Telepathy and the Subliminal SelfMason, R. Osgood (Rufus Osgood)
Philosophy
Telepathy and the Subliminal Self
Mason, R. Osgood (Rufus Osgood)
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Telepathy
In sleep the conditions are favorable for this readjustment, and the
subliminal self comes more or less perfectly to the surface; then appears
that most peculiar and interesting series of pictures and visions which we
call dreams; sometimes the rearranged, or rather unarranged, impressions
and perceptions of the waking hours brought together, possibly just before
the power of attention is entirely lost; sometimes the Puck-like work of
the subliminal personality, the Léontines of the dream-country influencing
the unconscious or semi-conscious primary self; sometimes the veridical or
truth-telling dreams, which have been the wonder of all ages, and
sometimes giving complete and active supremacy to the subliminal self as
in natural somnambulism. Another portion of the field in which it might be
profitable to look for evidence of the existence of a subliminal
personality is in the eccentric work of genius; and still another, in the
unexpected and often heroic actions of seemingly ordinary persons under
the stress and stimulus of a great emotion, as of joy, sorrow, or anger,
or of intense excitement, as for instance, the soldier in battle, the
fireman at the post of danger, or the philosopher or astronomer on the eve
of a new discovery; in all these cases the ordinary personality with its
intense self-consciousness and self-considering carefulness is
submerged--it disappears--the power of voluntary attention to mental
states or physical action is lost; a new and superior personality comes to
the surface and takes control. The supreme moment passes, and the primary
self resumes sway, scarcely conscious of what has been done or how it was
accomplished; even sensation has been abolished, and it is only now that
he discovers the bleeding bullet-wound, the charred member, or the broken
bone.
In physical science, whenever some new fact or law or principle has been
discovered, it is at once seen that many things which before were obscure,
or perhaps could only be accounted for by a theory of chance, or of direct
interference by an omnipotent Deity, are now illuminated by a new light,
and order reigns where before only confusion and darkness were visible.
Something of the same sort is beginning to be recognized in the world of
mental and psychical phenomena. If the mathematical exactness which
measured the force of gravity, or placed the sun in one of the foci of an
ellipse instead of the centre of a circle cannot be applied here, it is
only on account of the vast complexity of the problem presented, and of
which we know so few of the elements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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