understand the law of it, we must try so to regulate the habitual
current of our thoughts, that even when we are not using this power
intentionally, they may only exercise a beneficial influence.

In our normal state this cosmic element in ourselves is so closely
united with our more conscious powers of volition and reasoning, that
they constitute a single unity; and this is how it should be, only, as
we shall see later on, with a difference. But there are certain
abnormal states which are worth considering, because they make clearer
the existence in us of this impersonal self, which in academical
language is called the subliminal consciousness. The work of the
subliminal consciousness exhibits itself in various ways, such as
clairvoyance, clair-audience, and conditions of trance; all of which
either occur spontaneously, or are induced by experimental means, such
as hypnotism; but the similarity of the phenomena in either case shows,
that it is the same faculty that is in evidence.

In those hypnotic experiments in which the operator merely makes the
subject do some external act, we get no further than the fact that the
person's individual will has been temporarily put to sleep, and that of
the hypnotist has taken its place; still even this shows a power of
impressing upon the subliminal consciousness a personal quality of its
own, but it does not enable it to exhibit its own powers. The object of
such experiments is, to exhibit the powers of the hypnotist, not to
investigate the powers of the subliminal personality, which is of more
importance in the present connection. But where the hypnotist employs
his power of command to tell the subliminal self of the patient to
exercise its own powers, merely directing it as to the subject upon
which it is to be exercised, very wonderful powers indeed are exhibited.
Places unknown to the percipient are accurately described; correct