THOUGHTS AND VOICES FROM THE ETHER:

UNSOLICITED AUTO-IMPULSIONS

Undoubtedly Mrs. Piper in the trance state has access to abnormal sources of information; but the question is how she becomes cognizant of them. Is it by going up the stream of time and witnessing these actions as they occurred; or is it from information received from the still existent actors, themselves dimly remembering them; or again, is it through the influence of contemporary minds holding stores of forgotten information and offering them unconsciously; or lastly, is it by falling back for the time into a one Universal Mind of which all ordinary consciousnesses past and present are but portions?

Sir OLIVER LODGE.

If there be higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them.

Professor JAMES.

Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left

open.

EMERSON.

III

THOUGHTS AND VOICES FROM THE ETHER:
UNSOLICITED AUTO-IMPULSIONS

HUMAN beings are normally the subjects of

unexpected ideas that work out for their

benefit, impelling them to instantaneous action, determining them to follow courses opposite to those intended, suddenly presenting plans and procedures that mature in unanticipated results. Sometimes, as we have seen at the moment of awaking, these ideas introduce themselves almost faster than they can be grasped, forcing their way into consciousness with such vividness as to compel respectful attention and corresponding action. Sometimes they give us no peace until we yield to their pressure, and then we learn the reason why in some derived advantage. We call them presentiments, admonitions, imperative conceptions; and as a rule we find it profitable to give heed to them even if this involves change of intention and exasperating abandonment of purpose.

Such communications may assume the form

of warning voices, either audible or merely mental, and described by the subjects as "still or silent voices"; these are to be carefully distinguished from hallucinations of hearing so frequently met with in the practice of every neurologist.

Among my patients is a lady who from childhood has been restrained and guided by a voice, on occasion so loud and peremptory that she designates it as the voice of God. Another patient is convoyed by an inner voice, inarticulate and unorganized, which always apprises her of impending danger. A third lady, a resident of Alaska, similarly receives instructions in business perplexities that have never failed to disentangle them. A fourth was thus advised of her husband's approaching death. Numerous other instances might be adduced from the author's records (and vide the cases of Socrates and Joan of Arc).

Whence come these influences, these spurs to direct or to diverted action, these admonitions that save? Ordinary knowledge reaches us through our sense organs, the avenues of approach to the mind from the phenomenal universe. But not so these. They are auto-impulsions from the infinitely attributed subliminal consciousness, the watchful sentinel of the soul, automatically enlightening its objective representative.