2.8 The Soul Beyond the Body
Sleep and Dreams
An incarnate spirit does not willingly remain within its corporeal envelope. To ask otherwise would be like asking whether a prisoner is happy under lock and key. An incarnate spirit constantly aspires to freedom. The denser the envelope, the more it longs to be free of it.
During sleep, the soul does not rest as the body does. A spirit never remains inactive. During sleep, the bonds that join it to the body are loosened, and since the body does not need it while sleeping, the spirit travels through space and enters into a more direct relationship with other spirits.
The fact that a spirit is freer during sleep is confirmed by dreams. While the body rests, the spirit enjoys more of its faculties than in the waking state. It remembers the past and sometimes foresees the future. It acquires more power and can communicate with other spirits, whether on this world or another. What is often called a bizarre or horrible dream, yet one with no likelihood of being true, is almost always a memory of places and things that have been seen, or that will be seen, in another existence or on another occasion. Since the body is dormant, the spirit tries to break its chains in order to probe the past and future.
Human beings know so little about even the most ordinary phenomena of life. They believe they are very wise, yet the most ordinary things puzzle them endlessly. To the question asked by all children, “What do we do when we sleep? What are dreams?” they remain without an answer.
Sleep partially frees the soul from the body. When people sleep, they momentarily find themselves in the state they will be in permanently after death. Spirits who quickly free themselves from matter upon death had intelligent dreams during earthly life. While their body is sleeping, such spirits rejoin the company of those who are more evolved; they travel with them, converse with them, and learn from them. They even work on projects that they find completed upon dying. From these facts, one should once more learn not to fear death, because one dies daily, as a saint once said.
This applies only to more highly evolved spirits. The mass of spirits, however, who at death must remain for some time in a state of confusion, that uncertainty of which it has already been spoken, either go to worlds even less evolved than Earth, where former affections call to them, or seek out pleasures perhaps even baser than those they indulge in here. They go to absorb doctrines even viler, more ignoble, and more harmful than those they profess among us. What engenders sympathies on Earth is often nothing other than the fact that, upon awakening, they feel linked to the hearts of those with whom they have just spent eight or nine hours of happiness or pleasure. Likewise, the deep antipathies felt toward certain individuals may be explained by the fact that they are recognized inwardly, even without having been seen before. This also explains some people’s indifference when they do not seek to make new friends: they know that those who love and cherish them are elsewhere. In a word, sleep has more influence on life than is generally supposed.
During sleep, incarnate spirits are always in touch with the spirit world. That is why spirits of a high order, without too much aversion, consent to incarnate among us. During contact with earthly vices, God grants them the freedom to renew themselves during sleep at the source of the good, so that they do not fail in their commitment to instruct others. Sleep is the door that God opens to them so they may be in contact with their friends in heaven. It is their respite after work while they await the great deliverance, the final liberation that will restore them to their true environment.
A dream is the memory of what the spirit has seen during sleep. However, one does not always dream, because one does not always remember what was seen, or everything that was seen. This happens because the soul is still under development, so that often nothing more is retained than the confused memory that accompanies departure and return, mixed with the memory of what was done or what concerns were had while awake. Otherwise, those absurd dreams that both the wisest and the simplest endure would be inexplicable. Evil spirits also use dreams to torment weak and cowardly souls.
Furthermore, another type of dreaming will soon be seen to develop, a type as ancient as the one already known, though often ignored. It is the dream of Joan of Arc, the dream of Jacob, the dream of the Jewish prophets, and that of certain Indian seers. This sort of dream is the remembrance of the soul entirely disengaged from the body, the memory of that other life of which it has just been spoken.
One must try carefully to distinguish between these two types of dreams among those that are remembered; otherwise, one will fall into contradictions and errors that could be disastrous for faith.
Dreams are a product of the emancipation of the soul, which becomes more independent through the suspension of active life and bodily relations. This results in a sort of vague clairvoyance extending to the most distant places, to places never seen, and sometimes even to other worlds. It also produces the remembrance of events that have taken place in our present existence or in previous ones. The strangeness of the images referring to what is occurring or has occurred on unknown worlds, mixed with the images of the present world, forms those bizarre and confused medleys that seem to have neither meaning nor connection.
The incoherence of dreams is further explained by the gaps resulting from the incomplete memory of what appeared during the dream, much like a narrative from which sentences or parts of sentences have accidentally been omitted. If the remaining fragments were joined together, they would lose all rational meaning.
We do not always remember our dreams because, during what is called sleep, only the repose of the body is experienced, while the spirit is always in motion. During sleep, it recovers a measure of its freedom and communicates with those who are dear to it, whether on this world or on others. But since the body is composed of heavy and dense matter, it has difficulty retaining the impressions received by the spirit, because the spirit did not receive them through the body’s organs in the first place.
The various meanings attributed to dreams are not true in the sense understood by fortune-tellers, for example, since it is absurd to believe that dreaming of one matter necessarily foretells another. They are true in the sense that dreams present real images to the spirit, but these images often have no relation to what occurs in corporeal life. As has already been stated, they are often a memory of the past. Lastly, they may sometimes be a presentiment of the future if God allows it, or a vision of what is occurring at that moment in another place to which the soul has gone. There are numerous examples of persons appearing in dreams to warn relatives and friends about what is happening to them. Such apparitions are the soul or spirit of those persons communicating. When it is confirmed that what was seen has really occurred, it is evidence that imagination had nothing to do with it, especially if the event had not been in the mind while awake.
Often, things are seen in dreams that appear to be presentiments about matters that never occur. These may occur for the spirit, though not for the body, which means that the spirit sees what it desires because it goes in search of it. It must not be forgotten that during sleep the soul is always more or less under the influence of matter, and consequently is never completely free from earthly ideas. Therefore, the concerns of waking life may give what is seen the appearance of what is desired or feared. This is what may truly be called a trick of the imagination. When one is strongly preoccupied with an idea, one connects it to everything one sees.
When living persons well known to us are seen in a dream doing things they would never think of doing in waking life, this is not necessarily pure imagination. How can it be known what they would never think? Their spirit may come to visit ours, just as ours may visit theirs, without our always knowing what they are thinking. Besides, according to our desires, we often apply to familiar individuals what occurred or is occurring in other existences.
Complete sleep is not necessary for the emancipation of the spirit. The spirit recovers its freedom whenever the senses become dull. It takes advantage of every moment of respite that the body offers in order to emancipate itself. As soon as there is a prostration of the vital forces, the spirit disengages itself; the weaker the body, the freer the spirit.
Thus, a nap or a simple dulling of the senses often presents the same images as dreaming.
Sometimes it seems that distinctly pronounced words are heard within us that have no relation to what occupies our thoughts. This may even extend to entire sentences, especially when the senses begin to grow dull. It is sometimes the faint echo of a spirit that wishes to communicate.
Often, while the eyes are shut during a state not yet fully asleep, distinct images and figures are seen in the minutest detail. This is an effect not of imagination, but of vision. The body, being numb, the spirit tries to break its chains; it travels and sees. If sleep were complete, this vision would be a dream.
During sleep or a nap, ideas sometimes arise that seem very worthwhile, but despite efforts to recall them they are erased from waking memory. These ideas are the result of the freedom of the spirit, which emancipates itself and enjoys broader faculties for the moment. They are also often counsels given by other spirits.
Such ideas or counsels are useful even if memory of them is lost and they cannot immediately be employed. Such ideas sometimes belong more to the spirit world than to the corporeal one. But most often, even if the body forgets them, the spirit remembers them nonetheless, and the idea returns at the appropriate time as an inspiration of the moment.
During the time that the spirit is disengaged from matter and acts as a spirit, it often has a presentiment of the time of its death. Sometimes it has a very clear awareness of it, which gives it an intuition while awake. That is why some individuals sometimes foresee their own death with great precision.
The activity of the spirit during the repose or sleep of the body can fatigue the body, because the spirit is connected to the body like a balloon tied to a post. Just as the jerking movements of the balloon shake the post, the activity of the spirit reacts upon the body and may produce fatigue.
Visits between the Spirits of Living Persons
The principle of the soul’s emancipation during sleep indicates that, in the state of emancipation, the life of the body gives way to that of the soul. Properly speaking, however, there are not two lives. Rather, there are two phases of the same life; people do not live double lives.
Two people who know each other can visit each other during sleep. Many others, who do not think they know each other while awake, meet and converse. Without even suspecting it, one may have friends in another country. The phenomenon during sleep in which one visits friends, relatives, acquaintances, and individuals who may be useful is so frequent that it is experienced almost every night.
These nocturnal visits are useful because, ordinarily, upon awakening, an intuition remains that is almost always the source of certain ideas that arise spontaneously and seem otherwise inexplicable. They are simply the ideas grasped during such colloquies.
People cannot simply bring about spirit visits at will by deciding before sleep to meet a certain person in spirit in order to speak and say certain things. What actually happens is that the person sleeps and the spirit wakes, but the spirit is often far from following what the person resolved while awake, because the life of the person interests the spirit very little when it is freed from matter. This applies to individuals who are already fairly evolved; the others spend their spirit existence in a very different manner. They either give in to their passions or remain inactive altogether. Thus, depending on the reason proposed, the spirit may go to visit the desired individual, but the mere waking desire to do so is not in itself the reason for actually doing it.
A certain number of incarnate spirits can meet and form a gathering. The bonds of old or new friendship frequently reunite a number of spirits who are happy to be together.
The word old refers to ties of friendship contracted in previous existences. Upon awakening, an intuition returns of the ideas acquired during these hidden colloquies, even though their source remains unknown.
If a person believed a friend to be dead, but the friend was in fact still alive, that person could, as a spirit, certainly see the friend and know how she is. If the belief in her death was not intended as a trial, the person will have a presentiment that she is alive, or that she is indeed dead.
The Concealed Transmission of Thought
The same idea, a discovery for example, may arise at the same time in many places because during sleep spirits communicate with one another. When the body awakens, the spirit remembers what it has learned and the person thinks he or she has invented it. Thus, many may seem to have discovered the same thing at the same time. When it is said that an idea is “floating around,” the figure of speech is more precise than is usually thought. Without suspecting it, everyone has contributed toward developing it.
In this way, our own spirit often unknowingly reveals the object of our waking preoccupations to other spirits.
A spirit is not enclosed in the body as though in a box; it radiates in every direction. Hence, it can communicate with other spirits even in the waking state, though with more difficulty.
Two perfectly awake persons may sometimes have the same thought at exactly the same time because they are two attuned spirits who communicate with each other and read one another’s thoughts even when not asleep.
When spirits meet, there is sometimes a communication of thought that enables two persons to see and understand one another without the need for verbal language. It may be said that they speak the language of spirits.
Lethargy, Catalepsy, and Apparent Death
Lethargic and cataleptic individuals generally see and hear what is occurring around them, but they cannot express it. They do not see and hear through the eyes and ears of the body, but through the spirit. The spirit is conscious but unable to communicate.
The state of the body prevents this. This peculiar condition of the organs proves that there is something more to the human being than the body, because although the body is not functioning, the spirit continues to act.
In the state of lethargy, the spirit cannot separate itself entirely from the body in such a way as to give the body all the appearances of death and then return to it. The body is not dead in the lethargic state, because there are functions that continue to operate. Vitality remains in a latent state, as in a cocoon, but it is not extinguished. The spirit is always connected to the body while the body is alive, but once the ties are broken by real death and by the decomposition of the organs, the separation is complete and the spirit no longer returns. When an apparently dead person comes back to life, it is because death had not actually been consummated.
With timely care, one can strengthen the ties that are about to break and bring back to life a being who, without such attention, would certainly die. In such cases, magnetism is often a powerful means because it gives the body the vital fluid needed to keep the organs functioning.
Lethargy and catalepsy have the same principle: the temporary loss of sensitivity and motion due to an as yet unexplained physiological cause. They differ in that, in lethargy, the suspension of the vital forces is generalized and gives the body all the appearances of death, while in catalepsy it is localized and can affect a greater or lesser portion of the body so as to leave the intelligence free to express itself, which prevents confusion with death. Lethargy is always natural; catalepsy is sometimes spontaneous, but it may also be artificially induced and ended by magnetic action.
Somnambulism
Natural somnambulism is connected to dreams. It is a state of the soul in which its independence is more complete than in dreams; thus, its faculties are less restrained. The soul has perceptions that it does not attain in the dream state, which is in fact a state of imperfect somnambulism.
In somnambulism, the spirit is in full possession of itself, but the physical organs are in a sort of cataleptic state and no longer receive external impressions. This state manifests especially during sleep, the time during which the spirit can temporarily leave the body while the body enjoys the repose indispensable to matter. When somnambulistic activity occurs, it is because the spirit is preoccupied with something that requires the physical body, which it then uses in the same way it would use a table or other material object in the phenomena of physical manifestations, or a hand in written communications. In conscious dreams, the sensory organs, including those related to memory, begin to awaken and imperfectly receive the impressions produced by objects or external causes, and communicate them to the spirit. The spirit, itself in a state of repose, perceives only confused and often fragmentary sensations, which, without any apparent reason, are mixed with vague memories from either the present life or previous ones. It is therefore easy to understand why somnambulists do not remember anything, and why most dreams remembered have no meaning. Most of the time, because sometimes dreams are the consequence of a precise memory of events from a previous life, and sometimes even a sort of intuition of the future.
So-called magnetic somnambulism is the same thing as natural somnambulism, except that it is artificially induced.
The agent called the magnetic fluid is the vital fluid, or animalized electricity, and is a modification of the universal fluid.
The cause of somnambulistic clairvoyance is soul sight.
Somnambulists can see through opaque objects because no object is completely opaque except to dense organs. Matter is no obstacle to spirits, since they can pass right through it. Somnambulists often say that they see through their forehead, through their knee, and so on, because those entirely immersed in matter do not understand that they can see without the help of organs. Nonetheless, at others’ insistence, they believe they actually need them. If left alone, however, they would understand that they see through all parts of the body, or rather, that they see apart from the body.
Since the clairvoyance of somnambulists is that of the soul or spirit, they do not see everything and often make mistakes because, first, it is not given to imperfect spirits to see everything and know everything. They still share human errors and prejudices. Second, while connected to matter, they do not enjoy all the faculties of spirits. God has given clairvoyance to humankind for a useful and serious purpose, not so that people may learn what they should not know. That is why somnambulists do not know everything.
The source of somnambulists’ innate ideas, and the reason they can speak with such precision about things of which they are ignorant in the waking state and that are even above their intellectual capacity, is that somnambulists may actually possess more knowledge than might be supposed, though it lies dormant: their corporeal envelope is too imperfect to let them remember it. Like others, they are spirits who have incarnated to fulfill their mission, and the somnambulistic state into which they enter awakens them from their mental lethargy. Human beings live many times, and when they reincarnate they materially lose what they had learned in a previous life. When they enter what is called the crisis state, they remember what they already know, though always incompletely. They know, but they cannot say where the knowledge comes from or why they have it. Once the crisis passes, the memory is erased and they return to the knowledge of waking life.
Experience has shown that somnambulists also receive communications from other spirits, who transmit to them what they must say and supply what they lack. This is seen especially in cases involving medical prescriptions: the spirit of the somnambulist discerns the malady, and another spirit indicates the remedy. This double action is sometimes evident, while at other times it is revealed by frequent expressions such as, “They are telling me to say,” or, “They are forbidding me to say such and such.” In the latter case, it is always dangerous to insist on obtaining denied information; otherwise, the door is opened to frivolous spirits who talk about everything without any concern for truth.
The remote viewing ability experienced by some somnambulists is explained by the soul’s traveling during sleep. The same thing occurs in somnambulism.
The greater or lesser development of somnambulistic clairvoyance depends both on the physical organization of the body and on the nature of the incarnate spirit. There are physical dispositions that allow the spirit to disengage itself from matter more or less easily.
The faculties that the spirit of the somnambulist enjoys are, to a certain extent, the same as those of the spirit after death. Yet the spirit of the somnambulist is still attached to matter, and this fact must be taken into account.
Most somnambulists can see other spirits very easily, but this depends on the nature and degree of their lucidity. Sometimes, however, they do not at first understand what these other spirits are and so mistake them for corporeal beings. This happens especially with those who have no knowledge of Spiritism, because they do not yet comprehend the nature of spirits. Their human appearance deceives them, and that is why they think they are seeing living persons.
The same effect is produced at the moment of death among those who think they are still alive. Nothing around them appears to have changed. Spirits appear to them as having bodies similar to ours, and they mistake the appearance of their own body as being real.
When somnambulists see at a distance, it is the soul that sees and not the body.
Since it is in fact the soul that travels, somnambulists can experience in their body the sensations of the heat or cold of the place where their soul is, even when that place is very far from where the body actually is, because the soul has not entirely left the body. It always remains connected by the tie that joins them, and that tie is the conductor of sensations. When two persons communicate between one city and another by means of electricity, the electricity is the tie between their thoughts; thanks to it, they can communicate as though they were side by side.
The use somnambulists make of their faculties during life influences the state of their spirit after death very considerably, just as the good or bad use of all the faculties that God has given human beings does.
Ecstasy
Ecstasy is a more refined type of somnambulism; the soul of the ecstatic is more independent.
The soul of the ecstatic truly goes to higher realms. It sees them and comprehends the happiness of those who dwell there, which is why ecstatics would like to remain there. However, there are realms inaccessible to spirits who are not sufficiently purified.
When ecstatics express the desire to leave Earth, they may speak sincerely. That depends on the spirit’s degree of purification. If it sees that its future condition will be better than the present life, it makes an effort to break the ties that bind it to Earth.
If ecstatics were left to themselves, their soul could definitively abandon the body. They could die. That is why it is necessary to call them back by means of everything that might attach them to this world, above all by making them understand that if the chain holding them here were broken, that would in fact be the surest way not to remain in the place where they see they could be so happy.
Ecstatics claim to see things that are obviously the product of an imagination overexcited by earthly beliefs and prejudices. What they see is real to them, but since their spirit remains under the influence of earthly ideas, they may see it in their own way, or rather, express it in language shaped by the prejudices and ideas in which they were raised, or by those among whom they speak, in order to make themselves better understood. It is especially in this sense that they can err.
The degree of trust that may be placed in ecstatics’ revelations is limited. Ecstatics can be mistaken quite often, especially when they want to grasp what must remain a mystery for humankind. In such cases, they may transmit their own ideas, or become the instruments of deceiving spirits who take advantage of their enthusiasm in order to delude them.
From the phenomena of somnambulism and ecstasy, it may be concluded that they are a sort of glimpse into the past and future life. Human beings should study these phenomena because in them they will find the solution to more than one mystery that reason has tried in vain to grasp.
The phenomena of somnambulism and ecstasy could be reconciled with materialism only by those who do not study them in good faith and without preconceived ideas. Those who study them in good faith and without preconceived ideas could be neither materialist nor atheist.
Second Sight
The phenomenon called second sight is connected to dreaming and somnambulism. All of this belongs to one and the same order of phenomena. What is called second sight is the spirit in a state of greater freedom, even though the body is not asleep. Second sight is the sight of the soul.
Second sight is permanent as a faculty, though not in the ability to exercise it. On worlds less material than yours, spirits disengage themselves more easily, and while still maintaining articulated language, they communicate with one another by thought alone. For the majority of them, second sight is also a permanent faculty. Their normal state may be compared to that of your lucid somnambulists, and this is also why they manifest themselves to you more easily than those incarnated in denser bodies.
Second sight develops most often spontaneously, but the will can often play a considerable role as well. Thus, among certain individuals called fortune-tellers, some do possess this faculty of second sight, and it is their own will that helps them enter such a state, what you call vision.
Second sight can be developed through practice. Effort always leads to progress, and the veil that covers things becomes clearer.
This faculty is linked to one’s physical organization. Physical organization has its role, and there are constitutions incompatible with this faculty.
Second sight appears hereditary in certain families because of similarity of physical organization, transmitted like other physical qualities, and also because of the development of the faculty through a kind of education that is likewise passed from one to another.
Certain circumstances can cause second sight to develop. Illness, the approach of danger, or a major crisis may bring it forth. In such cases, the body is sometimes in a particular state that allows the spirit to see what cannot be seen with the eyes of the body.
Times of crisis, calamity, and great emotion—in short, all the causes of mental overexcitement—sometimes bring about the development of second sight. It seems that in the presence of danger, Providence has granted the means of calling upon it. All persecuted sects and individuals offer many examples of this fact.
Persons gifted with second sight are not always aware of it. For them, it is entirely natural, and many believe that if others paid closer attention to themselves, they would realize that they possess the same faculty.
The astuteness of certain persons who, without appearing to possess anything extraordinary, judge things more accurately than others may be attributed to a sort of second sight. It always involves the soul. The soul radiates more freely and judges better than when under the veil of matter.
In certain cases, this faculty can provide foreknowledge of future events. It may also furnish presentiment. There are many degrees of this faculty, and the same individual may possess all or only some of them.
A Theoretical Summary of Somnambulism, Ecstasy, and Second Sight
The phenomena of natural somnambulism are produced spontaneously and independently of any known external cause. Yet among some persons gifted with a special physical organization, they may be induced through the action of the magnetic agent.
The state called magnetic somnambulism differs from natural somnambulism only in that it is artificially produced, whereas the other is spontaneous.
Natural somnambulism is a widely known occurrence, and no one questions its reality despite the marvelous character of its phenomena. Magnetic somnambulism is no more extraordinary or irrational simply because it is artificially produced, like so many other things. It is said that charlatans have exploited it, which is one more reason not to leave it in their hands. Once science fully takes possession of it, charlatanism will have much less influence over the masses. Meanwhile, since both natural and artificial somnambulism are facts, there is no arguing against facts, and they continue to establish themselves despite the ill will of some. This is occurring even in the realm of science, where they are entering through a multitude of side doors instead of through the front. When they are fully established there, it will be necessary to grant them the right of citizenship.
For Spiritism, somnambulism is more than a physiological phenomenon; it is a light cast upon psychology. It is during somnambulism that the soul can be studied, because then the soul appears uncovered. One of the phenomena that characterize the soul is clairvoyance independent of the ordinary organs of sight. Those who contest this fact do so on the grounds that somnambulists do not see at all times and not at the will of the experimenter, as they do with their eyes. But when the means differ, the effects are not the same. It would not be rational to seek identical effects when the instruments differ. The soul has its properties just as the eyes have theirs, and it is necessary to judge them in their own right, not by analogy.
The cause of clairvoyance in both the magnetic and the natural somnambulist is identical: it is an attribute of the soul, a faculty inherent in every part of the incorporeal being existing within us, and having no limits other than those assigned to the soul itself. Somnambulists can see every place where their soul can go, whatever the distance.
In cases of remote viewing, somnambulists do not see things from the place where their body is, as though through a telescope. They see them as present, as though they were actually at the place where those things exist, because in reality their soul is there. That is why the body seems absent and deprived of sensation until the moment when the soul retakes possession of it. This partial separation of soul and body is an abnormal state that may last for a short or long time, but not indefinitely. This separation is what causes the fatigue the body experiences after a certain time, especially when the soul is engaged in some active pursuit.
Soul sight, or spirit sight, is not circumscribed and has no determined seat. This explains why somnambulists cannot assign it to any one organ. They see because they see, without knowing why or how. As spirits, sight for them does not have a specific location in the body. When they refer it to the body, sight seems to occur in the centers where vital activity is greatest, especially in the brain, in the stomach region, or in the organ that for them is the most intense point of connection between spirit and body.
The power of somnambulistic lucidity is not unlimited, however. Even when completely free, spirits are limited in their faculties and knowledge according to the degree of purification they have reached, and still more so when attached to and under the influence of matter. This is why somnambulistic clairvoyance is neither universal nor infallible. Its infallibility should be relied on even less when it is diverted from the purpose proposed by nature and turned into an object of curiosity and experimentation.
When the spirit of the somnambulist finds itself in a state of disengagement, it enters more easily into communication with other incarnate or discarnate spirits. This communication is established through the mutual contact of the fluids composing their perispirits, enabling the transmission of thought much like an electric wire. Somnambulists therefore do not need thought to be articulated in words. They sense and divine it, which makes them eminently impressionable and accessible to the influences of the mental atmosphere around them. This is also why a large gathering of spectators, especially onlookers who are more or less ill-willed, seriously hinders the development of their faculties, which close themselves off, so to speak, and do not unfold with full freedom as they would in more intimate or sympathetic surroundings. The presence of ill-willed or antipathetic persons produces on them an effect similar to that of a hand touching a sensitive plant.
Somnambulists see their own spirit and body at the same time. They are, so to speak, two beings representing a double existence, spiritual and corporeal, blended together by the ties that unite them. They do not always understand this condition, and such duality often makes them speak of themselves as if they were speaking of a stranger. At one moment, the corporeal being speaks to the spiritual being; at the next, the spiritual being speaks to the corporeal one.
The spirit acquires increased knowledge and experience during each of its corporeal existences. It partially forgets them during reincarnation in dense matter, but remembers them as a spirit. That is how certain somnambulists display knowledge superior to their degree of education, and even superior to their apparent intellectual capacity. The possible intellectual and scientific underdevelopment of somnambulists in the waking state therefore does not permit one to prejudge the knowledge they may reveal in the lucid state. According to the circumstances and the objective in view, they may draw this knowledge from their own experience, from their clairvoyance concerning present events, or from counsels received from other spirits. However, the accuracy with which they describe things depends on the degree of evolution reached by their spirit.
Through the phenomena of somnambulism, whether natural or magnetically induced, Providence furnishes undeniable evidence of the existence and independence of the soul, and enables us to witness the sublime spectacle of its emancipation. Moreover, through these phenomena, it opens to us the book of our destiny. When somnambulists describe what is occurring at a distance, it is clear that they truly see it, but not through the eyes of the body. They see themselves at that place after being transported there. There is something of themselves present there, and since that something is not the body, it can only be the soul or spirit. While human beings lose themselves in the subtleties of abstract and unintelligible metaphysics in pursuit of the causes of mental existence, God places before them, and within their reach, the simplest and clearest means for the study of experimental psychology.
Ecstasy is the state in which the independence of soul and body is expressed in the most sensitive way, and even becomes somewhat palpable.
In dreams and somnambulism, the soul wanders through terrestrial worlds, whereas in ecstasy it enters an unknown world, that of ethereal spirits, with whom it communicates without, however, overstepping certain bounds. If it did, the soul would completely break the ties connecting it to the body. A resplendent and entirely new brilliance surrounds the soul. Harmonies unknown on Earth enrapture it. An indefinable well-being permeates it. The spirit enjoys a foretaste of celestial beatitude, and it may be said that it has set one foot upon the threshold of eternity.
In the state of ecstasy, the nullification of the body is almost complete. It maintains only organic life as such, and one feels that the soul is connected to it by only a single thread, which with any further effort would break forever.
In this state, all earthly thoughts disappear in order to give way to the pure sentiment that is the very essence of our immaterial being. Entirely enraptured by this sublime contemplation, ecstatics regard life as a momentary pause. For them, the good and evil, the crude joys and hardships of this world, are no more than the futile incidents of a journey whose end they are happy to see.
The same is true of ecstatics as of somnambulists: their lucidity may be more or less purified, and how fully they understand things depends on the degree to which their spirit has evolved. At times there is more exaltation than true lucidity among ecstatics, or rather, their exaltation impairs their lucidity. That is why their revelations are often a mixture of truths and errors, of the sublime and the absurd, even the ridiculous. Imperfect spirits often take advantage of this exaltation, always a source of weakness, in order to dominate the ecstatic who does not know how to master it. To do so, such spirits produce appearances that keep the ecstatic attached to the ideas and prejudices of waking life. This is an obstacle, but not all cases are alike. It is our responsibility to judge coolly and weigh such revelations in the balance of reason.
The emancipation of the soul sometimes manifests even in the waking state and produces the phenomenon called second sight, which gives those who possess it the faculty of seeing, hearing, and feeling beyond the limits of the normal senses. They perceive things at a distance wherever the soul may extend its action, and they see, so to speak, through ordinary sight, as by a kind of mirage.
At the moment when the phenomenon of second sight is produced, the physical state is noticeably modified: the eyes become somewhat hazy, looking without seeing, and the whole countenance reflects a kind of exaltation. It is clear that the organs of sight are not involved in this phenomenon, because the vision has been observed to persist even when the eyes are shut.
This faculty seems as natural as normal sight to those who possess it. They regard it as a normal attribute of their being, and it does not seem exceptional to them. Generally, forgetfulness follows this temporary lucidity, the memory of which becomes more and more vague and finally disappears like a dream.
The power of second sight ranges from a confused sensation to a clear and distinct perception of things present or absent. In its rudimentary state, it gives some individuals tact, astuteness, and a kind of sureness in action, which may appear as an ability to judge, on first contact, another person’s moral standing. When this faculty is more developed, it awakens presentiments, and when still further developed, it shows events that have already happened or that are in the process of happening.
Natural and artificial somnambulism, ecstasy, and second sight are nothing more than varieties or modifications of effects arising from the same cause. Like dreams, such phenomena belong to the natural order, and that is why they have existed in all times. History shows that they have long been known and even exploited since the remotest antiquity, and that in them may be found the explanation of an infinite number of events that preconceived ideas have regarded as supernatural.