place, because of the current's failure to
rouse side-thoughts. But in the trance the
dominant idea is much stronger than in the
dream, and persists through the whole of it
as a ground for all other ideas. Especially
is this so in the possession trance. And the
366 OCCULT japan:
reason for this is more or less patent. The
idea that causes the dream is much less con-
sciously absorbing than the idea that pos-
sessed the possessed. The one is haphaz-
ardly entertained, the other is purposed.
Secondly, it is probable that the brain,
generally, is much deeper asleep in the
trance than in the dream. The fact that of
our own motion we are so close to waking
when we begin to dream implies this, and
the easy consequence of one idea upon an-
other in the dream state goes to back it up.
Lastly, the possessing idea in the trance is
repeated and realized again and again in
successive trances. This strengthens it im-
mensely. How much so, is evident from
the great development observable in trances.
A trance that occurs for the first time is
usually very embryonic ; but by repetition
the idea acquires momentum that rivals that
of single-purposed waking action.
Habit is just as potent in the trance state
as in the normal one. In both lives a self-
educatory process goes on, any action gain-
ing proficiency by practice. As we have
seen, divine development is as duly marked
NOUMENA. 367
in the Shinto trances as human development
in every-day man.
Much of the supposed divinatory power
of the possessed is attributable to the same
cause that makes the hypnotic subject so
supernaturally omniscient. The brain of
any one is a register of sense impressions to
a degree unsuspected by its owner. It is
none too much to say that everything we
have ever experienced is there, could we only
get at it ! The possessed does get at it, or
at some of it, and surprises himself quite as
much as others by having done so. Whence
his honesty in denying that it is he that does
it and the natural belief of others in its su-
pernatural origin.
In conclusion it may be noted here how
ill the self fares under these illusions and
disillusions of the trance. That self can
thus be snuffed out at a word from the
operator, or by the mere idea of god in the
possession trance, betrays it no transcen-
dental thing. Self, indeed, would seem itself
to be ; and the bundle of ideas in that mass
of machinery, the brain, alone to constitute
the I.
368 OCCULT JAPAN.
XIII.
Certain differences between the Japanese
possession trances and others of their kind are
significant. To begin with, one pecuharity
of the Shinto trance is the maezas connec-
tion with it. This man is the official inter-
mediary of the god, and he holds a curious
intermediary position between the person
spoken to in the mediumistic trance and the
operator in the hypnotic one. He is the
nakodo, or go-between, of the whole transac-
tion. He is the only part of humanity whom
the god deigns spontaneously to recognize.
He alone may speak to the god, and him
alone the god condescends to answer. Any
one else, however pious, who desires to con-
verse with the god, must first be brought in
rapport with him by the maeza. Until such
rapport be established, the god pays the out-
sider's remarks no attention. That he is
not quite so deaf as he seems, however, is
shown by his occasionally scolding the maeza
for irreverential conduct on the part of such
outsider. I blush to say that I never knew
this to happen except in my own case, when
engaged in testing the reality of the god by
NOUMENA. 369
making, too openly, a pin-cushion of him, or
otherwise treating him with what he took
for disrespect.
But the maesa does not affect the god's
actions, and only incidentally suggests by
his questions the current of the divine
thought precisely as one person does that
of another in every-day conversation. The
maesa usually starts the topic, but the god
is responsible for the replies. The maeza is
thus, unlike the operator in the hypnotic
trance, not the power behind the throne, but
merely the master of ceremonies before it.
In this he differs again from a person who
has a sitting with a trance-medium, and who
is not supposed to open his mouth except
upon his own business. There is, however,
a greater gulf between the god and the
maesa, particularly pure as the latter is, than
between the sitter and the informing spirit.
We now come to a very suggestive dis-
similarity between the Shint5 possessions
and all others.
Of trances of the possessory sort there
are manifold varieties to be found scattered
over the surface of our globe. Believers
grade them after the ethics of the possessing
370 OCCULT JAPAN.
spirits, a pious if not over-profitable criterion.
In Japan, for example, the rank of the god is
gauged by the knowledge he displays of his
own family mythology, while in America pos-
sessing spirits are valued for their proficiency
in a certain milk-and-water philosophy, meta-
physically tinctured of religion. The more
milk-and-water their well of information
proves, the purer proof-spirit is it esteemed
to be.
To science the spirits' morals would be of
more consequence did they not so singularly
mirror the morals of the race which the
spirits are kind enough to possess. As it is,
so remarkable a resemblance in ethical stand-
ards between the immutable gods and ever-
evolving man, observable at all times and
among all peoples, proves too much for
popular deity. Such concordance, further
emphasized by the striking manner in which
as a race advances in its conception of con-
duct the moral development of deity keeps
pace with the moral development of the dev-
otee, hints that between the orthodox and
the true divine comedy, the parts of creature
and creator have unfortunately got reversed.
The more abstract the conceptions of a
NOUMENA. 371
race grow to be, the more abstract become
its gods, and in consequence the less they
deign temporarily to inhabit mankind. A
growing incapacity to conceive how a more
and more abstracted god would act in the
concrete is indirectly responsible for this.
Among aboriginal peoples the gods them-
selves descend to embodiment in man ;
among more evolved races the spirits of de-
parted men take their place.
But it is not simply in their morals that
the gods show themselves in sympathy with
their people. In their characters generally
you shall see reflected the race character-
istics. In Japan the gods are eminently
Japanese. They are dignified, artistic, simple
souls, of the most exceptional deportment.
Their life is made up of one long chain of
ornamental, if somewhat conventional, mo-
ments.
Especially is this agreement of gods and
men conspicuous in that most interesting of
Japanese traits — the race's unindividuality.
As we saw, one of the strangest features of
Japanese possession is the way in which
several gods deign to share one trance.
Now when this copartnership is closely scru-
372 OCCULT JAPAN.
tinized it will be found to afford proof of a
curiously conceived impersonal kind of deity.
It is not that to one unacquainted with
the gods there appears at first sight to be
a very strong family likeness between them,
so strong as to imply no very marked in-
dividuality in any, for such superficial re-
semblance is common to every race in the
eyes of others. It is in the character of
the divine consciousness that the peculiarity
consists. For the consciousness of any one
god is continuous in successive trances, and
the consciousness of successive gods is con-
tinuous in any one trance. That is, in the
person of the same man the god remembers
what he did, said, and heard in different
trances, and different gods remember what
the others did, said, and heard in the same
trance, while perfectly differentiating them-
selves from those others. But different gods
do not remember about each other in differ-
ent trances. The first of these capabilities
is of course the usual trance - memory, as
self-identifying a one as the man's normal
memory. The second shows that an indefi-
nite idea of god underlies the several special
manifestations of it. The third indicates the
extent of this common bond.
NOUMENA. 373
That each god thus knows his own acts
and sensations from those of every other
god, in the same trance, and remembers his
previous acts and sensations in successive
trances, fulfills all the phenomena that we
recognize as constituting an individual self.
It is therefore only natural for it instantly
and irrevocably to have been taken for such.
On the other hand, that one god should have
any idea of the actions of his predecessor
when embodied, hints at a ground-work of
unindividual self.
The change of god evidently comes about
by unconscious auto-suggestion. Certainly
the subject himself has no inkling before-
hand what gods will constitute his surprise
party, if his seemingly honest profession to
that effect is to be believed, and there is
really no reason to doubt it. Nor is the
change due to any suggestion on the part
of the niaesa, the official interviewer of the
god. For the maeza asks no leading ques-
tions on the subject ; he confines himself to
asking after the fact who has come, and then
to questionings about the cure of the disease,
or other desired mundane or divine matter,
quite apart from the personality of the god.
374 OCCUL T JAPAN.
The auto-suggestion is of two parts, — the
general idea of change, and its particular
performance. The lirst is like the uninten-
tionally induced hypnotic habits of the Sal-
petriere. The gods have learned that chey
are expected to come in Indian file, and
kindly do so accordingly. That they did so
initially is due undoubtedly to the underly-
ing impersonality of the race.
That there is this general predisposition
to rotation in office is proved by the earli-
ness with which the change shows itself. It
appears long before the possession is perfect
enough for words. The boy whose divine
development I instanced before was already
several gods in turn, while as yet unable to
talk as any. The particular change comes
about from associations between the idea
of one god and the idea of the other, con-
tracted either in the normal or the entranced
state, and then evoked in the course of the
entranced's heavenly thinking. Sometimes
the link becomes visible. A god will say
that he is himself unable to answer a ques-
tion put to him, and will report the matter
to some higher god for solution, after which
an attendant of the higher god descends.
A'OUMENA. 375
This would seem to show that a sufficiently
connective thought in one trance will pass
over to become a part of the dominant idea
in the next. A god may thus present his
successor.
Somewhat analogous to this, though not
similar, is the way in which the control of a
trance medium has been known to change.
But this, so far as I am aware, has rarely
happened in the midst of any one trance.
The spirits spoken to change with kaleido-
scopic activity, but the control itself is a
tolerably stable spirit.
Indifferentism to individuality crops out
thus in the curious thread of impersonal
god - head, mere god -head as such, upon
which the several particular personalities are
strung, because it is so fundamental a qual-
ity of the race that it forms of necessity
part of their every idea.
The subject's dominant idea evidently con-
sists not of the possession by any particular
god, but rather of the prognostication of
possession by deity in general. For were
the idea of the individuality of the posses-
sory god strong, it would not of itself yield
possession of the premises to another. On
376 OCCULT JAPAN.
the other hand, it is no mere abstract idea
of god, but rather a vaguely concrete gen-
eral idea, accidentally clothed upon by par-
ticularity. For the gods are successively
individual enough, in spite of their hasty
succession. In fact, the Japanese idea of
god is kin to all the other Japanese ideas ;
like their idea of man, for example, as it
shows itself in their speech, the idea neither
of a man nor of mankind, but just the idea :
man.
The dominant idea thus betrays a very
curious state of mind in the possessed.
Though the man's self has quite departed,
the mere lessness of that self survives, and
not only characterizes all subsequent ten-
ants, but unites them by a sort of common
lease. The individual has vanished ; but
the race is left.
Such a result, indeed, is what we should
expect from our theory on the subject. For
the race characteristics are the ones most
deeply graven into the character of the in-
dividual. They are the great arteries of
thought, the well-worn channels through
which the stream flows most easily. So
easily does the current pass through them
NOUMENA. 377
that the thoughts it rouses there mingle un-
consciously with a man's thinking most of
the time. They constitute what we know as
habitual ones in the normal state. When,
therefore, the brain lies clogged in the gen-
eral lethargy of the trance, these channels
still remain relatively more permeable than
the less pervious veins of more recently
evolved sensations peculiar to the individual.
Thus the activity that cannot wake the man
wakes the race.
This brings us to confront the atavistic
character of the general trance state. A pri-
ori, we have just seen that the state should
hark back, and a posteriori that it does so in
this particular case. But we have evidence
that it is atavistic generally. The easy
transition from one idea to another in the
hypnotic state, the want of reasoning shown
in it, the intentness and energy with which
any given idea will be pursued one moment,
only to be thrown over the next with a com-
pleteness which is caricatural, are states of
mind that recall childhood for comparison.
The man has become a sort of grotesque
boy again. Could all ide'es fixes be eradi-
cated, that is, could we have the perfectly
3/8 OCCULT japan:
normal man for subject, then if the operator
could suggest some action colorless enough
to let only native activity come into play,
— a purity of experiment practically unat-
tainable, — we should probably, as the trance
state deepened and the man lost himself, see
him lose first his individual characteristics,
then his family traits, then the habits of his
clan, and so down, till only the broadly hu-
man ones survived. The trance state would
undo what evolution has done, and return to
us a primeval savage in the body of an end-
of-the-century man. But fortunately that
most insipid individual, the normal man,
whose mild portrait you shall see in any
composite photograph, it is impossible to
obtain. For the very essence of evolution
consists in the survival of the slightly ab-
normal. The spirit of the cosmos is itself
one great idee fixe working itself out. The
normality of the whole depends upon the
abnormality of each part. To be a trifle one-
sided gives each of us our chance. Indeed,
nothing is easier than to show that were
everything, as the Roman expression had
it, smooth and round, nothing could ever
have developed, just as \^^thout irregularity
NOUMENA. 379
no motion could have existed in the solar
system except one vast self-crushing in the
sun.
Thus idiosyncracies are a necessa''y part
of us, but they are numerous and diverse
in proportion to the height the individual
development has attained. They are much
less marked between man and man in Japan
than among Ar}-an folk. The average Jap-
anese more nearly approaches his own na-
tional norm.
This lands us in our investigation at an
unexpected conclusion, to \<\X., that these
gods really are what they claim to be. In
Shinto god-possession we are viewing the
actual incarnation of the ancestral spirit of
the race. The man has temporarily become
once more his own indefinitely great great-
grandfather. It is a veridic incarnation, if
ever there was one. If these his ancestors
were gods in the past, gods they are that
descend to embodiment to-day.
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