'If all things which partook of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing would be alive--what other result could there be?'--SOCRATES, as reported by Plato. In the esoteric Fairy-Faith, the terms Fairy and Fairyland attain
their broadest meaning. To the Celtic mystic, the universe is divisible
into two interpenetrating parts or aspects: the visible in which we are
now, and the invisible which is Fairyland or the Otherworld; and a
fairy is an intelligent being, either embodied as a member of the human
race or else resident in the Otherworld. The latter class includes many
distinct hierarchies and lower orders. Some, like the highest of the
Tuatha De Danann, who are the same in character as the gods of the
Greeks and Hindoos, are super-human; others are the souls of the dead; while many are subhuman and have
never been embodied in gross physical bodies. These last include
daemons (incorrectly regarded by Christian and other theologies as
being in all cases evil, and called demons); and other like spirits,
such as those which Dr. Tylor, in Primitive Culture, has designated nature spirits (leprechauns, 'pixies, knockers, corrigans, lutins, little folk, elves generally, and their counterparts in all non-Celtic Fairy-Faiths), which are the elementals of mediaeval mystics. In the preceding chapter chiefly the lower species of fairies were
under consideration, but now the higher orders (including human souls
embodied and disembodied), in their relation toward one another, are to
be considered independently. It becomes necessary, then, to present
here a view of life and death not yet scientifically orthodox. The Celt in all ages of his long history, like the ancient Greek
thinkers with whom his ancestors were contemporary, has always been
inclined, unlike modern scientists, to seek an explanation for the
phenomena of evolutionary life by postulating a noumenal world of
causes as the background of the phenomenal world of effects. To-day,
the rapid march of scientific pioneers, chiefly those in psychical
research, is bringing our own cold and exact science very close to that
indefinable boundary which separates the two worlds; and for that
reason alone a presentation of the Celtic theory of the causes
operating to produce death and birth will be, at least by way of
suggestion, of some value. Facts of common everyday knowledge are apt to lose their
significance through too great familiarity. A fact of this character is
that when each child is born it must awaken into life. Often it is not
known whether the newly-born babe is dead or alive until it stretches
forth its arms and breathes or cries. And this phenomenon of our first
awakening and entry upon the visible plane of life and conscious action
seems to corroborate what the early Celt who thoughtfully observed it
held to be true, and what the Celt of to-day holds to be true: that the
material substance composing the body of man is merely a means of
expression for life, a conductor for an unknown force which exhibits volition and individual
consciousness; just as material substance in a condition called
inanimate is a conductor for another unknown force called electricity,
which does not exhibit any volition or consciousness. Destroy the human
body, and there is no manifestation of its life force; destroy a wire,
and there is no manifestation of electric light: the human body seems
to be merely incidental in the history of the individual consciousness,
as a wire is incidental to electric light. But is this consciousness of man which we call life simply a
phenomenon of matter non-existent without a physical means of
expression, or does it--like electricity after the wire is
destroyed--continue to exist in an unmanifested state when the human
body is cold and motionless in death? And in the case of a child born
dead has this consciousness found some organic imperfection in the
newly-constructed infant body which made its manifestation impossible?
A few thoughts to aid in answering these questions will probably
suggest themselves if we briefly consider the great difference between
a human body in life and a human body in death. In life, there is the
highly organized, delicately adjusted, perfectly balanced human body
responding to the will of an invisible power; and it is admitted by all
schools of philosophers, moralists, and scientists that this invisible
power--whatever it may be--is the real man. This invisible power, beginning its manifestation through a
microscopic bit of germ-plasm, gradually builds for itself a more and
more complex physical habitation, until, after the short space of nine
months, it claims membership among the ranks of men. During the many
years of its sojourn on our planet, it renews its habitation many
times. Every atom it began with in childhood is discarded and replaced
by a new one long before the age of manhood is reached, and yet upon
reaching manhood the invisible power remembers what it did in a child's
frame. This indicates that memory or consciousness as a psychical
process does not depend essentially upon a material brain nor upon a
certain grouping of ever-changing brain-substance; for if it did,
apparently it would slowly and imperceptibly undergo change as completely as the whole physical
body and brains This physiological process furnishes sufficient data to
allow us to postulate that there is a psychical organ of memory behind
the physical sense-consciousness, and that such an organ in itself is,
at least during a human-life period, unchanging in its composition.
Without such an organ, the process of memory when more fully analysed
(in a way we cannot here attempt) is inexplicable.
[1] The simplest hypothesis is to conceive that organ as the one
connected with the subconsciousness or super-sense-consciousness, by
means of which the invisible power or rememberer is able to remember
and to impress its memory upon the temporary and continually unstable
physical brain. In the process of memory there must be first of all a
thing to be remembered; second, a record of that thing to be
remembered; and third, something to remember that thing. The thing
remembered is the result of a conscious experience, the record of it
the result of its impress at the time it was experienced, but the
rememberer is neither. That invisible power, which we have called the real mans animates
the body, it places food in it as fuel to produce animal heat, animal
vitality and force, and tries to keep it in good working order as long
as possible. If the body is imperfect at birth or becomes so later,
that invisible power is forced to act through it imperfectly; if the
brain is diseased, there is insanity, if undeveloped, idiocy; and when
the body ceases to respond either perfectly or imperfectly, the
invisible power must surrender it entirely, and there is what we call
death. Now what is this invisible power or force which has entirely
vanished, leaving the physical body and brain cold and motionless? Let
us see if there is an answer. Chemical analysis proves that the visible
parts of the body of man are merely transformed gases; but in a
complete analysis of a living body such as man's there are certain
elements to be considered which are always invisible.
[2]
Thus at death there is instantly a cessation of all bodily
consciousness--of all willing, thinking, movement. The power which has
made the body conscious, and which cannot be compared to any known form
of matter, is entirely gone. But there is left in the body a moment
after its departure everything which we know to be material--the animal
heat, the animal magnetism, the animal vitality. When these are gone,
the body is cold and stiff, and in no essential way unlike any other
mass of inert matter. If heat be applied to the body, or magnetism, or
vital forces, there is nothing in it to retain them any more than there
would be in a stone. The real man is gone. Then the body begins to
disintegrate. The law of the conservation of energy and the
indestructibility of matter makes it certain that in the process of
death nothing has been lost, certainly nothing material. The animal
heat has gone off somewhere in the atmosphere or in some other matter;
the animal magnetism and vitality are momentarily lost sight of, but
soon they will be attached to other organic beings such as plants or
animals to begin a new cycle of embodiment. The physical constituents
of the body will go to their appropriate places, into the air as gases,
into the water as fluids, into the earth as salts and minerals, and in
a short time may form the parts of a flower, or fruit, or animal. But
where or what is the willing, the thinking, the remembering, the
directing force which once controlled all these and held them together
in unity? Ultra-violet rays are invisible, but they show their
existence through their chemical action; similarly a soul or Ego may
exist invisibly and show its existence through the vital and physical
unity manifested by a living human being. As we have already seen in
the preceding chapter, there are a number of the first men of science
who feel that when all, the data of the latest scientific discoveries in the realm of
psychology and of psychical research are impartially examined there is
no escape from some such hypothesis as the ancient hypothesis of a soul. If we accept the soul hypothesis, as it seems we must, and regard a
soul as an indestructible unit of invisible power possessing
consciousness and volition, and normally able to exist independently of
a human body, then it becomes a logical and a scientific necessity to
postulate its preexistence, because as such a unit it is
indestructible, in accordance with the law of the conservation of
energy and indestructibility of matter. We speak here not of the
ordinary soul or human personal consciousness, but of that Ego which
Celtic mystics conceive as the permanent principle (though probably
itself relative to some still higher power) behind the
personality--which, in turn, they believe is a temporary combination
wholly dependent upon the Ego. Accordingly, it is scientifically
possible for such a soul as a homogeneous unit of force or conscious
energy to pass from one mass of matter or physical body to another
without disintegration, diminution, or loss of its own identity. It is
scientifically certain, also, from experiments performed to test the
power of resistance to decomposition exhibited by the force which we
call life in an organic body, that such a force is capable of
outwearing many physical embodiments.
[3]
Recent demonstrations tend to show that the heredity hypothesis cannot
be held to account fully for such widely varied character or soul
individuality as may be exhibited by members of one family. We must
therefore account for mental, moral, and certainly psychical
inequalities among our race by some other hypothesis; and no hypothesis
is more scientific, more in line with known physiological and psychical
processes, or more in accord with the law of evolution, than that of
re-birth. The theory of the mechanical transmission of acquired
characteristics in a purely physical manner through the germ-plasm is
no longer tenable when all the data of physiology and psychology are
admitted. A vitalistic view of evolution is rapidly developing in the
scientific world, and the weight of evidence is decidedly in favour of
regarding all evolutionary processes, reaching from the lowest to the
highest organisms, as illustrating a gradual unfolding in the sensuous
world of a pre-existing psychical power through an ever-increasing
complexity of specialized structures, this complexity being brought
about by natural selection. Such a view is also strongly supported if
not confirmed by the general scientific belief that spontaneous
generation of life is and always has been impossible on our planet or
on any planet: there must have been life before its physical
manifestation or its physical evolution began. We may regard this psychical power as like a vast reservoir of
consciousness ever trying to force itself through matter, the walls of
the reservoir. Through the microscopic body of an amoeba there has
percolated a very minute drop from the reservoir. As evolution
advances, the walls of the reservoir become more and more porous, and
little by little the drop increases to a tiny rivulet. Through the
higher animals, the tiny rivulet flows as a brook. Through man as he
is, the brook flows as a deep and broad river. Throughout the
completely evolved man of the far distant future, the deep and broad
river will have overflowed all its banks, it will have inundated and
completely overwhelmed the animal-human nature of the individual
through whom it flows, as the whole volume of the vast reservoir pours
itself out. The ordinary consciousness of man will then have been
transmuted into the subconsciousness, of which it had always been a
pale reflection. In other words, if the theory of the mechanical
transmission of acquired characteristics has failed, as seems to be the
case, then we must assume that there is, as the bearer of all gains
made from generation to generation, some sort of psychical or
vitalistic principle. This, making use of the germ-plasm merely as a
physical basis for its manifestation, begins to build up a body suited to its further evolutionary needs. The brilliant discoveries of Dr. Jacques Loeb and of M. Yves Delage
have demolished absolutely the old idea that each organ and each tissue
contained in embryo in the normal egg-germ must develop in a particular
and coordinate way into a normal organism and after the parental type:
it is possible to make a head grow where there ought to be feet; and at
Zürich, Standfuss, solely through changing the temperature of his
laboratory, was able to obtain from the same species of butterfly forms
which were tropical and forms which were arctic.
[4]
All this helps to establish the hypothesis, which amounts to certainty,
that the conformation of a physical body, or even the kind of species
to be born, is directly determined by physical environment and not by
heredity, and that the chief factor to consider in organisms is the
life animating the body. Physical environment affects only the physical
organism; it does not affect the invisible and unknown life-principle
resident within the physical organism. The process of fertilization is a physical process. As such it is
simply initiatory to embryonic evolution which also is physical. Once
the proper physical conditions are set up by the parents, life pursues
its marvellous progress in the womb of the human mother, from the
amoeba-like initial embryo to man. That is to say, parents set in
motion the laws governing, the reproduction of physical bodies. They
create such conditions as enable the invisible life-force to begin its
physical manifestation.
[5]
In the two fused germs from the parents resides the physical inheritance of the offspring, to be
outwardly shaped by environment; but the physical inheritance is a
thing distinct from the psychical part of the living being, just as
much as the dead human body is a thing apart from the life which has
left it. Though the old heredity theory is overthrown by late
discoveries, the question as to what life is in human bodies under all
possible environmental conditions remains unsolved; and so do the
questions why there should be sports in nature, which among man are
called geniuses, and why every human being has a distinct and highly
developed individual character, essentially unlike that of his
immediate ancestors. Embryology proves conclusively that the human embryo retraces in its
growth the evolution of lower life-forms. At first consisting of two
single cells fused into one, it is like the amoeba. By cell-division it
grows and progresses step by step through each lower realm of being
until it comes to be a water-creature with gills; and science teaches
that all organic life on this planet once dwelt in the seas. It grows
progressively out of the water-world stage of organic life into the
world of air-breathing creatures. Nature at last achieves her highest
product, and a human being is born out of the Womb of Time. The initial
microscopic bit of germ-plasm is endowed with power of motion, thought,
and human consciousness, with dominion over all the lower kingdoms
through which by right of ancient conquests it passed in the brief
period of nine months. On every side the problem of life is full of
poetry and wonder; it is the greatest mystery. Not only can we thus study the age-long evolution of the physical
man, but we have recently acquired sufficient scientific data to lay
foundations for a study of the evolution of the psychical man. Thus,
for example, instincts seem to be nothing more than habits which
through unknown periods of time have become so ingrained in the
constitution of man, and of all animals, that now they have become
second nature and usually are exercised without the need of reasoning
processes. The influence from innate sensuous experiences rises into
consciousness as the life of every normal child and youth unfolds itself; and these experiences in their full expansion, when
the age of maturity has been reached, constitute in their unity what we
call character, which, in one sense, may be defined as the sum total of
instincts of every kind. From such a point of view, the psychical or
invisible power in man is merely a bundle of acquired habits which make
use of the bodily organism in order to express themselves--in the same
way, as we have pointed out, that electrical forces manifest their
presence through a conductor. If these habits be good, we call their
possessor a good man; if evil, we call him an evil man. The theory of Charles Darwin suggests that all evolutionary progress
is directed to the acquirement of newer and ever higher instincts. And
if this process be the true one, that is to say, if all instincts,
which in their finer distinctions mark off species from species in all
animal kingdoms, be as Darwin thought--and as is to-day more clearly
evident--the result of a long and gradual evolution through experience
in a sensuous realm of existence, then it would seem to follow that
there must be some kind of a monad (probably a non-sensuous one) to
which such acquired instincts can attach themselves. Such a monad, too,
must have been a percipient and hence a recorder of such
ever-accumulating experiences throughout an inconceivably long chain of
lives, and it of itself must, while so perceiving and recording, not be
subject to the transitoriness of the sensuous realm wherein it gathers
together these instincts, which in their unified expression form its
personality or human character. In harmony with the vitalistic view of evolution, which implies a
pre-existent psychical power continually striving to express itself
completely through matter, yet normally able to exist independently of
a physical means of expression, we should regard such high mental
processes as judgement, reasoning, analysis and synthesis, and spatial
perception, along with memory, as resultants of very great experience
in a sensuous world, on which in our present psycho-physical
constitution such processes appear to have direct bearing. In other
words, for man to be able to exercise such high mental processes there is need to postulate incalculable ages of
specialization in the nervous apparatus, and in psychophysical
adjustment, of a kind which has thus enabled the psychical power to
express itself to such a supreme degree in the realm of mind and
matter. The same vitalistic argument is applicable to the lower mental
processes and to the instinctual powers in man, because we cannot at
any time, in viewing the complete evolution of man as a twofold being
composed of a physical and a psychical part, force aside Fechner's
conviction that the problem is a psychophysical one. A study of sexual
instincts in children seems to confirm this.
[6] Such a psychical and vitalistic hypothesis is, as we have seen,
strongly supported by embryology; and embryology proves conclusively
the need of long ages of physical evolution for the development of each
tissue and highly specialized organ in the human body. Certain French
and German and other scientists of the vitalistic school have
demonstrated physiologically the need of a pre-existent power as the
unifying principle which attracts and compels material atoms to group
themselves into the pattern of the human body
[7]
--or, as we may add, of any organic body. Psychical researchers at the outset
of their science seem apparently to have demonstrated psychologically
the post-existence of the personal consciousness-unity; and it is very
likely when further progress has been made in psychics that there will
arise a logical need to postulate, in addition to the personal
consciousness-unity, a hypothetical pre-existent soul-monad as the
unifying principle which attracts and compels psychical atoms of
experience (if such an expression may be used) to group themselves into the personal consciousness-unity
which appears to survive the death of the gross physical body--for a
long or short time, as future research may show.
[8]
Such a soul-monad, to follow the view held by Celtic mystics, led by
acquired instincts which were transmitted to it through the personality
(held by the Celtic esoteric doctrine to be a temporary combination),
apparently weaves out of matter the body-unit adapted to its further
evolution, in a way analogous to that in which a silkworm is led by
acquired instincts to weave a cocoon. This body-unit is twofold: (1)
the visible body derived from the visible elements of matter; and (2)
the invisible or ghost-body derived from the invisible or ethereal
elements of matter. Strictly speaking, for the Celtic mystic this soul-monad is
something upon which the personal consciousness depends for its
psychical unity in precisely the same way as the physical body depends
upon the personal consciousness for its physical unity. The Celtic
mystic holds that just as the body-unity falls back again into its
primal elements of matter, so the personal consciousness-unity
(apparently able to survive in the ghost-body for a long period after
its separation from the grosser physical envelope or human body) also
in due time is discarded by the soul-monad or individuality, and then
falls back into its primal psychical constituents. In other words, the
Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth correctly interpreted does not
conceive personal immortality, but it conceives a greater kind of immortality--the immortality of
the unknown principle which gives unity to each temporary personality
it makes use of, and which we prefer to designate as the individuality,
the impersonator. And this individuality is the bearer of all
evolutionary gains made in each temporary personality through which it
reflects itself: it is the permanent evolving principle. Perhaps an analogy drawn from nature will make the Celtic position
clearer: we may say that the personality occupies a position between
the human body and the soul-monad, just as the moon occupies a position
between the earth and the sun. Personal consciousness is to the human
body what the moonlight is to the earth, merely a pale reflection from
a third thing, the soul-monad or individuality, which is the ultimate
source of both sets of unities, the material or body-unity in its
twofold aspect and the psychical or personal consciousness-unity. Each
personality is temporary, while the individuality, like the sun in
relation to the earth and moon, is capable of at least a relative
immortality: the sun's light, as science holds, existed before there
was any moon to reflect it on to the earth, and may continue to exist
when both the moon and earth are disintegrated. The essential nature of
the sun's energy or life remains unknown to science; so does the
essential nature of the energy or life manifesting itself as the
individuality. Though all such analogies are more or less weak, this
one adequately fits in with the theories concerning the Celtic Esoteric
Doctrine of Re-birth which the most learned of contemporary Celts,
chiefly mystics, have favoured us with; and it is our rare privilege to
put these theories on record for whatever they may be worth. The best
hypothesis is always the one which best explains all available data,
and, to our mind, when very minutely examined, in a way which (chiefly
for reasons of space) cannot be attempted here, this Celtic hypothesis
concerning the nature and destiny of man is the best hitherto
adduced.
[9] Objectors to the Re-birth Doctrine as held by the Celts and other peoples anciently and now, naturally ask why, if we have lived before here on earth in physical bodies, we do not
remember it. But the shallowness and unscientific nature of this
question is at once apparent to psychologists who know that there
exists in man a subconscious mind which in the great mass of people is
almost totally dormant. 'The subconscious self,' wrote William James,
'is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity ... Apart from all
religious considerations, there is actually and literally more life in
our total soul than we are at any time aware of.' And he added:--'It
thus is "scientific" to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive
alternations of consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal
memories reaching a bursting point.'
[10]
Intuition, which all men have experienced, would seem to be the result
of a momentary contact by the physical brain with its psychical
counterpart--the subconscious self, the individuality is distinguished
from the personality. Certain observed psychological processes in ordinary men and women,
who never really know that they have a subconsciousness or
Transcendental Self, prove that it exists even for them, and any part
of man which exists and functions of itself can be developed so as to
be consciously perceived. This is incontestable. Let us point out a few
of these observed and recorded psychological processes. There may be an
unsolved problem in the mind, or inability to recall a certain name or
fact, and then a sudden, unexpected intuitional solving of the problem and an instantaneous recollecting
of the desired facts, at a time when the ordinary mind may be entirely
absorbed in altogether foreign thoughts. Again, many persons through
accident or disease have lost their memory to such an extent as to
require complete re-education, and then in time, gradually or
instantaneously, as the case may be, have completely recovered it.
[11]
And we noticed in our study of supernatural lapse of time
that at the moment of accidental loss of consciousness, as in drowning
for example, all forgotten details of life are instantaneously
reproduced in a complete panorama. These psychological processes
support what we have said above with respect to a psychical organ being
behind the sense-consciousness, and seem thus to prove that the
subconscious mind is the place for recording permanently all
experiences.
[12]
Under hypnosis, a subject may be requested to perform a certain act,
let us say 11,999 minutes after the moment of making the request. When
the hypnotic condition is removed, the subject has no personal
consciousness of the suggestion, but, as different experiments have
proved conclusively, he invariably performs the act exactly at the
expiration of the 11,999 minutes without knowing why he does so. This
proves that there is a subconsciousness in man which can take full
cognizance of such a suggestion, which can keep count of the passing of
time and then cause the unconscious personality to act in response to
its will.
[13]
Again, in extreme old age people who have come to have an imperfect
memory or none at all in their normal consciousness, under abnormal
conditions (which seemingly are due to a temporary influx of a latent
psychical power into the physical body and brain, or else to an
awakening of a dormant force within the physical body and brain
themselves) often regain, for a time, complete and clear memory of
their childhood. This proves that the memory is somewhere still perfect, and that it does not reside in the consciousness of the
age-exhausted physical brain and memory. Albert Moll, in his treatise
on hypnotism, says that events in the normal life which have dropped
out of memory can be remembered in hypnosis:--'An English officer in
Africa was hypnotized by Hansen, and suddenly began to speak a strange
language. This turned out to be Welsh, which he had learnt as a child,
but had forgotten.'
[14]
And even memory of acts done in hypnotic somnambulism can be awakened in the normal state.
[15]
Furthermore, through psycho-analysis, as Professor Freud has shown,
forgotten dreams and dreams which were never complete in the ordinary
consciousness can be recovered in their entirety out of the
subconsciousness.
[16]
How many of us can recall without some mental stimulus certain acts
performed ten years ago? A good deal of our present life is no longer
vivid, much of it is forgotten, and in old age many of the memories of
youth and of mature life will be subconscious. If this brain, whose
total existence is comprised between birth and death, cannot remember
in a normal way all its own experiences, how could it be expected to
know anything at all of hypothetical past lives where there were
various physical brains long ago disintegrated--unless the
hypothetically ever-existing transcendental individuality, whose
consciousness is the subconsciousness, be made by some unusual
psychical stimuli to transmit its memory of the past lives to each new
brain it creates? In other words, to have memory of pre-existent
conditions there must be continuity of association with present
conditions. If such continuity exists, it exists in the
subconsciousness. And if it exists therein, then in order to recall in
the present personal or ordinary consciousness, which began at birth,
memory of an anterior state of consciousness, it would be necessary to
hold impressed upon the present physical brain and body a clear and
unremittent consciousness of the sub-consciousness. In relation to our personal consciousness,
apparently our greatest powers lie in the subconsciousness which is
sleeping and in embryo, awaiting to be born into the consciousness of
this world through the slow process of evolutionary gestation. In the
case of a Buddha, who on good historical authority is said to have been
able to recall all past existences from the lowest to the highest, this
evolutionary process seems to have reached completion.
[17] Under ordinary conditions, individuals have been known to see a
place which they have never seen before, or to do a thing which they
have never done before in this life nor in any conscious dream-state,
and yet feel that they have seen the place before and done the thing
before. M. Th. Ribot, in his Diseases of Memory (chapter iv),
has brought together many cases of this kind. Some are undoubtedly
explicable as forgotten experiences of the present life. Others, to our
mind, strongly support the theory of pre-existent experiences preserved
in memory in the subconsciousness. Under chloroform, or other anaesthetics, patients often recover for
the time being forgotten facts of experience, and sometimes appear to
make momentary contact with their subconsciousness and to exhibit
therein another personality. In certain well-defined types of double
personality, which are not the kind due to demon-possession nor to
spirit-possession as in 'mediumship', there are two memories, 'each
complete and absolutely independent of the other.'
[18]
And in similar cases, where the subject exhibits alternately numerous
personalities, we see the individuality, that is to say the
subconscious man, exhibiting, as a dramatist might, various characters
or personalities of probable past existences according as each is most active at the moment. Similarly, crystal-gazing sometimes seems not only to revive lost memories of this
life, but also to call up subconscious memories of some unknown state
of consciousness which may be from a previous life.
[19] M. Ribot has made it clear from his careful study of numerous cases
of amnesia (loss of memory) that 'recollections return in an inverse
order to that in which they disappear'. For example, a celebrated
Russian astronomer lost all memory save that of his childhood, and in
recovering it there appeared first the recollections of youth, then
those of middle age, then the experiences of later years, and, finally,
the most recent events. Many even more marked examples of the law of
regression in amnesia are given by M. Ribot. We conclude from them that
all strange and apparently long-forgotten facts of experience arising
in consciousness out of the subconsciousness, as in the different cases
which have been cited above, would necessarily be those which have been
the longest lost to memory; and hence if they cannot be attached to
this present life then they can only be derived from a former life,
because every primary detail of memory must always originate from an
experience at some past period of time. M. Ribot himself, in his conclusion to The Diseases of Memory, makes this significant observation with respect to the law of
regression in amnesia:--'This law of regression provides us with an
explanation for extraordinary revivification of certain recollections
when the mind turns backward to conditions of existence that had
apparently disappeared for ever.' In dreams there is a great wealth of latent memory; sometimes memory
of the present waking life, but often not capable, apparently, of being
attached to it, nor explicable as due to the soul wandering from the
body during sleep: the hypothesis of re-birth seems to be the only
adequate one here. Certain dreams suggest that man possesses innate
memories extending backwards to prehistoric times. This fits in with Professor Freud's theory in his Die Traumdeutung,
that 'the dream is nothing else than the concealed fulfilment of a
repressed wish.' Some dreams are 'in the form of frightful, cruel,
horrible scenes, which seem frightful to us, but in a certain depth of
the unconscious satisfy wishes which, in the "prehistoric" ages of our
own mental development, were actually recognized as desires.'
[20]
This also supports our vitalistic view of the evolution of human
instincts. Again, in somnambulism there is a much more exalted memory,
and clear cases are on record of facts being then consciously present
which cannot be accounted for save through the same hypothesis.
[21] If we keep in mind the psychology of the dream state, we shall probably get the clearest intellectual theory as to why, if
pre-existence be true, we do not remember various previous states of
existence. In our present state of consciousness we may enter a dream
state, in that dream state by dreaming we enter a second dream state,
and theoretically, though not by common experience, there may be no
limit to superimposed dream states, each one in itself a state of
consciousness distinct from the waking consciousness. Accordingly, if,
as Wordsworth put it, 'our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting' of
another state of consciousness, and death the abrupt ending of that
sleep of dreams and a waking up, or if the direct opposite be true, and
death is the entrance to a sleep and dream state of consciousness, it
becomes very clear how difficult it would be for us here now either to
recall what we may have dreamt or have actually done in another state
of conscious existence corresponding to our present one. The subtle
thinkers of modern India, who completely accept the doctrine of
re-birth as a universal law, have summed up this abstruse aspect of the
dream psychology as follows:--'The first or spiritual state was
ecstasy; from ecstasy it (the Ego) forgot itself into deep sleep; from
deep sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself,
into the internal world of dreams; from dreaming it passed finally into
the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense.'
[22]
But our own psychologists are not yet far enough advanced to accept
this; much more work in psychical research must first be done before it
will be possible for them to announce to the West that pre-existence is
a necessary condition for post-existence which they now hypothetically
accept. If for the present our standpoint be that of our own
psychologists, we may then think of the human consciousness as a
spectrum whose central parts alone are visible to us. Beyond at either
end lies an unseen and to us unknown region, awaiting its explorer from
the West. 'Each one of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far
more extensive than he knows--an individuality which can never express
itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The Self
manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the
Self unmanifested; and always, as it seems, some power of organic
expression in abeyance or reserve.'
[23]
William James stated the position thus:--'The B. region' (another name
for the region of subconsciousness), 'then; is obviously the larger
part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent,
and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded and
unobserved.'
[24] Men of science see no way of accepting the doctrine of the
resurrection of the physical body as at present interpreted by
Christian theology; but the late Professor Th. Henri Martin, Dean of
the Faculty of Letters of the University of Rennes, has suggested in
his La Vie future that the doctrine may be the exoteric
interpretation of a long-forgotten esoteric truth; namely, that the
soul may be resurrected in a new physical body, and this is
scientifically possible.
[25] The ancient scientists called Life a Circle. In the upper half of
this Circle, or here on the visible plane, we know that in the
physiological history of man and of all living things there is first the embryonic or prenatal state, then birth; and as life,
like a sun, rises in its new-born power toward the zenith, there is
childhood, youth, and maturity; and then, as it passes the zenith on
its way to the horizon, there is decline, old age, and, finally, death;
and as a scientific possibility we have in the lower half of the
Circle, in Hades or the Otherworld of the Celts and of all peoples,
corresponding processes between death and a hypothetical but logically
necessary re-birth.
[26] The logical corollary to the re-birth doctrine, and an integral part
of the Celtic esoteric theory of evolution, is that there have been
human races like the present human race who in past aeons of time have
evolved completely out of the human plane of conscious existence into
the divine plane of conscious existence. Hence the gods are beings
which once were men, and the actual race of men will in time become
gods. Man now stands related to the divine and invisible world in
precisely the same manner that the brute stands related to the human
race. To the gods, man is a being in a lower kingdom of evolution.
According to the complete Celtic belief, the gods can and do enter the
human world for the specific purposes of teaching men how to advance
most rapidly toward the higher kingdom. In other words, all the Great
Teachers, e. g. Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, and many others, in different
ages and among various races, whose teachings are extant, are,
according to a belief yet held by educated and mystical Celts, divine
beings who in inconceivably past ages were men but who are now gods,
able at will to incarnate into our world, in order to emphasize the
need which exists in nature, by virtue of the working of evolutionary
laws (to which they themselves are still subject), for man to look
forward, and so strive to reach divinity rather than to look backward
in evolution and thereby fall into mere animalism. The stating of this
mystical corollary makes the exposition of the Fairy-Faith complete, at
least in outline. As shown by the Barddas MSS. in our chapter vii, the Celtic Doctrine
of Re-birth is the scientific extension of Darwin's law as
corrected,
[27]
that alone through traversing the Circle of Life man reaches that
destined perfection which natural analogies, life's processes as
exhibited by living things, and evolution, suggest, and from which at
present man is so far removed. There seems to emerge this postulate:
the world is the object of normal consciousness, the Ego or Soul-Monad
the object of subconsciousness; and the subconsciousness cannot be
realized in the world until through the normal consciousness of man the
Ego is able to function completely, and so endow man with full
self-consciousness in matter, which endowment seems to be the goal of
all planetary evolution. We conclude that the Otherworld of the Celts and their Doctrine of
Re-birth accord thoroughly in their essentials with modern science;
and, accordingly, with other essential elements in the complete Celtic
Fairy-Faith which we have in the preceding chapter found to be equally
scientific, establish our Psychological Theory of the Nature and Origin
of that Fairy-Faith upon a logical and solid foundation; and we now
submit this study to the judgement of our readers. With more complete
evidence in the future, both from folklore and from science, there will
be, we trust, a better vindication of the Theory, and perhaps finally
there will come about its transformation into what it but seems to us
to be now--a Fact. Some beliefs which a century ago were regarded as absurdities are
now regarded as fundamentally scientific. In the same way, what in this
generation is heretical alike to the Christian theologian and to the
man of science may in coming generations be accepted as orthodox. [1] Sigmund Freud, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, in Amer. Journ. Psych., xxi, No. 2 (April 1910). [2] The fact that all matter is capable of assuming a gaseous or invisible state furnishes good scientific reasons for postulating the actual existence of intelligent beings possessed of an invisible yet physical body. There may well be on and about our planet many distinct invisible organic life-forms undiscovered by zoologists. To deny such a possibility would be unscientific. [3] Cf. Communication adressée ou Dr. J. Dupré, p. 382 of an essay on La Métempsycose basée sur les Principes de La Biologie et du Magnétisme physiologique, in Le Hasard (Paris, 1909), by P. C. Revel. Cases of regeneration among the aged are known, and these show how the subliminal life-forces try to renew the physical body when it is worn out (of. Revel, ib., p. 372). [4] Cf. Revel, op. cit., p. 295 ff. [5] If scientists discover, as they probably will in time, what they call the secret of life, they will not have discovered the secret of life at all. What they will have discovered will be the physical conditions under which life manifests itself. In other words, science will most likely soon be able to set up artificially in a laboratory such physical conditions as exist in nature naturally, and by means of which life is able to manifest itself through matter. Life will still be as great a mystery as it is to-day; though short-sighted materialists are certain to announce to an eager world that the final problem of the universe has been solved and that life is merely the resultant of a subtle chemical compound. [6] Professor Freud, after long and careful study, arrived at the following conclusion:--'The child has his sexual impulse and activities from the beginning, he brings them with him into the world, and from these the so-called normal sexuality of adults emerges by a significant development through manifold stages.' And Dr. Sanford Bell, in an earlier writing entitled A Preliminary Study of the Emotions of Love between the Sexes (see Amer. Journ. Psych., 1902), came to a similar conclusion (of. Freud, op. cit., pp. 207-8). [7] Cf. Hans Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism (London, 1908); and Henri Bergson, L'évolution créatrice (Paris, 1908). [8] This Celtic view of non-personal immortality completely fits in with all the voluminous data of psychical research: after forty years of scientific research into psychics there are no proofs yet adduced that the human personality as a self-sufficient unit of consciousness survives indefinitely the death of its body. Granted that it does survive as a ghost for an undetermined period, generally to be counted in years, during which time it seems to be gradually fading out or disintegrating, there is no reliable evidence anywhere to show that a personality as such has manifested through a 'medium' or otherwise after an interval of one thousand years, or even of five hundred years. We have, in fact, no knowledge of the Survival of a human personality one hundred years after, and probably there are no good examples of such a survival twenty-five years after the death of the body. Such an eminent psychical researcher as William James recognized this drift of the data of psychics, and when he died he held the conviction that there is no personal immortality. [9] Though not inclined toward the vitalistic view of human evolution, M. Th. Ribot very closely approaches the Celtic view of the Ego (or individuality) as being the principle which gives unity to different personalities, but he does not have in mind personalities in the sense implied by the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth:--'The Ego subjectively considered consists of a sum of conscious states' (comparable to personalities). 'In brief, the Ego may be considered in two ways: either in its
actual form, and then it is the sum of existing conscious states; or,
in its continuity with the past, and then it is formed by the memory
according to the process outlined above. It would seem, according to
this view, that the identity of the Ego depended entirely upon the
memory. But such a conception is only partial. Beneath the unstable
compound phenomenon in all its protean phases of growth, degeneration,
and reproduction, there is a something that remains: and this something
is the undefined consciousness, the product of all the vital processes,
constituting bodily perception and what is expressed in one word--the cœnæthesis.' (The Diseases of Memory, pp. 107-8). William James, the greatest psychologist of our epoch, after a long
and faithful life consecrated to the search after a true understanding
of human consciousness, finally arrived at substantially the same
conviction as Fechner did, that there is no personal immortality, but
that the personality is but a temporary and partial separation and
circumscription of a part of a larger whole, into which it is
reabsorbed at death' (W. McDougall, In Memory of William James, in Proc. S. P. R.,
Part LXII, vol. xxv, p. 28). He thus virtually accepted the mystic's
view that the personality after the death of the body is absorbed into
a higher power, which, to our mind, is comparable with the Ego
conceived as the unifying principle behind personalities. In one of his
last writings, James explained his belief in such a manner as to make
it coincide at certain points with the view held by modern Celtic
mystics which has been presented above; the difference being that,
unlike these mystics, James was not prepared to say (though he raised
the question) whether or not behind the 'mother-sea' of consciousness
there is, as Fechner believed, a hierarchy of consciousnesses
(themselves subordinate to still higher consciousnesses, and comparable
with so many Egos or Individualities) which send out emanations as
temporary human personalities. The organic psychical forms (if we may
use such an expression) of such temporary human personalities would
have to be regarded from James's point of view as being built up out of
the psychical elements constituting the 'mother-sea' of consciousness,
just as the human body is built up out of the physical elements in the
realm of matter:-- |