Modern psychology has demonstrated the existence of a great
undercurrent of mental and emotional life, transcending the
individual's conscious experience, in which the most complex
processes are carried on without the individual's conscious
participation. The clearest symbol by which this fact may be figured
to the imagination is the one already presented: the comparison of
the subjective field to a plane, in which the conscious experience
of the individual is represented by a single line. In sleep and
trance we have an augmented freedom of movement and so are able to
travel here and there, backward and forward, not only among our own
"disassociated memories" but in that greater and more mysterious
demesne which comprehends what we call the future, as well as the
present and the past.
The profound significance of the disassociation and sublimation of
memory by hypnotism, or by whatever other means the train of
personal experience and recollection can be thrown off the track,
appears to have been ignored on its theoretical side--that is, as
establishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to
practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series
of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the
role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain
functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has
been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries,
may be--and frequently are--completely effaced from conscious
recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the
depths of the subconscious. It has been shown that thence they may,
and frequently do, exercise a baleful effect upon the whole organism,
giving rise to disease symptoms, the particular type of which were
determined by the victim's self-suggestion. As a preliminary to
effecting a permanent cure to such disorders, it is necessary to get
at these disassociated memories and drag them back into the full
light of conscious recollection. To get at them, medical
psychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing,
crystal-gazing--in short, of any method which will force an entrance
into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become
the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and
transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal
with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the
fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his
intelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: the past
recoverable and in a manner revocable!
Buddha taught that all sin is ignorance, and this teaching has
escaped oblivion because its truth has echoed in so many human hearts.
We find that it is possible to deal with our old ignorances in the
light of later knowledge. What is this but the self-forgiveness of
sins? Subconsciously we may be always at work, mending the past.
Repentance is the conscious recognition of some culmination of this
obscure process, when the heart is suffused with the inner gladness
of liberation from the payment of old karmic debts. Christ's words,
"Thy sins are forgiven," spoken to the woman who washed his feet
with her tears, sanctions this idea--that the past is remediable by
knowledge and by love.
Conceding this much, we must equally admit the possibility of
moulding the future, of adjusting the will to the event which shall
befall. If the present moment can again intersect the stream of past
conscious experience, it may equally do so with regard to the future.
This brings up the tremendous questions of free-will and
fore-ordination. Upon these the Oriental doctrines of karma and
reincarnation cast the only light by which the reason consents to be
guided. As these doctrines are intimately related both to higher
time and to trance revelations, some consideration of karma and
reincarnation may appropriately find place here.