English
” Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “ There are thoughts that never emerge into consciousness, and which yet make their influence felt among the perceptive mental currents. WNISTft O'"* 0o ‘*eX fNDS AND LOWLANDS OF MIND 'he tuiseen planets sway the movements of -itnown^ones.. 1- The same writer also remarks: “I was told of a business man in Boston who had given up think¬ ing of an important question as too much for him. But he continued so uneasy in his brain that he feared he was threatened with palsy. After some hours the natural solution of the question came to him, worked out, as he believed, in that troubled interval.” Dr. Schofield mentions several instances of this phase of the workings of the unconscious planes of the mind. We mention a couple that seem interesting and to the point: “Last year,” says Dr. Schofield, “I was driving to Phillmore Gardens to give some letters to a friend. On the way, a vague uneasiness sprang up, and a voice seemed to say, ‘ I doubt if you have those letters.’ Conscious reason rebuked it, and said, ‘ Of course you have; you took them out of the drawer specially.’ The vague feeling was not satisfied, but could not reply. On arrival I found the letters were in none of my pockets. On returning I found them op the hall table, where they had been placed a moment while putting on my gloves.” “The other day I had to go to see a patient in Folkestone, in Shakespeare Terrace. I got there very late, and did not stay but drove down to the Pavilion for the night, it being dark and rainy. Next morning at eleven I walked up to find the house, knowing the general direction, though never having walked there before. I went up the main road, and after passing a certain turning, began to feel a vague uneasiness coming into consciousness that I had passed the terrace. On asking the way, I found it was so ; and the turning was where the uneasiness began. The night before was pitch dark, and very wet, and anything seen from a close carriage was quite unconsciously impressed on my mind.” RAJA YOGA 3f. Kirchener says: “ Our consciousness caiv^flly. one quite clear idea at once. All other ideas are the time somewhat obscure. They are really existing, but only potentially for consciousness, i.e„ they hover, as it were, on our horizon, or beneath the threshold of consciousness. The fact that former ideas suddenly return to consciousness is simply explained by the fact that they have continued psychic existence; and attention is some¬ times voluntarily or involuntarily turned away from the present, and the appearance of former ideas is thus made possible.” Oliver Wendell Holmes says: “ Our different ideas are stepping-stones; how we get from one to another we do not know; something carries us. We (our conscious selves) do not take the step. The creating and informing spirit, which is within us and not of. us, is recognized everywhere in real life. It comes to us as a voice that will be heard; it tells us what we must believe; it frames our sentences, and we wonder at this visitor who chooses our brain as his dwelling place.” Galton says: “ I have desired to show how whole states of mental operation that have lapsed out of ordinary consciousness admit of being dragged into light.” Montgomery says: “ We are constantly aware that feelings emerge unsolicited by any previous mental state, directly from the dark womb of unconsciousness. Indeed, all our most vivid feelings are thus mystically derived. Suddenly a new irrelevant, unwilled, unlooked-for pres¬ ence intrudes itself into consciousness. Some inscrutable power causes it to rise and enter the mental presence as a sensorial constituent. If this vivid dependence on unconscious forces has to be conjectured with regard to the most vivid mental occurrences, how much more must such a sustaining foundation be postulated for those faint MIN/Sr^ ANDS AND LOWLANDS OF MIND §L of previous sensations that so largely assist ^ ig up our complex mental presence! ” ,ir Benjamin Brodie says: “It has often happened to me to have accumulated a store of facts, but to have been able to proceed no further. Then after an interval of time, I have found the obscurity and confusion to have cleared away; the facts to have settled in their right places, though I have not been sensible of having made any effort for that purpose.” Wundt says: “ The traditional opinion that conscious¬ ness is the entire field of the internal life cannot be accepted. In consciousness, psychic acts are very distinct Itom one another, and observation itself necessarily con- nets to unity in psychology. But the agent of this unity is outside of consciousness, which knows only the result of the work done in the unknown laboratory beneath it. Suddenly a new thought springs into being. Ultimate analysis of psychic processes shows that the unconscious is the theatre of the most important mental phenomena. The conscious is always conditional upon the uncon¬ scious.” Creighton says: “Our conscious life is the sum of t rese entrances and exits. Behind the scenes, as we infer, there lies a vast reserve which we call ‘ the unconscious,’ nding a name for it by the simple device of prefixing the negative article. The basis of all that lies behind the scene is the mere negative of consciousness.” Maudsley says: “ The process of reasoning adds nothing to knowledge (in the reasoner). It only displays what was there before, and brings to conscious possession what before was unconscious.” And again: “ Mind can oo its work without knowing it. Consciousness is the hght that lightens the process, not the agent that accom¬ plishes it.” Waistein says: “ It is through the sub-conscious self F Ml NIST/} RAJA YOGA AI Shakespeare must have perceived, without" . jat truths which are hidden from the conscious mt_ e student; that Phidias painted marble and bronze; that Raphael painted Madonnas, and Beethoven com¬ posed symphonies.” Ribot says: “ The mind receives from experience cer¬ tain data, and elaborates them unconsciously by laws peculiar to itself, and the result merges into conscious¬ ness.” Newman says: “ When the unaccustomed causes sur¬ prise, we do not perceive the thing and then feel the sur¬ prise; but surprise comes first, and then we search out the cause ; so the theory must have acted on the uncon¬ scious mind to create the feeling, before being perceived in consciousness.” A writer in an English magazine says: “ Of what transcendent importance is the fact that the unconscious part of the mind bears to the conscious part such a rela¬ tion as the magic lantern bears to the luminous disc which it projects ; that the greater part of the intentional action, the whole practical life of the vast majority of men, is an effect of events as remote from consciousness as the motion of the planets.” Dr. Schofield says: “ It is quite true that the range of the unconscious mind must necessarily remain indefinite ; none can say how high or low it may reach. ... As to how far the unconscious powers of life that, as has been said, can make eggs and feathers out of Indian corn, and milk and beef and mutton out of grass, are to be con¬ sidered within or beyond the lowest limits of unconscious mind, we do not therefore here press. It is enough to establish the fact of its existence; to point out its more important features; and to show that in all respects it is as worthy of being called mind as that which works in consciousness. We therefore return to our first definition ANDS AND LOWLANDS OF MIND id, as ‘ the sum of psychic action in us, wh£ iOus or unconscious.’ ” lartmann calls our attention to a very important fact when he says: “The unconscious does not fall ill, the unconscious does not grow weary, but all conscious mental activity becomes fatigued.” Kant says: “To have ideas and yet not be conscious of them—therein seems to lie a contradiction. However, we may still be immediately aware of holding an idea, though we are not directly conscious of it.” Maudsley says: “ It may seem paradoxical to assert not merely that ideas may exist in the mind without any consciousness of them, but that an idea, or a train of associated ideas, may be quickened into action and accu¬ rate movements without itself being attended to. When an idea disappears from consciousness it does not neces¬ sarily disappear entirely ; it may remain latent below the horizon of consciousness. Moreover it may produce an effect upon movement, or upon other ideas, when thus active below the horizon of consciousness.” Liebnitz says: “ It does not follow that because we do not perceive thought that it does not exist. It is a great source of error to believe that there is no percep¬ tion in the mind but that of which it is conscious.” Oliver Wendell Holmes says: “ The more we examine the mechanism of thought the more we shall see that anterior unconscious action of the mind that enters largely into all of its processes. People who talk most do not always think most. I question whether persons who think most—that is, who have most conscious thought pass through their mind—necessarily do most mental work. Every new idea planted in a real thinker’s mind grows when he is least conscious of it.” Maudsley says: “It would go hard with mankind indeed, if they must act wittingly before they acted at RAJA YOGA en, without knowing why, follow a cour 1 ppf good reasons exist. Nay, more. The pra< tincts of mankind often work beneficially in actual contradiction to their professed doctrines.” The same writer says: “ The best thoughts of an author are the unwilled thoughts which surprise himself; and the poet, under the influence of creative activity, is, so far as consciousness is concerned, being dictated to.