No one has been so tried by fate as the doctor of whom I spoke in the
first chapter under the sobriquet of leader of the youthful revolters.
After countless changes of opinion he has become sober and almost
morbidly scrupulous. He regards himself as bankrupt in everything, and
distrusts everyone. Deprived of the faculties which render us capable
of enjoyment and of suffering, he is indifferent to everything. He
began his career as an enthusiast for the freedom of the individual,
for the democracy, and for the liberation of women, and has seen his
hopes completely disappointed. He who was an ardent champion of free
love has seen the woman of his choice, for whom he himself had great
respect, sink in the deepest infamy.
He is now thirty years old. During some years' residence abroad
he has lived a painful life as a lonely wanderer; he has worn
threadbare clothing and endured poverty, hunger, and cold, and all the
humiliations of a man laden with debt. He has slept at night in woods
and open parks for want of a dwelling; and has nourished himself with
the gelatine and starch which were used in the laboratory where he
was an assistant. As a result of his privations he had less power to
resist alcohol, and although lie was not a drunkard, the effect of the
small quantity of drink which he could procure was too much for him.
Abandoned to the mercy of fortune by his relatives, he was helped by
a Swedenborgian, whom he hardly knew, to enter an institution for the
cure of nervous diseases. After some months he was healed, and returned
to the university in Sweden. He was told, however, that he would have
to practise total abstinence. It was he who lent me Swedenborg's
_Arcana Coelestia_, and later on his _Apocalypsis Revelata_. He
had not read them himself, but had found them in the library of his
mother, who was a Swedenborgian.
One thing surprises me, that although up to my forty-ninth year I have
never come across the works of Swedenborg, whom the cultivated classes
in Sweden openly despise, yet now he turns up everywhere--in Paris, on
the Danube, in Sweden, and that in the course of a single half year.
Meanwhile my friend, with his destroyed illusions, remains indifferent
in spite of the blows which fate has repeatedly dealt him. He cannot
stoop, and thinks it unworthy of a man to kneel to unknown powers who
might some day reveal themselves as tempters, whose temptations or
tests one should have resisted to the uttermost.
I do not conceal from him my new religious views without, however,
wishing to influence him. "You see," I say to him, "religion is a thing
which one must appropriate for oneself; it is no use preaching it."
Often he listens to me with apparent attention, and often he smiles.
Sometimes he disappears for a fortnight together, as though he were
vexed, but he comes again and looks as if he had been brooding over
some thought. Sometimes, in order to help him, I let drop, as though by
chance, an interrogatory remark, "Something is happening, isn't it?"
"I don't know; it is so absurd that there must be jugglery in it."
"What is it, then?"
"Every morning when I enter the laboratory I find my things in
confusion,--you cannot think what it looks like,--and the table in a
mess. And that although I take the greatest pains to keep the place
clean."
"Is it some one with a spite against you?"
"Impossible, for I am the last to leave the room, and if there were
anyone he would be immediately discovered."
"Then is it----?"
"Well, who?"
"Some one unseen?"
"I don't say so, but latterly it does seem as though some one were
watching me, and could read my most secret thoughts. And if I ever
kick over the traces, I am pulled up at once in a moment."
"Have you ever had similar abnormal experiences before?"
"Not I myself, but my mother and sister, who are Swedenborgians, have.
Wait a minute, though! I did have one, just two years ago, in Berlin."
"Let me hear it."
"It was as follows:--I entered a lavatory near the Linden Avenue one
evening, and saw beside me a bare-headed man of a questionable and
strange appearance. He had a protuberance on the back of his neck,
and to my astonishment he 'yodeled'[1] like a Tyrolese. The painful
impression which this individual with his lugubrious physiognomy made
on me remained with me unconsciously, and in order to shake it off I
continued my walk outside the town, and finally found myself in the
country. Tired and hungry I entered an inn, where I ordered at the
bar a Frankfort sausage and a pint of beer. 'A Frankfort sausage and
a pint--' of beer,' repeated some one at my side, and, as I turned
round, I saw the man with the protuberance on his neck. Thrown into
complete confusion, I went on my way without waiting for what I had
ordered, and, unable to give the reason for my abrupt departure, I have
never thought any more of this insignificant occurrence, but I have a
very vivid impression of it, and it just now recurs to me."
When he had finished he covered his eyes with both hands, as though he
wished to obliterate the picture by rubbing the pupil of his eye. which
still retained the portrait of the man.
While the above narrative with its details is fresh in the reader's
memory, I will introduce another, which, through its connection
with the former, may perhaps bring us a little nearer our goal. On
the first of May I went pretty early through the Park to eat dinner
with a school-master. When we had sat down at a table in the large,
open balcony, which was empty, I suddenly experienced a feeling of
discomfort, and as I turned round on my chair I perceived a man of very
questionable appearance, and with an unsteady, irresolute expression in
his eyes.
"Who is that?" I asked my companion, who was an old inhabitant of Lund,
and knew the whole population.
"A foreigner, certainly."
The stranger, bare-headed and silent, came near, and, when he stood
directly in front of me, he regarded me with such a piercing look that
I felt a burning pain in my breast. We changed our seats. The man
followed us without breaking silence. His looks were neither malicious
nor severe, but rather melancholy and expressionless like those of a
somnambulist. Then I had a recollection, which was too vague to be
conscious, and addressed a question to my companion. "That man there
resembles one of our friends, but which of them?"
"Yes, certainly; he is just like what our friend Martin would be at
forty-five."
At this moment there sprang up from a mass of confused memories the
Berlin Lavatory and "Friend Martin" (as the unfortunate doctor was
called), pursued by this stranger.
Meanwhile the man had taken a seat near us and turned his back. How
great was my astonishment when I noticed a protuberance on his neck!
In order to clear up the matter, I asked my companion, "Can you see a
protuberance on this fellow's neck?"
"Yes, distinctly. What of that?"
I did not answer, because it would have been too long a story. Besides,
the school-master was a declared foe of occultism.
The same evening I saw Friend Martin in the middle of a swarm of
students. Without beating about the bush I asked him directly, "Where
were you to-day between one and two o'clock?"
"Why? Why do you ask that?" And he looked embarrassed as he spoke.
"Only answer my question."
"I was asleep. I am not accustomed to sleep in the day, and therefore
your question embarrassed me."
"And yet you go outside and roam about during your sleep."
"It looks like it, for some days ago, while I slept, I saw the fire
which had broken out in the Museum. That is the simple truth."
After this admission on his part, I described to him the appearance in
the Park, and compared it with what he had seen in Berlin.
But he was in good spirits, and though the protuberance in the neck
made him shudder, he exclaimed, "The description fits to a T. It is my
double!"
And we both laughed.
* * * * *
I pause here for a moment in order to expound the possible theories of
the phenomenon known as a man's "double" (_doppelgänger_).
The Theosophists assume it as a fact that the soul, or the "astral
body," has the power to quit the body and to clothe itself in a
quasi-material form which under favourable circumstances can be visible
to many. All so-called telepathic experiences are thus explained. The
creations of the imagination have no reality, but some visions and
hallucinations have a kind of materiality. Similarly, in optics, one
distinguishes between virtual and real images, the latter of which
can be projected on a screen or fixed on a sufficiently sensitive
photographic plate.
Suppose that an absent person thinks of me, by evoking my personality
in his remembrance; he only succeeds in creating a virtual image of
me by a free and conscious effort of his own. But suppose again that
an old aunt of mine in a foreign country sits at the piano without
thinking of me, and sees me then standing in person behind the
instrument; she has _seen_ a virtual image of me.
And this actually happened in the autumn of 1895. I remember that I
was then passing through a dangerous illness in the French capital,
when my longing to be in the bosom of my family overcame me to such
a degree that I saw the inside of my house and for a moment forgot
my surroundings, having lost the consciousness of where I was. I was
really there behind the piano as I appeared, and the imagination of the
old lady had nothing to do with the matter. But since she understood
these kind of apparitions, and knew their significance, she saw in it
a precursor of death and wrote to ask if I were ill.
In order the better to elucidate this problem, I will insert here an
essay of my own printed last year in the Initiation, which has points
of contact with the above-mentioned occurrence.
"OBSERVATIONS ON THE IRRADIATION AND
DILATABILITY OF THE SOUL."
"To be beside oneself" and "to collect oneself" are two phrases in
every-day use, which express well the capacity which the soul possesses
of expanding and contracting. Fear makes it shrink and contract, and
joy, happiness, or success make it expand.
Go alone into a full railway carriage, where no one knows another,
but all are sitting silent. Each feels, according to his degree of
sensibility, an extreme discomfort. There is a manifold crossing of
irradiations from souls in different moods which causes a general
feeling of oppression. It is not warm, but one feels as though one
were stifled; the senses, charged to overflowing with magnetic fluids,
feel as if they must explode; the intensity of the electric streams,
strengthened by influence and condensation, perhaps also by induction,
has reached its maximum.
Then some one begins to speak. A discharge of electricity takes place,
and the various currents neutralise each other when all present enter
upon a trivial conversation to relieve a physical necessity.
The person fond of solitude draws back into his corner, closes his
inner eye and ear, and sinks in himself in order to ward off a new
"influence." Or he looks at the landscape through the window, and lets
his thoughts wander, while he steps outside the magic circle of those
shut up with him, to whom, however, he is indifferent. The secret of
the success of a great actor consists in his inborn capacity of letting
his soul "ray out," and thus enter into touch with the audience. In
great moments there is actually a radiance round an eloquent speaker,
visible even to the incredulous.
The actor with a dreamy nature, who has a keen intelligence, and has
studied much, but not acquired the power of going out of himself, will
never make a great impression on the stage. Shut up in himself, his
mind cannot penetrate the minds of the spectators.
In the great crises of life, when existence itself is threatened, the
soul attains transcendent powers.
It seems sometimes as though the fear of poverty drove the tortured
soul to fly to seek a life somewhere else, where living is easier, and
it is not for nothing that suicide attracts the unhappy by promising to
open the gates of their prison.
Some years ago I had the following experience. One autumn morning I sat
at my writing table before, the window, which looked out on a gloomy
street in a small industrial town of Moravia. In the neighbouring room,
of which the door was on the jar, my wife, who was expecting her first
confinement, was resting.
While I was writing, I imagined myself transplanted to a scene many
hundred miles north, which I well knew. Although where I was, it was
autumn and approaching winter, I found myself in my thoughts under
a green oak in the sunshine. The little garden which I had myself
cultivated in my youth was there; the roses--I could tell them by their
names--the syringas, the jasmines exhaled their scents so that I could
smell them; I picked caterpillars off my cherry-trees, I trimmed the
currant-bushes *** Suddenly I hear a hoarse cry, I find myself standing
on the ground, I feel a kind of cramp in my spine causing intolerable
pain, and fall senseless on my chair.
When I recover consciousness, I find that my wife had come from behind
in order to say good morning, and had quite gently laid her hand upon
my shoulder.
"Where am I?" That was my first question, and I said it in my native
language, which my wife, as a foreigner, did not understand.
The impression which I received from this occurrence was, that my soul
had dilated itself and left the body without breaking the connection
of the invisible threads, and I needed a certain though ever so small
an interval to recollect in some degree that I was conscious and intact
in the room, where I had just been sitting and working. If, according
to the old methods of explanation, my soul had merely sunk in herself
and still remained confined in the limits of the body, it would have
been able to expand itself again with greater readiness and swiftness,
and I would not have suffered so much through being surprised during my
absence.
No. I was absent, "_franvarande_"--that is the Swedish word for
"distracted "--and my soul returned so suddenly as to cause me
suffering. But the pains were felt in the neighbourhood of the spine
and not in the brain, and this reminds me of the important functions
attributed to the "plexus solaris" when I studied medicine in my youth.
Another occurrence, which happened to me three years ago in Berlin, is
to my mind sufficient proof that the exteriorisation or displacement
of the soul can happen under certain extraordinary circumstances.
After soul-shattering crises, troubles, and an irregular life, I
was sitting one night between one and half-past in a wine shop, at a
table which was always reserved for our coterie. We had been eating
and drinking since six o'clock, and I had been obliged the whole time
to carry on the conversation practically alone. The problem was for
me to give sensible advice to a young officer who was on the point of
changing a military career for that of an artist. As he happened to
be at the same time in love, his nerves were in a very over-strained
condition, and after having received in the course of the day a letter
containing reproaches from his father, he was quite beside himself. I
forgot my own wounds while I was tending those of another. The task
was a difficult one, and caused me some mental disturbance. After
arguments and endless appeals, I wished to call up in his memory a
past event which might influence his resolve. He had forgotten the
occurrence in question, and in order to stimulate his memory, I began
to describe it to him. "You remember that evening in the Augustiner
tavern." I continued to describe the table where we had eaten our meal,
the position of the bar, the door through which people entered, the
furniture, the pictures *** All of a sudden I stopped. I had half lost
consciousness without fainting, and still sat in my chair. I was in the
Augustiner tavern and had forgotten to whom I spoke, when I recommenced
as follows: "Wait a minute, I am now in the Augustiner tavern, but I
know very well that I am in some other place. Don't say anything *** I
don't know you any more, but yet I know that I do. Where am I? Don't
say anything; this is very interesting." I made an effort to raise my
eyes--I don't know if they were closed--and I saw a cloud, a background
of indistinct colour, and from the ceiling descended something like a
theatre curtain; it was the dividing wall with shelves and bottles.
"Oh yes!" I said, relieved after feeling a pang pass through me, "I am
in F.'s" (the wine shop).
The officer's face was distorted with alarm, and he wept.
"What is the matter?" I said to him.
"That was dreadful," he answered.
"What?"
When I have related this story to others, they have objected that it
was a fainting fit or an attack of giddiness, words which say little
and explain nothing. First and foremost, fainting fits and giddiness
are accompanied by loss of consciousness. Nor was it a case of
amyosthenia (depression of muscular action), as I remained sitting on
my chair, and spoke consciously about my partial unconsciousness.
At that time I was unaware of the phenomenon itself, and did not know
the expression "exteriorisation of sensibility." Now that I know it,
I am sure that the soul possesses the power of expansion which it
exercises in a very high degree during ordinary sleep, and at death to
such an extent that it leaves the body, and is by no means extinguished.
Some days ago, as I was going along the pavement, I saw an inn-keeper
before his door, loudly abusing a knife-grinder who was standing in the
street. I did not want to cut off the connection between the two, but
it could not be avoided, and I felt a keen feeling of discomfort as I
passed between the two quarrelling men. It was as though I divided a
cord which was stretched between them, or rather as though I crossed a
street which was being sprinkled on both sides with water.
The connection between friends, relatives, and especially between
husband and wife, is a real bond and has a palpable actuality. We begin
to love a woman, and deposit our soul piece-meal, so to speak, with
her. We double our personality, and the loved one, who was formerly
indifferent and neutral, begins to clothe herself in our other "I,"
and becomes our counterpart. When she takes it into her head to depart
with our soul, the pain which it causes us is perhaps the most violent
that there is, only to be compared to that of a mother who has lost
her child. There is a painful sense of emptiness and woe to the man
who has not strength enough to begin to divide himself again and to
find another vessel to fill. Love is an act through which the masculine
blossom attains to fruit, because it is the man who loves, and it is a
sweet illusion to suppose that he is loved by his wife, his other self,
a creation of his own.
Between a married pair the invisible bond often develops itself in a
mediumistic fashion. They can call each other from a distance, read
each other's thoughts, and practise mutual "suggestion" when they
like. They no longer feel the need of speech; the mere presence of the
beloved gives joy, her soul radiates warmth. When they are divided the
bond between them expands; the sense of longing and pining increases
with distance, sometimes to such a degree as to involve the breaking of
the bond, and thereby death.
For many years I have taken notes of all y dreams, and have arrived
at the conviction lat mail leads a double life, that imaginations,
fancies, and dreams possess a kind of reality.
So that we are all of us spiritual somnambulists, and in dreams commit
acts which, according to their varying character, accompany us when we
are awake with feelings of satisfaction or an evil conscience and fears
of the consequences. And from reasons, which I reserve the right to
explain some other time, I believe that the so-called persecution-mania
really springs from pains of conscience after evil deeds which one
has committed in sleep, and of which vague recollections haunt us.
The imaginations of the poet, which prosaic, souls so despise, are
realities.
"And what about death?" you ask.
To the brave man who does not set too great a value on life, I would
at an earlier stage of my experience have recommended the following
experiment, which I have repeatedly made, not without troublesome, but
in all cases easily cured, physical results.
After closing windows, doors, and the stove-flue, I place an open
bottle containing cyan-kalium on the table and lie down on the bed. The
carbonic acid in the air liberates in a little time the cyanic acid
in the bottle, and the well-known physical symptoms follow--a slight
throbbing of the throat, and an indescribable taste in the mouth, which
I might by analogy call "cyanic," paralysis of the biceps-muscle, and
pain in the stomach. The deadly effect of cyanic acid remains still a
mystery. Different authorities ascribe different methods of operation
to this poison. One says, "paralysis of the brain"; another, "paralysis
of the heart"; a third, "suffocation as a secondary consequence of the
medulla oblongata being attacked," etc.
But since the effect may show itself at once, before absorption has
taken place, the method of operation must be regarded much more as
psychical, especially when one has regard to the use of cyanic acid in
medicine as a quieting remedy in so-called nervous diseases.
As regards the condition of the soul under this experiment, I would
say the following: It does not seem to undergo a slow extinction, but
rather a dissolution during which the pleasant sensations far outweigh
the trifling pains. The mental capacities gain in clearness, exactly
contrary to their condition at the approach of sleep; one is in full
possession of one's will, and I can break off the experiment by corking
the bottle, opening the window, and inhaling chlorine or ammonia.
I do not lay much stress upon it, but supposing that we could obtain
satisfactory proofs of the temporary condition of death into which
Indian fakirs can throw themselves, the experiment might be prolonged
without danger. In case of an accident one must proceed with the
various methods which are used to resuscitate a person who has been
choked. The fakirs use warm compresses on the brain, the Chinese warm
the pit of the stomach and cause sneezing. In his remarkable book,
_Positive and Negative_ (1890), Vial relates, following Trousseau and
Piloux: "In the year 1825 Carrero stifled and drowned a large number of
animals, which he afterwards resuscitated a long time after death by
simply inserting needles into their brain."
* * * * *
In my book _Inferno_, I have spoken of my brother in misfortune the
German-American painter, and of the quack Francis Schlatter who was
suspected of being his "double." The time has come when I am obliged to
compromise my friend with the sole object of helping the investigation
into the relation between them.
My friend's name was H., whether real or assumed. When I had returned
to Paris in August 1897, I was turning over, one day, the _Revue
Spirite_ for the year 1859. I found there an article, headed "My
Friend H." Under this title a certain Herr H. Lugner had published in
the feuilleton of the _Journal des Débats_ for 26th November 1858 a
narrative which he asserted to be fact, and offered to witness to, if
necessary, as he himself was a friend of the hero of the adventure. The
latter was a young man, aged five and twenty, of irreproachable morals
and thoroughly amiable character.
H. could not keep awake as soon as the sun went down. An irresistible
weariness came over him, and he sank gradually in a deep sleep, from
which nothing could rouse him. In brief, H. lived a double life, so
that at night he committed criminal acts in Melbourne under the name
William Parker. When, later on, Parker was executed, H., in Germany,
was simultaneously found dead in his bed.
Whether the story was true or a product of the imagination, it
interested me, because of the coincidence of names, and also of
some of the circumstances. Modern literature has already dealt with
the phenomenon of the _Doppelgänger_ (double) in the famous romance
_Trilby_, and in another by Paul Lindau. It would be interesting to
know whether the authors have based their narrative on facts or no.
Meanwhile we return to friend Martin. In order to obtain some
distraction, he undertook a cruise to Norrland and Norway, and expected
to derive from it a real feeling of freedom and much pleasure. After
some weeks I meet him in a street in Lund.
"Have you had a pleasant journey?" I ask.
"No; a devil's journey! I don't know what to believe. There is
certainly some one who challenges me, and the fight is unequal. Listen!
I went to Stockholm to amuse myself at the great exhibition, and though
I have hundreds of friends there, I did not meet one. They were all in
the country, and I found myself alone. I only stayed in my room one
day, and was then turned out of it by a stranger to whom my brother,
by mistake, had previously promised it. Ill-luck made me so stupid that
I did not go and see the exhibition, and as I wandered about alone in
the streets, suddenly a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. It was a very
seriously disposed uncle of mine, whom I had not seen twice in my life,
and who was the last man I wished to see. He invited me to spend the
whole evening with him and his wife. I had to swallow everything I
disliked. It was like witchcraft.
Then I went on alone in a railway carriage for hundreds of miles,
through scenery that was deadly dull. At Areskutan, the principal
object of my excursion, there was only one hotel, and in this hotel all
my antipathies had appointed a rendezvous. The Free Church pastor was
feeding his flock there, and they were singing psalms morning, noon,
and evening. It was enough to drive one wild, and yet it seemed quite
natural. There was only one thing which seemed to me somewhat strange,
or with a smack of the occult about it. That was, that in this quiet
and well-kept hotel they were hammering up large boxes at night."
"Over your head?"
"Yes; just over! And, strangely enough, this hammering followed me to
Norway. When I ask the hotel manager for an explanation, he declared he
had heard nothing." "That is just like my own experience."
"Yes."
I would not have related these trivial and in themselves repellent
stories, did not their very absurdity suggest the existence of a
reality, which yet is neither real objectively nor a mere vision, but a
phantasmagoria called up by the invisible powers, to warn, to teach, or
to punish.
This condition, called by the theosophists "Astralplanet," is also
described by Swedenborg in the last part of his _Arcana_, "Visiones et
Visa."
There are two kinds of visionary states which are beyond nature, and
in which I have been placed merely to experience what they are like,
and what is to be understood by the expressions to be "rapt from the
body," and "to be carried by the spirit" to another place.
1. A man is placed in a condition between sleep and waking; when he
is in this state he seems to himself to be fully awake. This is the
condition of being "rapt from the body," when one does not know whether
one is in the body or out of the body.
2. Wandering through the streets of a city and over the fields, and
holding converse with spirits, I seemed to myself to be as much awake
and alert as on ordinary occasions. Thus I wandered without quitting
the road. Yet all the while I was in a vision, and saw woods, rivers,
palaces, houses, men, and other things. But after I had wandered
thus for some hours, I fell suddenly into a state of corporeal
hallucination, and was aware that I was in another place. At this I was
greatly surprised, and saw that I was in such a condition as those are
who are said to be "carried by the Spirit to another place."
* * * * *
Friend Martin since his return from his excursion lives alone in
his parents' house, because the family have scattered in different
directions for their summer holiday. I will not say that he is afraid,
but he is uncomfortable. Sometimes he hears steps and other sounds
from the room of his absent sister, sometimes sneezing. Some days ago
he heard in the middle of the night a sharp metallic sound, like that
of a scythe being sharpened. "Taking it all in all," he concluded,
"wonderful things do occur, but if I once began to engage in dealings
with the invisible powers I should be lost."
That was his last word, as autumn approached with great strides.
[1] Gave a peculiar cry.