SURVIVAL OF THE SELF
In the last chapter we pointed out that for any adequate understanding
of the subject before us the self must be taken to include the more
obscure and subconscious portion of the mind, as well as the specially
conscious portion with which we are most familiar. There is a constant
interaction and flow taking place between the two parts, and to draw a
strict line dividing them would be impossible. Indeed it would rather
appear that growth comes largely by their blending and throwing light on
each other. We also brought forward some considerations to show the
nature of the underlying or subconscious self—its immense extent, the
swiftness of its perceptions, and so forth. If then, to continue our
argument, there should come a time (in death) when the outer and more
obvious ego merges, or at least comes into closer relation, with the
under-self, it would seem likely that the surviving consciousness would
be greatly changed from its present form, and would take on something of
the instantaneous wide-reaching character of what has been called the
Cosmic Consciousness. And this is a conclusion much to be expected, and
surely also much to be desired. However one may envisage the matter, it
hardly seems possible to imagine an after-death consciousness quite on
the same plane as our present consciousness. (This, too—one may say in
passing—probably explains the difficulty we experience in holding
direct communication with the dead—the same sort of difficulty, in
fact, that the outer mind during life has in directly reaching the inner
mind.) Myers[85] speaks of our supraliminal life as merely a special
phase of our whole personality, and suggests that there are good reasons
for thinking that there is a relation—“obscure but
indisputable—between the subliminal and the surviving self.” Under
these circumstances it would seem natural to inquire what definite
reasons there may be for thinking that the subliminal self survives; and
I shall occupy this chapter largely with that question.
(1) In the first place, from the observed process of the generation and
growth of the body from a microscopic origin, we have already argued
(chapter vii.) the probability of the pre-existence in a sub-atomic or
fourth-dimensional state of the being which is manifested in the body,
and therefore the probability of the continuance of that being after the
dissolution of the body. And this argument must include the Under-self,
which is responsible for so much of the organization and growth and
sustentation of the body, as well as the Upper; and may well lead us to
infer that both upper and under selves continue after death—only
conjoined in some way, and with some added experience gained during
life.
(2) In the second place, we are struck by the fact that continuous
Memory—which we decided to be the very necessary condition of
survival—is just the thing which is so strong in the subjective being
and so characteristic of it. The huge stores of memory—and of quite
_personal and individual_ memory—which this being has at command, their
long dormancy and their extraordinary resurgence at times when
conditions call them forth, are a marvel to the investigator, and make
us feel that it is hardly probable that they are all swept away at
death. Even if dormant _at_ the time of death, it seems not unlikely
that here again later conditions may awake them once more to life.
But (3), we have a great deal of evidence to show that, as a matter of
fact, the underlying self is especially _active_ at the moment of death.
The whole phenomenon of ‘wraiths’—now in the mass so amply
proved[86]—the projection of phantasms sometimes to an immense
distance,[87] by persons _in articulo mortis_—goes to show its intense
energy and _vitality_ (if one may use the word) at that moment. And the
vivid resurgences of memory at the same moment (or in any hour of
danger) point in the same direction. T. J. Hudson, and others, insist
that the subjective mind _never sleeps_—that whatever drowsiness, or
faintness, or languor may overpower the upper or self-conscious mind,
the under mind is still acutely awake and operant, and if this is (as it
appears) true with regard to sleep, it may well also be so even with
regard to death.
Again (4), the Telæsthetic faculty of the under-self (I mean during
life)—its power of clairvoyantly perceiving things and events at a
distance, even in minutest details—is a very wonderful fact—a fact
that is amply established, and one that must give us pause. Here are
vision and perception at work without eyes or ears, or any of the usual
bodily end-organs[88]—and acting in such a way as to suggest or
practically to prove that the soul has other channels or instruments of
perception than those connected with the well-known outer body. Every
one has heard of cases of this kind. They are common on the borderland
of sleep, or in dreams, and—what especially appeals to us here—they
are very common in the hour of death. If the soul (as is evidently the
case) can perceive without the intermediation of mortal eye or ear;
then—though we may conclude that these special organs have been
fashioned or developed for special terrene use—we may also conclude
that, without them, it would still continue to exercise perception,
developing sight and hearing and other faculties along lines with which
at present we are but slightly acquainted. These faculties spring
inevitably deep down out of ourselves, and will recur again doubtless
wherever we are.... “Were your eyes destroyed, still the faculty of
sight were not destroyed; out of the same roots again as before would
another optic apparatus spring.”[89]
And the same may be said, (5), about the telepathic faculty—that is,
the power (not of perceiving, but) of _sending_ impressions or messages
to a distance. This power which the under-self has of communicating with
the under-selves of other persons, and often at a great distance, is one
of the best-established facts in the new psychology; and again, it is
very pregnant with inference. It shows us the soul acting vividly along
certain lines independent as far as we can see of the known body,
certainly along lines independent of the known organs of expression. It
compels us to conclude a possible and even probable activity quite apart
from that body. With this telepathic power, or as an extension of it,
may be classed the image-projecting faculty, which we have already seen
to be peculiarly active in death. And it may be appropriate here to
notice that in quite a number of the cases of wraiths or phantasms
projected (in forty cases out of three hundred and sixteen as given by
Edmund Gurney in _Proceedings S.P.R._ vol. v. p. 408) the apparition was
seen after the death had occurred—though within twenty-four hours
after. This may directly indicate an after-death activity of the person
who projected the image, or it _may_ merely indicate a relay of the
telepathic impression on its way, or in the subconscious mind of the
recipient, previous to emerging in the latter’s _conscious_ mind.[90]
All these things are strongly indicative. They do not give the
impression that at death the underlying self is in the act of perishing.
On the contrary, they point to its continuance, and if anything
_increased_ activity; while at the same time the strongly _personal_
character of many of the phenomena referred to—the wonderfully distinct
personal memories, the very personal images or phantasms projected, the
telepathic appeal to nearest and dearest friends—all suggest that the
continuing activity does not merely tail off into an abstract life-force
or vague stream of tendency, but is of a distinctly personal or
individual character.
There is another consideration, (6), on which I may dwell for a moment
here. The passion of Love, whether considered in its physical or in its
psychical and emotional aspects, is notably a matter of the subjective
or subliminal life. The little self-conscious, logical, argumentative
personality is completely routed by this passion, which seems to spring
from the great depths of being with Titanic force, full-armed in its own
convictions, and overturning all established orders and conventions. It
surely must give us a deep insight into the nature of that hidden self
from which it springs. Yet nothing is more noticeable about the passion
than its recklessness of mortal life—nothing more noticeable than its
willingness to sacrifice all worldly prospects and the body itself in
the pursuit of its ends. Even the most physical love, as we have said
already (chapter vi.), has a strange relation to Death, and often slays
the very object of its desire:—
“For each man kills the thing he loves,
Though each man does not die.”
While the more emotional form of the passion almost rejoices in its
contempt of life and its willingness to face dangers and death for the
sake of the beloved. It says as plain as words:—“I can fulfil myself
and my purposes all right, even without this mortal part which you hold
so dear”; and unless we think that the hidden being who thus speaks is a
perfect fool, we must conclude that it is _aware_ of a life surpassing
that of the body.
Such a continuing life we no doubt have evidence of, and indeed commonly
admit to exist, in the Race-life; and as a first approximation it seems
natural and obvious to interpret the underlying or subliminal self as
being simply the Race-self. In the case of the lower and less developed
forms of creation, perhaps this is the wisest thing to do. In default of
more detailed and perfect knowledge, we may easily assume that in a
shoal of several million herrings or in a ‘culture’ of several billion
microbes the underlying self of each particular herring or microbe is
practically identical with the self of the race concerned. But in the
case of man and some of the higher animals it is not so easy to do this.
We find a strongly individual element in his subconscious mind, which
must also be accounted for. I have already alluded to the stores of
individual memory which this mind retains, thus differentiating it from
others; and I have alluded to the intensely individual phantasms which
it projects. And now again we are brought face to face with the greatly
individual character of its love-passion. However much the love-passion
may be symbolical of the life of the race, and deeply implicated in the
same (and both of these it certainly is), still—except in its lower
forms—there is nothing vague and general and undifferentiated about
that passion; on the contrary, it is most strongly personal and sharply
outlined. Why is it that out of the hundred thousand people that a man
may meet only _one_ will arouse this tremendous response? Why is it that
every great love in its depth seems different from every other? Do not
these things suggest a profound difference of outline in the
subconscious beings themselves from whom these loves proceed? These
beings are manifestations and organic expressions of the Race—yes. But
they are also deeply individual and different—each one from the other.
And here we seem to come upon the first emergence of the solution of the
problem before us. The self of which we are in search _has_—especially
through its subconscious part—a vast continuing life, affiliated to the
life of the race and beyond that to the cosmic life of the All; but it
also has a strongly individual outline and character. Nursed in the womb
of the Race during countless ages, like a babe within its mother,
passing through numberless reincarnations in a kind of collective way,
and in more or less unconsciousness of its supreme and separate destiny,
it at last in Man attains to the clear sense of individuality, and
(through much suffering) is set free to an independent existence; being
finally exhaled from earth-mortality into a cosmic life under other
conditions of space and time than ours.
Difficult as this conception of a continued individual existence may be
to hold to in view of the terrible and external flux of general Nature,
and difficult as it may be to understand in all detail; yet, as I say,
it is Love which compels us to the insight of its truth. It is Love
which has the clear conception of the uniqueness of the beloved, it is
love which positively refuses to believe in her (or his) annihilation,
it is love alone which in the hour of loss can face the awful midnight
sky, and dare to sing:—
“Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace,
Sleep, holy Spirit, blessed soul!
_While the stars burn, the moons increase,_
_And the great ages onward roll._”
And it is in the meeting of lovers that the heavens open, allowing them
to see—if only for a moment—the eternities to which they both belong.
There are no doubt other considerations—I mean those connected with
mediumistic and so-called spiritualistic phenomena—which point toward
the conclusion of an individual survival of some kind after death; but
although this kind of evidence is likely to prove in the end of immense
value, it is possible that the time has not yet quite come when it can
be completely substantiated, tabulated, and effectively utilized; at any
rate I do not feel myself in a position to so deal with it. It has also
to be said that a great deal of this evidence (relating to actual
communications from the dead) is necessarily of so very personal a
character that it can only appeal to the individual persons concerned,
and however convincing it may be to them does naturally not carry the
same conviction to the world at large. I shall therefore for the present
pass these considerations by, and, on the strength of the arguments
already brought forward, assume the general truth of man’s survival.
The course of the argument has been somewhat as follows. In the first
place, we have urged the enormous possibilities (disclosed by modern
investigation) of other life than that which we know—thus enlarging the
bounds of the likely, and weakening the argument from improbability.
In the second place, we have pointed out that continuance of _memory_
seems the best test of survival; that even in our law courts (as in
a Tichborne case) it is not so much the facts of feature and form as
the facts of memory which are relied on to prove identity. Thirdly, we
have argued that not only the supraliminal but also the subliminal self
must be considered in this matter, and that probably the surviving self
will arise from a harmony or conjunction between these two. Fourthly,
we have shown that in respect of memory and many other matters the
subliminal self shows a quite remarkable activity even in the hour of
bodily death—which does not certainly suggest its decease and cessation
from existence. Fifthly, we have seen that all through life the soul
has faculties (of clairvoyance, transposition of senses, and so forth)
which point to its independence of the material body. Sixthly, that
through _love_ it reaches a deep conviction of its own duration beyond
the life of the body. And, seventhly, we have suggested that it is
largely through the supraliminal and self-conscious life that the
sense of identity and individuality is educed and finally established.
Proceeding, then, further along these lines, the next and obvious
question which arises is, In what sort of body is this continuing life
manifested? That it must be manifested in some sort of body is, I
think, clear. If we had only arrived at the conclusion that at death
the human being merged in the All-soul, or became an indistinguishable
portion of the ‘Happy Mass’—that his individual memory flowed out
into the great ocean of the world-memory and became lost in it, and
that his power of individual action or perception passed away in like
manner—why then the question of a continuing body could not well arise,
or at farthest stretch such body could only be thought of as something
indistinguishable from the entire universe. But if there is any truth
in the idea of an individual survival, then it seems clear that there
must be some kind of _form_, to mark the bounds of the individual, and
to give outline to his relations to other individuals—whether those
relations be active and invasive or passive and receptive; there must
be some surface of resistance and separation.
With this question I shall deal in the next chapter. Before, however,
going into any definite theory of this ‘soul-body,’ it may be useful to
dwell for a moment on general considerations. In the first place, it is
clear that if the individual survives, he does not do so in any fixed
and unchanging form. The form of the individual is not fixed in this
earth-life; nor can we expect or wish it to be so in any other life. As
long as there is a continuous stream of experience and memory, going on
from this life to another life, and from that perchance to others—that
is all we can expect to find. There may, indeed, be a fixed and
transcendent Individuality, an aspect of the Universal, at the root of
all these experiences, but with that we are hardly concerned at this
moment—only with the stream of personal manifestations which proceed
from it—everchanging yet linked together from hour to hour. In the
second place, though we have dwelt upon and emphasized the idea of
separateness and differentiation, in the surviving self, in
contra-distinction to the idea of fusion in a formless aggregate, yet it
is clear here too that the common life and bonds must hold individuals
together, just as much as, if not more than, in the earth-life. The
salient facts of telepathy, sympathy, clairvoyance, and so forth
convince us that souls, freed to some extent from their grosser present
envelopes, will react upon each other in the future, or in that farther
world, more swiftly and more intimately than they do now. And as they
progress from stage to stage, developing individualities and differences
always on a grander and grander scale, so they will also develop through
love their organic union with each other. It seems possible, indeed,
that growth will largely take place _through_ love-fusion; till at
length, rising into the highest ranges of combined Individuality and
Universality, the transformed consciousness of each soul will take on
its true quality—“that of space itself—which is at rest everywhere.”