Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/380

358 arriving to a man from all parts of the world, and he should leave all but those from Chili unopened on his desk. That the senses and the lower centres do their work perfectly, and that it is in the hemispheres that the messages are laid aside unscanned, is proved clearly by hypnotic experiments. For in certain cases the subject can be shown to have carefully distinguished two things first, in order subsequently to ignore one of them. These last sensations may afterward be recovered.

The same thing occurs in the case of the possessed. Violent sensations unconnected with the spirit of the trance, and even wounds inflicted in it, pass unnoticed. Pins stuck into the man are not felt by the god at all, though the pain of the prick continues sharp enough to be very disagreeably felt by the man on coming back again to himself. Yet when he does thus become aware of it he remains quite unable to assign its cause. On the other hand, sensations appropriate to the god may almost be said to be divined rather than ordinarily perceived, so alert to them is the entranced.

In neither trance, under natural, that is,