in the Shintō 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 supernatural 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 transcendental thing. Self, indeed, would seem itself to be illusion; and the bundle of ideas in that mass of machinery, the brain, alone to constitute the I.
