The case which I quote in Appendix VI. F illustrates both the essential harmlessness—nay, naturalness—of such an experiment, and the causeless fear which it may engender even in rational and serious minds.
In these experimental apparitions, which form, as it were, the spolia opima of the collector, we naturally wish to know all that we can about each detail in the experience. Two important points are the amount of effort made by the experimenter, and the degree of his consciousness of success. The amount of effort in Mr. S. H. B.'s case (for instance) seems to have been great; and this is encouraging, since what we want is to be assured that the tension of will has really some power. It seems to act in much the same way as a therapeutic suggestion from the conscious self; one can never make sure that any given self-suggestion will "take"; but, on the whole, the stronger the self-suggestions, the better the result. It is therefore quite in accordance with analogy that a suggestion from without, given to a hypnotised person, should be the most promising way of inducing these self-projections. It should be strongly impressed on hypnotised subjects that they can and must temporarily "leave the body," as they call it, and manifest themselves to distant persons—the consent, of course, of both parties to the experiment having been previously secured.
Of this type were Dr. Backman's experiments with his subject "Alma,"[128] and although that series of efforts was prematurely broken off, it was full of promise. There were some slight indications that Alma's clairvoyant excursions were sometimes perceptible to persons in the scenes psychically invaded; and there was considerable and growing evidence to her own retention in subsequent memory of some details of those distant scenes.
By all analogy, indeed, that subsequent memory should be an eminently educable thing. The carrying over of recollections from one stratum of personality into another—as hypnotic experiment shows us—is largely a matter of patient suggestion. It would be very desirable to hypnotise the person who had succeeded in producing an experimental apparition, of Mr. S. H. B.'s type, and to see if he could then recall the psychical excursion. Hypnotic states should be far more carefully utilised in connection with all these forms of self-projection.
In these self-projections we have before us, I do not say the most useful, but the most extraordinary achievement of the human will. What can lie further outside any known capacity than the power to cause a semblance of oneself to appear at a distance? What can be a more central action—more manifestly the outcome of whatsoever is deepest and most unitary in man's whole being? Here, indeed, begins the justification of the conception expressed at the beginning of this chapter;—that we should now see the subliminal self no longer as a mere chain of eddies or backwaters, in some way secluded from the main stream of man's being, but rather as itself the central and potent current, the most truly identifiable with the man himself. Other achievements have their manifest limit; where is the limit here? The spirit has shown itself in part dissociated from the organism; to what point may its dissociation go? It has shown some independence, some intelligence, some permanence. To what degree of intelligence, independence, permanence, may it conceivably attain? Of all vital phenomena, I say, this is the most significant; this self-projection is the one definite act which it seems as though a man might perform equally well before and after bodily death.
CHAPTER VII
PHANTASMS OF THE DEAD
| οὑκἑτι πρὁσω |
| ἁβἁταν ἁλα κιὁνων ὑπἑρ Ἡρακλἑος περἁν εὑμαρἑς. |
| . . .θυμἑ, τἱνα πρὁς ἁλλοδαπἁν |
| ἁκραν ἑμὁν πλὁον παραμειβεαι; |
| —PINDAR |
THE course of our argument has gradually conducted us to a point of capital importance. A profound and central question, approached in irregular fashion from time to time in previous chapters, must now be directly faced. From the actions and perceptions of spirits still in the flesh, and concerned with one another, we must pass on to inquire into the actions of spirits no longer in the flesh, and into the forms of perception with which men still in the flesh respond to that unfamiliar and mysterious agency.
There need, I hope, be no real break here in my previous line of argument. The subliminal self, which we have already traced through various phases of growing sensitivity, growing independence of organic bonds, will now be studied as sensitive to yet remoter influences;—as maintaining an independent existence even when the organism is destroyed. Our subject will divide itself conveniently under three main heads. First, it will be well to discuss briefly the nature of the evidence to man's survival of death which may theoretically be obtainable, and its possible connections with evidence set forth in previous chapters. Secondly,—and this must form the bulk of the present chapter,—we need a classified exposition of the main evidence to survival thus far obtained;—so far, that is to say, as sensory automatism—audition or apparition—is concerned; for motor automatism—automatic writing and trance-utterance—must be left for later discussion. Thirdly, there will be need of some consideration of the meaning of this evidence as a whole, and of its implications alike for the scientific and for the ethical future of mankind. Much more, indeed, of discussion (as well as of evidence) than I can furnish will be needed before this great conception can be realised or argued from with the scientific thoroughness due to its position among fundamental cosmical laws. Considering how familiar the notion—the vague shadowy notion—of "immortality" has always been, it is strange indeed that so little should have been done in these modern days to grasp or to criticise it;—so little, one might almost say, since the Phædo of Plato.
Beginning, then, with the inquiry as to what kind of evidence ought to be demanded for human survival, we are met first by the bluff statement which is still often uttered even by intelligent men, that no evidence would convince them of such a fact; "neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."