Impressions of an unconscious medium.

— Mr. Bonnemère was so kind as to transmit to us, concerning the young Breton dealt with in the preface of the interesting book he published under the title Romance of the Future, circumstantial details that complement those we gave on the subject in the Review of July 1867. These new pieces of information are of the highest interest, and our readers will be grateful to the author, as we are too, for having placed them at our disposal. We shall follow them with some observations.

Sir, A friend sends me, with much delay, the issue of the Spiritist Review in which you comment on the Romance of the Future, which I signed with my own name. Permit me to give you some clarifications regarding a passage of this article, in which is found this reflection: “We were told that the author, when he wrote this book, did not know Spiritism; this seems difficult, etc.”

Yet this is rigorously exact. I confess with all sincerity and humility, sir, that I erred in not having offered you this volume; I never went to your house; I did not even know the title of the Spiritist Review, and my library possesses no work on the questions that are treated therein; that is why I called my young Breton a natural ecstatic, when to you he is a medium.

I recounted in the preface of the Romance of the Future that, in consequence of that strange adventure, I, who had been a historian in the maturity of my life, was going to become a novelist, after having passed fifty years of age. The readers saw in this only one of those devices familiar to authors, to give something piquant to their account. I attest upon my word that, with the exception of one detail, which has nothing to do with the case, and which I am not yet permitted to reveal, all that I advance in this preface is true and, far from exaggerating, I do not say everything.

My young Breton explains in twenty passages of his voluminous manuscripts (nearly 18,000 pages) the causes and the effects of this kind of condemnation to forced labor that he suffered, cursing it.

— “Every night,” he wrote on August 24, 1864, “I go to bed very fatigued, after a day of work; I fall asleep; an hour later I awaken; I am sad, it seems that a black crepe envelops me; I am without speech, but I do not suffer. Something vague is in my brain; it is under this impression that at times my eyes close, with tears in my heart. Then, in the morning, I awaken with a persistent muteness, that is, with intolerable sufferings in the left side and in the heart, which did not allow me to find sleep. I experience a state of intolerable anguish, which forces me to get up. I suffocate; I must unburden myself. So I go to my desk and there I am constrained to work. The more I suffer, the more and the better I work. Then my imagination explodes. When a work is composed, and only needs to be put down on paper, I invent another, without ever seeking it, while I mechanically write the one that has reached maturity.

“When I am to serve as instrument to one of my departed friends, his name resounds in my ear. When I write, that name does not leave me, and I experience, even in the midst of my physical sufferings, sometimes acute, especially in the heart, a kind of sweetness in writing what he puts into me. It is like an inspiration, but a very involuntary one. All the fibers of my moral being are put on alert. Then I feel more vividly; it seems that I vibrate; all the sounds are stronger, more perceptible; I live by intellectual and moral vibrations at the same time.

“When I am in this state of muteness, I feel as if enveloped in a net, which establishes a separation between my intellectual being and the mass of material objects or of the persons who surround me. It is an absolute isolation in the midst of the multitude; my speech and my spirit are elsewhere. The inspiring being who comes into me leaves me no more; it is a kind of intimate penetration of him into me; I am like a sponge soaked with his thought. I press it and from it comes the quintessence of his intelligence, free of all the pettinesses of our life on Earth.

“At times, even without muteness, whether I am alone or with others, it matters little, I converse, I laugh, I perceive everything in the conversation of others and, nevertheless, I work; the ideas accumulate, but fleeting; I am and am no longer; I come back to myself and I have no more remembrance of anything; but the state of muteness makes the effaced images revive.

“If it be a novel that I am to write, first the title comes to me, then come the events; sometimes it is a matter of one or two days to compose it entirely. If it concerns something more serious, the title also is dictated to me, then the thoughts superabound, even when I seem very distracted. The elaboration is done in due time, until the instant when it reaches its climax and overflows onto the paper.

“Many times it has happened to me, after a long novel was finished, and when I had nothing ready to pour into my notebooks, to experience that strange sensation, as if in my brain there were an emptiness. Then I suffer much more; it is a state of complete atony, until the moment when my head fills with something else.

“Generally, from the very night, or in the morning in bed, I settle upon a new plan. However, sometimes I get up without thinking of anything of what I am going to do and without having elaborated anything beforehand. Once the candle is lit, I place myself before the paper. Then I hear on the left side, in the left ear, a name, a word, the plot of a novel in two or three words. This is sufficient. The words succeed one another without interruption; the events come to line up by themselves under the pen, without an instant of interruption, until the story is finished. When things happen thus, it is that it is only a matter of a very short tale, which will be concluded in one session.

— “There is still in my state a very singular peculiarity: it is when I worry about the health of someone whom I love. Truly this becomes an atrocious malady for me, and I believe that I suffer more than the sick person himself. For some instants I am seized in the head, in the stomach, in the heart and in the entrails by a pressure full of anguish, which goes as far as extreme pain. There is a moment when only the head suffers. Then one or several names of remedies come to me. I do not want to speak, because I doubt and I fear to do harm, when I would so much like to relieve! But these words come back without ceasing; I am vanquished, I yield and I say them with effort, or I write them. Then it is over, I think no more of it and everything is effaced.” I do not know whether I am mistaken, but it seems to me that I find there all the characteristics of the possession of former times, and I believe even that in the past they burned many possessed persons who were no more sorcerers than my young ecstatic. Evidently he lives a double life, but neither of the two has any relation with the other. I saw him many times, when one of the persons who confided in him came to tell him that she was suffering; the fixed gaze, the parted eyelids, the dilated pupil, he seemed to listen, to search. — “Yes, yes!” he murmured as if repeating to himself what an inner voice was telling him. Then he indicated the necessary remedy, conversed a moment on the nature and the cause of the malady, then, little by little, everything dissipated and he had no consciousness either of the instant when the ecstasy began, or of the moment when it had ceased. That rapid moment of absence did not exist for him and one avoided speaking of the subject.

— “I want and I must live in the shadow, he wrote elsewhere. They say to me: The good that one does without interest, emanating from a natural but somewhat extraordinary source, seems culpable, ridiculous, at least indiscreet. One must not expose oneself to mockery, to contempt, sometimes, because of a good deed. According to the old proverb: ‘He who tells the truth does not deserve punishment,’ one may say that a hidden good deed does not deserve punishment. Thus, one must do good to others without their suspecting it. It is true charity, which gives without expecting recompense.”

All this is not accomplished without struggles. At times he revolts against this tyrannical obsession. I saw him resist, struggle with anger; then, subdued by a will superior to his own, set himself to work.

He had announced a great and extensive work on liberty. He declared himself incapable of doing it, and protested that he would not do it. One morning he wrote:

“No; I want to struggle still today. I feel that the form has not yet come clearly enough… When, then, will you leave me at rest?… I am broken!… Ah! you call this a liberty of thought, which you instill in me! But it is slavery to your thoughts that should be said! You claim that I have its germ, and that it is rendering me an immense service to develop it, adding to it what you can place therein!

“I shall begin with this question already treated: What is life?”

A kind of announcement of a program to fulfill thus continued for ten pages of his writing, and had been written in forty minutes.

— All these things, which seemed to me very strange, are perhaps less so for you, sir. In sum, I have faith in his mysterious power, because it cured me of more than one affliction, which would perhaps have embarrassed the Faculty. Never is anyone ill near him without his writing his little prescription. Often he does it in spite of himself, feeling well that they would not take his prescriptions into account. One day he ended with these lines a consultation concerning a person ill in the chest who, in his opinion, was poorly cared for, and whom he judged he could still save:

“Here is what I can say. Do what you judge fitting; these are my observations, that is all. I shall not have to reproach myself for having let them sleep within me. Nothing should be done without the advice of the doctor. With natures such as all of them are, this can serve only as an indication. Let them never speak to me of this; let them not thank me. I am not a man, but a soul that awakens at the clamor of suffering, and that remembers no more once relief has come.”

When he had no sick persons at hand, he prescribed general remedies for the afflictions that official science did not yet know how to cure. What are these prescriptions worth? I am ignorant of it. Nevertheless, what I have seen, what I have been able to experience, leads me to believe that perhaps they could set us on the path of new curative processes.

If an individual who never opened a book of Medicine prescribes, without being conscious of it, remedies that can cure, in many cases, the majority of the ills today declared incurable, it seems to me incontestable that such things are revealed to him by an unknown and mysterious force. In the presence of such a fact, the question seems to me resolved. One must accept as demonstrated that there exist sensitives to whom it is granted to serve as intermediaries to the departed friends who, no longer having organs at the service of their will, come to use the voice or the hand of these privileged beings, when they want to cure our body, or to strengthen our soul, enlightening it on things that they are permitted to make known to us. One may risk an experiment in anima vili ≲ upon the silkworms, for example, which now serve hardly for anything but to be thrown to the worms of the tombs, so ill are they. The question is grave, because it is by hundreds of millions of francs that one must reckon the losses that the disease which strikes them makes us suffer annually. The result to be obtained is worth attempting this first experiment which, in any case, if it gives no result, could not aggravate the situation.

Here there may be a mystery, but I affirm that there is no mystification. If I am mystified, there will always remain to me the hundred and some novels and tales of this novelist without knowing it, whose publication will pleasantly occupy the leisure of the last years of my existence, and of which I shall leave the greater part to others after me.

This winter I shall give another novel of my young ecstatic Breton. In the preface I shall transcribe textually all that he wrote on the cure of the silkworms; and I shall even add, if they wish, his prescriptions to prevent and cure cholera and diseases of the chest.

It matters little that they laugh at me for some days; but it matters very much that these secrets, of which chance made me the depositary, do not die with me, if they contain something serious, and that it be known that there exist possible relations between the superior intelligences on the other side of life and the docile intelligences on this side. I believe it would be very important for us to enter into ever more sustained relations with these dead of goodwill who seem disposed to render us such services.

Accept, etc.

E. Bonnemère.

— The picture of the impressions of this young man, traced by himself, is all the more remarkable in that, having been written in the absence of any Spiritist knowledge, it cannot be the reflection of ideas gathered in some study that had exalted his imagination. It is the spontaneous impression of his sensations, from which stand out, with the greatest evidence, all the characteristics of an unconscious mediumship; the intervention of hidden intelligences is expressed therein without ambiguity; the resistance that he opposes, the very vexation that he feels, prove to satiety that he acts under the dominion of a will that is not his own. This young man is, therefore, a medium in every acceptation of the word, and endowed, moreover, with multiple faculties, since, at the same time, he is a writing, speaking, seeing, hearing, mechanical, intuitive, inspired, impressionable, somnambulist, medical, literary, philosophical, moralist medium, etc. But in the phenomena described, there is none of the characteristics of ecstasy. Therefore, it is improperly that Mr. Bonnemère qualifies him as ecstatic, for it is precisely one of the faculties that he lacks. Ecstasy is a particular, well-defined state, which did not present itself in the case in question. Nor does he seem endowed with the mediumship of physical effects, nor with healing mediumship. There are natural mediums, as there are natural somnambulists, who act spontaneously and unconsciously; in others, the mediumistic phenomena are provoked by the will, the faculty is developed by exercise, just as in certain individuals somnambulism is provoked and developed by magnetic action.

There are, therefore, unconscious mediums and conscious mediums. The first category, to which the young Breton belongs, is the most numerous; it is almost general and, without exaggerating, one may say that out of a hundred individuals ninety are endowed with this aptitude in more or less ostensible degrees. If each one studied himself, he would find in this kind of mediumship, which assumes the most diverse appearances, the reason for a host of effects that are not explained by any of the known laws of matter.

— These effects, whether material or not, apparent or hidden, are no less natural for having that origin. Spiritism admits nothing supernatural nor marvelous; according to it everything enters into the order of the laws of Nature. When the cause of an effect is unknown, one must seek it in the realization of these laws, and not in their disturbance, provoked by the act of some will, which would be the true miracle. A man invested with the gift of miracles would have the power to suspend the course of the laws that God established, which is not admissible. But the spiritual element being one of the active forces of Nature, it provokes special phenomena, which seem supernatural only because one persists in seeking their cause solely in the laws of matter. That is why the Spiritists do not perform miracles, and never had the pretension of performing them. The qualification of thaumaturges, which criticism gives them out of irony, proves that it speaks of a thing whose first word it does not know, since it calls workers of miracles those very persons who come to destroy them.

— Another fact stands out from the explanations given in the above letter: the Romance of the Future is indeed a mediumistic work of the young Breton, and one cannot but be grateful to Mr. Bonnemère for having declined its paternity. Thoughts so elevated and so profound had nothing that could surprise us on his part; for this reason we did not hesitate to attribute them to him, and we had only more esteem for his character and for his talent as a writer, which was known to us; but they take on a particular interest, considering the source from which they emanate. However strange this source may seem at first sight, it has nothing surprising for whoever knows Spiritism. Facts of this kind are seen frequently, and there is not a single Spiritist, however little enlightened he may be, who does not perfectly account for it, without recourse to miracles. Thus, attributing the work to Mr. Bonnemère and finding therein facts and thoughts that seem taken from the doctrine itself, it seemed to us difficult that the author should be ignorant of it. Since he affirms the contrary, we believe him without effort and find in his very ignorance the confirmation of this fact many times repeated in our writings: Spiritist ideas are so much in Nature that they germinate outside the teaching of Spiritism, and a multitude of creatures are or become Spiritists without knowing it and by intuition; their ideas lack only the name. Spiritism is like those plants whose seeds are carried by the wind and sprout without cultivation; it is born spontaneously in thought, without prior study. What, then, can those do against it who dream of its annihilation, by striking the maternal stock?

— Thus, here is a complete, remarkable medium, and an observer who do not suspect, neither the one nor the other, what Spiritism is; and the observer, by a logical deduction from what he sees, arrives by himself at all the consequences of Spiritism. What he establishes, right from the start, is that the facts he has before his eyes present to him, in the same individual, a double life, of which one has no relation whatever with the other. Evidently these two lives, in which divergent thoughts manifest themselves, are submitted to different conditions; they cannot both proceed from matter; it is the confirmation of spiritual life; it is the soul that one sees acting outside the organism. This phenomenon is very common; it occurs every day during the sleep of the body, in dreams, in natural or provoked somnambulism, in catalepsy, in lethargy, in second sight, in ecstasy. The intelligent principle isolated from the organism is a capital fact, for it is the proof of its individuality. The existence, the independence and the individuality of the soul can thus be the result of observation. If, during the life of the body, the soul can act without the concurrence of the material organs, it is because it has its own existence; the extinction of corporeal life does not, therefore, necessarily entail that of spiritual life. One sees thereby that, from consequence to consequence, one arrives at a logical deduction. Mr. Bonnemère did not arrive at this result by a preconceived theory, but by observation. Spiritism proceeded in no other way; the study of the facts preceded the doctrine, and the principles were not formulated, as in all the sciences of observation, except in proportion as they were deduced from experience. Mr. Bonnemère did what every serious observer should do, because the spontaneous phenomena that stand out from the same principle are numerous and common; only, Mr. Bonnemère having seen but one point, he could arrive only at a partial conclusion, whereas Spiritism, having embraced the whole of these phenomena so complex and so varied, was able to analyze them, compare them, verify some by others, and find therein the solution of a great number of problems. Since Spiritism is the result of observations, whoever has eyes to see, reason to reason, patience and perseverance to go to the end, will be able to arrive at constituting Spiritism, just as all the sciences can be reconstituted; but, the work being done, it is time gained and effort spared. If it were necessary to begin again incessantly, no progress would be possible.

As the Spiritist phenomena are in Nature, they have occurred in all epochs; and precisely because they touch spirituality in a more direct manner, they are mixed with all the theogonies. Spiritism, coming in an epoch less accessible to prejudices, enlightened by the progress of the natural sciences, which the first men lacked, and by a more developed reason, was able to observe better than in former times. Today, it comes to separate what is true from the mixture introduced by superstitious beliefs, daughters of ignorance.

— Mr. Bonnemère congratulates himself on the chance that placed in his hands the documents furnished by the young Breton. Spiritism admits chance no more than the supernatural in the events of life. Chance, which by its nature is blind, would show itself at times singularly intelligent. So we think that it was intentionally that such documents came into his possession, after he had been placed in a condition to verify their origin. In the young man's hands, they would have remained lost and, doubtless, this was not to happen. It was necessary, therefore, that someone should take charge of drawing them out of obscurity; and it seems that to Mr. Bonnemère fell this mission.

— As for the value of these documents, judging by the sample of the thoughts contained in the Romance of the Future, there must certainly be excellent things there. Will they all be good? That is another question. Under this aspect, their origin is not a guarantee of infallibility, considering that the Spirits, being no more than the souls of men, do not have sovereign science. Their advancement being relative, there are some more enlightened than others; if there are some who know more than men, there are also men who know more than certain Spirits. Up to now the Spirits have been considered as beings outside Humanity, and endowed with exceptional faculties. Here is a capital error, which engendered so many superstitions and which Spiritism came to rectify. The Spirits are part of Humanity and, until they have reached the culminating point of perfection, toward which they gravitate, they are subject to being mistaken. That is why one must never renounce free will and reasoning, even in relation to what comes from the world of the Spirits; one must never accept anything whatever with eyes closed and without the severe control of logic. Without prejudging anything about the documents in question, they might contain things good or bad, true or false; consequently, we would have to make a judicious choice, for which the principles of the doctrine can furnish useful indications.

— Among the number of these principles, there is one that it does not do to lose sight of: it is the providential aim of the manifestation of the Spirits. They come to attest their presence and to prove to man that not everything ends with corporeal life; they come to instruct him on his future condition, to train him to acquire what is useful for his future and what he can take with him, that is, the moral qualities, and not to give him the means of growing rich. The care of his fortune and the improvement of his material well-being must be the act of his own intelligence, of his activity, of his work and of his researches. If it were not so, the idler and the ignorant could grow rich without effort, for it would suffice to address oneself to the Spirits to obtain a lucrative invention, to have treasures discovered, to win on the stock exchange or in the lottery. For this reason, all the hopes of fortune founded upon the concurrence of the Spirits have failed deplorably. It is this that raises in us some doubts on the efficacy of the process for the silkworm, a process that would have the effect of making millions earned, and of giving credit to the idea that the Spirits can give the means of growing rich, an idea that would pervert the very essence of Spiritism. It would be, therefore, imprudent to create chimeras in this respect, because here it might happen as with certain recipes that were to make the Pactolus flow into certain hands, and that led only to ridiculous mystifications. Nevertheless, it is not a reason to silence the process and to scorn it; if the success should have a result more important and more serious than fortune, it is possible that such a revelation be permitted. But, in doubt, it is well not to cradle hopes that perhaps will not come to pass. We approve, therefore, the project of Mr. Bonnemère to publish the recipes that were given to his young Breton, because, among them, some useful ones may be found, especially for the diseases. [1] [Le Roman de l’avenir, par E. Bonnemère - Google Books.]

[2] [In anima vili: Adverb, Latin expression about a useless being (it means an experiment upon an animal)

Dictionary Reverso.]