Such a conclusion—whatever force of conviction may accompany it—is certainly not altogether satisfactory. I remember that once—in the course of conversation with a lady on this very subject—she remarked that though she thought there would be a future life she did not believe in the continuance of individuality. “What do you believe in, then?” said I. “Oh,” she replied, “I think we shall be a sort of Happy Mass!” And I have always since remembered that expression.
But though the idea of a happy mass has its charms, it does not, as I say, quite satisfy either our feelings or our intelligence. There is a desire for something more, and there is a perception that Differentiation and Individuation represent a great law—a law so great as probably to extend even to the ultimate modes of Being. And though a vague generality of this kind cannot stand in the place of strict reasoning or observation, it may make us feel that personal survival is at any rate possible, and that a certain amount of speculation on the subject is legitimate.
At the same time we have to bear in mind that the subject altogether is a very complex one, and that we have to move only slowly, if we want to move forward at all, and to avoid having to retrace our steps. We must not too serenely assume, for instance, that we at all know what we are! We have already (ch. v.) analyzed to some degree the constitution of the human being, and found it complicated enough in its successive planes of development. We have now to remember that—at least on the two middle planes, those of the human soul and the animal soul—there is another subdivision to be made, namely between that part which is conscious and that which is only subconscious; so that further complications inevitably arise. We may not only have to consider, as in the chapter referred to, which of these planes may possibly carry survival with it, but again whether such survival may be in the conscious region, or only in the subliminal or subconscious. This chapter will be largely occupied with a consideration of the subliminal or underlying portion of the self, and it will be seen that that is probably of immense extent and variety of content compared with the surface or conscious portion; but it will also be seen that there is no strict line of demarcation between the two, and that a continual interchange betwixt them is taking place, so that for the present at any rate it is safest to give the word ‘self’ its widest scope and make it include both portions and every mental faculty, rather than limit its application.
In attacking the subject, then, of the Survival of the Self, I suppose our first question ought to be: What is the test of survival, what do we mean by it? And to this, I imagine, the answer is, Continuity of Consciousness. This would seem to be the only satisfying definition. Consciousness is necessary in some form or other, as the base and evidence of our existence; and continuity in some degree is also necessary, in order to link our experiences together, as it were into one chain. Continuity, however, need not be absolute. The chain of consciousness may apparently be broken by sleep, or it may be broken by a dose of chloroform, or by a blow on the head; but it may be re-knit and resumed. It may pass from the supraliminal state to the subliminal, and again emerge on the surface. It may even be discontinuous; but as long as Memory bridges the intervals we get the sense of continuity of life or personality.[[59]] Supposing a body of memories—of life say in some village of ancient Egypt—suddenly opened up in one’s mind, as vivid and consistent and enduring as one’s ordinary memory of childhood days, it would be natural to conclude that one really had pre-existed in that village; it would be difficult not to make that inference. And similarly if at some future time, and in far other than our present surroundings, the memory of this one’s earth-life should emerge again, vivid and personal as now, the being thus having that memory would, we suppose, conclude that he had once lived this life here on earth.
Thus Memory would be the arbiter of survival and of the continuity (on the whole) of consciousness. Frederick Myers, indeed, goes so far as to define consciousness as that which is “potentially memorable”[[60]]—thus suggesting that memory is a necessary accompaniment of any psychic state to which we can venture to give the name of consciousness.
It may indeed seem precarious to rest our test of survival on so notoriously fallible, and even at times fallacious, a thing as Memory; but one does not see that there is anything better, or that there is any alternative! The memory may not be continuously enduring and operative; but if at any future time one should be persuaded of having survived from this present life, it must, one would say, be by memory in some form or other, of this present life. And it must be remarked that though memory is fitful and fallible, these epithets apply mainly to the supraliminal memory, to that superficial memory which we make use of by conscious effort, and which often fails us in the moment of need. Deep below this we dimly perceive, and daily are becoming more persuaded of, the existence of vast and permanent but latent stores, which from time to time emerge into manifestation; and more and more our psychologists are inclining to think that the supraliminal self gains its memories by tapping these stores, and that its lapses and oblivions are more due to failure in the tapping process than to any failure of the memory stores themselves. Indeed not a few psychologists are now asking whether it is not likely that every psychic experience carries memory with it, and so is preserved in the great storehouse.
I have already, in the last chapter, spoken of the so-called subliminal self as, among other things, a wonderful storehouse of memory; and I propose now to occupy a few pages with the more detailed consideration of the nature of that self; because, as we are discussing the question of survival, our discussion, as I have just said, ought obviously to include the under as well as the upper strata of consciousness. We cannot very well confine our meaning and our inquiry to the little brain-self only, and leave out of consideration the great self of the emotions and impulses—of genius, love, enthusiasm, and so forth.[[61]] No, we must include both—the more intimate, though more hidden, self, as well as the self of the façade and the front window.
This hidden self is indeed an astounding thing, whose extent and complexity grows upon us as investigation proceeds. For when the term ‘subliminal’ was first used it had apparently a fairly simple connotation—as of some one obscure and unexplored chamber of the mind; but now instead of a single chamber it would seem rather some vast house or palace at whose door we stand, with many chambers and corridors—some dark and underground, some spacious and well lighted and furnished, some lofty with extensive outlook and open to the sky; and the modern psychologists are puzzling themselves to find suitable names for all these new domains—which indeed they cannot satisfactorily do, seeing they know so little of their geography!
I can only attempt here—very roughly I am afraid, and unsystematically—to point out some of the properties and qualities of the underlying or hidden or subconscious self—whichever term we may like to use. In the first place, its memory appears to be little short of perfect, and at any rate to our ordinary intelligence and estimate, nothing short of marvellous. When a servant girl, who can neither read nor write, reproduces, in her wandering speech during a nervous fever, whole sentences of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which she could not possibly understand, and which had only fallen quite casually on her ears years before from the lips of an old scholar (who used to recite passages to himself as he walked up and down a room adjoining the kitchen in which the girl at that time worked[[62]]); we perceive that the under or latent memory may catch and retain for a lengthy period, and with strange accuracy, the most fleeting and apparently superficial impressions. When Dr. Milne Bramwell instructs a hypnotized subject to make a cross on a bit of paper exactly 20,180 minutes after the giving of the order; and the patient, having of course emerged from the hypnotic sleep, and gone about her daily work, and having no conscious remembrance of the command, does nevertheless at the expiration of the stated number of days and minutes take a piece of paper and make the said cross upon it,[[63]] we can only marvel both at the persistence and accuracy of memory which the subliminal being displays, and at the strict command which this being may exercise in its silent way over the actions of the supraliminal self. When we are repeatedly told that in the moment of drowning, people remember every action and event of their past life, though we may doubt the exact force of the word ‘every,’ we cannot but be convinced that an enormous and astounding resurgence of memory does take place,[[64]] and we cannot but suspect that the memorization is somehow on a different plane of consciousness from the usual one, being simultaneous and in mass instead of linear and successive. Or when, again, a ‘calculating boy’ or prodigy of quite tender years on being asked to find the cube-root of 31,855,013 instantly says 317, or being given the number 17,861 immediately remarks that it consists of the factors 337 × 53,[[65]] we are reduced to the alternative suppositions, either that the boy’s subconscious self works out these sums with a perfectly amazing rapidity, or that it has access to stores of memory and knowledge quite beyond the experience of the life-time concerned. In all these cases, and hundreds and thousands of others which have been observed, the memory of the subliminal self—whether manifested through hypnotism, or in sleep or dreams, or in other ways—seems to exceed in range and richness, as well as in rapidity, the memory of the supraliminal self; and indeed Myers goes so far as to say that the deeper down one penetrates below the supraliminal, the more perfect is the remembrance: that, in cases where one can reach various planes of memory in the same subject, “it is the memory furthest from waking life whose span is the widest, whose grasp of the organism’s upstored impressions is the most profound.”[[66]] This is, I think, a very important conclusion, and one to which we may recur later.