of asubconscious mind of the medium, and that
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we are really obtaining messages direct fromthe spirit world. Why and how spirits
prove their identity? This proof ofidentity is really the great problem and the
first point to solve. Let memake this plain. Suppose that a cousin
of yours had disappeared twelve years ago. One day you receive a call over
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the telephone, and a voice saysto you, I am your cousin so
and so. I demand my shareof your uncle's will. Naturally, you
would reply, how do I knowthat you are so and so? In
daily life? It would be aneasy matter to prove this. He could
appear before you in his physical body, and you could identify him more or
less easily in most cases. Butsuppose he were so placed that he could
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never see you personally. In sucha case, how could he prove to
you that he really was the personin question. He would have to relate
to you a number of personal anddetailed incidents in his past life which he
would be the only likely person toknow, or relate facts which only he
and you knew, or tell youthings which you did not know, but
which you afterwards found out to becorrect. If you were see a number
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of these replies, you would beright in concluding that he really was the
person at the other end of theline. And this is the way in
which spirits prove to us their identity. Until they do so, we can
never be sure that the teachings theygive are correct. If they succeed in
proving their identity, we may thenaccept their word as to the conditions of
the next life and other matters,since they were always truthful people in this
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life, and we have no reasonto suppose that they are other than truthful.
Now. How we obtain spirit messagesthrough the subconscious. The subconscious is
the channel through which we obtain spiritmessages in nearly all cases. That is,
they come through or by means ofthe subconscious mind, and it therefore
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assists the spirits to communicate. Thespirit can manipulate or act upon the subconscious,
while it cannot readily affect the consciousmind. This we can see ourselves
in the following way. Many ofus have noticed that just as we are
dropping off to sleep, a forgottenmemory has flashed into our mind. It
could not find its way to ourconscious attention while the latter was busy with
(24:04):
the day's activities, But as soonas the conscious mind became passive, then
the subconscious had the power to sendup this memory or message of warning.
It is the same in the caseof spirits who communicate. They are only
enabled to do so when the consciousmind is in abeyance, quieted, or
abstracted more or less completely, asin a trance. Then the spirit is
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enabled to act upon the subconscious mindof the medium and through it to reach
us still in the body. Thesubconscious is therefore the true medium or vehicle
for the manifestation of discarnate spirits,and this will become more apparent when we
come to consider the phenomena of trance, which will be dealt with more fully
in a later chapter. End ofChapter four
Chapter four, the Subconscious. Inthis chapter I shall take up and try
to make plain to the student thenature and functions of the subconscious mind.
This is the greatest of all stumblingblocks to many spiritualists. Its possibilities and
at the same time its limitations shouldbe made clear to the student at the
(00:21):
beginning of his studies. Otherwise heis sure to get in trouble later on,
not only with himself and with thephenomena he is studying, but with
all persons who discuss these subjects withhim and try to persuade him that the
whole of spiritualism may be accounted forby the powers of a subconscious What is
the subconscious mind? First of all, what is the subconscious mind? We
(00:45):
do not know exactly, but agreat deal has been found out concerning it
within the past quarter of a century. Twenty years ago, when Thomson J.
Hudson wrote his famous work The Lawof Psychic Phenomena, very little was
known of the subconscious. Nearly everythingwhich has been discovered about it has been
learned since he wrote. His attitudeis doubtless well known to the majority of
(01:07):
my readers. It is that manhas two minds, the conscious and the
subconscious, or, as he preferredto express it, the objective and the
subject of minds. The first ofthese is the conscious mind, the every
day reasoning mind. The second isthat vast realm in which occur the phenomena
of dreams, hypnotism, insanity,hysteria, clairvoyance, telepathy, and all
(01:30):
kindred psychic phenomena. He placed theobjective mind in the cerebrum or fore part
of the brain, and the subjectivemind in the cerebellum or hinder part of
the brain. Two minds or one. But this dual conception of the mind
is to day given up by practicallyall psychologists. They admit that the mind
(01:52):
is in a certain sense dual,but it is believed that both minds are,
in reality, one a part ofwhich is conscious, and of the
greater part of which we know nothing. The analogy of the iceberg has often
been used. A small percentage ofthis emerges above the water, and this
we see and know. But thegreater part of the mountain of ice is
(02:13):
below the surface, and this wedo not know through our senses. Yet
it is all one iceberg. Inthe same way, there is only one
mind. But when the search lightof consciousness is turned upon certain areas,
those areas become illuminated, and weknow or are conscious of those parts.
All else remains in the dim obscuritybeyond, in the great storehouse of the
(02:35):
subconscious mind, the powers of thesubconscious. It may easily be proved that
the subconscious mind acquires far more information, even through the senses, than does
the conscious mind. The following simpleexperiment will prove this. Lead a person
into a strange room and ask himto observe as many things in it as
he possibly can. Suppose he remainsfive seconds in that room. He is
(03:00):
then quickly removed and the door shut. If now he is asked to tell
you all the things that he remembershaving seen, he will probably be enabled
to remember ten or fifteen of them. But if you were to hypnotize that
person, he would then describe toyou, under hypnotic influence, forty or
fifty things which were in the room. This shows us that the subconscious mind,
(03:21):
which we reached through hypnotism, hasbeen able to perceive or take in
many more things than the conscious mind. This happens to us every day dreams.
It is the same with dreams.If when out walking, we should
happen to drop a brooch, pinor a piece of money. We might
be totally unconscious of the fact,but the subconscious mind would perceive and record
(03:45):
it. That night, in sleepwe might have a dream in which a
figure appeared to us and told usthat the article had been lost, and
that it would be found in suchand such a place. On looking the
next morning, sure enough, thereit was. Here we see that the
subconscious has perceived a certain fact whichthe conscious mind did not notice. For
long, it was thought that thispower signifies some supernormal faculty of the subconscious
(04:08):
mind. But in most cases itis not necessary to suppose this, For,
as the last experiment showed us,the subconscious mind takes in many things
which the conscious mind does not,and only the most striking and interesting facts
rise into consciousness. Of the thousandsof events going on all around us every
day, we perceive but a few. All the rest are ignored, though
(04:30):
they are lodged within the great mentalstorehouse within us, the memory of the
subconscious. The powers of the subconsciousmind are indeed great. It forgets nothing,
and facts which have entirely slipped fromthe conscious mind are retained within it,
and may be recalled years later,or may suddenly flash into the memory
(04:53):
of their own accord. They maycome into the mind in the form of
some simple thought or memory, justas any their thought or memory would,
or they may come to us inmore startling form. They may be,
as we say, externalized, thatis, projected upward from the subconscious into
the conscious mind, forcibly and dramatically, as a bombshell might be exploded within
(05:15):
it. In these cases, thethought may strike us as coming wholly from
without, and not from within ourselvesat all. One or two examples will
make this clear. If you havemislaid a book you cannot remember where it
is, the natural process would beto recollect. In the case of an
individual who is psychic or mediumistic,the externalization may take more startling form.
(05:38):
He may hear a voice telling himto look under certain papers upon the library
table, and sure enough, uponlooking there, the book is found.
Or he may have a mental pictureof himself leaving the book in that place,
or he may feel the hand gentlypushing him in the direction of the
table, or he may see afigure standing before him and pointing to the
hidden book. In all these cases, it is improbable that the voice,
(06:00):
the touch, and the figure werereal, that is, that they came
from some spirit friend. They mayhave done so, but it is true
that in many cases at least,they are methods by which the subconscious mind
externalizes or reproduces its hidden memories indramatic form, just as they are reproduced
in dreams or in visions of thecrystal ball. The psychic diaphragm. The
(06:25):
subconscious mind therefore may be looked uponas composed of a number of strata like
a layer cake, which are normallymore or less separated from one another by
a sort of psychic membrane or diaphragm, which is impervious. At times,
this psychic diaphragm becomes thinned. Inthat case, we remember our dreams of
the previous night, or we havewonderful constructions of genius, the productions of
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musical prodigies, etc. The subconsciousmind works out the problems, and the
finished product is projected into the consciousmind in its completed form. That is
why it appears to us so marvelous. On the other hand, if a
part of the subconscious mind is diseased, as may sometimes happen, then we
have hysteria, obsession, and insanity. It will be seen therefore, that
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both good and evil may result fromthis thinning or puncturing of the psychic diaphragm
separating the conscious from the subconscious mind. If the mind be healthy and is
kept so, only good will result. Psychic powers will be cultivated, and
helpful advice will be given to thesubject thenceforward. If, on the other
hand, the mind becomes in anyway deranged or diseased, then harm may
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result, and the individual may besorry that he has ruptured this dividing diaphragm
instead of preserving it intact. Itis all the question of care, good
health, good judgment, and ahealthy psychic, mental and physical life.
Once this psychic membrane has been soto say, punctured, it is very
difficult to heal it up again,and great care must be exercised in developing
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the subconscious phenomena. We shall discussthis more fully, however, in the
chapter devoted to obsession. The subconsciousmind should be made our friend and not
our enemy. We should train itcarefully, for though it is a good
servant, it is a bad master. It should always be kept in check
and dominated and controlled by the consciousmind. When this is the case all
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goes well, how the subconscious reckonstime. The subconscious has, among other
faculties, the power of reckoning timein a most remarkable manner. Many of
my readers have doubtless conducted the followingexperiment for themselves. On going to bed,
you have said to yourself, nowI wish to wake tomorrow morning at
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seven o'clock, promptly because I havesuch and such a train to catch.
There is no alarm clock in thehouse, but promptly at seven you awake.
That this is no mere chance coincidencehas been proven by a number of
cases which have been collected, andthe fact has also been proven experimentally on
hypnotic subjects. Thus, they havebeen told that, in say, nine
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thousand, seven hundred fifty seconds,they would perform a certain action. Then
they were immediately awakened. As soonas awake, they knew nothing of the
suggestion which have been given to them, and nothing of the action they were
to perform. And yet precisely innine thousand, seven hundred fifty seconds they
performed the action in question. Wesee, therefore, that the subconscious mind
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has the faculty of reckoning time ina very remarkable manner. And this is
but one of its mysterious powers.The subconscious rules the body. Another of
its remarkable manifestations is the power whichit possesses over the bodily organization. By
means of suggestion, the pulse hasbeen raised or slowed, the temperature has
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been elevated or lowered, the varioussecretions of the body have been altered,
and many similar phenomena which are wellknown to any one who has read upon
this subject. One of the moststriking cases, doubtless is that of Mademoiselle
Ilma X. A pair of coldscissors was applied to her chest, and
it was suggested that these were redhot and that they were burning the flesh.
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In a few moments, an angryred mark appeared corresponding to the shape
of the scissors, and the nextday a genuine blister had been created,
which took several days to heal.Here we see the power of the subconscious
mind in affecting the body and eventhe local tissues to a remarkable extent.
If this is true, and thebody can be harmed in this way,
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it can doubtless also be cured.We here enter the field of suggestion and
psychotherapy, which will be treated morefully. In chapter thirty how to give
your own subconscious mind suggestions. Oneof the best methods of treating yourself is
by suggesting certain desirable things just asyou are falling off to sleep. Thus,
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if anything is wrong with you physically, mentally, or spiritually, suggest
to yourself the last thing at night, as you are falling to sleep,
that all will be well, thatthe trouble will be removed during the night,
that you will wake up refreshed andinvigorated, that there be no pain,
no unpleasant feelings or emotions in themorning, et cetera. Suggest in
fact whatever you desire to have accomplished, and you will find that during the
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night this will have been effected,and that your bodily or mental ills will
have disappeared as the result of yourautosuggestion during the hours of sleep. Here
again we shall be enabled to seethe remarkable powers of the subconscious mind brought
into play and clearly demonstrated spirit messagesand the subconscious Now, these faculties of
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the subconscious mind explain a certain numberof spirit messages which are received at seances.
Let me illustrate this in the followingmanner. Just before leaving your home
to join a circle. You glanceat the evening paper. Your attention has
been attracted to the leading articles.Apparently you have seen nothing else. At
the seance that evening, the nameof a friend of yours is spelled out,
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and the announcement that this friend hasbeen killed that day by falling from
the fourth story of his residence.At first sight, this seems a very
good test message. But on goinghome and again looking at your evening paper,
you find a small article tucked awayin the corner of the paper stating
these facts. Therefore, probably whathappened was this your subconscious mind perceived and
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took in these facts without their evenrising to consciousness, and at the seance
they were given out, either byyourself or by the medium who obtained them
from your mind by telepathy. Inthis way, many messages have been explained
and shown to be due to theworkings of the subconscious mind, and not
to spirits at all. We musttherefore always be on our guard against these
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possibilities. The structure of the mind. The older conception of the human mind
was that it was a single entity, an individual thing, a sort of
sphere incapable of division. This wasin fact, one of plato main arguments
for the immortality of the soul.Unfortunately, modern science has destroyed this illusion.
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We now know that the human mindis a composite and not a simple
thing. To use a rough analogy, it has been proved that the mind
is somewhat like a rope composed ofa number of strands twisted together. Under
normal, healthy conditions, this roperemains one the strands are united, but
under certain abnormal states or conditions,these strands may be divided up into several
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groups, and they would all pullin different directions. What holds these strands
together normally? First good health,then cheerfulness, attention, concentration, will,
and an interest in objective things?What favors this disintegration process, this
dissociation of the mind, as itis called the exact opposite of all this
a run down or fatigued condition introspectionand particularly all continued subjective practices and the
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two passive attitude of the mind.If we lose contact with an interest in
the objective world, if we goinside our hands and spin romances and dream
day dreams to too great an extent, if we gaze blankly into space,
thinking of nothing in particular, ifwe allow the mind to become too passive
and do not exercise our intellect ina normal, healthy manner, this disintegration
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is likely to take place. Thestrands of the rope become separated, and
then the mind may go to piecesand spirit obsession and even insanity may result.
How to heal a sick mind?Of course, this is only a
crude analogy. The mind is notlike a rope and cannot be divided into
strands in the same way, butit is an analogy which will help us.
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The only way to heal and restorea mind in this condition is to
weave or well together these separate strandsand bind them up again into one solid,
single rope, as it were.This may often be done by hypnotism,
but great care must be exercised indoing this, for if it is
not rightly applied by an expert operator, the mind may become still more disintegrated,
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and the last state of that manshall be worse than the first.
Now, these separate strands of themind, to return to our analogy of
the rope, may form different selves. Each self may possess a certain identity
and individuality of its own, andthey may all pull in different directions.
That is, they may all exercisetheir own functions and powers, and think
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their own thoughts. There is noone self anymore. It has gone to
pieces. These various selves may alternateone with another in the same individual,
and then we have those interesting casesknown to us as alternating personality. If
there are two of these, wehave double personality. If there are three
or more of these personalities, wehave a case of multiple personality. There
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are sometimes six or seven of these, and in one case it was reported
that there were ten, all inthe same individual, all alternating with one
another, all having their own prejudices, likes, dislikes, interests, points
of view, and knowledge of personsand things. Many such cases have been
cured by welding together several of theseselves by hypnotic suggestion, when the original
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man was restored. The differences betweenspirits and subconscious selves. Now, if
this be true, and it hasbeen proved to be true by many well
authenticated cases, how distinguish these selvesfrom true spirits. This is a very
complex question which cannot be fully answeredin this place, because we must understand,
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first of all, more of thenature of the subconscious mind and its
powers. But one simple test canbe applied, which is this, All
these personalities or parts of selves derivetheir knowledge of men and things through the
same source, namely the five senses. None of them can possibly know any
fact which was not supplied to themthrough sight, hearing, touch, etc.
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So that if any of them manifestsupernormal knowledge, this proves to us
at once either that some external intelligenceis present, or that this personality,
whatever it may be, has acquiredthis knowledge in some occult manner by telepathy,
clairvoyance, et cetera. Which ofthese two interpretations is the correct one?
I shall endeavor to answer in anotherplace, personalities created by hypnotism.
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It may seem incomprehensible to many howthe human mind can become split up or
dissociated in this manner. They thinkthat this is rather a far fetched theory
and prefer to believe the simple theoryof spiritism as applied even to the most
simple facts. This might be admissible, but for the following consideration, we
can trace a gradual series of intermediatesteps all the way from normal states of
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mind to these dissociations. In daydreamingand absent mindedness. We see the first
of these steps when we hypnotize asubject and suggest to him that he is
Napoleon Bonaparte or Julius Caesar, andhe enacts the part with due gravity.
We can hardly suppose that Napoleon Bonaparteor Julius Caesar really returned to manifest through
him, And should any be inclinedto accept this view, it may be
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said that the hypnotic subject will justas easily carry out the suggestion that he
is a lion, or a bear, or a bird flying in the air.
And no one, we imagine,would contend that a lion, or
a bear or a bird really manifestedat such times. So therefore we see
that one part of the mind mayenact a little comedy by itself without the
knowledge of another part. And fromthis simple fact to the most striking phenomena
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of the subconscious we can trace adefinite chain of connection the picture forming faculty
of the mind. One of themost striking powers which the subconscious mind possesses
is its ability to reconstruct mental picturesor photographs of distant or imaginary persons.
Your mind contains a whole picture galleryof all your friends, which you see
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as it were in your mind's eye. This is limited not only to your
and relatives, but to heroes ofbooks you have read, and even to
imaginary personages. These pictures are notset and inert, but live and move,
and we place the characters in varioussituations and cause them to move,
act and talk as human beings woulddo. Thus, suppose your friend A
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or David Harem, or some imaginarypersonage were thought by you to be on
a journey, you would imagine themto be in various situations, and would
picture to yourself precisely how they wouldact in each situation, and would put
into their mouths arguments and conversations whichthey would carry on with those about them.
This faculty which the mind possesses isa very peculiar one, and its
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functions are technically known as spiritoid functions. They have a great bearing upon spiritism,
how dream personalities talk. These phenomenashow us how easy it is for
the subconscious to imagine that various personagesare present carrying on a conversation with us,
et c. Whereas, as amatter of fact, they are not
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present at all, but were inventedby us. If therefore, at a
seance, some exalted personage appears andclaims to communicate, We must always assure
ourselves, first of all, thatthis personage is not one of these semi
conscious or subconscious creations, and mustmake him give proof of his own identity.
This faculty of the mind is againseen in dreams. In dreams we
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create situations in a similar manner andimagine that other personages are present talking to
us. We have long debates andarguments with such personages, and sometimes they
beat us out. So you seehow important it is to be sure that
the intelligences which communicate at seances arenot creations, but are really individualities as
they claim to be. How todistinguish true from false? How are we
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to prove this and make this distinction? You may say, the following is
the first method. All our knowledge, whether it is conscious or subconscious,
is supposed to be obtained through thefive senses. The subconscious is built upon
the facts obtained by means of hearing, sight, touch, etc. Now,
if the communicating intelligence tells us manyfacts as proof of its identity which
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the mind of the medium never knew, we have fairly good proof of identity,
or at least that the knowledge givenwas obtained by some supernormal means,
but decisive proof is not yet obtained. We know that there are other methods
of obtaining supernormal information, for instance, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. Adding
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these powers to the subconscious faculties ofthe medium, we have often a difficult
task to prove that the intelligence whichcommunicates with us is really the personage it
claims to be. Repeated questions mustbe asked. Absolute proof of identity must
be insisted upon, and in thisway only can we be sure that we
have passed beyond the limitations of asubconscious mind of the medium, and that
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we are really obtaining messages direct fromthe spirit world. Why and how spirits
prove their identity? This proof ofidentity is really the great problem and the
first point to solve. Let memake this plain. Suppose that a cousin
of yours had disappeared twelve years ago. One day you receive a call over
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the telephone, and a voice saysto you, I am your cousin so
and so. I demand my shareof your uncle's will. Naturally, you
would reply, how do I knowthat you are so and so? In
daily life? It would be aneasy matter to prove this. He could
appear before you in his physical body, and you could identify him more or
less easily in most cases. Butsuppose he were so placed that he could
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never see you personally. In sucha case, how could he prove to
you that he really was the personin question. He would have to relate
to you a number of personal anddetailed incidents in his past life which he
would be the only likely person toknow, or relate facts which only he
and you knew, or tell youthings which you did not know, but
which you afterwards found out to becorrect. If you were see a number
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of these replies, you would beright in concluding that he really was the
person at the other end of theline. And this is the way in
which spirits prove to us their identity. Until they do so, we can
never be sure that the teachings theygive are correct. If they succeed in
proving their identity, we may thenaccept their word as to the conditions of
the next life and other matters,since they were always truthful people in this
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life, and we have no reasonto suppose that they are other than truthful.
Now. How we obtain spirit messagesthrough the subconscious. The subconscious is
the channel through which we obtain spiritmessages in nearly all cases. That is,
they come through or by means ofthe subconscious mind, and it therefore
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assists the spirits to communicate. Thespirit can manipulate or act upon the subconscious,
while it cannot readily affect the consciousmind. This we can see ourselves
in the following way. Many ofus have noticed that just as we are
dropping off to sleep, a forgottenmemory has flashed into our mind. It
could not find its way to ourconscious attention while the latter was busy with
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the day's activities, But as soonas the conscious mind became passive, then
the subconscious had the power to sendup this memory or message of warning.
It is the same in the caseof spirits who communicate. They are only
enabled to do so when the consciousmind is in abeyance, quieted, or
abstracted more or less completely, asin a trance. Then the spirit is
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enabled to act upon the subconscious mindof the medium and through it to reach
us still in the body. Thesubconscious is therefore the true medium or vehicle
for the manifestation of discarnate spirits,and this will become more apparent when we
come to consider the phenomena of trance, which will be dealt with more fully
in a later chapter. End ofChapter four
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