Buda Pest and the lands lying southward were then my home, a roving home and tent life of infinite variety.
Thus the dead of vanished years are disguised in the present living.
I have no doubt that many people who have not had the interesting experience of remembering one or more of their former incarnations have been able through some trivial incident to recollect happenings long vanished from their memory. Sometimes the scent of a flower, the glimpse of a scene, a chance word or expression will vividly recall some episode lying hidden for many years in the subconsciousness. Again it will be pulled over the threshold from past to present, from the storehouse of the eternal memory into the everyday working consciousness or mind.
This is not a book for scientists. I will therefore go into no elaborate metaphysics, but will sketch as simply as I can what I mean by subconsciousness. I use the term for the region or zone within us which stores up the residues of past thoughts and experiences. Scientists tell us there are three realms of mind, the super-conscious, the conscious, the subconscious. The conscious mind is what we commonly use. It belongs purely to the objective world, and its instruments are the five senses. The subconscious mind is the storehouse for experiences on the human plane of man's long past. The super-consciousness is independent of the five senses. It is a faculty of perception closely akin to the One force in the Universe, which is inseparably related to all created things. It possesses the attributes of Infinity, is indestructible, immortal, undying. We may forget a fact for many years, then suddenly we remember it. I believe it has come back to us again across the threshold from the subconscious region to our consciousness or mind which is open to everyday observation.
I have become convinced, by personal experience, of the existence in us of this region below the threshold of our ordinary conscious life. When I was young there were many problems I wished to solve, and in this effort human aid often failed me. My plan was to "sleep on" a problem, ardently desiring before "dropping off" that an answer might be accorded me. I suppose this desire was of the nature of prayer, though addressed to no Deity. Almost invariably the solution was clear and unmistakable to me in the morning.