Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily DeathMyers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
Religion
Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death
Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
Immortality; Parapsychology; Personality
We have thus brought the hypnotised subject up to the point of knowing
supernormally, at any rate, the superficial sensations of his
hypnotiser. From that starting-point,--or, at any rate, from some
supernormal perception of narrow range,--his cognition widens and
deepens. He may seem to discern some picture of the past, and may
retrace the history of some object which he holds in his hand, or he may
seem to wander in spirit over the habitable globe, and to bring back
knowledge of present facts discernible by no other means. Perhaps he
seems to behold the future, predicting oftenest the organic history of
some person near him; but sometimes discerning, as it were pictorially,
scattered events to which we can guess at no attainable due. For all
this there is already more of positive evidence than is generally
realised; nor (I must repeat) is there any _negative_ evidence which
might lead us to doubt that further care in developing hypnotic subjects
may not at any moment be rewarded in the same way. We have here, in
fact, a successful branch of investigation which has of late years been
practically dropped from mere inattention to what has been done
already,--mere diversion of effort to the easier and more practical
triumphs of suggestive therapeutics.[96]
The next group of cases to which I pass relate chiefly to knowledge of
present facts. I may first refer to some experiments in
thought-transference with hypnotised persons[97] analogous to the
experiments with persons in a normal condition recorded in my next
chapter. Here the subject seems simply to become aware telepathically
of the thoughts of his hypnotiser, the hypnotic condition perhaps
facilitating the transfer of the impression. Next come the cases of what
used to be called "travelling clairvoyance" in the hypnotic state. These
are more like the partially retrocognitive cases in that they cannot be
traced with certainty to the contemporary thoughts of any particular
person. In travelling clairvoyance we seem to have a development of
"invasive dreams,"--of those visions of the night in which the sleeper
seems to visit distant scenes and to bring back intelligence otherwise
unattainable. These distant hypnotic visions seem to develop out of
thought-transference; thus the subject may discern an imaginary picture
as it is conceived in the hypnotiser's mind. Thence he may pass on and
discern a true contemporaneous scene,[98] unknown to any one present,
and in some few cases there is an element of apparent prevision in the
impression.[99]
Our survey of that important, though inchoate, appeal to the subliminal
self which passes under the name of hypnotism is now nearly as
complete--in its brief sketchy form--as the present state of knowledge
permits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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