Sometimes, dreaming, with closed eyes we see the realities around-our bedroom, and everything in it; our library, and persons entering. We are fast asleep, it is a dream—but the objects are true clear and defined. The horizon of the dream expands, the whole street is seen, distant places are brought nigh, and the inward scene is a true picture of things really existing. At times, old things become new; forgotten events are remembered; words long ago said, in a now unknown language, are repeated; the dead appear as living; and, as by clairvoyance, there are visions of the absent. Inward influences seem the stronger the more our brain is given up to rest and sleep or, as others assert, the operation is carried on not when we sleep soundest, but with the maximum of sub-consciousness consistent with sleep. Whatever these perceptions are, unconscious, sub-conscious, flashes of insight scientific or poetical, our brains use them in the same manner as were they outward impressions received through the senses. They are not a mere play of the fancy; for when we are awake, no imagination, no fancy, has power to produce the objective perceptions and realities of a dream. Some persons when they dream, are as dramatic as Shakespeare. Sometimes, on awaking in the morning, there is no remembrance other than a confused notion of having lived another life in sleep; but in course of the day, some trifling incident, that has no apparent connection with dreamland, recalls the whole procession of events to form a living mental scene in the light of day. Most of us, awaking, have to fight our vivid perceptions before we find that they are only shadows; and important events float before the soul-the soul veiled in doubt whether they are visionary or real. We do, or think we do, unreasonable and impossible acts-unconscious that they are so. We dream that we dream, or dream that we awake, and thus the dream. is yet more clothed with the realities of life. Sometimes our spirit seems apart from the body, and looks on the dead clay. We are in a cave, consorting with ghosts and idiots. Walls even are no hindrance, and space has no limits, though all the conditions of physical sight are absent. Men, who never painted, conceive pictures most charming and artistic; the Seeing from Within. 361 unpoetic have glowing thoughts, clothe them with the language of Tennyson or Byron; and the unmusical make to themselves exquisite melody. Such dreams cannot be produced solely by outward influences on our senses; unless we are like a harp, which, uninfluenced by outward sound when played on, resounds with gentle excitement and sympathetic nerve when not played. Even so, how is it? the eye sees when no light shines the ear is filled with melodies, discords, or cries of anguish, when no sound is without; the sense distinguishes odours, nerves of taste are delicately excited, and there seems no cause-except that of the brain's peculiar fancy. The fact is, we possess a power by which we see and hear, taste and smell, and fill space with forms, when our outer physical senses are closed to the external world: we are endued with a faculty of seeing from within, unaided by impressions from without. Does it not render possible the actual existence of a power by which visions of every kind-prophetic as to the future, inspirative as to doctrine, perceptive as to facts, revelative as to Divine dealings-are brought within the circle of human knowledge and experience? Lord Brougham recorded a most marvellous incident.1 In his youth he had frequently disputed with G― on the immortality of the soul and on a future state. They actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written in their blood, to the effect that whichever died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts they had entertained of "the life after death." They grew up, and Brougham had well-nigh forgotten his young friend who went to reside in India. On the 19th of December 1799, after a day in the cold and open air, in Sweden, Brougham had a warm bath. While lying in it, enjoying the comfort, he turned round and looked toward the chair on which lay his clothes. There, on the chair sat G——— looking calmly at him. The apparition was so startling that Brougham fell down, and on recovering his senses was sprawling on the floor. There had been nothing to recall G to his mind, nor had he thought of him; yet, though regarding the whole as a Brougham's Life and Times," vol. i., pp. 201-204. 1 66 dream, he felt sure that G was dead. Returning to Edinburgh, he received some time after a letter from India, "announcing G's death! and stating that he had died on the 19th of December"!! Singular coincidence, and an analogy of some of the affairs of life, so Brougham regarded it. Like other ghost stories it is, of course, capable of explanation; but who shall explain the explanation. "Between the two states" (of dreaming and somnambulism) "there is a gradational transition. There are many, for instance, who talk much in their sleep, yet never attempt to leave their beds and walk. And among sleep-talkers there are some who merely utter meaningless sequences of words, or strangely jumbled phrases, and are incapable of being influenced by suggested ideas; whilst there are others who give utterance to a coherent train of thought, still without any receptivity of external suggestion; and others, again, obviously hear what is said to them, and attend to it or not according to the impression it makes upon them. . . The Somnambulist differs from the ordinary dreamer in possessing such a control over his nervo-muscular apparatus, as to be enabled to execute, or at any rate to attempt, whatever it may be in his mind to do; while some of the inlets to sensation ordinarily remain open, so that the somnambulist may hear, though he does not see or feel, or may feel, while he does not see or hear."1 Somnambulism, viewed simply as night-wandering, is a dream of reality for a direct purpose; and nature is generally the guardian in such perilous and mysterious walk. Somnambulists avoid every obstacle, walk on narrowest paths, climb dangerous heights, leap precipices, write without mistake, are conscious of the outer world by other means than their external senses, and certain faculties of the brain are used with greater precision and perfection than when awake. Carrying these facts into the region of magnetic sleep, we find that the Clairvoyant Somnambulist may have the attention directed to any place he wishes to see; where he will know everything that happens, and perceive, so it is asserted, things in advance which do not yet exist; but will happen, in course of time, as sequences of accidentally working causes. 1 "Mental Physiology," p. 591: Dr. W. B. Carpenter. This, as also spontaneous somnambulism, brings visions, which do not arise from outward influences, into relation with perceptions which are derived from the material external world; and dreams having reference to the health or sickness or death of the dreamer, have been verified by events.1 Such dreams may be called prophetic or clairvoyant; others can be explained away as mere misgivings and forebodings. Genuine sleep may be produced in a few moments; and the Biologized subject will be caused to sleep by the expressed determination of the operator that he will; not only so, but spontaneously to awake at the time he was directed. Metals, accounted the simplest and primitive productions of magnetic force, are said to be related to the system of ganglia in the same manner that the brain is related to light. Persons are not only sensitive to contact with metals, but even without metals or magnets, the Biologised "subject" may be acted on by mere suggestion; and the mind, which has lost the power of volitional direction, will be in complete subjection to a dominant idea given by the master mind. There may be no need to call in any special or new force to explain the influence which is exercised over what are called good "subjects." There is a power of paralysing the volitional power of some persons by a masterful expression of determination, by positive assurance of certain things, and earnestness of suggestion, so that the subject is made to assume the personality of the operator. "The undue repetition of such experiments, however, and especially their frequent repetition upon the same individuals, are to be strongly deprecated; for the state of mind thus induced is essentially a morbid one; and the reiterated suspension of that volitional power over the direction of the thoughts, which is the highest attribute of the Human mind, can scarcely do otherwise than tend to its permanent impairment." In the higher degrees of somnambulism, the "rapport between magnetizer and magnetized becomes so perfect that the latter is conscious of all that is passing in the brain of the magnetizer, of all impressions received by him from without, 1 Fabius. De Somniis. 2 "Mental Physiology," p. 565: Dr. W. B. Carpenter. and is entirely under his control.1 If this be the case: if hundreds of trustworthy witnesses assert that somnambulists, in a state of clairvoyance, are able to see what is absent, hidden, and distant, or what is even yet future; how is it possible to dispute or disbelieve the power of prophecy, the dreaming of dreams, and seeing of visions by the ancients? If such a force comes into play during magnetic sleep, "why should it not show its power at certain moments of our life, when we are awake, placing coming events before us either in a direct or allegorical form?"2 We are able, in conception, to separate space and time from pure intellect; and efface all distinction between the near and the distant, past present and future; proving that there is no insurmountable barrier to the occurrence of prophetic visions, "visio in distantia et actio in distantia," instantaneous acquaintance with events happening at any distance both in space and time. "If we hear that clairvoyant somnambulists are capable of seeing, in advance, what is to happen in the future, we must assume that they had an insight into the hidden and secret machinery from which everything proceeds, where everything is already at the present moment what it will be in future, and which represents itself only seen from without through our optical glass-time-as a future and coming event." We do not understand this, nor wholly endorse the statement; but wait every reverential attempt to reveal the secrets of matter and spirit, everything which gives an insight into the hidden machinery by which our Father moves the world. Consider the mechanism of these various actions. Suppose that a new idea is attended by the passage of a wave of molecular motion along a new path of the brain, and an old idea is the passage of a wave along an old path; the recollection of these ideas is the passage of later waves along these paths, and memory is the keeping open of the paths by a continual transit of waves. Reflex action and instinct, travelling along these fibrous paths or transit lines connecting nerve cells, are 1 "Spiritual and Animal Magnetism," p. 65: Prof. G. G. Zerffi. Prof. G. G. Zerffi. |