Research source

Before leaving this subject of spontaneous sleep-waking states I ought briefly to mention a form of trance with…

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 196
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Before leaving this subject of spontaneous sleep-waking states I ought briefly to mention a form of trance with which we shall have to deal more at length in a later chapter

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

Before leaving this subject of spontaneous sleep-waking states I ought briefly to mention a form of trance with which we shall have to deal more at length in a later chapter. I speak of trance ascribed to _spirit-possession_. As will be seen, I myself fully adopt this explanation in a small number of the cases where it is put forward. Yet I do not think that spirit-agency is necessarily present in all the trances even of a true subject of possession. With all the leading sensitives--with D. D. Home, with Stainton Moses, with Mrs. Piper and with others--I think that the depth of the trance has varied greatly on different occasions, and that sometimes the subliminal self of the sensitive is vaguely simulating, probably in an unconscious dream-like way, an external intelligence. This hypothesis suggested itself to several observers in the case especially of D. D. Home, with whom the moments of strong characterisation of a departed personality, though far from rare, were yet scattered among tracts of dreamy improvisation which suggested only the utterance of Home's subliminal self. However we choose to interpret these trances, they should be mentioned in comparison with all the other sleep-waking states.

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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