Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/381

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NOUMENA.
359

unsuggested, conditions, does the man remember anything of what happened in the trance after he has waked up. In the case of the hypnotic trance, a suggestion by the operator during the trance that he shall remember it afterwards, will enable him to do so. As to the possession trance, I am not aware that it is ever remembered in the waking state, though I believe this could be done. Certainly it is not done in Japan. The man knows nothing of the god.

Discontinuous, however, as the trance consciousness is from the normal one, in each kind of trances its own consciousness is continuous. The hypnotic subject remembers in subsequent trances what happened in former ones. So does the god. Some curious details of this I shall consider presently.

Agreeing thus as the two kinds of trances do in so many respects, it becomes all the more singular that they should differ so in others, entered, as they both seemed to be, by the same gate. In what, then, does the difference consist? It consists, so I conceive, in the idea that dominates the trance.

To explain it, we must look a little back