The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5Various
General
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5
Various
Periodicals
But do we not know that in these regions unconscious and involuntary
suggestion is often more powerful and effective than the other? In
the hackneyed and rather childish experiment of table-turning, for
instance, which, after all, is only a crude and elementary form of
telepathy, the replies are nearly always dictated by the unconscious
suggestion of a participant or a mere onlooker.[6] We should therefore
first of all have to make sure that neither the hypnotizer nor
an onlooker, nor yet the subject himself, has ever heard of the
reincarnated persons. It will be enough, I shall be told, to employ
for the countertests another operator and different onlookers who
are ignorant of the previous revelations. Yes, but the subject is
not ignorant of them; and it is possible that the first suggestion
has been so profound that it will remain forever stamped upon the
unconsciousness, and that it will reproduce the same incarnations
indefinitely in the same order.
All this does not mean that the phenomena of suggestion are not
themselves laden with mysteries; but that is another question. For
the moment, as we see, the problem is almost insoluble, and control is
impracticable. Meanwhile, since we have to choose between reincarnation
and suggestion, it is right that we should confine ourselves in the
first instance to the latter, in accordance with the principles which
we have observed in the case of automatic speech and writing. Between
two unknowns, common sense and prudence decree that we should turn
first to the one on whose frontiers lie certain facts more frequently
recorded, the one which shows a few familiar glimmers. Let us exhaust
the mystery of our life before forsaking it for the mystery of our
death. Throughout this vast expanse of treacherous ground, it is
important that, until fresh evidence arrives, we should keep to one
inflexible rule, namely, that thought transference exists as long as
it is not absolutely and physically impossible for the subject or some
person in the room to have cognizance of the incident in question,
whether the cognizance be conscious or not, forgotten or actual. Even
this guaranty is not sufficient, for it is still possible for some one
taking no part in the sitting, and even very far away from it, to be
placed in communication with the medium by some unknown means, and to
influence the medium at a distance and unwittingly. Lastly, to provide
for every contingency before letting death come upon the boards, it
would be necessary to make certain that atavistic memory does not
play an unforeseen part. Cannot a man, for instance, carry hidden in
the depths of his being the recollection of events connected with
the childhood of an ancestor whom he has never seen, and communicate
it to the medium by unconscious suggestion? It is not impossible. We
carry in ourselves all the past, all the experience, of our ancestors.
If by some magic we could illumine the prodigious treasures of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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