Unhappiness, though it may seem trivial now, both as to cause and quality, was very deep in me at the time. It had wakened an understanding of certain things I had read--as in the stolen “Patanjali” years before--without then grasping what they meant. These things I now was beginning to reach by an inner experience of them, rather than by an intellectual comprehension merely.... And, as thought ran backwards, escaping the unpleasant Hub and Dairy, to earlier days in the Black Forest School, to the Jura Mountains village, to family holidays among the Alps or on the west coast of Scotland, it reached in due course the year spent at Edinburgh University just before I left for Canada, and so to individuals there who had strongly influenced me: I recalled Dr. H----, who used hypnotism in his practice, taught me various methods of using it, and often admitted me to private experiments in his study. He explained many a text-book for me. He had urged me to give up the idea of farming in Canada, and to read for medicine and become a doctor. “Specialize,” he said (in 1883). “By the time you are qualified Suggestion will be a recognized therapeutic agent, accepted by all, and accomplishing marvellous results. Become a mental specialist.” I lay under my pine trees, wondering if it were still too late ... but speculating, further and chiefly, about those other states of consciousness, since called “subliminal,” which his experiments had convinced me were of untold importance, both to the individual and to the race. Any lawful method of extending the field of consciousness, of increasing its scope, of developing latent faculties, with its corollary of greater knowledge and greater powers, excited and interested me more than the immediate prospect of making a million.... This doctor’s family were sincere and convinced spiritualists. He let them be, paying no attention to them, yet pointing out to me privately the “secondary” state into which his wife, as the medium, could throw herself at will. His son had an Amati violin; we played together; I was invited to many séances. The power of reading a “sitter’s” mind I often witnessed, my own unuttered thoughts often being announced as the communication from some “guide” or “spirit friend.” But for the doctor’s private exposition, I might doubtless have been otherwise persuaded and shared my hostess’s convictions.