Part 4

"Lieutenant X. I saw him lying in the death struggle, the chamber, the attendants, and everything!"

His friends laughed at him, but on their return to the town they were met by the news of Lieutenant X.'s death. It had happened suddenly, exactly at half-past seven o'clock, at the same moment in which the visionary received intimation of it. Those who had ridiculed him were greatly impressed, so that they involuntarily shed tears, not of grief, for the death of the lieutenant was a matter of indifference to them, but of emotion at the strange occurrence.

The newspapers made a fuss over the affair. The honest ones did not deny the fact, while the dishonest ones suggested that the witnesses were liars. The result was a protest on the part of my friend the heretic, who acknowledged the real facts of the case, but explained them as an accidental coincidence.

I grant that a certain apparent modesty would rule out as impossible all interference of invisible powers in our petty affairs, but this modesty itself may be an "obstacle cast up by the unrepentant." This seems to be suggested by the following words of Claude de Saint Martin:--

"It is perhaps this wrong connection of ideas (that the earth is only a mere point in the universe) which has led men to the still falser notion that they are not worthy of the Creator's regard. They have believed themselves to be obeying the dictates of humility when they have denied that the earth and all that the universe contains only exist on man's account, on the ground that the admission of such an idea would be only conceit. But they have not been afraid of the laziness and cowardice which are the inevitable results of this affected modesty. The present-day avoidance of the belief that we are the highest in the universe is the reason that we have not the courage to work in order to justify that title, that the duties springing from it seem too laborious, and that we would rather abdicate our position and our rights than realise them in all their consequences. Where is the pilot that will guide us between these hidden reefs of conceit and false humility?"

Meanwhile I have gained a thorough knowledge of all my friend's weaknesses, and can predict the troubles he will suffer by day or night by observing his behaviour. My observations lead me to the conclusion that all his ailments spring from "moral" grounds. But "moral" is a word which is nowadays despised and suspected, and I am not the man to reassert it. Only on one occasion, when the unfortunate man was in a state of deep depression, I said to him out of sympathy, and by way of putting up a sign-post for him, "If you had read Swedenborg before your last attack at night you would have gone into the Salvation Army or become a hospital attendant!"

"How so?" he asked. "What does this Swedenborg say?"

"He says a great deal, and he it is who has saved me from going mad. Consider now, he has given me back the power of sleep by a single sentence of four words."

"Say it, I beg you."

My courage sank, and has failed me every time that the possessed man has asked for this formula of exorcism.

But here I write down the four words which are worth all the doctors' regulations, "_Do this no more_."

Everyone's conscience must interpret the word "this" for himself. I, the undersigned, declare that I have obtained health and quiet sleep by obeying the above receipt.

THE AUTHOR.

This is a confession, not an exhortation.

MISCELLANIES

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.