2.8 The Soul Beyond the Body
Sleep and Dreams
The incarnate spirit does not remain in the body by preference. Its union with the corporeal envelope resembles a form of confinement. It constantly aspires to greater freedom, and the heavier and denser the bodily covering, the more keenly it feels the constraint.
Sleep offers a partial release from that condition. The body rests, but the spirit does not. A spirit never remains inactive. During sleep, the bonds that attach it to the body are loosened, and because the body no longer requires its full presence, the spirit moves more freely, travels through space, and enters into a more direct relationship with other spirits.
Dreams provide one of the clearest signs of this relative freedom. While the body sleeps, the spirit enjoys more of its faculties than it does during waking life. It may remember the past, sometimes glimpse the future, and communicate with spirits from this world or from others. Many dreams that seem strange, frightening, or impossible are not mere nonsense. They are often memories of things the spirit has seen, whether in another time, another condition, or another existence.
Human understanding usually stops at the surface of sleep, as though the inactivity of the body meant the inactivity of the soul. Yet sleep places the soul, for a few hours, in a state that partly resembles the condition it will know after death. Those who, after death, detach themselves quickly from matter are often the same ones who had clear, intelligent dreams during earthly life. While the body sleeps, they rejoin spirits more advanced than themselves, travel with them, converse with them, learn from them, and even take part in works whose continuation they find after death. Seen in this light, sleep becomes a daily lesson against the fear of dying: each day already includes a partial disengagement.
This does not occur in the same way for all spirits. More elevated spirits make better use of this freedom. Others, still strongly bound to material and lower desires, do not rise toward higher company. They may be drawn instead to less advanced worlds, to old attachments, or to coarse pleasures corresponding to their inclinations. They may absorb ideas still more harmful than those they profess while awake.
Many earthly sympathies and antipathies are connected with these nocturnal relations. People may awaken with a renewed sense of closeness to those with whom their spirit has just spent hours in harmony. Likewise, instinctive aversions may arise because the spirit recognizes dispositions foreign to its own, even where no outward acquaintance exists. Sleep influences human life much more deeply than is commonly supposed.
For spirits of high order who consent to incarnate in difficult environments, sleep is also a mercy. During waking life they endure contact with human ignorance and vice; during sleep they return in part to the source of the good, renew their strength, and reconnect with those who belong to their true sphere. Sleep is their interval of restoration while they await complete liberation.
Dreams as the Memory of Spiritual Activity
A dream is the memory of what the spirit has seen during sleep. But that memory is often incomplete. One does not always remember dreaming, and even when one does, one rarely preserves the whole of what was experienced. What remains may be only a confused fragment from the spirit’s departure and return, mingled with the concerns, impressions, and memories of waking life.
This mixture explains why dreams are so often incoherent. Images referring to distant places, unknown worlds, past events, and even other existences become blended with elements from present life. The result is a confused medley that appears disconnected or absurd.
Their incoherence is increased by the gaps in memory. A dream recalled after waking is like a story from which several sentences have been removed. The remaining fragments, joined together, seem irrational only because the missing links are gone.
Dreams arise from the emancipation of the soul. Through the suspension of active bodily life, the soul becomes more independent. This produces a kind of indistinct clairvoyance that can extend to distant places, to places never seen before, and at times even to other worlds. It also allows the remembrance of events from the present life or from previous lives.
Why Dreams Are Forgotten
What is called sleep is only the repose of the body. The spirit remains active and in motion. During that interval it recovers part of its freedom and communicates with those who are dear to it, whether on earth or elsewhere.
The difficulty lies in transmission. The body, composed of dense matter, does not easily retain the impressions received by the spirit, because those impressions were not received through the bodily organs. The spirit saw and heard by its own faculties, but the waking brain cannot always hold what did not pass through ordinary sensation.
The Meaning of Dreams
Dreams are not true in the superstitious sense often attributed to them. It is unreasonable to suppose that dreaming of one thing must symbolically foretell another in some fixed and universal way. Yet dreams are true in another sense: they present real images to the spirit.
Those images may have no connection with outward bodily life. They may be memories of the past. They may also, when permitted, be presentiments of the future, or visions of something taking place at that moment in another location visited by the soul.
There are cases in which a person appears in a dream to warn a relative or friend of an event occurring to them. Such manifestations are not mere fantasy when the event is later confirmed, especially if the dream concerned something the dreamer had not been thinking about while awake. In such moments, imagination is not a sufficient explanation; one spirit has communicated with another.
Still, not every apparent presentiment concerns the body’s future. Sometimes the spirit sees what concerns itself, not what will happen in earthly life. At other times, waking desires and fears distort what is perceived. During sleep, the soul is never wholly freed from matter, and the concerns of waking life often color what it sees. When the mind is strongly preoccupied, it connects everything with the object of its desire or fear. That is what may properly be called a trick of the imagination.
Encounters with Other Persons in Dreams
When known persons appear in dreams doing things wholly unlike their ordinary conduct, this need not be dismissed as pure invention. One cannot be certain of all that another spirit thinks or experiences. Their spirit may indeed have come to visit yours, just as yours may visit theirs, without either person retaining a clear waking memory of the encounter.
Dream images may also be altered by personal desire. The dreamer may apply to familiar individuals things that in fact belong to other circumstances, other spirits, or even other existences. Familiar faces may serve as coverings for scenes of deeper origin.
The Emancipation of the Spirit Without Complete Sleep
Complete sleep is not necessary for the spirit to begin freeing itself. Whenever the senses grow dull, the spirit recovers some liberty. It takes advantage of every respite the body offers. As soon as the vital forces slacken, the spirit disengages itself to some degree. The weaker the body, the freer the spirit tends to be.
For that reason, a simple nap, a state of drowsiness, or a partial numbing of the senses may produce experiences similar to dreams. Distinct inner words, and sometimes even entire sentences, may be heard when the senses are becoming inactive. These may be the faint echo of a spirit seeking to communicate.
Likewise, with the eyes closed but before full sleep, one may see vivid images and figures in the finest detail. This is not ordinary bodily sight. The body is becoming numb, and the spirit, trying to loosen its chains, travels and sees. If sleep were complete, the same perception would appear as a dream.
Ideas Received During Sleep
During sleep or even a brief dozing state, thoughts may arise that seem elevated, penetrating, and unusually rich. Yet on waking they often vanish despite every effort to retain them. These ideas come from the greater freedom of the spirit while emancipated from the body. They may also be counsels given by other spirits.
Even when the body forgets them, they are not necessarily lost. Some belong more to the spirit’s order of life than to earthly consciousness. More often, the spirit keeps their imprint, and the idea returns later at the needed moment as a spontaneous inspiration.
Presentiment of Death
While disengaged from matter and acting more directly as spirit, an incarnate being may sometimes know the time of its death. Often this appears only as a presentiment, but at times the awareness is quite clear. When that knowledge filters into waking consciousness, it becomes an intuition, and this is why some individuals foresee their death with striking precision.
The Effect of Spiritual Activity on the Body
The activity of the spirit during the body’s repose can also react upon the body itself. The connection between them remains real. The body may be compared to a post to which a balloon is tied: when the balloon is agitated, the post feels the movement. In the same way, the spirit’s activity can shake the bodily organism and leave it fatigued even after apparent rest.
Sleep, then, is never mere physical interruption. It is a temporary loosening of the soul from its earthly ties, a hidden continuation of spiritual life, and one of the most constant forms of intercourse between the incarnate being and the invisible world.
Visits Between the Spirits of Living Persons
During sleep, the soul becomes partially emancipated from the body. This can give the impression that human beings live two lives at once: one outward, tied to bodily activity and daily relationships, and another inward, belonging to the soul and its hidden relationships.
Strictly speaking, however, there are not two separate lives. There are two phases of one and the same life. Bodily life recedes for a time, and the life of the soul becomes more active.
Encounters During Sleep
When the body sleeps, spirits who know one another can meet and visit each other.
Such meetings are not limited to those who are consciously acquainted in waking life. Many who seem to be strangers during the day recognize one another and converse in the spiritual state. A person may even have friends in another country without suspecting it while awake. Visits to friends, relatives, acquaintances, and to persons who may be useful are so common during sleep that they occur almost every night.
These encounters are often forgotten on awakening, but they are not without effect. What usually remains is an intuition. Many ideas that seem to arise spontaneously, without any clear source, are traces of what was learned or perceived in these hidden conversations.
Can Such Visits Be Chosen Deliberately?
A person may go to sleep intending to meet a certain individual in spirit, to speak with that person, or to communicate something specific. Yet the wish formed while awake is not enough by itself to make this happen.
What occurs is that the body sleeps while the spirit awakens. Once freed from matter, the spirit is often far from following the plans made during waking life. For spirits already more advanced, bodily concerns may hold little interest during this state of freedom. Less advanced spirits spend this interval differently: some still yield to their passions, while others remain inactive.
Because of this, a spirit may indeed go to the person it intended to visit, if there is a fitting reason. But the simple decision made before sleep is not the true cause of the visit.
Gatherings of Incarnate Spirits
Not only can two incarnate spirits meet during sleep, but several can gather together.
Friendships, whether old or newly formed, often bring groups of spirits together, and they find happiness in one another’s company. The older ties may come from previous existences, even when nothing in waking life clearly reveals them.
On returning to the waking state, a person may retain only an impression or intuition of what was gained in these meetings. The ideas remain, even if their origin is no longer recognized.
Recognizing the Living or the Dead
In the spiritual state, a person can sometimes see a friend believed to be dead and learn the truth of that friend’s condition.
If someone is mistaken in thinking a friend has died, that friend may still be encountered in spirit and recognized as living. Upon awakening, this may leave a presentiment of the truth. In the same way, if the friend is truly dead, that reality may also be perceived.
Such knowledge is not always granted in every case. If the mistaken belief is part of a necessary trial, certainty may not be given. But when no such purpose exists, the soul may receive an inner impression that the person is alive, or else that death has in fact occurred.
The Concealed Transmission of Thought
The same idea may arise in many places at nearly the same time because spirits communicate with one another.
During sleep, spirits encounter each other and exchange thoughts. When the body awakens, the spirit retains something of what it has learned, and the person often believes the idea originated entirely within himself or herself. In this way, several individuals may appear to make the same discovery at once.
The common expression that an idea is “floating around” comes surprisingly close to the truth. Without realizing it, many minds may have contributed to forming and developing it.
A person’s own spirit may also, without conscious intention, disclose to other spirits the subject of waking concerns. Thoughts that occupy the mind by day can thus become known beyond ordinary awareness.
Communication While Awake
Spiritual communication does not cease when the body is fully awake.
A spirit is not shut up inside the body as though enclosed in a box. It radiates outward in every direction. Because of this, it can remain in communication with other spirits even during waking life, though this occurs with more difficulty than during sleep.
This helps explain why two people, fully awake, may sometimes have exactly the same thought at the same moment. When their spirits are attuned to one another, they may communicate directly and perceive each other’s thoughts even without sleep.
The Language of Spirits
When spirits come into contact, thought may be communicated so directly that two persons understand one another without the need for spoken words.
There is, in such moments, a true exchange of thought beyond ordinary language. In that sense, spirits may be said to speak a language of their own: the immediate language of spirit to spirit.
Lethargy, Catalepsy, and Apparent Death
In lethargy and catalepsy, a person may seem cut off from the world while still remaining inwardly aware. Such individuals often perceive what is happening around them, yet they cannot express what they see or hear. Their perception does not operate through the ordinary functioning of the bodily senses, but through the spirit, which remains conscious even when the body is unable to respond.
This condition points to a distinction between body and spirit. Although the body may appear inactive, the spirit continues to think and perceive. The inability to communicate does not come from the extinction of consciousness, but from the condition of the organs, which no longer provide the means for outward expression.
Lethargy and the Link Between Spirit and Body
In lethargy, the spirit does not separate completely from the body in the way it does at death. The body is not truly dead, because certain functions still continue, even if only in a hidden or weakened form. Vitality remains present in a latent state, as life remains enclosed within a cocoon before emerging. As long as the body is alive, the spirit is still joined to it.
Real death brings a different condition. When the bond between spirit and body is definitively broken, and when the organs have undergone the decomposition that confirms death, the separation is complete and the spirit does not return. When someone who seemed dead later revives, it is because death had not actually taken place.
Apparent Death and Recovery
There are cases in which timely care can reinforce bonds that are on the verge of breaking and restore life to someone who would otherwise have died. Daily experience offers many examples of this kind of recovery.
Magnetism may serve as a powerful aid in such circumstances, because it can provide the vital fluid needed to sustain the organs and support their continued operation.
Distinction Between Lethargy and Catalepsy
Lethargy and catalepsy arise from the same general principle: a temporary loss of sensation and movement caused by a physiological condition not yet fully understood. Even so, they differ in important ways.
In lethargy, the suspension of the vital forces is generalized. The whole body is affected, and the person may display nearly all the signs of death.
In catalepsy, the condition is localized. It may affect only part of the body, to a greater or lesser degree, and can leave the intelligence free enough to manifest itself. For that reason, catalepsy need not be mistaken for death.
Lethargy is always natural. Catalepsy may also arise spontaneously, but it can sometimes be artificially induced and later ended through magnetic action.
Somnambulism
Natural somnambulism is connected with dreams, but it is not the same state.
It is a condition in which the soul enjoys a greater degree of independence than it does in ordinary dreaming, and for that reason its faculties act with more freedom. In this condition, the soul can perceive things that remain inaccessible in the dream state. Dreams may be understood as a kind of imperfect somnambulism.
In somnambulism, the spirit is more fully in possession of itself, while the body is left in a condition resembling catalepsy, no longer receiving external impressions in the usual way. This occurs especially during sleep, when the spirit can temporarily disengage itself from the body while the body takes the rest required by matter. If somnambulistic activity appears, it is because the spirit is occupied with something that still requires the bodily instrument, and it uses that body as it might use any material means of action.
In dreams that are remembered consciously, the bodily senses, including memory, begin to awaken and receive only imperfectly the impressions produced by outside objects or causes. These impressions are then passed on to the spirit, which, still in a state of relative repose, receives them in a confused and fragmentary way. They become mixed, often without apparent order, with vague recollections from the present life or even from previous lives. This helps explain why somnambulists usually remember nothing of what occurred in that state, and why most remembered dreams are incoherent or without clear meaning. At times, however, dreams may preserve a precise memory of events from an earlier existence, and sometimes even offer a kind of intuition of the future.
Magnetic Somnambulism
So-called magnetic somnambulism is of the same nature as natural somnambulism, with the difference that it is artificially induced.
The agent called magnetic fluid is the vital fluid, or animalized electricity, considered a modification of the universal fluid.
Somnambulistic Clairvoyance
The clairvoyance of the somnambulist belongs to the soul. It is soul sight.
This is why a somnambulist may appear to see through opaque objects. Matter is not an obstacle to the spirit in the way it is to the dense bodily organs. Nothing is absolutely opaque in itself; it is opaque only in relation to the limitations of ordinary physical perception. Since the spirit can penetrate matter, the somnambulist does not truly see by means of the bodily organs.
When somnambulists say that they see through the forehead, the knee, or some other part of the body, they are usually speaking according to the expectations of those around them. People so identified with material conditions assume that seeing must happen through an organ, and the somnambulist may adopt that language. Left undisturbed, they would better understand that they see through every part of the body, or more exactly, apart from the body.
Yet somnambulistic clairvoyance is not unlimited. Somnambulists do not see everything, nor do they know everything, and they are often mistaken. One reason is that imperfect spirits do not possess complete knowledge and remain subject to error and prejudice. Another is that, while still united to matter, they do not enjoy the full range of spirit faculties. Clairvoyance has been given for useful and serious ends, not to uncover everything human beings are not meant to know.
Innate Knowledge and Hidden Memory
The striking precision with which somnambulists sometimes speak about matters unknown to them in the waking state does not mean that they acquire all such knowledge in the moment.
They may know more than is ordinarily suspected, but that knowledge lies dormant because the corporeal envelope is too imperfect to let them recall it in everyday consciousness. As incarnate spirits, they have lived before, and reincarnation causes the material loss of what was learned in former lives. In the somnambulistic crisis, they awaken from that mental lethargy and recover something of what they already knew.
This recovery is always incomplete. They know, but cannot say where the knowledge comes from or why they possess it. Once the crisis ends, the memory is erased again, and they return to the limited knowledge of ordinary waking life.
Experience also shows that somnambulists may receive communications from other spirits, who supply what is lacking and direct what should be said. This is seen particularly in medical cases. The somnambulist’s own spirit may perceive the nature of the illness, while another spirit indicates the remedy. Sometimes this twofold action is obvious. At other times it appears indirectly through expressions such as, “They are telling me to say,” or, “They are forbidding me to say.”
When information is withheld in this way, pressing to obtain it is dangerous. Such insistence may open the way to frivolous spirits, who speak readily about anything without concern for truth.
Remote Vision and the Movement of the Soul
Some somnambulists can perceive distant places. This follows from the same principle that applies during sleep: the soul travels.
The degree to which this clairvoyance develops depends on both the physical organization of the body and the nature of the incarnate spirit. Certain bodily dispositions make it easier or harder for the spirit to disengage itself from matter.
The faculties enjoyed by the spirit of the somnambulist resemble, to a certain degree, those of the spirit after death. But the comparison is only partial, because the somnambulist’s spirit is still attached to matter, and that attachment limits its freedom.
Seeing Other Spirits
Most somnambulists can see spirits quite easily, though this depends on the nature and degree of their lucidity.
At first, however, they may not understand what they are seeing. They may mistake spirits for living, embodied persons, especially if they have no prior understanding of the spiritual nature of such beings. Because spirits often appear in human form, those who lack discernment assume they are seeing ordinary people.
A similar confusion can occur at the moment of death among those who still believe themselves alive. Nothing around them seems changed, and spirits appear to possess bodies like those of the living. They take the appearance of their own spiritual body for a real physical body.
Where the Somnambulist Sees From
When somnambulists see at a distance, perception does not take place from the location of the physical body, but from where the soul is. It is the soul that sees, not the body.
Yet because the soul has not entirely left the body, sensations can still be transmitted back to the organism. This explains how somnambulists may feel the heat or cold of a place where their soul is present, even when that place is far from the body’s actual location.
The soul remains linked to the body by the bond that joins them, and this bond serves as the conductor of sensations. The relation is like communication carried by electricity between distant places: the connecting medium transmits the effect, making communication possible across the distance.
Moral Consequences
The use somnambulists make of their faculties during earthly life has an important influence on the state of their spirit after death.
Like every faculty given by God, somnambulistic ability may be used well or badly, and its consequences follow that use. The gift itself does not determine the spirit’s condition; what matters is the manner in which it is exercised.
Ecstasy
Ecstasy is a more refined form of somnambulism. In it, the soul is more independent of the body and acts with greater freedom.
In that state, the soul may perceive higher realms and understand something of the happiness of the beings who dwell there. This perception can awaken a strong desire to remain in that condition. Yet not every realm is open to every spirit. There are regions inaccessible to those who have not attained sufficient purification.
When ecstatic individuals express a desire to leave earthly life, that desire may be sincere. Much depends on the spirit’s degree of advancement. If it perceives its future state as better than its present one, it may strive to loosen the ties that still bind it to the body.
For that reason, ecstasy may involve real danger. If such persons were left entirely to themselves, the soul could definitively abandon the body, and death could follow. They must therefore be recalled through whatever can reattach them to earthly life. Above all, they should be led to understand that if the bond holding them here were broken too soon, that would be the surest way not to remain in the state of happiness they glimpse.
Visions in Ecstasy
Ecstatics sometimes describe things that appear shaped by imagination, earthly beliefs, and inherited prejudices. What they perceive is real to them, but their spirit remains influenced by ideas formed during bodily life. Because of this, they may see according to their own mental habits, or express what they perceive in language shaped by the beliefs in which they were raised, or by familiar ideas that make them more easily understood by others.
Error often enters at that point. The reality perceived is filtered through human forms of thought, and so the description may not perfectly correspond to the thing perceived.
The Limits of Ecstatic Revelations
Ecstatic revelations deserve caution. Those in ecstasy may often be mistaken, especially when they try to penetrate matters that must remain hidden from human beings. In such cases, they may substitute their own ideas for what they have truly perceived. They may also become vulnerable to deceptive spirits, who exploit enthusiasm and admiration in order to mislead.
For that reason, ecstasy can offer insight, but not infallibility. Its testimony must be weighed with discernment.
What Somnambulism and Ecstasy Reveal
The phenomena of somnambulism and ecstasy offer more than unusual experiences. They provide glimpses of both the past life and the future life of the soul. Careful study of them can help clarify mysteries that reason alone has struggled to solve.
Anyone who examines these phenomena sincerely, without preconceived denial, finds in them strong grounds for rejecting both materialism and atheism. They point to the soul’s independence, to the continuity of conscious existence beyond the body, and to realities that cannot be reduced to matter alone.
Second Sight
Second sight is of the same nature as dreaming and somnambulism.
In all three, the spirit becomes freer from the constraints of the body. What is called second sight is the sight of the soul operating while the body remains awake. The body does not need to be asleep for the soul to perceive beyond ordinary physical sight.
The Nature of the Faculty
Second sight may exist as a lasting faculty, even when its exercise is not constant.
A person may possess the capacity without being able to use it at all times. The faculty remains, but its manifestation varies according to conditions. In worlds less material than ours, spirits disengage more easily from bodily influence. There, communication takes place more directly through thought, and second sight is, for most beings, a normal and permanent faculty. Their ordinary condition resembles the state of lucid somnambulism known on earth. For the same reason, such beings manifest more easily than those incarnated in denser bodies.
Spontaneous Manifestation and the Role of the Will
Second sight most often appears spontaneously, but the will can also have an important influence.
Some individuals are able, by an effort of intention, to enter the state that produces visions. Among those commonly regarded as fortune tellers, there are some who genuinely possess this faculty, and in them the will helps bring about its exercise. The phenomenon is not always involuntary; it may sometimes be encouraged and directed.
Development Through Practice
Second sight can be strengthened.
Effort leads to progress, and with practice the veil covering hidden things may become less opaque. Yet this development is not independent of the body. Physical organization has its part, and some constitutions are more suited to the faculty than others. Certain bodily organizations are incompatible with it.
Heredity and Transmission
When second sight seems hereditary in certain families, this is linked to similarity of physical organization.
Like other bodily traits, this disposition may be transmitted from parent to child. After that, the faculty may become more developed through a kind of education or habitual cultivation, and this too can pass from one generation to another.
Circumstances That Awaken Second Sight
Certain conditions may bring second sight into activity.
Illness, the approach of danger, or the pressure of a major crisis may awaken it. In such moments, the body sometimes enters a special state that allows the spirit to perceive what the physical eyes cannot see.
Periods of calamity, intense emotion, and mental overexcitement often produce similar effects. In the presence of danger, there seems to be a providential means by which a person may call upon resources not usually active. The experiences reported among persecuted groups and individuals offer many examples of this awakening under extreme circumstances.
Awareness of the Faculty
Those who possess second sight are not always aware of it.
For many, it appears so natural that they do not recognize it as anything unusual. Some suppose that others, if they observed themselves more carefully, would discover the same ability in themselves.
Second Sight, Astuteness, and Presentiment
A more penetrating judgment in certain people may also arise from the same principle.
When someone seems to read situations with unusual precision, without displaying anything outwardly extraordinary, the soul may simply be acting with greater freedom. Released to some degree from the heaviness of matter, it judges more clearly.
This faculty may also include a measure of foreknowledge. In some cases, it gives a presentiment of future events. There are many degrees of second sight, and one person may possess all its forms or only some of them.
A Theoretical Summary of Somnambulism, Ecstasy, and Second Sight
Natural somnambulism appears spontaneously, without any known external cause. In some people whose physical constitution is especially suited to it, the same state may also be brought about through magnetic action.
Magnetic somnambulism is not different in nature from natural somnambulism. The only difference is that one is produced artificially and the other occurs spontaneously.
Natural somnambulism is widely recognized, even though its phenomena may seem extraordinary. For that reason, magnetic somnambulism is no less real simply because it is induced. Many things in life are produced artificially without becoming less natural in principle. Abuse by charlatans does not disprove the reality of the phenomenon; it only shows the need for serious study. As knowledge advances and these facts are examined more carefully, deception loses its power.
For Spiritism, somnambulism is more than a physiological condition. It opens a path to the study of the soul, because in this state the soul appears with less of the usual bodily covering. One of the clearest signs of this is clairvoyance independent of the ordinary organs of sight. Some reject this because somnambulists do not see at all times or on command as the eyes do. But different instruments do not act in the same way. The soul has its own properties, just as the body has its own, and each must be judged according to its own mode of action.
The clairvoyance of both the magnetic and the natural somnambulist has the same source: it is an attribute of the soul, a faculty belonging to the incorporeal being within us. Its range extends as far as the soul itself can go. Somnambulists see wherever their soul can reach, regardless of distance.
In remote perception, they do not see from the place where the body lies, as though looking through a telescope. They perceive things as present, as though actually on the spot, because in reality the soul is there. During such moments, the body seems absent and deprived of sensation until the soul resumes fuller possession of it. This partial separation of soul and body is an abnormal state, whether brief or prolonged, though never indefinite. The body grows tired after a time, especially when the soul is occupied in active effort.
Soul sight, or spirit sight, is not confined to any single organ. It has no fixed seat. That is why somnambulists cannot point to one bodily center as its source. They see because they see, without always knowing how or why. For the spirit, vision does not depend on a material organ. When they try to relate the experience to the body, they often place it where vital activity seems strongest, especially in the brain, the region of the stomach, or whatever point feels to them like the strongest bond between spirit and body.
The lucidity of somnambulism is not unlimited. Even when more disengaged from matter, spirits remain limited in knowledge and ability according to their level of purification. This limitation is even greater while they remain attached to the body and influenced by matter. For that reason, somnambulistic clairvoyance is neither universal nor infallible. It becomes even less reliable when diverted from its natural purpose and turned into a spectacle of curiosity or mere experimentation.
When the somnambulist’s spirit is in a more disengaged condition, communication with other incarnate or discarnate spirits becomes easier. This communication takes place through the contact of the fluids composing their perispirits, allowing thought to be transmitted like an electric current through a wire. Somnambulists therefore do not need ideas to be spoken aloud in order to receive them. They sense and intuit them. This makes them highly impressionable and especially open to the moral atmosphere around them.
Because of this sensitivity, a crowd of spectators, particularly if some are hostile or skeptically disposed in a harmful way, can interfere seriously with the development of somnambulistic faculties. Under such influences, their abilities seem to close in on themselves and no longer unfold freely. They operate much better in surroundings marked by sympathy, calm, and intimacy. The presence of ill-disposed or antipathetic persons affects them much as the touch of a hand affects a sensitive plant.
Somnambulists perceive both their own spirit and their body. In a sense, they are two beings at once, living a double existence, spiritual and corporeal, joined by the bond that unites them. They do not always clearly understand this condition, and this duality often leads them to speak of themselves as though speaking of another person. At one moment the corporeal being speaks to the spiritual being; at another, the spiritual being speaks to the corporeal one.
With each bodily life, the spirit gains knowledge and experience. During reincarnation in dense matter, it forgets part of these temporarily, but as spirit it remembers them. This is why some somnambulists display knowledge beyond their education and beyond what their waking intelligence seems to allow. Their apparent intellectual or scientific limitations in ordinary life do not justify dismissing what they may reveal in the lucid state. According to the circumstances and the purpose involved, they may draw on their own past experience, on clairvoyant perception of present events, or on counsel received from other spirits. Yet the precision of what they say depends on the degree of advancement of their own spirit.
Through somnambulism, whether natural or magnetically induced, Providence offers clear evidence of the soul’s existence and independence. In these phenomena, the soul is seen in a state of relative emancipation. When somnambulists describe what is happening far away, it is evident that they are truly seeing it, though not with bodily eyes. They perceive themselves as present there, having been transported to that place. Since what is present there is not the body, it can only be the soul or spirit. In this way, simple and direct facts are placed within human reach for the study of experimental psychology.
Ecstasy
Ecstasy is the state in which the independence of the soul from the body becomes most striking and almost tangible.
In dreams and somnambulism, the soul still moves within the terrestrial sphere. In ecstasy, it enters another world, the world of ethereal spirits, with whom it communicates, though without crossing certain limits. If those limits were passed entirely, the soul would break the ties that still bind it to the body. A new and radiant brightness surrounds it. Harmonies unknown on earth fill it with delight. An indescribable well-being penetrates the whole being. The spirit tastes, in advance, something of celestial beatitude, as though standing on the threshold of eternity.
In ecstasy, the body is almost completely nullified. It retains only organic life itself, and the soul feels attached to it by what seems like a single thread, which one further effort might break forever.
In this state, earthly thoughts disappear and make way for the pure feeling proper to our immaterial nature. Entirely absorbed in sublime contemplation, ecstatics regard earthly life as only a brief interruption. To them, the good and evil, the coarse pleasures and the hardships of this world become little more than incidental events in a journey whose end they are glad to approach.
Ecstatics, like somnambulists, vary in the purity of their lucidity according to the degree of advancement of their spirit. Sometimes there is less true lucidity than exaltation, and this exaltation may even distort what is perceived. For that reason, their revelations are often mixed: truth and error, the sublime and the absurd, can appear side by side. Imperfect spirits often take advantage of this exalted state, which is always a point of vulnerability, to dominate those who do not know how to govern it. They may produce appearances designed to confirm the ecstatic in ideas and prejudices already held in waking life. This is a real obstacle, though not every case is alike. Such revelations must be judged calmly and weighed by reason.
Second Sight
The emancipation of the soul may also appear in the waking state. This produces the phenomenon known as second sight, through which a person can see, hear, and feel beyond the usual limits of the senses. Such individuals perceive things at a distance wherever their soul extends its action, and they perceive them through ordinary sight in a manner resembling a mirage.
At the moment when second sight occurs, the physical condition is noticeably altered. The eyes become somewhat vague and fixed, looking without truly seeing, and the whole expression takes on a kind of exaltation. It is clear that the bodily organs of vision are not the true cause, because the perception may continue even when the eyes are closed.
For those who possess it, this faculty often seems as natural as ordinary sight. They regard it as part of themselves and not as something exceptional. Usually this temporary lucidity is followed by forgetfulness. The memory of it gradually fades and may finally vanish almost completely, like the memory of a dream.
The power of second sight may range from a vague impression to a clear and distinct perception of things present or absent. In its rudimentary form, it gives some people tact, insight, and a certain sureness in action, sometimes appearing as the ability to judge another person’s moral character at first contact. When more developed, it awakens presentiments. In a still higher degree, it shows events that have already occurred or are in the course of occurring.
One Cause, Many Forms
Natural and artificial somnambulism, ecstasy, and second sight are only varieties or modifications of effects arising from the same cause. Like dreams, they belong to the natural order. For that reason, they have existed in all times. History shows that they have long been known and often exploited, even from the remotest antiquity. In them can be found the explanation of countless events that preconceived ideas have treated as supernatural.