EMANCIPATION OF THE SOUL.

Sleep and dreams.

— 2. Spirit visits among living persons. — 3. Hidden transmission of thought. — 4. Lethargy, catalepsy. Apparent deaths. — 5. Somnambulism.

— 6. Ecstasy.

— 7. Double sight. — 8. Theoretical summary of somnambulism, ecstasy, and double sight.

Sleep and dreams.

Does the incarnate Spirit willingly remain in its bodily envelope?

“It is as if you asked whether the prisoner is pleased with the prison. The incarnate Spirit constantly aspires to its liberation, and it desires to see itself free of its envelope all the more, the coarser this envelope is.”

During sleep, does the soul rest like the body?

“No, the Spirit is never inactive.

During sleep, the bonds that hold it to the body are loosened, and since the body then does not need its presence, it launches itself through space and enters into more direct relation with the other Spirits.”

How can we judge of the Spirit’s freedom during sleep?

“By dreams.

When the body rests, believe it, the Spirit has more faculties than in the waking state. It remembers the past and sometimes foresees the future. It acquires greater potentiality and can put itself in communication with the other Spirits, whether of this world or of the other.

You often say: I had an extravagant dream, a horrible dream, but utterly improbable. You are mistaken. It is often a recollection of places and things you have seen or will see in another existence or on another occasion.

The body being numbed, the Spirit endeavors to break its fetters and to investigate the past or the future.

“Poor men, how little you know the most ordinary phenomena of life! You deem yourselves very wise, and the most commonplace things confound you. You can answer nothing to these questions which all children put: What do we do when we sleep? What are dreams?

“Sleep partially frees the soul from the body. When he sleeps, man finds himself for a time in the state in which he remains permanently after he dies.

Spirits who, upon disincarnating, promptly detach themselves from matter have had intelligent sleeps. These Spirits, when they sleep, go to be near the beings who are superior to them. With these they travel, converse, and instruct themselves. They even work at tasks which they find completed when, dying on earth, they return to the spiritual world.

This circumstance too is such as to teach you that you should not fear death, for every day you die, as a saint said.

“This as regards the elevated Spirits. As regards the great number of men who, in dying, must spend long hours in the disturbance, in the uncertainty of which so many have already spoken to you, these go, while they sleep, either to worlds inferior to the Earth, where old affections call them, or in search of enjoyments perhaps baser than those in which they so delight here. They go to drink in doctrines still more vile, more ignoble, more baleful than those they profess among you.

And what gives rise to sympathy on Earth is the fact that man feels himself, on waking, bound by the heart to those with whom he has just spent eight or nine hours of happiness or pleasure. Invincible antipathies too are explained by the fact that we feel within ourselves that the beings toward whom we feel antipathy have a conscience different from our own. We know them without ever having seen them with our eyes.

It is this too that explains the indifference of many men. They do not trouble to win new friends, because they know that they have many who love them and wish them well. In a word: sleep influences your life more than you suppose.

“Thanks to sleep, incarnate Spirits are always in relation with the world of Spirits.

It is for this reason that superior Spirits consent, without great repugnance, to incarnate among you. God willed that, having to be in contact with vice, they might go to fortify themselves anew at the source of good, so that they too may not fail when they set out to instruct others. Sleep is the door that God has opened to them, that they may go to be with their friends in Heaven; it is the recreation after labor, while they await the great liberation, the final liberation, which will restore them to the milieu that is properly their own.

“The dream is the remembrance of what the Spirit saw during sleep.

Note, however, that you do not always dream. What does that mean? That you do not always remember what you saw, or all that you saw, while you slept. It is that you do not then have the soul in the full development of its faculties. Often there remains to you only the remembrance of the disturbance that your Spirit experiences at its departure or on its return, augmented by that which results from what you did or from what preoccupies you when awake.

Otherwise, how would you explain the absurd dreams which the learned, as much as the humblest and simplest creatures, have? It also happens that evil Spirits take advantage of dreams to torment weak and pusillanimous souls.

“In short, before long you will see another kind of dream become widespread. Though as ancient as the one of which we have been speaking, you are unacquainted with it. I refer to the dreams of Joan, to that of Jacob, to those of the Jewish prophets, and to those of certain Indian seers. They are recollections kept by souls that detach themselves almost entirely from the body, recollections of that second life to which we alluded a moment ago.

“Strive to distinguish these two kinds of dreams among those you remember, otherwise you would fall into contradictions and into errors baleful to your faith.” n

Dreams are an effect of the emancipation of the soul, which becomes more independent through the suspension of the active and relational life. Hence a kind of indefinite clairvoyance that extends as far as the most distant places and even to other worlds. Hence too the remembrance that brings back to memory events of the preceding existence or of the prior existences. The singular images of what is happening or has happened in unknown worlds, interspersed with things of the present world, are what form those strange and confused assemblages that seem to have no sense or connection.

The incoherence of dreams is further explained by the gaps presented by the incomplete recollection we keep of what appeared to us when we were dreaming. It is as if, in a narrative, sentences or passages were truncated at random. Brought together afterward, the remaining fragments would have no rational significance.

Why do we not always remember dreams?

“In what you call sleep, there is only the repose of the body, since the Spirit is constantly in activity.

It recovers, during sleep, a little of its freedom and corresponds with those dear to it, whether in this world or in others.

But, since the matter of which it is composed is heavy and coarse, the body hardly retains the impressions that the Spirit received, because these did not reach it through the bodily organs.”

What is to be thought of the significations attributed to dreams?

“Dreams are not true as the fortune-tellers understand it, for it would be absurd to believe that to dream of such a thing announces such another.

They are true in the sense that they present images which for the Spirit have reality, but which frequently bear no relation to what is happening in the bodily life.

They are also, as we said above, a presentiment of the future, permitted by God, 4 or the vision of what is at the moment occurring in another place to which the soul transports itself.

Are there not many cases of persons who in a dream appear to their relatives and friends in order to warn them of what is happening to them? What are those apparitions but the souls or Spirits of such persons communicating with dear beings? When you are certain that what you saw really took place, is it not proved that the imagination took no part in the occurrence, especially if what you observed was not passing through your mind when awake?”

It frequently happens that we see in a dream things that seem a presentiment which, in the end, is not confirmed. To what should this be attributed?

“It may happen that such presentiments come to be confirmed only for the Spirit. That is to say that it saw that which it desired, it went to meet it.

It must not be forgotten that, during sleep, the soul is more or less under the influence of matter, and that, consequently, it never frees itself completely of its earthly ideas, whence it results that the preoccupations of the waking state can give to what is seen the appearance of what is desired, or of what is feared. This is what, in truth, should be called an effect of the imagination. Whenever an idea strongly preoccupies us, all that we see shows itself to us linked to that idea.”

When in a dream we see living persons, well known to us, performing acts of which they absolutely do not conceive, is that not pure effect of imagination?

“Of which they absolutely do not conceive, you say. What do you know about it? The Spirits of those persons come to visit yours, as yours goes to visit them, without your always knowing what they are thinking.

Moreover, it is not rare for you to attribute, according to what you desire, to persons you know, what took place or is taking place in other existences.”

Is complete sleep necessary for the emancipation of the Spirit?

“No; it suffices that the senses fall into a stupor for the Spirit to recover its freedom.

To emancipate itself, it takes advantage of every instant of respite that the body grants it.

As soon as there is a prostration of the vital forces, the Spirit detaches itself, becoming all the freer, the weaker the body is.”

This explains why images identical to those we see in a dream we see while only half asleep, or in a simple drowsiness.

And what is the reason that we sometimes hear, within ourselves, words distinctly pronounced that have no connection with what preoccupies us?

“It is a fact: you hear even whole sentences, especially when the senses begin to grow numb. It is, almost always, a faint echo of what a Spirit who wishes to communicate with you is saying.”

At other times, in a state that is not yet quite that of falling asleep, with our eyes closed, we see distinct images, figures whose slightest particularities we perceive. What is there, an effect of vision or of imagination?

“The body being numbed, the Spirit endeavors to detach itself. It transports itself and sees.

If sleep were already complete, there would be a dream.”

It also happens that, during sleep, or when we find ourselves only lightly asleep, ideas come to us that seem excellent to us and that fade from our memory, despite the efforts we make to retain them. Whence come these ideas?

“They come from the freedom of the Spirit which emancipates itself and which, emancipated, enjoys its faculties with greater amplitude.

They are also, frequently, counsels that other Spirits give.”

a — Of what use are these ideas and these counsels since, by forgetting them, we cannot profit from them?

“These ideas, as a rule, concern the world of Spirits more than the bodily world.

It matters little that the Spirit commonly forgets them when united to the body. At the opportune moment they will return to it as an inspiration of the moment.”

Being detached from matter and acting as a Spirit, does the incarnate Spirit know what the time of its death will be?

“It happens that it has a presentiment of it.

It also happens that it has full consciousness of that time, which gives rise to its having, in the waking state, the intuition of the fact. It is for this reason that some persons foresee with great exactness the date on which they will come to die.”

Can the activity of the Spirit, during bodily repose or sleep, fatigue the body?

“It can, for the Spirit is bound to the body like a captive balloon to its post. Just as the shakings of the balloon disturb the post, the activity of the Spirit reacts upon the body and can fatigue it.”

Spirit visits among living persons.

From the principle of the emancipation of the soul it seems to follow that we have two simultaneous existences: that of the body, which permits us the ostensible relational life; and that of the soul, which affords us a hidden relational life. Is it so?

“In the state of emancipation, the life of the soul prevails.

Nevertheless, there are not, truly, two existences. They are rather two phases of a single existence, since man does not live doubly.”

Can two persons who know each other visit each other during sleep?

“Certainly, and many who think they do not know one another are wont to gather and speak to one another. You may have, without suspecting it, friends in another country.

It is so habitual a thing for you to go and meet, during sleep, with friends and relatives, with those you know and who can be useful to you, that almost every night you make these visits.”

What use can they have, if we forget them?

“Ordinarily, on waking, you keep the intuition of this fact, from which certain ideas originate that come to you spontaneously, without your being able to explain how they occurred to you. They are ideas that you acquired in those conferences.”

Can man, by his will, provoke spirit visits? Can he, for example, say, when he is about to sleep: I want this night to meet in Spirit with so-and-so, I want to speak to him to tell him this?

“What happens is the following: When man falls asleep, his Spirit awakens and, often, shows itself not at all disposed to do what the man had resolved, because the life of the man interests his Spirit little, once detached from matter. This with respect to men already quite elevated spiritually.

The others pass through the spiritual phase of their earthly existence in a very different manner. They give themselves over to the passions that enslaved them, or they remain inactive.

It may, then, happen, such being the motives that induce it to this, that the Spirit goes to visit those with whom it wishes to meet. But the simple fact of his wanting it when awake does not constitute a reason for such a thing to occur.”

Can incarnate Spirits gather in a certain number and form assemblies?

“Without any doubt. The bonds, old or recent, of friendship are wont to gather in that way various Spirits, who feel happy to be together.”

By the term old are to be understood the bonds of friendship contracted in prior existences. On waking, we keep an intuition of the ideas we drew from those colloquies, but we remain in ignorance of the source whence they sprang.

A person who thought one of his friends dead, without such being the reality, could he meet with him, in Spirit, and verify that he continued alive? And, given the fact, could he, on waking, have an intuition of it?

“As a Spirit, the person you imagine can see his friend and know his lot.

If it has not been imposed upon him, as a trial, to believe in the death of that friend, he will be able to have a presentiment of his existence, as he will be able to have one of his death.”

Hidden transmission of thought.

What gives rise to an idea, that of a discovery, for example, arising at many points at the same time?

“We have already said that during sleep Spirits communicate among themselves.

Well then! When waking occurs, the Spirit remembers what it learned, and man deems this an invention of his own authorship. Thus it is that many can simultaneously discover the same thing.

When you say that an idea is in the air, you use a figure of speech more exact than you suppose. All, without suspecting it, contribute to propagating it.”

In that way, our own Spirit often reveals to other Spirits, in spite of us, what constituted the object of our preoccupations in the waking state.

Can Spirits communicate while the bodies are completely awake?

“The Spirit is not enclosed in the body as in a box; it radiates on all sides.

It follows that it can communicate with other Spirits, even in the waking state, although more with difficulty.”

How is it explained that two persons, perfectly awake, instantaneously have the same idea?

“They are two sympathetic Spirits that communicate and reciprocally see their respective thoughts, although the bodies are not asleep.”

There is, among the Spirits who meet, a communication of thought, which gives rise to two persons seeing and understanding each other without needing the ostensible signs of language. One could say that they speak to each other the language of Spirits.

Lethargy, catalepsy, apparent deaths.

The lethargic and the cataleptic, in general, see and hear what is said and done around them, without being able to express that they are seeing and hearing. Is it through the eyes and the ears that they have these perceptions?

“No; through the Spirit. The Spirit has consciousness of itself, but cannot communicate.”

a — Why?

“Because the state of the body opposes itself to this.

And this special state of the organs proves to you that in man there is something more than the body, for, then, the body no longer functions and, nevertheless, the Spirit shows itself active.”

In lethargy, can the Spirit separate itself entirely from the body, so as to imprint upon it all the appearances of death, and then return to inhabit it?

“In lethargy, the body is not dead, since there are functions that continue to be carried out. Its vitality is found in a latent state, as in the chrysalis, but not annihilated. Now, while the body lives, the Spirit is bound to it.

When, by the effect of real death and through the disaggregation of the organs, the bonds that hold one to the other are broken, the separation becomes integral, and the Spirit returns no more to its envelope.

As soon as a man, apparently dead, returns to life, it is that death was not complete.”

By means of cares dispensed in time, can bonds about to come undone be reknit, and can a being be restored to life who would definitively die if it were not aided?

“Without doubt, and every day you have proof of it.

Magnetism in such cases often constitutes a powerful means of action, because it restores to the body the vital fluid it lacks to maintain the functioning of the organs.”

Lethargy and catalepsy derive from the same principle, which is the temporary loss of sensibility and of movement, from a physiological cause still unexplained. They differ from each other in that, in lethargy, the suspension of the vital forces is general and gives the body all the appearances of death; in catalepsy, it remains localized, being able to affect a more or less extensive part of the body, in such a way as to permit the intelligence to manifest freely, which makes it not to be confounded with death.

Lethargy is always natural; catalepsy is at times magnetic. Somnambulism.

Does natural somnambulism have any relation to dreams? How is it to be explained?

“It is a state of independence of the Spirit, more complete than in the dream, a state in which its faculties acquire greater amplitude. The soul then has perceptions of which it does not dispose in the dream, which is a state of imperfect somnambulism.

“In somnambulism, the Spirit is in full possession of itself. The material organs, finding themselves in a certain manner in a state of catalepsy, cease to receive exterior impressions. This state presents itself principally during sleep, the occasion on which the Spirit can provisionally abandon the body, this being found in enjoyment of the repose indispensable to matter. When the facts of somnambulism are produced, it is that the Spirit, preoccupied with one thing or another, applies itself to some action, for the carrying out of which it needs to make use of the body. It then makes use of the latter, as it makes use of a table or of another material object in the phenomenon of physical manifestations, or even as it uses the hand of the medium in written communications.

In dreams of which one is conscious, the organs, including those of memory, begin to awaken. They imperfectly receive the impressions produced by exterior objects or causes and communicate them to the Spirit, which, then, also at repose, experiences, of what is transmitted to it, only confused and, often, disordered sensations, without any apparent reason for being, mingled as they present themselves with vague recollections, whether of the present existence or of prior ones.

Easily, therefore, is it understood why somnambulists keep no remembrance of what happened while they were in the somnambulic state, and why dreams, of which a memory is kept, most often have no sense. I say — most often, because it also happens that they are the consequence of an exact remembrance of events of a prior life, and even, not rarely, a kind of intuition of the future.”

Does so-called magnetic somnambulism have any relation to natural somnambulism?

“It is the same thing, with the only difference of being provoked.”

Of what nature is the agent that is called magnetic fluid?

“Vital fluid, animalized electricity, which are modifications of the universal fluid.”

What is the cause of somnambulic clairvoyance?

“We have already said it: It is the soul that sees.”

How can the somnambulist see through opaque bodies?

“There are no opaque bodies except for your coarse organs. Did we not say previously, [91.]

that matter offers no obstacle to the Spirit, which freely traverses it?

Frequently you hear the somnambulist say that he sees through the forehead, through the wrist, etc., because, finding them entirely bound to matter, you do not understand that it can be possible for him to see without the aid of the organs. He himself, by the desire you manifest, deems that he needs the organs. If, however, you left him free, he would understand that he sees through all the parts of his body, or, better put, that he sees from outside his body.”

Since his clairvoyance is that of his soul or of his Spirit, why is it that the somnambulist does not see everything and so often is mistaken?

“Firstly, to imperfect Spirits it is not given to see everything and to know everything. You are not unaware that they still share in your errors and prejudices.

Then, when united to matter, they do not enjoy all their faculties as Spirit.

God granted man the somnambulic faculty for a useful and serious end, not that he may inform himself of what he ought not to know. This is why somnambulists cannot say everything.”

What is the origin of the somnambulist’s innate ideas, and how can he speak with exactness of things he is ignorant of when awake, of things that are even above his intellectual capacity?

“It is that the somnambulist possesses more knowledge than you suppose of him. Only, such knowledge slumbers, because, being too imperfect, his bodily envelope does not allow him to recall it.

What is, after all, a somnambulist? A Spirit, like us, who finds himself incarnate in matter to fulfill his mission, awakening from that lethargy when he falls into the somnambulic state.

We have told you, repeatedly, that we live many times. It is this change that, to the somnambulist, as to any Spirit, occasions the material loss of what he may have learned in a preceding existence. Meanwhile, in the state which you call a crisis, he remembers what he knows, but always in an incomplete manner. He knows, but he could not say whence comes to him what he knows, nor how he possesses the knowledge he reveals. The crisis past, all recollection fades, and he returns to obscurity.”

Experience shows that somnambulists also receive communications from other Spirits, who transmit to them what they should say and supply the incapacity they show. This is verified principally in medical prescriptions. The Spirit of the somnambulist sees the ill, another indicates the remedy to him. This double action is at times patent and reveals itself, moreover, by these very frequent expressions: They tell me to say, or they forbid me to say such a thing. In this latter case, there is always danger in insisting on a denied revelation, because it gives occasion for frivolous Spirits to intervene, who speak of everything without scruple and without caring about the truth.

How is vision at a distance in certain somnambulists explained?

“During sleep, does the soul not transport itself? The same occurs in somnambulism.”

Does the greater or lesser development of somnambulic clairvoyance depend on the physical organization, or only on the nature of the incarnate Spirit?

“On one and the other. There are physical dispositions that permit the Spirit to detach itself more or less easily from matter.”

Are the faculties that the somnambulist enjoys those that the Spirit has after death?

“Only up to a certain point, for one must attend to the influence of the matter to which it is still bound.”

Can the somnambulist see the other Spirits?

“The majority of them see them very well, depending on the degree and the nature of the lucidity of each one.

It is very common, however, for them not to perceive, at the first moment, that they are seeing Spirits, and to take them for bodily beings. This happens principally to those who, knowing nothing of Spiritism, do not yet understand the essence of Spirits. The fact astonishes them and makes them suppose that they have earthly beings before their sight.”

The same occurs with those who, having died, still deem themselves alive. Noting no alteration around them, and it seeming to them that Spirits have bodies equal to ours, they take for real bodies the apparent bodies with which those same Spirits present themselves to them.

The somnambulist who sees, at a distance, does he see from the point where his body is, or from that where his soul is?

“Why this question, since you know it is the soul that sees and not the body?”

Granted that what occurs, in somnambulic phenomena, is that the soul transports itself, how can the somnambulist experience in the body the sensations of cold and heat existing in the place where his soul is, often quite distant from his envelope?

“The soul, in such cases, has not entirely left the body; it remains bound to it by the bond that links them and which then plays the role of conductor of sensations. When two persons communicate from one city to another, by means of electricity, this constitutes the bond that links their thoughts. Hence it comes that they confer as if they were beside one another.”

Does the use a somnambulist makes of his faculty influence the state of his Spirit after death?

“Greatly, like the good or bad use that man makes of all the faculties with which God endowed him.”

Ecstasy.

What difference is there between ecstasy and somnambulism?

“Ecstasy is a more refined somnambulism. The soul of the ecstatic is even more independent.”

Does the Spirit of the ecstatic really penetrate the superior worlds?

“It sees those worlds and understands the felicity of those who inhabit them, whence is born in it the desire to remain there.

There are, however, worlds inaccessible to Spirits that are not yet sufficiently purified.”

When the ecstatic manifests the desire to leave the Earth, does he speak sincerely, does the instinct of conservation not hold him back?

“That depends on the degree of purification of the Spirit.

If it verifies that its future situation will be better than its present life, it strives to untie the bonds that hold it to the Earth.”

If the ecstatic were left to himself, could his soul abandon the body definitively?

“Perfectly, he could die.

It is for this reason that it becomes necessary to call him to return, appealing to all that holds him to this world, making him above all understand that the surest way not to remain there, where he sees that he would be happy, would consist in breaking the chain that holds him bound to the terrestrial planet.”

Claiming that it is given to him to see things which are evidently the product of an imagination impressed by earthly beliefs and prejudices, would it not be just to conclude that not everything the ecstatic sees is real?

“What the ecstatic sees is real for him.

But, since his Spirit always remains under the influence of earthly ideas, it can happen that he sees in his own way, or rather, that he expresses what he sees in a language molded by the prejudices and ideas with which he finds himself imbued, or else by your prejudices and ideas, in order to be better understood. It is in this sense, principally, that it happens to him to err.”

What confidence can be placed in the revelations of the ecstatics?

“The ecstatic is liable to be mistaken very frequently, above all when he claims to penetrate into what should continue to be a mystery to man, because, then, he lets himself be carried along by the current of his own ideas, or becomes the plaything of mystifying Spirits, who take advantage of his exaltation to fascinate him.”

What deductions can be drawn from the phenomena of somnambulism and of ecstasy? Will they not constitute a kind of initiation into the future life?

“To tell the truth, by means of these phenomena, man glimpses the past life and the future life. Let him study them and he will find the elucidation of more than one mystery which his reason vainly seeks to fathom.”

Could such phenomena be adapted to materialist ideas?

“He who studies them in good faith and without preconceptions cannot be a materialist, nor an atheist.”

Double sight.

Does the phenomenon to which the designation double sight is given have any relation to the dream and somnambulism?

“All of this is one and the same thing.

What is called double sight is again a result of the liberation of the Spirit, without the body being asleep.

Double sight, or second sight, is the sight of the soul.”

Is second sight permanent?

“The faculty is, the exercise is not.

In worlds less material than yours, Spirits detach themselves more easily and put themselves in communication by thought alone, without, however, articulate language being abolished.

For that very reason, in such worlds, double sight is a permanent faculty for the majority of their inhabitants, whose normal state can be compared to that of your lucid somnambulists.

This too is the reason why those Spirits manifest themselves to you with greater ease than those incarnate in coarser bodies.”

Does second sight appear spontaneously or by effect of the will of the one who possesses it as a faculty?

“Most often it is spontaneous, but the will also very frequently plays an important role in its appearance.

Take, for example, one of those persons to whom the name fortune-tellers is given, some of whom dispose of this faculty, and you will see that it is with the aid of their own will that they place themselves in the state of having double sight and what you call vision.”

Is double sight susceptible of being developed by exercise?

“Yes, from labor there always results progress and the dissipation of the veil that conceals things.”

a — Has this faculty any connection with the physical organization?

“Incontestably, the organism influences its existence.

There are organisms that are refractory to it.”

Why is it that second sight seems hereditary in some families?

“By similarity of organization, which is transmitted like the other physical qualities.

Then, the faculty develops by a kind of education, which is also transmitted from one to another.”

Is it exact that certain circumstances develop second sight?

“Illness, the proximity of danger, a great commotion can develop it.

The body, at times, comes to find itself in a special state that enables the Spirit to see what you cannot see with the carnal eyes.”

In epochs of crises and of calamities, great emotions, all causes, in short, of overexcitement of the moral being, not rarely provoke the development of double sight. It seems that Providence, when a danger threatens us, gives us the means of averting it. All persecuted sects and parties offer multiple examples of this fact.

Do persons endowed with double sight always have consciousness that they possess it?

“Not always. They consider it a perfectly natural thing, and many believe that, if each one observed what is happening with himself, all would verify that they are like them.”

Could one attribute to a kind of second sight the perspicacity of certain persons who, without presenting anything extraordinary, appraise things with more precision than others?

“It is always the soul radiating more freely and appraising better than under the veil of matter.”

a — Can this faculty, in some cases, give the prescience of things?

“It can.

It also gives presentiments, for there are many degrees in which it exists, it being possible that in one same individual it exists in all degrees, or in some only.”

Theoretical summary of somnambulism, ecstasy, and double sight.

The phenomena of natural somnambulism are produced spontaneously and are independent of any known exterior cause. But, in certain persons endowed with a special organization, they can be provoked artificially, by the action of the magnetic agent.

The state that is designated by the name of magnetic somnambulism differs from natural somnambulism only in that the one is provoked, while the other is spontaneous.

Natural somnambulism constitutes a notorious fact, which no one any longer thinks to call into doubt, notwithstanding the marvelous aspect of the phenomena to which it gives rise. Why, then, would magnetic somnambulism be more extraordinary or irrational? Only because it is produced artificially, like so many other things? Charlatans exploit it, they say. All the more reason for it not to be left in their hands. When Science has appropriated it, charlatans will have much less credit with the popular masses. Until this comes about, since natural or artificial somnambulism is a fact, and since against facts no reasoning is possible, it goes on gaining ground, despite the ill will of some, within the very bosom of science, where it penetrates through an immensity of little doors, instead of entering through the wide door. When it is there entirely, they will have to grant it the right of citizenship.

For Spiritism, somnambulism is more than a psychological phenomenon, it is a light projected upon psychology. It is there that the soul can be studied, because it is there that the soul shows itself uncovered.

Now, one of the phenomena that characterize it is that of clairvoyance independent of the ordinary organs of sight. Those who contest this fact base themselves on the fact that the somnambulist does not always see, and at the experimenter’s will, as with the eyes. Is it to be wondered at that the effects differ, when the means are different? Would it be rational to claim to obtain the same effects, when there is and when there is not the instrument? The soul has its properties, as the eyes have theirs. They must be judged in themselves and not by analogy.

From a single cause originate the clairvoyance of the magnetic somnambulist and that of the natural somnambulist. It is an attribute of the soul, a faculty inherent in all parts of the incorporeal being that exists in us and whose limits are none other than those assigned to the soul itself.

The somnambulist sees in all places to which his soul can transport itself, whatever the longitude.

In the case of vision at a distance, the somnambulist does not see things from where his body is, as by means of a telescope. He sees them present, as if he were in the place where they exist, because his soul, in reality, is there.

It is for this reason that his body remains as though annihilated and deprived of sensation, until the soul comes to inhabit it again anew. This partial separation of the soul and the body constitutes an abnormal state, susceptible of a more or less long duration, but not indefinite. Hence the fatigue that the body experiences after a certain time, especially when the soul gives itself over to an active labor.

The sight of the soul or of the Spirit is not circumscribed and has no determined seat. This is why somnambulists cannot mark out a special organ for it. They see because for them, in the condition of Spirits, sight lacks a proper focus. If they refer it to the body, this focus seems to them to be in the centers where vital activity is greatest, principally in the brain, in the region of the epigastrium, or in the organ which they consider the strongest point of connection between the Spirit and the body.

The power of somnambulic lucidity is not unlimited. The Spirit, even when completely free, has its knowledge and faculties restricted, according to the degree of perfection it may have attained.

It has them still more restricted when bound to matter, to whose influence it is subject. This is what causes somnambulic clairvoyance not to be universal, nor infallible. And the less can its infallibility be counted on, the more it is diverted from the end aimed at by nature and transformed into an object of curiosity and of experimentation.

In the state of detachment in which it is placed, the Spirit of the somnambulist enters into easier communication with the other Spirits, whether incarnate or not incarnate, a communication that is established by the contact of the fluids that compose the perispirits and serve as a transmission for thought, like the electric wire.

The somnambulist does not need, therefore, that thoughts be expressed to him by means of the articulate word. He feels and divines them. It is this that makes him eminently impressionable and subject to the influences of the moral atmosphere that surrounds him.

This too is the reason why a very numerous audience and the presence of more or less malevolent curiosity-seekers essentially harm the development of his faculties, which, so to speak, contract, only unfolding with full liberty in an intimate or sympathetic milieu. The presence of ill-intentioned or antipathetic persons produces in him an effect identical to that of the contact of the hand on the sensitive plant.

The somnambulist sees at the same time his own Spirit and his body, which constitute, so to speak, two beings that represent to him the double existence, bodily and spiritual, existences which, however, are confounded, by means of the bonds that unite them.

The somnambulist does not always perceive such a situation, and this duality often makes him speak of himself as if he were speaking of another person. It is that now it is the bodily being that speaks to the spiritual being, now it is the latter that speaks to the former.

In each of its bodily existences, the Spirit acquires an increase of knowledge and of experience. It forgets them partially, when incarnate in matter too coarse, but it remembers them as a Spirit. Thus it is that certain somnambulists reveal knowledge above the degree of the instruction they possess, and even superior to their apparent intellectual capacities.

Therefore, from the intellectual and scientific inferiority of the somnambulist, when awake, nothing can be inferred with respect to the knowledge that he may perchance reveal in the state of lucidity. According to the circumstances and the end one has in view, he can draw it from his own experience, from his clairvoyance relative to present things, or from the counsels he receives from other Spirits. But, since his own Spirit may be more or less advanced, it is possible for him to say things more or less correct.

Through the phenomena of somnambulism, whether natural or magnetic, Providence gives us the irrefutable proof of the existence and the independence of the soul and makes us witness the sublime spectacle of its emancipation. It opens to us, in that manner, the book of our destiny.

When the somnambulist describes what is happening at a distance, it is evident that he sees, but not with the eyes of the body. He sees himself and feels himself transported to the place where he sees what he describes. There, then, is something of him, and, this something not being able to be his body, it is necessarily his soul, or Spirit.

While man loses himself in the subtleties of an abstract and unintelligible metaphysics, in search of the causes of our moral existence, God daily places before our eyes and within reach of our hand the simplest and most patent means of studying experimental psychology.

Ecstasy is the state in which the independence of the soul, with respect to the body, manifests itself in a more perceptible manner and becomes, in a certain way, palpable.

In the dream and in somnambulism, the Spirit goes wandering through the terrestrial worlds. In ecstasy, it penetrates an unknown world, that of the ethereal Spirits, with which it enters into communication, without, however, its being licit for it to overstep certain limits, because, if it transgressed them totally, the bonds that hold it to the body would break. There surrounds it then a resplendent and unaccustomed radiance, harmonies unknown on Earth inebriate it, an indefinable well-being invades it: it enjoys in advance the celestial beatitude, and it may well be said that it sets a foot on the threshold of eternity.

In the state of ecstasy, the annihilation of the body is almost complete. There remains to it only, one might say, the organic life. One feels that the soul is held to it solely by a thread, which a little more of a slight effort would break beyond remission.

In this state, all earthly thoughts disappear, yielding place to the refined sentiment that constitutes the very essence of our immaterial being. Entirely given over to so sublime a contemplation, the ecstatic regards life only as a momentary stopping-place. He considers the goods and the ills, the coarse joys and the miseries of this world as futile incidents of a journey whose end he has the good fortune to descry.

With the ecstatics there occurs what occurs with the somnambulists: they can have a more or less perfect lucidity, and the Spirit more or less apt to know and understand things, according as it is more or less elevated. Often, however, there is in them more excitement than true lucidity, or, better, often the exaltation harms their lucidity. Hence their revelations are frequently a mixture of truths and errors, of grandiose things and absurd, even ridiculous, things.

Of this exaltation, which is always a cause of weakness, when the individual does not know how to repress it, inferior Spirits are wont to take advantage in order to dominate the ecstatic, taking, with such an aim, before his eyes, appearances that bind him more to the ideas he nourishes in the waking state. There is in this a pitfall, but not all are thus. It falls to us to judge everything coldly and to weigh their revelations in the balance of reason.

The emancipation of the soul is verified at times in the waking state and produces the phenomenon known by the name of second sight or double sight, which is the faculty thanks to which the one who possesses it sees, hears, and feels beyond the limits of the human senses. He perceives what exists as far as the soul extends its action. He sees, so to speak, through the ordinary sight and as by a kind of mirage.

At the moment in which the phenomenon of second sight is produced, the physical state of the individual is found to be perceptibly modified. The gaze presents something vague. He looks without seeing. His whole physiognomy reflects a kind of exaltation. It is noted that the visual organs remain alien to the phenomenon, by the fact that the vision persists, despite the closing of the eyes.

To those endowed with this faculty it appears as natural as the one we all have of seeing. They consider it an attribute of their own beings, which in no way seems to them exceptional. Ordinarily, forgetfulness follows that passing lucidity, whose remembrance, becoming more and more vague, ends by disappearing like that of a dream.

The power of double sight varies, going from the confused sensation to the clear and distinct perception of present or absent things. When rudimentary, it confers on certain persons tact, perspicacity, a certain assurance in acts, to which one can give the qualification of precision of moral glance. A little developed, it awakens presentiments. More developed, it shows the events that have occurred or are about to occur.

Natural and artificial somnambulism, ecstasy, and double sight are various effects, or of diverse modalities, of one and the same cause. These phenomena, like dreams, are in the order of nature. Such is the reason why they have always been known and even exploited since the most remote Antiquity, and in them is found the explanation of an immensity of facts which prejudices caused to be held as supernatural. [1] With this title the above communication may also be read in Dissertations from Beyond the Grave in the Spiritist Review of December 1858.