by Colin Wilson
It is, of course, this notion of hostile magic that the Western intellect finds most difficult to accept. Yet Nandor Fodor himself, in spite of his support for the “unconscious” theory, accepts both the idea of black magic and the death wish. He speaks of a woman he knew in London who claimed to be skilled in the black arts, and who told him how she had conjured up the Devil by hypnotizing a boy and sending him to summon the Devil. Fodor, in his role as psychoanalyst, says that he has no doubt that she tried to conjure up the Devil, but that he could not believe that he had appeared to her. What probably happened, he says, is that the boy’s unconscious “rose to the occasion” and summoned up visual auditory hallucinations. Having said which, he tells how, when the woman lost some silver spoons, she pronounced a curse against the thief, and how the woman’s discharged cook dropped dead at the moment the curse was pronounced. He goes on to tell a story of a spy of his acquaintance who successfully willed an accomplice to commit suicide. He goes on: “This man was a weird creature. He was convinced that he had a familiar spirit always ready to do his bidding . . .” Fodor later tells a story about G. R. S. Mead—an eminent student of the occult—in which Mead describes how he himself survived an “astral attack”:
I woke from a troubled sleep, but remained in a twilight state, as if under a spell. There was a growing chill in the air, or in my mind. I saw a soft glow and a menacing shape which boded evil and which I thought I recognized. I knew I was in danger, but the peril was not on the physical plane.
Mead claims to have used his own knowledge to counter attack effectively.[2]
Cases like these are easier to explain with reference to Long’s Huna concepts than to Fodor’s Freudian theories. The same is true of the puzzling case of the Barbados tomb, discussed by Father Thurston and many other writers on poltergeist hauntings. The vault, hewn partly out of solid rock, was opened in 1812—only five years after it had been used for the first time—and two coffins were found standing on end. Four years later, the coffins had again been scattered when the tomb was opened. When it happened for a third time, in 1819, the floor was scattered with fine sand; the following year, when the tomb was opened again, the sand was undisturbed, but the coffins had again been thrown around in the vault. The case seems completely non-typical of poltergeist haunting; not only was there no disturbed teenager to act as “focus,” there was no human being of any kind from whom the entity could have “borrowed” the energy. But the island of Barbados has its voodoo practices, and the Huna explanation would be that some enemy of the family had sent spirits to discharge their excess mana in this way.
The mana theory is, in a sense, the essence of Long’s spirit theory, and the aspect that would probably be the easiest to investigate scientifically. Long points out: “Modern studies of the vital electricity have been made by attaching wires to the skin of the body and of the scalp, then using very sensitive instruments to measure the electrical discharges.” In fact, the experiments of Harold Burr in measuring the “life field” of trees and animals are now well known. Long adds:
Life magazine files show in the issue of October 18, 1937, some pictures of tests with charts and graphs. Two voltages of electricity have been found, a low voltage in the body tissue and a higher voltage in the brain.
And as an example of the use of mana he cites the “lifting experiment” that has always been popular at parties. The subject sits in a chair, and four people attempt to lift him with a single finger placed beneath his knees and armpits; it is, of course, impossible. All four now place their hands on the subject’s head in an alternating “pile” (that is, so that no person’s two hands are together) and concentrate for a moment. Then they remove their hands and quickly attempt the lifting again; the subject can usually be raised without difficulty. (“Professor” Joad was much intrigued by this phenomenon, and described how he had often seen heavy men sailing up toward the ceiling in one case, with a small child as one of the lifters.) According to Long, this is a simple demonstration of the human ability to concentrate mana. And, if Long is correct, this is also the energy used by the poltergeist. (Elsewhere in the book, he mentions the case of the Cottingley fairies, and implies that they are also “thought forms” created by mana.)
Yet although the “spirit” theory seems, on the whole, to explain the phenomena rather more convincingly than the “unconscious” theory, it would be a mistake to go to the opposite extreme and dismiss the latter as a scientific rationalization. This would be throwing out the baby with the bath water. To grasp the real importance of the unconscious theory, we have to go back to the origins of organized psychical research, and to the first attempt by an investigator to create a comprehensive theory—Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (1903) by F. W. H. Myers, one of the founders of the SPR. Myers is, in fact, less concerned with “life after death” than with the mysterious powers of the human mind. There are chapters on multiple personality, on genius, on hypnosis, and on specters of the living and the dead. Myers is fascinated, for example, by “calculating prodigies,” children (often of less than average intelligence) who can do immense calculations in their heads within seconds. Myers ends by concluding that “discarnate spirits” exist; but his conclusions are otherwise disappointingly tentative.
Writing at about the same time as Myers, and from the same starting point, the American Thomson Jay Hudson reached far more interesting conclusions. The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892) begins by considering the mystery of hypnosis, in which the powers of the hypnotic subject seem to be enormously increased. People in hypnotic trances have spoken foreign languages they have never studied (although it is usually found that they had unconsciously “absorbed” them in childhood) and have exercised powers of clairvoyance and telepathy. (We may recall Barrett’s hypnotized girl who winced when he held his hand over a candle flame, or the boy who could speak aloud the words in a book from which Ochorowitz was reading.)
Hudson then advances an important thesis: that we all contain “two selves” or minds. He calls these the objective mind and the subjective mind. The objective mind is the conscious ego, whose business is to “cope” with the physical world. The subjective mind seems to be more concerned with our internal functions, and it works through intuition. The subjective mind is far more powerful than the objective mind, which is why hypnotic subjects are capable of feats that they could never perform through conscious effort. What excites Hudson is that this subjective mind—or unconscious—is the servant of the objective mind, and will obey its commands. So, in theory we are all capable of becoming clairvoyant, or of curing our own illnesses (and those of other people) at will. (Hudson convinced himself of the soundness of these theories by performing some remarkable experiments in “absent healing.”)
But because he is so impressed by the amazing powers of the subjective mind, Hudson concludes that it is responsible for all the phenomena of Spiritualism—for example, automatic writing and “spirit voices.” He has, of course, no difficulty in explaining multiple personality in terms of the subjective mind. He is even convinced that it explains the miracles of the New Testament. Only one major psychic manifestation is absent from his remarkable book: the poltergeist. And this is obviously because he feels he would be stretching things too far to explain the violent movement of objects in terms of the subjective mind. (It was J. B. Rhine’s studies in psychokinesis in the 1930s that opened the way for the RSPK theory of poltergeist phenomena.)
In the 1960s, an American doctor named Howard Miller took up the theory of the “two minds” where Hudson left off. Miller became fascinated by hypnosis when he saw a dentist extract a tooth after hypnotizing the patient and telling her that she would not bleed; to Miller’s astonishment, there was no bleeding. Bleeding is, of course, controlled by the involuntary nervous system, and cannot, in the normal course of things, be affected by thinking. Yet here was evidence that the dentist’s “thought” could stop bleeding. Miller began to try hypnosis on various ailments—including cancer�
��and was astonished by its effectiveness. He concluded that our major “control system” lies in the cerebral cortex: the thinking part of us. In effect, Miller had rediscovered the subjective and objective minds.
Miller carried his thinking an important step beyond Hudson. If the cerebral cortex, the conscious ego, has the power to control the automatic nervous system, why do we fail to recognize this power? What stops us from curing our own illnesses, whether headaches or cancer? Obviously, the main reason is that we never make the attempt. This is because we feel that consciousness counts for so little compared to the forces of the unconscious mind—the power of the emotions and the body. And this is not simply because Freud and D. H. Lawrence have taught us to distrust the conscious ego. It is because our own experience seems to support the notion that thought is helpless when compared to the forces of the unconscious.
The problem, says Miller, is that the conscious mind is unaware that it is supposed to be in control. The brain is like an enormous computer, overflowing with activity that seems to be independent of the will. This is particularly obvious during sleep, when all kinds of strange phantasmagoria swarm into consciousness. It is equally obvious if I get a tune stuck in my head and cannot get it out, or if I find myself thinking obsessively about something I would prefer to forget. The brain physiologist Wilder Penfield discovered that if he touched an area in the temporal cortex—the seat of memory—with an electric probe, the patient would relive experiences from his past life in cinematic detail. The brain is a vast library. No wonder the conscious self feels like a visitor with only limited right of access.
Yet this is a mistake, as we discover every time a crisis produces a flood of concentration and vitality, or when ecstasy brings a sense of control and power. In such moments, we suddenly realize that it is the “I” that is in control, not “it.”
The “I” only achieves this recognition when galvanized by intensified consciousness. Yet if it is a recognition, and not an illusion, then we should be able to use this insight to reach unprecedented levels of self-control. Miller compares our situation to a man sitting idly in a cinema, watching a jumbled phantasmagoria on the screen, and wondering what has happened to the projectionist. He is unaware that he is the projectionist. It takes a sudden crisis to wake him up, and make him realize that his proper place is in the projection room, not yawning in the “audience.”
What Miller is saying is that we must come to terms with this recognition that the “controlling ego” (which he calls “the unit of pure thought”) is intended to be the director of both the conscious and the unconscious minds. As a species, we have slipped into the habit of regarding consciousness as somehow subservient to the body and the emotions. So that if I feel sick, or feel convulsed with jealousy, it seems self-evident that my ability to think is of no particular use; on the contrary, it seems to make things worse by looking on detachedly and telling me I oughtn’t to be such an idiot.
Yet the moment I feel the need to turn my thought into action, the moment I determinedly search for solutions, I experience a sense of control, a surge of power and insight. The sensation is not unlike the surge of power and purpose produced by the orgasm. And the more I become accustomed to these efforts of control, instead of lying down and surrendering to my emotions, the more I learn that “I” am not a cork tossed about on a sea of feelings and sensations; I am the director. In fact, if I study my perceptions—which seem to occur without my volition—I realize that even they depend on a form of unconscious effort (which the philosopher Husserl called “intentionality”). If I look at my watch without paying attention, I fail to grasp the time; my mind has to make an effort, like a hand grasping an object.
It can be seen that the two minds of Hudson correspond to the two hemispheres of the brain—discussed in chapter 1—with the left brain as the objective mind, the right as the intuitive, subjective mind. So it would seem a reasonable assumption that they also correspond to the Huna notion of the “lower self” and the “middle self”—the unconscious and conscious minds. Yet this proves to be inaccurate. In Enid Hoffman’s Huna: A Beginner’s Guide, a chapter is devoted to the split brain, and, as expected, the “middle self” is placed in the left cerebral cortex. But the “lower self,” according to the kahunas, is located in the solar plexus.
This is less surprising than it sounds; after all, D. H. Lawrence identified the solar plexus as the center of intuition and emotion. And this is confirmed by self-observation. If some unpleasant thought enters my head—the left brain—I experience a “sinking feeling”—a leak—in the area of the solar plexus.
And what of the right brain? This, according to Dr. Hoffman, is the seat of the “higher self.” And this, again, is supported by self-observation. In moods of serenity produced by music or poetry—both of which make their appeal through the right brain—we experience a sense of expanding identity, or contact with powerful vital forces. It is the right brain that is involved in mystical ecstasy, in the feeling that G. K. Chesterton calls “absurd good news.”
So Huna philosophy has removed another of the puzzling contradictions of modern psychology: the notion that the unconscious mind is the source of our best and worst impulses, of inspiration and anarchic violence. It anticipates Aldous Huxley’s suggestion that if the mind has an unconscious “basement,” full of repressions and neuroses, it must also have a superconscious “attic.”
The kahunas go considerably further than Howard Miller in defining the role of the “controlling ego.” The higher self, says Long, has control over the future, so that it is possible for us to direct the future, if we go about it in the right way. Long describes his own experience of visiting an old kahuna woman during the Depression, when his camera shop in Honolulu was on the point of bankruptcy.
The healer told me that in her experience most people sent to the High Self a continuous jumble of conflicting wishes, plans, fears and hopes. Each day and hour they changed their minds about what they wished to do or have happen. As the High Self makes for us our futures from our averaged thoughts which it contacts during our sleep, our futures have become a hit-and-miss jumble of events and contrary events, of accidents and good and bad luck. Only the person who decides what he wants and holds to his decision doggedly, working always in that direction, can present to the High Self the proper thought forms from which to build the future.
The High Self, says Long, must be contacted through the intermediary of the low self; the middle self cannot do it directly.
Long claims that as a result of the kahuna’s advice—which she arrived at through “scrying” with a glass of water—she was able to tell him: “Your path is not badly blocked,” and to give him precisely detailed instructions which showed an accurate foreknowledge of the future, and which saved him from bankruptcy.
All of which raises an obvious question: if the High Self knows the future, and is the “guardian angel,” why does it not do a better job of shaping our destinies? The answer is to be found in Howard Miller. Because the middle self is the director, the controller, it is its job to contact the high self, not vice versa. It must do this by using its power of choice and rational analysis, by trying to grasp the insights of “moments of vision” and intensity, and living by these, instead of by the impulses of the low self, which is still close to the animal world. The kahunas say that only the middle self can sin, for it has the power of choice.
It all sounds depressingly difficult. In fact, it is not; for we are always receiving flashes of insight, “glimpses.” Every time a spring morning brings a surge of “absurd good news,” every time we experience a sense of interest and absorption that arouses a glow of sheer affirmation, we see the solution, and see that it is astonishingly simple. (This is why every mystic has expressed a feeling that can only be translated: “Of course!”) The problem is that the low self fails to grasp it, so that half an hour later we can no longer remember what it was. The romantics of the nineteenth century died off like flies because they suspected t
he “moments of vision” were an illusion, and the basic truth is that life is dull, brutish and short (Tennyson’s In Memoriam is a classic expression of this anguish). Trained in kahuna teaching, they would have recognized that this is a purely technical problem of communication between the “selves,” and that despair is due to an absurd misunderstanding.
According to Long, Huna teachings originated in ancient Egypt and the Sahara, in the days when the Sahara was still fertile. This original Huna people left in an exodus and spread in many directions; Long produces strong evidence that the Berber tribes of the Atlas mountains, in north Africa, spring from the same people. We may, of course, reject the whole notion that Huna is a secret knowledge system (Huna means secret), and regard it simply as a form of intuitive psychology mixed with ancient superstition, in which the low, middle and high selves are simply aspects of the human psyche (corresponding roughly to Freud’s unconscious, conscious and superego). What must be acknowledged is that, as a psychological system, it has a depth that is lacking in most modern psychologies.
Our concern in this book is with the poltergeist and its mysteries; and here the kahuna explanation seems to fit the facts rather better than most. As Guy Playfair points out, the kahunas seem to have explanations for most “psi”’ phenomena. Before considering some of these explanations, let us look once more at the “facts.”