It will of course be said, and often is said, that those phenomena are only hallucinations, and have no objective existence. But the sufficient answer to that is that the things also of our actual world are hallucinations in their degree, and certainly have no full objective existence. The daffodil in my garden is an hallucination in that degree that with the smallest transposition of my senses, its color, its scent, and even its form might be quite altered. What we call its objectivity rests on the permanence of its relations—on its continued appearance in one spot, its visibility to different people at one time, or to one person at different times, and so forth. But if that is the definition of objectivity, it is obvious that the forms which have been seen over and over again, and under strict test-conditions, in connection with certain mediums, have had in their degree an objective existence.
In America, in connection with Kate Fox (one of the earliest and most spontaneous and natural of modern mediums), a certain Mr. Livermore—a thoroughly capable business man of New York—came into communication as it seemed with his deceased wife. She appeared to him—not in one house only, but in several houses—over and over again; sometimes only the head, sometimes the whole figure; her appearance was accompanied by inexplicable sounds and lights; she communicated sometimes by raps, sometimes by visibly writing on blank cards brought for the purpose; and these phenomena extended over a period of six years and 388 recorded sittings, and at many of the sittings were corroborated by independent witnesses.[[75]] It is difficult to imagine hallucinations or deceit maintained under such circumstances.
In England (in connection with the medium Florence Cook) the figure “Katie King” appeared to Sir William Crookes a great number of times during three years (1881–84) and was studied by him and Mr. C. F. Varley, F.R.S., with the greatest scientific care. Her apparition often spoke to those present, was touched by, and touched them, wrote, or played with the children. It often came outside the cabinet, and three times was seen by those present simultaneously with, and by the side of, the entranced medium. The figure was taller than the medium and different in feature; Crookes observed its pulse and found it making 75 beats a minute to the medium’s 90, and so forth.[[76]]
Professor Richet, the French scientist, examined with great care the phantasm “Beni Boa,” which appeared to him some twenty times in connection with the Algerian medium Aisha; he obtained several photographs of it, and observed its pulse, its respiration, and so forth.[[77]] Lombroso, the author of many scientific works, and a man who to begin with was a complete sceptic on these matters, assures us that at the sittings of Eusapia Paladino he saw his own mother (long dead) a great number of times, and that she repeatedly kissed him.[[78]] In connection with Mme. D’Espérance[[79]] the girlish figure of “Yolanda” appeared and disappeared very frequently during a period of ten years, and was well known to frequenters of her circle; and in 1896 a committee formed by some twenty-five high officials and well-known persons in Norway publicly attested the repeated appearance at her seances of a very beautiful female figure who glided among the sitters, grasped their hands, gave them messages, and so forth, and disappeared before their eyes in a misty cloud.[[80]] Such evidence of the objectivity of seance figures could be rather indefinitely multiplied. But the same may be said, though perhaps less conclusively, of various ghosts and other manifestations, whose relations to certain persons or places or houses seem quite definite and well established—and not unfrequently steadily recurrent under the same conditions.[[81]]
Without going into the vexed question of whether these and the like manifestations are merely products or inventions of the trance-mind of the medium or other person concerned, or whether some at least of them are the work or evidence of separate ‘spirits’—leaving that question open for the present—we may still say that all these things are actual creations—creations of the hidden self of Man in some form or other; not so assured, certainly, and not so permanent as the well-known shapes of outer Nature; abortive creations, if you like, which come a little way forward into manifestation, and then retreat again; but still creations in the same sense as those more established ones; and wonderfully revealing to us the secret of the generation and birth of all the visible world.
That we should have, all of us, this magic source somewhere buried within—this Aladdin’s lamp, this vase of the Djinns, this Pandora box of evil as well as of good, is indeed astounding; and must cause us, when we have once fully realized the fact, to envisage life quite differently from what we have ever done before. It must cause us to feel that our very ordinary and daily self—which we know so well (and which sometimes we even get a little tired of) is only a fraction, only a flag and a signal, of that great Presence which we really are, that great Mass-man who lies unexplored behind the very visible and actual. Difficult or impossible as this being may be to define, enormously complex as it probably is, and far-reaching, and hard to gauge, yet we see that it is there, undeniably there—a being that apparently includes far extremes of faculty and character, running parallel to the conscious self from low to high levels,[[82]] having in its range of manifestation the most primitive desires and passions, and the highest feats of intellect and enthusiasm; and while at times capable of accepting the most frivolous suggestions and of behaving in a humorous or merely capricious and irresponsible manner, at other times capable, as we have seen, of taking most serious command and control of the whole physical organism, and as far as the spiritual organism is concerned, of rising to the greatest heights of prophecy and inspiration.[[83]]
I say, then, that we must include in this problem of survival both the ordinary upper and conscious self and the deep-lying subjective and subconscious (or superconscious) being. Just as the organizing power of the Body includes the Cerebro-spinal system of nerves on the one hand, and the Great-Sympathetic system on the other, so the organism of the soul includes the supraliminal and subliminal portions. The two must be taken together, and either alone could only represent a fraction of the real person. The exact relation of these two selves to each other is a matter which can only become clear with long time and study of this difficult subject. It may be that the subliminal self is destined to become conscious in our ordinary sense of the word. It may be, on the other hand, that the conscious self is destined to rise into the much wider consciousness of the subjective being. There is a great deal to suggest that the supraliminal self is only the front as it were of the great wave of life; and that the brain consciousness is only a very special instrument for dealing with the surroundings and conditions of our terrestrial existence—an instrument which will surrender much of its value at death and on mergence with the larger and differently constituted consciousness which underruns and sustains it. That the two selves are in constant communication with each other, and that they are both intelligent in some sense, is obvious from the facts of suggestion, by which often the lightest whisper so to speak from the upper is understood and attended to by the under self; while, on the other hand, the under-self communicates with the upper, sometimes by inner Voices heard and Visions seen, sometimes by automatic actions, as in dream- or trance-writing, sometimes even by Sounds and Apparitions so powerful as to appear at least external.
So we cannot but think that the question of survival may ultimately resolve itself very much into the question of the more complete and effectual understanding between these different portions of the self. When they come into clear relation with each other, when the unit-man and the Mass-man merge into a perfect understanding and harmony, when they both become conscious of their affiliation to the great Self of the universe, then the problem will be solved—or we may perhaps say, the problem will cease to exist.