Psychical

“ What the senses convey to us alone builds up our mental content, from mere sensory perceptions upwards to the most abstract ideas from the simplest psychical elements up to the most complex ideas, concepts, and conclusions, to the most varied imaginative constructions. And in the development of the mental content the “soul” itself is merely the stage upon which all that is acquired through the senses crowds, and jostles, and unites to form images, perceptions, and precepts. ”

“ For I wish to make it quite plain that the psychical fact from which I propose to start, is on what I may perhaps best call the sentient level of consciousness, i.e. involves only a consciousness which feels pleasure and pain, which strives and desires without as yet clear self-consciousness or conception of objects. ”

“ The psychical principle belonging to a given person can, in the process of mesmeric manipulation, become embodied, and can stream out from the mesmerizer in the form of some 'fluid' (or whatever one may choose to term it) , and seize upon and govern the psychical principle of another--the person mesmerized--producing a state which is at variance with all the ordinary conditions of human life, and the usual rules of existence, and which, even in its celebrated 'ecstatic forms,' comprehends in itself all the awesomeness of the mysterious spirit realm. ”

“ On the other hand, if the psychical life is subjected to the incessant influences of a powerful and rich experience, then every representative element in the mind is connected with so many others that the actual and natural course of the thoughts is easily influenced and determined by insignificant circumstances, which accidentally are decisive. ”

“ American Practitioner and News, I suggested (as a possible explanation for certain psychical phenomena) the existence in man of two consciousnesses, an active, vigilant consciousness and a pseudo-dormant consciousness. Again, in the American Naturalist, in an essay entitled “The Psychology of Hypnotism,” [100] I reasserted this theory and, to a certain extent, elaborated it. ”

“ Psychological pertains to the empirical data of consciousness, (thoughts, ideas, sensations, etc.) while psychical pertains to the inner or ultimate nature of these data. Though the data as given in consciousness are psychical, that which is psychical may not be solely manifested as psychological phenomena. It may be manifested as physical phenomena and perhaps be identified with the energy of the universe. ”

“ Physical objects are those which are possible objects of awareness for every subject; psychical objects are those which are possible objects of awareness for one subject only. The tree which I see is as physical tree object for every man, it is the same tree which you and I see; my psychical perception of the tree is object for one subject only. My perception can never be your perception. Our perceptions may agree but each has his own. ”

“ This individual spirit energises through each of our bodies. Of our own spirit we have a very close knowledge, of other spirits we have a rather more remote knowledge from inference; we infer their states of mind from the states of body which we observe, or from the material effects which they cause in speaking or writing. ”

“ to-day there is but a small minority among educated persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamer's own psychical act. ”

“ What is our Ego? Is this Conscious Personality which receives impressions through the five senses, and through them alone, is it the only dweller in this mortal tabernacle? May there not be other personalities, or at least one other that is not conscious, when we are awake, and alert, and about, but which comes into semi-consciousness when we sleep, and can be developed into complete consciousness when the other personality is thrown into a state of hypnotic trance? ”

“ It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call 'something there,' more deep and more general than any of the special and particular 'senses' by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality ”

“ Our capacities for sensation, for example, are less intimate possessions, so to speak, than our emotions and desires; our intellectual processes are less intimate than our volitional decisions. The more active-feeling states of consciousness are thus the more central portions of the spiritual Me. The very core and nucleus of our self, as we know it, the very sanctuary of our life, is the sense of activity which certain inner states possess. This sense of activity is often held to be a direct revelation of the living substance of our Soul. ”

“ We come now to consider the mental apparatus which is at the disposal of the self: to ask what it can tell us of the method by which she may escape from the prison of the sense-world, transcend its rhythm, and attain knowledge of—or conscious contact with—a supra-sensible Reality. ”

“ Or does one seriously think he understands better how the knower 'connects' its objects, when one calls the former a transcendental Ego and the latter a 'Manifold of Intuition' than when one calls them Thought and Things respectively? Knowing must have a vehicle. Call the vehicle Ego, or call it Thought, Psychosis, Soul, Intelligence, Consciousness, Mind, Reason, Feeling,—what you like—it must know. ”

“ From the roughest to the finest, from matter to spirit, from hypnosis to the psychic state, we find enough to arrest attention and give a high degree of seriousness and earnestness to our investigation. We stand on the threshold of soul, and the place where we stand is holy ground. We find, as is the physical, mental, and spiritual characteristics of the operator, plus those of the sensitive or sensitives, so will be the nature of the phenomena evolved. ”

“ And this philosopher's well-known formula assumed: there exists a spiritual, non-extended, indivisible substance, an objective, immortal entity, superadded to and independent of brain, which thinks, feels, and wills—a substance cognizable by self-consciousness alone, and which is in fact the "thinking principle" or proper "soul." Mind thus becomes absolutely and wholly an extra-cerebral product, and the possible offspring of activity on the part of the "soul" alone. ”

“ The physical phenomena of spiritism are in more senses than one the most interesting of all the manifestations of subjective power. They require, however, but a brief treatment at our hands, for the reason that the primary object of this book is to deal with the mental powers and attributes of mankind in their relations to psychic phenomena. ”

“ For instance, we can prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena, etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities, therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the mind. ”

“ It is this rational and common-sense view which I want to impress upon you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel, wonder, and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to make you understand that you are unfolding consciousness, showing out your powers on one plane after another according to the organisation and the fineness of the bodies in which your consciousness is working ”

“ The successive chapters of the first section take up in order the following questions: the nature of instincts and their place in the constitution of the mind, the principal instincts and the primary emotions of man; some general or non-specific innate tendencies, the nature of the sentiments and the constitution of some of the complex emotions; the development of the sentiments; the growth of self-consciousness and of the self regarding sentiment; the advance to the higher plane of social conduct; and volition. ”

“ Therefore, all the experiences of the 'Soul' or psychic form, from its first entrance into active consciousness, whether in this world or in other worlds, are attracted to itself by its own inherent volition, and work together to make it what it is now and what it will be hereafter. ”

“ When we say of any mind, that it is devout, or superstitious, or meditative, or cheerful, we mean that the ideas, emotions, or volitions implied in those words, form a frequently recurring part of the series of feelings, or states of consciousness, which fill up the sentient existence of that mind. ”

“ They are sensational processes, processes due to inward currents set up by physical happenings. Such processes have, it is true, always been regarded by the platonizers in psychology as having something peculiarly base about them. But our emotions must always be inwardly what they are, whatever be the physiological ground of their apparition. If they are deep, pure, worthy, spiritual facts on any conceivable theory of their physiological source, they remain no less deep, pure, spiritual, and worthy of regard on this present sensational theory. ”

“ The theory of these researchers is that besides the body and the mind, meaning by the mind the Conscious Personality, there is also within our material frame the soul or Unconscious Personality, the nature of which is shrouded in unfathomable mystery. The latest word of advanced science has thus landed us back to the apostolic assertion that man is composed of body, soul and spirit; and there are some who see in the scientific doctrine of the Unconscious Personality a welcome confirmation from an unexpected quarter of the existence of the soul. ”

“ That ideas and feelings, thus indirectly and mechanically transmitted or stored, can affect the sensitive soul in unmistakable fashion, is a fact of experience; but that deposits in matter are competent to produce so purely psychic an effect can surely only be explained in terms of the potentialities and previous experience of the mind or soul itself. No emotional influence can be expressed, or rendered intelligible, in terms of matter. Matter is an indirect medium of communication between mind and mind. ”

“ When we speak of the 'mental' condition of a person, we refer to his senses, his perceptions, his consciousness, his ideas. If his mental condition is perfect, his will, his memory, his understanding are perfect, and connected with a healthy bodily organization. ”

“ Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple homogeneous mental state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great classes—Cognitions and Feelings. ”

“ The philosophy which deals with what is variously called the automatic faculty, the subjective consciousness, the subconsciousness or the sub-liminal ("Below the threshold") consciousness as an important factor in fantastic and misleading psychic phenomena from spirits will be found set forth at length in my little book on Hell's Happy Sunshine. ”

“ All of which we are truly conscious, in sensation, is the mental affection, the last link of the series, in the supposed process; what we term our perceptions of organs of sense, or of other external things that act upon these—our ideas, for example, of a brain or an eye, a house or a mountain, being as truly states of our own percipient mind, and nothing but states of our own mind, as our feeling of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, love or hate,—to which we never think of giving an existence, nor a direct and immediate cause of existence, out of ourselves. ”

“ The only remaining psychic phenomena which I propose to discuss are those connected with that emotion of the human soul which finds its expression in the worship of the Supreme Being. This feeling is so widespread that no system of philosophy is complete that does not take it into account. Like every other emotion, it has its normal mode of expression, and its abnormal manifestations. The difference between the two modes of expression is so great that their identity of origin has been, to a great extent, lost sight of. ”

“ All the 'fainter' forms of pleasure and pain, — those which constitute the agreeable or disagreeable element in all our judgments, emotions, desires, and passions, whether 'sensual,' aesthetic, moral, or religious, — all these we shall explain, on their physical side, by tracing them to the central modes of neurosis corresponding to the similar central processes of seeing and hearing and of thinking in general. ”

“ I confess, therefore, that to posit a soul influenced in some mysterious way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious affections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical resistance, so far as we yet have attained. ”

“ As sight, hearing, perception, involve, in a single word,—process both mental and corporeal,—so, I have no doubt, that idea, though now confined more strictly to the feelings of the mind, was long employed with a more vague signification, so as sometimes to mean the mental affection, sometimes the organic affection, sometimes both;—in the same manner, as at present we speak of sight, sometimes as mental, sometimes as organic, sometimes as both. ”

“ Modern psychology, finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thorough-going and complete. ”

“ But as soon as these two faculties have passed into action, and man has verified by his experience, through the medium of sensation, a determinate existence, and through the medium of consciousness its absolute existence, the two fundamental impulses exert their influence directly their object is given. The sensuous impulse is awakened with the experience of life—with the beginning of the individual ”