THE DANGER OF UNCONSCIOUS SUGGESTION IN MESMERIC TESTS
WE now come to the most serious objection, that of suggestion. Colonel de Rochas declares that he and all the other experimenters who have given themselves up to this study “have not only avoided everything that could put the subject on a definite tack, but have often tried in vain to lead him astray by different suggestions.” I am convinced of it: there can be no question of voluntary suggestion.
But do we not know that in these regions unconscious and involuntary suggestion is often more powerful and effective than the other? In the hackneyed and rather childish experiment of table-turning, for instance, which, after all, is only a crude and elementary form of telepathy, the replies are nearly always dictated by the unconscious suggestion of a participant or a mere onlooker.[6] We should therefore first of all have to make sure that neither the hypnotizer nor an onlooker, nor yet the subject himself, has ever heard of the reincarnated persons. It will be enough, I shall be told, to employ for the countertests another operator and different onlookers who are ignorant of the previous revelations. Yes, but the subject is not ignorant of them; and it is possible that the first suggestion has been so profound that it will remain forever stamped upon the unconsciousness, and that it will reproduce the same incarnations indefinitely in the same order.
All this does not mean that the phenomena of suggestion are not themselves laden with mysteries; but that is another question. For the moment, as we see, the problem is almost insoluble, and control is impracticable. Meanwhile, since we have to choose between reincarnation and suggestion, it is right that we should confine ourselves in the first instance to the latter, in accordance with the principles which we have observed in the case of automatic speech and writing. Between two unknowns, common sense and prudence decree that we should turn first to the one on whose frontiers lie certain facts more frequently recorded, the one which shows a few familiar glimmers. Let us exhaust the mystery of our life before forsaking it for the mystery of our death. Throughout this vast expanse of treacherous ground, it is important that, until fresh evidence arrives, we should keep to one inflexible rule, namely, that thought transference exists as long as it is not absolutely and physically impossible for the subject or some person in the room to have cognizance of the incident in question, whether the cognizance be conscious or not, forgotten or actual. Even this guaranty is not sufficient, for it is still possible for some one taking no part in the sitting, and even very far away from it, to be placed in communication with the medium by some unknown means, and to influence the medium at a distance and unwittingly. Lastly, to provide for every contingency before letting death come upon the boards, it would be necessary to make certain that atavistic memory does not play an unforeseen part. Cannot a man, for instance, carry hidden in the depths of his being the recollection of events connected with the childhood of an ancestor whom he has never seen, and communicate it to the medium by unconscious suggestion? It is not impossible. We carry in ourselves all the past, all the experience, of our ancestors. If by some magic we could illumine the prodigious treasures of the subconscious memory, why should we not there discover the events and facts that form the sources of that experience? Before turning toward yonder unknown, we must utterly exhaust the possibilities of this terrestrial unknown. It is moreover remarkable, but undeniable, that, despite the strictness of a law which seems to shut out every other explanation, despite the almost unlimited and probably excessive scope allotted to the domain of suggestion, there nevertheless remain some facts which perhaps call for another interpretation.