This double-consciousness, memory, or sub-state of mental powers, is another but lower phase of psychic-consciousness, and is sometimes exhibited by accidents, and also by disease.
Dr. Abercromby relates the case of a boy, four years old who was trepanned for a fracture of the skull. He was in a complete stupor during the operation, and was not conscious of what took place. At fifteen he became seriously ill of fever. In the delirium occasioned by the fever, he gave a correct description of the operation, and of all the persons present, their dress, manners, and actions, to the minutest particulars. The “superior power” must have obtained this knowledge in some other way than through the ordinary channels of the outward senses.
In cases of apparent drowning, where the person has been saved from death by active, external help, we have been informed that the human mind has worked with a rapidity of action not thought possible in the waking state, the intensity of menial action being increased in adverse ratio to the inaction of the external senses and consciousness. In this state the career of a lifetime has been reviewed, conversations, actions, persons seen and places visited, all vividly brought to mind—in possibly less time than it takes to pen this paragraph. These phenomena suggest the reflection that the daily waking life—sensuous and worldly-minded—is possibly, to many, the least real and effective. How much our external life is influenced by our unconscious (to us in the waking state) sub-life, is an interesting problem.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says:—“The more we examine the mechanism of thought, the more we shall see that the automatic and unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all its processes. We all have a double who is wiser and better than we, who puts thoughts into our heads and words into our mouths.”
A commercial gentleman of my acquaintance, who was rather sceptical on the subject of double-consciousness—although, “notwithstanding,” he said, “Mr. Stead, in the Review of Reviews, had turned an honest penny out of ghosts, double-consciousness, and that sort of rubbish”—admitted to me, he had a maid, who had an awkward habit of rising in her sleep, carefully setting the fires, cleaning and dusting out the rooms, setting the breakfast table, and doing many other things which appeared important to the servant-mind. Her movements were watched. She slipped about with eyes closed, avoiding obstacles, and doing her work systematically and neatly, and without fuss, when done, she would go to bed. In the morning she had no recollection of what she had said or done. It was a curious thing, he had to admit. The girl was honest enough. He was certain this habit had not been simulated. Threats of discharge, and possible loss of wages, did not cure her of this habit. There was a certain form of “double consciousness” in this case.
“The subliminal consciousness” of Mr. Myers, by which he accounts for the phenomena of genius, is but another way of expressing the concept of an “identity underlying all consciousness,” the psyche, the real “I, me,” “the superior power which directs and controls our better nature,” the “double who is wiser and better than we,” the reality of which is so much hidden from our ordinary experience, because our soul-life is so much buried out of sight by the débris of the “things of this life,” which, fortunately or otherwise, pre-occupy so much of our attention.
It is this “subliminal consciousness” we see manifested in the psychic state, and natural somnambulism. Clairvoyance, psychometry, thought transference, etc., are as so many spectrum rays of the one soul light. Call them “subliminal” if you will. These rays flow out from the soul, and are many-hued, distinct or blurred, according to the degree of pureness or super-sensitivity of the external corporeal prism through which they are projected.
Persons have lived for years, we are credibly informed, who have spent half their lives entranced, in the alternation of two distinct individualities or two distinct states of consciousness, in one of which they forget all they had learned or did in the other.
Professor Huxley described (British Association of Science, Belfast, 1874) a case in which two separate lives, a normal, and abnormal one, seemed to be lived at intervals by the same individual during the greater portion of her life.
The conclusion to the whole matter is—the psychic, or soul-powers in some persons are less entrammelled by the senses than in others; that a high degree of organic sensitiveness always accompanies those who are recognised as psychics or sensitives; that this state of sensitiveness is natural to some, and in others may be developed by accident, disease, or induced by somnambulism and trance.