[PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH]
It has been said that the great distinction between East and West in the matter of learning has been that whilst Western science deals with phenomena and builds upon deductions from observation of external things, Eastern wisdom looks always inwardly, seeking to find the answer to all enigmas of creation in the mind of man. The one develops the logical faculty, often, perhaps, at the sacrifice of the imaginative functions; whilst the other follows the intuitive powers, not regarding logical rules. But, as a matter of fact, neither method can be employed to the exclusion of the other, and any great discovery of Western science will be found the outcome of interaction between the two principles. It had always been clear, however, to the writer that the part played by the intuitive or, as Myers would say, subliminal powers of the mind is habitually set aside by the orthodox naturalist, who is apt to see little beyond his specimens and what can logically be inferred from them. And archæological research has been in such a manner hidebound, and, it must be admitted, with some reason; for, as a comparatively young science, it has had to protect itself against many a foolish fantasy launched by a half-instructed or over-enthusiastic devotee. To describe these as "vain imaginations" would be correct, as the word "vain" is a sufficient qualification, but the writer at all times deprecates the use of the noble word "imagination" in the debased sense of a mere fantasy. Imagination is a great gift, a Divine power of the mind, and may be trained and educated to receive and to create only that which is true. And this, maybe, is the secret of much of the spiritual understanding and wisdom of the East.
But we Western folks think it unpractical to cultivate this gift. We have no system for training it, and our bourgeois habit of mind despises it. In our slipshod way, we say of anything not founded on fact, "It is all imagination," and similarly we are wont to misuse the term "illusion" by employing it to characterise positive delusion.
The training of the imaginative faculty upon scientific lines and its application to archæological research had long been a favourite notion of the writer's, and he and J.A. had many a talk on the subject; but the difficulty was as to the method most likely to secure the results at which they aimed.
What was clear enough, however, was the need of somehow switching off the mere logical machinery of the brain which is for ever at work combining the more superficial and obvious things written on the pages of memory, and by its dominant activity excluding that which a more contemplative element in the mind would seek to revive from the half-obliterated traces below.
And it occurred to F.B.B. that in the faculty of automatism which his friend was believed to possess, but which he had never used deliberately (it had operated once or twice in his life spontaneously), there might be found the key to success in this direction. F.B.B. was a member of the Society for Psychical Research. Both he and J.A. were intimate with Mr. Everard Feilding, Secretary of the Society, who had been greatly interested in J.A.'s account of certain phenomena of automatism which he had experienced. And E.F. had been present at one or two experiments in the calling of these powers into play.
Before entering upon the actual narrative of the discovery in connection with Glastonbury, it must be further premised that neither F.B.B. nor J.A. favoured the ordinary spiritualistic hypothesis which would see in these phenomena the action of discarnate intelligences from the outside upon the physical or nervous organisation of the sitters. They would regard such a view as something like a reversal or turning inside-out of the truth. But that the embodied consciousness of every individual is but a part, and a fragmentary part, of a transcendent whole, and that within the mind of each there is a door through which Reality may enter as Idea—Idea presupposing a greater, even a cosmic Memory, conscious or unconscious, active or latent, and embracing not only all individual experience and revivifying forgotten pages of life, but also Idea involving yet wider fields, transcending the ordinary limits of time, space, and personality—this would be a better description of the mental attitude of the two friends.
The following may be quoted as indicating F.B.B's temper of mind and feeling at a time closely following the date of the experiments he made with J.A. It may be found as a passage in the Illuminated Address which he prepared for, and which was accepted by, the Queen on her visit as Princess of Wales to the Abbey in 1909, and was conceived as a part of the "lovynge Greetinge of ye monkes of Glaston to theyre Prince and Princesse. xxii Jun: Ao Mcmix." This extract runs as follows. It was not automatic, but was doubtless influenced to some extent by a strong feeling in more than one quarter that Glastonbury would be renewed as a centre of spiritual realisation and reconciliation between the various racial elements in these islands and their distinctive religious expressions, not yet co-ordinated (see the writer's article on "Glastonbury" in the Christmas number of the Treasury for 1908, also an address by Canon Masterman given in London in the same year). Glastonbury, as is well known, was a centre of pilgrimage from all parts of the world. In most ancient times it was compared with Rome and Jerusalem:
"For ye past dyeth not but slepeth, nay ffor perchaunce hit wakyth and hit ys they of ye present who doe slepe and dreme. Hit ys euen as a ffar countrie ffrom ye which they heare tydynges: Yet men will fare vnto londes ffarr distant and ye weelth hath bene theyr guerdon euen soe wayteth euer ffor man ye treasure of ye wisdom of past tymes and yeeldeth her vnto ye loue whych seekyth and ys ne wearyed; soe schal ye memorie of oldetyme thinges be reuealyd and of Glaston hit ys sayd yt when ye tymes ben ripe ye glorye schal return: May hit bee euen soe Gracious Prince and Princess yn youre tyme."
