Opium and hashish.

— They write from Odessa to one of our subscribers in Russia, presently in Paris:

“If you attend a Spiritist session at the home of Mr. Allan Kardec, propose, I beg you, the question, so interesting, about the effects of opium and hashish. Do the Spirits have some part in it? What happens in the soul, whose faculties seem to triple? It is supposed that it almost entirely separates from the body, since it suffices to think of a thing to see it appear, and in forms so distinct that one would take them for reality. There must be here some analogy with the photography of thought, described in the Spiritist Review of June 1868, and in Genesis According to Spiritism, chapter XIV. However, in the dreams provoked by hashish, one sometimes sees things one has never thought of, and, when one thinks of any object, it appears to you in exaggerated, impossible proportions. You think of a flower and at once mountains of flowers rise before you, which pass, disappear, and reappear before your eyes with a frightening rapidity, a beauty, and a vivacity of colors of which one can form no idea. You think of a melody and you hear an entire orchestra. Memories long forgotten rush to your mind as if they were of yesterday. “I have read a good deal about hashish, among others the work of Moreau de Tours. What pleased me most was the description given of it by a learned English physician (the name escapes me), who made experiments on himself. Those I made with some of my friends succeeded only in part, which was probably due to the quality of the hashish.”

— This letter having been read in the Society of Paris, the Spirit of Doctor Morel Lavallée made it the object of the following dissertation:

(Society of Paris, February 12, 1869.)

Opium and hashish are anesthetics very different from ether and chloroform. While the latter, by momentarily suppressing the adherence of the perispirit to the body, provoke a particular release of the Spirit, hashish and opium condense the perispiritual fluids and diminish their flexibility, welding them, so to speak, to the body and chaining the Spirit to the material organism. In this state, the varied and numerous visions that are produced under the excitation of the Spirit's desires belong to the order of purely material dreams. The opium smoker falls asleep in order to dream, and dreams as he wishes, materially and sensually. What he sees are particular panoramas of intoxication, provoked by the substance he has ingested. He is not free: he is drunk, and, as in alcoholic intoxication, the dominant thought of the Spirit, taking an immutable, distinct, perceptible form, appears and varies according to the fancy of the sleeper. If the desired sensation finds itself increased a hundredfold in the result, this is because the Spirit, no longer having the strength and freedom necessary to measure and limit its means of action, acts to obtain the object of its desires with a power increased a hundredfold, by reason of its abnormal state. It no longer knows how to regulate its mode of action upon the perispiritual fluid and upon the body. Hence the difference of power between the effect produced and the desire that provokes it.

As has already been said, in the spiritual dream the Spirit, detached from the body, goes to gather realities of which it often retains only a confused memory. In the intoxication due to the opiate elements, it shuts itself up in its material prison, in which lie and fantasy, materialized, join hands.

Real, useful, normal release is only that of the Spirit desirous of advancing in the moral and intellectual order. Provoked sleeps, of whatever kind, are always hindrances to the liberty of the Spirit and a threat to bodily safety.

Ether and chloroform, which, in certain cases, can provoke the spiritual release, exert a particular influence upon the nature of the bodily relations. The Spirit escapes from the body, it is true, but it does not always have an extremely clear notion of external objects. In the intoxication due to opium, one has a healthy Spirit shut up in a drunken body and subjected to the overexcited sensations of that body. In the release by ether, we are faced with a Spirit drunk perispiritually and withdrawn from bodily action. Opium intoxicates the body; ether and chloroform intoxicate the perispirit; they are two different states of intoxication, each hindering, in a different manner, the free exercise of the Spirit's faculties. Dr. Morel Lavallée.

Observation. – Remarkable from several points of view, as much for the clarity and conciseness of its style as for the originality and novelty of its ideas, this instruction seems to us destined to make known a question hitherto little studied.

If bodily or sensual intoxication, of which the facts of daily life offer such numerous examples, is readily admitted, the study of perispiritual intoxication, if it exists, seems, at first sight, to elude the investigations of thinkers. A few reflections on the subject, the mere expression of our personal opinion, may perhaps not be out of place here.

No Spiritist doubts that man, in his normal state, is a compound of three essential principles: the Spirit, the perispirit, and the body. “If, in terrestrial existence, these three principles are constantly face to face, they must necessarily react upon one another, and from their contact will result health or illness, according to whether there is between them perfect harmony or partial discordance.” (Spiritist Review of 1867: The three principal causes of illnesses.)

Intoxication, whatever, moreover, its cause and seat, is a passing illness, a momentary rupture of the organic equilibrium and of the general harmony that is its consequence. The whole being, momentarily deprived of reason, presents to the eyes of the observer the sad spectacle of an intelligence without direction, given over to all the inspirations of a vagabond imagination, which no longer comes to govern and moderate the will and the judgment. – Whatever the nature of the intoxication, this will always be, in all cases, its apparent result.

Under the dominion of intoxication, man resembles a telegraphic apparatus disorganized in one of its essential parts, which transmits only incomprehensible dispatches, or even will transmit absolutely nothing, whether the cause of the disorder be in the producing apparatus, in the receiver, or, lastly, in the transmitting apparatus.

If we now examine the facts attentively, do they not seem to bear out our theory? Does not the intoxication of the man subjugated by the abuse of alcoholic liquors resemble the disorders provoked by the overexcitation or the exhaustion of the locomotor fluid that animates the nervous system? Is not the momentary distraction of the man suddenly stricken in his dearest affections also a special intoxication? We are deeply convinced that there are three kinds of intoxication in the incarnate being: material intoxication, fluidic or perispiritual intoxication, and mental intoxication. The body, the perispirit, and the Spirit are three different worlds, associated during terrestrial existence, and man will not know himself psychologically and physiologically until he consents to study attentively the nature of these three principles and their intimate relations. We repeat: these few reflections are purely and simply the expression of our personal opinion, which we do not pretend to impose on anyone. It is a particular theory that seems to rest on some probabilities and that will leave us content if we see it discussed and verified by our readers. – Truth cannot be the privilege of one alone, nor of a few. It emanates from enlightened discussion and from the universality of observations, the only criteria of the fundamental principles of all durable philosophy.

We shall be grateful to the Spiritists of all centers who shall see fit to place this theory among the questions to be studied, and to transmit to us the reflections and instructions of which it may be the object.

Opium and hashish.

(2nd article. – See the Review of August 1869.)

In accordance with the wish we expressed in the last issue of the Review, several of our correspondents deigned to study the question, so interesting, concerning the various forms of intoxication to which the human being may be subjected, and transmitted to us the result of their observations. As lack of space does not permit us to publish all these documents, of which, nevertheless, we have taken good note, we shall limit ourselves to calling the attention of our readers to the Report of the works of the Spiritist Society of Bordeaux during the year 1867, which, on its pages 12 and 13, contains very judicious and quite rational reflections on the perispiritual intoxication provoked in the disincarnate by the absorption of alcoholic fluids. We likewise reproduce an instruction obtained on the same subject in a group at Geneva, as it seems to us to contain considerations of great profundity and general interest.

(Geneva, August 4, 1869. – Medium: Mrs. B.)

Q. – Does the intoxication of the man dominated by the abuse of alcoholic liquors resemble the disorders provoked by the overexcitation or the exhaustion of the locomotor fluid that animates the nervous system? – Is not the momentary distraction of the man suddenly stricken in his dearest affections also a special intoxication?

Answer. – Indeed, there are three kinds of intoxication in the incarnate being: material intoxication, fluidic or perispiritual intoxication, and mental intoxication.

Matter properly so called encloses an essence that gives life to plants, and this essence circulates in their tissues by means of a system of fibers and vessels of extreme delicacy; one could, with full reason, call this essence the vegetable fluid. Notwithstanding its perfect homogeneity, it transforms and modifies itself in the body it occupies and, as it develops the plant, gives it a material form, a perfume, and qualities of diverse nature and power. Thus the rose does not resemble the lily, nor has it its perfume, nor its properties; the ear of wheat has not the form of the vine, nor its taste, nor its qualities. One can, then, determine in three quite distinct forms the relations of plants with the general fluid, which feeds them and transforms them according to their nature and the object they are called to fulfill in the scale of animate beings. This same law presides over the development of all creations, whence results an uninterrupted chain of all beings, from the organic atom, invisible to the human eye, up to the most perfect creature. In its normal state, each being possesses the quantity of fluid necessary to constitute the equilibrium and harmony of its faculties. But man, by the abuse of alcoholic liquors, breaks the equilibrium that must exist between his various fluids; hence the disorganization of his faculties, the wandering of ideas, and the momentary disorder of the intelligence; it is as in a tempest, in which the winds cross and whirlwinds of dust rise, breaking for an instant the calm of Nature. Fluidic or perispiritual intoxication is the consequence of the infusion into the economy [into the organism] of the perfumes of plants and of the absorption of the semi-material, etheriform part of terrestrial elements. The narcotics and anesthetics are among these; they sometimes provoke insomnia, but in general they provoke visions, deep sleeps not always with an awakening. One could say that the perfume is the perispirit of the plant and that it corresponds to the perispirit of man. The excessive use of perfumes gives more expansion to the fluidic bond, rendering it more apt to undergo occult influences, but the release provoked by the abuse is incomplete, irregular, and brings disturbance into the harmony of the three constitutive principles of the human being. Thus, one could compare the Spirit to a prisoner who escapes and runs at random, making poor use of the moment of liberty that he incessantly fears to lose. The visions consequent upon fluidic intoxication are neither complete nor continuous, because there already exists equilibrium in the regulating and conserving fluids of life. Mental intoxication is provoked by violent and unexpected moral shocks; joy and sorrow can be its promoters. It is possible to establish a distant analogy between this intoxication and what takes place in the plant which, besides its individuality and its perfume, possesses properties, which it conserves and which it can utilize, when it no longer belongs to the Earth. It can cure or kill. The violet, for example, calms pains, while the hemlock provokes death. Poisonous plants are nourished by the impure part of the vegetable fluid. Every vitiated fluid, whatever the animic section to which it belongs, provokes disorders, whether in the body or in the Spirit. A very vivid impression of joy or of sorrow can give rise to mental intoxication, and a similar shock can reestablish the momentarily broken equilibrium, just as the ingestion into the economy [into the organism] of a noxious element can, in certain circumstances, be a counterpoison for an element of the same nature. But, while admitting the existence of these three forms of intoxication – material, fluidic, and mental – we must add that the three forms never present themselves in isolation to the view of the observer. A superficial study permits, according to the effects produced, the recognition of the nature of the determining cause, but, in all cases, the disorders affect, at the same time and more or less gravely, the Spirit, the perispirit, and the body. Perhaps one could say, with some reason, that moral madness is a chronic mental intoxication.

Elsewhere, we shall return to this question, interesting for the physician and for the psychologist, that physician of the soul.

A Spirit.

[A. DESLIENS.]

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