Research source

Such were the suggestions of the evidence as to dream and vision; such, I may add, will be seen to be the…

Date of account: Published 1903
Source: Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death
Reference: Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death · selected passage 115
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Such were the suggestions of the evidence as to dream and vision; such, I may add, will be seen to be the suggestions of spontaneous somnambulism, which has not yet fallen under our discussion

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

Such were the suggestions of the evidence as to dream and vision; such, I may add, will be seen to be the suggestions of _spontaneous somnambulism_, which has not yet fallen under our discussion. Yet claims so large as these demand corroboration from observation and experiment along many different lines of approach. Some such corroboration we have, in anticipatory fashion, already acquired. Discussing in Chapter II. the various forms of disintegration of personality, we had frequent glimpses of beneficent subliminal powers. We saw the deepest stratum of the self intervening from time to time with a therapeutic object, or we caught it in the act of exercising, even if aimlessly or sporadically, some faculty beyond supraliminal reach. And we observed, moreover, that the agency by which these subliminal powers were invoked was generally the _hypnotic trance_. Of the nature of that trance I then said nothing; it was manifest only that here was some kind of induced or artificial somnambulism, which seemed to systematise that beneficial control of the organism which spontaneous sleep-waking states had exercised in a fitful way.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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