The word "subliminal" means what is beneath the threshold (limen) of the consciousness,—the sensations, the thoughts, the memories, which remain at the bottom, and seem to represent a kind of sleeping me. I do not pretend to affirm (adds the author) that there always exists in us two me's correlative and parallel: I denote rather by the subliminal me that part of the me which ordinarily remains latent, and I admit that there may be not merely co-operation between these two quasi-independent currents of thoughts, but also changes of level and alternations of personality.[88] Medical observation (Félida, Alma) proves that there is in us a rudimentary supernormal faculty, something which is probably useless to us, but which indicates the existence, beneath the level of our consciousness, of a reserve of latent unsuspected faculties.[89]
What is it that is active in us in telepathic phenomena? We may recall the case of Thomas Garrison (Society for Psychical Research, VIII, p. 125) who, while sitting with his wife at a religious service, suddenly gets up in the middle of the sermon, goes out of the church, and, as if impelled by an irresistible impulse, walks twenty miles afoot to go to see his mother, whom he finds dead on his arrival, although he did not know that she was ill and although she was relatively young (fifty-eight years). I have a hundred observations similar to this in writing before me. It is not our normal habitual nature that is in action in such a case as this.
There is probably in us, more or less sentient, a sub-conscious nature, and it is this which seems to be at work in mediumistic experiences. I am pretty much of the opinion Myers expresses in the following paragraph:[90]
Spiritualists attribute the movement and the dictations at their séances to the action of disembodied intelligences. But if a table execute movements without being touched, there is no reason to attribute these movements to the intervention of my deceased grandfather, rather than to my own proper intervention; for if I do not see how I could have done it myself, it is not clear to me how the effect could have been produced by the action of my grandfather. As for dictations, the most plausible explanation seems to me to be for us to admit that they do not come from the conscious me, but from that profound and hidden region where fragmentary and incoherent dreams are elaborated.
This explanatory hypothesis is held, with an important modification, by a distinguished savant to whom also we owe long and patient researches into the obscure phenomena of normal psychology; I mean Dr. Geley, who thus sums up his own conclusions:
A certain amount of the force, intelligence, and matter of the body may perform work outside of the organism,—act, perceive, organize, and think without the collaboration of muscles, organs, senses and brain. It is nothing less than the uplifted sub-conscious portion of our being. It constitutes, in truth, an externalizable sub-conscious nature, existing in the me with the normal conscious nature.[91]
This sub-conscious nature does not seem to depend upon the organism. It is probably anterior to it, and will survive it. It seems to be superior to it, endowed with powers and acquirements very different from the powers and acquirements of the normal, supernormal, and transcendent consciousness.
Assuredly, there is in this view of the case more than one mystery still, were it only the feat of performing a material act at a distance, and that (not less strange) of apparently having nothing to do with that kind of an act.
The first rule of the scientific method is first to seek explanations in the known before having recourse to the unknown, and we should never fail to comply with this rule. But if this method of sailing does not bring us to port, it is our duty to confess it.
I very much fear that that is what is the matter here. We are not satisfied. The explanation is not clear, and is floating a little too much at random in the waves—and the wavering uncertainty—of the hypothesis.