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DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT
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To persons adopting this view of things, the possibility of augury must rest upon the possibilities of the sub-consciousness. Mr. Myers would not, perhaps, go as far as the ancient Sages, and say we are all Gods if we only knew it, but he has been forced to endow the sub-consciousness with very divine gifts. It is able, apparently, to foresee the consequences of action much more clearly than the working consciousness does. It has a larger purview of the environment and an extraordinary memory of the past, of things unconsciously observed and a rapid sympathy with the feelings of others, but in some ways it is sillier than the reasoning consciousness. The latest publications of the Society are d now admitting that this sub-consciousness under abnormal circumstances is able to automatically control the action of the body and thoughts, and herein Mr. Myers finds an explanation of all the augury in our second and third classes. He would explain, we may presume, divination by the augur's staff, sybilline books, openings of Bibles, drawing of lots, geomancy, dreams and such kind, as he would the modren planchette, clairvoyance and card-telling, viz., by the superior powers of the "subliminal consciousness" to cause automatic actions and choice, and to read other people's desires. But the augury of other classes, such as that by the action of birds and animals, direct voices, appearances in the flesh of Divine Beings, his theory cannot explain. He must either deny their possibility or wait for further enlargement of his views.
Jain Education International
213
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