like it. I am aware that I shall bring upon myself a flood of letters from Christian Scientists if I identify their methods of curing with "animal magnetism" and "manipulation," and other devices of the devil which they repudiate. All I can say is that their miracles are brought about by affecting the subconscious mind; there is no other way to bring them about, and for my part I cannot see that it makes a great difference whether the subconscious mind is affected by a hand laid on the forehead, or by a hand waved in the air, or by an incantation pronounced, or by a prayer thought in silence. If you can persuade the subconscious mind that God is operating upon it, that God is omnipotent and is directing this particular healing, that is the most powerful suggestion imaginable, and is the basis of many cures. But if in order to achieve this, it is necessary for me to persuade myself that I can find some meaning in the metaphysical moonshine of Mother Eddy—why, then, I am very sorry, but I really prefer to remain sick.
But such is not the case. You do not have to believe anything that is not true; you simply have to understand the machinery of the subconscious, and how to operate it. We are only beginning to acquire that knowledge, and we need an open mind, free both from the dogmatism of the medical men and the fanaticism of the "faith curists." A few years ago in London I met a number of people who were experimenting in an entirely open-minded way with mental healing, and I was interested in their ideas. I happened to be traveling on the Continent, and on the train my wife was seized by a very dreadful headache. She was lying with her head in my lap, suffering acutely, and I thought I would try an experiment, so I put my hand upon her forehead, without telling her what I was doing, and concentrated my attention with the greatest possible intensity upon her headache. I had an idea of the cause of it; I understood that headaches are caused by the irritation of the sensory nerves of the brain by fatigue poisons, or other waste matter which the blood has not been able to eliminate. I formed in my mind a vivid picture of what the blood would have to do to relieve that headache, and I concentrated my mental energies upon the command to her subconscious mind that it should perform these particular functions. In a few minutes my wife sat up with a look of great surprise on her face and said, "Why, my headache is gone! It went all at once!"
That, of course, might have been a coincidence; but I tried the experiment many times, and it happened over and over. On another occasion I was able to cure the pain of an ulcerated tooth; I was able to cure it half a dozen times, but never permanently, it always returned, and finally the tooth had to come out. My wife experimented with me in the same way, and found that she was able to cure an attack of dyspepsia; but, curiously enough, she at once gave herself a case of dyspepsia—something she had never known in her life before. So now I will not allow her to experiment with me, and she will not allow me to experiment with her! But we are quite sure that people with psychic gifts can definitely affect the subconscious mind of others by purely mental means. We are prepared to believe in the miracles of the New Testament, and in the wonders of Lourdes, as well as in the healings of the Christian Scientists and the New Thoughters, which cannot be disputed by any one who is willing to take the trouble to investigate. We can face these facts without losing our reason, without ceasing to believe that everything in life has a cause, and that we can find out this cause if we investigate thoroughly.
CHAPTER XIII
EXPLORING THE SUBCONSCIOUS
(Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and other methods by which a whole new universe of life has been brought to human knowledge.)
One of the most common methods of exploring the subconscious mind is the method of automatic writing. I have never tried this myself, but tens of thousands of people are sitting every night with a "ouija" in front of them, holding a pencil on a piece of paper and letting their subconscious minds write what they please. Most of them are hoping to get messages from the dead—a problem which we shall discuss in the next chapter. Suffice it for the moment to say that automatic writing and table rapping and other devices of mediumship have opened up to us a vast mass of subconscious mentality. A part of the scientific world still takes a contemptuous attitude and calls this all humbug, but many of our greatest scientists have been persuaded to investigate, and have become convinced that in this mass of subconsciousness there is mingled, not merely the mind of the medium, but the minds of all those present, and possibly other minds as well. For my part, I do not see how any one can study disinterestedly the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and not become convinced that telepathy at least is one of the powers of the subconscious mind.
Telepathy is what is popularly known as "thought transmission." Every one must know people who are what is called "psychic," and will know what is happening to some friend in another part of the world, or will go upstairs because they "sense" that some one wants them, or will go to the door because they "have a hunch" that some one is coming. And maybe these things are only chance, but you will be unscientific if you do not take the trouble to read and learn what modern investigators have brought out on such subjects.
This much is certain, and is denied by no competent investigator: whatever has been in your mind is there still, and it is possible to find a way of tapping the buried memory. An old woman, delirious with fever, begins to babble in a strange language, and it is discovered that she is talking ancient Hebrew. The woman is entirely illiterate, and her conscious memory knows no language but her own, her conscious mind has no ideas beyond those of her domestic life and the gossip of the village. But investigation is made, and it is discovered that when this woman was a girl, she worked in the home of a Hebrew scholar, and heard him reading aloud. She did not understand a word of what she heard, and was not consciously listening to it; nevertheless, every syllable of it had been stored away forever by her subconscious mind. Innumerable cases of this sort have been established; and, as a matter of fact, we might have been prepared for such discoveries by the memory-feats of the conscious mind. It is well known that Mozart, when a child, could listen to a new opera, and go home and play it over note for note. At present there is a child in America, giving exhibitions in public, carrying on thirty games of chess at the same time. There have been others who do sums of mental arithmetic, such as multiplying thirty-two figures by thirty-two figures, or reciting the Bible backwards.
All this seems incredible; and yet there is something still more incredible. Suppose that these same powers, which are stored in our subconscious minds, were stored also in the minds of animals! A few years ago Maurice Maeterlinck published a book, "The Unknown Guest," in the course of which he tells about his experiments with the so-called Elberfeld horses: two animals which had been trained for years by their owner to give signals by moving their forefeet, and which apparently could count and divide and multiply large sums, and extract square and cube root, and spell out names, and recognize sounds, scents and colors, and read time from the face of a watch. Of course, it is easy to say that this is absurd, that the horses must have got some signals from their trainer; but, as it happened, they would do their work in the absence of their trainer; they would do it in the dark, or with a sack over their heads, and the best scientific minds of Germany were unable to suggest any test conditions which could not be met. There have been many gigantic frauds in the world, and this may have been one of them; on the other hand, there have been many new discoveries, and for my part I will finish exploring the miracles of the subconscious mind of man, before I presume to say that anything is impossible in the subconscious mind of a horse or a dog. Also I will wait for some learned person to explain to me how the subconscious minds of horses and dogs know enough to build and repair their bones and teeth, so cleverly that modern architectural and engineering science could teach them nothing. I ask, also, if it is possible to find a region in the subconsciousness which is common to two people, why is it absurd to suggest that there might be a region common to a man and a horse? Why is this any more absurd than that they should eat the same food and breathe the same air and feel the same affection and be frightened at the same dangers?
The only persons who will be dogmatic about such subjects are the persons who are ignorant.
