Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/395

Rh That each god thus knows his own acts and sensations from those of every other god, in the same trance, and remembers his previous acts and sensations in successive trances, fulfills all the phenomena that we recognize as constituting an individual self. It is therefore only natural for it instantly and irrevocably to have been taken for such. On the other hand, that one god should have any idea of the actions of his predecessor when embodied, hints at a ground-work of unindividual self.

The change of god evidently comes about by unconscious auto-suggestion. Certainly the subject himself has no inkling beforehand what gods will constitute his surprise party, if his seemingly honest profession to that effect is to be believed, and there is really no reason to doubt it. Nor is the change due to any suggestion on the part of the maeza, the official interviewer of the god. For the maeza asks no leading questions on the subject; he confines himself to asking after the fact who has come, and then to questionings about the cure of the disease, or other desired mundane or divine matter, quite apart from the personality of the god.