Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/379

Rh sleep as he stands. It requires, indeed, no faith in the onlooker to see in the one an alien spirit acting and speaking through the man. Such is the instant natural inference from his looks and behavior. On the other hand, the hypnotic subject can hardly be said to have either looks or behavior till commanded to have them to order by the hypnotist.

The one subject thus acts from spontaneous impulse; the other only of derivative accord. The next point of dissimilarity is that the sense of self differs entirely in the two. The possessed believes himself to be another person, the possessing spirit. The hypnotized continues to think himself himself unless told by the hypnotist that he is some one else, upon which he promptly conceives himself that other person.

In both trances such sensations only as are compatible with the hypothesis entertained by the entranced are allowed to enter consciousness. These are perceived with abnormal alacrity, so abnormal as to have suggested a possible explanation of clairvoyance. All irrelevant sensations are simply ignored. It is as if telegrams were