Extracted from the manuscripts of a young Breton mediumThe hallucinated, the inspired, the fluidics and the somnambulists
Our readers remember reading the Novel of the Future, in June last year, that Mr. Bonnemère had taken from the manuscripts of a young Breton medium, that had given him his work. It was still in that large heritage of manuscripts that the author found these pages, written by inspiration, that comes to the appreciation of the readers of the Spiritist Review. It goes without saying that we leave it to the medium, or rather to the Spirit that inspires him, the responsibility for the opinions that are issued, preserving our rights to analyze them later. As with the Novel of the Future, it is a curious specimen of unconscious mediumship.
I
The Hallucinated
We have little to say about hallucination, a state provoked by a psychological cause that influences the physical, and to which nervous natures are more prone, always more impressionable. Women, for their intimate organization, are more particularly driven to exaltation, and the fever in them occurs more frequently, followed by a delirium that takes the appearance of a momentary madness. We must recognize that hallucination slightly touches madness, as well as cerebral overexcitations, while delirium is mostly exhaled through incoherent words, more particularly representing the action, the staging. They are, sometimes, wrongly confused.
In the grip of a sort of internal fever, that does not manifest itself on the outside, by any apparent disruption of the organs, the hallucinated person lives in the midst of an imaginary world, created by his troubled imagination; everything is in disorder in him, as around him; he takes everything to the extreme: sometimes cheerfulness, almost always sadness, and tears roll from the eyes while the lips grin a sickly smile.
These fantastic visions exist for him; he sees them, touches them, is frightened by them. He preserves, however, the domain of his will; he talks with his interlocutors and hides from them the object of his fears or his dark concerns.
We knew one who, for about six months, attended the burial of his own body every morning, fully aware that his soul was surviving. Nothing seemed to have changed in the habits of his life, and yet that incessant thought, that same sight followed him everywhere. The word death echoed continually in his ear. When the sun shone, dispelled the night, or pierced the clouds, the dreadful sight gradually faded away, and finally disappeared. At night he fell asleep sad and desperate, for he knew what a horrible awakening awaited him the next day.
Sometimes, when the excess of physical suffering silenced his will, and deprived it of the power of dissimulation that he usually had, he suddenly cried out: - Ah! Here they are! … I see them! … And then he described to those more closely around him the details of the dismal ceremony, he recounted the sinister scenes that unfolded before his eyes, where circles of fantastic characters paraded in front of him.
The hallucinated will tell you the crazy perceptions of his sick brain, but he has nothing to repeat to you about what others would come and tell him; for to be inspired, peace and harmony must reign in your soul, and you must be free from all material or petty thoughts; sometimes the sickly disposition provokes inspiration, it is then like a help that the friends, who left first, bring to relieve you.
This madman, who yesterday enjoyed the fullness of his reason, does not present any external disorders, perceptible to the eye of the observer; however, there are many, they exist and are real. Evil is often in the soul, yanked from itself by the excess of work, joy, pain; the physical man is no longer in equilibrium with the psychological man; the psychological shock has been more violent than the physical can bear: hence the cataclysm.
The hallucinated also suffers the consequences of a serious disturbance in his nervous system. But – something that rarely takes place in madness - in him these disorders are intermittent and more easily curable, because his life is doubled in a way, since he thinks of real life and dreams of a fantastic life.
The latter is often the awakening of his sick soul, and if we listen to him with intelligence, we can discover the cause of the illness, that he often wants to hide. Among the flow of incoherent words that a delirious person throws out, and that seem to have nothing to do with the probable causes of his illness, there will be one that will keep coming back, and as if in spite of himself, that he would like to retain, and that escapes nonetheless. That is the real cause and that must be fought.
But the task is long and difficult, for the hallucinated is a skillful actor, and if he notices that he is being observed, his mind throws itself into strange cracks, taking the appearance of madness to escape this unwelcome pressure that one seems determined to exert on him. It is, therefore, necessary to study it with extreme discretion, without ever contradicting or trying to correct the errors of his delirious brain.
These are various phases of cerebral excitations, or rather of excitations of the whole being, because it is not necessary to locate the seat of the intelligence. The human soul, that gives it, hovers everywhere; it is the breath from above that makes the whole machine vibrate and act.
The hallucinated can, in good faith, believe himself to be inspired, and prophesize, either because he is aware of what he is saying, or only those around him can, without his knowledge, collect his words. But to accredit the indications of a hallucinated would be to prepare for strange disappointments, and that is how too often we have attributed to inspiration the errors that were only the product of hallucination.
The physical is material, sensitive, exposed to broad daylight, that everyone can see, admire, criticize, heal, or try to correct. But who can know the psychological man? When we ignore ourselves, how would others judge us? If we reveal some of our thoughts to them, it is still in greater quantity those that we hide from their eyes, and that we would like to hide from ourselves.
This cover-up is almost a social crime. Created for progress, our soul, our heart, our intelligence are made to spread over all brothers of the large family, to lavish on them all that is in us, as to enrich ourselves, at the same time, with all that they can communicate to us.
Reciprocal expansion is, therefore, the great humanitarian law, and concentration, in other words, the concealment of our actions, our thoughts, our aspirations is a kind of theft that we commit to the detriment of everyone. Which progress will be made if we keep to ourselves all that nature and education give us, and if everyone acts in the same way towards us?
Voluntary exiles, and keeping ourselves apart from the exchanges with our brothers, we concentrate on a fixed idea; the obsessed imagination tries to escape it by pursuing all kinds of senseless thoughts, and one can thus reach the point of madness, fair punishment that is inflicted on us for not having wanted to walk on our natural pathways.
So, let us live in others, and them in us, so that we all become one. Great joys, like great sorrows, break us when not confided in a friend. All loneliness is bad and doomed, and anything contrary to the designs of nature has, by inevitable consequences, immense internal disturbances.
II
The inspired
Inspiration is rarer than hallucination, because it does not depend only on the physical state, but also, and more importantly, on the mental situation of the individual predisposed to receive it.
Every man has only a certain share of intelligence that he is given to develop through his work. Arriving at the culminating point where it is granted to him to reach, he stops for a moment, then he returns to the primitive state, to childhood, without this very intelligence that grows every day, diminishes at an old age, dies out and disappears. So, having given everything, and no longer able to add anything to the baggage of his century, he leaves, but to go elsewhere, to continue the work that had been interrupted down here; he leaves, but leaving the place invigorated to another who, arriving at the adult age, will in turn have the power to accomplish a greater and more useful mission.
What we call death is just dedication to progress and humanity. But nothing dies, everything survives and is found again, through the transmission of the thought of the beings who left earlier, who still hold to the homeland they left, but did not forget, through the most ethereal part of themselves, that they continue to love, since it is inhabited by the followers of their life, by the heirs of their ideas, to whom they like to instill, at times, those that they did not have time to sow around them, or that they could not see the expected progress.
Having no more organs at the service of their intelligence, they come to ask the men of good will that they appreciate, to give way to them for a moment. Sublime hidden benefactors, they imbue their brothers with the quintessence of their thought, so that their sketched work continues and ends, by passing through the brains of those who can make its way in the world.
Between the missing friends and us, love continues, and love is life. They speak to us with the voice of our awakened conscience. Purified and better, they bring us only pure things, free that they are from any material part, as from all the triviality of our poor existence. They inspire us in the feeling they had in this world, but in this feeling free from any stain.
They still have a part of themselves to give; they bring it to us, letting us believe that we have obtained it through our own personal work. From there come these unexpected revelations that confuse science. The spirit of God blows where it wants ... Strangers make great discoveries, and the official world of academies is there to hinder their passage.
We do not claim that, in order to be inspired, it is essential to keep incessantly in the narrow paths of good and virtue; but they are usually moral beings to whom one comes, often as compensation for the evils from which they suffer for the actions of others, to grant manifestations that allow them to take revenge in their own way, by bringing the tribute of some benefits to humanity that disregards them, mocks and slanders them.
There are as many categories of inspirations, and therefore inspired, as there are faculties in the human brain for assimilating different knowledge.
The struggle startles the purified Spirits that have left for more advanced worlds, and they want to be listened to with meekness. Also the inspired are generally pure beings, naive and simple, serious and reflective, steeped in abnegation and devotion, without any marked personality, with deep and lasting impressions, accessible to external influences, without preconceived ideas about what they ignore, intelligent enough to assimilate the thoughts of others, but not strong enough morally to discuss them.
If the inspired holds to his own convictions, he takes, in good faith, their echo for the warning of the voices that speak in him, and that also deceives, in good faith, instead of enlightening. Kindness presides over these revelations, that never take place except for a useful, and at the same time, moral purpose.
When one of these sympathetic organizations suffers from a cruel disappointment or a physical ailment, a friend takes an interest in him and comes, giving another nourishment to his thought, to bring him relief, and particularly to those who are dear to him.
It is not uncommon for the inspired one to begin as a hallucinated. It is like a novitiate, a preparation of his brain to concentrate his mind and to be able to accept what will be said to him.
Because an inspired one cannot formulate anything conclusive at a certain moment, this does not mean that he will not be able to do it in other times. The manifestations remain free, spontaneous; they come when needed. Thus, those who are inspired, even the best ones, are not inspired on a fixed day and time, and sessions announced in advance often lead to inevitable disappointments.
In making too frequent evocations, we run the risk of ending up only in a state of overexcitation, more akin to hallucination than to inspiration. So, it is only about games of our delirious imagination, instead of those lights from another world, intended of illuminating the steps of humanity, in its providential path.
This explains these errors turned into a weapon by skepticism, denying in absolute terms the intervention of the superior Spirits. The inspired are by all those who left before their time and have something to teach us.
It may happen that the simpler, the less educated woman has medical revelations. We have seen one who, without even knowing how to read or write, found within herself different names of plants that could heal. Popular credulity had almost forced her to exploit that faculty. She also was not always enlightened, even by feeling the pulse of the sick person she was in contact with, for she was also one of those fluidics of which we will speak later. Although weak and delicate, she could, by her touch, restore balance to the one who lacked it and put the arrested vital principles back into circulation. Without realizing it, she often did by this simple touch, on certain people whose fluid was identical to hers, more good than by the remedies that she prescribed, sometimes only out of habit, and with insignificant variations, whatever the illness she was consulted for.
Providence has placed a remedy for each disease with each man. Only there are as many different organisms as there are individuals. The remedies also act differently on each organism, that influences the characters of the disease; and this is what makes it almost impossible for the doctor to prescribe the effective remedy. He knows its general effects, but he has no idea in what direction it will act on any patient that is presented to him.
It is here that the superiority of the fluidics and somnambulists shines, since when they find themselves in certain conditions of sympathy with those who come to consult them, the superior beings guide them with almost certain infallibility.
Often this inspiration is unconscious; often a doctor, but only with certain patients, suddenly finds the remedy that can cure them. It wasn't science that guided him, it was inspiration. Science put at his disposal several modes of treatment, but an inner voice shouted a name to him; he was forced to say it, and that name was that of the remedy that was to act, to the exclusion of all others.
What we say about medicine exists in the same way in all other branches of human labor. At certain times, the fire of inspiration devours us, we must give in; and if we pretend to concentrate in ourselves what must come out of it, real suffering becomes the punishment for our revolt.
All those to whom God has granted the sublime gift of creation, poets, scientists, artists, inventors, all have these unexpected illuminations, sometimes in fields very different from their ordinary studies, if one has claimed to violate their vocation. But the Spirits know what we must and can do, and they constantly come to awaken our muffled attractions.
We know how Molière explained these inequalities that distort Corneille's most beautiful pieces: "This devil of a man," he said, "has a familiar genius that at times comes to whisper sublime things in his ear; then suddenly he plants it there, saying: Get out of there as best you can! And then he doesn't do anything worthwhile anymore.” Molière was right. The proud genius of Corneille did not have the docile passivity necessary to always endure the inspiration from above. The Spirits would abandon him, and then he would fall asleep, as Homer himself sometimes did.
There are some - Socrates and Joan of Arc were among them - who hear interior voices speaking within them. Others hear nothing but are forced to obey a victorious force that dominates them.
At other times, a name strikes the ear of the inspired: it is that of a friend, of an individual whom he does not even know, of whom he has hardly heard. The personality of this unknown friend penetrates him, pervades him; strange thoughts gradually replace his own. He has the spirit of that one for a moment; he obeys, he writes, unwittingly and despite himself, if necessary, things that he does not know. And since that passive obedience, to which he is condemned, is bitter for him to endure in the waking state, he avoids these things written under an oppressive inspiration, and does not want to read them.
These thoughts can be in formal disagreement with his beliefs, with his feelings, or rather with those that education has imposed on him, because for certain Spirits to come to him, there must be some relationship between them. They give him the thought, leaving it up to him to find the form; they must then know that his intelligence can understand them, and momentarily assimilate their ideas to translate them.
It is rare that the circumstances have allowed us to develop in the direction of our native aptitudes. More advanced Spirits know which string to pull for it to vibrate. It had remained silent because others had been attacked by neglecting this one. They bring it back to life for a while. It is a long-stifled germ that they fertilize. The inspired then returning to his usual state, no longer remembers, for he lives a double existence, each of which is independent of the other.
It also happens, however, that he retains a greater easiness of understanding, and conquers a greater intellectual development. It is the reward for the effort he has made to give a graspable form to the thoughts that others have revealed to him.
Do not believe that all the inspired can know everything. Each, according to his natural predispositions, but often kept unknown to himself as to others, is inspired for such and such a thing, but is not equally so for all. There are indeed natures so unfriendly to certain knowledge, that the Spirits will never come knocking on a door that they know they cannot open.
The future is only known to the inspired to a certain extent. So, it is not true to say that an inspired predicted in what world such a person will go after his death, and what judgment God will pass on him. This is a game of the hallucinated imagination. Man, however high he has climbed the ladder of the worlds, does not know what his brother's destiny will be. This is the part reserved for God: the creature will never be able to infringe such rights.
Yes, there are manifestations, but they are not continuous, and our impatience with them is often to blame. Yes, everything is held together, and nothing is broken in the immense universe. Yes, there exists between this existence and the others a sympathetic and indissoluble bond that links and unites all the members of the human family to one another, and that allows the best ones to come and give us the knowledge of what we do not know. It is through this labor that progress is accomplished. Whether it is called the work of intelligence or inspiration, it is the same thing. Inspiration is superior progress, it is the substance; personal work gives the form, while still adding the quintessence of previously acquired knowledge.
Not a single invention belongs to us, for others have sown before us the seed we harvest. We apply to the work that we want to pursue the forces and the work of nature, that belongs to all, and without the help of which nothing is done, and then the forces and the work accumulated by others who have prepared for us the means of success.
In a way, everything is common and collective work, to further confirm this great principle of solidarity and association, that is the basis of societies and the whole law of creation.
Man’s work will never be made useless by inspiration. The Spirit who comes to bring it to us will always respect the part reserved to the individual; he will respect it as a noble and holy thing, since work puts man in possession of the faculties that God has deposited in his soul, so that the goal of his life is to fertilize them. It was through their development that he got to know himself, and that he deserves to be closer to God.
Inspiration comes either during the day, at night, waking or sleeping. It only requires recollection. It must find minds that can be abstracted from all concerns of the real world, providing free space to the being who will come to embrace him entirely, and infuse his thoughts into him.
In the hours of inspiration, man becomes much more accessible to all the outside noise, and everything that comes from the real world troubles him. He is no longer in this world, he is in a transitory environment between this one and the other, since he is in a way embedded in the moral and intellectual person of a being from another sphere, and whose body, however, clings to this one.
Although it is addressed to everyone, the inspiration will descend more generally on the unhealthy natures or worn out by a succession of sufferings, material or psychological. Since it is a blessing, is it not right that those who suffer are more easily able to receive it?
Hallucination is an unhealthy condition that magnetism can modify in a beneficial way. Inspiration is a psychological assimilation that we must be careful not to provoke by magnetic passes. The hallucinated readily indulges in outbursts, in ridiculous contortions. The inspired one is calm.
The inspired are melancholic. They need to be thoughtful; to be joyful, you don't need to think much; one must enjoy, in good health, a balance that the inspired ones do not always possess. But let's not think that they are difficult and fanciful. On the contrary, they are gentle and easy going with those they love.
There are inspired of several degrees. Some come to tell you tangible things, facts of second sight, so that one can see the reality of the initiation. The others, more clairvoyant and little concerned with the material processes of which they are not called to divulge the secrets, repeat as they come to them, the thoughts brought by the Spirits of progress. The first heal the body, the second are the doctors of the soul.
The mission of the most modest is limited to revealing how these things come to them. It is an established fact that advanced powers, by many degrees above us, come to dominate and inspire us. What is the point of repeating it? Believe it if they will. But the findings being well established, we should only consider inspiration from the useful and serious side. It doesn't matter, if the ideas are good, from what sources they come.
E. Bonnemère
