MR. W. JAMES ON RELIGIOUS CONVERSION. [TO THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Your review of Professor James's work in the Spectator of July 12th is of great interest to me, as the unconscious mind and its scope, especially with reference to spiritual matters, has occupied me for some years. The whole mind of man is essentially one; a smaller portion being to a varying extent illumined by consciousness, while above and below stretches the larger part, in contact on one side with the highest spiritual influences, while on the other it controls the action of the smallest body cells. Conscience, character, the Spirit of God, the " new man," and all the deepest religious experiences have their home in the unconscious mind. In all spiritual and religions exercises, whether anciently among monks and other ascetics, or in the present day, the greatest results are obtained as consciousness is wholly or partly in abeyance. " The mysteriousness of our being ' is not confined to subtle physiological processes which we have in common with all animal life. There are higher and more capacious powers wrapped up in our human personality than are expressed even by what we know of consciousness, will, or reason. There are supernormal and transcendental powers of which, at present, we only catch occasional glimpses; and behind and beyond the supernormal there are fathomless abysses, the ' Divine ground' of the soul, the ultimate reality' of which our consciousness is but the reflection or faint representation." In religious services for the " deepening of the spiritual life" it is to be noted how prominent a place is given to the "cessation of effort," to the "casting out of self," to "lying passive," and "yielding up our powers," &c. The larger and more potent part of our spiritual, as of our physical life, is behind the veil of our normal consciousness, and beyond our highest intellectual capacity. Kingsley says : " It leads to the mistaking conscious emotions for the workings of the spirit, which must be above consciousness." A well-known Christian teacher, the Rev. Dr. Andrew Murray, writes : " Deeper down than where the soul with its consciousness can enter there is spirit matter linking man with God; and deeper down than the mind and feelings or will—in the unseen depths of the hidden life—there dwells the Spirit of God." Our conscious mind, as compared with the unconscious mind, has been likened to the visible spectrum of the sun's rays as compared to the invisible part which stretches indefinitely on either side.* We know now that the chief part of heat comes from the ultra-red rays that show no light; and the main part of the chemical changes in the vegetable world are the results of the ultra-violet rays at the other end of the spectrum, which are equally invisible to the eye, and are only recognised by their potent effects. Indeed, as these invisible rays extend indefinitely on both sides of the visible spectrum, so we may say that the mind includes not only the visible or conscious part, and what we have termed the subconscious, that lies below or at the red end, but the supraconscious mind that lies beyond at the other end,—all those regions of higher soul and spirit life of which we are only at times vaguely conscious, but which always exist, and link us on to eternal verities on the one side, as surely as the subconscious mind links us to the body on the other. The mind, indeed, reaches all the way, and while on one hand it is inspired by the Almighty, on the other it energises the body, all whose pur- posive life it originates. We may call the supraconscious mind the sphere of the spirit life, the subconscious the sphere of the body life, and the conscious mind the middle region where both meet.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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